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Interesting Engineering published an article about a new mathematical study that dismantles the simulation hypothesis once and for all.
The idea that we might be living inside a vast computer simulation, much like in The Matrix, has fascinated philosophers and scientists for years. But a new study from researchers at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus has delivered a decisive blow to that theory.
According to Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor at UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international collaborators, the structure of reality itself makes simulation impossible.
Their work shows that no computer, no matter how advanced, could ever reproduce the fundamental workings of the universe.
Their research goes further than rejecting the simulation theory. It suggests that reality is built on a kind of understanding that cannot be reduced to computational rules or algorithms.
The researchers approached the simulation question through mathematics and physics rather than philosophy. They explored whether the laws governing the universe could, in theory, be recreated by a computer system.
"It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated," says Dr. Faizal. "If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation.
This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation."
[Journal Reference]: https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 05, @07:58AM (1 child)
That may be an argument that we cannot make a computer in this universe which can accurately simulate this universe, but we know nothing about a potential parent universe which may have completely different laws.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday November 05, @05:18PM
Absolutely.
But proving we can't simulate our own universe with a turing machine, would itself be a feat, (if true, then it means we can't create universes in computers) and it further at least implies at least it can't be turtles all the way down with universes like ours simulating universes like ours simulating universes like ours...
You are right of course, that this doesn't rule out simulation by other than a 'computer' from a universe with possibly completely different properties.
But arguing that 'hey we could still be a simulation hosted by a parent universe with unknown and unknowable properties using some mechanism we have no hypothesis for...' is 'moving the goal posts'.