Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation
UBC researchers claim the universe can’t be a simulation, citing math that proves reality goes beyond computation and algorithmic logic.
And here I was waiting to get unplugged, or maybe finding a Nokia phone that received a call.
Exactly what the simulation would say
Definitely was patched in the newest update
I can't explain how much I hate simulation theory. As a thought experiment? Fine. It's interesting to think of the universe in the context of code and logic. But as a driving philosophy of reality? Pointless.
Most proponents of simulation theory will say it's impossible to prove the universe is a simulation, because we exist inside it. Then who cares? There obviously must exist a non-simulated universe for the mega computer we're all running on to inhabit, so it's a pointless step along finding the true nature if reality. It's stoner solipsism for guys that buy nfts. It's the "it was all a dream" ending of philosophy.
Simulation theory is the long way around to creationism for atheists.
Creationism usually implies the creator put a lot of thought, care, and love into the creation. Knowing what I do of software development, fucking lol.
Yes, kind of, but I don't think that's necessarily a point against it. "Why are we here? / Why is the universe here?" is one of the big interesting questions that still doesn't have a good answer, and I think thinking about possible answers to the big questions is one of the ways we push the envelope of what we do know. This particular paper seems like a not-that-interesting result using our current known-to-be-incomplete understanding of quantum gravity, and the claim that it somehow "disproves" the simulation hypothesis is some rank unscientific nonsense that IMO really shouldn't have been accepted by a scientific journal, but I think the question it poorly attempts to answer is an interesting one.
Yes but, also, no.
You already seem familiar but, for the uninitiated playing along at home, Wikipedia's entry for Simulation Theory is a pretty easy read. Quoting their synopsis of Bostrom's conjecture:
it's certainly an interesting thought. I agree it shouldn't inform our ethics or disposition toward our lived experiences. That doesn't mean there's zero value in trying to find out though. Even if the only positive yield is that we develop better testing methods which still come up empty: that's still progress worth having. If it nets some additional benefit then so much the better.
I'd argue that satisfying curiosity is, in itself, and worthy pursuit so long as no harm is done.
That all still sets aside the more interesting question though. If such simulations are possible then are they something we're comfortable creating? If not, and we find one has been built, what should we do? Turn it off? Leave it alone? "Save" those created inside of it?
These aren't vapid questions. They strike at the heart of many important unresolved quandries. Are the simulated minds somehow less real than unsimulated ones? Does that question's answer necessarily impact those mind's right to agency, dignity, or self-determination?
The closer we get to being able to play god on a whim the more pressing I find such questions. That's not because I wring my hands and labor anxiously at truth or certainty for lack of better idols. It's because, whatever this is, we're all in it together and our choices today have an outsized impact on the choices others will have tomorrow. Developing a clearer view of what this is, and what we're capable of doing in it, affords future minds better opportunity to arrive at reasonable conclusions and decide how to live well.
It kind of sounds like you're talking about it purely as a thought experiment or as something to inspire other philosophical thinking. But I think the issue most people have with the simulation theory is when people think that it's actually the way that the world is or think that it's worth investigating the way that the world is just because it theoretically could be the way the world is. But theoretically the world could have been created by the god of the Bible or any of the other million explanations proposed by the million other religions that have existed. Almost every religion proposes a hypothesis that could indeed explain reality, but just because it could explain reality doesn't mean it's reasonable to investigate it.
I agree with you that all the questions you raised are interesting and worth thinking about, but none of that really relates to thinking that we actually live in a simulation. You're just using the idea that we live in a simulation as inspiration to start thinking about these other ideas. But actually thinking that we live in a simulation is much less reasonable.
The universe can't be a simulation, the framerate is way too good.
In a simulation, you could take a thousand years to render a single frame, and the occupants of the simulation wouldn’t know any better.
The max tick rate for our simulation seems to be tied to the speed of light, that’s our upper bound.
Of course, the lower bound is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or Planck length.
In other words, it is a confined system. That means it is computationally finite in principle if you exist outside the bounds of it.
I think if we're ever going to find an answer to "Why does the universe exist?" I think one of the steps along the way will be providing a concrete answer to the simulation hypothesis. Obviously if the answer is "yes, it's a simulation and we can demonstrate as much" then the next question becomes "OK so who or what is running the simulation and why does that exist?" which, great, now we know a little bit more about the multiverse and can keep on learning new stuff about it.
Alternatively, if the answer is "no, this universe and the rules that govern it are the foundational elements of reality" then... well, why this? why did the big bang happen? why does it keep expanding like that? Maybe we will find explanations for all of that that preclude a higher-level simulation, and if we do, great, now we know a little bit more about the universe and can keep on learning new stuff about it.
I think the "what if we're all in a video game" take is a thought terminating cliche based solely on our own culture and experience.
I'm less certain that we're not a brane stretched across the cosmological horizon projected backwards in time by the collapse of a universe-sized supermassive black hole, and that the answer of who runs the simulation or who's making the hologram is no one. But mostly I think that because I cleave hard to the idea that any natural process that we hypothesize about should have a basis in an existing model. Black holes are something that we largely exist outside and can study and have a number of comparable features that make them ideal to test these thought experiments. There's obvious uncertainties, like whether our universe is spinning, whether it even needs to be spinning, and the inconclusiveness of whether galaxies have inherited spin from that or not, but I also don't buy for a second that the big bang doesn't have an origin or natural cause or that it could possibly be "just is."
I'm a proponent and I definitely don't think it's impossible to make a probable case beyond a reasonable doubt.
And there are implications around it being the case which do change up how we might approach truth seeking.
Also, if you exist in a dream but don't exist outside of it, there's pretty significant philosophical stakes in the nature and scope of the dream. We've been too brainwashed by Plato's influence and the idea that "original = good" and "copy = bad."
There's a lot of things that can only exist by way of copies that can't exist for the original (i.e. closure recursion), so it's a weird remnant philosophical obsession.
All that said, I do get that it's a fairly uncomfortable notion for a lot of people.
I thought the rebuttal to this was covered in 'The Thirteenth Floor'. They don't have to simulate the entire universe, and it doesn't have to be consistent. Just the parts that the PCs are looking at.
I'm not even going to mention what tricks they can do with the rewind button.
Anyways this paper was likely written by an NPC.
I mean, it's a bunch of technical gobledyremoved from different fields in an Iranian journal dealing with holography claiming extraordinary results.
Reminds me of the Bogdanov affair.
Dr. Faizal says the same limitation applies to physics. “We have demonstrated that it is impossible to describe all aspects of physical reality using a computational theory of quantum gravity,” he explains.
“Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone.”
Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.
Impossible to describe does not mean that it’s not possible to simulate, and impossible is an incredibly strong criterion that sounds quite inaccurate to me. We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately. We don’t even know that gravity is quantum, so that’s quite a weird starting point but we’ll ignore that for a second. What is this argument?
This seems like a huge leap to conclude that just because some aspects of our understanding seem like we wouldn’t be able to fully describe them somehow means that the universe can’t be simulated.
“Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone,” says Dr. Faizal.
Who’s to say that reality is completely defined? Perhaps there are aspects to what we consider the real universe that are uncertain. Isn’t that foundational to quantum mechanics?
What bothers me most is that they equate a model with reality.
Quantum gravity theory is our current working model that we use to describe our observations. It's not reality itself, and no scientist worth their money would claim that it is, because if it was, physics would be solved and it isn't.
That's how science works: We have observations, we build models to describe them, then we have more observations that don't fit the old models, so we build newer models that also describe the new observations. Since we aren't omnicient, there's always something we can't observe (yet) and what we can't observe we also can't describe.
“Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone.”
This, in fact, would fit quite well to an imperfect simulation that doesn't perfectly follow all the rules we made up when observing.
We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately.
The amount of computer power used to run those simulations is immense, and even then, the predictive capacity of those models starts degrading rapidly around 7 to 10 days ahead. There's some amazing science that goes into those models, but the results are hard-won. And what we know about more energetic systems (say, the magnetohydrodynamics of the sun) is far less comprehensive.
And be careful with that "fundamentally chaotic" assertion: there are degrees of how chaotic a system is, and some aspects of a system can be more deterministic than others.
We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately.
Weather simulations are approximations. It’s not an exact replication of the universe.
This is such a boring take, I wonder how anyone gets funding or publication making a statement as useless as "see godels incompleteness theorem that proves that there's more truth than what mathematics can prove, therefore reality is not a simulation". Yes, we know, you don't need a PhD to know the major theorem that took down the entire school of logical positivism. The fundamental philosophical error here is assuming that all forms of simulation are computational or mathematical. Counterexample: your dreams are a form of simulation (probably). So I can literally disprove this take in my sleep
The fundamental philosophical error here is assuming that all forms of simulation are computational or mathematical.
Uh... that's literally what a simulation is.
Counterexample: your dreams are a form of simulation (probably). So I can literally disprove this take in my sleep
But dreams aren't simulating reality as we observe it; they just kinda do their own thing. Your brain isn't consistently simulating quantum mechanics (or, hell, even simple things like clocks) while you're dreaming so this is a moot point.
People who are lucid dreaming simulate a full reality that's nearly indistinguishable from the one they find themselves in during waking time. If your brain can't tell the difference during this time, how can you be sure you're not dreaming right now reading this?
The scope of what a simulation is has always been limited by the technology we know. It is only a failing of imagination and knowledge to assume that algorithmic computation is the only valid form of simulation in the future, these have existed for barely 100 years, but even Plato's cave was talking about the larger philosophical problem
This paper is shit.
https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488_8e072972f66d1fb748b47244c4813c86.pdf
They proved absolutely nothing.
For instance, they treat physics as a formal axiomatic system, which is fine for a human model of the physical world, but not for the physical world itself.
You can't say something is "unprovable" and make a logical leap to saying it is "physically undecidable." Gödel-incompleteness produces unprovable sentences inside a formal system, it doesn’t imply that physical observables correspond to those sentences.
I could go on but the paper is 12 short pages of non-sequiturs and logical leaps, with references to invoke formality, it's a joke that an article like this is being passed around and taken as reality.
I mean, simulation theory is kind of a joke itself. It’s a fun thought experiment, but ultimately it’s just solipsism repackaged.
In reality there’s no more evidence for it than there is for you being a butterfly dreaming it’s a man. And it seems to me that the only reason people take it at all seriously in the modern age is because Elon Musk said he believed it back when he had a good enough PR team that people thought he was worth listening to.
The DMT I took yesterday says otherwise
Simulation theory is actually an inevitability. Look up ancestor simulators for a brief on why.
Eventually when civilization reaches a certain computationally threshold it will be possible to simulate an entire planet. The inputs and outputs within the computational space will be known with some minor infinite unknowns that are trivial to compensate for given a higher infinite.
Either we are already in one or we will inevitably create one in the future.
You don’t even need to reject the applicability of Gödel, because there’s no proof that our universe doesn’t include a bunch of undecidable things tucked away in the margins. Jupiter could be filled with complete nonsense for all we know.
"If we assume X theorem is true, Y theorem is true, and lemma Z is true, then ..."
This is actually about our models and seeing their incompleteness in a new light, right? I don't think starting from arbitrary axioms and then trying to build reality was about proving qualities about reality. Or am I wrong? Just seems like they're using "simulated reality" as a way to talk about our models for reality. By constructing a "silly" argument about how we can't possibly be in a matrix, they're revealing just how much we're still missing.
Lol, because these guys imagine the outer universe in which ours is built has the same rules and limitations. Also because they can't wrap their minds around our universe's rules doesn't mean they make no sense to higher beings. Life in conway's game would equally produce the same wrong statement
They also identity the particular junction that seems the most likely to be an artifact of simulation if we're in one.
A game like No Man's Sky generates billions of planets using procedural generation with a continuous seed function that gets converted into discrete voxels for tracking stateful interactions.
The researchers are claiming that the complexity of where our universe's seemingly continuous gravitational behaviors meet up with the behaviors of continuous probabilities converting to discrete values when being interacted with in stateful ways is incompatible with being simulated.
But completely overlook that said complexity itself may be the byproduct of simulation, in line with independent emerging approaches in how we are simulating worlds.
We are reasonably confident that mathematical limitations apply to both the inner and outer universe. However they don't understand the mathematical limitations enough to understand how little they matter. Pi is pi everywhere - that doesn't change anything.
There are truths we can't prove true - again it doesn't say anything about all the other trues we can prove.
Funny that your example is wrong. Pi isn't always 3.14, it's only 3.14 in euclidian worlds. We are not even sure ours is one
It's possible that the universe could be simulated by an advanced people with vastly superior technology.
Hard solipsism has no answer and no bearing on our lives, so it's best to not give it another thought.
Does it feel very solipsistic around here or am I the only one?
It’s possible yes, but the nice thing is that we know we are not merely talking about “advanced people with vastly superior technology” here. The proof implies that technology within our own universe would never be able to simulate our own universe, no matter how advanced or superior.
So if our universe is a “simulation” at least it wouldn’t be an algorithmic one that fits our understanding. Indeed we still cannot rule out that our universe exists within another, but such a universe would need a higher order reality with truths that are fundamentally beyond our understanding. Sure, you could call it a “simulation” still, but if it doesn’t fit our understanding of a simulation it might as well be called “God” or “spirituality”, because the truth is, we wouldn’t understand a thing of it, and we might as well acknowledge that.
But that sounds like disproving a scenario no one claimed to be the case: that everything we perceive is as substantial as we think it is and can be simulated at full scale in real time by our own universe.
Part of the whole reason people think of simulation theory as worth bothering to contemplate is because they find quantum physics and relativity to be unsatisyingly "weird". They like to think of how things break down at relativistic velocities and quantum scale as the sorts of ways a simulation would be limited if we tried, so they like to imagine a higher order universe that doesn't have those pesky "weird" behaviors and we are only stuck with those due to simulation limits within this hypothetical higher order universe.
Nothing about it is practical, but a lot of these science themed "why" exercises aren't themselves practical or sciency.
"Robot, parse this statement, 'this sentence is false'." The robot explodes because it cannot understand a logical contradiction.
I swear, that's what this argument sounds like to me. Also, I'm genuinely confused why people don't think that, if we can simulate randomness with computers in our world with pseudo random number generators, why a higher reality wouldn't be able to simulate what we view as true randomness with a pseudo random number generator or some other device we cannot even begin to comprehend.
Either this paper is bullshit or they're talking about some sort of very specific thing that all these articles are blowing out of proportion.
I don't believe we are in a simulation but I don't believe this paper disproves it. Just like I don't believe in god but I don't believe the question "can god make a rock so big he can't pick it up?" disproves god.
When we dream we often believe it to be reality, despite that in retrospect we can identify clear contradictions with logic in those dreams.
A Matrix-like simulation doesn't have to be perfect. We are a bunch of dumb-dumbs who will suspend disbelief quite easily and dismiss those who claim to see a different truth as crazy.
The uptime is too good to be a simulation. It has an uptime of like 14 billions years! AWS has a lot of catching up to do. /s
But would we even notice an outage? Like hitting pause on a simulation and restarting it. There could be nightly maintenance and we may never know. Or maybe that's what deja vu is after all...
Yes, just like Minecraft worlds are so antiquated given how they contain diamonds in deep layers that must have taken a billion years to form.
What a simulated world contains as its local timescale doesn't mean the actual non-local run time is the same.
It's quite possible to create a world that appears to be billions of years old but only booted up seconds ago.
This is exactly the kind of disinformation the simulation would send out to trick us.
⬆️ ⬆️ ⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️BABA Start holy fucking shit I can see time. It's the colour three.
You're a single player I see.
That's just what they fucking want you to think.
This doesn't really address the idea that our simulation is a simplified version of the "real" universe though does it?
They argue that the universe isn’t mathematically computable, and therefore not possible to simulate. It’s not about physical computers.
We know there’s a class of ”uncomputable problems” for which there’s no algorithm (most well known is halting problem). If the universe rely on any of these uncomputable problems, then no computer - no matter how advanced it is - can simulate the universe. Something else other than pure computation is needed.
However, their argument rely on that ”quantum gravity” is what makes the universe uncomputable. I’m not sure how valid this statement is.
Going to circle back around on uncomputible in "our" version of reality. I mean it's kind of lazy in its way but it seems like the possibility that the "real" universe is a fundamentally different kind of place throws out most if not all methods for "proving" it's not. I'm not even a fan of the matrix theory but still, to acknowledge it.
When someone claims something isn't computable, it is instantantly sus, especially from math nerds and not compsci nerds. Imagine the universe is indeed uncomputable, but each measurement is. The number of measurements you'd need to sim (at various scales/resolutions) is vastly smaller than the universe as a whole. This is morally equivalent to occlusion pruning in 3D games. If you aren't looking at it, it isn't being rendered.
However, their argument rely on that ”quantum gravity” is what makes the universe uncomputable. I’m not sure how valid this statement is.
Here is the assumption the authors use that brings quantum gravity into the proof:
As we do not have a fully consistent theory of quantum gravity, several different axiomatic systems have been proposed to model quantum gravity [26–32]. In all these programs, it is assumed a candidate theory of quantum gravity is encoded as a computational formal system F_QG = {L_QG, ΣQG, R_alg} .
I interpret their assumption to mean that describing quantum gravity in this way is how it would be defined as a formal computational system. This is the approach that all of the other leading theories (String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity) have taken, which have failed to provide a fully consistent and complete description of gravity. I think the proof is saying that non-computational components can be incorporated into a fully consistent and complete formal system and so taking a non-computational approach to quantum gravity would then incorporate gravity into the formal system thereby completing the theory of everything.
Does that make sense? I am not a logician by any extent and I have no idea how robust this proof really is. I do think the bold claims the authors are making deserve heavy scrutiny, but I am not the one to provide that scrutiny.
Very interesting, although I'm going to withhold judgment pending some serious peer review.
Edit: One person doesn't like peer review to be part of the scientific process.
Oh those mathers. At least scientists are humble enough to recognize that theorums about the physical world can't be proven.
I was under the impression that something along these lines was already accepted from the perspective of information theory. I.e. a machine that could simulate the universe must at least be composed of as much information as the universe itself. Given the vastness and complexity of the universe, this would make it rather unlikely that the universe is simulated. Unless you want to view the universe itself as a machine that calculates it's own progression. But that is a bit of a semantic point.
Disclaimer: this is not my area of expertise and I probably got some terms or concepts wrong. I am basing this off of 'The information' by James Gleick
But you wouldn't have to simulate the whole universe, only one brain. There is no way for you to know, if everything your brain experiences is caused by it actually happening, or just the neutrons being triggered in that way from outside.
Solipsism is definitely one way to look at it.
I mean, maybe the machine is five-dimensional and has no problem containing all the information of a three-dimensional universe? I don't know, yadda yadda talking out of my ass.
This is akin to cavemen concluding there's no way an mri scanner could be possible.
Honestly I haven't seen a single article written by someone who actually understands the mathematics involved so I call a huge amount of HORSeSHIT on your headline.
I highly suggest to listen to this podcast with Damien P. Williams and Paris Marx:
“No, we don't live in a f---ing simulation”
https://ouropinionsarecorrect.libsyn.com/no-were-not-living-in-a-f-ing-simulation
Inside a turtle's dream theory still not disproven
About that title...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(mathematics)
Matrix theory is the branch of mathematics that focuses on the study of matrices.
In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of numbers or other mathematical objects with elements or entries arranged in rows and columns
So really The Matrix should have taken place in a two dimensional world.
Alternatively, I would also accept renaming the trilogy to The Array, The Matrix, and The Tensor.
Isn't it a waste of time to disprove the "Matrix Theory" (a piece of metaphysical, navel-gazing, freshman dormitory claptrap with absolutely no bearing on the pursuit of scientific knowledge or technical innovation or philosophical insight) in the first place? I look forward to the next paper, proving that there also aren't any fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Disproving the 'matrix theory' is just the catchy headline to garner clicks. The results of the research are beyond just the matrix. For example, this proof means that non-algorithmic determinism isn't something that represents a lack of deeper theoretical understanding. There are theories that consciousness is non-algorithmic. In that case, this proof means that AGI is also impossible.
Your summary is certainly more interesting than the article; I look forward to having time to read the paper, now!
That’s what the matrix wants you to think /s
Lol. They forgot that thermodynamics existed? If they remembered they were already done before they started.
I can't help but notice everyone going through psychosis saying reality is a simulation also says "and all evidence is starting to point to it".
Yet, they never ever discuss any of this "evidence" or related "research".
we are a speck of excrement on the buttplug of reality during a gay porno film.
If you have not already done so watch the animated series Pantheon (2022). Worth the watch and goes deep into simulation and concesiones.
dude yes! I recommend this series all the time.
What about a simulation inside a simulation........!!!
I will prove that we're not in a simulation:
If we're in a simulation then whoever is operating it would not want us to know if we're in a simulation or not.
Anyone trying to check if we're in a simulation or not would be stopped by the operator.
I wasn't stopped by an operator hence there is no operator and we're not in a simulation.
Q.E.D.
Um, why? As a general rule, the point of running a simulation is to find out what happens under some circumstances where you don't know what happens. If you're imposing conditions like that, then you aren't so much running a simulation as you are running some kind of procedural generation.
I'm kidding but since we're just playing I would say:
Let's imagine you want to know who will win the next election. You create detailed simulation of the entire population and run it until the voting day to see how they will vote. If the simulated population realized they are in a simulation the will obviously start behaving in a different way then the real population thus making your simulation useless.
So I would say unless the goal of the simulation is to see how fast will it realize it's just a simulation you would try to avoid them finding out.
Then again, checking if people will realize they are in a simulation is a valid reason to simulate them so it's possible we're in a simulation that is supposed to find out it's a simulation...
Damn
The simulation idea doesn't work only because people apply it incorrectly. Our brains do in fact create our experiences with no contact to the world outside our bodies, its our sensory organs that give data to the brain to create our perception of experiencing things.
We are all partly made of simulators, but knowing this changes nothing for each of us since we can start associating ourselves with a larger force of nature that happens when we group ourselves together for changes we want to see in the world.
Our brains do in fact create our experiences with no contact to the world outside our bodies, its our sensory organs that give data to the brain to create our perception of experiencing things.
Ehhh..... The claim that there's a clear delineation between the central and peripheral nervous system is generally just a byproduct of how we teach anatomy. The more we understand about cognitive science and anatomy in general, the further we get away from the old understanding of the cns when it was treated almost like a computer that runs a machine.
I think it kinda depends on how you define an experience, but you're kinda edging into an old debate known as the mind body problem in cognitive science and philosophy.
None of that suggests this can't be the case though.
What I'm saying is that for example, dreams are not real, and yet they can and often are indistinguishable from reality, many even have dreams where they are aware they are dreaming and can control them the same way we can control what we do while awake.
This is only possible because we have bodily systems for producing experiences.
Buncha fee fees about to start rejecting reality