One of the most boiling debates recently is whether or not the universe is a simulation.
Skepticism on this topic goes back to the fifth century. Parmenides argues that the everyday perception of the reality of the physical world is wrong and the world is an unchanging, ungenerated and indestructible whole.
The word 'simulation' comes from Latin and literally means “pretending, imitating, resembling.” Before implementing something in real life, it is first tested in the computer environment and the decisions are made accordingly. In other words, “modelling” takes place.
According to Baudrillard, a person watches the Sudanese Civil War on TV with the same apathy as when s/he watches a toilet paper commercial. Although the war continues after s/he turns the TV off, it is over for her. That universe the person lives in is the simulation universe. Everything is inanimate and made of images.
Under normal conditions; a simulation program, two or three dimensional, puts limits on a model progressing in time. In other words, we cannot go out of the boundaries drawn by those who built the simulation. Briefly, we cannot go to a point in the simulation (limit values) that the software does not allow us to.
When we think about the existing laws of physics, it is obvious that we can only go on accepting some constants. We, for example, cannot change the speed of light; we can neither slow it down nor speed it up. Similarly, we cannot change anything about the Planck Constant that has a significant role on quantum mechanics.
There have been several philosophical and scientific theories on the claim that reality is an illusion. Simulation argument was first put forward by Nick Bostrom in 2001. Bostrom and some other writers assert that there is empirical evidence indicating that the simulation argument is valid. In Germany, the results of the experiments done at Bonn University pointed to the upper energy limits that must exist in simulations.
Universe is 13.8 billion years old and there's no need to talk about how big it is. If you’ve read so far, it means you are already interested in the topic. So let’s go back to our subject matter; there is a good chance there are more advanced civilizations than us. But where are they? And why don’t they make any contact with us?
Physicists have been trying to answer this partly philosophical question with a newly developed research technique. The main argument behind the idea is that another human-like civilization may create gigantic simulations. This civilization is so advanced that it can build a simulated universe containing billions of planets and stars. If this theory is correct, that means we are in a chain of interwoven simulations. In fact, we are the ones who build the first civilization in the first virtual universe. Recently an article was published by Bonn University in Germany on this subject. The lead researcher Silas Beane stated that the article was not just fiction, as the movie 'The Matrix' is, rather it had a grain of truth in it, he said.
The answer to this question is both yes and no. If we are simulated by a civilization, it is possible for our civilization to simulate another. But here is the problem: Would the civilization simulated us allow us to simulate another one or would it simply unplug us? No matter how complicated these questions sound, IBM’s supercomputer Mira has been trying to simulate our universe by collecting all the known laws of physics. If we manage to simulate a civilization in the future, that means there are infinite numbers of interwoven universes. It's just like the simulated dreams intertwining in Inception, isn't it?
We may all have heard that the Matrix was not just fiction; there was ongoing research that we didn’t know about and the trilogy was the fruit of the results of that research. In the movie, artificial consciousnesses were created by sending electromagnetic waves from a universe to the human brains. A universe was created and it was being kept under control. Just like what the simulation theory suggests.
This is where all the questions become meaningless: As you know, reincarnation is a popular belief. When we combine the simulation theory with reincarnation however, the result is quite intriguing. Our consciousness we have here and now is being transferred to another simulated universe and it starts a new life there all over again. Interesting, isn’t it?
Alright, I think this is the deepest end to the subject. Let’s assume that the theory is accurate and our civilization is being simulated by another civilization. And then later on, we simulate another civilization and they go through all the processes of existence that we went through. We may come to the conclusion that the civilization that simulates us is a simulation built by another simulation. This should be an endless hierarchical circle. Well, who or what has been simulating this all, from the very beginning? Is it some sort of a god that sees the whole universe as a playground? Or is it the most advanced civilization living somewhere in the universe? Or are we just the product of evolution and are alone in the universe?