# Any off the wall ideas to test the 'life is a simulation' theory? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 12, 2019, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383 "2019-02-12T02:59:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/21 "2019-02-13T21:44:06Z")
The Planck length is the resolution of the universe. Planck time is its clock speed. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/22 "2019-02-13T21:44:31Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > I think there’s plenty of evidence suggesting we’re a simulation. > > For example, the frequency in our lifetime of incredible discoveries of ancient human artifacts that somehow remained undisturbed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, in places continuously inhabited (not like in the now-submerged land of Beringia or Doggerland). Deep inside caves, sure, but people have been cave-explorers forever. In fact, the Denisovan bones are so named because they were discovered in a cave already named after an 18th Century Russian hermit, St. Denis, who lived in that cave. A surprising source of undisturbed hominid fossils from over 100,000 years ago! > > I like to think of this as an obvious example of “that stuff has lied there for 125,000 years… Since ten years ago, when it was inserted into the program” Hmmm. Wouldn’t Occam’s razor suggest that, in spite the fact that cave explorers have existed “forever”, that in this case, they either didn’t explore _this_ particular cave very thoroughly, or explored it, but did not have an appreciation for it’s contents? Your “incredible discovery” could be Grognak’s pile’o dumb bones. Isn’t that the far more likelier explanation than “the program (aka “God”) put it there”? It did? Why? How does planting discoveries in a cave benefit anybody? This also implies, of course, that there _weren’t_ hominids in there 100K years ago, and that “the program” inserted it for… reasons? This sounds like a creationist trying to explain away dino bones. ---
**Author:** ![Jet\_Jaguar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jet_jaguar/32/3562_2.png) [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/23 "2019-02-14T18:57:29Z")
Rather than breaking physics altogether, maybe look for inconsistencies that simply cannot be resolved. Perhaps we find that unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity into a workable theory of everything is impossible because the simulation switches models in different domains, with different simplifying assumptions for each. No need to track every quark in the Universe if you don’t need to, and you can neglect gravity at subatomic scales. Maybe these assumptions break things at galactic scales and dark matter and dark energy are kludges or work arounds. The simulation is still close enough, and it runs faster that way. I’m sure I’m not the first to think of these, though it all sounds a bit silly to me. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/24 "2019-02-14T23:27:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You’re asking whether we limited, provincial, barely evolved humans can break the code of a being capable of simulating the entire universe? > > Can Pacman build a working interstellar starship? It is possible for programs _we_ have written to escape their sandboxes. I don’t see why it’s impossible for a highly advanced being on vastly more powerful hardware to write something he doesn’t quite understand or control as well. [A great story of a simulated being escaping its simulation](https://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.html). Note that the critical requirement is not that the simulated being is particularly smart, but that the simulation is sufficiently complex that the creator of it doesn’t fully understand the system he’s using. It seems like your argument boils down to a claim that whatever could create a simulation this complicated would also necessarily create one that is bug and exploit free. Our experience seems to show the opposite, though. The more complicated a system, the _more_ bugs and exploits there are. Maybe that’s because we’re not smart enough, but it feels a lot more like a fundamental mathematical fact: the more complicated the system, the harder it is to understand. I don’t know that we should try to break out though. It seems almost certain to end badly. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/25 "2019-02-14T23:46:32Z")
You’ll notice that nobody here has proposed anything close to a meaningful response. That’s because we cannot imagine even in theory how simulating an entire universe might be accomplished. Calling it code might be nonsense. Maybe computers are primitive devices no better than sticks. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Right now the question is not at all answerable, even as a thought exercise, any more than the question of what’s in God’s head is answerable. Both assume things that probably are not true and both require understandings that are not given to humans. If that’s a game you want to play, feel free. I haven’t tried to stop you. But I’m sitting this one out. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/26 "2019-02-15T00:07:53Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You’ll notice that nobody here has proposed anything close to a meaningful response. That’s because we cannot imagine even in theory how simulating an entire universe might be accomplished. Calling it code might be nonsense. Maybe computers are primitive devices no better than sticks. > > Maybe, maybe, maybe. Right now the question is not at all answerable, even as a thought exercise, any more than the question of what’s in God’s head is answerable. Both assume things that probably are not true and both require understandings that are not given to humans. > > If that’s a game you want to play, feel free. I haven’t tried to stop you. But I’m sitting this one out. Are you kidding? Of course we can imagine how it would work. All it would have to do is simulate all the basic laws of physics as applied to a bunch of simulated matter and energy and particles and such. At the lower levels everything seems to follow pretty straightforward rules, even - all the better to simulate it. It would require truly massive storage and processing power if we did it that way, obviously, but there’s no particular reason it couldn’t work. Such a simulation would be completely indistinguishable from an ‘actual’ reality, presuming it was being run ‘clean’ (read: without somebody going in and editing in dinosaur bones on the fly), which is why people aren’t seriously trying to disprove it - it’s undisprovable. There’s nothing that would serve as evidence of reality that couldn’t also be part of a simulation. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/27 "2019-02-15T02:31:05Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Are you kidding? Of course we can imagine how it would work. All it would have to do is simulate all the basic laws of physics as applied to a bunch of simulated matter and energy and particles and such. At the lower levels everything seems to follow pretty straightforward rules, even - all the better to simulate it. It would require truly massive storage and processing power if we did it that way, obviously, but there’s no particular reason it couldn’t work. > > Such a simulation would be completely indistinguishable from an ‘actual’ reality, presuming it was being run ‘clean’ (read: without somebody going in and editing in dinosaur bones on the fly), which is why people aren’t seriously trying to disprove it - it’s undisprovable. There’s nothing that would serve as evidence of reality that couldn’t also be part of a simulation. Yeah, all you would have to do is “simulate all the basic laws of physics as applied to a bunch of simulated matter and energy and particles and such.” How? And how do we break something like that? That’s the issue. Assuming it’s a computer program is using 21st century human thinking. We agree that a good simulation is undisprovable. Why? Because we have no idea what we’re talking about on that level. We’re not even gibbering apes. We’re bacteria. Maybe viruses. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/28 "2019-02-15T13:07:18Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > Hmmm. Wouldn’t Occam’s razor suggest that, in spite the fact that cave explorers have existed “forever”, that in this case, they either didn’t explore _this_ particular cave very thoroughly, or explored it, but did not have an appreciation for it’s contents? Your “incredible discovery” could be Grognak’s pile’o dumb bones. Isn’t that the far more likelier explanation than “the program (aka “God”) put it there”? It did? Why? How does planting discoveries in a cave benefit anybody? This also implies, of course, that there _weren’t_ hominids in there 100K years ago, and that “the program” inserted it for… reasons? > > This sounds like a creationist trying to explain away dino bones. I get what you’re saying, but it’s not one thing in isolation, but in aggregate. We keep having instances of people “suddenly” discovering stuff that apparently was right under their noses - from a collective humanity POV - for a very long time. Sure, the “obvious” explanation would be, we’re just not that good at noticing stuff, weren’t looking for it, and/or didn’t know what it is we were looking at all that time (e.g., how much of our legends about cyclops and dragons stem from the bones of extinct animals like mastodons and dinosaurs?). As an “enterprise system” computer programmer (i.e., in-house for a large corporation for their internal operations, not designing applications/programs for consumer use), one of the biggest headaches I have to deal with is with users manually bypassing automated processes designed to maintain links in one set of data with another, to “jam in” data. The biggest annoyances typically involve “jamming in” historical data kept in a time series, like database records with date T0, T1, T2, etc., and suddenly there’s a record between T1 and T2 based on something completely different than all the others. Because someone just ran some kind of backfill or simulation type analysis that needed some program that reads from that time series to work, which gets them what THEY wanted, but messes up some other process or program also living off of that data. Yes, not to get off on a tangent, the system should permission or guard against such data inserts, but in any very old (20+ year old) system there are going to be multiple ways to insert data, including some “critical” process, some that were thought to be retired but in fact “has been running that way for years and we can’t just turn it off right now, just make it work like it did last week for a little while longer and we’ll fix it [no we won’t because nobody’s actually paid to do that and it’s negative money and career advancement to fix other people’s problems who aren’t here any more]”, … sorry, do I sound bitter? Anyway, in my mind, if our universe were a “simulation”, this is the kind of area we might find evidence of “software weakness”. Not trying to poke holes in the Rules of the Game, the operating system if you will (“Hey, let’s break the speed of light and see what happens!”), but to look for evidence that the ongoing program is still being updated and patched as it runs, including at the data level, not just the “software” level. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/29 "2019-02-15T17:50:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That’s because we cannot imagine even in theory how simulating an entire universe might be accomplished. Calling it code might be nonsense. Maybe computers are primitive devices no better than sticks. Sure we can. An entire universe can be simulated by a computer as we know it, given enough matter/energy/time. [Cite](https://xkcd.com/505/). I’m not suggesting that that’s actually how our universe might be simulated, but yes we _can_ imagine in theory how an entire universe could be simulated: The same way we simulate anything else, but bigger and more complicated. And computers are based on math that is independent of the physical properties of the universe. Predicate logic is true whether or not you can build logic gates out of silicon. A Turing Machine is a mathematical construct that performs mathematical operations on an arbitrary symbolic representation. All you need for a universe simulation is a set of rules and a really long tape. Our universe seems _really_ big to us, but maybe it’s not. With our current technology, we can simulate things using computers that contain, say, 10^20 times as much matter. And they are quite primitive. So, maybe a computer in the _real_ universe has 10^50 times as much matter as our universe and a more efficient use of it too. It would be pretty simple to simulate this tiny toy universe we live in. > [@](#): > > Right now the question is not at all answerable, even as a thought exercise, any more than the question of what’s in God’s head is answerable. Both assume things that probably are not true and both require understandings that are not given to humans. Thought exercises are answerable depending on the assumptions you make. If your assumption is that we can’t answer it, I agree that this probably isn’t an interesting conversation for you. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/30 "2019-02-15T19:12:46Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > I get what you’re saying, but it’s not one thing in isolation, but in aggregate. Okay, can you name a\* single\* discovery where the likeliest explanation is “the program inserted it for reasons”? If the aggregate if full of things that have more likelier explanations, then that doesn’t mean much. Fact is, most of our newer discoveries come from the existence of more people with improved understanding of multiple fields of study, and vastly improved technology over the last 300 years. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/31 "2019-02-15T19:25:16Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Sure we can. An entire universe can be simulated by a computer as we know it, given enough matter/energy/time. [Cite](https://xkcd.com/505/). I’m not suggesting that that’s actually how our universe might be simulated, but yes we _can_ imagine in theory how an entire universe could be simulated: The same way we simulate anything else, but bigger and more complicated. > > And computers are based on math that is independent of the physical properties of the universe. Predicate logic is true whether or not you can build logic gates out of silicon. A Turing Machine is a mathematical construct that performs mathematical operations on an arbitrary symbolic representation. All you need for a universe simulation is a set of rules and a really long tape. > > Our universe seems _really_ big to us, but maybe it’s not. With our current technology, we can simulate things using computers that contain, say, 10^20 times as much matter. And they are quite primitive. So, maybe a computer in the _real_ universe has 10^50 times as much matter as our universe and a more efficient use of it too. It would be pretty simple to simulate this tiny toy universe we live in. > > Thought exercises are answerable depending on the assumptions you make. If your assumption is that we can’t answer it, I agree that this probably isn’t an interesting conversation for you. Okay, so we dismiss God out of hand, come up with theories that don’t require a creator, but seriously entertain the notion that our universe is a simulation which, by definition, HAS to have a creator? That is absurd. If we’re in a simulation, the creator, who is _literally_ outside of time and space as we know it, is in possession of technology that we literally couldn’t possibly produce, because it would take more energy to run than we possess in our “fake” universe. This creator would essentially be God. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/32 "2019-02-15T19:41:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Yeah, all you would have to do is “simulate all the basic laws of physics as applied to a bunch of simulated matter and energy and particles and such.” How? And how do we break something like that? That’s the issue. Assuming it’s a computer program is using 21st century human thinking. > > We agree that a good simulation is undisprovable. Why? Because we have no idea what we’re talking about on that level. We’re not even gibbering apes. We’re bacteria. Maybe viruses. Are you a computer programmer? I am. It’s _certainly_ possible. The only minor hiccup is that if you didn’t figure out some way to streamline the data the computer to store it on will be physically larger (much larger) than our universe is. That and the process of applying the laws of physics and object interaction to every particle/object/whatever in the universe would take spectacularly long to simulate each Planck second of universe-time. (Not that the people in the universe would know that.) Or put another way - see the xkcd link in **iamthewalrus(:3=**'s post. Of course if you _did_ apply compression, things could be a bit simpler… DM: You all meet in an inn. Fred: Tharg the Destroyer buys a beer, and drink it. DM: (consults chart, consults Fred’s constitution stats): Tharg enjoys the taste and gets a mild and pleasant buzz. Joe: Stephen Hawking examines the printout he just got from the Large Hadron Collider. DM: (consults reference book, rolls dice for particle interactions): Stephen found a Higgs Boson! Joe: Sweet! Fred: High five! Oh, and Tharg buys a beer for Steve to celebrate. DM: (consults references) A good time is had by all. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/33 "2019-02-15T19:43:26Z")
I mean, _I’m_ not _seriously_ entertaining the simulation argument. I think it’s fun to play around with. It is an entertaining concept. I agree that a technological singularity/universe as simulation belief is religious in nature. God is created in man’s image; the simulation God is God as tech-bro. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2019, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/34 "2019-02-15T19:46:29Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > Okay, so we dismiss God out of hand, come up with theories that don’t require a creator, but seriously entertain the notion that our universe is a simulation which, by definition, HAS to have a creator? That is absurd. If we’re in a simulation, the creator, who is _literally_ outside of time and space as we know it, is in possession of technology that we literally couldn’t possibly produce, because it would take more energy to run than we possess in our “fake” universe. This creator would essentially be God. Of course the simulation’s creator would be functionally a god, the same way I’m effectively the god of the characters in the books I’ve written. The reason why dismiss the _Christian_ god out of hand is because the descriptions of him and stories about him are absurd and self-contradictory, and the reason we come up with theories that don’t require a creator is because there’s nothing about our reality that seems to _require_ a creator. Suppose you find a rock on a streambed - you don’t assume that that rock was carefully carved into that exact shape and then placed there for you to find. But you can’t prove it wasn’t! ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2019, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/35 "2019-02-16T19:00:10Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > I get what you’re saying, but it’s not one thing in isolation, but in aggregate. > > We keep having instances of people “suddenly” discovering stuff that apparently was right under their noses - from a collective humanity POV - for a very long time. > > Sure, the “obvious” explanation would be, we’re just not that good at noticing stuff, weren’t looking for it, and/or didn’t know what it is we were looking at all that time (e.g., how much of our legends about cyclops and dragons stem from the bones of extinct animals like mastodons and dinosaurs?). > > As an “enterprise system” computer programmer (i.e., in-house for a large corporation for their internal operations, not designing applications/programs for consumer use), one of the biggest headaches I have to deal with is with users manually bypassing automated processes designed to maintain links in one set of data with another, to “jam in” data. The biggest annoyances typically involve “jamming in” historical data kept in a time series, like database records with date T0, T1, T2, etc., and suddenly there’s a record between T1 and T2 based on something completely different than all the others. Because someone just ran some kind of backfill or simulation type analysis that needed some program that reads from that time series to work, which gets them what THEY wanted, but messes up some other process or program also living off of that data. > > Yes, not to get off on a tangent, the system should permission or guard against such data inserts, but in any very old (20+ year old) system there are going to be multiple ways to insert data, including some “critical” process, some that were thought to be retired but in fact “has been running that way for years and we can’t just turn it off right now, just make it work like it did last week for a little while longer and we’ll fix it [no we won’t because nobody’s actually paid to do that and it’s negative money and career advancement to fix other people’s problems who aren’t here any more]”, … sorry, do I sound bitter? > > Anyway, in my mind, if our universe were a “simulation”, this is the kind of area we might find evidence of “software weakness”. Not trying to poke holes in the Rules of the Game, the operating system if you will (“Hey, let’s break the speed of light and see what happens!”), but to look for evidence that the ongoing program is still being updated and patched as it runs, including at the data level, not just the “software” level. That’s… actually…a lot more plausible then what I thought you were initially saying. So in your scenario, the universe isnt some kids video game or a single scientists experiment…but a simulation that a LOT of people use at once. And time to time, someone inserts something (either backdoor, or because they’re smart enough to do so) because they need it to get the answer they were looking for. (Insert Spock ‘fascinating’ here) User: “No no no…I need dinosaur bones in this cave. How will the humans react if they find dinosaur bones here?” User 2: “But humans have already explored this cave.” User: “SO??..they overlooked them. Shit…Bob over there has fucking flying saucers running around and that hasn’t broken anything.” Bob waves. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2019, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/36 "2019-02-16T19:12:46Z")
I wonder if people in the far past ever said “Arn’t we lucky to live in such an advanced time as to have such a firm grasp on the universe? To know that the sun is just a giant fireball on the end of Zeus’s yo-yo?? Not like those savage Zubanians 1000’s of years ago who thought the Sun just got tired and needed a nap?? BAHAahahah!!” If not, it sure sounds like a line from a Theodoric of York skit. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2019, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/37 "2019-02-16T20:07:02Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > Musk is a loon and there is no point in contemplating this silly idea. If we are in a simulation then we are no doubt programed not to ever discover it. It is not just a silly idea but a dangerous one that may lead weaker minds into nihilism. Do something useful like volunteer your free time to a local charity. Pretty much this. Within the simulation hypothesis we have the idea of part of the simulation being fake: since simulating every particle’s quantum state would take as many particles, we presuppose the simulation is engineered so that sentient beings see what looks like a complete universe but is actually just essentially a movie set. But if the universe is part fake, we can ask: Why stop there? Why assume every human is being simulated; perhaps Angolan subsistence farmers are NPCs, perhaps my best friend is? And why assume all my experiences are real; the precise details of my last dump is unlikely to be critical to the result of the simulation, so maybe it’s a false memory? Et viola: solipsism + last Thursdayism Or: let’s call the whole thing off, and not assume the existence of a simulating outer universe that we have no evidence for. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2019, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/38 "2019-02-16T21:10:54Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Pretty much this. > > Within the simulation hypothesis we have the idea of part of the simulation being fake: since simulating every particle’s quantum state would take as many particles, we presuppose the simulation is engineered so that sentient beings see what looks like a complete universe but is actually just essentially a movie set. > > But if the universe is part fake, we can ask: Why stop there? > Why assume every human is being simulated; perhaps Angolan subsistence farmers are NPCs, perhaps my best friend is? > And why assume all my experiences are real; the precise details of my last dump is unlikely to be critical to the result of the simulation, so maybe it’s a false memory? > > Et viola: solipsism + last Thursdayism > > Or: let’s call the whole thing off, and not assume the existence of a simulating outer universe that we have no evidence for. OR we could not call it off and realize we have at the very least explored short story Sci-Fi ideas and some philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2019, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/39 "2019-02-17T01:17:45Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Pretty much this. > > Within the simulation hypothesis we have the idea of part of the simulation being fake: since simulating every particle’s quantum state would take as many particles, we presuppose the simulation is engineered so that sentient beings see what looks like a complete universe but is actually just essentially a movie set. > > But if the universe is part fake, we can ask: Why stop there? > Why assume every human is being simulated; perhaps Angolan subsistence farmers are NPCs, perhaps my best friend is? > And why assume all my experiences are real; the precise details of my last dump is unlikely to be critical to the result of the simulation, so maybe it’s a false memory? > > Et viola: solipsism + last Thursdayism > > Or: let’s call the whole thing off, and not assume the existence of a simulating outer universe that we have no evidence for. Combine simulation and hologram theory and you don’t need to simulate anywhere near so many particles. Even forces on the whole wouldn’t be affected by the particles being shared by “different” objects. Actually depending on the viewers perspective, it could make a number of universes this way. Now if it’s literally like a hologram then getting far enough away could change your universe. Assuming they are shared to more than one and not just used to make up several objects. If it’s analogously holographic then it might not necessarily change at all and given sub light speed it could be constructed such that you’d never actually be able to change your perspective viewpoint anyhow since all you could “see” would be a projection in your universal plane. Assuming I understand the two semi correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2019, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383/40 "2019-02-17T08:45:41Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > Combine simulation and hologram theory and you don’t need to simulate anywhere near so many particles. Possibly you didn’t read through what I was saying because what I was saying is you either are simulating every particle, or you ain’t. Not asserting either. If you are simulating every particle, then you need at least as many particles (10^80 IIRC). These particles don’t need to occupy as much volume as our universe, but you still need them. If you ain’t, then my points about a fake universe apply. And think about it: for most of human history we have assumed our planet is basically everything, that humans are the super important reason for it all, and the stars are just points of light. And \*oh lookie here: \*the fake universe just happens to be exactly that paradigm again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-off-the-wall-ideas-to-test-the-life-is-a-simulation-theory/829383.md?page=3)