Holy Matrix! I am in a Computer!
There's fairly recent theory in physics called quantum loop gravity. It doesn't have a lot of traction yet in the physics community and is by no means close to being proven. It does however make one prediction that caught my attention. It implies that below the level of the quantum flux, which is thought to give rise to all forms of matter and energy, there might be nothing but pure information. In other words, the universe might be a giant quantum computer with no real physicality. This brought to mind an essay I read 20 years ago in Douglas R. Hofstadter's, "The Minds Eye". The essay begins with the premise of a powerful enough computer to run a simulation program that would create a universe like our own. To the inhabitants of this simulation everything would appear as it does to us and therefore they would not be aware of existing inside a computer program. I've been wondering lately what a physicist inside the program might see. You might see simulated atoms, made of simulated particles, made of simulated quarks, etc. until finely the software code itself. This would be limit of what you could learn about your simulated universe from the inside. In other words it would look like what quantum loop theory predicts. Maybe the Buddhists where right all a long. A computer also implies a maker but not necessarily the one we usually think of. If human beings can conceive of a way to make universes in a bottle then the maker of ours may be no more divine than us. And what is the purpose of a computer universe? Perhaps we live in somebody else's version of a video game. I think a lot of us have suspected the universe is a bit out of whack all along. It brings to mind the last message of God to his creation before he left in Doug Adams "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy". "So long, and sorry for all the mess!"
