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If the universe is just a Matrix- like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane of the University of Bonn, Germany, thinks he has the answer!. His paper “Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation” has been submitted to the journal Physical Review D !.

Are We Living in a Simulated Universe?

Remark: This person claimed that the whole world is a great simulation, and the whole world started with a simulated big bang. and every things are results of spontaneous program self-organization and automorphisms. The big bang happened in a kind of supercomputer And now we're inside of it. the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.75 billion years to our eyes, But perhaps within less than a second for simulator.

  • If the universe is just a Matrix- like simulation, how could we ever know?
Qmechanic
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mathcal
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  • Welcome to Physics SE mathcal! Could you make it a bit clearer exactly what question you're asking? At present the only question is just the title of the linked reference. – twistor59 Dec 24 '12 at 14:05
  • If Google it some ordinary people and amateurs have gone to these results too. The Whole World is a Game From God – mathcal Dec 24 '12 at 14:32
  • Welcome to Physics! Can you explain a bit better the physics side of this question, because while there's clearly a philosophy question here, that would belong on [philosophy.SE]. – Sklivvz Dec 24 '12 at 14:33
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    possible duplicate of Does Quantum Physics really suggests this universe as a computer simulation? – Sklivvz Dec 24 '12 at 14:36
  • The paper concludes that the universe as a simulation isn't ruled out by his lattice spacing arguments. So it doesn't answer the question. Anyway, computers in another universe might act according to other laws. Therefore, I doubt you could ever conclusively show that the universe is a simulation or is not one. – MadScientist Dec 24 '12 at 14:42
  • @Sklivvz arxiv Subjects: High Energy Physics Phenomenology – mathcal Dec 24 '12 at 14:44
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    @mathcal, It is found in a physics journal, but you are not asking a specific question about the physics in that paper. You have only asked if we are living in a simulation. You should read the paper yourself and then ask a question about the physics in it. I believe this board isn't for reviewing entire papers for people who are too lazy to read them themselves. – MadScientist Dec 24 '12 at 14:47
  • @Sklivvz but if you think so so Immigrate it to Philosophy section – mathcal Dec 24 '12 at 14:47
  • @MadScientist If the whole world is simulated then we're able to hack it but we can not go out of it. – mathcal Dec 24 '12 at 14:51
  • Froum our FAQ "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. [...] avoid asking subjective questions where [...] we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”" – Sklivvz Dec 24 '12 at 14:56
  • @mathcal how would you hack it? the idea of hacking the world seems wrong to me because that would involve changing the laws of the universe, but we can only use how the world actually works. I don't see how you can change it. But that is more philosophy talk that doesn't belong here. – MadScientist Dec 24 '12 at 15:02
  • @mathcal only a moderator has the ability to migrate this. – Sklivvz Dec 24 '12 at 15:06

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There exists substantial evidence that integers that appear in physics are emergent in character, see e.g. this essay by Prof David Tong

http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdf

which won a silver prize in a related contest

http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2011.1

Because the integers are emergent, they're not fundamental and our world is fundamentally not the Matrix or anything analogous. Such abstract questions could have been inaccessible in the past but modern physics has actually turned them into a framework with predictions and these predictions seem to disagree with the observations, and the world is therefore not simulated or discrete at the fundamental level.

The existence of continuous symmetries – and continuous redundancies such as gauge symmetries – speaks against the conjecture that the world is fundamentally discrete. The verified postulates of quantum mechanics exclude the possibility that the world is fundamentally a "classical engine", too.

Luboš Motl
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    It is the Matrix. It's just that the machines have abandoned digital computers in favour of analog ones ;-) (analog ones that can do superpositions. These machines are clever)! – twistor59 Dec 24 '12 at 16:11