# Lounge > Science and Technology >  >  Is the universe simply a computer simulation?

## Koalafan

Try to wrap your head around this!  :Tongue:  This theory has been kicked around a bit and it pretty much states that at one point post human beings would be able to build universes and that we are simply living in one of these simulations.

http://io9.com/5799396/youre-living-...math-proves-it

Youâre living in a computer simulation, and math proves it

Is your life really your life, or is it actually the dream of a butterfly? Or is it a complex computer simulation indistinguishable from "real" reality? Don't worry, it's just a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

Questions about the nature of reality weren't invented by high-as-a-kite college sophomores. Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi noticed sometime around 300 BCE that his dreams of being something other than human (a butterfly, most famously) were indistinguishable from his experience being Zhuangzi. He could not say with certainty that he was Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly rather than a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi.

The whole "reality is an illusion" idea has been kicked around by everyone from Siddhartha to the existentialists. It is Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom who is most often associated with the idea that we are living in a computer simulation. His premise is based on a series of assumptions:

1). A technological society could eventually achieve the capability of creating a computer simulation that is indistinguishable from reality to the inhabitants of the simulation.

2). Such a society would not do this once or twice. They would create many such simulations.

3). Left to run long enough the societies within the simulations would eventually be able to create their own simulations, also indistinguishable from reality to the sub-simulations inhabitants.

As a result, you have billions of simulations, with a nearly infinite number of cascading sub-simulations, all of them perfectly real to their inhabitants. Yet there is only a single ultimate progenitor society. The math is actually pretty simple: the odds are nearly infinity to one that we are all living in a computer simulation.You're living in a computer simulation, and math proves it

One very strong argument against this unsettling theory is that a computer with the computational power to accomplish this is impossible. Setting aside the fact that today's computational power surely seemed unimaginable 100 years ago, there's a more interesting solution â the computer only actively simulates what it needs to. This is something that actually happens in modern computer games, and you've seen it if you've ever moved faster than your graphics card was capable of rendering the scenery, as the trees and buildings that had previously been beyond your view were drawn on the screen before your eyes. It actually explains a few of the trickier things about quantum physics, like why particles have an indeterminate position until they're observed.

Even more disturbing, it may be a much smaller simulation that you think. There could be just a few active simulation inhabitants, with the rest of the world filled with "non-actor" or NPC characters controlled by the computer. Their actions are only simulated as you perceive them, carefully performed so as to present the illusion that they have entire lives separate from yours. This helps explain why the creepy homeless guy at the end of your street doesn't seem to do much other than hang out and ask you to bring him 10 dire wolf pelts.

If all that seems too weird, let's just kick it back to Zhuangzi. There are almost seven billion people in the world. They all sleep. They all dream. Odds are we're all just living someone else's extremely vivid dream.

Source: Bostrom, Nick. "Are you living in a computer simulation?" Oxford University.

Butterfly photo: Lindsay Sorensen.

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## Chantellabella

I think that would be a neat thing. I've read enough sci fi books and watched enough Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes to consider that anything's possible.

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## Sagan

*Whoa: Physicists testing to see if universe is a computer simulation*

Could this be a computer simulation? (Space.com)Will you take the red pill or the blue pill?
 Some physicists and university  researchers say it's possible to test the theory that our entire  universe exists inside a computer simulation, like in the 1999 film "The  Matrix."
 In 2003, University of Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper, "The Simulation Argument,"  which argued that, "we are almost certainly living in a computer  simulation." Now, a team at Cornell University says it has come up with a  viable method for testing whether we're all just a series of numbers in some ancient civilization's computer game.
SNIP------------------
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...224525825.html

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## Chieve

I remember thinking about this as a kid lol

is this similar to us actually living in a world being 2D? and that the 3D world is just an illusion created by our brains and its all just a hologram?

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## shelbster18

::s: hock: ::s: hock: ::s: hock: Holy mother of pie.

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## IllusionOfHappiness

If I'm just living someone' dream...damn! Get it together, girl. You are a mess.

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## Dill

If so, it's malfunctioning!

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## WineKitty

> If so, it's malfunctioning!




My thoughts exactly!!!!  :;):

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## Chantellabella

> hock:hock:hock: Holy mother of pie.



Omgosh!! That's the funniest shock sentence I've ever heard. Thanks for giving me a laugh this morning.  ::):  I'm going to have to remember that one.

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## onawheel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain

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## Sagan

I sometimes wonder if the universe is just an atomic scale of another realm. The sun being the nucleus of an atom. the planets and moons being part of the electron or molecular cloud. With it going infinitely down or up in scale.

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