Are we living in a simulation?
There are many theories out on the internet that indicates that we are living in a simulation. The followings are the best evidence that convinces me we are really in a simulation.
1. Quantum mechanics
In physics, there is a phenomenon call observer effect. This phenomenon is best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that in the quantum world, by mere observation of the experiment can cause the end result to change. Double-slit experiment is an experiment of firing light source through 2 small holes. When there are no observers to see which hole the light pass through, it will appear as a wave pattern. When an observer is placed to check which hole light passes through, the light will appears as particles forming 2 distinct indicators.
Observer effects in reality is for simulation to conserve memory.
This is similar to what we are doing in computer games, where we will only create the objects when necessary for the user to observe. Imagine a tree, it might be hollow inside until that instance we cut it. Then the inner part is created because we are observing it now. This means all physical objects might be empty until we observe it. This proves that we are in a simulation.
2. Universal speed limit
We all know that light and objects in our spacetime have a speed limit, which is 299,792,458 m/s nothing in our spacetime we know now can break this limit. This shows that the simulation we are in has an upper limit on how fast it can process. When objects accelerate near the speed of light, the object time slows down. This can explain that the object is now lagging as it reaches the upper limit of the processing power of the simulation.
Expending in space is faster than the speed of light. Special relativity only applies in local context, when we measure the speed of expending universe they appear to be moving away faster than the speed of light. This is because the context is no longer local, we are measuring them while we are moving ourself and they could have different expension rate.
3. Time is relative
Since time is relative an advance civilization might want to simulate intelligent life in a slow-moving universe to test technology. While they wait in a fast-moving space like near a black hole. This allows them to run the simulation at an accelerated rate while the time for them is flowing extremely slowly.
If we consider our technology is growing at an exponent rate, we can speculate that our world is simulated by an advance civilization and is testing the technology we have discovered. We may argue that our technology now at the Kardashev scale is not even a type 1 civilization. We can imagine in another 100,000 years our technology will advance significantly but outside the simulation, time would flow less than a fraction of a second.
4. Rarity of life in the universe
Life appears to be extraordinarily rare in our universe, not even including intelligent life. Science currently accepts the evolution theory where life forms took billions of years from basic cellular structures from bacterial to complex life such as human.
All life form comes from 4 simple building blocks, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and nucleic acids. We often thought that similar life form like bacterial is just made up of simple building blocks but thanks to the electron microscope they are far more than just simple living organism.
Watchmaker analogy, imagine you take a walk at a park and pick up a stone you would think that the stone is form naturally and could be there for years. But when you pick up a watch with complicated gears and delicated functions you would think that it should be a design by of a creator.
Bacterial flagellum
The discovery of flagellum in a bacterial blew my mind, to think that nature has the capability of creating such a complex mechanism for bacterial to move around. A flagellum is made up of around 40 different proteins, it acts as a rotary engine which works with almost 100% efficiency and is capable of rotating at 1500 rps (F1 engine tops at 300rps). This blew the design of F1 engine out of the water and our design requires thousands of parts. Flagellum also comes with a shaft to disconnect the motion from the engine.
If this is really an evidence of an intelligent design using nanotechnology we are definitely in a simulation. Evolution by pure chances would be unlikely.
Bacteriophage
A bacteriophage is a virus “evolve” to attack bacterial in order to duplicate itself. A virus is not a living organism, they are mainly a programmed entity that injects its DNA into a bacterial which is capable of duplication. They look like little nanobots with a large head that contain the payload (DNA), they also had long legs and a needle in the centre which is used for DNA injection.
They are really tiny about 200 x 100 nm and there are lots of them everywhere on earth. There are probably billions of them on our hands, on our eyelids and in our intestine now. But no worries they only target specific bacteria and will not act on human cells.
5. Bugs in code
If we are living in a simulation, there is likely a chance we will encounter a bug in the simulation. Where we should be able to experience unexplainable events that should not have occurred because the chances of it happening are really low. The following are some events that you might have experiences and it might be a bug.
- Déjà vu
- Dreams that actually happen in real life
- Realistic dreams of you living as another person in a similar world
- Mandela effect, is an unusual phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how reality actually occurred.
Finally some quotes from famous individuals
“If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence… While the world we see is in some sense ‘real,’ it is not located at the fundamental level of reality.” — Nick Bostrom
“If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical. That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.” — Max Tegmark
“The absence of any noticeable life may be an argument in favour of us being in a simulation. Like when you’re playing an adventure game, and you can see the stars in the background, but you can’t ever get there.” — Elon Musk
Thanks for reading till the end. So are you convinced we are in a simulation? Will you take the red or the blue pill?
