Recently I stumbled over hacker-extraordinaire (unlocked iPhone and PS3) Geohot’s talk, discussing the Simulated-Universe-Hypothesis. While taking more of a philosophical standpoint similar to Elon Musk, he mentioned something that got me thinking:

If you want to find exploits in a game, you have to look at the edge cases. Youtube: “Jailbreaking the Simulation with George Hotz”

Wave-Particle-Duality in Molecules

We all know the double-slit-experiment, which reveals wave or particle properties, depending on the experimental setup. Recently it was discovered that not only light can have both these properties, but also atoms and even entire molecules.

So we are no longer just talking about electromagnetic waves behaving weird, but actual solid matter that you can touch and feel.

Even the mere possibility of being able to know which slit the molecule passes through is enough to wipe out the interference pattern. Nature; Physics World: “Wave Particle Duality seen in Carbon 60 molecule”

This experiment, has proven that matter “knows” somehow where the previous molecule landed, where the next one will land, and to top it off whether it is being measured or observed. Something that was previously only attributed to electromagnetic waves and in the mind of many people still is.

Culling and LOD

So what has that to do with the Simulated Universe? In my opinion, this could hint at matter being only “rendered” to full fledged atoms, when it is accessed in a certain way.

Possible similarities between modern game design and the Wave-Particle Duality.

Similar processes, called Culling and LOD, are used to optimize performance in modern games. In a nutshell, culling is the process of rendering only objects that are in the field-of-view, without regarding the distance. LOD or level-of-detail, is the process of switching objects dependent on the camera’s distance: low-polygon models or even 2D sprites for when you are far away; HD 3D models when you are close. When implemented correctly both processes happen without the player ever realizing they happened.

However, it could also “just” mean that our understanding of matter is fundamentally flawed. And maybe that a “Theory of Everything” is on the horizon to finally bring together the quantum world and “makro” physics.