Is The Universe A Simulation?

in 1970 a British mathematician named John Conway created a project known as the game of life even though it's a game it isn't one that you necessarily play the game of life is a zero player game which doesn't make much sense when you hear it the way it works is you put in a set of initial conditions and then observe that's it once you put the initial conditions in the game runs itself other than the small set of rules of the simulation follows it runs on almost nothing some patterns only run for a few generations before they die out while others seemingly go on forever and this got me thinking if a simulation as small as this with the very little variables can result in something huge what if we scale this up to say the size of a universe a simulation that's more than just dots on a screen but a simulation with galaxies planets and life more importantly if that is possible how do we know that we aren't living in one of those simulations right there [Applause] [Music] [Applause] at first the argument for our universe being a simulation just sounds like complete nonsense but when you actually take a look into it it seems to become more and more plausible how do you observe things well you see them or smell them or observe them with any of your senses this is your subjective reality a reality based on the subject you you are alone in your own head everything that you observe or interact with ences journey with neurons firing in your brain in a certain way to create your view for the world what this being said can you prove that there is an objective reality that is a reality that exists independently of our knowledge of it sort of overarching reality that encompasses all of our subjective realities it exists without our observation of it that sounds kind of confusing though you can't know that an objective reality exists without someone or something to observe it for example if I went outside and stated that it was freezing and you went outside and stated that it was scorching hot that is where our subjective realities come into play from this it seems that two different Minds two different people can observe a single object in multiple ways in an objective reality it would just be either freezing or just scourging regardless of either one of our observation in an objective reality in order to prove something exists you would have to observe it without observing which is an obvious contradiction this kind of begs the question can you prove that anything outside of your own mind is actually real babies aren't exactly the smartest things in the world but they do give us a good insight into how we learn how our minds develop and how we become aware of the world around us if you look outside your window you might see a tree or another house or maybe you're caught in the driveway but you don't need to physically look out there to know that those things exist this is known as object permanence is the knowledge that objects exist even when we aren't perceiving them in any way however we aren't born with the skill it's something that is developed over time I'm sure you've seen or even played peekaboo with a baby before when you cover your face babies less than about a year old will believe that you disappeared into thin air but when you take your hands away you're back back into their reality the knowledge that things exists even when you can't observe them isn't learned until about one and a half to two years into life but is that actually true this goes back to your subjective reality sure after a while you might learn that some things seem to exist when we aren't observing them but how can you be certain at the end of the day it is just your subjective reality it's due to your consciousness that you can even observe anything take this for example when you've looked at your computer or phone or television or whatever device you're watching this on you know that all of those things are composed of atoms but you can't really see them can you it's not until we take a device such as a microscope to observe them that we can actually see these atoms that make up everything we can't see them until they're observed closely so if this is true this can make simulating universe a million times easier simulating an entire universe with billions of galaxies over billions of light-years would take up a lot of computing power and would really just be a waste all the posthuman species would have to do is just simulate the consciousness of its subjects or maybe even subject is there any way to prove that anyone you talk to on a daily basis isn't just another function of code in the simulation all the simulation has to do is just trick you into believing the world around you is real when you play video games you'll notice that things don't render and completely when you aren't looking at them it's a waste of power and energy since video games are basically simulations of our own why wouldn't the simulated universe follow a similar strategy is a very arrogant statement coming from human but hear me out if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound it's a pretty popular psychological question and it fits really well here it is simulated universe if no one is around or conscious of that even taking place there's no reason for it to make a sound or for the tree to even fall in the first place if we stumbled upon that tree later on it will just be lying on the ground to give the illusion that it fell if we aren't observing galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field what's the point of them existing in the simulation at all times it can be possible that just bits and pieces of what we call the universe exist and are observed at a single time if we look back at where technology was a hundred years ago and compare it to now you can see an obvious difference if technology continues to advance at any rate that's greater than zero then it is possible that in the future whether it be 100 or 1 million years that we will eventually have technology with near unlimited computing power but all I keep talking about is power and energy how would a civilization even get this kind of power remember those creepy Russian dolls that when you open them up there's another doll inside and then another and another there's a concept that's basically that but on a stellar scale take our son for example it's really big and really hot and it radiates a ton of energy if we could somehow harness all of that energy we could use it to simulate millions of universes simultaneously but how are we supposed to gather all that energy using a little something called matryoshka brains if an advanced civilization was able to build a mega structure and come seeing the Sun in multiple layers just like the dolls they would have all of the sun's energy at their disposal a civilization capable if this could most likely do this within multiple stars and thus we'll be able to simulate as many universes as they'd like we can run simulations on our own computers that project our universe on a large scale the illustrious project does this very well just like the game of life the project is much like a zero player game scientists who created the project gave it certain properties that match our universe near the beginning and then just let it run it's able to project our universe on a large scale very accurately actually and that's just what the computing power we have today in the future simulations like these will get more and more accurate until eventually it may even be realistic however it cannot be perfect when we observe atoms and attempt a view electrons or other particles we cannot know both the position and momentum of these particles with a hundred percent certainty this is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle there's a limit to what we can know about the mass energy position and time of a particle meaning that in any simulation there is no way to accurately represent everything exactly as it was you can never truly have a perfect simulation of reality it will always be slightly slower than the actual reality itself even with an infinite amount of computational power at your disposal in order to combat this limits have to be put in place tricks and sleight of hand have to be used a good example is this if you have an old computer and try to run the newest games on it with 20 Google Chrome tabs open while also listening to music you'll see an obvious decline in your computer's performance the old computer doesn't have the computing power necessary to handle all of that strain so it slows down now think of black holes when you're around that much matter in one place that much information in one spot time literally slows down it's as if whoever created the simulation slowed down parts of the simulation to keep the energy required low could this be an explanation for the speed of light could this be the speed of computation of whatever simulation we may be in there's no way to tell and all of this is theoretical and to be honest insane but it doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it it could actually help answer some of the most sought-out questions we asked for example the Fermi paradox when we look out into the universe we don't see any other signs of life are we really alone are we just a glitch in the simulation or are we just not looking hard enough take the creatures that exist at the bottom of our oceans are they aware that we humans even exist are they aware of anything outside of their immediate vicinity do they know that they're living on a big rock floating around a hot ball of gas orbiting some big black hole of death in the center of the galaxy that sucks anything and everything in probably not what if we're just like those creatures but the furthest that we can observe or are aware of is what we call the observable universe perhaps the universe cannot exist without conscious minds to observe it the idea of simulated universes could also explain the multiverse theory the idea of a multiverse is just that multiple universes or perhaps infinite universes in many situations when there's a high chance of someone getting killed or someone has a near-death experience they are reported to have said that their life flashed before their eyes their most special moments and memories from their life all comes rushing back to them in an instant researchers from hadassah University in Jerusalem analyzed multiple cases of people who experienced these near-death experiences in almost all of these cases those being interviewed stated that they had lost all sense of time one of them wrote there is not a linear progression there is a lack of time limits it was like being there for centuries it happened all at once or some experiences but didn't my near-death experience were going on at the same time as others though my human mind separates them into different events another respondents stated I could individually go into each person and feel the pain that they had in their life I was allowed to see that part of them and feel for myself what they fell when people experience these things it was as if they were living another life they experienced things they never felt before it was as if they stepped foot into an alternate reality the idea of time didn't exist for a short while and they were able to analyze things that no other living person could do when you're talking with a friend and had that weird deja vu feeling that you've had the same conversation before or that you've experienced exactly what they're feeling without actually having been through it perhaps you when another universe or another simulation actually had that same thing happened to you the illusion of free will allows us to live our lives in any way we see fit but what if every single decision that you've ever made has been pre-programmed into the simulation that we could exist in every decision you make branches you off into a parallel universe a parallel simulation where every choice that you have ever made has led you to this exact very moment at home on your phone watching in this very video current technology already greatly surpasses human performance and speed that's why many big companies like Tesla use robots and other machines to do jobs that humans can't do as effectively biological neurons those are the neurons that fire in your brain every second of the day operate at a peak speed of about 200 Hertz whereas modern micro processors operate at at least 2 gigahertz a whole 7 orders of magnitude faster even with modern technology a super intelligent AI for example a human mind that runs a hardware faster than the brain could make decisions millions of times faster than current humans would it would be able to think of every outcome and pick from the best ones however we are not super intelligent AI there is a limit to what the human brain can do can observe we have though made some very important discoveries that keep us asking questions most importantly math math seems universal there are numbers and patterns and things from the size of atoms to things the size of galaxies discoveries that we humans have made and only in the past couple thousand years have allowed us to ask crazy questions like are we living in a simulation if we were to put every single one of the possible billions of simulations into a hat jumbled them around and picked now what are the chances that we will grab the original one the one who made all the simulations in the first place what are the chances that the earth were living on even exists perhaps an advanced alien species came upon our dead planet after billions of years and found traces of our DNA traces of our existence and then made a simulation out of that to learn about the history of the barren wasteland of a planet they had just stumbled upon if that's the case then hello we can never know for sure all we can do is observed and hope that our game of life is one that we can win [Music]

Channel: Aperture

Views: 1,738,837

Rating: 4.8915477 out of 5

Keywords: aperture, Is The Universe A Simulation?, universe_simulation.exe, The Simulation Hypothesis, are we living in a simulation, simulation theory, simulation hypothesis, virtual reality, universe, simulation, the matrix, simulated reality, we are living in a simulation, what is reality?, are we in a simulation?, simulation argument, nick bostrom, the illustris project, are you living in a simulation, is life real, the game of life, subjective reality, matrioshka brain, fermi paradox

Id: 7SjiRTYmNoA

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018