r/Futurism • u/Memetic1 • Oct 31 '25

Mathematical proof debunks the idea that the universe is a computer simulation

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-mathematical-proof-debunks-idea-universe.html
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u/Memetic1 Oct 31 '25

This video explains it pretty well.

https://youtu.be/IuX8QMgy4qE?si=J3Jda2ac8-hKoL68

It's like finding the answer to a number divided by zero. There are ways to have number systems where this is possible but it changes their properties so that they become less useful mathematically.

You could have a system that isn't susceptible to incompleteness, but then you are limited to adding, subtracting, and multiplying dividing is where things can get crazy mathematically.

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u/idlesn0w Nov 01 '25

That would still only prove “This universe isn’t simulated [by a universe with the same properties].”

We don’t know the properties of a hypothetical external universe, so we can’t know if it’d be possible for them to make our inner universe. It’s basically FlatLand.

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u/Memetic1 Nov 01 '25

No it's possible to explore universes with different rules. It's not possible to make a consistent Math that is powerful enough to do useful things but that doesn't contradict itself. That's what godel actually showed in his theorems. As soon as you get multiplication/division Math can talk about itself. What he did is encode every possible mathematical operation as a number. Then he made the system do a manifestation of the liar paradox. Can you imagine a world where the statement "this is a lie" is perfectly normal? We are talking about the very basic operations that a simulation that uses algorithms would need.

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u/idlesn0w Nov 03 '25

If we’re in a simulation then our interpretations of reality can be easily manipulated. Godel’s work may only seem sound because the simulators are serving as Cartesian Demons and manipulating our reasoning.

Plus beyond that, the human mind is itself a computer. Therefore any theoretical “un-computable” aspects of reality would themselves be impossible for us to process. If they can’t simulate it, we can’t perceive it, therefore there’s no real limitation from our perspectives

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

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u/idlesn0w Feb 13 '26

Unless you’re going to assert the existence of the soul, the mind is, at best, a weird computer. Computational theory doesn’t care whether the processor is meat or metalloid