The Matrix in Real Life: Is Perfect Simulation Possible?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

20 years after the release of the first "Matrix", the directors decided to shoot the fourth. During this time, a lot has changed: the Wachowski brothers became sisters, and scientists took the main idea of the film to heart: imagine, many physicists are seriously discussing the theory that our world is just a matrix, and we are digital models in it.

Why would scientists need to test theory from cinema?

When translated into reality, the idea of the "Matrix" seems absurd: why would anyone create a huge virtual world - which is clearly laborious - and populate it with people, us? Moreover, the implementation of this idea from the Wachowski sisters' film does not stand up to criticism: any schoolchild knows that the efficiency cannot exceed 100%, which means that it makes no sense to get energy for machines from people in capsules - more energy will be spent on feeding and heating them, than they can give to the machines.

Nick Bostrom was the first in academia to answer the question of whether someone might need an entire simulated world in 2001. By that time, scientists had already begun to use computer simulations, and Bostrom suggested that sooner or later, such computer simulations would be used to study the past. Within the framework of such a simulation, it will be possible to create detailed models of the planet, people living on it and their relationships - social, economic, cultural.

History cannot be studied experimentally, but in models you can run countless scenarios, setting up the wildest experiments - from Hitler to the postmodern world in which we now live. Such experiments are useful not only for history: it would also be good to understand the world economy better, but who will give experiments to be carried out on eight billion real, living people at once? Bostrom draws attention to an important point. It is much easier and cheaper to create a model than to create a new, biologically real person. And this is good, because the historian wants to create one model of society, the sociologist - another, the economist - the third, and so on. There are a lot of scientists in the world, so the number of digital "people" that will be created in many such simulations can be very large. For example, one hundred thousand, or a million, or ten million times more than the number of "biological", real people.

If we assume that the theory is correct, then purely statistically, we have almost no chance of being not digital models, but real people. Let's say the total number of "matrix" people created anywhere and ever by any civilization is only one hundred thousand times more than the number of representatives of this civilization. Then the probability that a randomly chosen intelligent creature is biological and not “digital” is less than one hundred thousandth. That is, if such a simulation is really being carried out, you, the reader of these lines, are almost certainly just a bunch of numbers in an extremely advanced supercomputer.

Bostrom's conclusions are well described by the title of one of his articles: "… the likelihood that you live in the Matrix is very high." His hypothesis is quite popular: Elon Musk, one of her supporters, once stated that the probability of our living not in the matrix, but in the real world is one in billions. Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate George Smoot believes that the probability is even higher, and the total number of scientific papers on this topic over the past twenty years is estimated at dozens.

How to build a "Matrix" in real life, if you really want to?

In 2012, a group of German and American physicists wrote a scientific paper on this subject, later published in The European Physical Journal A. Where, from a purely technical point of view, should you start modeling a large world? In their opinion, models of the formation of atomic nuclei based on modern concepts of quantum chromodynamics (which gives rise to a strong nuclear interaction that hold protons and neutrons in a whole form) are best suited for this. The researchers wondered how difficult it would be to create a simulated universe in the form of a very large model, coming from the smallest particles and their constituent quarks. According to their calculations, a detailed simulation of a really large Universe will require too much computing power - quite expensive even for a hypothetical civilization from the distant future. And since a detailed simulation cannot be too large, it means that really distant areas of space are something like theatrical scenery, since there was simply not enough production capacity for their meticulous drawing. Such regions of space are something that only looks like distant stars and galaxies, and looks in enough detail that today's telescopes cannot distinguish this "painted sky" from the present. But there is a nuance.

The simulated world, due to the moderate power of computers used for its calculations, simply cannot have the same resolution as the real world. If we find that the "resolution" of the reality surrounding us is worse than it should be based on basic physics, then we live in a research matrix.

“For a simulated creature, there is always the possibility of discovering that it is simulated,” the scientists conclude.

Should I take the red pill?

In 2019, philosopher Preston Greene published an article in which he publicly urged not to even try to find out if we live in the real world or not. As he states, if long-term studies show that our world has an unlimitedly high "resolution" even in the farthest corners of space, then it turns out that we live in a real Universe - and then scientists will only waste time trying to find the answer to this question …

But this is even the best possible option. Much worse if it turns out that the "resolution" of the visible Universe is lower than expected - that is, if we all exist only as a set of numbers. The point is that simulated worlds will be of value to their creator scientists only as long as they accurately model their own world. But if the population of the simulated world suddenly realizes its virtuality, then it will definitely stop behaving "normally". Realizing that they are a resident of the matrix, many can stop going to work, obey the norms of public morality, and so on. What's the use of a model that doesn't work?

Green believes that there is no benefit - and that scientists of a modeling civilization will simply unplug such a model from the power supply. Fortunately, even with its limited "resolution" to simulate the whole world is not the cheapest pleasure. If humanity really takes the red pill, it can simply be disconnected from the power supply - which is why we all die in a non-illusory way.

What if we live in a simulation simulation?

Yet Preston Green is not entirely right. In theory, it makes sense to simulate a model whose inhabitants suddenly realized that they are virtual. This can be useful for a civilization, which at some point itself realized that it is being modeled. At the same time, its creators for some reason forgot or did not want to disable the model.

Such "little men" may find it useful to simulate the situation in which their society finds itself. Then they can build a model to study how the simulated people behave when they realize that they are just a simulation. If this is so, then there is no need to be afraid that we will be turned off at the moment when we realize that we are living in the matrix: for this moment, our model was launched.

Can you create a perfect simulation?

Any detailed simulation of even one planet down to the level of atoms and subatomic particles is very resource-intensive. Reducing the resolution can reduce the realism of human behavior in the model, which means that the calculations based on it may not be accurate enough to transfer the simulation conclusions to the real world.

In addition, as we noted above, the simulated can always find evidence that they are being simulated. Is there a way to get around this limitation and create models that require fewer powerful supercomputers, but at the same time infinitely high resolution, like in the real world?

A rather unusual answer to this question appeared in 2012-2013. Physicists have shown that, from a theoretical point of view, our Universe during the Big Bang could arise not from some small point with an infinite amount of matter and infinite density, but from a very limited area of space, where there was almost no matter. It turned out that within the framework of the mechanisms of "inflation" of the Universe at an early stage of its development, a huge amount of matter can arise from the vacuum.

As Academician Valery Rubakov notes, if physicists can create a region of space with the properties of the early Universe in a laboratory, then such a “Universe in a laboratory” will simply turn into an analogue of our own Universe according to physical laws.

For such a "laboratory universe" the resolution will be infinitely large, since, strictly speaking, by its nature it is material, and not "digital". Plus, its work in the "parent" Universe does not require a constant expenditure of energy: it is enough to pump it there once, during creation. Moreover, it must be very compact - no more than the part of the experimental setup in which it was "conceived".

Astronomical observations in theory may indicate that such a scenario is technically possible. At the moment, with today's state of the art, this is pure theory. To put it into practice, you need to redo a whole heap of work: first, find in nature the physical fields predicted by the theory of "laboratory Universes" and then try to learn how to work with them (carefully so as not to destroy ours along the way).

In this regard, Valery Rubakov asks the question: is not our Universe one of such "laboratory" ones? Unfortunately, today it is impossible to reliably answer this question. The creators of the "toy universe" must leave the "gate" to their desktop model, otherwise it will be difficult for them to observe it. But it is difficult to find such doors, especially since they can be placed at any point in space-time.

One thing is for sure. Following Bostrom's logic, if one of the intelligent species ever decided to create laboratory Universes, the inhabitants of these Universes can take the same step: create their own "pocket Universe" (recall that its real size will be like ours, small and compact there will only be an entrance to it from the laboratory of the creators).

Accordingly, artificial worlds will begin to multiply, and the likelihood that we are the inhabitants of a man-made universe is mathematically higher than that we live in the primordial universe.