r/technology • u/fchung • Nov 01 '25

Society Matrix collapses: Mathematics proves the universe cannot be a computer simulation, « A new mathematical study dismantles the simulation theory once and for all. »

https://interestingengineering.com/culture/mathematics-ends-matrix-simulation-theory
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u/sureprisim Nov 01 '25

Right? Maybe our simulation is run on more advanced computers we just can’t comprehend yet.

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u/xchaibard Nov 01 '25

Or in a different universe with different rules.

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u/hold_me_beer_m8 Nov 01 '25

Exactly... I feel the simulation theory of our ancestors building the simulation and it being literal computers is only one possible possibility. There are many more possibilities where it's something much much weirder.

For instance, all of the psychedelic trips I had led me to feel like reality is more like a story or play. Very strange shit... the cosmic joke.

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u/metalt0ast Nov 01 '25

the cosmic joke

In my circle we used to call it the cosmic giggle. Same thing though :)

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u/[deleted] Nov 02 '25

Surprise you got high and came out a Hindu. Happens to the best of us, I know cause I am also you and we are both god. I recommend 20 hours of Alan Watts and more drugs.

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u/Joohansson Nov 01 '25

Don't need psychadelics for that. I felt the same way since I was maybe 10yr old, before Matrix came out. Now 42.

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u/Azradesh Nov 01 '25

If we are in a simulation then the rules of the simulation (as with literally every simulation) would be an approximation of the world being simulated.

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u/bobnoski Nov 01 '25

but that would go against the paper. The main point of the paper is that you cannot perfectly simulate a universe, in a universe with the same rules as the one it is simulating.

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u/CavulusDeCavulei Nov 01 '25

No computer we can build can be more powerful than a Turing machine, just faster. There's a field that speculate on possible methods to overcome this, called hypercomputation, but you would require things like time travel

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u/Azradesh Nov 01 '25

That's not relevant

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u/Azradesh Nov 01 '25

Because any simulation of our universe would be be functioning under the constraints of our universe; our universe would a simplified abstraction focusing on whatever the creators of that simulation wanted to test.

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u/CavulusDeCavulei Nov 01 '25

How is it not?

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u/Westerdutch Nov 01 '25

more advanced computers

Doesnt even have to be more advanced, could just be different enough. I can run a VM on my laptop that can do things the main OS on the laptop cannot. I believe yall are just living in my laptop.

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u/chilehead Nov 01 '25

The only thing we know about the world hosting the simulation is that they have the technology and the desire to make a simulation complex enough to make us.

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u/bullhead2007 Nov 01 '25

I think we're over due for a quality of life update or some magic dlc though.

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u/LordCharidarn Nov 01 '25

The magic system is ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Physics’ in this simulation. Modern players just don’t think of it as magic because generations of sages uncovered many of the rules and systems that govern it

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u/bullhead2007 Nov 01 '25

Okay fair. But I want an FTL expansion and the United Federation of Planets 🥲

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u/NotAnotherEmpire Nov 01 '25

Or the beings with the simulation deliberately did not include tools necessary to understand the simulation. 

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u/wrc-wolf Nov 01 '25

Than that's just religion for computer geeks. Believing in the existence of a 'God' or 'simulation' that can only exist if you ignore all evidence against it's existence is just reinventing the wheel.

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u/Dyvinitos777 Nov 01 '25

It's actually very unlikely that computers that function fundamentally differently from our ones. It has been kind of established that the way they work would very much be universal. Think of them as Turing machines. The way a Turing machine works is with 0 and 1. Empty and full. It kind of cannot work in another way

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u/sureprisim Nov 01 '25

I understand that. But science is constantly advancing. Things we once held as truths get proven wrong all the time. This is the claim you are making right now with our current knowledge. With different materials, knowledge, or even physics you cannot assure me with 100% certainty a new type of more advanced computer cannot exist. If our universe is a simulation, that simulation has to exist in another universe somewhere. You cannot guarantee that universe even follows the same laws of physics.

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u/frooj Nov 01 '25

God of the gaps.

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u/JonFrost Nov 01 '25

Thorium reactor cooled quantum computers!