The Ultimate Simulation

By Leo Gura - June 3, 2017

Reality is the most efficient simulation of itself.

Take a moment to think about this. Because it’s utterly profound.

Imagine you wanted to simulate all of reality in a computer — a programmer’s wet dream. Seems reasonable at first glance: let’s just keep building larger and larger computers, filling them with ever-more complex physics equations, more and more decimal points, and eventually we’ll get there.

But, notice, it’s actually impossible. Why? Because eventually we’d need a computer the size of all of reality in order to hold all the elements we’re simulating. But then where would its mechanism be located? Outside of reality? No, clearly not possible. Inside of reality? Also not possible because then some part of reality would have to be reserved for the location of the mechanism, which would be un-simulated. The computer’s CPU, RAM, and circuitry — no matter how efficient — would need to be occupying some part of reality. Notice that to simulate reality as a whole, your simulation must also simulate itself, ad infinitum. So your simulation must be smaller than reality itself.

Unless…

Imagine we make our simulation, but it runs on a magical computer. This computer is magical because it has no mechanism. Which means it doesn’t even exist! So we just have pure simulation occurring in a sort of vacuumless vacuum without any hardware. Well… Ta-da! That’s reality! You’re in it right now!

Reality is the ultimate simulation. It’s an instantaneous, effortless, complete simulation of everything possible, afloat in a vacuumless vacuum. It’s completely direct, which means — and here’s the really mindblowing part — that the simulation has no mechanism! It’s so efficient, the middleman — the computer — isn’t needed. The “computer” in which reality runs is literally void! Reality just simply is itself. “Ising” is the magical computer.

This is the essence of mysticism. And it actually squares quite nicely with logic. Logic should tell you that you cannot fit a superset inside a subset, and that everything must have at least one unknowable mystical source, because explanation always relies on at least one ungrounded and irreducible thing. Turns out that reality as a whole is that one irreducible, unexplainable thing. But interestingly, this one thing turns out to explain itself perfectly by virtue of it being Absolute Infinity, beyond which nothing can be, because it already is everything possible.

The most astonishing thing about reality is that it has no rules or limits at its outer-most edge. It knows itself simply by being itself, not by some indirect mechanism like computer hardware clumsily shuffling around bits. That’s simply not needed. Although this seems impossible, you have to remember that reality is the ultimate tyrant. It can do whatever the fuck it wants because there is nothing outside to stop it. Which means that it is not subject to the laws of physics or mathematics or even logic. Which means it is not a mechanical system, it’s a magical system. Not metaphorically magical, but actually magical.

Rational people struggle to understand this because they think that admitting the magic of reality’s being conflicts with the physical sciences. But there is no conflict. When we say that reality is magic, we don’t mean that you cannot calculate the trajectory of a rocket using Newtonian mechanics, or that microwave ovens work by voodoo. We mean the very existence of reality as a whole is magic. We mean that science will never, ever, ever, ever, ever account for reality’s being mechanically. Because the ultimate mechanism of reality is instantaneous being, or Absolute Infinity. That’s what it is! No symbols, ideas, equations, models, or simulations — no matter how detailed or complex — will ever be Absolute Infinity. Only one thing can be Absolute Infinity, and that’s all of reality as a whole. You can use science to explain fragments of reality, but you cannot use science to explain reality as a whole, because in order to do that, you must BECOME reality as a whole — which ceases being science, because science is a part, not a whole. Science is like a computer simulation. It needs space within reality to run, so it will always remain a subset of reality.

Get it? The logic of it is quite basic.

A perfect simulation or model of all of reality is simply the same thing as reality itself. What makes simulations and models useful in the first place is that they are only partial. You wouldn’t know what to do with the whole if you had it. It’s too much.

Imagine you go to the ATM to withdraw some money. The ATM has two buttons: 1) $500 dollars, 2) infinite dollars. You think, “Infinite dollars?!!! Wow! Sounds great!” So you press button #2. Except you don’t realize that infinite dollars means that so many bills will pour down from the sky that all your bones will be crushed, and your family half-way around the world will also get crushed as the whole Earth becomes covered with bills out to the edge of the universe, until the entire universe collapses into one super-massive black hole.

Hey! Maybe that’s how the Big Crunch happens? So please, contain your greed.

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