What Computing Power Is Needed to Run a Reality Simulation?
What Computing Power Is Needed to Run a Reality Simulation?
Could we build a life-like simulation? Is there a problem with processing power to sustain this simulation we live in? What would it take to run a simulation the size of Earth?
One of the arguments against the idea that we are living in a simulation is the supposedly enormous computing power needed to run the whole universe full of living beings. Many have argued that the fact that there are bugs everywhere is a sufficient indication that we are not living in a simulation, as it would take impossible amounts of computing power to maintain such a simulated world. Today, we’ll talk about some alternative ideas in this regard and see where it takes us.
The computing resources problem
There are many issues with the argument that we can’t live in a simulation, as it would take an impossible amount of processing resources to maintain it. Let’s look at a few.
Computer capabilities, costs, and processing power are increasing exponentially
Just look at how far we come in a few decades. Since its inception, computing power and resources have experienced exponential growth, doubling approximately every two years, following Moore's Law. The tiny smartphones we carry in our pockets are a million times more capable than supercomputers that send rockets to the moon.
Here’s a little thought experiment, though it has its problems:
In short, if we continue on this path, we will increase our computing power and resources by over one quadrillion times! I know. I can’t imagine what this would mean, either. Now, extrapolate that to a thousand years because why not?
The computer resources argument is a mental limitation of today’s state of affairs. If we were to create a simulation of the size of the universe, we would only do it once the computing power would allow it.
Perhaps we are the simulated beings inside a large simulation built by our predecessors. If you’re religious, you might call the architects Gods or, alternatively, aliens. Anything is possible, I suppose.
The human brain is a supercomputer - connected to an unimaginably vast network
Supercomputers, not your home laptop or smartphone, have now achieved a single human brain's estimated processing and storage capabilities in most aspects, apart from energy efficiency. While this may be the scientific understanding pertaining to the mere biological brain as a resource of the mind, I would suggest an alternative outlook.
There are many indications that we are all interconnected into a sort of subspace, quantum web. You know, like the internet, only a gazillion times better. Even the latest scientific research indicates that our minds might not be contained in our brains. If you’re exploring spiritual or metaphysical discussion, this will have been a “known fact” for a long time.
My point is that if we combined all our processing power, humans alone would already create a computer network capable of easily handling a simulation the size of Earth. But we’re not even considering that all living beings could be part of the same network, which opens up immeasurable capabilities. Still, we haven’t even touched on the quantum nature of our reality, but we will soon enough.
If our simulation is a decentralized system, things are becoming more and more likely and reproducible even with our understanding of the world and the mind, which is most likely severely limited and doesn’t even touch the full scale of what a mind ever is.
The unknowns of the simulation
What we’ve mentioned are just the tangible ideas regarding the computing power necessary for maintaining a life-like simulation such as our reality. We already see that it is theoretically possible, even by human standards and capabilities.
If you struggle to believe that possibility, play a modern multiplayer video game. Thousands of people are playing in virtual reality, all living their lives and conquering their quests, battling enemies custom-tailored to their specific characteristics and development. One game, connected, but with different characteristics for every player.
In short, we already know how to build something similar to how this reality works, just on a smaller scale. Given enough time, it is inevitable, as Elon Musk predicts. That raises a few questions:
Who built the simulation?
Is it a mind-made simulation or an actual outside system that we are a part of or trapped inside?
What is it made of?
How does it work from an engineering perspective?
We can assume and play with different options, but that’s about it. In a universe as vast as ours, anything is possible at any time. That was before we even knew quantum mechanics, which means that everything is possible simultaneously at all times. I know; it’s a mind-bending concept. Speaking of…
How does rendering change everything in a simulation?
All video games and simulations render the image in real-time for each viewer or player. The purpose is to conserve resources.
What does that mean in practice?
When you play a game, you enter a vast world, a large map, full of characters (NPCs, nonplaying characters, and other players from around the world). There are battles everywhere and millions of individual stories tailor-made for each player—something akin to this life, I suppose.
When you look through your video game's screen, you only see the immediate surroundings. You see what you need to see and nothing more. While that large map is real and ready, it still needs to be displayed. In essence, it only exists as an idea, a potentiality. Sounds familiar? We’re back to Quantum Physics and how the observer determines the collapse of particles in superposition.
Anyway, as you walk through this simulated world in a video game, it may stretch for hundreds of miles, but you will only see a few hundred meters ahead, for example. Nothing beyond that is rendered.
Nothing beyond is real and existing at this point in time, and it doesn’t require any computational power. Only when you access that particular area will it render in front of your screen.
In effect, this may be a vast, ever-expanding universe, but from our perspective, the player in the simulation of life, we only ever need to see our immediate surroundings, and that is all that may be rendered, and we would never know any difference.
What happens or is supposed to be happening anywhere else is just information. “In Africa, someone did that,” for example, doesn’t mean it had to happen in our simulation, and it didn’t need to be rendered for us. It’s just a news item, a few bits of data.
If each of us only needed to see one image at a time, the few hundred meters of reality being rendered before our eyes, that wouldn’t take much computing power at all.
Let’s say we are walking on the road. The only things that need to be rendered in detail are those in our immediate surroundings. The rest is only information. As we walk further down the road, what was behind us no longer needs to be rendered. It can simply disappear and remain a memory - a piece of information, and we would never know the difference.
Turn your head and imagine that everything outside the view of your eyes disappears, and all the resources redirect to creating or rendering what you are looking at. When you look away, that disappears, and only your immediate view is rendered. In terms of those dreadful bugs, only the ones bugging you now are rendered. The rest don’t technically exist.
This universe may then contain billions of galaxies with billions of stars and billions of beings, but in the simulation, only a few hundred feet around you, or better yet, in front of you, needs to be rendered—actually created—for you to normally live in this universe. Fun, right?
There are many indications that our reality works in a similar way, especially since we’ve discovered quantum mechanics. The Double Slit experiment demonstrates that without an observer quantum particles like photons are suspended in a state called superposition, which contains all possible states. Only when an observer or measurement is present, does the particle collapse into one of the possible states, thus becoming “real” and not a wave of all posibilities.
This is a horrible simplification with some allowances, but it does illustrate the possibility of our “reality” being rendered in real time, when an observer is present.
If no one hears a tree fall in the forest, did it even fall?
The mind simulation hypothesis
What if this simulation is internal, contained in your mind, and like a dream?
How much of your processing power is needed for your dreams?
Not much, right? And from your point of view, it looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes just as real as what you perceive as the ultimate reality.How much needs to be rendered, existing in detail?
Only the current scene and nothing else.
Thus far, we’ve discussed the simulation being like our simulations or video games. This could be and probably is an entirely false idea. From that perspective, someone had to build a simulation or a program where we live in our entirety or are connected to through our minds. But there is another possibility.
We’re not real, and nothing outside our minds is real
It’s just like a dream, perhaps a collective and persistent dream. Essentially, we’re stuck inside our minds, believing that we are experiencing an outside world, but we’re not. We’re still dreaming.
If this is even remotely true, the whole computing power argument is invalidated. Our minds are more than capable of creating and maintaining illusions.
Would you know if you were dreaming and nothing outside your mind existed? How exactly?
Everything you perceive through your senses is information
You don’t directly see, hear, sense, taste, or smell things directly. A signal gathers information through one of your senses. Your mind interprets those signals and gives them meaning.
We humans can already intercept those signals in our brains, interpret what they mean, and even use them as a user interface. A great example would be the Neurolink. A man thinks about moving an arm, the chip in his head recognizes that signal and, instead of moving an arm, moves the cursor in the desired direction. We’re effectively in the infant state of this technology and brain mapping. The sky is the limit of its potential.
Those signals can be interpreted (and are) in various ways. They can also be hacked. Turning this around, we don’t really know what is or is not outside our minds. We think we do because we’ve learned to give meaning to those signals from our brains, but we don’t.
Nothing may look (partly fact anyway) how we imagine or interpret it. It’s even possible that there is no such thing as an outside world, and those sensors have been lying to us this whole time. We would never know the difference because we know no other existence and experience everything through our mind’s filter.
We could guess and debate this topic all day, but let this be enough. I think we’ve effectively dismantled the whole “we can’t be living in a simulation because it would take impossibly powerful computing resources” and put it to rest.
Enjoy your simulation, dear ones.
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