Could the Universe be a giant quantum computer?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02646-x

by pseudolus • 3 years ago

33 87 3 years ago

mcculley3• 3 years ago

Yes.

I see a lot of speculation about the possibility that our universe is a simulation. But our experience with inadvertently building Turing-complete systems makes me wonder if our universe is running on something that is just a side-effect of some other computation and not something deliberately constructed.

Someone in the enclosing universe could fix a bug and suspend or destroy our universe.

Or the computational substrate on which our universe executes is just some natural process in the enclosing universe, like sea foam or solar flares.

gremlinsinc2• 3 years ago

ha, how weird it'd be if we're just a bug and not the feature. Totally throws the idea of a god out, I mean sure a programmer launched our instance but we were created totally by accident.

maxhille2• 3 years ago

"just some random test deployment"

I wonder what the automated tests will look like to us...

dsego• 3 years ago

I've recently had this really bizarre intuitive insight telling me I'm just living out the actions that were either pre-recorded as a movie or are computed along the way, and I'm just perceiving it as my actions and my will, like my own volition is just another type of experience or an illusion and not a real phenomenon. Hard to explain, it's very elusive. Another insight was that my internal observer is a separate entity, one that might survive death and isn't really related to my intelligence or personality, but is limited by them (like driving a slow car).

amitprayal• 3 years ago

you have probably read some vedanta book or snippet from the book

lostmsu2• 3 years ago

Someone in the enclosing universe could fix a bug and suspend or destroy our universe.

It is not as simple. See Permutation City.

TL;DR; from a perspective of a person living in Game of Life, your time doesn't rewind when the computer running it rewinds the state.

mcculley3• 3 years ago

I did not say that the state was reversible. If you are trying to say that non-reversibility implies that state cannot be destroyed, we would need more than your TLDR.

rendall17• 3 years ago

How likely would it be that the Universe is an instance of some recent technology that humans created?

junon• 3 years ago

This makes no sense whatsoever.

rendall17• 3 years ago

I've seen articles speculating that the Universe is a computer, a simulation, and a hologram. There are serious scholarly speculations that the Universe is a clock, a machine, or a book.

AtlasBarfed• 3 years ago

That statement (the universe, which is what we seemingly evolved and grew in, was created by ... us? we are our own creator?) is so circular and illogical that it is actually ingenious.

Like humans existed in some other existence, but we were going to get Gnab Gib'd, so we ensured that the next universe would inevitably rise to precisely recreate us through a convoluted 4 billion year evolutionary program in a tiny speck of dirt in one of billions of galaxies?

It's like some convoluted anime/manga plotline that occurs in the final stages of a 10-15 year run. Or heck, like the infamous "Dallas" plot element from the 1980s: THE ENTIRE SERIES WAS JUST A DREAM.

Or "Lost".

It does seem that quantum mechanics hints at the universe being some bizarre gigantic n-dimensional computational matrix, but that's probably because of the discrete quantities and rigid math and things like hard orbits/energy level jumps which seem a lot like memory assignment or cellular automata.

trey-jones2• 3 years ago

If you consider that the latest human technology humans created is capable of spawning nearly infinite numbers of "simulated universes", then the probability that our universe is one of those "simulated universes" is nearly infinite! Or is it? This is a version of the Sleeping Beauty problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem

rendall17• 3 years ago

No. A computer is no more capable of simulating a Universe than is a book. The same arguments apply to books: If a super advanced race were capable of writing such vivid fiction that it created a Universe, then our Universe must be fictional!! It's an absurd idea that has gotten way too much traction.

esperent3• 3 years ago

This is kind of like the Boltzmann Brain idea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

earthboundkid4• 3 years ago

Okay, it's not like a horse or an astroglobe or a steam engine, but c'mon, it's definitely like a computer.

rendall17• 3 years ago

In my view the Universe is as much a computer as it is a clock or steam engine. That is to say, it has a superficial, poetic resemblance, but is not actually one at all.

tiborsaas• 3 years ago

I'll bet on Star Citizen 3.0

pseudolus• 3 years ago

Link to the referenced New York Times obituary for Edward Fredkin: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/04/science/edward-fredkin-de...

baerrie• 3 years ago

No. If you expand the definition of a computer to be any somewhat organized system, maybe. Then you could argue all life is is just a simulation within the system of Earths elements and forces because said forces led to our existence and “organized” our own bodies processes

gremlinsinc2• 3 years ago

There's code that resembles error correcting code that is used in browsers inside physics calculations. We're nearly able ourselves to create a full universal computer simulation. There's arbitrary speed limits or other 'settings'like a clicker game might have. Speed of light, planks constant, etc... The fact we haven't seen any life could mean we're the only life simulated. The entire universe needn't even exist just our perception that it does, we see it, we can observe but maybe we're just observing facts fed to us if things that should be there in a universe of infinite size. Perhaps the speed limits are set because of size limits of existing hardware. it's easier to believe than there being a god, or the universe could be conscience and we're simulated like a dream is simulated in our subconscious.

nologic012• 3 years ago

Could Nature turn from one of the most respected academic journals to a clickbaiting blogging outfit in the space of a decade? [1]. The post rehashes some old and sterile ideas. The most recent reference is a preprint from 2013.

Alas the zeitgeist is conducive to "bits will eat the world". Here is a more radical idea: Could the Universe be a giant Universe? (= a recursive function). Maybe its Universes all the way down?

[1] Apparently yes

djmips• 3 years ago

Something 10 years old isn't a measure of irrelevance.

nologic012• 3 years ago

In our day and age a decade of no publication or follow up is definitely a measure of something - there is more than enough talented and agitating spirits around to pursue wild ideas. Thats why I picked the word "sterile".

aradox66• 3 years ago

Sort of begs the question, doesn't it? Just kicks the existential mystery one step up the ontological ladder.

garciasn• 3 years ago

Yes, of course it begs the question: that's the whole point of science. To explore and provide hypotheses which can be studied and potentially eventually proven when we can gain enough evidence at a later time.

The problem with the universe is that, right now, we operate entirely within its confines and we know we don't even fully understand its physics, let alone any sort of 'physics' which may operate outside of it--should there be something outside of it.

Unless something changes in our view of the universe, this will very likely remain a philosophical question, likely for our entire existence and the existence of whatever intelligent life forms replace the human race several times over in the coming billions of years of this planet.

earthboundkid4• 3 years ago

No, for the same reason it's not a vehicle even though it has many moving parts. A vehicle is something used to transport an agent. A computer is something used to do computation for an agent. Computation is the process of making reliable, rule-driven inferences about one system from another. If the universe is considered as a whole, there is no second system to which to applies the inferences made using the universe as a first system.

hirundo• 3 years ago

there is no second system to which to applies the inferences made using the universe as a first system

This is as much speculation as a statement that such a system does exist.

earthboundkid4• 3 years ago

In this case, the word "universe" means everything there is. If there's some kind of comic book like "multiverse", it's really just one "universe" with different pockets. It's not actually multiple "universes."

I guess we can't rule out that someone is using Earth as a computer, but if they were, you'd expect the mice to get better cheese.

maxhille2• 3 years ago

Carl Sagan's view on these matters:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lH7H9d28BR8

Although he talks about Gods and Creation, I think the same argument applies to the Simulation Hypothesis aswell.

Swizec• 3 years ago

Obviously the universe is a giant computer. We’re calculating the question to 42. There’s a whole documentary about this!

veltas• 3 years ago

The documentary's been on display at the Alpha Centauri planning office for the last fifty years, it's not my fault you have not got around to inventing stellar travel yet.

karol• 3 years ago

It could even be a sewer system if that's your obsession.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

I'm getting good at remembering that it's called Betteridge's law. I used to have to look it up, but I'm getting so much practice that I think it's finally started to stick.

thereikiway• 3 years ago

Could Nature speculate any more lately?

okonomiyaki3000• 3 years ago

I think the answer is obvious. It is and it isn't.

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

There are a few problems with this claim, as well as the general idea that the universe is a computer. tl;dr: the claim doesn't even make sense, except perhaps in some figurative sense.

First, what a computer is cannot be identified with any physical system, because computation is observer-relative. There is no fact of the matter that some physical system is performing computations. Computation is not a natural kind. We can harness physical phenomena "computer-wise", that is, use physical phenomena to simulate computation, but it makes no sense to identify computation with physical phenomena as such. That physical phenomena involve quantities that can be computed does not mean the phenomena are performing computations as such. A simpler example of something analogous is a book. The print in a book, physically, is just a series of pigmented spots on sheets of something made of plant fiber. Physically, it isn't even "writing" per se, as writing is not a natural kind, but what we call the result of the act of writing. The pigmented spots on plant fiber are the only content, physically, of what is in a book. The content we think of when we speak of books is brought to the book by the reader who interprets the marks on the pages according to what he already has in his head. This is what reading is: interpretation, assigning meaning. The same is true of computers. Physically, no computation is occurring.

Second, computation is about something. When a physicist or engineer computes the current in a circuit, he isn't manifesting the circuit. He is computing something about the circuit. Computation is an abstract activity of the mind. (We can use this in an argument against materialism.)

Third, part of the reason why this identification of computation with physics is likely occurring is because the methodology or methodologies of physics necessarily strip reality of much of its substance and leave us with a mathematical, formal model expressed in computational terms. Guess what else is a formal model that involves computation? This allows us to talk about the formal equivalence or subsumption or whatever of physical models and computational models. That such a relationship exists isn't that surprising in retrospect.

FrustratedMonky• 3 years ago

For those thinking 'computer' like we are executing on some system outside of our reality, then I think "no".

But, if we take that the universe has rules, and all particles are following a wave function, and interacting. Then it is ok to think of our universe as 'executing functions'. So our universe is self executing, like a computer.

There is no randomness, just rules we haven't discovered. See Super Determinism.

sambeau• 3 years ago

Isn't this all just René Descartes's Demon, the 'Deus Deceptor' that he proposed in his 'Meditations on First Philosophy' in 1641.

Are we doing anything more than updating his question to our latest technology?

Is there a fundamental difference between this and, say, 'The Truman Show'? Other than a more sophisticated layer of MacGuffin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosoph...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

I have a hypothesis that the double slit experiment provides evidence that the universe is simulated. It always makes me wonder if photons act as waves when unobserved because it's easier to simulate the general area a particle could end up to save computing costs. However, when observed, the simulation must make the granular calculations and show where that individual particle actually ended up.

It also calls into question how much we can learn about the beginning of our universe. We are "trapped" by the physics of our universe so there may be no grand explanation of where all the energy came from. If the universe is simulated it's not like we're going to suddenly get down to the source code, there will just be a distinct point when the universe booted and all the stuff started happening.

karmakaze2• 3 years ago

A universe could be simulated, but could they all?

I prefer to think that there are symmetry/conservation laws that work bidirectionally in time. Even if time travel were possible, the only events that could occur are those that don't break any symmetry/conservation laws. This could be seen as a weaker form of simulation hypothesis leaving out the concrete 'how' as an unknown.

I remember coming up with the idea of 'time legs'. A tree can't pick up and move somewhere else, and a falling leaf doesn't choose its path. Other creatures can. We just don't have the apparatus to move freely through time--our memories only form when moving forward.

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

I like the concept of time legs! Time is a weird concept to nail down anyway, since it's relative, but from a single perspective there is only the perpetual "now". We can remember times that happened, but aren't "now", and we can conceive of a time in the future that is also not "now".

We just need to figure out how to affect our relativity without needing to go insanely fast or being swallowed by a gravity well. Easy task...

az09mugen2• 3 years ago

I like a lot your point of view. And maybe this is a proof of some granularity of our simulated universe.

But on the other hand, I can't remove the idea from my brain that maybe there is some kind of hidden variable/dimension/other-concept-we-can't-be-aware-of at the source of this phenomenon explaining perfectly why we see it that way.

Our science knew a big expansion since the beginning of 20th century thanks to some geniuses. And now I have the feeling there is no more 'science explosion' coming. Sure, there are some good intuitions, but nothing concrete or testable.

Everything nowadays lies on these fancy ideas to prove them or push them to their corners. But nothing really appealing, it's just some 'monkey testing' of our universe. LK-99 : false hope, string theory: too much variable and kinda not testable, dark matter or lambda CDM : nothing going towards the confirmation. Sure, the math/physics models predict a lot of stuff, but nothing incredible.

I have the feeling something big is missing to understand our universe, but we're not working in that direction.

Sorry, needed to vent.

Still, I like your idea.

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

We are only just starting to experiment with quantum systems and I have hope that there are still many things we can discover. Our understanding of light alone is kind of brain breaking in some ways. It acts like a particle and a wave, but it always has a wavelength even as a single photon. And a photon is more of a quantized description of a certain amount of light energy than an actual particle with mass, as I understand it.

It all stems from a certain fluctuation in a specific quantum field, so we may be able to discover properties which allow us to manipulate these as well as other quantum fields. For me it kind of boils down to the more we understand reality, the more complex it becomes, and it always has more layers. We don't truly understand what reality even is, and can only experience certain parts of it with our senses.

So have no fear, the drive to understand what is going on around us is a very human trait and we have built some of the best tools in the history of humanity in only the last 60 years. There's a lot of runway left on science :)

karmakaze2• 3 years ago

There's no reason it needs to be a quantum computer. It can be a simple device, it only needs enough memory. How slow the calculations are doesn't matter because it controls the 'tick's. We'd basically be frozen in a frame of time until the next computation was done rendering.

az09mugen2• 3 years ago

A small contribution to this big topic from xkcd since I haven't seen it : https://xkcd.com/224/

Could the Universe be a giant quantum computer?

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