New Evidence For The Simulation Hypothesis? Donald Hoffman on The Simulation Argument

this isn't real what is real how do you define real if you're talking about what you can feel what you can smell what you can taste and see then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain imagine a universe not just vast and ancient but intricately detailed down to the smallest particle could everything we see everything we experience everything that exists in our entire universe be artificial IAL welcome to the mindbending concept of the simulation hypothesis a theory that proposes our reality everything from the furthest star to your morning coffee could be a sophisticated digital construct but who or what would be running this simulation 20 years ago we asked ourselves how long it would be before faces and bodies could be changed as easily as we change clothes 12,000 years ago humans first start started shaping their environment laying the foundation for civilization fast forward to today and we're creating virtual worlds of our own could an advanced civilization perhaps eons ahead of us have created the ultimate simulation our reality Donald Hoffman is a cognitive psychologist and Popular Science author known for his unconventional views on the nature of reality space and time according to him the world is with perceive it is not the true reality Hoffman posits that mathematical models grounded in the principles of natural selection indicate that our most deeply held intuitions could in fact be misleading most of us believe that we see reality as it is when we look up and see the moon it's because there really is a moon and it would exist even if there were no observers to see the moon it would still exist and we don't believe that we see all of reality no one thinks that we see everything that there is to see but we do believe that we've been shaped by natural selection to see those aspects of the truth that we need to see to stay alive and so that our perceptions of space and time are giving us a genuine insight into a real space and time that would be there even if there were no observers to perceive it and also our perception of objects like tables and chairs the moon quarks and leptons and so forth that these things would also exist and have roughly the properties that we see even if there were no creatures no observers to see them at all and if you believe evolution by natural selection then the mathematics of natural selection makes it very very clear that the probability is zero that any of the language that we use in our perceptions the language of space and time the language of shapes and objects and position and momentum and colors and so forth is the wrong language to describe objective real real ity whatever that reality might be it's not that we're getting the shape of this table a little bit wrong or the colors a little bit off it's that no description in the language of space and time and objects and colors could ever be true reality whatever it is can't be described in that language if we buy evolution by natural selection so we have a choice between taking one of our best confirmed scientific theories seriously namely evolution by natural selection or taking our intuitions that SpaceTime is fundamental and objects are fundamental taking that intuition seriously the idea that reality might be an illusion isn't new ancient Greek philosophers like Plato pondered the nature of reality fast forward to today and this ancient contemplation has evolved into a modern hypothesis fueled by advancements in Computing and digital Technologies the simulation hypothesis opens a cosmic door to endless questions it challenges our understanding of existence consciousness and the Very fabric of reality but let's delve deeper into this Cosmic conundrum recent scientific insights bring a new twist to the simulation hypothesis what if the very laws of physics that govern our universe are not just rules but algorithms in a grand Cosmic program could we the inhabitants of this universe ever recognize the digital nature of our existence or are we destined to live unaware within the confines of our program reality in this simulated Universe the physical laws are algorithms and our experiences are generated by computational processes of an advanced system that could become immortal while speculative this theory has captivated scientists and philosophers alike sparking both Fascination and skepticism I think a good analogy here that might help clarify the issue is in say Grand Theft Auto right I'm playing with somebody who's in Canada and someone else is in Europe and someone else is in China we're all playing a remote version of it and I look over and I see a red Porsche to my right and so I say is there a red Porsche am I right and the guy in China says yeah I see a red Porsche and the guy in Canada agrees and the guy in Europe agrees as well so of course each of them is rendering their own red Porsche so there is some reality that's coordinating all of these perceptions right so the guy in Canada didn't see a red Porsche until he looked but when he looked there was this whole world of circuits and software that you don't see there's some supercomputer that's coordinating the whole thing in that particular metaphor right the there's a supercomputer that's taking the inputs from like your headset what direction are you looking with your headset maybe you've got a bodysuit so it's looking at your arm movements and so forth and it's feeding all that into a supercomputer where it's got a model of the game and in that model there's some red Porche model of course there's no red Porche in the computer and it knows then how to coordinate and send the photons to your headset in Canada and my headset in Irvine and someone else's headset in in China so that we have this notion of a persistent reality of a Porsche even though individually each one of us local realism is false the Porsche doesn't even exist until I render it and there's no red Porsche inside the supercomputer so that's sort of the idea is that SpaceTime is just a headset and there's behind SpaceTime there's going to be an incredibly complicated realm to explore that's as least as complicated more complicated as like the supercomputer is to my little headset headset is sophisticated it's beautiful technology but the supercomputer is you know really really powerful thing the same thing will be true of SpaceTime it's just our headset if we look beyond that headset we're going to you know be finding a realm that's far more complicated so in some sense science up till now has only studied our headset we've studied inside space and time we're taking our first baby beeps to start to explore we learned the tools in the last 3 or 400 years about experiments and clean mathematical theories and the loop between experiments and theories but we thought we were studying objective reality we were studying our headset but now we have the tools to actually take a First Step Beyond SpaceTime and start to find structures Beyond SpaceTime and their projection back into SpaceTime and so from that point of view objects in SpaceTime we've taken that to be the fundamental reality will look sort of parochial I hopefully in just a few decades some scientists suggest that if our reality is indeed a simulation there might be detectable glitches or patterns that betray its simulated nature however finding such anomalies is a formidable challenge as our understanding of physics continues to evolve a recent study proposes a new law of physics the second law of infodynamics which seems to support the simulated universe theory at the heart of this new law is the concept of entropy a measure of disorder while traditional entropy always Rises the second law of infodynamics states that information entropy must remain constant or decrease over time the most intriguing consequence of the second law of infodynamics is the optimization of information content in the universe this suggests that the entire universe might indeed be a simulated construct a super complex computer program running on an unimaginable scale quantum mechanics offers some of the most compelling evidence for the possibility of our universe being a simulation take for instance the double slit experiment this experiment a Cornerstone of quantum mechanics reveals that particles like electrons and photons can display characteristics of both particles and waves when not observed they seem to go through two slits simultaneously creating an interference pattern typical of waves however when observed they behave behave like particles going through only one slit this peculiar Behavior baffles scientists and seems to defy the classical laws of physics but if we consider the simulation Theory this could make sense in a simulated Universe the rules are not bound by our traditional understanding of physics the observation effect in the double slit experiment could be akin to a rendering feature in a simulation where elements are fully realized only when they are observed much like how video game environments are rendered in detail only when the player's character looks at them so local realism is false so local realism is the claim that objects in SpaceTime like say a proton have definite values of their properties like position momentum and spin definite values even when they're not observed and that they have influences that propagate no faster than the speed of light we have very very good evidence to say if if we know anything we know that local realism is false but that leaves open whether it's the locality that's false or whether it's realism that's false that which is what I'm claiming that realism is false that a particle doesn't have a position or momentum or spin when it's not observed because you create it as a headset element When You observe so the double slit experiment is completely compatible with what I'm saying whether we are part of an elaborate simulation or not these scientific explor ations open new doors to understanding our universe they challenge us to rethink the nature of reality and our place within it

Channel: Science Time

Views: 730,849

Keywords: the simulation hypothesis, simulation hypothesis, are we living in a simulation, is the matrix real, the simulation argument, simulation argument, simulation theory, are we stuck in a simulation, nick bostrom, donald hoffman, universe, space, science, curiosity, infodynamics, holographic universe, spacetime, science time

Id: RhAgpq26Noc

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023