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Universal Monsters

Our Simulated Universe: Part Two

OOPS: Tweaking, Miracles, Upgrades and Patches: So say you feel like playing God and creating a universe, not a real one of course but a simulated one, on your supercomputer (which presumably has greater capacity than your wetware brain which could also create one). So, you (the Supreme Simulator) start writing the initial ‘in the beginning' set(s) of software with a view to creating a Big Bang and dictating the parameters that will control the subsequent evolution of your cosmos. Of course, not being a real God, it's hard to think of everything and initially Part ‘A' may not mesh totally well with Part ‘B', and by the time you get to Part ‘Z', everything's an absolute mess. So, you start rewriting and revising and patching things up by tweaking the software here and there so that you end up, down the track, with a cosmos that's a unified and consistent whole.

 

Oops #1 – Part ‘A' created matter; Part ‘B' you dictated and created an equal amount of antimatter, making Parts ‘C' through ‘Z' pretty irrelevant because your cosmos is now pretty boring – just a universe of pure energy!  So, tweak #1 is to create Part ‘B' but under the surface set the value to an extremely low number. You now have a matter dominated universe.

 

Oops #2 – In Part ‘C' you create gravity along with your matter so as to keep your universe orderly and behaving in a nice clockwork way. Oops, your universe now quickly contracts and undergoes a Big Crunch – end of evolution; end of simulation. Tweak #2: create some antigravity in the form of Dark Energy to prevent that Big Crunch while allowing gravity to maintain the desired clockwork predictability.

 

Oops #3 – Having taken care of the macro (you've evolved your matter via gravity into planets and stars and galaxies and associated debris) in Part ‘D', you now polish off the software, all the bits and pieces needed to control the micro – Part ‘E'. Oops, you find that turns out not to be compatible with your macro software. Well, that apparently has no actual bearing on the other parts of your cosmic creation and since you're ultra busy dealing with 1001 other problems and issues, you don't bother to tweak this. You ignore this – no one will be any the wiser! (Oops, you didn't plan on the eventual evolution of cosmologists and quantum physicists!!)

 

OOPS: Why Are Miracles A Tweak? A miracle is something unexplained and unexplainable. It's a direct violation of the known laws of science. To my mind, a miracle is something that corrects a mistake; a mistake that never should have happened in the first place if the Supreme Simulator had been on the ball. For example, say you have to have a limb amputated, only at a later date it grows back! That's a miracle that corrects what presumably the Supreme Simulator hadn't counted on or programmed or desired. So, count up the number of alleged miraculous events that have been recorded over the eras of human history – that's a lot of alleged tweaks!

 

Why Don't I Know This? If you and everything around you (out to the farthest boundaries of the Universe) are just a simulation (created either inside the wetware mind or as software in a machine – the Supreme Simulator's supercomputer) you wouldn't know. You'd be programmed not to know or otherwise plain ignorant in the same way that the character in your dream in unaware it's a mental creation – an artefact of your mind. Ditto the characters in a video game – they don't know they are an artificial creation; an artificial life form. Since you are a simulated entity, you are not in control since you are pre-programmed and have to just go with the predetermined flow – the Supreme Simulator's puppet. You can no more control your activity than a calculator can help but calculate that the cube root of 27 is 3. Ditto the entity in your dreams does what your mind commands it to do, even if you aren't aware at the time that your mind is a puppeteer. Your dream character(s) has/have no free will in other words.

 

Never-the-less there may be ways to come to terms with the correctness or otherwise of the basic scenario that you are simulated and a Supreme Simulator is in control. The hint comes from the above – the need for The Boss to tweak their simulation creation to eliminate discrepancies or paradoxes, which is the same as saying there's evidence that the Supreme Simulator has failed to tweak. The fact that tweaks are necessary in our natural environment is suggestive that we are indeed in a simulation; otherwise parts of the Universe (assuming it's really real) make no real sense. Either Mother Nature screwed up, or the Supreme Simulator did. The fact that macro and micro physics don't mesh is but one illustration. Another is that matter on the micro scale has a wave/particle duality. A third is quantum entanglement, where two objects can influence each other at faster than light speeds.

 

Mysteries abound when something can not be, yet apparently is. One whole set of issues here revolves around the conflict between what theory says isn't possible, yet what eyewitness testimony says is. Translated, it's the sceptics vs. the ‘I know what I saw' mob. A tweak could resolve their differences.

 

Example: Take the Loch Ness Monster and related lake monster sightings. Biologists claim that one can not have a viable population of large creatures in such a confined space. You need a relatively large population for reproductive purposes and a large food supply for same, all in a relatively small volume. It should be easy to verify the existence of large animals in a natural cage. On the other hand, you have to account for, and then discredit all eyewitness testimony. A tweak could resolve the differences.

 

Example: Crop circles exist. No explanation for their existence makes total sense. They are obviously made by intelligence, but Mother Nature isn't the guilty party in this case (although Mother Nature is responsible for some geometrical shapes like the spirals in some sea shells, flowers, snowflakes, etc.). No known natural force can account for crop circles. Human intelligence is the most likely explanation, but problems abound like the making of complex patterns in the dark of the night and why haven't those responsible been caught and dealt with? I could list other problems like why England and not Australia? Surely Australia has its share of pranksters. Is an extraterrestrial intelligence responsible perhaps? But what's their possible motive? I'm damned if anything rational comes to the fore. So, I think a tweak is in order here for this puzzlement has gone on far too long

 

As a general rule of thumb, just about anything science says is near impossible, yet for which there's some degree of credible eyewitness testimony to the contrary, might be a candidate as a quirk courteous of our Supreme Simulator! Collectively, these topics fall under a general umbrella called ‘anomalies' and whole books can be read that are full of case histories. For example, your attention is directed to the many volumes compiled by William R. Corliss of anomalies culled from the scientific literature in his Sourcebook Project series. Then there are those wonderful collections of anomaly tomes penned by Charles Fort.

 

Mysteries abound where something should or shouldn't be, yet apparently isn't or is. There often is a conflict between what sciences theoretically say should or should not be, yet scientific observations end up producing opposite findings. Perhaps the conflict between theory and observation/experiment is evidence that our Universe needs tweaking.

 

Example: Theoretical physics predict that the vacuum energy should have a certain value. Experimental evidence suggests that the vacuum energy is 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts. This by the way is the greatest discrepancy between theory and observation ever recorded in all of science. A tweak could resolve the differences. Another case, noted above, is that theoretical physics says there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Observation says that theory is just plain nuts because we don't detect any antimatter remotely close to that predicted!

 

So why are these discrepancies allowed to continue? Why hasn't the Supreme Simulator tweaked these? My best guess is that probably its because having set the simulation program in motion, and since none of the quirks are serious enough to cause the program simulation to crash, it's easier just to allow everything to run its course and not ‘end program' for the sake of relatively major, but not Universe-threatening, repairs. Minor fixes, like those ‘miracle' tweaks can be fixed on the run without interrupting the simulation, just like some upgrades to your computer software can take place while you work, while others don't take effect unless you shut down and boot up again. If you can soldier on and not shut down your operation and live without the upgrade(s), that's okay.

 

So does that mean our Supreme Simulator, The Boss, is at least 13.7 billion years old since the program running our (presumably) simulated Universe is 13.7 billion years old because it's been 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? Not really, since there doesn't have to be any relationship between time as experienced by the Supreme Simulator and our perception of time, just like you can watch a two hour movie, but as far as the characters in the movie are concerned, perhaps two days, two weeks, two months, two years or two decades have elapsed. So, perhaps one second passing to The Boss is the equivalent of a decade going by the boards to us.

 

And just like watching a movie, you can speed the film up, or slow it down – even freeze frame it if you're so inclined. Now if our Supreme Simulator decided to speed up, slow down, even freeze frame (stop) the action, we wouldn't notice because all of our surroundings would be speeded up, or slowed down, or stopped by the exact same amount (which has some obvious parallels with general relativity).

 

What's the Best Piece of Evidence? If the Universe and all it contains; its physics (relationships, principles, laws, etc.), were created by either Mother Nature (i.e. – naturally) or via an all-knowing, all-powerful, creator God (i.e. – supernaturally), then presumably everything physics would mesh/interlock and be comprehensible, understandable, with no paradoxes, contradictions, anomalies, etc. Translated, one Universe, one set of hardware; contains just one set of unified physics, one set of software. Now your computer hardware runs on not one, but many sets of software – various functions; various sets of software. So, is the Universe like the way the Universe should be, or is it more akin to your computer programs? Unfortunately, the Universe is like your computer. The Universe's physics contains two programs; two sets of software. They don't mesh/interlock; they can not be unified; they are not compatible. Its relativity (macro) software; its quantum mechanics (micro) software and never the twain shall meet. The two are like your basic square peg in a round hole. That's a flawed creation – it's an ‘Oops #3' (see above) – the work of a flawed creator, like of the flesh-and-blood kind. The sort that churns out video game programs – like a Supreme Simulator.

 

There are other anomalies that physical sciences are having a hard time coming to terms with – that is, explaining them. For example, the concept of ‘dark matter' must exist in order to explain the rotation and structure of galaxies. However, no one can see this ‘dark matter'. ‘Dark matter' doesn't interact with any part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, yet it has gravity. There's also about five times more ‘dark matter' in the Universe than there is ordinary matter – ordinary matter is the kind of matter that has gravity and does interact with the EM spectrum, things like you and I and Planet Earth. "Dark matter' has been in vogue for decades now, yet no one has a real clue what it is – if it is. Maybe it's simulated.

 

Then there's ‘dark energy'. If ordinary matter and ‘dark matter' make up about a quarter of the mass/energy content of the Universe, ‘dark energy' makes up the other 75%. And we haven't the foggiest idea what ‘dark energy' is. The apparent detection of ‘dark energy' is over a decade old now. This concept has been introduced to explain why the expansion rate of our Universe is accelerating, contrary to all expectations (the expansion rate should be decelerating because of the Universe's gravity). So ‘dark energy' is apparently a kind of antigravity that's stronger than ordinary gravity that nobody understands, not the least of which is that the expansion of space itself produces ever more ‘dark energy', ‘dark energy' being a property of space itself. More space means more ‘dark energy'. That's like the concept of the ‘free lunch' and since when can energy be created out of nothing? That's a violation of the basic physic's principle of the conservation of matter and energy. So, how weird is the concept of antigravity created out of nothing – just expanding space? Now simulation is also weird!

 

Basically some 96% of the entire Universe consists of ‘dark matter' and ‘dark energy' and nobody has any idea what they are. They are at the present, just labels. The idea that this is all simulated makes about as much sense as anything any physicist has dreamed up to account of this 96% of the cosmos. And of course if 96% is simulated, then no doubt 100% is – including you and I and Planet Earth.

 

Apart from the above observed anomalies, our simulated Universe theory is also potentially testable. While I can think of no way to prove I'm not a simulated being, one can find evidence that we do live in a simulated universe, and by implication that we too are simulated beings.  No computer software is perfect. Computer software – from our experience – is always being upgraded / updated. If the same applies elsewhere, we could perhaps notice it if we're a product of that software. So, if there are any software upgrades, they might be detectable as anomalous phenomena in some context or another. Like say one of the physical constants were tweaked and altered ever so slightly (and there is some evidence for that – the fine structure constant for example has apparently changed over astronomical time periods). If physical constants aren't – constant that is – but variable, then we got troubles with a capital T.

 

One of the, no, in fact THE most fundamental bedrock of all cosmology is that the physics of the universe are the same everywhere. If that's not the case, and apparently it's not seeing as how there's evidence that the fine structure constant doesn't have the same value in all parts of the cosmos, then cosmologists are forced to go back to square one. Nothing in terms of what the universe is and what governs it can now be taken anymore as gospel.

 

Can you really imagine either a supernatural God or a natural Mother Nature creating a cosmos where the physics therein aren't uniform? If your answer is ‘no', then you are nearly forced into accepting a third alternative – the universe as we know it is a simulation by a hardly all powerful flesh and blood (supreme simulator). Since the value of the fine structure constant is critical in terms of the Universe being bio-friendly, if it's not constant, then parts of the Universe are bio-unfriendly. So our Supreme Simulator is apparently happy to create a software detailed pocket of bio-friendly universe within a far larger software un-friendly cosmos. That makes sense to create a small pocket of the simulation to be bio-friendly and just have the rest of the bio-unfriendly Universe simulated by way less sophisticated software as a sort of background wallpaper to the bio-friendly part.

About the Author

Science librarian; retired.

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Universal Monsters - Ever the Same