Simulation

Simulation

I recently was thinking about the idea that we live in one huge simulation. I’ve heard a bunch of theories on how to prove it, but I realised most, if not all of them depend on having some understanding of the world outside of the simulation; otherwise, we have no way of proving it.

In Futurama season 11, episode 10, they explore this idea of living in a simulation by having the professor create a precise simulation of the universe that even simulates the show’s characters themselves. (Note that I will likely be calling back to this episode throughout this post as this is what inspired this thought in the first place.) Anyway, as the episode goes on, the simulated universe reaches a point to where the simulated characters have caught up to the present and created their own simulation like the beginning of the episode. The simulated Planet Express crew then start to wonder if they themselves are in a simulation so they set out to try and prove it by observing a massive cosmic event that would stress the computer running the simulation causing errors and therefore prove that they live in a simulation.

I won’t spoil the ending of the episode, partly because I’m going off pure memory and haven’t seen it since it released but also because there is a sweet and heartwarming part to it that I wouldn’t want to ruin for you, dearest reader. Also, this discussion is not on the ending but rather the approach the simulated characters made to proving that the universe is a simulation.

See, the thing is that simulations do exact what you’ve programmed them to do. Anything that seems wrong only appears that way in comparison to what we expect in the real world, but in the simulation, everything is working exactly as programmed. Things may not obey our laws of physics in the simulation, but they are following the laws of physics as programmed in the computer.

I think you may see where I’m going with this. The laws of physics in the simulated universe would work exactly how the real professor programmed them to be, so the simulated professor would have studied the simulation’s laws of physics and anything inaccurate to real world physics within the simulation would not matter since the simulation has its own laws of physics. The only way the simulated professor could prove that an event was the result of a simulation malfunction would be if he knew how the “real world” physics was meant to work. Otherwise, theory would have to be adjusted to fit the observed phenomenon.

Okay, maybe that whole paragraph was very rambly and made no sense, so let me raise a thought experiment. Suppose you created a simulation of the universe using a video game physics engine, let’s say Valve’s Source engine. (For those of you unfamiliar with the games using this engine, I will try my best to give context because I will be talking about specific engine mechanics, but it may still be confusing.) In the Source engine, there is a feature known as “air-strafing” in which the player can move the character in a certain way that allows them to gain extra momentum midair simply by turning and moving left or right. Some consider this an exploit since this obviously could never happen in real life, but when you look at the code, this is exactly how it’s supposed to work. The engine may be trying to simulate real world physics for us to see, but small details in how it works make it have a completely different but still valid set of laws of physics.

So now imagine a scientist who was born and raised in this simulated universe. Let’s say that something similar to Newton’s laws of physics have already been established in this world. The people living here have grown to understand these laws and formulas as they are, unaware that they are different from our laws of physics since they don’t know they are in a simulation. Now, let’s say our scientist made a huge breakthrough and discovered the “air-strafing” mechanic mentioned earlier, or maybe even some other Source engine exploit. Does this discovery prove to them that they live in a simulation? Not exactly. This would force the physics community within the universe to adjust their understanding of how their world works, but eventually, they would find some way to make it fit with other discoveries and now they have a working theory and model of the universe, adjusted to fit new observations.

Now imagine you’re a scientist in the late 19th century trying to solve the blackbody radiation problem. Experimental results show that the universe does not work exactly how theory describes it. Then, the 20th century comes and some guy named Max Planck figures out a solution that fits the observed behavior almost too perfectly just by assuming that the electromagnetic radiation is released in discrete packets or quanta of energy rather than the continuous range of energy values you were taught to believe. It seems ridiculous but then even some guy named Einstein figures out these energy packets of light can be modeled as tiny particles called photons and then more discoveries are made and before long, the whole 20th century revolves around these new quantum laws of physics and making them fit with previous theories.

If we are indeed living in a simulation and the computer running it exists in a world where only classical Newtonian mechanics work, then to the outside observers, everything to do with quantum theory must seem like a glitch or exploit like with the aforementioned exploits with the source engine. But to us, since we live in this universe and only know of this one, everything is working as expected, even if it seems unusual. In fact, in the Futurama episode mentioned at the beginning of this post, Amy points out that a lot of the optimizations the professor made to the simulation resemble a lot of the oddities with real world quantum mechanics which opens the professor’s mind to the idea that they too could probably be living in a simulation.

Actually, as I was writing out that last part, I remembered another interesting example to bring up. In Minecraft: Java Edition, there is a quirk with redstone pistons in which they interact with redstone wiring the same way doors do in the game due to an oversight by the developers. However, this odd behavior turned out to be so useful that it was left in the game and became known in the community as “quasi-connectivity” due to the unintuitive yet useful behavior. This mechanic (along with other redstone mechanics) was not carried over to the Bedrock Edition of the game leading to both games having vastly different rules to circuit-building at larger scales.

This made me imagine a sapient being living in the Java Edition and somehow being transported to the Bedrock Edition. Having existed in Java his whole life, he would first not notice much difference, but then seeing things work differently in his new universe would likely lead him to conclude that he is in a simulation. However, back in the Java universe, he would not be aware that he exists in a video game because he has no idea that the real world exists and would have no point of comparison. The things that seem weird to us in Minecraft like floating blocks and inconsistent gravity would be completely normal to our Minecraft character and in fact, our world would seem more like the simulation to him. Even if we take things further and imagine him pushing the game engine to its limits by building a massive railgun like the YouTube user docm77 built, that railgun would have been built based on previously observed phenomena in the Minecraft world and would still follow the laws of physics. In fact, this is basically the equivalent of us in the real world building a particle accelerator or even the nuclear bomb to exploit scientific discoveries we’ve made that seem to break previous laws of physics but in actuality reinforce them.

I’ll end it here before I ramble on for much longer. Hopefully this all made sense because it is really hard to fully explain my thought process here. I consider this good practice for my writing, so hopefully one day I could explain all this in a way that actually makes sense.