Did we really take the red pill?
The Blue Pill
Could we be trapped inside a simulated reality, rather than the physical universe we usually assume?
It’s a tantalizing theory, long theorized by philosophers and popularized by the 1999 blockbuster “The Matrix.” What if there was a way to find out once and for all if we’re living inside a computer?
A former NASA physicist named Thomas Campbell has taken it upon himself to do just that. He devised several experiments, as detailed in a 2017 paper published in the journal The International Journal of Quantum Foundations, designed to detect if something is rendering the world around us like a video game.
Now, scientists at the California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly) have gotten started on the first experiment, putting Campbell’s far-fetched hypothesis to the test.
And Campbell has set up an entire non-profit called Center for the Unification of Science and Consciousness (CUSAC) to fund these endeavors. The experiments are “expected to provide strong scientific evidence that we live in a computer-simulated virtual reality,” according to a press release by the group.
Needless to say, it’s an eyebrow-raising project. As always, extraordinary claims will require extraordinary evidence — but regardless, it’s a fun idea.
Simulation Hypothesis
Campbell’s experiments include a new spin on the double-slit experiment, a physics demonstration designed to show how light and matter can act like both waves and particles.
Campbell believes that by removing the observer from these experiments, the actual recorded information never existed in the first place. That’s instead of current quantum physics suggesting the existence of entanglement that links particles across a distance.
In simple terms, without a player, the universe around them doesn’t exist, much like a video game — proof, in Campbell’s thinking, that the universe is exclusively “participatory.”
Campbell isn’t the first to explore a simulation hypothesis. Back in 2003, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?“
Basically, his idea was that if we progress far enough technologically, we’ll probably end up running a simulation of our ancestors. Give those simulated ancestors enough time, and they’ll end up simulating their own ancestors. Eventually, most minds in existence will be inside layers of simulations — meaning that we probably are too.
Campbell’s hypothesis takes a different tack than Bostrom’s “ancestor simulation,” arguing that our “consciousness is not a product of the simulation — it is fundamental to reality,” in CUSAC’s press release.
If he were to be successful in his bid to prove that humanity is trapped in a virtual reality — an endeavor that would subvert our basic understanding of the world around us — it could have major implications.
Campbell argued that the five experiments could “challenge the conventional understanding of reality and uncover profound connections between consciousness and the cosmos.”
More on the simulation hypothesis: Famous Hacker Thinks We’re Living in Simulation, Wants to Escape
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