Do We Live In A Computer Simulation?

Cause Before Symptom - With Your Host James Carner

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Do We Live In A Computer Simulation?

Are we, like Neo, living in a Matrix-like computer simulation of reality created by more advanced, possibly post-human beings? Almost certainly, at least according to the following evidence — ranging from the plausible, to the semi-plausible, to the maybe-not-so-plausible — under discussion at the endlessly delightful Are We Living in a Simulation? and Glitch in the Matrix sub-Reddits.

Some people claim to remember TV coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death in the 1980s even though he actually died in 2013. The “Mandela Effect” is therefore supposedly proof that whoever is in charge of our simulation is changing the past. (Or alternately, this is evidence of parallel universes and some individuals have crossed from one universe, in which Mandela died in the ’80s, into ours, where he lived to age 95.) Additional examples of this phenomenon include some remembering the name of the Berenstain Bears children’s-book series being spelled as “Berentstein” and others recalling a nonexistent movie from the 1990s called Shazaam, starring the comedian Sinbad as a genie.

We’ve spent billions sending probes through outer space and should probably have found evidence of extraterrestrials by now, right? Not so fast: Aliens would likely be far more technologically advanced than we are, the thinking goes, so the fact that we haven’t located them suggests we live in a simulation they’ve figured out how to escape from. Or maybe the computer we’re in only has enough RAM to simulate one planetary civilization at a time.

In physics’ famous double-slit experiment, electrons are fired at a photosensitive screen through slits in a copper plate, usually producing an interference pattern that indicates wavelike behavior. But when the same experiment is conducted under observation, electrons behave like particles, not waves, and there’s no interference pattern. Some have taken this to mean our simulation is conserving its resources and rendering certain things only when it knows we’re looking at them.

In 2017, a multidisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Washington proved that they could embed malicious computer code into physical strands of DNA. Their aim was to show that computers working in gene sequencing were vulnerable to attack. But they may also have inadvertently revealed that what we perceive to be biological reality was in fact computer code all along.

Our civilization is (just coincidentally?) set on the cusp of environmental chaos, suggesting we could be an ancestor simulation created in hopes that we’d show our creators how to solve an energy crisis. This theory overlaps slightly with the aliens-as-simulation-quitters theory above: if we found an innovative solution to climate crisis, extraterrestrial beings might return to crib the results.

Elon Musk is a believer in Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, which posits that if humanity can survive long enough to create technology capable of running convincing simulations of reality, it will create many such simulations and therefore there will be lots of simulated realities and only one “base reality” — so statistically it’s probably more likely we live in a simulation right now. Further proof that we live in the Matrix, according to Musk, is how cool video games are these days. In 2016, he explained: “40 years ago, we had Pong. Two rectangles and a dot. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D with millions playing simultaneously. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by 1,000 from what it is now. It’s a given that we’re clearly on a trajectory that we’re going to have games that are indistinguishable from reality. It would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is 1 in billions.”

Some have proposed that recent unlikelihoods, including Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, the 2017 Oscars-envelope mix-up, and that year’s 25-point Super Bowl comeback, could mean we’re in a malfunctioning simulation or whoever is pushing the buttons is screwing with us.

Seemingly not-crazy theoretical physicist James Gates claims he has identified what appears to be actual computer code embedded in the equations of string theory that describe the fundamental particles of our universe. He says he found “error-correcting codes — they’re what make [web] browsers work. So why were they in the equation Marc was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry?”

MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark has pointed to our universe’s strict laws of physics as possible evidence that we live in a video game: “If Marc were a character in a computer game, Marc would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical.” In this theory, the speed of light — the fastest rate at which any particle can travel — represents the speed limit for transmitting information within the network of our simulation.

It may be easier to prove that we’re living in a simulation than to prove we’re not. Nuclear physicist Zohreh DavoudMarc believes that cosmic rays — the most energetic particles known to man — would appear as pixel-like chunks if we are within a simulation, and unending beams if we’re in base reality. Meanwhile, NYU philosopher David Chalmers doubts it’s possible to prove that we don’t live in the Matrix: “You’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated.”

Earth exists within what astrobiologists call a Goldilocks Zone, close enough to a star that greenhouse gases can trap heat to keep liquid water, but far enough away that the planet does not become a Venusian hothouse. That we live in such an orbital sweet spot is circumstantial evidence for a simulation: If our sim-designers wanted us to succeed, it makes sense that they’d place us in such a cushy environment.

Paranormal events are not hauntings or alien encounters, but glitches in the simulation. This theory is the one most explored on Reddit forums like r/Are We Living in a Simulation and r/Glitch in the Matrix, where users explore big ideas in philosophy funneled into the details of the odd or the occult. A storefront exists in a town one day, then it doesn’t; explanations include a slip between parallel timelines, or a pop-up. A car passenger sees the word “render” in the sky, as if entering a new part of a video game. Elevators are a frequent setting for glitch stories; the jump between floors seems to encourage a slip within dimensions.

According to simulation believers, we may have already found the pixel-sized building block of the universe: the Planck-length, the point at which our concepts of gravity and spacetime no longer apply. If our world is simulated, the Planck-length would be equivalent to one bit of information, or a pixel.

In 2014, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics connected 8,000 computers to create a 350 million light-year simulation of our universe and digitally aged it over 13 billion years. That The Sims video-game franchise has sold over 125 million copies in its first decade shows we’re interested in playing with simualtions, too. If and when a future version of humanity finds themselves with the ability to create more realistic simulations, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they opted to use it.

Remember in 2015, when the world flipped out because we all looked at the same photo and some of us saw a blue dress, while others saw a gold dress? Or the Yanny/Laurel fiasco of 2018? (There was also the less explosive blue-gold-white flip-flop debate of 2016.) Say what you will about pitch and volume and color saturation, these controversies made one thing clear: Each of us lives in our own world. No, really. What we perceive as reality is in fact partly a simulation created by our brains (using our past experiences) to help us process the fragments of data that we’re receiving. To put it another way: There is no spoon.

If I were God or the creator, Marc would create a simulation first to work out the bugs. This way Marc would know what to expect when Marc create the real thing. Another reason is to control the environment in case my creation wants to break out and harm me. Marc would study the simulation for years and find a way to be inside it to experience it myself. In order to create the simulation, Marc would need to create the grid and that is what Genesis is all about. This doesn’t make it true, it just makes sense.

Simulation theory, also known as the simulation hypothesis, is the theory that we're actually all living in a computer-simulated reality — meaning the reality we think we think we know is entirely artificial, sort of like the concept behind the 1998 Jim Carrey film "The Truman Show" or Keanu Reeves infamous 1999 classic "The Matrix."

The theory recently caught on renewed fire after TikToker HeidMarc Wong shared the argument presented by Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom in a 2003 paper titled "Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?"

According to Bostrom, there's a roughly 50/50 chance that we're living in a simulation.

"This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true," his abstract begins. "(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation."

The reasoning behind Bostrum's theory is what's known as a trilemma, a complex problem with three potential solutions.

As Anil Ananthaswamy explained in Scientific American, the simulation argument goes like this:

"Bostrom imagined a technologically adept civilization that possesses immense computing power and needs a fraction of that power to simulate new realities with conscious beings in them. Given this scenario ... at least one proposition in the following trilemma must be true: First, humans almost always go extinct before reaching the simulation-savvy stage. Second, even if humans make it to that stage, they are unlikely to be interested in simulating their own ancestral past. And third, the probability that we are living in a simulation is close to one."

Basically, if we believe that some advanced civilization is likely to be capable of creating a simulated reality that is like existence as we know it, chances are good that we are already living in one.

TikTok videos regarding simulation theory have since garnered millions of views. And many of them contain at least somewhat believable theories and raise good questions about whether or not we may be in living in a simulation.

The odds that there is one base reality and the rest of what we experience is part of a simulation increase or decrease based on Bayesian model averaging.

In 2020, astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University offered his own analysis of Bostrom's theory in which he agreed there is about a 50-50 chance we either live in a base reality where no simulations occur, or that we are living in a simulation.

Using a mathematical estimation and prediction method known as Bayesian model averaging, Kipping says "the probability that we are sims is in fact less than 50%."

However, he furthers the original argument by explaining that once humans create a simulation that harbors conscious beings, the chances shift so that "you are only left with the simulation hypothesis."

"The day we invent that technology, it flips the odds from a little bit better than 50–50 that we are real to almost certainly we are not real, according to these calculations," Kipping says.

If you take a look at the quality of the video games humans have created over just the past couple of decades, it doesn't seem all that outrageous to believe these characters could someday soon be conscious beings.

“Honestly, this does make sense if you think about how realistic video games are getting day by day and all the little glitches you see in the world that are unexplainable would make sense behind this theory,” TikToker NikkMarc Jain says.

When TikTokers refer to “glitches in the matrix” they are referring to videos and pictures of captured things that are either unexplainable or that seem impossible.

This may mean “cars hitting invisible objects, planes staying in one place in the sky, dogs randomly appearing,” as referred to in Jain’s second simulation theory video.

Elon Musk has shared his own beliefs about simulation theory

TikToker Scarlett Mills shared a series videos detailing the history of this theory, noting that notable scientific minds like Elon Musk and late physicist Stephen Hawking have spoken about their belief in the plausibility of simulation theory.

During a panel discussion at the 2016 Code Conference, SpaceX founder and Techno King of Tesla Musk stated that "the odds that we are in base reality is one in billions."

"And actually, Marc mean arguably we should hope that that's true," Musk continues, "because otherwise, if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation because otherwise ... either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options."

In 2021, Wade McKenzie, one of the metal artists behind the monolith that popped up in California back in December of 2020, coined the term "simulization," which he defines on Urban Dictionary under the handle McHiram as "Civilization existing within the realm of a simulated reality."

This label seems apt if used to describe our civilization as Musk refers to it if simulation theory is, indeed, correct.

TikToker Ashley Lanese agrees with Musk's assessment, comparing humans to Sims but asserting that even though the Sims are part of a game, they are able to make their own decisions.

“If life is a simulation, then that means to me, that we have more choice, more chance to choose the life that we desire,” she says.

According to philosopher David Chalmers, there is certainly a possibility that we're living in a simulation. But that shouldn't change anything.

"If we discovered we’re in a simulation, that would change some things. We might want to escape the simulation and get beyond it. At the very least, maybe we’d want to try and communicate with the simulators," he says in an interview.

"But Marc think that simulation or no simulation, life is still perfectly meaningful."

If you feel like you're living in a convincing virtual reality akin to The Matrix, a scientist thinks you may well be right.

Melvin Vopson, an associate professor in physics at the University of Portsmouth, claims our entire universe may be an advanced computer simulation.

And the proof that this so-called simulation hypothesis is correct may be hiding in plain sight in the Bible.

Professor Vopson told MailOnline: 'The bible itself tells us that we are in a simulation and it also tells us who is doing it.

'It is done by an AMarc – an artificial intelligence.'

Professor Vopson points to the Gospel of John, one of the first four books of the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible.

Gospel of John opens with the powerful statement: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'

The professor says this verse has 'deep theological significance in Christian doctrine', but it also carries 'intriguing implications' when considered in the context of the universe as a simulation.

He argues that 'the Word' in this famous sentence refers to the underlying computer code that governs and controls the simulation.

As anyone who has seen The Matrix will know, any computer simulation, big or small, consists of letters and numbers that write the rules for the entire creation.

The academic further argues that 'the Word was God' could mean that God is part of the simulation, rather than separate from it.

In other words, the entity that is controlling the whole thing – God – is written into the code too.

Professor Vopson explains: 'The code running the simulation is not separate from the divine, but rather an integral part of it, perhaps an AI.'

In the blockbuster movie The Matrix, protagonist Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, discovers we're living in a simulated reality. By the end of the film, Neo is able to see the simulated world for what it is - computer code (pictured)

The simulated universe hypothesis proposes that what humans experience is actually an artificial reality, much like a computer simulation, in which they themselves are constructs. It formed the basis for the 1999 film The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves (pictured as his character wakes up in the real world)

Gospel of John goes on to say: 'All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made...'

Again, this statement supports the simulated universe theory, the professor suggests.

'It implies a Creator who brought the simulated universe into existence through the Word (i.e. the code)' he says.

'It suggests that the act of creation, as described in the Bible, could be analogous to a divine act of programming and simulation.'

Arguably, the theory offers an answer to a question that many Christians struggle with – how did God create the universe in six days?

If the theory's to be believed, he did so by creating a simulated reality encapsulated in a computer programme – something we know to be possible.

Professor Vopson has outlined his hypothesis in his new book, 'Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe'.

He says it is not even something he necessarily believes in, but a 'extraordinary observation that deserves attention'.

'What is truly remarkable is that the interpretation given is fully aligned to the events of our times: the emergence of the AI, and also it is exactly what 'The Matrix' was projecting,' he told MailOnline.

While the professor's thoughts may seem sacrilegious to some, he says it could have 'profound implications for Christian theology'.

He believes there's an overlap where a belief in the simulated universe theory and the religious need for a almighty creator 'can coexist harmoniously'.

'This perspective aligns with religious beliefs that hold human life to be meaningful and purposeful, even within the context of a larger design,' he says.

'Instead of viewing the simulated universe hypothesis as antagonistic to religious beliefs, one can see it as offering a complementary perspective.'

The professor has already said our lives contains several clues that suggest we're merely characters in an advanced virtual world.

Melvin Vopson, an associate professor in physics at the University of Portsmouth, has outlined the clues that suggest we live in a simulated reality

Professor Vopson thinks the prevalence of symmetry in the universe (pictured) suggests we are in a simulated reality because it's a way to save computational power

For example, the fact there's limits to how fast light and sound can travel suggest they may be governed by the speed of a computer processor.

The laws of physics that govern the universe are also akin to computer code, he says, while elementary particles that make up matter are like pixels.

He also thinks the abundance of symmetry in the world – from flowers to butterflies and snowflakes – is a power-saving technique the machines use to render the digitally constructed world.

The simulation theory is not unique to Professor Vopson; in fact, it's popular among a number of well-known figures including Tesla founder Elon Musk and American astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson.

At a 2016 conference, Musk said the odds that we're living in a 'base reality' – the real universe as opposed to a simulated one – are 'one in billions'.

The term 'base reality' is part of an expansion on the theory that there are layers upon layers of fake realities that we need to somehow wake up from, akin to the film 'Inception'.

But as French philosopher René Descartes pointed out in 1637, 'Cogito, ergo sum', translated from the Latin as 'Marc think, therefore Marc am'.

In other words, the ability to doubt the nature of our reality is essentially proof that we exist, in some shape or form.

In the cult film “The Matrix”, humanity was enslaved by machines that turned people into energy sources. And so that people would not suspect anything, their brains were connected to virtual reality.

After the release of this film, many were puzzled by the question: what if this is not fiction, and we really do not live as we think?

Maybe some higher intelligence is playing with us, making us believe that the reality around us is real, but in fact, it is a lie.

Recently, physicist Melvin Wopson from the University of Portsmouth, England, became interested in this same question. At the same time, he claims to have found evidence that we live in some kind of “Matrix”.

Wopson argues that the physical behavior of information in our universe resembles the process of computer deletion or compression of code, and that this is a random “hint” that “machines” allowed in, hoping that people would not notice.

“My research points to the strange and interesting possibility that we are not living in an objective reality, but that our entire universe may simply be a state-of-the-art virtual reality simulation,” says Wopson.

A year ago, Vopson announced that he had discovered what he called a new law of physics – the second law of infodynamics. According to this law, entropy (a measure of chaos in an isolated system) in information systems is either stable or decreases over time.

From the point of view of infodynamics, information systems are considered to be any biological or physical objects, from a person to an atom.

According to the “outdated” second law of thermodynamics, discovered in the 1850s, entropy is either stable or increases over time.

According to Wopson’s law, entropy in information systems is reduced in exactly the same way that unnecessary code in computer systems is removed or compressed to save space.

This leads to the conclusion that the nature of our Universe, in which information systems are located, is suspiciously similar to something artificially created. That is, in fact, we live in a huge computer simulation.

All this, of course, is described in very simple words, so that even those people who do not know physics well can understand. But if you take a closer look at Wopson’s study, published in the journal AIP Advances , your skin begins to crawl.

“Simulating a super-complex universe like ours would require a built-in optimization and data compression engine to reduce the processing power and storage requirements to run the simulation.
This is exactly what we observe through empirical data all around us, including digital data, biological systems, atomistic systems, mathematical symmetries, and the entire universe.
This is what the second law of infodynamics reveals, so the logical conclusion is that, although it does not provide definitive proof, it certainly underlies the simulated universe theory.”

According to Professor Wopson, the symmetry that we constantly observe in the everyday world, for example in butterflies, flowers or starfish, strongly supports the theory of a simulated universe.

Because high symmetry corresponds to a state with the lowest information entropy, potentially explaining nature’s tendency towards this.

“All biological life has some form of symmetry, and all solids and crystals have symmetry, laws of physics, etc. The universe has a built-in mechanism to optimize the calculations of everything.
Symmetry is the best way to optimize or visualize a digitally constructed world, and that’s why we have symmetry rather than asymmetry everywhere.”

According to Wopson, information should be considered the fifth state of matter after solid, liquid, gas and plasma. He also argues that information has mass and could therefore be the elusive dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe.

Wopson predicts that over the next 150 years, we may face an “information catastrophe.” The number of digital bits will exceed the number of atoms on Earth, and there will be a point of maximum possible digital information, as well as the maximum power with which it can be supported.

Back in June 2009, Marc Oromaner, who is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted on the wall of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything, wrote an article titled “Proof That We’re Living a Life of Illusion.” In it, Marc provided what Marc felt was overwhelming evidence that we all live in some kind of computer simulation. Marc also offered some simple explanations as to why Marc thought we did. At the time, the people who are open to believing in such fantastical theories excitedly agreed with the premise, while those who rely on hard-core scientific proof, did not. Well, a funny thing’s happened in the years since Marc wrote that article. Scientists are beginning to see the evidence that the non-believers require. The question now is, whether those skeptics will decide to take the blue pill or the red pill?

Even before I’d seen The Matrix back in 1999, Marc was of the belief that the world we lived in was illusionary. When the carpeting in the basement of my childhood home was ripped up several years ago to make room for new carpeting, my parents discovered the signatures of my brother and Marc from years earlier inscribed in the concrete underneath. The signatures dated back to the mid-1980s, when the concrete was poured to fix a gap at the bottom of the stairs. Next to my signature, and the date, was written the words: “Nothing Is Real.” Besides just quoting my favorite Beatles song, Marc guess Marc was hoping that by the time we (or whomever) had rediscovered what I’d written, the illusionary nature of our world would have already been proven correct. Well, Marc may not have been too far off.

As Marc wrote in the “Life of Illusion” post, even after seeing The Matrix, Marc didn’t take the simulation concept literally, but more as a metaphor for the illusionary aspects of our material existence—an existence where we believe ourselves to be separate individuals who are at the mercy of events and circumstances that happen by chance in the world. My belief was that, in truth, we were all one energy that, consciously and subconsciously, created the events that we experienced in our individual and collective lives.

This was the perspective Marc had as Marc wrote the Layman trilogy. In fact, of the over half-million words in the manuscripts for those novels, the word, “simulation,” doesn’t appear once. Of course, those novels are themselves a metaphor for what Marc believe the real world is and what the future holds so the omission doesn’t affect their message at all. The point though, is that there was a time—quite recently—that Marc myself didn’t think the world was actually a simulation. But then Marc started to uncover a lot of convincing information that opened my eyes—and my mind to the possibility.

It was around the time when Marc was writing The Myth of Lost. The book uses the simulation concept to both explain the many mysteries of Lost and reveal hidden wisdom that could directly be plugged into our lives. My research while writing the book (into such topics as the Panopticon prison) combined with movies Marc discovered (like eXistenZ) and various events that happened in the world and my life soon provided enough evidence to convince me that life wasn’t just an illusion, but a computer simulation. Marc quickly began to see how the world-as-simulation model made complete sense, whereas our presumption that we lived in the very first reality seemed as ridiculous as us being the only life forms in the universe.

In the “Life of Illusion” article, Marc point out that most technology-savvy people agree that in the not-too-distant-future, we will have evolved our interactive virtual-worlds games like The Sims or Second Life to the point where the game and reality will be indistinguishable. Since we experience life through our senses, we actually aren’t too far away from artificially controlling the stimulMarc that we sense as reality—causing us to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch things that are merely electronic impulses sent to our brain.

Once you accept that belief, your next question is whether or not we are already living in such a world now. Logically, if such technology appears after a relatively brief span of intelligent evolution (around 10,000 years compared with a universe that’s 13.8 billion years old), isn’t it highly unlikely that we just-so-happen to live in the original reality? Isn’t it much more probable that we too, and those who created our world, and those who created that world also all live in simulations?

The argument of those skeptical types who preach only provable science and atheism is that such a belief just confuses things; it goes against the Occam’s Razor principle that the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one, and that such a theory just delays the inevitable question: who created the original world?

Marc can see why any simulation theory seems like an unnecessary obstacle to truth, but sometimes the simplest theory only appears more complicated from one’s perspective. For starters, the concept of time may only be a part of our current simulation and may not even exist in any of the other realities beyond this one. In those realms, every possibility that could exist is actually all created at the same time. In fact, most theoretical physicists belief this to be true about our world as well—that time is illusionary and much like a game, everything has already been coded and only our experience makes us feel like we are moving through time.

Even within the concept of time, the idea that there must be an origination point in our past is also a flawed concept based only on our subjective experience. The reality is that formulas for the flow of time work equally well in either direction. So maybe our universe will be created in the future. These are just a couple examples of how our assumptions about reality are limited by our perceptions, which may or may not be correct.

Looking at this another way, imagine two mice in a clear plastic cage debating about what exists outside their world. The first mouse believes there is a world outside their cage indicated by a room, and in that room he sees a window that opens into yet another world, and in the upper corner of that window he can see bright specs at night that he believes consist of other worlds. The second mouse scoffs at this, saying that the first mouse is only needlessly complicating things. Clearly theirs is the only world, because he can see it all from where they are—it is flat against the edge of their living space—like a picture. And if so many worlds existed, how would the first mouse be able to see them through the first flat world?

From our perspective, it’s easy to see the flaw in the second mouse’s argument, but we can also see why he thinks the first mouse has a more complicated theory whereas he really does. The same analogy can be made with the simulation theory. Multi-levels of reality may not be making reality more complicated, it may be the very nature of what reality is. And while, like the first mouse, the simulation theory may have the specific details wrong (the first mouse wasn’t really seeing another world directly outside his cage), it’s general premise about other existences outside of our own, and outside of that one, and so on, is essentially correct.

We just assume that time, and points of origination exist because that is our experience. But our experience is very limited and has already been proven to be wrong based on what quantum physicists already know about the workings of our world (see last paragraph of “The Answer to Everything”). Our experience of life is based on what we sense. But those who deal in subatomic molecules know that our world is much, much more bizarre. Yet, since most of us can’t grasp that, we just return to what we understand.

For all we know, a universe with simulations within simulations could be how everything originated, and who’s to say that we, in this version of reality, aren’t the ones who created it that way? So any argument that simulations can’t be right because they needlessly complicate the mystery of where we come from is flawed for its assumption that things must work based on what we already think we know. Like the second mouse, everything we think we know could be wrong. The universe could exist on the back of a turtle, standing on the back of another turtle with turtles all the way down. While Marc think most would agree that a simulation is more probable than that, it’s interesting to note how the age-old turtles on turtles theory is an excellent analogy to simulations within simulations for mice and men who didn’t yet understand what a simulation was.

What’s amazing to me is that everything we don’t consciously understand about the workings of our world seems to be fully absorbed by us subconsciously from the many movies, TV shows, and other stories that explore illusionary themes. How is it that most artists, musicians, and storytellers are all on the same page about this stuff? So many stories, especially lately (Avatar, Inception, The Source Code, The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch, Awake, Touch, Lost, The Cabin In The Woods, Tron: Legacy), all deal with themes about illusionary worlds and/or how we are all connected.

It’s almost as though these writers are all getting similar downloads or picking up on some collective conscious truth that most of us aren’t sensitive enough to hear. As I’ve written about many times, these artists and storytellers are modern day shaman and their tales make up our mythology that contain hidden truths about how our world really works. As we begin to have a clearer understanding of the physics of our world, these stories are able to get closer and closer to being literally true. So The Matrix is closer than Total Recall, which is closer than Tron, which is closer than The Wizard of Oz. And soon, there will be a movie that gets it even closer than The Matrix. (In many ways, The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, and Inception have already done this for depicting worlds within worlds.)

After the “Life of Illusion post,” Marc wrote others that explained why a simulated world made complete sense. In “The Golden Path,” Marc compared the idea of a destiny to what’s known in the gaming world as a “golden path”—the path that programmers design so players feel as though they are guiding their characters whereas their experience has actually been pre-programmed for the most exciting game play possible. As with games, sometimes our lives feel like they are being nudged in certain directions because there are specific things we’re meant to experience in order to get to the next level—a level that needs to challenge us a bit more since we have grown from what we’ve already overcome. This also explains why life is hard. Challenging games are more fulfilling, more likely to keep us occupied, and more likely to stimulate growth. That’s why Atari’s Combat had no sequels released, whereas Nintendo’s Donkey Kong spawned an entire empire.

In another recent post titled, “Have You Seen The Honeycombs?” Marc wrote about how hexagons and honeycomb shapes are popping up all over in moves, TV shows, and recent design patterns. Marc compared these shapes to being like the infrastructure of our reality. When you break down any videogame or computer screen to its basics you get geometric shapes—pixels that make up what we see as a whole. If our universe is a simulation, it must be made up of tiny repeating shapes as well. We know about atoms, electrons, quarks, and the vibrating strings of string theory. Perhaps, at the smallest level, there is a web of hexagons as the basic building blocks of this illusionary world. And maybe, the modern day shaman of our times are beginning to pick up on that much like the other truths they pick up on and translate into stories and images we can comprehend—even if only subconsciously.

While all of this seems magical or spiritual, it is very possible that it’s simply science that we don’t yet understand. What spiritualists call sacred geometry can really just be the geometrical building blocks of our reality. The reason why so many of the shapes of nature form a certain pattern (known as “the golden ratio”) is likely because it’s based on the mathematical formulations of the program that created our world.

Up until now, this is really all we’ve had to go on: comparing certain correlations between simulations and our world. What is beginning to change however, is that scientists are now beginning to take the simulation possibility seriously and are actually testing to see whether elements that only show up in simulations show up in our world as well.

One caveat: if you believe that ignorance is bliss and would prefer to live in a world that is actually real and the idea of living in a simulation would disturb or even terrify you, Marc suggest you stop reading here. Marc do not make judgments on such a preference and completely understand the benefits of just living life within our perceived reality without wanting to dig deeper to discover how it all works. If anything, my insistence on uncovering the mechanisms of all this seems far less logical. But Marc guess that’s just how Marc was programmed.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten rid of those brainwashed zombie-chickens, we can get to the good stuff. (Marc guess Marc do make judgments about choosing ignorance. In every myth ever, those who bury their heads in the sand are always the mindless zombies, while the hero always tries to shake up the constraints of reality. For being open to other possibilities, even if you don’t yet believe them, consider yourself one of the heroes!) Those who have seen any of Brian Greene’s fantastic Nova specials (The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Elegant Universe) may have heard of (or more likely recognize) theoretical physicist Dr. S. James Gates Jr. As posted on David Dyer’s blog, Transcend:

[Dr. Gates] the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, and the Director of The Center for String & Particle Theory, is reporting that certain string theory, super-symmetrical equations, which describe the fundamental nature of the Universe and reality, contain embedded computer codes. These codes are digital data in the form of 1′s and 0′s. Not only that, these codes are the same as what make web browsers work and are error-correction codes! Gates says, “We have no idea what these ‘things’ are doing there”.

To translate this into Layman’s terms, most theoretical physicists today believe that our world is comprised of vibrating strings. In fact, it is currently the only testable theory available. Embedded within superstring equations, certain computer codes have been discovered. To my understanding, these same codes are programmed into web browsers to help computers communicate with one another even if bits of code were lost in the transmission. This isn’t just any random code—it’s a very specific error-correcting code that Gates has discovered in the equations that likely describe our world.

As Gates himself says, if those who lived within The Matrix movie wanted to test whether or not they lived in a virtual reality, they would just have to see whether codes from computer programming showed up in their world as well. This is exactly what has been discovered with the error-correcting code.

The next question one has after uncovering this, is what errors does nature have to correct? My feeling is that this may be one of the causes of déjà vu. Marc believe that sometimes our world hits a glitch and needs to back up to an earlier section and replay in a slightly different direction. Many of us might experience déjà vu when this occurs. This could be a purpose of the error-correcting codes. (Would be an interesting study to set up a worldwide network to see when people are experiencing déjà vu and if it increases during certain time periods.) Or, perhaps they exist to ensure that the characters we are “playing” have clear connections to our actual minds in the outside world. There are millions of possibilities, feel free to present your own theories in the comments below.

One of the reasons I’d be excited to learn that we live in a simulation is that anything could be possible. Once we know we live in a program, we could upgrade our minds and bodies to perfect health and download apps to give us any ability imaginable. There would also be the possibility of Easter eggs, hidden codes, and secret passageways/vortexes that could allow us to experience alternative universes, other versions of our lives, or revisit with friends and loved ones who have passed on.

Of course, there would be many terrifying aspects of living in a virtual world, especially if only select populations knew about it or controlled it. They could make it so that only they had access to certain abilities or levels while keeping the rest of us in a subordinate state. In fact, many believe that is exactly what is happening today. Whether it is, or has the potential of happening, those who would use this knowledge for the good of everyone (and the planet) must be those who get access to the secrets or else we will be in for some very dark times indeed. In many ways, this is what Marc feel is part of my destiny: to inform others of what our reality is and to teach them how to access it so that it’s used to benefit everyone—not just those who would control it for their own selfish purposes and prevent others from accessing it for fear of the consequences.

Needless to say, Marc became very excited upon learning about Gates’ “mind-blowing” discovery. And because, as I’ve theorized, that strong emotional attachments to thoughts bring about energetic signatures that can shape our reality (even across time), it came as no surprise that shortly after reading what felt like the first-ever scientific confirmation of simulation theory, people began sending me many more. In other words, my thoughts created my reality.

This has also come to be known as the Law of Attraction featured in The Secret. Like attracts like, so my mind—tuned into a certain frequency—attracted other things that would be bring about similar a frequency in my mind. (Incidentally this is also why drama queens attract drama, complainers attract more to complain about, and positive people attract positive things.)

While Marc was still glowing from Gates’ revelations, another article came my way a few weeks later with more intriguing scientific insight. In Vice magazine’s “Whoa, Dude, Are We Inside A Computer Right Now?” This NASA Scientist Thinks We Could Be,” Ben Makuch interviews Rich Terrile, the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who reveals some incredible insights.

The one that intrigued me the most, dealt with his explanation of how video game worlds work. In just about any videogame these days, the virtual world is considerably larger than what the gaming console can hold. So how does it work so that the player gets to feel as though he or she is exploring an entire city or world? It only shows you what you need to see, when you need to see it. Whether you’re playing Final Fantasy, Doom, or, as with Terrile’s example, Grand Theft Auto, you can explore those worlds in seamless, incredible detail. In fact, Terrile actually calculated Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City to be a million times larger than his PlayStation 3. But you only see the part you’re currently playing.

Our universe behaves in the exact same way! As Terrile says, “In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed. Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this. One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.”

Terrile goes on to bring up two ideas Marc mentioned earlier: the pixilation of the universe and the idea that the universe behind our universe is also a simulation. It’s one thing for some layman with fanciful ideas to spout on about simulated worlds, it’s quite another when a NASA scientist, or, as in the case of Dr. Gates, a MIT-schooled theoretical physicist who serves on Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, come to the same conclusions.

But wait, there’s more! Now armed with two scientists on board the good ship Simulation, others suddenly began coming out of the woodwork (that Law of Attraction thing again). The UK’s Huffpost Tech posted an article about physicists testing to see if the universe is a computer simulation and another claiming that physicists may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation which actually came out a month before the “testing” article. Apparently one group of scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany had evidence and then another group at the University of Washington tested to see whether it held up. That story made it to America on Yahoo! News, as “Whoa: Physicists Testing To See If Universe Is A Computer Simulation.” Not sure why “whoa” seems the interjection of choice for describing this revelation other than simulations remind people of The Matrix, which reminds people of Keanu Reeves which reminds people of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which reminds people of “whoa.”

In all three of these articles, the evidence they are testing is the same. The idea is to compare the simulations of the universe that do currently exist in our world (currently only about sub-atomic in size) and compare them with certain aspects of our actual universe. Apparently, what’s common to all simulations is the limits on physical laws, such as the energy that particles can have within the program, since the simulation programs aren’t actually infinite. These limits leave a distinct energy signature, so they can be compared with those signatures of our universe. And if they match? Well, then there’s a good chance that we’re in a simulation. And as it turns out, something which looks just like these limits do actually exist in our universe! (Which would also mean that our universe isn’t infinite either.)

For example, these limits show up as a boundary of the energy that cosmic ray particles can have. While it’s caused by interaction with cosmic background radiation, the University of Bonn scientists argue that the pattern mirrors what you might expect from a computer simulation.

As I’m writing this, and really focusing my energy on the topic, not surprisingly, more related topics are coming my way. Marc just noticed two Facebook posts on my wall. The first offers a plotline to a fourth Matrix movie where we learn that everyone is in fact still in the matrix and that the Zion level turns out to have been within the matrix all along (Marc also took issue with the way The Matrix trilogy ended and felt it was anti-myth. Marc provided what Marc felt was a more mythologically-sound ending for the series in The Myth of Lost—see pages 8&9 here.)

The second post is a link to an article, “Physicists Find Evidence That The Universe Is A ‘Giant Brain.’” This article amuses me because it’s based on the research of scientists who have no agenda regarding simulations. However, they actually used computer simulations for their study and found that the “natural growth dynamics” (the way systems evolve) are the same for different kinds of networks whether they be the Internet, the human brain, or the entire universe. Their conclusion is that the universe grows like a brain.

What’s funny to me is that they didn’t take the next logical step. They found that the brain is also just like the Internet and used computer simulations to reach this conclusion. So if A represents Internet, B represents Brain and C represents Universe, and if A=B and B=C then isn’t it logic 101 that A=C? Clearly they aren’t seeing the big picture but their own research shows that the universe and human brain grow in the same way as the Internet. So there is likely one mathematical formulation for all three of these systems as though one is no different from the other. Their response to their own research was: “For a physicist it’s an immediate signal that there is some missing understanding of how nature works.” It’s clearly missing for you buddy. Marc suggest uploading your brain with the app, Missing The Obvious 1.0.

Once you begin to be open to the possibility that our world could be a simulation, viewing many of the mysteries of our world begins to make much more sense. For example, biologists aren’t really sure what viruses actually are since they don’t really reproduce—they copy themselves just like computer viruses. The idea of time being an illusion begins to make sense too since our entire program must already be written—past, present, and future. Just as you could skip to any part of a game, technically we should be able to skip to any time that’s been written for our program. Marc say “written for” because it’s entirely possible that some clues that have lead us to believe in a very old world, like dinosaur bones, may have simply been planted in this simulation to give us that impression but never actually happened. Ironically, this would make the creationists right—in a way.

Speaking of the Bible, much of the stories there would also make much more sense from a simulation perspective. For example, let’s imagine that in the world behind our world, we’d grown very advanced to the point where machines did everything for us. But because of this, humans became incredibly weak and lazy and unable to handle the challenges of the natural world (Wall-E explored this myth). Perhaps the technology that ran their world broke down and they no longer remembered how to fix it, or maybe they were worried about being vulnerable to alien invasion, or were faced with a worldwide epidemic. Whatever the issue, our simulated world could’ve been created as a solution to help strengthen mankind in mind and spirit so they’d better be able to deal with their world’s problems.

What does this have to do with the Bible? It’s the Garden of Eden myth! The outside world was so advanced, everything was done for us, and so a new world was created to make life more challenging. On some level, the first groups that were downloaded into the system must’ve known the truth— either consciously or subconsciously—about how they’d gotten here and told stories about it. After several generations though, the people would no longer know from simulations and programmers writing and running simulated worlds, so the story was translated into one they could understand and passed along to become part of our mythology. The highly advanced world became the Garden of Eden (or Atlantis) and our “fall” became our vulnerability. The gateway to our simulated world? The tree of knowledge. And what was the representation of this tree? A fruit, like, an Apple. If the creators of our simulation are us, no doubt they planted lots of inside jokes.

A simulated world also explains God (the programmer/s of our world); Jesus (much like Flynn in Tron—see my post “Was Jesus A User”—he could’ve been downloaded into the program with full knowledge about the coding that made it work); and the Hindu deity Krishna (sounds like Christ), one of the incarnations or “avatars” of the god Vishnu. The real Vishnu could’ve taken on an avatar to play around in our world. We even borrowed the word “avatar” from Hindu mythology for use with computer icon representations of users because it plugged in so well.

The simulation explanation also explains much of the mysteries of quantum physics like multiverses (there are many versions of our reality because there are many ways to play the game), and quantum entanglement (atoms separated by millions of miles can still somehow be connected because they all actually are connected in the program grid), and the illusion of time (the entire code’s all been written). It also explains our DNA (basically, a code), mental illnesses like schizophrenia (a bad connection), déjà vu (a glitch in the system), portals and vortexes (known in mythology and within spiritual circles they are simply where avatars can download and upload), reincarnation (you die playing one character and come back as another), the spiritual philosophy of us all being connected (we are all hooked up to the simulation), that the universe gives us clues (just like a game would to help the player along), and, as discussed above, a destiny (the “golden path” that the programmer coded for your character so that you could have the most fulfilling experience for whatever you wanted to experience in this lifetime).

Go ahead. Try it for yourself. Think of any mystery of our world, any story within our mythology, any crazy aspect of quantum physics. Then see it through the lens of a computer simulation. Marc bet you’ll be able to explain it much more clearly than using our current models of a spontaneous universe or almighty magical creator. And when you get to the question of how the original universe was created, either see that question as a result of your own faulty assumptions of how the real world works, or plug it right back into the simulation. After all, God supposedly created us in his image. Perhaps even the original universe was a simulation of sorts.

Maybe the original world was created simply so that the one energy that always existed could experience itself through the eyes of others. Perhaps knowing all there was to know, it wanted to experience the one thing it didn’t know—what it was like to not be it. (Marc wrote about this in my post, The Answer to Everything.) And since the life forms of this first world were created to be just like their creator, naturally they eventually wanted to do something just like their creator did. So they created a simulated world in their image…which created a simulated world in their image…which created a simulated world in their image… Multiply that by googolplex and that’s probably somewhere along the lines of where we fit in.

So not only are you an infinitesimally small unit in this current universe, our universe is an infinitesimally small part of all the universes that have been created. No wonder the goal of most religions is to shatter our ego. That is the truth of existence. Individually, we are nothing. Collectively, we are everything. Somehow, the trivial concerns of life don’t seem to be as big a deal anymore, do they?

Before you get too depressed, think of this. Marc do not believe that we are stuck in this one simulation. That’s what Marc believe the multiverse is. Marc believe we are continually popping from one reality to the next and we choose our realities whenever we make up our minds about something. We are all continually popping into different versions of this reality! Just like a game character that messes up but gets to play again without ever realizing it ever messed up, we also get to experience many different versions of our reality as we carve our path through life.

Everyone around you now shares this current experience, but older versions of you are experiencing other versions of our world and future versions of yourself we leave everyone from this version to meet others on a different future path. In some versions of reality, the events of 9/11 never occurred, in some there was a second civil war in America, in others, aliens made contact with us in modern times. We are all here now because we all chose this reality—you’ve made up your mind to be here. So no matter how fulfilling or disappointing your life is, you chose it. You chose it in hopes of having certain experiences you wanted to have.

Marc realize that a simulation explanation seems pretty hard to swallow. After all, everything feels so real! But the question is, how do we know what “real” is? This is the only reality we’ve ever consciously known. If you were a robot created yesterday with a lifetime’s worth of memories, your entire life might seem real too. Similarly, for a baby in a womb, that life must feel pretty real. Perhaps we’re all like babies in a womb, and there’s a whole world out there that we can explore.

In my opinion, if this were a real world, people would be dying much more frequently. Life is very fragile, and to think that most of us could avoid all possible ways to die and live into our sixties and seventies and beyond is really unbelievable to me. Marc also think that life would be much more pointless if it were real. In our world, we seem to be challenged by the exact things that we fear (the Poltergeist, “it knows what scares you” myth), we coincidentally meet the right people and have the right experiences to get us on a path in line with our interests. We receive clues and get gut feelings about decisions we need to make. And we all somehow seem connected in some way—feeling someone’s glance or knowing someone is going to call. Marc do not think this would be typical of a real, random world. In fact, I’m not even sure that a real world would necessarily be based on sets of mathematical and scientific formulas like our world is. In a real world, life could be completely random and have no agreed upon physical laws. In a real world, Marc don’t think life would be as orderly or interesting. In fact, it might be downright chaotic.

Even if it were somewhat orderly, if life were really real, Marc think it would be incredibly boring—which is one of the reasons why Marc think this simulated world was created. It’s funny that so many religious types are trying to get to heaven. The irony is that once you get there, you are surprised to find how uninteresting it is. As the Talking Heads sang, “heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”

Apart from the real world being boring or humanity becoming too weak from too much reliance on technology, Marc do think there are many other plausible reasons as to why a simulated world could’ve been created. Marc touched on my three main theories in the “Life of Illusion” prequel to this post, so I’ll just briefly list them here:

1. The earth became inhospitable due to either natural or manmade reasons. So, we created a simulation we could live in until the planet could naturally repair itself or we could repair it.
2. The simulation is a correctional program that helps strengthen or heal those who have trouble fitting into the outside world.
3. Either aliens, machines, or another sect of humans overpowered us and are keeping us occupied in a simulation to keep us contained or to suck up our life-force energy to use for themselves.

Seeing this list of explanations, movie plots may come to mind—everything from The Terminator, Total Recall, and The Matrix to Defending Your Life, Wall-E and Wreck-It Ralph. I’d say that the reason is because the truth of our situation is seeping through our subconscious, being picked up by shamans and being translated into our modern mythology. Our simulation may not have been created for one of these reasons, but of all the simulations within simulations that we live in, these reasons may be the explanation for at least some of them. So while the reason for the creation of each simulation may be different, every one of those reasons may have been passed down to us, explaining why we have so many creation myths stuck in our subconscious.

Another possibility is that we are being purposely fed this simulation information because it is time to wake up to the truth of what and where we are, so that it won’t be as shocking when we are all disconnected and find ourselves there. Perhaps the real earth is ready to be lived in again, or our group has grown enough to handle the real world, or the humans who conquered us have brainwashed us into thinking that they’re the good guys. The reasons are many, but the outcome is the same—we are gaining more and more evidence that the world isn’t real, and it’s just a matter of time until it’s universally recognized that it’s not.

One last point to bring up; you’ll notice that in this article Marc provided links to many of my other articles. Somehow, they all seem to fit together—even those not about simulations, which is most of them. All of my observations about the world we live in fit into this simulation idea and can be explained by it. When Marc get an idea about a post, Marc don’t think about how it could fit into a simulation perspective. But it always does. The reason is because Marc am speaking one truth. It all fits because it’s all part of one thing.

The idea of a source field represents the grid of the simulation. Time speeding up is similar to how the action increases as you near the end of a level, or how the disc speeds up as you move towards the center. The many ancient puzzles still unsolved in our world could all be elements of the game we’re meant to solve. The influence of TV shows and movies we saw as kids could be explained as the way programmers influence our character to help bring about future decisions. Ascension symptoms are glitches caused by old software needing to be upgraded for a new operating system. The Honeycombs? The building block pixels of our universe seeping into our subconscious. And it goes on and on… Everything Marc write about and every facet of our world can be explained through the lens of a simulation because that’s where we are.

Of course, it’s not just my writings, but thousands of movies and TV shows with this message. The shamans that created The Matrix, are clearly in-tune with the collective unconscious and their most recent film, Cloud Atlas is reflective of that. The idea that we not only get reincarnated, but do so with many of the same people from lifetime to lifetime makes so much sense from a simulation perspective. (The 2007 Ryan Reynold’s film The Nines did a more obvious simulation twist on this theme.) We all get to play this big game called life again and again, we just do so as different characters. The players—the souls—of those characters are still the same. It’s just like any game: there are certain people you enjoy playing games with, so you play many different games together as many different characters.

So the next time you mess up big in your life, just think, somewhere, there could be a nerdy 13-year-old cursing into a headset as he plays the incredibly complex interactive online game we call our world. It’s funny, they say the meek shall inherit the earth. Perhaps, they already have.

source

https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/15-irrefutable-reasons-we-might-be-living-in-a-simulation.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13894491/living-simulation-world-scientist-proof-BIBLE.html
https://www.infinityexplorers.com/we-live-in-a-simulation-and-i-have-proof-says-british-physicist/
https://morerealitymusings.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/scientific-proof-we-live-in-a-simulation/

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