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'' All that has a form is an illusion '' - Buddha
Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer.
A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we're living inside a machine.
The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened.
And if it has? Well, then the statistical likelihood is that we're located somewhere in that chain of simulations within simulations. The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd.
And it's not just theory. We previously reported that researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany had found evidence the Matrix was less than fiction.
Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer.
A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we're living inside a machine.
The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened.
And if it has? Well, then the statistical likelihood is that we're located somewhere in that chain of simulations within simulations. The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd.
And it's not just theory. We previously reported that researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany had found evidence the Matrix was less than fiction.
