Imagine for a minute that everything you see around you is not actually there. It is just for lack of a better phrase, a figment of your imagination. Could it be?
The world's top scientists now think that it could. In the Sunday Times from Britain, Prof. Sir Martin Rees suggested that life in the universe and everything in it may be nothing more than a giant computer simulation. The Royal Society professor at Cambridge University says humans may simply be bits of software. In other words, we program our world the way we want it. We create our own world, just like computers create a virtual world.
Prof. Rees says that over the past few decades, computers have created a virtual world with extensive detail.
"If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers, which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we're living in."
He adds that this fact raised the question: "could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense, we could be ourselves, the creations within this simulation."
Though this idea has already been snatched up by Hollywood in such films as The Matrix, Vanilla Sky and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, back in ancient Greece the philosophers of the day did not find the notion so far fetched. Even as far back as 2,000 years, the Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu wondered if his whole life had been nothing more than a dream. And in the 1600s, Rene Descartes wondered the same thing as noted by his famous words, "I think, therefore I am." Then in the last century, Bertrand Russell propounded that humans might be just "brains in a jar" that were being activated by chemicals or electrical currents.
Next month, Prof. Rees will present his ideas in a television documentary called "What We Still Don't Know." He is expected to emphasize that today's top physicists and cosmologists are seriously considering this theory. One of them, mathematical science Prof. John Barrow also of Cambridge University, will discuss the fine-tuned nature of our world and how event the slightest alteration in such things as gravity would have devastating affects. This, he believes, proves that intelligent design is at work.
There are, however, those who do not believe in intelligent design and say the universe is far too complex to be a simulation. Quantum mechanical engineering Prof. Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says he could begin to imagine a computer large enough to simulate a whole universe.
What are your thoughts on Prof. Rees' theory?
Story source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1358588,00.html
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Comments: 19
More interesting, what do you think?
Olga: I tend to agree with you on that.
Jac: In the grand scheme of things, probably not.
Barbara: You got that right!
I'll look for it.
Cecile,
Are you sure it's your head?
Here or there ? What is time really ? What is space really ? What are facts really ?
Is there really such as TRUTH ? REALLY ? WHAT IS REAL ? What is GOD ?
no answer expected, just think deeply about it.
Marc: Hmmm... doesn't sound right to me.
The ID angle somewhat misconstrues the Information Theoretic proposal that Martin Reese is alluding to. And even if it does imply the "Argument from Design", any such argument still suffers from the same weakness it ALWAYS did! Complexity is not demonstrative of either a designer or intentionality. Ever since Darwin (and earlier) this argument has been shown to be untenable.
Also, none of this has much to do with the "Holographic Principle" that was proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, some years back. I have seen many bad, ill-informed discussions on this topic, and I caution everyone to look at the actual physics before you get crazy.
The article you provide a link to was obviously not written by a physicist. It is a reporter's hodgepodge of popular culture mixed in with a couple of misunderstood remarks from some reputable scientists engaging in VERY free speculations. One should be cautious about accepting these ideas as presented, even were they properly labeled.
Also, the article doesn't say what the theory is, so how can we comment on it? A speculation is NOT a theory.
The Holographic Principle is basically the realization that to get any information about the inside of a spherical volume of space FROM the inside TO the outside, it must, of necessity, be transmitted through the sphere's surface. Hence, the total available information content of a spherical region of space is proportional to its surface area, as opposed to its volume. Any extra information that we might intuitively suppose to be inside the sphere is inaccessible, in principle. It's not even deeply mysterious, although it is somewhat counter-intuitive. It implies that the total description of the 3D volume can be thought of as being "inscribed" on the surface, similar to the way a hologram contains 3D information on its 2D surface.
The Information Theoretic model of the Universe is not about whether it is "simulated" or not, and certainly says nothing about the character of any possible Extra-Universal entities that might be engaged in such endeavors. The "brains-in-vats" philosophical conundrum (due to B. Russell) has implications only to the study of Epistemology, wherein it is meant to demonstrate how hard it is to know anything absolutely—since the possibility of a "matrix-style" existence cannot be discounted from sensory data alone. It is NOT a theory of anything, since it predicts nothing, and merely casts doubt on the veracity of things that we normally believe to be true.
For many years it has been clear that each particle in the universe has been describable by its quantum numbers. For instance, an electron has quantum numbers like "electric charge", "spin", "isotopic spin", "position", "mass", and so on. Each of these has a value, and perhaps a discreet "quantized" value. The question is, is an electron anything other than its collection of quantum numbers? As far as physics is concerned, the answer is "no, it isn't". These values represent the totality of information that can be gleaned from an electron. They ARE the electron. This same idea applies to all quantum particles, and physics shows that EVERYTHING is made of such particles. Lately, there is good reason to suppose that space itself is similarly quantized. Since the observable universe is finite in size, this implies that the entire system of the observable universe has finitely many qubits (quantum bits) of information contained within its boundary. If this is so, then there remains the logical possibility that such a system could be "simulated" in a Super-Duper-Quantum Computer with a memory made of qubits. Unfortunately, the required number of qubits equals or surpasses the number of qubits in the observable universe! Such a theory seems to lack parsimony, by necessity. It assumes more that it explains. It's not impossible, it's just pointless. Good theories are theories that give something back—something more than you put in!
In a sense, this parallels the "God created Everything" argument. This idea seems simple and intuitive enough—on the surface. It's only when you set about specifying what characteristics God has to possess in order to accomplish this feat that you realize that He gets to be really, really complex. God, it seems, has to be Infinite! (Or at least bigger and more involved than the universe. So, we "explain" something finite by postulating an Infinite Being—a Being who is infinitely larger and more complex than the thing we are trying to account for! (Not much of a bargain, from considerations of parsimony, is it?)
Anyway, we'll see what Dr. Rees has to say. I haven't seen his paper on this topic, so all the cards have not been dealt, I suppose.
Science progresses because the scientist knows he doesn't know, and sets about trying to amend this gap. In this sense, ignorance is the midwife of knowledge. Only by recognizing our ignorance for what it is can we make inroads into knowledge.