January 8, 2008
Virtual Us
This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.
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I’ve posted about this over at my place, in case anyone’s interested. I still need to read the actual paper myself, but my short, off-the-cuff response is that, unless the authors mean “information” in a very different way than it usually does, this is NOT an idea that “legitimate” scientists will love but that Intelligent Designers will.
I just finished reading this paper last night, and it’s splendid. Thanks Deron–and John–for pressing it forward. It’s a lucidly written piece, and the possibilities it suggests are openly presented in the context of accepted theories that sport equally “outlandish” propositions. Whitworth is very careful to avoid direct speculation, and simply says–look at this and look at this, and see which view best explains the central issues all of us most eagerly hope to understand. He points to many mysteries–such as quantum entanglement and pre-big bang state–that mainstream physicists struggle to account for, and begins to accumulate instances of greater explanatory power offered by the “virtual” view. He is also quick to note the limits of this inductive approach, while also offering interesting arguments for what may indeed be discovered by way of it. I haven’t had this much fun reading such a paper in a long time, and I plan to seek out more of his efforts. He needs to head over to the Santa Fe Institute, if he doesn’t already show up there among all of those great minds.
I just read some interesting comments on this over at John’s blogmeridian–several of which expressed concerns about the implications of this idea (an old idea, as we know) with respect to it being new fodder for Intelligent Design proponents. Some wondered why Whitworth would apparently fail to see and address this matter. But I don’t find this odd at all. I am actively not a friend of Intelligent Design arguments–but just how open may one’s curiosity be if explorations are avoided because uncomfortable results might appear? My sense is that Whitworth is not making a “claim,” as some suggest, but is playing the game that everybody else is playing by probing at the boundaries of operational paradigms. How important is it, for instance, that we find an answer for why the experimentally demonstrable presence of quantum entanglement violates the established speed of light limit to cause at a distance? We are “living with” this lack of an answer–not just in this realm of inquiry but in many others. But scientific method favors those who are willing to look for improved models of understanding–not just those that fit our needs. The central problem with ID and anthropic arguments is that they are driven by a desire to assert, rather than a desire to explore. They can’t speak to the fact of our desire to always know more than we do. They can’t begin to get comfortable with the counter intuitive. And if one could wave a wand and grant them their wish of full acceptance–they would simply find that they didn’t know any more than they ever did, and all of their assertions about the nature of the “Designer” would be as arbitrary as they ever were. Whitworth says–Look at this, and you decide if it represents a problem solving approach that is superior to what we have now. It probably won’t gain the approval of many–but string theory and brane theory aren’t doing such a good job at the moment either.
I am a swarm of molecules held together by a consciousness that I call mine. The swarm that is me swims in a sea that is my neighborhood, my cohort, my world. It is in this sea we all exist, whether physically next to each other or not. Where we appear to be may be very different from where we are in any given moment….
There’s a point here. Where is it? To quote Danny’s Dad, in his morphine-induced delirium, to three of us sitting watch in his presence in the wee hours of the morning the last day of his life (and something I’m asking now of you). “Can somebody give me a push? I’m out of gas.”
I have a mantra I repeat, as often as I remember to, “I establish myself in the limitless substance of God.” For me, it reminds me that “I am a swarm of molecules held together by a consciousness that I call mine….”
Sounds very much like William Blake’s notion of ‘States’ (with reference to printing terminology); rings true to me.