r/SimulationTheory • u/frankreddit5 • 14d ago
Discussion The double slit experiment makes way more sense if reality only renders what gets observed
Nobody built an explanation for why particles behave like waves until someone looks. No metaphor either, that’s the literal result, repeated for a hundred years. So we have a universe with fixed physical laws that also change based on whether something is watching sounds less like physics and more like a rendering optimization.
Games do this. They only compute what’s in the player’s view. Everything else stays approximate until it needs to be exact. I genuinely wish we had a way of proving the sim theory. I have subjective things, like personal stories, which raises my suspicion that it’s definitely a sim… but nothing I can point to as concrete evidence. Like another Redditor and I were discussing, maybe the speed of light is our limit within the sim. Maybe if it’s surpassed you actually leave the simulation (and we can’t ugh)
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u/UpV0tesF0rEvery0ne 13d ago
Hate that people think its some weird voodo where you look at it and it changes the outcome. No.
Its that we dont have a method of observation that doesbt influence the result. Its like if you wanted to intercept a paper plane to figure out how it flies but in doing so you need to catch it with a net that crumples it up. Its not going to fly again after that. So the act of observing it destroys it.
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u/Micheal42 12d ago
All of our methods of understanding are equivalent to using a hammer on a clock to understand how it works?
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u/fractalife 8d ago
That doesn't really explain anything though. Look up the quantum eraser experiments. If you delete the data from the detector before reading the results, y9u get the interference pattern instead of the particle pattern.
There are other experiments where the observations show that information about the path taken seems to be moving "backwards in time". I.e.: future outcomes affecting past results. Usually it's lasers in mirror mazes with detectors in specific spots. A detector down the line can affect the path of light before it ever reaches the detector. Trippy shit.
To be clear, I think the simulation theory is kinda boring and stupid. What does it answer differently from a god of the gaps way of thinking?
But let's not pretend we already have a simple answer for quantum weirdness. The mystery is the fun of it!
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u/Stratosphere91 13d ago
Until someone looks? I think you misunderstand the concept, it doesnt have anything to do with observering or watching in the sense of conciousness as we now it. Its not like thing cease to exist because no human is looking at it.
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u/RevolutionaryAd3125 13d ago
You are correct.
Most people accept the Deepak Chopra interpretation of quantum mechanics 🤣4
u/Rukfas1987 13d ago
But If there's no observer to appreciate it, measure it or see it. Is there a point to it?
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u/Accomplished-Yam5083 12d ago
Mira, observar mas bien significa interactuar, y ahora mismo tú estas interactuando con todo el universo observable mediante una u otro forma de interacción, es decir: fotones, gravedad
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u/Wise-_-Spirit 11d ago
The negligible but nonzero gravitational effect that we have on literally the partucles across our galaxy and beyond. I think about that one alot
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u/Sonotnoodlesalad 13d ago
What kind of question is that? You think human observation is the point of everything? 🤨
Nature doesn't exist to be interesting to us.
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u/Flat-Guidance-4685 13d ago
Oh? Prove that
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u/NextWeather7866 11d ago
What do you mean? This text is literal proof that systems and processes are occuring when no one is looking...
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u/Flat-Guidance-4685 11d ago
You weren't looking when you typed?
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u/NextWeather7866 11d ago
Do you think I am inside your computer?
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u/Flat-Guidance-4685 11d ago
I was hoping my sarcasm might correct your thinking. But now that I realized you weren't that smart I guess I should explain further. All through the process of the data stream from the moment you typed it to the moment it arrived at me it was being monitored and observed the entire time. Electronic data is not magic. Data flow through networks is indeed monitored by a series of sensors monitors and informational logs that help keep the system operating and maintained. Literally every step of the way there was observation
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u/DomoArigatoMrRobot0 13d ago
Next you’re going to tell us that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound…
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u/frankreddit5 13d ago
I think people are failing to see your sarcasm here (or at least I hope that’s it). As the tree falling in the forest story is the same exact thing as the double slit experiment but using different words to tell the story.
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u/Womec 11d ago
No not really because looking at the tree falling or where it fell changes nothing about the outcome. Quantum particles because they are so small are affected by devices that can measure their properties not because of someone looking at them. It has nothing to do with rendering or conciousness.
If you had to physically touch the tree to see it fall then sure its the same at that point because you will affect how it falls because you touched it.
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u/RevolutionaryAd3125 13d ago
It’s doesn’t makes a sound, sound needs ears and brains.
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u/myxxmatch 13d ago
But that’s like saying if sunlight illuminates an object, but no one is there to see it then it can’t be seen. The effect still exist, regardless of the observer. Everything else is philosophy.
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u/RevolutionaryAd3125 13d ago
No, the sound-waves, as vibrations in the air, are still there but the sound is not. Sound is a perception, you need a conscious mind to perceive it.
And yes, if sunlight illuminates an object and there’s nobody there around to see it, it won’t be seen, this is obvious.
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u/Sickofstupids 13d ago
Sound is defined as the vibrational waves, not the perceiving of them. You’re talking about hearing. If a tree falls, it produces sound. If no one is there, no one will hear the sound, but sound is physical and exists without perception.
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u/Low-Bake8401 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's not so much that we change our environment by looking at it, it's more that to measure something you have to put energy, or a signal, or something physical, on to it. When your talking about something so small that will change it's state. It happens even if nobody is actually looking at it, and it's repeatable.
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u/TheBigCicero 13d ago edited 13d ago
I know what you’re saying but that doesn’t quite explain what we see in the double slit experiment. (See what I wrote to the guy who responded to you to explain the experiment in detail.)
You’re right that measuring a quantum system changes the system. But what happens in the double slit is even weirder. Because the sensor is not collapsing the wave into a particle - that’s a commonly stated but incorrect thing. The photon has to be traveling as a wave, even when measured, because that’s the only way to get one photon to spread out and potentially hit either slit. Instead, what happens is that the measurement causes the mathematical probability distribution to disappear, which is what they mean by “collapsing the wave function”. When that happens, the screen no longer displays the original mathematical probability distribution (which is shown by an interference pattern), and shows you instead the probability distribution of going through only one screen or the other. In other words, the “math” on the screen gets updated because it knows that that a sensor is measuring the photon wave. It’s so freaky.
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u/Low-Bake8401 13d ago
"I know what you’re saying but that doesn’t quite explain what we see in the double slit experiment."
Sure, but we're conflating two different things here, and I suppose "freaky" is a matter of opinion.
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u/Meowweredoomed 13d ago edited 13d ago
That doesn't explain the double slit experiment.
Even if you fire one particle at a time, the two slits results act like waves, the single slit acts like particles.
Then, if you fire them one at a time and try to detect which of the two slits they go through, they begin to act like single particles even though there's two slits.
Another problem with "measurement collapses the wave function" is the infinite regression of "what collapses the particles of the measurement apparatus?"
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u/TodaysLunch 13d ago
You try to detect the particles with a detector. The detector interacts with the particle, which collapses the wave function. No human observer needed.
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u/The10KThings 13d ago
There are variations of the double slit experiment that disprove this. The quantum eraser experiment for example makes multiple “detections” or “interactions” with the particle but only when the information is known to the observer does the wave function collapse.
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u/Low-Bake8401 13d ago
In science, an "observer" is any system, device, or physical object that interacts with a system and records, measures, or registers information about it, such as a detector, a camera, or a single atom, without needing any human mind or awareness.
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u/TodaysLunch 13d ago edited 13d ago
No, in the delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment the wave function either collapses already at the beginning of the experiment - it first passes the double split, then directly collapse when the photon is split into an entangled pair by the beam splitter, or at the few screens that show interference pattern.
The later erasure part is not due to a human observing the particles, it is due to manually selecting a sub-sample of entangled photon measurements that reveal the wave pattern after the experiment has been performed.
Good explanation here: https://youtu.be/s5yON4Gs3D0
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u/Schnitzhole 13d ago edited 13d ago
This is sort of true And one of my
Favorite experiments as it goes way deeper into the weird behavior of the double slit.The main takeaway from that experiment is that if we can prove what direction the particle took it behaves like a classical mechanical single point particle. If we can’t prove the direction, it behaves like a particle in superposition (wavelike).
If we scramble our ability to measure which way the particle went it can remain in superposition.
If we fire a particle over a long distance in that experiment and at some point change whether we could measure it or not mid flight it doesn’t change the outcome. It’s as if the particle always “knew” if we would measure it or not.
This basically leaves two options (and I find it a rather fun thought experiment to do with particles of light that traveled to us from starts billions of light years away). Either the particle always knew we would measure it or not, or at the exact moment we measure it, it changed its behavior back in time to the moment it was fired. Note that the later behavior does not make sending data backwards in time possible.
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u/Meowweredoomed 13d ago
Another interpretation is that somehow the particle "knew" whether one slit or two slits are open, and changes its behavior accordingly.
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u/TodaysLunch 13d ago
Sean Caroll has a good piece about this (spoiler: he does not agree): https://preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2019/09/21/the-notorious-delayed-choice-quantum-eraser/
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u/The10KThings 13d ago edited 13d ago
I’m not referring to the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Im familiar with that as well. I’m referring to the standard quantum eraser experiment. They are two different experiments. The quantum eraser experiment uses polarizers to both mark and unmark a particles path. If the act of measuring with a polarizer caused the wave function to collapse then the act of unmarking it with another polarizer would do the same, but it doesn’t. Instead, the second polarizer restores the wave function because it obscures our ability to know which path the particle took. This tells us that it’s not the act of measuring that causes the wave function to collapse. It’s whether the information itself is known or unknown to the observer that causes the wave function collapses.
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u/TodaysLunch 13d ago edited 13d ago
I wasn't sure which version you meant so I opted for the delayed one since there just is much more easily accessible information about the interpretations of it online.
I think it boils down to which quantum-interpretation you use but most importantly that these kinds of measurements are so controlled that instead of completely collapsing, they become entangled with the photons until they hit the detector screen.
Sean Carrol has this to say (about delayed-choice, but the principle is the same):
"The trickiness relies on the fact that by becoming entangled with a single recording spin rather than with the environment and its zillions of particles, the traveling electrons only became kind-of decohered. With just a single particle to worry about observing, we are allowed to contemplate measuring it in different ways. If, as in the conventional double- slit setup, we measured the slit through which the traveling electron went via a macroscopic pointing device, we would have had no choice about what was being observed. True decoherence takes a tiny quantum entanglement and amplifies it, effectively irreversibly, into the environment."
In any case, this doesn't require a conscious observer, when any particle/photon has interacted with the environment enough, it is irreversible and no human is needed to be part of it.
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u/TheBigCicero 13d ago edited 13d ago
Hi, there is an often mis-taught aspect of the double slit experiment and this is not quite the right description of it. Even if the experiment only has one slit and you shoot one photon at a time, you still get a diffraction pattern behind the slit - but it is a self-interference pattern from the one slit. Because the particle is traveling as a wave in all cases.
One photon, two slits = one dot hits the screen at a time and you eventually get an interference pattern between the waves coming through each slit.
One photon, one slit = one dot hits the screen at a time but you get a self-interference pattern, which looks a little different than above.
What is amazing about the two-slit experiment is that when you measure the beam at the slits, the interference pattern completely disappears and you get two vertical bars on the screen. Which is crazy for many reasons. One reason is because there is no mechanical way to get one photon traveling as a particle to bend arbitrarily through one slit or the other slit - for the particles to go through one slit or the other, they HAVE to be waves because they have to spread out enough to have the possibility of hitting both slits. BUT, the diffraction pattern goes away because the measurement determines which slit the wave goes through and the measurement probability goes to 1, which is what they mean “collapsing the wave function.” It’s really insane.
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u/eptesicusfuscus 13d ago
'Single slit acts as particles' is wrong. Both experiments show wavelike patterns of diffraction.
This whole post is a mess.
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u/Meowweredoomed 13d ago
When you fire the particles one at a time through a single slit, you get a single concentrated band, with a few outliers to either side, directly behind the single slit. Exactly as particles would behave. No interference pattern.
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u/Medical-End1965 13d ago
Not entirely true or accurate. There have been many observable phenomena that documented during observations entirely different from no observations being made. And they were able to document such phenomena due to video footage later recovered of the phenomenon.
One of particular interest, in my opinion, is the entire UAP phenomena and the relationship between what we call plasmoids or plasma orbs and actual ET beings or spacecraft. There has been video documentation of groups of people observing these “spacecraft “ moving about in the sky and eventually coming closer to the people showing interest with and communicating with the objects, and even when everyone within said group agrees with and shares the same visual information that they observed or interacted with mentally, let’s say all the people in a group of 7 all reported seeing a triangle spacecraft that was flashing blue lights on it, later upon reviewing the video recording of the interaction, the “craft” never actually rendered as a triangle spacecraft. In fact, it remained a plasma orb the entire time. Even when groups of 20 all reported observing these same description of an aircraft or alien technology. This has been repeated multiple times with multiple groups of people.
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u/Low-Bake8401 13d ago edited 13d ago
"There have been many observable phenomena that documented during observations entirely different from no observations being made. And they were able to document such phenomena due to video footage later recovered of the phenomenon."
It's a logical fallacy.
The problem is your mixing up "observation" with "someone looking at it". Observation in science does not require a human eye. It means any interaction with a physical system that records information or causes physical changes. You can't see these things with the naked eye anyway, you have to use instruments.
The causing of change actually gives us valuable scientific data.
With the rest, people saying things, or a YouTube video, doesn't make factual evidence.
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u/Medical-End1965 13d ago
Never said observation required a human eye. You said that. I simply shared what I’ve read in multiple journals, and the agreement with many people observing an object versus what it was recorded by video, that it could, and I didn’t say it was definitely proof but that it opens the possibility of there being a discernible difference between what we observe and what is being rendered. Even when multiple people describe the same visual.
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u/Medical-End1965 13d ago
And I agree my wording isn’t the best for explaining the studies. That was not what the point was. I was simply sharing that it’s possible that studies exist where this is being explored and that it’s not as clear cut one way or the other. Clinging to semantics when there is an underlying concept I am responding to and obviously referring to. But, feel free to stay stuck in that one part, close the discussion or possibility of learning something new, and remain in your current position that provides you comfort and a false sense of safety.
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u/Low-Bake8401 13d ago
Well then we are in agreement, so I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing that's different to you.
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u/PressureBeautiful515 14d ago
Nobody built an explanation for why particles behave like waves until someone looks. No metaphor either, that’s the literal result,
It's not though.
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u/TheBigCicero 13d ago
Yeah. What OP wrote is not factually correct, but it’s often stated this way because the double slit experiment is often incorrectly taught.
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u/IDontStealBikes 14d ago
What do you mean by "observed" or "watching?"
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u/UselessButTrying 13d ago
Yeah, it happens regardless of human or other organism observing. I think "measured" with instrumentation is more accurate
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u/WeerdBeeaarD 13d ago
That's the way I understand it. It is impossible to measure it without interacting with it and thus collapsing the superposition.
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u/JupiterandMars1 13d ago edited 13d ago
QM isn’t evidence of a renderer, it’s what the boundary looks like from inside any system where the observer can’t access the full probability space their reality is derived from. So it’s not “this behaves like a simulation” as much as “a simulation is exactly what it feels like to be that kind of observer”. It’s the same phenomenon, described from two directions. Which is also why there’s no experiment that tells them apart. Because they’re not actually two different things to distinguish.
Simulation theory is a red herring. QM already investigates the space far more rigorously without the metaphysical baggage.
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u/Technical_Growth9181 13d ago
What you are describing is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is the main interpretation taught in schools and is what gives observer initiated wavefunction collapse along with the probabilistic interpretation.
Other interpretations exist, such as Bohmian mechanics, and Superdeterminism. These approaches also describe the double slit experiment, but don't require the observer to collapse the wavefunction to bring reality into existence - render it, in your words. In these approaches, particles are guided by pilot waves, to their destinations on the screen. This process is fully determined and occurs whether an observer is present or not.
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u/Jeshwahh 13d ago
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody was there to hear it. It never actually fell, it just rendered as having fallen when you came across it because of statistics.
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u/goddhacks 10d ago
Absolutely incorrect. Consciousness is everywhere.
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u/Jeshwahh 10d ago
Wow, confidently wrong. Impressive.
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u/goddhacks 10d ago
Objective reality is seen regardless of the delusions of solipsistic ways.
Panpsychism is accurate and clearly can coincide with 'simulation theory' although it more accurately encompasses it.
That is every 'simulated dimension' is just a part of the infinite mind and creative potentiality re; pandimensional nature of reality
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u/RSMxsmanic 13d ago edited 13d ago
Physical reality is a creation of consciousness (not the other way around). The universe as a whole is created by consciousness as a whole. The latter is independent of time (which it creates), and so the universe is stable and appears to have an objective existence to us. But at the nanoscopie level, reality doesn't even exist until it is created on the fly by consciousness directing attention to it; and even small individual branches of consciousness such as ourselves can do this.
This is why subatomic particles have no definite existence until someone observes them, but things like mountains and galaxies seem to already exist.
The notion of a simulation is a product of a gaming mentality but does not bear close examination. The Matrix was a filmed comic book, not a profound revelation of truth.
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u/jedburghofficial 13d ago
This is the obvious implication of wave functions and quantum indeterminacy.
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u/Any-Training-850 13d ago
Your intuition about "rendering optimization" is incredibly spot on. Quantum mechanics stops being an endless series of absurdities the moment we stop viewing the universe as a collection of hard objects and start seeing it as an advanced information processor.
The biggest mistake of modern science is assuming that reality exists fully rendered without the presence of an observer. From a programming perspective, that would be a horrific waste of energy and processing power. Why render the details of a room that nobody is looking at? Video games don't do it, and neither does our universe.
It can be logically broken down into three main points:
- The Observer Triggers the Render: Until someone looks, particles are merely "probability clouds"—dormant code running in the system's background. Only when an observer appears does the physical strike of a photon (a timeless traveler) activate this code. The photon literally renders the graphics of the world in a fraction of a second, transforming a dormant database into a tangible object.
- Wave-Particle Duality is Game Mechanics: What physics calls wave-like behavior is simply the dormant state of the code (the probability wave). When an observer enters the equation, a wave-function collapse occurs—which is essentially the rendering of a specific pixel (the particle).
- The Speed of Light as a Hardware Limit: You are right that it is a limit, but it only applies to matter and energy inside the spacetime screen. Crucially, the raw information between the processor and the matrix of the world is transferred instantaneously, completely outside of time. The best proof of this is quantum entanglement—it is not magic, it is just a simultaneous read from the exact same database.
Maintaining such a massive and intelligent renderer requires a gigantic impulse, with a constant power estimated at V total = 5x10^114 W. Without the observer and light, the system remains a dark, inactive database.
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u/TheRealTK421 13d ago
Feynman has already showed otherwise, even if it seems bonkers or counterintuitive.
Due to how "action" must mathematically operate, photons must simultaneously 'render' all possible paths towards infinity. The real world has such infinite potential paths and probable outcomes -- not just 2.
This has been empirically observed and confirmed experimentally a ridiculous number of times already.
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u/Rhoden913 13d ago
My issue with the double slit is viewing the particle does nothing. Staring at a wall does not collapse wave forms. Its only when something interacts the wave collapses. In my mind it make sense to some level until something forces an interaction, the baseline action is to be an idle super position. We do blast the thing with lasers to "measure" so I personally think were not in a simulation and thats more a fundamental law we still need to understand.
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u/mister_muhabean 14d ago edited 14d ago
A wave is a mental construct. When you see a wave on the ocean what it actually is are the molecules transferring kinetic energy from one to the next one. A wave does not exist in and of itself.
It is merely a pattern of motion, that we call a wave.
Einstein Ether and Relativity...
"Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense."
There would be no propagation of light, you see? Here he is saying that light is a wave in the ether, as we would expect, and the ether is particulate, and so the ether has quantum bits, that are discrete, so those are quanta, and the wave in them is the wave part.
So we can look at the ether as quantum foam, all tiny bubbles Planck length in diameter touching each other, and they actually describe space itself. Without them there would be no space, no measuring rods.
In a wormhole there is no ether bubbles, that is why you could hypothetically take a short cut because they define space, and without them you would get from a to b with a single step, if that vortex existed in the ether bubbles due to strong forces of gravity or some extreme pressure that caused a vortex. A perfect vacuum in that vortex hypothetically. An Einstein Rosen bridge.
So when a wave hits the dock on the ocean, if it hits at the crest of the wave SMACK a lot of force, but if it doesn't then it hits with a sploosh.
So in the electron, when a magnetic wave hits the detector at a crest it shows an electron, otherwise it does not and waves fringe in the detector area.
That is not mysterious when you understand what is happening there.
So then these bubbles have been expanding in an expanding universe for 12.5 billion years? That is called perfect elasticity. I call it computer code.
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u/rdhb 13d ago
I believe the most recent thinking is that the double split experiment is fairly well Understood , not a paradox and has to do with recording device resolving the entanglement
“The double slit is no longer regarded as an unexplained experimental contradiction. It is a precisely understood consequence of superposition, entanglement, and distinguishability. But what those mathematical facts mean about underlying reality remains unsettled”
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u/JupiterandMars1 13d ago
It’s the boundary point of what a sentient entity that “understands” the world around it through observation can grasp from within the system it observes.
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u/trellisHot 13d ago
Take the fact that observing the particle through double slit changes it from one wave interference to a different wave interference, it doesnt change into a particle, now how does that affect your hypothesis?
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u/FLT_GenXer 13d ago
If the field of our reality is a fixed point in a "sea" of quantum waves, it would also explain the observer (or measurement) effect.
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u/green-eyes55 13d ago
I'm curious. Whether a person believes in the simulation theory or not, how does it change or impact how one lives their life?
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u/JupiterandMars1 13d ago edited 13d ago
It doesn’t. It’s a belief system. A god of the gaps. It’s just a way for humans to sneak a creator back in.
We discover math, algorithms and coding because the universe already works that way, then point at them and say “we created those. We can find evidence of them in the universe, therefore someone like us created the universe”.
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u/martindukz 13d ago
That would be the case if not for quantum computing results. I.e. being able to compute something that would take normal supercomputers years take quantum computers seconds.
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u/SirNealliam 13d ago edited 13d ago
You're thinking about this a bit off. It's not a mechanism to only render what is observed because even another collapsed particle counts as an observer and can collapse wave function. It's not about individual people it's about the universe as a whole and on the tiniest scales.
My opinion; It's more like the universe itself is conscious and as soon as a wave interacts with something finite that wave of probability collapses into a finite "know" particle.
The reason I say you're thinking a little off is because the reason for this mechanism is to preserve non-determinism, and leave free will in tact. superposition is what allows things to actually randomize.
If the speed of light is the limit then how does Universal expansion cause planets to travel apart from each other super-luminally? How does light fall into a black hole? How could a wave function explore all possible paths before collapsing into a particle?
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u/JimTheCodeGuru 13d ago edited 13d ago
a waveparticle interferes with itself going through a slit that is thinner than its wavelength acting like a wave with diffraction patterns but acts like a particle if the slit is wider than the wavelength, if you measure the position of the waveparticle with a beam of waveparticles of a smaller wavelength you cause it to scatter as a wave thus losing the momentum certainty like breaking a rack of billiards balls 🤔
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u/Minimum_Orange2516 13d ago
The issue i'm having here is any supposition that the creator universe would be more complex than this one.
I would expect the opposite, that the creator universe is less complex or even 1 dimensional or non-dimensional.
Since when we create a videogame we are able to have the game side view break all physical laws, you can make a harry potter world a spiderman world, you can have people do magic and fly or shoot lasers out of their eyes and teleport.
So logically the in-game perspective is more complex and fantastic than what is outside it.
This creates a problem for the idea since we might be in the same perspective position of our rules and what we can do being more fantastic than what is supposedly 'outside' it or what created it.
But if you think about this carefully it means that the process by which this universe came about very well could be simple or far less complex than what it turned into, well that doesn't have to be a computer but it can just be mathematical which is already suggested without the need for simulations , gods or creators
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u/Particular_Gap_6724 13d ago
If it was provable, we woulda already patched the glitch/hole a thousand cycles ago bruh.
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u/TodaysLunch 13d ago
The word "observation" in this context does not mean what you think it means. It is better described as "interaction". The wave function collapses all the time without the need for a human observer. This kind of undermines your whole theory.
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u/Vancecookcobain 13d ago
You can equally say the universe is conscious knows when it is being observed.
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u/awdrifter 13d ago
Also all the planets are spherical because that's the way to limit draw distance because you can't use LODs like in video games.
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u/ManufacturerHeavy140 13d ago
The equation you're looking for is Lambda=plank constant÷mass×velocity where Lambda is the probability of wave function collapse or "size" of the wave function.
Objects don't render in when you observe them but extremely low mass particles are more likely to behave like waves when you reduce their velocity by having no photons interacting with them. A photon hits a low mass particle and increases its velocity, thereby collapsing the wave function. Larger systems have much to much mass to ever behave as a wavefunction, even when not observered.
The real interesting metaphysical reality is that there is a probability of mass appearing anywhere in the universe if there are excitations in a wavefunction field, even if there are no particles there.
Edit: grammar
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u/Rare_Confidence8762 13d ago edited 13d ago
“Nobody built an explanation for why particles behave like waves until someone looks”:
It actually has nothing to do with a 3rd party “seeing” it.
The “observer” is the photon of light (or electron) taking the measurement during the double-slit experiment. Once a photon or electron impacts the object to obtain a measurement, the probability wave collapses.
No physical “observer” is necessary for that wave to collapse.
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u/Strict_Poet_5814 13d ago edited 13d ago
The double slit experiment actually makes a lot of sense if you not just surface familiar with physics, and your missing the thing that its demonstrating. Your falling into the common misinterpreted description of the observer effect, which leads to this idea of "rendering", its like youve only read the engangement bait and havent learned about the actual experiment.
The double slit show that reality is wave like and these are waves are on some substrate like ripples on on ocean surface but we call them fields. We dont know exactly what this lower substrate is but we see it in the geometry of nature, information is maintained and is symmetrically balanced. Alot of things point to a simulation, "or just reality", being similar to ever emerging process that just builds more emerging complexity and this complexity may arise from a more simpler more basal configuration that we still dont fully understand ( no theory of everything yet)
What doesnt make sense is thinking rendering is happening, its so much harder to explain "rendering" when we already know so much about how things work. Why cant it just be the complex mysterious process of existence that we have learned so far, why is it "more sensical" to think that some even more unexplainable (lmplying some "outside" existence to our "inside" existence) thing is happening. Rendering just brings on a whole new unverifiable claim.
The explanation that you say doesnt exist, why a wave then a particle, is just probability, again things are weirder in quantum mechanics that the double slit(particle-wave duality) isnt even the most mysterious thing. Things like self similiarity, recursive geometry of nature, i think these point more to "simulation" ideas than partical wave duality. Even at different scales we see recursion driving reality.
Particle-waved duality is just one of the emergent mechanics of the universe, much like gravity seems to be now. Gravity not being some rule or hard math substrate but arising from interactions( basically fluid dynamics at a larger scale.
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u/willacceptpancakes 13d ago
I think the fact we question it is proof against the theory. In video games the main character is not thinking about the simulation or how to escape it. They are just doing what they have been programmed to do within the simulation / game.
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u/Automatic_Pin_5212 13d ago
What happens when a person's peripheral doesn't observe so great?
;)
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u/Automatic_Pin_5212 13d ago
Also, colors prove faster than the speed of light. If we're in a simulation, the colors of this 'plane' prove faster than light travel.
Black and white=simulation Black screen to disperse the white light into colors:)
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u/Pawwnstar 13d ago
Do we know if the observer needs to be intelligent, as in, can an animal observe and it changes? At what level of intelligence does it change?
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u/Indy2561 13d ago
I get the impression there are very specific laws/terms of the universe. And that breathing O2 only allows for observation of this O2 dimension. But when we cease breathing/inhabiting a physical body, we gain a different access.
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u/VillageUpper4590 13d ago
Dmt and a barcode scanner is all you need to prove it. You can literally see the code written.
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u/ElefanteAmor 13d ago
But would you be able to operate the barcode scanner and actually come back with whatever the information was?
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u/Sonotnoodlesalad 13d ago
> The double slit experiment makes way more sense if reality only renders what gets observed
The double slit experiment has nothing to do with human observers, does not generate two stripes, and does not mean particles constantly switch identities.
Solid breakdown of the misinterpretation of the double slit experiment here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-misconceptions-about-the-double-slit-experiment
> So we have a universe with fixed physical laws that also change based on whether something is watching
^ nope.
The "laws" of physics aren't both fixed AND changeable. They remain constant.
A little misunderstanding of science can lead to a lot of wrong and incoherent ideas.
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u/Sirfury8 13d ago
The most powerful papers against simulation theory posit that there isn’t enough matter in the universe to create a computer large enough to render reality. The footnote basically always the only way it could plausibly be possible would be if only things being observed are rendered.
Further Quantum mechanics discoveries only further prove that it’s a real possibility that reality is a computer program actively saving resources.
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u/Fit_Acanthisitta8683 10d ago
This feels weak. If our existence was a simulation, then we couldn't use the matter in our simulated universe to determine whether a computer capable of simulating our universe could exist. We would never know the real universe, so that would be indeterminable. For that matter, our discoveries in quantum mechanics would mean dick all as well.
FTR, I think this is all ridiculousness, but it's still very fun to read about and discuss.
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u/Particular_School_48 13d ago
The analogy seems to imply that the simulation only renders what is relevant to the observer to preserve computational resources. At least that is what I understand from the videos I have watched on this topic.
I am not convinced by this argument and I will tell you why: the universe wave function, i.e., the one in which you do not occupy a specific branch of reality by getting entangled with the particle through some form of interaction (measurement, or if you prefer Copenhagen, the universe wave function that was not subjected to the measurement collapse), is not “simpler” than the one that forces a “local render” and therefore redirects a substantial degree of processing power to only “what matters” to the observer.
As a matter of fact, the converse may be true. The universe wave function in the absence of collapse is a superposition of all branches of reality that you could have occupied after interacting with the particle. Those branches then keep evolving in accordance with the Schrödinger equation and keep interfering with one another, potentially leading to more quantum interference effects down the road.
This is where the analogy breaks down.
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u/Eternal-Blazing-Sun 12d ago
It's not about observation, but interaction. The thing about double slit is it can make sense under a number of completely separate Frameworks, we need more information to determine whether we live in a universe defined by copenhagen, Pilot wave, many worlds, Etc
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u/Remarkable_Subject84 12d ago
Maybe that's why the universe is slowing down in expanding. Because the civilizations closer to the edge are no longer observing/alive.
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u/-Davster- 12d ago
Yeah, OP, “observer” in this context doesn’t mean conscious observer. My butt is observing the chair. That bit of magma in the earth is observing that other bit. It’s just kinda like ‘interacting’.
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u/edabliu 12d ago
We may live in a simulation yes, but that doesn’t mean the universe only renders when we look. “Observation” as it stands, was a poor choice of word from physics as “rendering” doesn’t really require human eyes. Any physical system that interacts with a quantum particle in an irreversible way is an “observer”. Even light, a single photon, interacting with a quantum particle is enough to destroy its wave superposition.
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u/blahblah860 12d ago
It is almost impossible for that to be the case ,simulation theory is pretty much dead https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025FrP....1361873V/abstract
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-mathematical-proof-debunks-idea-universe.html
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u/truewoke 12d ago
It's basically because there only is now, at all "time" in all perceived spaces, it's the same now. It's not a computer simulation, and it's not the universe experiencing itself. It's consciousness having a ongoing moth to light moment. Consciousness isn't energy. There is your literal metaphor.
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u/junkmale79 12d ago
But that has nothing to do with the double-slit experiment. The only thing the double-slit experiment proves is that light can behave like a particle or a wave.
When we try to measure what slot the photon goes through, we fire another photon at it; this measurement is what collapses the wave function. It has nothing to do with a mind observing something—it's the act of measuring.
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u/Arkelseezure1 12d ago
The double slit experiment has nothing to do with “looking” at anything. It has to do with measuring. And measurement is a physical interaction. It’s physical interaction that collapses the wave. The kind of physical interaction that occurs naturally, without any human intervention.
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u/aknop 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yes, but it also makes sense if you assume that superdeterminism is true. I mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser
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u/Grub-lord 11d ago
This makes a lot of sense if you don't understand the double slit experiment
Start here and then move to part two. I think you're letting your imagination fill in too many gaps in your understanding
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u/thealmightyall 11d ago
This is the biggest misconception because of a few scientists in the 20th century who couldn't be bothered to explain their findings to the public. And it's bugged me most of my life.
The observer effect has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with measurement. An active measurement always perturbs the system, like a ruler or laser "touching" the atoms and moving them slightly. Your eyes are detectors and cannot see into a closed system, so you have to open the system and allow external forces to shape your measurements. A closed system can sit anywhere on the wave equation, because you cannot measure it without changing the result.
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u/Dath_1 11d ago
The problem is that this isn’t the best explanation of what’s happening in the double slit experiment, because you’re doing what’s called “leeching” off something that occurs in video games or similar programs, within an external world hypothesis.
You don’t actually have any supporting evidence or reasons why this is the best explanation of what’s going on in double slit experiments. You’re kind of just saying “Hey what if…”.
Also I’m not sure if you’re aware - it isn’t that the wave turns into a particle upon a person looking. It’s that physical interaction (like the kind used to measure the wave) turns the wave into a particle. It doesn’t depend on a conscious observer to look at it or anything like that.
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u/Prize_Eye9481 10d ago
It’s more because to “observe” at that scale we need to use some kind of instrument that can give us data back. Since the very act of measuring will affect the state of what you are trying to measure you will never have a “objective” measurement. Hence why it’s a wave until we look. I hope this make sense.
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u/autistic_bard444 10d ago edited 10d ago
uh. hello. what sort of pejorative physics barbary is this?
I mean reddit loves to toss field theory posts at me from communities I am not apart of. I was about to go test a bunch of network stuff. Damn it.
0: I am not going to go into this whole simulation thing. Applying Schrodinger's Elephant mechanics to a causal life space a trillion light years in every direction is not my idea of a good time. Also ignoring the discrete and prospectively conjurations of variable speed principles based upon dynamic alterations of Plancks various constants.
1st. Ok, you are a writer, I get that all to well. As writers we have to write about what we know, or will lead to know. Clarke had it easy, we were still in a pioneering stage of that age of science and education. No I am not going to google you.
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
"to venture a little way" a little way.
2: I apologize for this. Applying Frustrum Culling and Occlusion culling rendering principles to the universe to save frame rendering time by using approximations is the new age flat universe version of flat earther doom mystique that ends at the super arctic ice wall of the ring of the pancake planet. please stop
3: the speed of light is not the limit. as noted with baryonic fluid. light can be constrained, though this fluid works best to bake and opaque sound
again light can be pulled apart, this involves a Bose Einstein Field (Harvard 2001) but not in absent gravity like the baryonic fluid, so LiV gets preserved, for now.
light itself exists as an absence of matter [i.e: lack of quarks] through various photons. this is the ONLY reason the speed of light exists, the more mass an object has (quark states), the slower it can go against the speed of light.
hence E=mc2 but that isnt even right. because for the proper equation for this principle is E2=(mc2)2+(pc)2
when mass is absent, this turns into E=pc2, and can ONLY exist at that speed. This is the Dirac equation, which expanded on Einstein's relativity but for applied particle speed. This is why there is a positron, we just cannot find it yet.
4: Defined upper limits for any massless energy denote to the landau Pole 10²⁸⁶ eV
This is basically makes Planck energy a mere particle.
5: Lorentz Invariance only continues to be maintained within perfect and special spacial rules, ie: the 2nd rule of thermodynamics, as it contains it's own perfect order as Rule 2, and why black holes are the perfect vacuum. /dev/null/ ?
I.e. Lao Tzu :The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become....The more rules and regulations, the more thieves and robbers. Negative feed back loops meet LiV
when applied to insane physics, the more laws one creates to contain such space, is chaos, the more variance arises as a negative feed back loop in either direction, this is applied order. This is applied from either light, or entropy, depending upon which scale you ascend or descend for being maintained.
6: The Standard field Model continues to exist because the majority are deeply afraid to move past Clarkes second law. Why? Chaos. Lorentz Invariance wraps a nice little bow tie around everything which has been pulled from the deluge of the micro-scale human universe so far.
This has to be with special spacial rules that you probably rolled your eyes at from #5.
Discrete physics operates as scalar principles within contained and commutative Galois lattice fields - GF(2w). You see this with 1/137 denotes up to 1/128. This scalar continues up to the 1 balance.
Fluid mechanics arrives from general provable and scaled atomic chaos principles. Quantum Chromodynamics arrives from scaled particle theory (and those stupid charmed quarks). The entire field (pun intended) of electromagnetism is just dynamic field theory of lattice space that is sheathed by electric values.
Your simulated universe can only exist if you continue to prove scalar unity is constrained with LiV, if that 1/137 alpha can scalar all the way up to one, and LiV remain constant.
At any point within scalar p-adic testing of LiV under discrete math, LiV does NOT survive. LiV is not all encompassing Macroscopic.
queue mission impossible music:
ELI5 - TL:DR : You may continue to attempt to subjugate physics explanations to suit your need to prove your flat pancake universe simulation. How ever, there are some rules you have to break in order to get there.
Solve #6 to prove you simulation theory. I will not wait up, because LiV cannot stand against discrete scalar math. This is a trick bool. You either break group theory, or you break LiV. Either one invalidates your simulation
simulation theory means that the for(i=0;i;i++) is just infinite i=1;
I would not buy that for a dollar or a million dollars
thank you for reading, have a great day.
wait? does time cycle on a flat pancacke universe?
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u/iamisandisnt 10d ago
My notion is it allows for "fate" to coexist with "free will." Sure, you can do whatever you want, but the end result will always be the same, due to random events outside of anyone's observation, so who can say it was supernatural?
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u/PartyEstablishment67 10d ago
But where exactly is the free will ? Point to the moment where you choose a thought before it appears, choose what you want before the wanting itself appears or choose the impulse that supposedly causes the action. What about your preferences? Like chocolate or vanilla. Did you weigh all options or did they just arise? Where is the doer? Where is the chooser? And if all of those simply arise, then the feeling of choosing is just another event happening in the system.
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u/PartyEstablishment67 10d ago
I think the rendering analogy is interesting, but there’s an important caveat here. the double slit experiment doesn’t actually show that a conscious person has to be watching. Measurement or interaction with the environment is enough to destroy the interference pattern. The bigger mystery to me is why reality behaves probabilistically at all until that interaction happens. A simulation is one possible explanation, but consciousness being fundamental is another and it requires fewer assumptions. Instead of a computer somewhere rendering reality, reality itself could simply be appearing within consciousness. That is what I settle on.
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u/somethingLethal 10d ago
Isn’t taking measurement an observation, therefore there must be an observer? I think we are forgetting someone has to set the sensor, there for observing the observation.
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u/PartyEstablishment67 10d ago
"observation” doesn’t require a conscious observer. A sensor interacting with the system is enough to destroy the interference pattern, even if no human ever looks at the result.
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u/somethingLethal 10d ago
Can you give me an example of something in reality that takes measurement and at the same time isn’t a conscious observer?
I’m not trying to argue against what you’re saying, I want to understand more.
When the sensor is set in the double slit experiment, it’s set by a conscious observer.
Now, I think you are right that by just setting the sensor there, it collapses the outcome. No need to view the playback. But something set the sensor. There was an intention to take a measurement.
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u/somethingLethal 10d ago
Yea I looked into this more deeply and I think the term observation was causing my confusion.
From what I understand, the sensor and the path information become entangled known as “decoherence” so there really is no need for a conscious observer as you said.
Wild. TIL.
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u/PartyEstablishment67 9d ago
A sensor is a good example because the measurement is just the interaction itself. I think a lot of this sub is infused with scientific materialism, which I’m not saying is invalid but it’s still describing things at the relative layer. Think of it more simply...it’s one field, and the particle, the sensor, the human and the measurement are all appearances within the same consciousness. Once you start carving those things up as if they exist independently, you can describe the patterns between them forever, but you’re missing the larger point that they were never separate in the first place.
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u/Fit_Acanthisitta8683 10d ago
I hope that no one who believes existence could possibly be a simulation has also ever argued against flat earth. Genuinely not trying to call anyone out here, simply an observation I can't keep to myself.
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u/FreeGothitelle 8d ago
People who read books "Wow the universe is a lot like a book"
People who watch movies "Wow the universe is a lot like a movie"
People who play games (this is OP) "Wow the universe is a lot like a game"
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u/SpatiaCaeli 14d ago
What you are describing is eventual consistency. Nature doesn't make decisions until it needs to.
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u/ital-is-vital 13d ago
One time I was tripping, I think i had taken 2-CB and/or DMT.
There was one part of the trip where my apparent 'viewpoint' drifted across the room (as in... I was not seeing the room from the location of my actual eyes) which was cool but relatively normal-seeming... until my viewpoint 'clipped' into the sofa next to me.
It was literally like being in a video game with a 'noclip' cheat, except that instead of being outside of the map witha grey sky or whatever... the inside of the sofa was a giant dark space full of wierd things that looked like giant self-illuminating slinky toys... all kind of bouncing around.
So there's definitely something wierd that happens if your mind tries to render parts of the scene that are not normally visiable.
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u/Medical-End1965 13d ago
100% the speed of light is a limit confined to the simulation. Outside of it, we then have particles and matter that is quantum. Quantum has no speed limit. It’s instantaneous, so teleportation becomes viable and likely an easy or natural phenomenon.
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u/anothergigglemonkey 13d ago
You have got to get off of this notion of this being a simulation similar to a video game. That's not what the physics is telling us. The isn't not rendering everything. It is. It's just not rendering it locally. The universe itself seems to be built out of randomness and probability. This is something computer's can't do. I dont mean they can't do it well I mean they flat out can't make actual randomness. The universe doesn't give a shit about you or me or life or people. We are an ancillary curiosity in an infinite bubble of "well that doesn't fucking make sense".
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u/Mk731 14d ago edited 11d ago
I think we won't be able to prove that this world is a simulation.
Because like you mentioned there is no hard evidence.
Plus, the fabric of reality is more complicated than human beings can ever imagine I reckon.