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Movie “The Matrix” stills

In the movie, Keanu Reeves (Keanu Reeves) plays the role called Neo, he met a man named Morpheus (Morpheus) The guy, Morpheus is the name of the Greek god of dreams. Morpheus asked him to choose to take a red pill or a blue pill. If he takes a red pill, he wakes up and realizes his entire life, including his work, the building he lives in, everything is part of this elaborate game, and he is in a world outside the game. wake up.

This is the basic version of the simulation hypothesis.

Q: Do we live in the simulated universe now?

There are many mysteries in physics. These mysteries are best explained by the simulation hypothesis, not by the material hypothesis.

In fact, we don’t understand our reality at all, and I think we are more likely to be in some kind of simulated universe. It’s more complicated than the games we make, like World of Warcraft and Fortress Nights are more complex than Pac-Man or Space Invaders. It took people decades to figure out how to model physical objects using 3D models and how to render them with limited computing power, and eventually made a series of multiplayer online games.

I think, in fact, we are very likely to live in the simulation, although I can’t be 100% sure. But there is a lot of evidence that I may be right.

Q: You just said that some of the phenomena in our world will be more plausible if we apply the theory of simulation. What are the specific phenomena?

There are several phenomena, one of which is God.The quantum uncertainty of the secret, that is, a particle is in multiple states at the same time, you are not sure about its state until you observe the particle.

Maybe a better way to understand is the “Schrodinger’s Cat” that you repeatedly mentioned. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger (Erwin Schrödinger) made a hypothesis that a cat was in a radioactive material In the box, the probability of a cat dying or surviving is 50% each.

Common sense will tell us that cats are either alive or dead. We just don’t know because we didn’t look in the box. As long as we open the box, we will know if the cat is alive or dead.

But quantum physics tells us that cats are in a state of being alive and dead at the same time, until someone opens the box to observe it. The basic principle here is that the universe only presents what needs to be observed.

Q: What is the relationship between Schrödinger’s cat and game or computer simulation?

The history of game development is constantly optimizing for limited resources. If you ask a person in the 1980s, can you make a full 3D virtual reality game like World of Warcraft, you will get the answer: “Impossible, this will exhaust the computing power of the world, We can’t render all pixels in real time.”

But the optimization technology that comes with it makes this possible, and the core of optimization is “presenting only the images to be observed.”

The first big game to successfully render in real time is Doom. (Doom), which was very popular in the 1990s. . This first-person shooter only renders light and objects visible to the character’s perspective. This optimization technique reminds me that our physical world may also be video games.

Doom

Q: I want to quote an example to express my own incomprehension: Occam’s Razor Law(Occam’s Razor) . Suppose we live in a real world with flesh and blood. Isn’t this a simpler and more likely explanation?

I would like to borrow the theory of the famous physicist John Wheeler (John Wheeler). He was a great physicist and one of the last physicists in the 20th century to have worked with Einstein. He said that physics was originally defined as the science of studying objective objects, and everything can be restored to particles, which is known as the Newtonian model. But with quantum physics, we realized that everything is a probability field rather than an objective object. This has brought Wheeler’s professional research to a new level.

John Wheeler

And let him go one step further, he found that everything is essentially information, all composed of bit bytes. He also invented a famous phrase called “Everything comes from bits”, which is to assume that any objective world we see is actually a collection of information. Unfortunately, he did not see quantum computers become a reality in his lifetime.

So, I want to say that if the world is not objective, but based on information, then a simpler explanation is that We actually live in a simulation environment based on computer science and information generation.

Q: So, in theory, is there any way we can clearly prove that we live in the simulated world?

I would like to borrow the arguments put forward by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom,

Nick Bostrom

Therefore, he puts forward an argument from the statistics. The simulation world is much more than the real world, but the simulation world can be created very quickly. Therefore, as a conscious species, we are more likely to be in a simulated environment than in a real environment. This is more of a philosophical argument.

Q: If we live in a computer program, then this program contains rules that may be modified or destroyed by the programmer. But the laws of our material world seem to be very constant. Does this mean that our world is not a simulated world?

The computer does follow the rules, but the fact that the rules always apply does not tell if we live in a computer simulation. There is a theory related to it called “the irreducibility of computing”. It means that even if you know all the rules, you may not be able to predict in advance what these rules will do. The only way is to do it on the ground. Run these rules to see what they will do.

There is a mathematical branch called chaos theory. It believes that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause hurricanes in other parts of the world, but to figure this out, you must really practice every step of modeling. Just because the rules seem to apply, it does not prove that we are not living in the analog world.

In fact, there is more evidence that we live in the simulated world.

Q: If we live in a simulated world like “The Matrix” in a fake, then what is the difference between simulation and reality? Is it important to figure out whether our world is real or illusory?

There is a lot of debate around this topic. Some of us are reluctant to know the truth and prefer to swallow blue pills.

The most important question that may be relevant to this is that we are in the game NPC(computer role) or PC< Span class="text-remarks" label="remarks">(player character).

If we are a PC, it means that we are only playing a role in the game of life, which I call “big simulation.” I think a lot of people want to know which one we are. We want to know the parameters of the game in order to better understand and experience.

But if we are an NPC or a mock character, then I think this assumption will be more complicated and more horrible.

The problem is, if all of us are in the simulation, what is the purpose of the simulation? I think a lot of people want to understand the goals of this simulation and the goals of our roles.

As one episode in Star Trek, one character finds that there is another world outside of the perspective, but he can’t go, and maybe some of us would rather not know.

Q: How far are we from having a technical ability to create a fake world like “The Matrix”?

I have listed 10 stages of technology development. A civilization must go through these stages to reach the simulation point I am talking about and create a world of analogy that is comparable to reality. IThey are in the fifth stage, virtual reality and augmented reality. The sixth stage is rendering, so we don’t have to wear glasses, and 3D printers can now playThe fact that the entity is printed shows that most things can be presented with information.

Movie “The Matrix” stills

But the really difficult part is not covered by many technical experts. In The Matrix, the reason people think they are completely living in the simulated world is that a line is inserted into the cerebral cortex as a bridge for signal transmission. This brain-computer interface is an area where we have not made significant progress, and it is still in its early stages.

My guess is that after tens to 100 years, we will reach the simulation point.

This article is from WeChat public account: create (ID: xingshu100) , author: creating Talk editors, original title: “If we live Is it terrible in the simulated world of the Matrix? What if science supports this hypothesis?