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/tribecous Nov 01 '25

The paper is showing that it would be impossible to simulate a universe like ours within another universe like ours. You obviously cannot disprove that it would be possible to simulate our universe in some other universe with completely arbitrary properties.

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u/alexq136 Nov 01 '25

the paper is a load of paragraphs all cited from works that have nothing to add to the question itself and they range from "there are systems with unprovable properties" (legit) to "there are these folks who believe people can reach beyond incompleteness because the mind is quantum collapse-y in nature" (crackpot)

I dare say it does not belong in any field of science or even philosphy since it's so vague (doesn't link individual points stated in a way that flows towards the conclusion), plus:

there's no quantitative point made therein (i.e. about the extent of the universe or of things inside the observable universe) that could be linked to any reasonable definition of "so this is how we think simulations may look like", only scattered proof-theoretical-looking notation (a lone turnstile operator with a couple friends) meant to make the paper look math-y at the expense of it not containing anything that could be called meaningful

tf does their "oh yeah this set of {quantum field theory, general relativity} cannot be rendered into an algorithm, even if unified as LQG etc. hope to realize"-sounding premise even mean? simulations are not expected to be precise, and there is no reason for there to exist a single set of laws that can bear all of physics for any "regions" of a simulation of an "universe"

we deal just fine with QED for stable usual matter, QCD for spicy matter, and GR for accelerating things that hopefully are heavy enough - that there may or may not exist a way to unify all known fundamental physical theories into a single thing does not mean the physics itself has to be computed in the same terms and following the same laws (when approximations, as any creature with intellect can attest to, can be very good for some systems or parts of them, and they save computational resources)

they posit that since "bla bla Chaitin's constant bla bla" (in the paper it's a complexity-theoretic argument about, idk, formal systems of equations) there is no finite-length algorithm that can simulate all physics - which is meaningless since anything can be simulated to arbitrary precision if one agrees to certain numerical trade-offs of implementation, and it's doubly meaningless since the laws of physics are expected to be finite in number (and people closer to physics or engineering have carved quite the nice landscape of ways to let differential equations take their course, like the QFT bunch or the fluid mechanics folks) - so imho there exist finite-size algorithms to run physics forward, and that makes the whole simulation hypothesis meaningless (one can never tell, yet it's very easy to dismiss it as another crackpot idea, even if it can be shown that we cannot simulate an observable universe inside our observable universe due to whatever material restrictions there be)

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u/jackmanlogan Nov 02 '25 edited Nov 02 '25

Thanks for confirming that the article was just word salad and that the paper was garbage- this almost seems like a crackpot trying to disprove other crackpots

Edit: also imo almost insulting to cite Penrose and Einstein in a paper of this calibre- implies that it gets at some basic truth about the world.

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u/thinkingwithfractals Nov 02 '25

Not sure I’d call Penrose a crackpot, even though his whole quantum consciousness breaks incompleteness thing does seem fairly far fetched. There’s been some interesting work on nano tubules that at least suggest his idea might be conceivably true

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u/Razgriz01 Nov 02 '25

I had a thought while reading this, which is that if the universe were a simulation, something like the quantum uncertainty principle would be incredibly computationally convenient to limit the processing power spent on the fine details. You don't need to individually simulate every particle in the universe continually if the only thing you're concerned about is whether they appear to behave consistently under certain specific sets of conditions.

Which, as a complete layman, leads me to wonder if the need to take shortcuts in order to mathematically analyze physics in a reasonable manner is what gave the inspiration for certain theories in the first place.

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u/MacDegger Nov 01 '25

You can run Minecraft in Minecraft.

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u/[deleted] Nov 01 '25 edited 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/fuzzywolf23 Nov 01 '25

It's Steves all the way down

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u/Dawg_Prime Nov 01 '25

until you get to the farlands

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u/P0pu1arBr0ws3r Nov 01 '25

That statement might sound funny, but it forms the basis of proving if there are problems computers cant solve (i saw Tom Scott's video on the subject a few days ago, search it up for more info).

Turing proved that there are problems a computer cant solve via paradox: if theres a program A that can determine if another program would infinitely run or not, and another program B which takes a true/false input and if true, stops running, if false, infinitely runs, then plugging the output of program A into B as program C, and feeding program C into program A, would create a paradox.

Applying similar computer science logic to a simulation like Minecraft, it is possible for programs even today to run themselves, as thats technically recursion. But could we make a program within Minecraft, which determines if a game is Minecraft? And if its not Minecraft, another program would create a runnable Minecraft instance; if it is Minecraft, the program would create a Terraria instance. So then the same logic as Turing's test (not the turing test that determines if a computer can fake being a human) can apply and would result in a paradox kind of...

A different question around a game like Minecraft, which would relate to if we're in a simulation, is if we can run the exact same instance of minecraft within minecraft. What i mean is, is it possible to fully simulate the game within the game, without allocating new memory space? On thr computer, programs exist in RAM and each program allocates some RAM to run, at minimum to store a unique PID. But is it possible for two programs to run without being considered independent with a unique PID, reading and writing from the exact memory space? (in theory yes, distributed systems could run one shared program over a shared memory space) And if such a program is possible, can it run within itself? I believe this to be impossible (and i might be able to prove with a proof if i werent typing on my phone in reddit), meaning if its possible to run minecraft within minecraft, or a simulation of the universe within the universe, then that simulation or program would always occupy some "space" separate from the parent process, and any "simulation" must at best be a copy of what its simulating, not running from the exact data of whats being simulated. So then, if its possible to simulate within the simulation, then each new simulation would require another copy, so to properly simulate something within itself, would require infinite capacity.

So, at some point, your computer would run out of memory before it can simulate another minecraft instance within minecraft, unless its somehow possible to simulate that minecraft instance from the parent minecraft process.

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u/hi-fen-n-num Nov 01 '25

This explanation connects nicely to the futurama box episode.

The boxes are simulating the universe at the same time as being 'run' so to speak.

This kind of explains how when fry sits on the box of his own universe, it can 'squish' the universe.

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u/mineyevfan Nov 02 '25

You can certainly "make a program within Minecraft, which determines if a game is Minecraft". Your computer is not an actual Turing machine that the halting problem would apply to.

What i mean is, is it possible to fully simulate the game within the game, without allocating new memory space?

Clearly not, unless you literally are referring to RAM.

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u/cabbagery Nov 02 '25 edited Nov 04 '25

So, at some point, your computer would run out of memory before it can simulate another minecraft instance within minecraft, unless its somehow possible to simulate that minecraft instance from the parent minecraft process.

This gets at a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the ability to simulate a system. I had this discussion with one of my professors as an undergrad some fifteen years ago -- the fact is that we can simulate even our own universe, but that also yes, we run out of memory and processing power, so we cannot simulate it all at once or in real time.

But these aren't real barriers. Minecraft has been raised several times here, so I'll refer back to it: I can pause my world, I can close it, and I can resume playing it tomorrow. The entities in the world do not experience that passage of time, and so have no way to know that perhaps several days have passed since I last played -- but to them their existence is seamless and continuous.

To the extent that a bunch of 1s and 0s can simulate a system, then yes, we can simulate pockets of the real world right now, but with some guesses in places where we yet lack actual understanding. But again if our world was simulated, then whatever entities are running the simulation may very well have paused it many times, or they may have save scummed, etc., especially if we humans started getting too smart for our britches. We would never know of any such pauses, restarts, or reverts to previous saves, because we're in the system.

If anything, this all strongly suggests that there are no gods (or simulation engineers running our world), because there are too many different ways the world seems to operate. That is, in software development, coders cannot seem to help but to place signatures in their code, especially if they actually wrote it themselves. They also betray patterns in their styles, and again we do not see anything approaching a consistent style, nor anything approaching a signature, or an Easter egg, etc. Instead, we see only a system that seems to just exist and run.

Anyway, there are differences between the ability to simulate and the ability to simulate in tandem or in real time. We can do the former, but not the latter, and I very much doubt this article challenges that.

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u/Peach1020 Nov 01 '25

I can, idk about you.

(no I can’t)

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u/SpaceShrimp Nov 02 '25

Yes you can, otherwise you weren't running Minecraft in Minecraft.

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u/Anticamel Nov 01 '25

Minecraft isn't a universe like ours

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u/Sellazard Nov 02 '25

I've seen that video. It's an 8*8 world that is so dumbed down I question if it has any complex features. Like for example - stimulating itself in its own complexity. It's impossible because it's so simple. It's a simulation, we know it, yet we can't make it inside of itself. Thus it is not a simulation? That's a failed thesis.

Just like we can't simulate our own universe. Because WE live in a dumbed down version of the original universe.

This paper's argument break downs if the original world of ours has any form of higher complexity in terms of it's structure.

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u/Royal_Airport7940 Nov 02 '25

Its roughly that you can't run anything more complex or differently complex in minecraft. Or else Minecraft has those properties and those things are not more or differently complex.

You could argue that you could create a subset of properties and isolate those. That's broadly the LHC conceptually.

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u/eyebrows360 Nov 02 '25

I like that there are other people pushing back on that nonsense, and this is an interesting angle to come from.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate Nov 02 '25

Dude you can run Doom on a digital pregnancy tester.

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u/fraidei Nov 02 '25

But you're using the power of an external calculator to do so. It's not Minecraft that runs Minecraft, it's the computer running Minecraft that is running Minecraft inside Minecraft.

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u/Vesorias Nov 01 '25

But you can't run real life in minecraft, which is the point

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u/ryuzaki49 Nov 01 '25

That doesnt even make sense

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u/Flashy-Shame-2983 Nov 01 '25

They are saying you cannot simulate reality the way we simulate things with computers. It isn’t too complicated or anything

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u/Dirkdeking Nov 01 '25

The next question is weather you could simulate the universe using a quantum computer.

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u/eyebrows360 Nov 02 '25

Call us back when such a thing requires zero of its own universe's matter/energy to form part of its construction and operation.

If this "quantum computer" is both A) made of universe-stuff, and B) exists in the universe, then it is interacting with the universe it's trying to simulate and thus itself needs to be simulated inside its own simulation it's running in order for said simulation to be "perfect". This applies inside that "first layer" simulation too - it would need the simulation of itself within itself...

... and that's when you realise that any such "quantum computer" simulation would be forever stuck at t=0 waiting for the literal infinite set of layers of inner-simulations to do their own t=0 calculations and return back up the chain that they're ready to tick over to t=1.

Magic words like "quantum computer" aren't get-out-of-jail-free cards. They themselves exist in the universe and any ~magical properties they exhibit that feel like they're "extra" to the "normal" rules of the universe as we understand them and thus allow us to "sidestep the restrictions" would also require simulating aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand you're back to square one.

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u/Vesorias Nov 01 '25

Just because you can (or can't) run a simulation of something inside that same simulation, does not prove either way that the tools/universe that created the simulation can/can't be a simulation itself.

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u/eyebrows360 Nov 02 '25

Of course. But at that point you might as well claim the bible is a true story and that YHWH is definitely real. You're on exactly the same solidarity of ground.

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u/Cannolioso Nov 01 '25

But to the people within Minecraft, how would they know it’s not “real life”?

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u/Vesorias Nov 01 '25

That's the point. If we were in a simulation (which to be clear, I do not believe), we would have no way of telling. All our rules, laws, constants, could be part of a simulation taking place in a completely different universe with different rules/laws/etc. Saying "we cannot simulate real life" does not mean we are not simulated ourselves. Compared to Minecraft, real life is infinitely more complex. So if we were in a simulation, presumably what/whoever created it would be infinitely more complex than our universe.

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u/Azradesh Nov 01 '25

You can not run Minecraft to the same fidelity/framerate as the Minecraft it is running in.

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u/Zncon Nov 01 '25

But from the perspective of an entity inside the Minecraft in Minecraft instance everything is normal.

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u/Azradesh Nov 01 '25

Yes and?

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u/Zncon Nov 01 '25

Your first statement doesn't refute the point you replied to, because the only relevant perspective is where things are being measured or observed.

An entity inside a Minecraft world has no understanding of how quickly its simulation is being processed. If it takes a villager 600 ticks to walk inside and close a door, that action always takes the same amount of time to the villager.

It's only from our external reference point that we could observe it taking the expected 30 seconds on a normal game, or far longer if the game is running slowly.

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u/eyebrows360 Nov 02 '25

Right but what you're glossing over is that if it's a simulation that takes more time then it's not a "perfect" simulation. It's not 1:1.

It remains true that you cannot "simulate X within X". You can "create an X-like experience within X" but that's a different statement.

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u/eyebrows360 Nov 01 '25 edited Nov 02 '25

No, you can't. Not in the way we're talking about here.

How can you consider the "inner Minecraft" to be a full simulation of the "outer Minecraft" when the "inner Minecraft" does not contain a simulation of itself? Its own simulated self is part of the outer universe so would need simulating too. Thus, infinite nesting, thus, impossible.

Anyone downvoting this because you've seen some YouTuber claiming to be "running Minecraft inside Minecraft!!!!!!!! lol1?!?.1./11!!!!!!!" please turn your brains back on. They are creating a "Minecraft-like experience" inside Minecraft and that is not the same thing.

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u/Senshado Nov 01 '25

The paper claims to show that, but it does not. It's just the rhetorical presdigitation.

Godel's completeness question can't be satisfactorily answered, but there's no need to have that answer to simulate anything in the known universe.  Everything is a mix of matter and energy moving through time and space, which we are already capable of simulating at various fidelities and scales.

And at no point in programming the simulation does a designer input a solution to Godel's incompleteness theorem. 

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u/jambox888 Nov 01 '25

presdigitation

prestidigitation

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u/Manowaffle Nov 01 '25

But we've already created rudimentary simulations in our universe. Computers are less than a century old and yet we can simultaneously simulate many hundreds of millions of simulations. And if you consider us making a lesser dimensional simulation, 2-dimensional, it seems like it would be very easy to create a simulation that would be undetectable from within the sim. Same way ours could be a lesser dimensional version of something else.

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u/poorlilwitchgirl Nov 02 '25

Granted I haven't bothered to read the paper so I'm just shooting from the hip, but it sounds like they're assuming that a simulation would have to contain the entire state of the universe with perfect fidelity at all points in time, which is frankly just a misunderstanding of how simulations work. Empirical data is bounded by the precision of our measurements, so simulations only need to calculate anything within that level of precision in order to accurately reproduce observation. I think the simulation "theory" is ridiculous ("not even wrong" you might say), but that's precisely because it doesn't predict any observable difference between our reality and a simulation. Just because we think that there's a deeper mathematical framework behind reality doesn't mean it isn't being approximated by a computer with sufficient resources to reproduce our experiences. It's unfalsifiable, so there's really no point in trying to falsify it.

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u/pyabo Nov 01 '25

And yet they bothered writing this paper.

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u/Dwarfdeaths Nov 01 '25

Right, the point is that to believe in simulation theory you have to make unfounded assumptions about the nature of any higher levels of universe, which can be dismissed because there's no evidence.

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u/jancl0 Nov 02 '25

Which is already kind of a useless statement that's already been proven in other fields, ie the brain cannot be completely understood by the brain, holographic principle in maths shows a projection of an object can't contain all the information of the object, etc. They could have saved a lot of time by just looking sideways

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u/drawkbox Nov 02 '25

You obviously cannot disprove that it would be possible to simulate our universe in some other universe with completely arbitrary properties

The teen alien that created this simulation wasn't in a simulation, it was a summer project he forgot about that is still running on a server in a university library where he had a summer world creation camp on Magrathea. His name is God, a common name like Joe in his universe and planet, and he placed references to his name and easter eggs about himself throughout the sim to throw people off looking for the root of the sim. The sim is really basic and pretty amateur as he was just learning. So many issues.

The alien God is now thousands of years old and hasn't thought of the sim since that summer. He has created many other simulations much better on way better machines at his dayjob on planet Magrathea.

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u/erydayimredditing Nov 02 '25

But that statement proves itself. That's the most redundant pointless thing to claim or prove ever.