this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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This really seems to miss the point of the simulation hypothesis. The simulators wouldn't need to simulate every atom on the planet. They argue that the whole planet would need to be simulated at a certain resolution in order to be compatible with the body of existing subatomic experiments that have been done.
But this misses the point and the true abilities of the simulators of a virtual world. The whole world could be simulated at the macroscopic level, only what is needed for human perception. Then, any time some experiment probed the microscopic or subatomic world, a local fine grid simulation could be spun up in that local area to simulate what results that world would look like. Bacteria don't actively exist everywhere - just the effects they generate on humans, plants, and animals. But if you take some pond water and look at it under a microscope, the minigame for visual microscopy is pulled up, revealing various microscopic organisms.
And the system doesn't even need to be perfect. Has the simulation-scaling code screwed up, and the simulated humans received erroneous results, proving they live in a simulation? No problem. Just pause the simulation, adjust the code to prevent the error, and restore the simulation to an older backup.
This paper was written by physicists. So, understandably, they look at it through a physics lens. But really they should be looking at it more from a computer game designer's perspective.
That does assume that the universe would be simulated for our benefit and that intelligent life is not just a side effect. If that was the case then why even bother including hundreds of billions of galaxies worth of stars in the simulation.
The simulation wouldn't actually include all those billions of stars and galaxies. In this kind of simulation, it's all just a skybox. If you point a telescope at a distant star, then the simulation spins up a sub-simulation to produce what output a real star would experience in that situation. You include the stars and galaxies because the real universe contains them, and you want your simulation to be realistic.
It actually does make sense that the simulation would be created for us. Compare the level of computing power required to create a limited human-centric simulation to trying to simulate an entire universe. The whole-universe simulation would be some absurd power of ten times more difficult to simulate. If it is possible to simulate a world convincingly, then it's reasonable to assume that there are many, many more low-res human-scale simulations than giant full universe simulations.
With the whole universe simulation, you also have the problem of scale. It's hard to imagine that an entire universe can be simulated at the atomic level with anything less complex than the universe itself. Unless you have a universe-sized computer, you probably aren't simulating an entire universe with atomic accuracy. A human-scale simulation could be performed in a universe no more complex or different from the one we observe. An atomic-scale universe-spanning simulation would have to be run from a higher level that has completely different physical laws than the one we inhabit. Occams' razor applies. If you want to assume a simulation, it makes sense to assume a type that requires the least exotic higher-order "real" universe possible.