A couple of times I've posted about an idea put forward by some freethinking physicists -- namely, that our universe might be best understood as a virtual reality simulation.
What I didn't know is that there's a neat little Web site devoted to this idea, with some well-written essays that explain the concept in refreshingly nontechnical language.
It's called The Bottom Layer.
If this kind of ontological speculation appeals to you (as it does to me), check it out.
The television show and website Closer To Truth has many theories by leading thinkers on consciousness and the cosmos. It is easier to digest than The Bottom Layer. Older episodes used to be roundtable discussions on various topics that often got heated. The newer shows are single topic, multiple view points. I believe the holographic universe has been discussed a few times there. I know Morgan Freeman's "Through the wormhole" had an episode about holographic nature. Sorry if Im rambling and plugging sites and shows. I think they are a little more valuable to the layman.
Posted by: Rob | August 05, 2010 at 07:55 PM
From the site:
"As we have advanced in physics and computer science, we have been slow to realize that what we humans can accomplish in the language of COBOL or LISP or FORTRAN or C++ might have been more perfectly accomplished before. In particular, we have been slow to consider that the physicist's puzzlement over a world corresponding to mathematical formalism might be answered by analogy to our own efforts in creating worlds through the mathematical formalism of our programming languages. The world itself might have been created by the Word."
Reminds me of Columbus brushing past the natives and claiming "discovery" of America.
John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Posted by: dmduncan | August 05, 2010 at 08:21 PM
"As we have advanced in physics and computer science, we have been slow to realize that what we humans can accomplish in the language of COBOL or LISP or FORTRAN or C++ might have been more perfectly accomplished before."
Yes, I agree dmd. Physicists are rediscovering the wheel. I can't help wondering sometimes if someone up there is saying, "Look, you're not supposed to be looking for how it works, you're meant to be enjoying it. When you come back, you'll see how it all works."
But I think it's a very good site indeed. Nice discovery, MP. The article on "A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" is, as you say, written in refreshingly plain English.
Posted by: Ben | August 06, 2010 at 08:46 AM
I teach calculus, which of course is the math behind the physics, yet I swear this stuff is still Greek to me. I'm trying to sort through it right now. There's a lot of material there.
Posted by: J9 | August 06, 2010 at 03:56 PM
"I teach calculus, which of course is the math behind the physics, yet I swear this stuff is still Greek to me."
Funny, J9!
I used to ask my Maths teacher to translate all the Greek alpha-s, beta-s and pi-s into English, but he just looked blankly at me.
Posted by: Ben | August 06, 2010 at 05:29 PM
Ben, I understand completely. Anytime we couldn't answer a question on a advanced math test we would mark "I executed the Picard manuever and the answer is 49". I realize we combined literature with pop culture "trek" fiction, but my buddy was a dual math/philosophy major and it made sense at the time. He was also the person who asked me "If Milli Vanilli were singing in the forest, would anybody hear them?". But I think I'm dating myself.
Posted by: J9 | August 06, 2010 at 08:20 PM
This idea started at least back in the 1960s, at the beginning of computer science. I always believed it, because it makes sense and agrees with everything else. We know that matter isn't "matter," so what else can it be? We sort of know that it's all waves and relationships, patterns in nothingness -- in other words, it's all information. And what is information if not "intelligence?" And what is intelligence? It is always related somehow to a personality, a being.
So it seems very obvious that the universe is inherently meaningful and inherently personal. A place swarming with intelligence of all kinds.
Carl Sagan wrote a book "The Demon Haunted World." I didn't read it but I assume it's about how our ignorant ancestors believed in demons because they didn't have scientific explanations. Well now as wee go deeper into science, it is leading us back to demons.
I started becoming a "new ager" when I read The Tao of Physics in the 1970s. Everything I read after that pointed in the same general direction. The universe is made out of intelligence, and it's infinitely complex and beyond our comprehension.
Saying the world is a computer program isn't really accurate. It's better to say a computer program is like the world. Computer programs are made out of information and so is everything else. So of course everything is a program, but not like the simple little programs we human write. We are Flatlanders, compared to intelligences on higher levels.
We sophisticated educated moderns like to feel safe from demons, because our science has explained them away. Well no, it has not, and science has not made us safe. Far far from it. Science has created our gravest dangers. But it's fun and we can't help wondering and messing things up. We are primates after all.
So now we have the dangers of science and technology, and we still (without knowing it) have the dangers of demons. We get less safe all the time. We don't know anything about magic and rituals so we have no control over the unseen worlds. No wonder everything is going crazy!
Posted by: realpc | August 06, 2010 at 10:15 PM
Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has written at length about the possibility that we're in a posthumous 'ancestor simulation':
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Posted by: Greg Taylor | August 07, 2010 at 06:45 AM