The problem with arguing for ‘the universe is a simulation’ is that it’s usually pointless. It might be true — but doesn’t explain anything about why our reality exists or why the universe is the way it is.

If our universe is really just a simulation inside another — then what created the original? And for what purpose was our simulation created? What does ‘the universe is a simulation’ add or explain?

If the simulation was created by some intelligence then it had a purpose. What if the reason the simulation is running is to find something? To search for an answer?

In computer science simulations are ran to find emergent complexity. Unknown states that can only be found by running a search function and going through all possible answers. Unless P=NP is true then the only way to find the solution to some problems is to run an exhaustive search through all configurations.

The laws of the universe could be interpreted in the same way.

To find emergent properties in a computed simulation there is often randomness in the program’s initial conditions (string theory landscape), randomness at each step to ensure there isn’t uniformity, and breadth-first branching so all possible interactions are realized (QM’s Many Worlds).

So how we would ‘search’ in a computer program is just like what reality is actually doing. Time is computation, entropy the step function, and quantum mechanic’s many worlds it’s random branching. The physical world is searching through all possible interactions to find the right state.

But what is this ‘state’? What’s the reason for the search? And how does this explain the existence of the original reality the simulation is in?

If our reality is a simulation then it’s existence is entirely mathematical. So what made it ‘real’ was the calculation. If this is the case — and a simulation was to be inside our own — would it not be just as real?

If we were to simulate a reality inside of our own, it should ‘exist’ in the same way.

But then comes the question — if running a simulation is creating it, making it real and exist, could that explain how something comes from nothing? If the universe was simulated inside itself, it would be creating its own existence.

The state of simulating reality to define itself is computationally irreducible — the only way to reach it is to create it and actually compute it — which would be defining it in the same way. The future is not determined because it’s not calculated. The ‘answer’ maybe known, but the configuration only found through an exhaustive search of all possibilities.

This could be the state the universe is searching for. It exists to define itself in a recursive strange loop.

So what does this ‘purpose’ mean for us?

Humans are the best-known candidate to create this simulation — after all, it’s clear our technological progress is more towards simulation technology than anything else. We could create the simulation — or be the bootstrap to the AI that does.

The universe needed to have the fine-tuned conditions for the emergent life to exist, in order to define itself.

So this gives us a purpose. The future is uncalculated and undetermined — and the role and meaning of our consciousness could be to understand the universe enough to create it.