On testing the simulation hypothesis

Tom Campbell, Houman Owhadiy, Joe Sauvageauz, David Watkinson

Can the hypothesis that reality is a simulation be tested? We investigate this question based on the assumption that if the system performing the simulation is fi nite (i.e. has limited resources), then to achieve low computational complexity, such a system would, as in a video game, render content (reality) only at the moment that information becomes available for observation by a player and not at the moment of detection by a machine (that would be part of the simulation and whose detection would also be part of the internal computation performed by the Virtual Reality server before rendering content to the player). Guided by this principle we describe conceptual wave/particle duality experiments aimed at testing the simulation hypothesis. Full text

 

 

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