Book review: The Simulated Multiverse, by Rizwan Virk
I have been reading an advance copy of “The Simulated Multiverse: An MIT Computer Scientist Explores Parallel Universes, The Simulation Hypothesis, Quantum Computing and the Mandela Effect” (2021), by Rizwan Virk. The book will be published on October 15.
The book follows and elaborates upon Virk’s previous book “The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game” (2019).
I reviewed “The Simulation Hypothesis” and gave it five stars. See also my book “Tales of the Turing Church” [*]. For those unfamiliar with the simulation hypothesis, it is the idea that our reality is a simulation computed in a higher level of reality. In simpler words, the world is some kind of game universe and we are characters in the game. Virk’s book traces the history of the simulation hypothesis and outlines its implications.
Reviewing “The Simulation Hypothesis,” Ben Goertzel said that the simulation hypothesis is “mostly bullshit,” but interesting and valuable nonetheless “as a pointer toward other, deeper ideas.” The universe could be embedded in a broader universe, “thus being in some sense a ‘simulation’ of this greater containing space,” said Ben. I agree (I almost always agree with Ben), and I have sketched possible bridges between the simulation hypothesis and my view of reality [*].
Analogies with computer games help make sense of issues in fundamental physics, such as the limit speed of light, quantum entanglement, and quantum collapse. For example, it doesn’t make much sense to waste resources to compute something that nobody is looking at. Better to compute it just in time when somebody is looking. But perhaps this is more than an analogy and the universe is really some kind of computer game? In a simulated universe, time travel to the past is a rewind of the simulation to a previous state.
I think “The Simulation Hypothesis” is a great work of popular scientific speculation with spiritual implications. Virk says, and I agree, that the simulation hypothesis “bridges the gap between religion and science in ways that weren’t possible before,” and “may just be the answer that provides a single framework, a coherent model that brings together science and religion.”
This is, I believe, something that today’s world very much needs. I never miss a chance to emphasize that the simulation hypothesis, inspired by technology, is essentially equivalent to religion.
In “The Simulated Multiverse” Virk elaborates upon his previous book and introduces a very intriguing twist: it’s not just one timeline that is simulated, but many.
If you prefer to read the book without spoilers, stop at the picture below and think of “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Borges.
Please subscribe to the new Turing Church website turingchurch.com!
If you don’t mind spoilers, keep reading.
It’s a multiverse, stupid
Far from living in a single universe, “we live in a complex, interconnected network of multiple timelines,” Virk says. He outlines alternative multiverse concepts that have been proposed by physicists, including the multiverse of inflationary cosmology and the higher-dimensional multiverse of string theory, then zeroes in on the “Many Worlds” quantum multiverse of Everett & co.
Virk explains these concepts in a simple, straightforward way that everyone can understand. Of course, the level of detail is coarse and there are some omissions and some imprecise explanations, which is the price to pay for readability. No doubt some pedantic scientists will criticize Virk, but my message to them is, first write a good science book for the masses, and then feel free to speak.
And this is a good (a very good) science book for the masses. Along the way, Virk touches related topics in physics, information theory, cellular automata, evolutionary computing, and quantum computing.
This book is full of references to popular culture, especially to science fiction books, films, and TV shows. Again, some critics will say that this is a minus, but to me it is a plus.
Philip Dick is the hero of this book. In a legendary speech given in 1977 at a science fiction convention in Metz, titled “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others” (the text of the speech is published in the collection “The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings”), Dick painted a vivid picture of simultaneous realities that start and stop, split and recombine.
Dick suspected that agents operating beyond time intervene in history to spin-off new timelines, kill unwanted timelines, and merge timelines. If a timeline is stopped and merged into another, some persons stranded in the new timeline could retain some memories of the old one. Dick said that he was one of these persons, and some of his novels were based on memories from other timelines.
This could explain why, at times, significant numbers of people seem to remember a different history (“Mandela effect”). Perhaps they remember another timeline?
Virk translates Dick’s intuitions into the language of contemporary physics and computer science. “The universe spawns multiple timelines as multiple processes that are each exploring slightly different paths,” says Virk. The universe is constantly “creating multiple timelines, branching and merging and pruning.”
Why? Because the universe is “looking for better outcomes,” just like our evolutionary computing simulations explore networks of alternative paths to find good paths, where “good” depends on the purpose of the simulation. The good paths are retained, but the others are pruned because it doesn’t make sense to waste computing resources on useless computations.
Why doesn’t the universe just choose the best path instead of computing many paths? Because there’s no way to predict the outcome of a path without running the computation (computational irreducibility), and therefore the universe runs the computation for many paths.
In Everett’s quantum multiverse, everything that could happen does happen in one or another timeline. But in Virk’s cost-effective simulated multiverse, unwanted timelines are pruned and only good timelines are retained. So Virk ends up with the same “thin multiverse” concept that I sketch in my book [*] (see here and here).
What about you and me? We could be like the bots in World of Warcraft, non-playing characters (NPC) fully controlled by the simulation algorithms. But we could also be like the real players that run their characters in World of Warcraft or other role-playing games (RPG). If we are NPC bots we have no real free will (we only have a delusion of free will), but if we are RPG players we do have at least some free will. And perhaps “we are the Programmers, to some extent, all making choices.”
The last chapter of the book outlines spiritual and religious implications of the simulated multiverse theory. According to Virk, the metaphors used by religions should be updated, and the simulation hypothesis is the latest update. Some religious groups like the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Virk says, are already reformulating their theology in the simulation framework.
Read both of Virk’s books. The simulation metaphor is a product of our time, and will likely seem naive in the future. But this is true of all metaphors. I have argued that, beyond its naive aspects, the simulation hypothesis is a coherent and useful mental picture of reality that allows science-minded people to hope in life after death [*]. So if the simulation hypothesis floats your boat, hold it in your mind as a complement to (or a replacement of) traditional religion.
Q/A with Rizwan Virk
I contacted Virk and asked him a couple of questions:
GP: You mention the New God Argument of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, which is explicitly based on a simulation framework. Could this lead to a reformulation of Christianity? Should it? What about Islam?
RW: Well the major religions, in this case we are talking about Christianity and Islam, have always adapted and incorporated local beliefs, such as local saints across Europe or south Asia. There have also been splinter groups and new branches when they came to new lands (LDS [Mormons] and the many evangelical sects being a primary example in North America). Religions in general have always adopted new technologies as tools, ranging from the printing press to the radio to the TV to the internet, though it is often the newer sects that are more open to experimenting with technologies, then those are taken up by the mainstream part of the religion usually years later. You can see it in online prayer groups over zoom and prayer apps and even virtual reality churches, though these are relatively new.
The New God Argument [link] is one attempt by a sub-group to adapt to the awareness of technology and the simulation as a metaphor in our lives. I think for a lot of younger people, the idea of living in a simulation will make more sense than angels with wings or a bodily resurrection or the afterlife, so I think as a matter of course, they will incorporate these beliefs into their framework. Otherwise, as technologies get pervasive in our lives, other countries may see the same thing that happens in the US, where “spiritual but not religious” is actually the fastest growing category. The simulation approach (more specifically the RPG version) allows traditional religions an opportunity to “catch up” with modern believers and non-believers.
GP: What concept of life after death do you offer those who need one?
RW: Well in the RPG version of simulation, you think of our current life as only an avatar that is running through a shared multiplayer game. In this model, the “player” has always been outside the simulation. It becomes a question of unhooking, like Neo did in the Matrix, and the “afterlife” in this view is the soul ending this game. I don’t claim to give specifics of what the players look like, but I get the sense that they can play this game or other games and that there is a lot of knowledge and wisdom that we are denied while in the game, that will make sense when we “wake” up. Or we might be rewarded by playing other “games” which are much less controversial and easier than the current Earth-based game complete with its struggles and setbacks. Different views of the afterlife presented in different religions may just be another layer of simulation depending on a person’s beliefs and mental states.
[*] My book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).
Please buy my books, and/or donate to support other Turing Church projects.
Please subscribe to the new Turing Church website turingchurch.com!
Cover picture from Wikimedia Commons, picture from Wikimedia Commons..
