Hey guys!

It's Showcase Sunday again, and this is a special one, as @nonameslefttouse, the Writer/Artist who came up with this idea, is back in business. This time I'm taking the chance to share a post I wrote 25 months ago, which discusses the notion that this life may very well be a computer simulation. It is a theoretically possible concept, and we would probably have no way of knowing if we were actually trapped in a simulation. Have you given this any thought? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Is Life Real?

A rhetorical question. Nobody can prove anything. But let's hold a short discussion. Source - License

It has to be real, right? I mean everything seems so real. I can smell, taste, see, hear and touch. I can feel joy, fear, lust, agony and so on. But wait a minute, isn't that the case when we're dreaming as well?

Dreams are so weird. Most of the time they make no sense and even when they do, there are still huge differences from reality which should help us realize we're actually dreaming. But most times we fall for it. We're unable to realize that it's not real. We're trapped inside. Dreams feel so real that you might wake up and need time in order to get rid of the feelings they brought, whether positive or negative. You might start shouting while sleeping or even sleepwalking and doing various things unconsciously. There are hardly any memories when you wake up. Like nothing ever happened. Like it just wasn't real.

Another factor that induces doubt is technology. Technology is progressing at such a great rate that soon we will be unable to tell the difference between virtual reality and real life. If human computers in 2018 can achieve such things, just imagine what we could possibly accomplish technologically within the next 1000 years. Nobody had cell phones 50 years ago, yet kids nowadays have smartphones which are many times faster than NASA's 1960's computers used for the moon mission. And all this progress was accomplished in less than a century! Just imagine what our computers will be capable of in 1000 years from now! Artificial Intelligence will probably have surpassed human consciousness. Virtual Reality games will be indistinguishable from reality. If we can't actually prove we're not trapped inside a dream, we can't prove our whole existence isn't happening inside a software generated by a supercomputer of the future either.

There's more to this though. We live in an infinite Universe which is constantly expanding. There are infinite possibilities. There could be literally anything and everything out there, the Universe is unbelievably enormous for the human mind to comprehend. This world is truly limitless. Not really.

There is one fundamental limit: the speed of light. Nothing can go beyond the speed of light. Nothing can travel with a speed higher than 299792458 m/s (meters per second). But why??? Why is such a random number the limit? Why is there a limit in the first place? I thought this Universe was infinite, space never ends, time never stops. Doesn't this concept of a maximum possible speed resemble the way our computers work? It is like the computer processing this reality we're ''living'' in has only so much computing power, and therefore there is a speed limit.

My final attempt to debunk reality will rely on physics. Quantum Entanglement. Have you heard of this phenomenon? It is a natural phenomenon that occurs when particles interact in a way that the quantum state of each particle is dependent of the other's, even when the particles are separated by huge distances. Particles are described by their basic properties: position, spin and polarization. Entangled particles' physical properties are always correlated, in other words if you change one particle's spin, then the other particle will instantly change its spin as well. This sort of ''communication'' between entangled particles happens instantly, regardless of distance. That means it is the only thing that beats the speed of light in this Universe: the speed at which entangled particles exchange ''information''. Einstein called it ''spooky action at a distance'' and never managed to explain why this is possible. According to his theory of relativity this shouldn't be possible, but in fact it is, and Einstein died with this question torturing his mind.

This phenomenon could be explained though if we looked at this life as a computer simulation. It would make perfect sense! That would explain how particles located billions and trillions of kilometers apart can communicate instantly.

Five exabytes of technical information will be produced this year. This amount equals to all technical information produced the last 50 years combined. We live in exponential times. But is this life real? I guess I will never find the answers to most of my questions. Even Einstein couldn't.

I appreciate your attention.

Links:

• https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/quantum_entanglement.htm
• https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/einstein-s-spooky-action-distance-spotted-objects-almost-big-enough-see

Video Credits @gtg