Comment of the Day: "Are We Living in a Simulated Universe?"

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"The fact that heavy elements were plentiful only 5 billion years after the big bang is a very good sign about the possibility of alien-life evolving in the very earlier universe. But of course that then leads to the annoying and now cliche Fermi paradoxical question: If alien life had several billion years to get started earlier than we might have initially expected, then where the heck are they? Consider this: If a hyper intelligent civilization arose when the universe was only 5 billion years old, then it should have had time to effectively colonize every galaxy in the universe, simply by sending out replicating-machines and probes to every visible galaxy at once, simultaneously. And of course once each probe reached the target galaxy, it would only take a few hundred thousands years (or perhaps a couple of million years at most) to establish replicating probes in every star system of that galaxy. So really once life reaches hyper intelligence, then it doesn't take very long to colonize not only a single galaxy, but the entire universe. Thus there really should be aliens amongst us.

"Some answers to the paradox might include: 1) It really is much more difficult to evolve intelligence than we suspect. But... I'm not sure I fully buy that. We see sophisticated intelligence evolving multiple times in multiple species, including dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, bonobos... heck even crows and parots show sophisticated intelligence at times. Even the lowly octopus, which is a very alien creature to mamals, is said to exhibit cat-like intelligence. 2) Hyper intelligent civilizations always end up self destructing pretty quickly. I guess, sadly, this seems to be them most plausible explanation... but even this explanation doesn't feel fully correct... as you just need 1 civilization, out of millions to not self destruct, and then they can take over the universe. 3) The aliens are already amongst us -- observing! But as forensic scientists say, you can't enter a room without leaving some sort of trace... it would seem based upon the laws of physics as we know it, and chaos theory, that there should be some trace of them, no matter how careful they are, that can be detected. 4) We are living in a simulation.

"I once read a theory that says it is far more likely we are living in a simulation, as opposed to the "real" universe. The reasoning behind that is simply this: imagine that there is a vast universe, in which a few million hyper intelligent civilizations have evolved, that have computer technology. Each of those civilizations will in turn likely run billions of simulations. Thus if you look at the numbers: there are only a few million "real" civilizations, and multiple billions (probably trillions!) of simulated civilizations. Ergo, the odds are much greater that an individual will exist in a simulated universe, rather than the real universe. Suddenly I'm beginning to think that the lack of evidence of aliens, may simply be that we are indeed a simulation, and aliens are not programmed into this particular simulation! Probability/mathematically this is beginning to sound like the most reasonable explanation... But it's also the explanation I am most uncomfortable with, so I hope it is wrong!"

Velocity Wave

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Source: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/04/comment-of-the-day-are-we-living-in-a-simulated-universe.html

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