yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Understanding Simulated Universes | StarTalk


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Now, Brian Green, uh, he's best known to the public for popularizing string theory. His earliest book, "The Elegant Universe," was a mega bestseller back in 1999. It was followed up with a book called "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality." Now, that touches on so much, and it enables him to think about so many interesting branches of physics that intrigue us.

In 2003, there was a paper published by a philosopher from the University of Oxford on whether or not the universe is a simulation. I had to ask Brian Green if he thought this could actually be possible, just to get a professional opinion on this. Let's find out if it's the case that one day we can have computers that can recreate a reality in bits and bytes that has such veritude that their inhabitants of those simulations feel that it's real.

If that's possible, and I think many of us agree that it might be, we're getting closer already. Just let's assume that's possible. It's so much easier to create a simulation than it is to create a real universe. I mean, how are you going to create a real universe? So if you wait long enough, there are going to be many, many more simulated universes than there are real ones.

So, any sentient being, if they're rational, would think that the odds are that they're in one of those simulations because there are so many more of those compared to real ones. Statistically, you're in the simulated one, not the real one.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So how do you know? It would be very hard. I mean, some have suggested, sort of like in "The Matrix," to look for glitches. Real universes don't have glitches, but computers can have them. But I say to that glitches, because, uh, presumably a fallible entity programmed that.

It could be that there could also be an electric current glitch that happens in the real universe and screws up what's happening inside the computer. But I don't buy that argument because if it's a really good simulation, it should be able to rewind, erase the memory of a glitch, fix it, and then the simulated beings have no memory of it ever happening.

More Articles

View All
3 Ways the World Order is Changing
I’m desperately trying to pass along my thoughts to help you understand how the world order is changing. Um, it’s changing in three very important ways. It’s changing financially and economically in important ways that you can see. It’s changing because o…
Crashing Into Saturn: This Cassini Mission Is the Most Epic Yet | Short Film Showcase
Alone, Explorer on a mission to reveal the grandeur of Saturn, its rings and [Music] moons. After 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is running out of fuel. And so, to protect the moon of Saturn that could have conditions suitable for life, a sp…
Slope and intercept meaning from a table | Linear equations & graphs | Algebra I | Khan Academy
We’re told that Felipe feeds his dog the same amount every day from a large bag of dog food. Two weeks after initially opening the bag, he decided to start weighing how much food remained in the bag on a weekly basis. Here’s some of his data: So we see af…
Choosing the Winners of the 2015 National Geographic Photo Contest | National Geographic
[Music] Connection, energy, artistry, truth, originality, originality, originality. My name is Jesse Wender, and I’m a senior photo editor at National Geographic magazine. An In Varma, I’m a contributing photographer to National Geographic magazine. Davi…
Position, velocity, and speed | Physics | Khan Academy
Let’s explore the ideas of position, speed, and velocity. So let’s start with an example. We have a car parked here somewhere on the road. What is its position? So let’s start with that. What is its position? Well, the meaning of position is basically lo…
Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances
This is a great excerpt from Federalist 51 by James Madison. Just as a reminder, the Federalist Papers, which were written by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay, were an attempt to get the Constitution passed, to get it ratified. So these were really kind of…