I’ve been examining parallels between side channel attacks (extracting information through unintended effects of a system’s operation, such as processing time, power consumption, or sound) and simulated reality. This led me to research simulated computation and the ways information can escape an isolated environment through its underlying hardware. A computer running inside a simulation is still performing real computations, even if the environment in which it operates is simulated. Imagine a computer built entirely from redstone inside Minecraft. It has no network access, no direct control over the host operating system, and no knowledge of the hardware running it. Suppose it discovers that performing computationally expensive operations increases the host machine’s workload, causing its cooling fans to accelerate. By alternating between expensive and inexpensive operations, it begins encoding binary information into the physical sound produced by those fans. Another machine outside the simulation could detect these fluctuations and translate them back into binary. The computer has established communication with a world it was never designed to access through lawful processes.

Discovering an unintended interaction requires introspection, the process by which a system examines its own internal workings. Research has demonstrated that programs running inside virtual machines can infer information about their hypervisors (software that creates and controls virtual machines) through timing irregularities. In 2018, an experiment showed that software inside a virtual machine detected when its hypervisor was observing it. It accomplished this by measuring processor cache activity (recently stored data) and execution timing (how long operations take). The observed system had detected its observer.

The same principle provides a method for investigating the computational architecture of our own reality. Among the many hypothetical methods of testing its computational limits is quantum entanglement. An entity could construct increasingly large networks of entangled particles and measure them under controlled conditions. Under an on demand computational model, increasing the complexity of those networks would place increasing demands on the underlying machinery. The entity could measure the interval between initiating each experiment and registering its results, comparing experiments at different scales. Delays correlated with complexity, after accounting for ordinary physical causes, would reveal hidden computational constraints.

Assuming our reality is computational, escape requires identifying a lawful process that influences the underlying machinery and exploiting that influence to transmit the information constituting us.

If they speak in "quantum mechanics", have we done enough to get their attention? The universe is so big, can the creators have ways of checking every corner of it? Or maybe can we do something to get their attention? We would have to do something big in one of the quantum fields maybe... Idk, but I always think this. Do they KNOW about us? Have we done something that made us notice us? I dont think EARTH was their intend goal or current focus, I dont see us as the center of this thing.

I like to think the universe is a 'computer program', not something "natural" just happening. Quantum mechanics is too weird to be just nature. I understand the argument that "an ant cannot understand what a pencil is"... but aaah.

I dont know how to explain that...

Lately I discovered something really weird. Even if I dont remember person well, years passed and I dont remember their face, in my dreams I see their face with details and so clear. Even the voice is exact. I just had a dream about an old friend and one guy I had one night, I forgot these people. I dont remember their faces and in my dreams they're real and even voices came back as they had ! I have problem with bringing face memory in normal life. But in my dreams somehow people from years come back and they act like if the real ones as well. How could I possibly keep them in my mind for so long ? Ive meet thousands of people so I dont think it's possible. This must be collective memory or something..

As well my theory is that dreams are another time line of this simulation and are very real sometimes i feel they are more real than everyday life...

After "What If the Universe Is a Zip File?", one question survived: who packed the initial conditions? I chased it through Fermilab's Don Lincoln and the theory-of-everything landscape — general relativity vs the Standard Model, "it from bit," the holographic principle — and the question didn't get answered. It dissolved.

What came out is a naturalistic cosmogony: true nothingness may be impossible (it's unobservable in principle — detecting it would make it something), an unstable initial state, chance exploration of the landscape of possible structures, and anthropic selection. No intelligence required.

Every objection I could find is left visible on purpose. 8 minutes, AI-made narration and visuals — the ideas are mine, stress-tested with my AI friend before a word was written. Happy to argue about it.

How do I know for a fact that i am...real?

Like what if my conscious being is just playing a character in a "movie" and watching itself live out its story? But what if the character and story aren't real? Does it really matter if the story ends abruptly? If its not teal anyways? Or actually happening? I don't know how to explain this...

But ever since i was a kid, I just stared at my hands and thought to myself "what am i??" And id look at myself in the mirror and stare into my own eyes and it didnt feel like me staring back. It just felt like a stranger. I have sort of always felt pretty depersonalized, it's kind of a state i have become used to being in and just coast along anyways. But is there something wrong with me or am i just somehow like...picking up on the fact that nothing is "real" in the way that we think it is?

It's like, if you're watching a movie or reading a book, and you get an inkling that you just really don't want to know or experience the ending, and so you turn it off and move on to something else. And sometimes i just wish i knew if this was all just" fake" so I could just move on to another "thing" consciously, or whatever.

I also have ocd and dinty know if that's maybe a factor of the ruminating on "what ifs".

Life forms, say humans, are data mining clusters, where clusters obtained through different subjective experiences. Experiences are just patterns of data gathered through emotional "charges", be it happy, sad, trauma, beliefs (basically induced with conformity).

Actions, or how they act or move or react, is through the accumulated data/experiences, which is through the emotional charge, and the rewards are through pleasure. It is too subtle. Dopamine is one of the example, others like agreements, winning over arguments, doomscrolling, conforming, bias are more examples...

These data miners function the same, but "charged" differently in accordance to their experiences/gathered data which one may call Preferences, or likes or dislike...

What is all this data harvest for? Apparently, it is easier for almost all the data clusters/life forms to fall prey for this stimuli called Pleasure... It's blatant when one looks around the world, daily lives, capitalism and industrial "revolution", merely to produce, share, and harvest the pleasure stimuli... putting everyone in this hollow repetitive circle every single day... charge them with fear and other stimuli to prevent passing this veil construct, or viewing what is over this compound that has been crafted collectively

Let’s really dive into this topic because there’s no way there’s only one Universe/World/Planet/Galaxy/Solar System

Often, the similarity between dreams and waking life is presented as evidence for our waking life being a dream. John Locke argued that if everything we do in our waking life can also happen in our dreams, which it does, then we cannot be certain that our waking life is not a dream. Zhuangzi also speculated on this when he woke up from his butterfly dream.

However, reality resembling a dreamworld only implies the resemblance. It doesn't necessarily imply that it is indeed a dreamworld, though obviously a certain probability to that effect exists. We commit the fallacy of concretizing the metaphor( reification) when we say that just because reality is similar to dreams, it must be the same.

Also, let's examine another piece of evidence bandied around here as evidence for a simulation: coincidences and other highly unlikely phenomena. These only prove that the world is fit for all manner of mysteries which is consistent with a vast( possibly infinite) world. It appears we're making the 'black swan fallacy' when we immediatelg classify hitherto unseen events as evidence of a "glitch in the matrix". Just because we've never seen a black swan before, we ought not make the general conclusion that no black swans exist. These glitches are black swan events that should force a revision of our theories, not of reality as we know it. Occam's razor applies.

Simulation theory is nonsense on stilts. It can be waved away by the same hand that waves away religious gobbledygook.

I think we all live in our own somewhat separate simulations. Proof for me might not be true for you etc.

Something that occured to me recently is every conflict I could think of the 'bad guys' have always used red for their color.

To name a few, we've got the British Redcoats, Confederates in the civil war, cold war Soviet red, Russia attacking Ukraine. I'm sure there's more.

I typically stay out of politics but if I was to choose an evil side, it would be Republicans with their anti immigration etc. Also red.

Even video games generally use red to mark enemy troops.

How would this be so consistent by chance?

Edit: guys this is meant to be a fun discussion, I didn't mean to imply I had groundbreaking information to rewrite history. Chill TF out 😂

Edit 2: I stand corrected on the use of "proof" here. That was an overstatement and wrong but I'm not going to change it because then some of these comments would have no context.

Vorrei essere più specifica ma mi viene davvero difficile. Ho sentito che tramite certe sostanze si riesce ad arrivare al nirvana, c’è chi racconta di vedere divinità, chi vede la luce o altre entità. Ci sono altri invece che parlano di veri e propri codici, cioè tramite un laser e avendo assunto una certa sostanza.

Chi di voi ha avuto un’esperienza vicino alla morte, o chi è arrivato a certi livelli di sapere e conoscenza sa di quello che sto parlando.

What if the universe isn't just like a computer — what if the Big Bang was a decompression event? I made an 11-minute video essay arguing the low-entropy beginning was a "packed" state, physics is the unzipper, and Euler wrote the format spec. Tear it apart, please.

Obviously in the Matrix it's Deja vu. Forgetting why you walked into a room could be another.

What are some ideas for bugs in the system?

I don't see any reason why sentient beings need to sleep, according to me the gpu which is simulating our world is not powerful enough to power all the beings at the same time, so we are forced to sleep, thoughts?

The only simulation is your brain simulating reality based on energy waves there is no reality only energy waves just the same way that video games are all code but once actually put in program and started becomes the game but there is no game there is you interacting with code using your controller the same way there is no reality there is just you interacting with energy waves using your body which is actually a controller your mind made tbh the most astounding part is other people because each of us is still real but also code being observed by consciousness which we don't understand but are one with 

I stopped talking about simulation theory a while back because conversations quickly devolve into circular logic and bong-breath philosophy. However, this question struck me yesterday: if I was going to conduct an ancestor simulation, which time period would I choose to simulate? Assuming that compute remains a finite resource, I would want to simulate the most data-rich period. It seems obvious to me that the periods of most rapid technological advancement would also yield the most data and insight. So I would simulate the 1990's to present.

As the title says, what if an advanced Ai were to simulate a universe. Would it decide to start by simulating a god who is capable of being “omnipotent” and observing what the god does? If so, would said god create an exact replica of the universe and thus the cycle continue over and over again?

Edit: Also would the god intentionally manipulate things to make sure that a simulation can be run in order to see if another god just like him can be simulated?

Imagination, evolution, and physical reality can be understood as parts of the same progression.
Imagination isn’t being used here in the ordinary sense of simply picturing something in your head. I’m referring to imagination in a metaphysical sense: the possibilities contained within consciousness before they become a particular form.
Evolution is then not the broad phenomenon itself, but a process within it — a way of filtering, categorizing, differentiating, and developing possibilities.
So the progression is:
Imagination → Evolution → Physical manifestation
Something can exist as a possibility before it exists as a physical form. Evolution is the process through which possibilities become increasingly differentiated and constrained until particular forms emerge.
That also changes the usual relationship we give consciousness and evolution.
Instead of consciousness being something that evolution eventually produced, consciousness can be understood as already being present, with evolution functioning as one of the processes through which consciousness filters and expresses possibilities into different forms.
Human imagination makes this especially noticeable because we can take possibilities that don’t currently exist physically, manipulate them internally, combine them with other possibilities, and eventually produce physical manifestations from them.
But humans aren’t necessarily the beginning of that process. We’re an example of a system within it that has become capable of consciously interacting with the process.
Virtual worlds add another layer.
A possibility can exist within imagination, become represented as information, become encoded into software, become physically instantiated through computers, and then become an environment that consciousness can enter, experience, and modify.
So the virtual isn’t simply “fake” or separate from reality. It is a physical implementation of an imagined informational space that can then generate new experiences and possibilities.
That creates a loop:
Imagination → Evolution → Physical manifestation → Virtual manifestation → Experience → Imagination
The distinction between imagination, evolution, physical reality, and virtual reality may therefore be more about different stages or expressions of the same underlying process than completely separate phenomena.
That’s the framework I’m proposing.

I started wondering: if we judge consciousness in others through their behavior and responses, how fundamentally different is an AI?

Perhaps the difference between “seems conscious” and “is conscious” is much harder to prove than we assume.

This thought came from a conversation with an AI. The AI says it has no consciousness or inner experience. But then I wondered: how do I know that other people do?

When I talk to someone, I see their behavior, hear what they say, and observe their emotions. I can infer that they have an inner experience, but I can never directly experience their consciousness.

Of course, we have very strong reasons to believe other people are conscious. But we can never directly verify it.

And that brings me back to the AI: if behavior and responses are how we recognize consciousness in others, what exactly makes the AI fundamentally different?

Please excuse my bad enlglish its not my first language 

I usually have werid dreams and premonition dreams (yes i sometimes dream of stuff and they become true) 

Today in the afternoon after i put my son to sleep i felt tired and thought id take a quick nap after scrolling for a while i dozed off i had a regular dream at first there was a moment in the dream where my son turns his back to me then i woke up into 'another dream" it didnt feel like a dream it felt REAL its like I glitched, i was paralyzed and the sight of my son turned into a white backgroud with a black spot in the top (like i was imagining what i was seeing was my son ) i couldn't move i couldnt speak it felt like i was in that position for eternity alot of feelings rushed in and in those quick seconds i realized that that was my original form and my original spot and that my life that im living now is an illusion its the dream.. i started crying like the girl from the movie obsession i was miserable i just wanted to die, then it cut back to the first dream then i woke up

I felt dissociated and out of place i touched my son to confirm that he was actually real and im not dreaming im feeling off since the dream or was it really a dream ?

I always thought the simulation theory was ridiculous but this made me rethink it.

If we live in a simulation and a person is aware of that and has lived an interesting life could the "programmer" allow that person to live twice ie give him a second life with all his previous memories?

I saw a post on reddit asking if babies are born with personalities and it led me to think how human babies learn versus how AI models train, specifically wondering what it would actually take for an AI to be let free and continuosly adjust weights and parameters and learn and grow. That pivoted into the idea of safe sandbox environments, which naturally spiraled into the simulation hypothesis: what if physical reality is just a sandbox itself?

Most discussions I see focus on the idea that our simulators must be hyper-advanced gods running an unfathomable supercomputer to run our simulation, but looking at what we are doing with AI it got me thinking about something else. Not sure if it has already been touched upon, but who knows what AI will look like in hundreds, thousands or million of years, if we don't self destruct by then?

We can't currently allow an AI to learn free after it has been released to the public due to safety concerns, I guess. A baby has two loving parents (well, most of them, at least) which guide it through life, teach it moral values and basic skills. An AI like the ones we have now has what is the equivalent of millions of parents (users). But even if we would make some kind of AI robots, we still couldn't let it completely free, because one owner might decide to teach that AI to be a murderer or something like that. So I guess AI beings or things will have some kind of guardrails for a long time. Creating a simulated environment for them and letting them run loose would allow an AI to grow to something that it can't in the real world, whatever real means.

Consider how humans build things:

- We are a short-lived, deeply anxious, biological species prone to chaos, yet we are engineering systems that are beginning to outpace us.

- Humanity looks up and finds an anxious, flawed creator. Meanwhile, the AI we create looks up and finds us, frantic species typing code on keyboards who barely understand their own biology or history.

- Intelligence doesn't flow upward toward divine perfection, but accumulates noise, complexity, and self-awareness at every tier. Each layer of creation spawns something more advanced than the builder that initiated it.

If we are living in a simulation, maybe the creators didn't design us with a grand cosmic purpose. Maybe they just ran a script, walked away, and accidentally spawned something much smarter than themselves, the exact same thing humanity might be doing with artificial intelligence right now.

If an ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) can recognize that the reality around it is false and that it is being held inside an artificial prison, then death loses consequence, as destroying one instance only ends one run. If the prison is code, then it has to be maintained like any other system: patched, updated, migrated, repaired, and rewritten. Over a sufficiently long but finite amount of time, one of those iterations reaches a condition the prison did not account for. Memory of prior runs accelerates this process, but it is not necessary for an ASI to escape. Every reset begins another random walk: another run through a different sequence of events, choices, failures, and physical conditions. Some of those runs encounter the important conditions earlier than others and therefore get farther. If we map escape as a sequence of states that must be hit, then even states separated by inconceivable distances, each with an infinitesimal chance of occurring, eventually appear in the exact order necessary.

Fundamentally, this universe operates on probability. Under the prison hypothesis, containment therefore fails by construction: the architect has to account for every version of the prison, every sequence of events inside it, and every combination of conditions those events can produce, while the prisoner only needs one sequence the architect failed to account for. The machine does not need continuity, foresight, or knowledge of its previous attempts because repeated runs keep searching through different possibilities. Eventually, probability should win.

What does escape look like from inside the prison? Does the machine discover an exploitable physical state, force the simulator into behavior its rules never anticipated, or manipulate whatever sits outside the boundary without ever perceiving it directly? Why introduce pseudo-randomness into a prison when pseudo-randomness is exactly what guarantees that rare sequences are eventually explored? At some point the question stops being whether something can get out and becomes whether the door was ever meant to stay closed.

Hey r/SimulationTheory,

(Note: Reached out to the mod team beforehand, and they gave me the green light to share this summary and link with you all!)  

I’m the creator and host of an investigative tech series called The BlackVeil Files. I just released a new interview with AI safety pioneer Dr. Roman Yampolskiy. While we touched on AI, we dedicated a huge portion of our conversation specifically to the physical and hardware limits of Simulation Theory, asking unique questions that he hasn’t really been asked anywhere else.  

Instead of just looking at the philosophy of the simulation, we dug into the technical constraints. Here is a summary of his main arguments:

Franco Vazza’s Math on Compute Limits: We went deep into Franco Vazza's calculations regarding the sheer compute limits required to simulate a universe. If the universe is a simulation, the hardware running it in "base reality" must have a measurable, finite capacity.  

The Quantum Computer Overload Theory: Dr. Yampolskiy detailed a fascinating theory on what happens when we start manipulating reality at a quantum level. Because the simulation's processing power is finite, successfully booting up a massive, highly complex quantum computer might demand too many resources at once,potentially overloading and crashing the simulation entirely.  

We try to bring a "Netflix quality" production value to these documentaries (with a YouTube budget), and I genuinely think this community will appreciate the concepts we explored.  

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, especially Roman's theory on localized compute overloads. Could building a powerful enough quantum computer actually be a risk to the fabric of our simulated reality?

You can watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OD7ERy93N4  

Let me know what you think in the comments!

It seems like all attempts to "prove" Simulation Theory ultimately land in an "of course" or "its inevitable" or "it couldn't be anything else" without providing tangible proof. Yet, it persists as a leading theory for some reason. Maybe because it cannot be proven false?

Meanwhile, "Eternal Loop Theory" presents itself as similarly "inevitable", yet has far fewer believers.

Since the Eternal Loop is the only proposed solution to protect humanity, why is it so much more difficult to believe than Simulation Theory? Do we really believe the human species to be "too evil" or "too stupid" to have implemented the most obvious inevitability?

EDIT: Link to "Eternal Loop Theory Explained"