Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information \nprocessing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical \nworld. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but the world as a virtual \nreality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be \nan information simulation running on a three-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, that the \nessence of the universe is information has advantages, e.g. if matter, charge, energy and \nmovement are aspects of information, the many conservation laws could become a single law of \nconservation of information. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang \nwould no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that \nwhether the world is an objective or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve, and \ncomputer science could help. If one could derive core properties like space, time, light, matter and \nmovement from information processing, such a model could reconcile relativity and quantum \ntheories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how \nit creates energy and matter.
Author: Brian Whitworth
Institution: Association for Computing Machinery
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2146629295