The idea that we live in a simulation has not been abandoned. His new theoretical support: infodynamics.

Entropy will work with information in the opposite way to how it works in thermodynamics.

The hypothesis that the world we perceive (if not our very existence) digital modeling This is the starting point of the films of the saga. Matrix. It is therefore not surprising that one of the books defending this hypothesis has an explicit reference to the saga in its title: Reality: reboot.

Its author, University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin M. Wopson, explained his defense of this hypothesis in a journal article a few months ago Talk. In this article, Wopson describes the hypothesis as “inherently speculative”, even though he believes there are signs of its veracity.

But how do you find evidence of something like this? While for many proponents of the idea the key is to find imperfections that can reveal the true nature of the universe, for Vopson the key lies in the laws of physics and in matter and its forms.

For example, the author defends information as a form of matter. That is, the same as matter is neither created nor destroyed but it can transform between different phases and even into energy, hypothetically it can transform into something completely different: information.

Based on this and the discipline known as information theory, Vopson postulates his second law of infodynamics. This is an attempt to explain the entropy of information in parallel with the “physical” entropy as we understand it in the second law of thermodynamics.

“Infodynamics is based on the concept of entropy (a measure of disorder, which in an isolated system always increases over time).” The second law, postulated by Wopson, speaks of information entropy. This, understood as the average amount of information associated with an event, “should remain constant or decrease over time” at least until an equilibrium value is reached.

More than parallel, the second laws of thermodynamics and infodynamics can be seen as symmetrical: energy and matter tend towards disorder, and information, on the other hand, tends towards order.

Vopson cites evolution as an example of a decrease in information entropy. After studying the mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid pandemic, the physicist concluded that mutations do not occur randomly, as the scientific consensus indicates, but rather respond to this need. .

This would also explain the apparent discrepancy: A universe in constant expansion, in which heat does not increase or disappear, in the sense of constant entropy, can be considered an isolated system and therefore with increasing entropy. Wopson explains this by adding information and its decreasing entropy to the equation, so that they both cancel each othergenerating constant universal entropy.

There is little evidence beyond this theoretical model. For example, inferring negative evolutionary entropy from the evolution of organisms on Earth, an open and non-isolated system, raises obvious questions.

For now, the truth is that we have no conclusive evidence that we are living in a simulation. Wopston’s work also includes imaginary experiments that we might one day be able to conduct to test his ideas. Meanwhile, the idea of ​​modeling still belongs to the realm of science fiction.

From Plato’s Cave to the present day, the idea that the world we perceive is not an entity, but rather a reflection of reality, has evolved. However, it remains impossible to demonstrate that the real world is intangible to us.

In Hatak | We do not live in the Matrix: according to theoretical physics, we are not in a computer-simulated reality.

Image | This isEngineering