How real are you? What if everything you are, everything you
know, all the people in your life as well as all the events were not physically
there but just a very elaborate simulation? Philosopher Nick Bostrom famously
considered this in his seminal paper “Are you living in a computer
simulation?,” where he proposed that all of our existence may be just a product
of very sophisticated computer simulations ran by advanced beings whose real
nature we may never be able to know. Now a new theory has come along that takes
it a step further – what if there are no advanced beings either and everything
in “reality” is a self-simulation that generates itself from pure thought?
The physical universe is a “strange loop” says the new paper titled “The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”
from the team at the Quantum Gravity Research, a Los Angeles-based theoretical
physics institute founded by the scientist and entrepreneur Klee Irwin. They
take Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, which maintains that all of reality is an
extremely detailed computer program, and ask, rather than relying on advanced
lifeforms to create the amazing technology necessary to compose everything
within our world, isn’t it more efficient to propose that the universe itself
is a “mental self-simulation”? They tie this idea to quantum mechanics, seeing
the universe as one of many possible quantum gravity models.
One important aspect that differentiates this view relates
to the fact that Bostrom’s original hypothesis is materialistic, seeing the
universe as inherently physical. To Bostrom, we could simply be part of an
ancestor simulation, engineered by posthumans. Even the process of evolution
itself could just be a mechanism by which the future beings are testing
countless processes, purposefully moving humans through levels of biological
and technological growth. In this way they also generate the supposed
information or history of our world. Ultimately, we wouldn’t know the
difference.
But where does the physical reality that would generate the
simulations comes from, wonder the researchers? Their hypothesis takes a
non-materialistic approach, saying that everything is information expressed as
thought. As such, the universe “self-actualizes” itself into existence, relying
on underlying algorithms and a rule they call “the principle of efficient
language.”
Under this proposal, the entire simulation of everything in
existence is just one “grand thought.” How would the simulation itself be
originated? It was always there, say the researchers, explaining the concept of
“timeless emergentism.” According to this idea, time isn’t there at all.
Instead, the all-encompassing thought that is our reality offers a nested
semblance of a hierarchical order, full of “sub-thoughts” that reach all the
way down the rabbit hole towards the base mathematics and fundamental
particles. This is also where the rule of efficient language comes in,
suggesting that humans themselves are such “emergent sub-thoughts” and they
experience and find meaning in the world through other sub-thoughts (called
“code-steps or actions”) in the most economical fashion.
In correspondence with Big Think, physicist David Chester
elaborated: “While many scientists presume materialism to be true, we believe
that quantum mechanics may provide hints that our reality is a mental
construct. Recent advances in quantum gravity, such as seeing spacetime
emergent via a hologram, also is a hint that spacetime is not fundamental. This
is also compatible with ancient Hermetic and Indian philosophy. In a sense, the
mental construct of reality creates spacetime to efficiently understand itself by
creating a network of subconscious entities that can interact and explore the
totality of possibilities.”
The scientists link their hypothesis to panpsychism, which
sees everything as thought or consciousness. The authors think that their
“panpsychic self-simulation model” can even explain the origin of an
overarching panconsciousness at the foundational level of the simulations,
which “self-actualizes itself in a strange loop via self-simulation.” This
panconsciousness also has free will and its various nested levels essentially
have the ability to select what code to actualize, while making syntax choices.
The goal of this consciousness? To generate meaning or information.
If all of this is hard to grasp, the authors offer another
interesting idea that may link your everyday experience to these philosophical
considerations. Think of your dreams as your own personal self-simulations,
postulates the team. While they are rather primitive (by super-intelligent
future AI standards), dreams tend to provide better resolution than current
computer modeling and are a great example of the evolution of the human mind.
As the scientists write, “What is most remarkable is the ultra-high-fidelity
resolution of these mind-based simulations and the accuracy of the physics
therein.” They point especially to lucid dreams, where the dreamer is aware of
being in a dream, as instances of very accurate simulations created by your
mind that may be impossible to distinguish from any other reality. To that end,
now that you’re sitting here reading this article, how do you really know
you’re not in a dream? The experience seems very high in resolution but so do
some dreams. It’s not too much of a reach to imagine that an extremely powerful
computer that we may be able to make in not-too-distant future could duplicate
this level of detail.
The team also proposes that in the coming years we will be
able to create designer consciousnesses for ourselves as advancements in gene
editing could allow us to make our own mind-simulations much more powerful. We
may also see minds emerging that do not require matter at all.
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