The Simulation Hypothesis

[Tom Mazanec]

With virches indistinguishable from RL I imagine this is popular in OAUP.
But I have heard reasons for holding it, like the Planck Length being the pixel size.
What is your take?

[stevebowers]

There are several religious or philosophical belief systems in Orion's Arm which are derived from the Simulation Hypothesis. Simulationism holds that reality is in fact a simulation, and sophonts of all kinds are experiencing the universe as a result of deliberate modelling by an unknown entity or entities.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/6417553973714
Exactly what form this situation may take is unknown, and some believe that the mechanism which sustains this simulation may exist in a larger and more complex universe than the one which we experience, which might explain how the complex calculations which would be necessary to run our universe in full could be performed.

Other believers suspect that the simulated universe is highly simplified compared to a real, complete, quantum-level recreation; this belief is no doubt reinforced by the fact that a very large number of simulated universes are maintained within the Terragen Sphere, each of which are necessarily less complex than the real world and use a number of clever shortcuts to achieve this.

Some forms of simulationism are explicitly religious; the Church of the Great Programmer holds that the ultimate deity of our universe is both omnipotent and omniscient, so can simulate our world perfectly merely by thinking about it.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/55b39757b0748
Some sects of this church hold that the Great Programmer has modelled every possible universe, and so knows everything about the Multiverse and every choice that could be made by the entities within that manifold reality; others believe that there is only one possible timeline, and all the others are merely imaginary. The Church of the Great Programmer is generally considered to be a kind of panenthesism in which the Universe (or Multiverse) exists entirely within the mind of the Programmer, so that the entirety of the simulation is controlled by that entity; but not all believers are panentheists, and some think that the Universe/Multiverse has an independent existence, so that the entities within the Simulation have true, free will.

Note that OA is metaphysically neutral, so we never try to resolve these sorts of questions, although we can explore them in some depth.

[stevebowers]

Concerning the Planck length being the pixel size, this is complicated by length contraction in relativity. If an object approaches the speed of light, all its dimensions contract in the direction of travel, so it can be demonstrated that even the planck length isn't constant. This is one reason you can't reconcile relativity with quantum physics.