Our universe is made of pixels and computer code

I recently was watching an episode of Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole and an interesting idea was brought up, whether the universe around us is nothing but a simulation. Imagine that if every single breath you take was at the controls of some computer genius. When matter is broken down to its smallest known level, billions of times smaller than atoms, the argument could be made that its no different than pixels. The world around us has quite a few similarities to a computer and how a computer works. I apologize in advance if this subject has been touched upon already on here but this idea has intrigued me. Just the thought that your whole being, every single thing you have ever done, every breath you have taken, all of it, just a bunch of 1's or 0's, or 1's and 0's if your talking quantum computing. I would love to hear anyone's ideas on this and any references anyone has as to any readings on this subject. Yours truly, 0100101000100010

There was a trilogy of movies about that same theory......

My apologies for the blatant 1 liner. sometimes i can't help but point out the obvious.

Sounds like the "Matrix" to me and I think Sega are behind it !

This is a good way understand it, it is an advanced spiritual concept. Which of course the Matrix films popularised of late.

Only...........it is sort of the wrong way to look at it in that, we copy and mimic the most high and the laws written into our binary/dualistic reality.

For example it is more correct to say "videogames are like our reality" rather than "reality is like a videogame".

It seems that those who are illuminated or versed in magic can manipulate the code. Do you believe this is so and to what degree?

we could all be in a very advanced version of the game "the sims". some nerd could be plaing sims 412 in the year 3500.

Interesting concept, been around awhile. The Universe Solved is a recent book on the topic. Also, Gregg Bear's "Moving Mars" uses a variation of this idea in a very good science fiction book that is worth reading just for the ideas in it.

reply to post by luchini33334


It's entirely why I have decided to take up the computer sciences. See the magic is good, it's like a cheat code for the well versed, however, knowing the code, and busting it, and being able to reprogram it from the inside (if that can in fact be done) will make it possible to do anything, I mean anything, virtually breaking down the laws of Physics at the very basic level. So hopefully, I will be able to figure this out by studying normal computer coding. I think some of the best hackers could also try to crack reality if they were so inclined. Most of them really aren't into reality in the metaphysical sense, though.

What they were saying in that episode is that we may be just inside some "Super" Computer.. If you get a powerful enough microscope things basically break down to atoms/pixels if you wanna call them that.. Are we just a simulation inside some kids playstation 144 system?? I always thought you could (with practice) control your own life just by "visualization" of whatever it is you want to do...I'm remember Jim Carrey talked about how he would see himself as a movie star and how things would seem to work out for him to make it happen... No doubt there is ALOT more to it BUT there seems to be something to it...

The more advanced computers get and the more we learn about computers, the more we may learn how similar our existence is to them. There is so much we have yet to learn about both our existence and computers. The scary thing to me is thinking about Moore's law and exponential growth of computing power. Imagine what they are going to be like not only 10 years from now but say 100 years from now. It seems that someday everything will be linked to computers and we will no longer be physical beings in a physical world, but our own ideas and projections of the world.

Let me add some info from Bear's novel. His idea is that when you get past string theory you discover that everything in the Universe is coded in a database. (I'll use older database terminology here), i.e.: everything has a record. The fields in the record describe the object in detail, including its exact location. Once you get into the guts of the thing you can change the location of an object by changing the data in the location fields of the record. Thus you can move a planet, such as Mars, from one solar system to another. It doesn't 'traverse' the distance, hence there are not "speed of light" issues to overcome. It simply changes places because the coordinates in its record in the database change--instantaneously.

You could probably use this same idea to explain FTL travel, huh?

I would generally agree with the OP. being in school for computers as well, you can see a lot of parallels in the two.

the interesting thing about the universe is its code is also physical in a sense. Understanding the true physics of the universe is basically understanding the code.

reply to post by luchini33334


More realistically, a part of our perception of reality is controlled by a computer matrix. This would mean that an alien can simply use that system to project itself as human, and thus, there could be millions of aliens here that appear human to us, and there could be whole chunks of this planet that we can't access because there are walls that appear to us, however that do not actually exist. The scarry thing is, is that some of us could be entirely "system" manifestations, that is, without any real physical presence in the "real world" yet still recorded in the system as being "alive" or worse still, their whole memory and personality uploaded to the system, so only existing as computer code, or more accuratley, their consciousness only being expressed in this reality via computer code.

what frame rate is the universe running at?

seems pretty smooth to me.

reply to post by schuyler


Hmm lets see if this works

update universe set BankBalance='$1000000000' where Name=DaveSpanners

Nope.

Damn

Edit for C++


private void UpdateBankInfo()
[
objBankInfo.Parameters["BankBalance"].Value =$1000000
objBankInfo.Parameters["Girlfriend"].Value ="Hot"
oleDbConnection1.Open();
objBankInfo.ExecuteNonQuery();
oleDbConnection1.Close();
]

Still nothing

Aghhh

the universe is written in c++,stupid.

Right ...

imagine this

class Alex
[
private:
bool isAlive = true;
int age, energy;
bool isSleeping, isEating, isTakingaDump, is Reading = false;
bool isSmoking, isDrinking, isDriving = false;
public:
void Add1YearToLife() [ age++ ];
void Kill() [ age = 0; isAlive = false; cout

Perhaps a thought experiment:

Imagine if I were to give everyone a special pair of AR (Artificial Reality) goggles. Lets say the technology was very advanced, and basically could patch itself directly into the optic nerve, and even the central nervous system. Basically, it could show you anything, and make you feel anything. Lets say, that it was also connected to the outside world, and it could "see" the "real" world. Lets take it one step further, lets say that the system could "link" the very imaginations of each individual, so they could all interract in thier own "virtual world". Lastly, lets say that the "virtual world" could continually update and regulate itself, by observing changes to the "real world" and that these people lived in a kind of "half-way" world between the real world and the virtual world. As an interesting note, imagine if these goggles could also make it that various individuals could have special status, such as being invisible in A.R, and also that people who do not want the full experience, can project themselves into the virtual world with a kind of "avatar" even though they are not "in" the virtual world. Imagine, after a while, there became a kind of "inside joke" concerning all the people that wore the special glasses. Walking down the streets doing strange things, standing still while zoned out in thier virtual buildings.

When it comes to computing power, all it would have to do is use the human brain itself as a computer, and link the human brains together in a network. Perhaps people can even have thier entire personality downloaded, so when they die they will exist as a computer sprite in the system, possibly as a real person or just as an observer, or to exist purely in the virtual world and not project into the virtual/real world.

So three kinds:
Projections into the virtual world by virtual people
Projections into the virtual world by living people
Living people not connected to the virtual world

We are seeing only a portion of reality.

We always knew dogs could see things we can't, ghosts. Now with technology we have figured out what end of the spectrum dogs see and now we have the technology to see "ghosts" that get dogs all riled up and barking.

In the 1920's Karl Lashley was hacking portions of a rats brains out trying to eradicate memories. No matter which part of the brain he hacked out the dang rat always remembers a trained task taught to the rat. So where are memories stored?

The military had some mad scientists putting computer chips in monkey brains and writing software to intercept brain activity and convert it to usable messages. Now monkeys using only their brain can control robotic arms. It was really neat that the brain WANTED to connect to the chips and interact.

There have been people who had brain damage from an accident and woke up able to speak a foreign language, they never knew before. Young children able to recall prior lives or events.....they shouldn't know.
In the 1960's scientists were using '___' on people and those people were able to tell of creatures long extinct and tell details about those creatures, they also shouldn't have known. And afterwards it was proven they were correct. How did their brains access such information?

Our brains are only a receiver. As the holographic universe theory is researched we will reach a point where we will build a computer that will access the very database...we are projected from. And create a lifeform that could never die.

www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html

I always wondered why the military always wants to pull GI's wisdom teeth out if they re-enlist and do a second enlistment. Could they use the opportunity when people are put under deep with anesthesia to access the database we are projected from? Could this be the best intelligence source our Government has, able to access the past and future...foreign countries people......??

There's a reason pullin' wisdom teeth won't ever be cut from DOD's expenditures.....it's an intelligence source for off this world activities from the Holographic database.