The Matrix: Clues from Quantum Physics

Brian Whitworth, a physicist from New Zealand, noticed similarities between the quirkiness of Quantum physics and virtual reality, simulations, holographs and or video games: Gameboy, Nintendo, and such. He wrote a short monograph called “The Physical World as a Virtual Reality” that highlights similarities between Quantum behavior and VR.

Here are several strange observations made over the century or so, that threw over standard Newtonian physics.

Gravity slows time.

Gravity curves space.

Speed slows time.

Speed increases space.

Speed of light has a governor or limit.

Faster than light reactions occur between entangled particles.

Two slit experiment demonstrates the presence of an electromagnetic particle in two places at once.

Radiative decay like gamma radiation occurs randomly with no known cause.

All of this and more befuddle physicists and have for a century.

I spoke about much of this weirdness in my last blog. I left the reader only a hint that Virtual Reality like the Matrix, the movie, was a proposal a few current physicists have begun to ponder that seems to best to reflect this strangeness.

Let’s lay out the case for a correspondence between VR and the Quantum physics.

1)      The Big Bang singularity is a beginning out of nothing. A VR simulation begins from nothing.

2)      Universe appears to have a Maximum processing rate. Screen refresh has a fixed allocated speed.

“The maximum speed a pixel in a virtual reality game can cross a screen is limited by the processing capacity of the computer running it. In general, a virtual world’s maximum event rate is fixed by the allocated processing capacity. In our world, the fixed maximum that comes to mind is the speed of light. That there is an absolute maximum speed could reflect a maximum information processing rate…”*

3)      The world appears pixelated, as Virtual Reality would be. There are limits to how closely we can observe the universe. In the subatomic particle world at the electromagnetic level Heisenberg Uncertainty is encountered. Only location alone or mass alone can be determined but not both together. The world is fuzzy or composed of packets, quantized.

4)      The world is “nonspatial” or as physicists like to term it, nonlocal. In VR no location is any further from another location to speak of, just one item on a screen. Nonlocality refers to the phenomenon of entanglement referred in the last blog. Observation on one entangled particle correlates to the other entangled particle across space regardless of distance, disregarding the speed of light, the presumed speed governor of the universe. Since a location on Virtual Reality display is determined by processing parameters, display pixels can be correlated.

5)      Crazy processing load effects are observed as in VR. If a computer has many demands a video may play slower than usual. A large body in space… “may constitute a high processing demand, so a massive body could slow down the information processing of space-time, causing space to ‘curve’ and time to slow. Likewise, if faster movement requires more processing, speeds near light speed could affect space/time, causing time to “dilate” and space to extend. Relativity effects could then arise from local processing overloads.”*

6)      There is surprising Algorithmic simplicity; mathematical laws surprisingly describe the scientific laws of the universe. “If the world arises from finite information processing, it is necessary to keep frequent calculations simple. Indeed the core mathematical laws that describe our world are surprisingly simple: ‘The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.’** In VR theory physical laws are simple because they must actually be calculated.”*

7)      Complementary uncertainty is a fact of reality. VR only calculates screens when viewed. VR displays either position or momentum for a particular memory location. But doesn’t display the entire game universe at once only that which is being interacted with.

8)      Fungible elements compose the phenomenon of the universe. One photon or electron is identical to another just like a dot on the screen of a video game. Of course this is an infinitely more sophisticated one.

9)      Teleportation has been observed. Quantum particles can “tunnel”, suddenly appearing beyond a barrier they cannot cross, like a coin in a sealed glass bottle suddenly appearing outside it.

There is far, far more to investigate about these similarities and correspondences. And there is great opposition by the majority of the physicists frankly and understandably so. The common understanding is reality is out there and we sense it intuitively. It’s substantial and real. It has real extension or space and mass or substantiality. It certainly seems this way no matter how we look at it, at least us in the West. Quantum Physics contradicts common sense, of course.

There have been cultures that didn’t take that view, mostly Eastern. The observable world was impermanent and perishable and transitory, the Maya. An illusion that was a façade behind which represented the Unity, the Mind of God. And not only in the East, as early as Plato and before the pre-Socratics, the argument was there existed a reality beyond the observable, called the Universals according to Plato. Universals were immaterial, eternal foundations of the world that represented the Ideal of the perishable and transitory matter. The primary example of a Universal was a number, eternal and immaterial. Beyond the observable. Where did the number reside? It existed before you thought of it, and it will exist after you’re long gone to contemplate it. So if there were no humanity to think of numbers or symbols, there would remain the reality and truth of numbers. They are not an illusion.

Matter on the other hand is always in a process of transforming; it is argued. The chair rots and decays and breaks into fragments and given enough time becomes soil. We too will die and decay and go back into the ground eventually. The Universal ideal of the chair, the symbol of the chair, is real and is eternal or at least according to Plato. As well as the part of us that shares in the eternal and perfect goes on forever.

Western Science has pursued the truth of the foundation of matter for centuries. It has delved and searched and investigated and pried apart the tiniest of pieces of matter. One of the first to position fundamental matter was Democritus (460-370B.C), a contemporary of Plato. He posited the fundamental nature of matter were tiny atoms, operated upon by natural forces. He was a pupil of Leucippus of the early 5^th Century B.C., who held similar views. Tiny little particles bouncing around were the nature of matter. This is really the standard view of matter even in our day.

Discoveries in quantum physics placed great uncertainty into this view. Scientists remain perplexed as to what to make of it. Nothing has really replaced this idea of “solid” matter being fundamental in the century that’s transpired. Einstein’s Relativity and Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty (surprising conclusion that electromagnetic phenomenon has indeterminacy of either location or movement) poked holes in the standard view of reality. The idea that there’s substantial matter out “there” hasn’t died. It’s similar to the retort, “I’m pounding on this solid desk…of course there’s a reality out there.”

The inescapable conclusion nonetheless one is drawn to: the fundamental basis of matter is immaterial; fundamentals of observable phenomenon are immaterial. And much like Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) proposed three hundred years ago, we’re in a world of immaterial ideas, real but a fundamental reality beyond space, time and extension engendered by a Supreme Intelligence. Absent perceived qualities what is matter? Take away measured or perceived qualities of an object, the color, the extension, the weight, what do you have? Berkeley would argue nothing.

There have been other Idealists, Plato I’ve mentioned but Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and his elaborate Monadology (a complex system of immaterial bodies that comprise matter) is another. It’s been a decidedly minority view but longstanding. The consensus of science is to dispute this view point.

Most germane are the revelations of Quantum Physics that demonstrate absence of extension (spatial dimension) and movement and time prior to observation. This state is called Hilbert Space representing state of matter prior to the collapse of the Schrodinger Wave Function. Prior to the “collapse” or observation the particle is only a probability with the likelihood of location that lacks determinacy.

If you concede there’s a Matrix, the question becomes, who’s running it? For me that’s straight forward. Something or someone with a vast intelligence operates the Virtual Reality with haptic features. An hyper-techno enhanced VR appliance. Could there be anyone or thing that intelligent in the universe?

And that begs the Ontological question. Does there exist the possibility of an intelligence greater than yours? Maybe an alien intelligence, who evolved a billion years before us? Or just a hundred years before us?  Whose technology is such it appears to be magic? How about the possibility of an infinitely powerful, all-knowing, immortal intelligence? The existence of perfection? Can you recognize the possibility? Of course.

In conclusion science has searched for the foundational, fundamental building block of matter only to discover a large measure of mystery to say the least. There wasn’t the every so tiny particles that interacted with each other that Democritus posited, after matter had been halved and split and divided and partitioned ad infinitum. Tiny pool balls universe. What they found was a bizarre, nonsensical world. An immaterial world best described as Virtual Reality as in the Matrix or Video Game, an Observer in a immaterial world of simulation.

Much of what I’ve written re: Quantum Physics and its correspondence to VR is a re-capitulation of the referenced monograph by Brian Whitworth.

*Brian Whitworth, “Physical World as a Virtual Reality” (2006)

**Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences (1960)