You might want to sit down for this.
The world, and indeed, life as we know it could be a great big lie. From the chair that you’re currently sitting in to the weird smell that seems to hover around your fridge, none of it is real.
It might sound like the crazed musings of a conspiracy theorist, but according to top physicists it’s a lot more plausible than you might first think.
Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has spoken extensively about the subject, compared the scenario to that of the Keanu Reeves bulletfest, The Matrix, saying: “Instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation.”
“It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains, right down to neurons and synapses.”
Essentially meaning that we’re all just walking, talking simulations. Which is terrifying.
Proof of the claims apparently lie in the way that our universe obeys very strict mathematical laws – similar in many ways to that of a computer program.
One piece of evidence that apparently lends the theory weight is the manner in which the energy of cosmic rays cuts off when it reaches a specific limit (known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK)).
This replicates what would be expected to happen in a computer simulation of reality, which would be built around lattice spacing that imposes a limit on the amount of energy that particles can have.
However, leading cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence Marvin Minsky explained to the MailOnline that the ability to distinguish between the two alternate realities is probably unlikely, “Unless the programmer has made some slips – if you notice that some laws of physics aren’t quite right, or if you find rounding-off errors.”
So, best get looking for those errors. Or relax, and carry on believing the lie...
[Via: MailOnline]
