Do we live in a simulation?

The question is, “Do you think we are living in a computer simulation?”

I feel I am well suited to answer this, as I am a computer scientist.

The idea originates from this: Modern humans have been around for 100,000 years. The universe has been around 13 billion years. Humans haven't been around that long with respect to the age of the universe. This means it is highly likely another life form created the technology to simulate us, before we ecen existed. Yet, if we are a simulation, how do we know the universe is truly 13 billion years old? It could be 90 billion years old, and our simulation could be 13 billion years old. The argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Often in math, there are questions of “How do I prove that X is true?”. People will work years trying to prove X. And then someone who thinks differently will come along and try to prove the opposite, that X is not true. And they do so in a short paper, and invalidate books worth of thought.

I believe this is one of those cases, but I probably need a physicist or mathematician to actually prove my point. Still, I am writing because I believe my point is true, and I believe someone smarter than myself can mathematically prove this.

Basically, we can't live in a computer simulation. Computers can't handle infinite numbers.

They can't be added a CPU. The computer would get into an infinite loop adding all the numbers together and never stop. It would continue processing a part of the infinite number, and then move on to the next section and process that, and then move on to next section and so on. It would just keep processing the parts of the infinite number.

Infinite numbers can't be stored into RAM, or disk. We can store petabytes worth of data. But a even petabyte worth of data, still has a maximum integer size of 2^(10^15). This still is not infinity. Maybe our computer overload has even more capability to add numbers than this. But that still isn't infinity.

And that assumes the universe contains no negative numbers in calculations, or numbers with decimals in them.

T o hack an Android phone, just type in a really long password

So, all you have to do is prove that the universe contains calculations that use infinite numbers. For example, PI is an infinite number.

http://mathforum.org/library/drm...

And we know that PI is used in calculations. For example, the orbit of planets:

http://www.dummies.com/education/science/physics/how-to-calculate-the-period-and-orbiting-radius-of-a-geosynchronous-satellite/

As such, it can't be used in a computer calculation, because it would cause an infinite loop.

“But maybe its using a really long version of PI”.

If PI is rounded by the computer in performing any calculations whatsoever, then that means the speed of light is not a constant (but not due to gravity), and physicists would not like this. The universe itself would be discreet and not continuous (i.e. 3 dimensional pixels if you will, smaller than an electron, but nonetheless it would exist). This is due to the fact that numbers are being rounded. For example,depending on how far you round PI:

2x3=6

2x3.1=6.2

2x3.14=6.28

2xPI=6.28318531…

as we add in more digits, we get a higher resolution. But this rounding isn't giving us the real value. That means if we go looking for something in an orbit, it will exist in an entirely different location than it should exist.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/

This means light needs to pick between two units of space, either by increasing, or decreasing it's speed.

http://www.andor.com/learning-academy/ccd-spatial-resolution-understanding-spatial-resolution

Also, as objects become more distant from us, the size of the pixels would get larger due to the way floating point numbers get stored into bits. You would need more bits to store the integer part of the number, leaving you with less space to store the floating point part of the number, meaning billions of miles away the discreet pixels would be larger than where we live.

In simple example, (such as with 4 bits) you can either store the number 16 or 1.6. But you can't store 16.6 because you don't have enough bits. So you could store from 0 through 9.9, but once you get part 10, you can only store the integer 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. That not exactly how it works, but its close enough to understand the point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic

Waves of light would behave like this. If for example, the computer had do do a calculation. Say the speed of light were 4 meters per second, and it travels for PI seconds. Consider PI was rounded to 3.1.

4 x 3.1 = 12.4

But the computer can not store 12.4. It has to round the speed of light to 12, or to 13. This means that the speed of light was either faster, or slower then the real speed of light. By contrast, if light travels for 3 seconds:

4x3=12.

That means if we live in a computer simulation, light will travel 12 meters for 3 seconds, but also 12 meters for PI seconds.

See how this becomes a problem? So here is the philosophical proof that we can't live in a computer:

PI is infinite.
Light is constant.
Light can not be constant if the universe rounds numbers.
PI can not be stored in a computer. PI must be rounded by a computer.
PI is used in calculations in the universe.
PI would be rounded if we lived in a computer.
The speed of light would not be constant.
We do not live in a computer.
So arguing that we live in a simulation had profound effects on physics today. Enough effects that physicists should consider that if they truely believe we live in a simulation, they should put their money where their mouth is and test it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the universe is pixellated, and contains only non infinite numbers. Maybe that explains the two slit experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

But you simply can not argue that we live in a simulation, without accepting the profound impact that this has on physics itself.

I believe I have done my duty showing that:

Computers can not add infinite numbers
The universe contains calculations that contain infinite numbers
We can not live in a computer because computers can not perform infinite calculations
All that said, I doubt my thoughts will ever gain any traction. I'm not someone launching rockets into space, or stating Pluto isn't real. I'm simply somebody who has written, debugged, broken, and reverse engineered a lot of software and games.

If you enjoyed reading this please up-vote. It keeps me motivated.