Do we live in a computer simulation along the lines of The Matrix?

when?

A computer simulation so like reality that you can spend your whole life in it without ever realizing that everything around you is fake.

Where did you see?

in a the matrix Only a few realize it: the world around them is a simulation. In fact, each human is floating in horrific capsules, connected to the electric current, where they serve as biological batteries for an evil artificial intelligence.

How close are we?

Second Life, World of Warcraft, Fortnite … Virtual worlds are still very popular, especially among gamers. Even virtual reality is within reach of anyone with a good smartphone or a few hundred euros for a PC headset or gaming console. At the same time, even the best virtual worlds are far from reality. The way a piece of chocolate melts on the tongue, the feeling when you walk barefoot on a deep carpet, the smell of fresh showers: the zeros and ones in the computer can’t yet imitate.

Or well: of course there are people who doubt it the matrix It is much more than a funny piece of fiction. They think we are actually living in a computer simulation. This real reality hides behind walls, which are erected by complex pieces of program code.

Take the holometer, for example, a strange experiment in a small room near the famous Fermilab Physical Institute in Chicago. An experiment with only one purpose: to discover distortions in reality. Pixels, errors in the matrix, if you will, that betrays that everything around us is a projection.

It’s not a strange idea when you realize that in modern “bit” theoretical physics, the zeros and ones of computer information are increasingly taking the lead. More and more physicists believe that reality at the smallest levels, beyond molecules, atoms and quarks, consists of information. Mathematically, the universe might be a kind of hologram, as they speculate, the shadow of a flat information reality located on a distant, elusive horizon.

Esoteric and erotic thoughts are those that, moreover, remain unproven. However, something is nibbling. Because if the universe is really a hologram, if this idea is more than a hand-held mathematical trick by physicists, are we actually, well, real? Or is our self-awareness just an algorithm in a computer the size of the universe?

If those thoughts make you panicked, comfort yourself with this fact: That holometer looking for pixels on the smallest scale known in the universe? He didn’t find anything at all. The universe appears to be tightly bound together. There are no edges or pixels to be seen. There is no creative algorithm in sight.

And if this ever happens, the Holometer website warns interested parties inFrequently Asked Questionsexistential calm. “The idea that our three-dimensional universe is somehow encoded into two dimensions does not mean that something or someone ‘outside’ is projecting the illusion or running the simulation,” they wrote.

Or does the advanced AI you’re using as a bio battery just wants you to believe it?