10 Spooky Solutions to the Simulation Hypothesis

An exploration of ten scenarios related to the simulation hypothesis that speculate on the nature of what the simulation is, why it exists and who is doing the simulation.

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Intermission in D by Miguel Johnson

"Ascent" by Stellardrone

[logicplague]

I never put much stock into the simulation theory. However after the last few years, not only am I absolutely certain that this is a simulation, I'm also certain that whoever is running it went to the bathroom and their child is currently face-rolling the keyboard.

[AceSpadeThePikachu]

One of my favourites I like to think about is something I call the "game hypothesis." Picture a civilization so advanced that they have done everything that can ever be done, seen everything that can ever be seen and know everything that can ever be known. Such an entity would no doubt become extremely bored as there is nothing left to do, no challenges or frontiers, no problems or puzzles. The only way for such a consciousness to experience anything "new" would be to place itself inside a simulated reality, like a video game of sorts, that has the "player" start each new "game" with literally no memories of anything; a total blank slate.

[vegard]

If someone ran a simulation of an infinite or near infinite universe, whoever is running it might not even know we are here.

[owenosborne]

I think the best part about the simulation theory is that it doesn’t really change anything for our day to day lives, regardless if we live in a simulation or not

[georgejones]

It had never occurred to me before that not only might we be living in a simulation, we might not even be the subject of that simulation.

[WildStar]

"Cogito, ergo sum" - such a dangerous idea! Few people know that Descartes, while traveling from Paris to New York on an aeroplane was approached by the stewardess, "Coffee or tea?" she asked. "I think not, " he replied - and he immediately disappeared!

[iSaidNo]

I love this so much—I’m 84 and have such comforting memories of sleeping at my grandmother’s house —she lived close to a railroad—and hearing the train whistle coming from way down the tracks and listening to the clickety clack of those wheels as they grew closer and closer and then moved off in the distance—

[laurachapple]

If the opossum emerged from the quantum foam like a virtual particle, does that mean there's an antipossum out there somewhere waiting to annihilate with him?

[tbmdd]

I swear you upload at all the right times! Churning out the bangers as usual!

[slandgsmith]

The more I watch John Michael Godier videos, the more I question…..everything.

[teugene]

I would like to see you do an entire video on the concept of a Boltzmann brain and its theoretical consequences for modern cosmology and (meta)physics. As a Boltzmann brain (myself), I command you to do this. Thank you (me).

[thatguychris]

I lean towards #3 but call it Shadow Theory. You are a 3d creature and cast a 2d shadow. The shadow is very simplified and exists on a 2d plane. What if our 3d selves are just simplified shadows of our 4d selves? This would check off a lot of boxes:
- Feeling of having a higher self
- "Man" created in "God's" image
- An "afterlife" when your 3d self is gone
- Simulation, a very simplified copy of the dimension above

Just a thought 🤔

[OrNaurItsKat]

Ah yes, right on time for my daily existential crisis

[bjornleonhenry]

I never get bored listening and learning more about your theories and ideas, always very interesting

[martinstallard]

1:17 we are the biproduct of an alien simulation
3:15 we are an ancestor simulation
4:56 we are a computer simulation
6:28 the unknown simulator
7:44 nature's true guise is simulations
10:20 fever dreams of a Boltzmann brain
12:00 the brain in a vat matrix
15:48 the mirror hypothesis

[jacke]

"Fever dreams of a Boltzman Brain" sounds like a great band name! It'd be some eerie techno mixed with that kinda sound you think of when thinking the Space Race era...

[cykkm]

John, there is one misconception about infinity that is repeated too often not to point out. I thought it was a slip of the tongue, but I heard it more than once: infinity _doesn't_ imply that anything that can happen, will. “Worlds” and “events” are presumably countable, so I'll show two countably infinite counterexamples, one trivial, another much less so, and even uncountably infinite one with countably many uncountable “gaps”!

We call an infinity _countable_ if every member of an infinite set can be assigned at least one natural number _in a systematic way._ For example, we can number all integers by natural numbers, if we number them in order 0, 1, −1, 2, −2, 3, −3... We can also number all rationals by diagonals: in an table, write "column/row" fractions, counting rows and columns from 1, and number them across finite diagonals, crossing from the N=1, 2...th cell in the first row down and left to the Nth cell in the first column. Each diagonal is longer by 1 than the previous one: (1/1), (1/2, 2/1), (1/3, 2/2, 3/1), (1/4, 2/3, 3/2, 4/1), (1/5, 2/4, 3/3, 4/2, 5/1), ... Also, look up Hilbert hotel, it's a funny mental exercise: a hotel with infinitely many rooms, and it's a busy night, there's no vacancy. Hilbert is at the reception desk, and Cantor walks in. They quickly exchange looks, and Hilbert moves occupants to free up the room No. 1 for Cantor. There are funny extensions to it, look them up. An _uncountable_ infinity is such that we cannot assign natural numbers to the elements of the set. For one, while rational numbers are countably many, real numbers are uncountable. There are higher infinities, but there is none between uncountable and countable infinities. All countably infinite sets “contain” ℵ₀ elements, alef-nought, the smallest transfinite cardinal. The “smallest” uncountable infinity size is ℵ₁=ℵ₀^ℵ₀.

In this vein, a correct way to think of it is, in infinitely many worlds, infinitely many possibilities that _are_ realized, and infinitely many possibilities that _aren't._ And if there is a countably infinite possibilities or impossibilities in every world, there may be _uncountably_ many possibilities or impossibilities in countably-infinite many words, the powerset size law: there are “only” ℵ₀ natural numbers, but set of all possible sets of natural numbers, called the powerset, has the size ℵ₀^ℵ₀=ℵ₁, i.e., it's uncountable.

So on now to my examples.

1. Periodic: infinite digits of decimal expansion of a rational number. 1/7=0.142857142857...

2. Aperiodic. The infinite Prouhet-Thue-Morse string consists of symbols 0 and 1. By “inverting” we mean replacing each 0 with 1 and 1 with 0. The string is constructed as follows. Start with a single 0. On each step, take the already built string, _invert, _ and append the result to the end. That it, start with 0, invert to obtain 1, append to 0, get 01. Then take 01, invert to get 10, obtain 0110. Then invert to get 1001, append to obtain 01101001. The string doubles in length on each iteration:
0
01
0110
01101001
0110100110010110

...and to infinity. This string is aperiodic (overlap-free) and infinite, and still it doesn't contain all possible sequences of 0 and 1. It's cube-free (all overlap-free string are): it doesn't contain any substring of the form _sss, _ where _s_ is any arbitrary string of 0 and 1: there is no 111, or 100100100. The string is computable, all its substrings are computable: take rationals as above, and for any fraction m/n, m≤n, take positions between m and n. And all its “gaps, ” the set of _minimal_ substrings it doesn't contain, are also computable (just let _s_ equal 1, 2, 3... in binary), thus also countably infinite. The set of _all_ substrings it doesn't contain is uncountable: it contains the powerset of minimal non-substrings under catenation as a subset.

3. An infinite set of measure 0 that is uncountably large while nowhere dense: “Cantor's dust” set. Take the closed interval of reals [0, 1] and remove open middle 1/3 of it, an open interval (1/3, 2/3), to obtain [0, 1/3]∪[2/3, 1] Next, remove open middle thirds of each of the two remaining closed intervals: remove (1/9, 2/9) from [0, 1/3], and (7/9, 8/9) from [2/3, 1]. What's left is the union of 4 closed intervals, [0, 1/9]∪... Remove middle open third of each, (1/27, 2/27)∪... etc., and so on to infinity. How much of [0, 1] have we removed? 1/3 + 2/9 + 4/27 + 8/81... Multiply and divide by 1/3: we've removed 1/3(1+2/3+4/9+8/27). The number in parentheses is a geometric series, Σ(2/3)ⁿ for n=0...∞. It's convergent, and equal to 1/(1-2/3)=3. We've removed 1/3×3=1. All of it? No! We've never removed 1/3, 2/3, 1/9, 2/9. 7/9, 8/9. Hmm... it's a countable set of discrete endpoints left of the closed intervals, right? Maybe, let's see. Write the endpoints in _ternary, _ base 3. On the first step, we've removed (1/3, 2/3), or (0.1, 0.2). On the 2nd, (1/9, 2/9)∪​(7/9, 8/9), or (0.01, 0.02)∪​(0.21, 0.22). It's a bit tedious to write explicitly to reveal the pattern, but on the 3rd, (0.001, 0.002)∪​(0.021, 0.022)∪​(0.201, 0.202)∪​(0.221, 0.222) were gone. The pattern is clear: on the step n+1, the removed intervals are (0.{0|2}ⁿ1, 0.{0|2}ⁿ2), where {0|2}ⁿ stands for all possible 2ⁿ sequences of length _n_ consisting only of 0s and 2s, and the number of digits after the point is n+1. Now, we clearly removed 1/2 on the first step, but on which step was 1/4 removed? 1/4 in ternary is a periodic fraction 0.02020202... it wasn't removed on the 1st step, as it was in the non-removed interval [0, 0.1], neither on the 2nd, because it's in [0.02, 0.21], and on the 3rd, it slipped through [0.002, 0.021]... In fact, it's never removed, because all removed intervals have the form (0.{0|2}ⁿ1, 0.{0|2}ⁿ2), and 1/4=0.02020202... is, looking at the closest removed endpoint, less than 0.1, greater than 0.02, less than 0.021, greater than 0.0202, less than 0.02021, greater than 0.020202, and so on. In fact, after removing the countable infinity of intervals that add up to exactly 1, the set, whose measure is clearly 0, still contains uncountably many reals! (The proof is much more involved; the above just shows that there _are_ numbers not coinciding with any endpoint and remaining in the set.)

Infinities are too tricky and subtle to make conclusions of them lightly!

[spencerstevens]

I think the unintentional by product is honestly the best theory. I have definitely considered that.
They may just be looking at the sim on a macro level and aren't even interested in finding if there is "life"

[Anuchan]

If I were creating a simulation, I'd make the physics unsolvable at the boundary so it would be impossible to escape.

[maalrothmaalroth]

The bad thing about this video is, that it ends. I enjoyed this content so much! Thanks again, forever a fan