OK.. I never really subscribed to the simulation hzpothesis simply because, to me, it seems a lot like some sort of a religious explanation ( it wasn't a "God" but a Programmer- thatz created our universe) .. although, ffrom the start, I could see why , some rather intelligent people ( and much better at physics than I am) got rather interested in the concept.
Yet, rather recently, I was doing some thought experiments and an I had an idea which might explain how a simulation like that could be put into practice with some use of quantum mechanics ... let me try and lay it out:
some proponents of the simulation hypotheses clam that anyone running this particular simulation might not need the vast ammounts of processing power that is needed to keep runing a simulation of a universe and everything that is within it. Instead, they ( It!!) might have chosen a technique which is well known to video-game porgrammers, meaning that at no time during the simualtion does the computer deal with the entire universe- instead, it only renders what is visible to the PC ( player character) at any given moment, while everything else is a compresed blur- untill the "player" decides to turn it's gaze towards that "part" of the simulated universe... the best thing about this is that the PC does not know ( and has no way of knowing) that their entire universe consists of only what they are observing at any given moment
A number of scientists working in various fields, from genetics to quantum physics say that at some, basic level, they ran into these bult in "equations" which , somehow, perfectly fit what we know as binary code programming- and for now there is no decent explanation on how/why they are there... which, again, gives a bit more of a boost to the simulation hypotheses supporters....
As I was playing around with the diea I got thiking about the issue of quantum superposition and the measurement problem... meaning, the idea that in quantum mechanics a particle can exist in two states simultaneously untill it is observed- and that it is the act of obesrvation which decides the state of the particle ( Schrödinger's cat comes to mind) ....
FOr quite some time now, some of the best brains on the planet have been trying to create a proper quantum computer- a super-machine which , if ever made, will be capable of calculation which put t shame the most powerfull and the fastest machines we have today. Although some companies say that they ahve done it- none of the products on the market are real quantum computers, some of them do use a bit of quantum properties, but they mainly simulate the quantum effects ....
But.. a civilisation which is technically evolved enough, will have most likely solved these problems and and used quantum computing in their everyday lives ... in such a scenario, where quantum computing is invloved- running a simulation of a universe would not be that difficult... A simulation which will use the fact that particles can exist in two states at the same time - where a bit has the value of both 1 and 0 at the same time... untill the program needs it to "decide" which value will it take. someone programing a universe in a quantum computer, especially if he ( she, it...) i using the programming trick we mentioned before: rendering only what is visible to the PC at any given time, could take advantage of that principle in order to make the simulation easier to process. Thus keeping all the bits in an undefinite state ( with a value of both 1 and 0 at the same time) untill the PC turns it's attention towards them, in which case they "set" in a certain state for as long as they are being observed by the PC and going back to their original ( dual) state the moent they are not being observed any more... So, if we are running around within a simulation of a universe- that simulation is most likely using these principles to keep functioning ( in combination with pre-set parameters which we know as laws of physics)
Truth is that at the moent I have no way of doing the calculations ( or observations) needed to prove or disprove the idea... so, if anyone that knows more than I do about the subject has too much free time on their hands, it might be fun to try an dfigure out how can this idea be tested