Is Life All Just A Dream?

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
London Times

DEEP THOUGHT, the supercomputer created by novelist Douglas
Adams, got there first, but now the astronomer royal has
caught up. Professor Sir Martin Rees is to suggest that
“life, the universe and everything” may be no more than a
giant computer simulation with humans reduced to bits of
software.

The possibility that what we see around us may not actually
exist has been raised by philosophers many times dating
back to the ancient Greeks and appears repeatedly in
science fiction.

However, many scientists have always been dismissive,
saying the universe was far too complex and consistent to
be a simulation.

Despite this, the idea has persisted, popularised in films
such as Tom Cruise’s Vanilla Sky and The Matrix, starring
Keanu Reeves.

It was also the basis for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, written by Adams, who died in 2001. In the book,
Deep Thought creates the Earth and its human inhabitants as
a giant calculating device to answer the “ultimate
question”.

The BBC’s rerun of the radio version of Hitchhiker finished
recently, just as Rees was putting together his
contribution to the debate in which he will concede that
the depictions by Adams, Cruise and Reeves might have been
right after all.

In a television documentary, What We Still Don’t Know, to
be screened on Channel 4 next month, he will say: “Over a
few decades, computers have evolved from being able to
simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create
virtual worlds with a lot of detail.

“If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine
computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps
even as complicated as the one we think we’re living in.

“This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves
be in such a simulation and could what we think is the
universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the
real thing. In a sense we could be ourselves the creations
within this simulation.”

Rees will emphasise that this is just a theory. But it is
being increasingly discussed by other eminent physicists
and cosmologists.

Among them is John Barrow, professor of mathematical
sciences at Cambridge University. He points out that the
universe has a degree of fine tuning that makes it safe for
living organisms.

Even a tiny alteration in a fundamental force or a constant
such as gravity would make stars burn out, atoms fly apart,
and the world as we know it become impossible. Such fine
tuning, he has said, could be taken as evidence for some
kind of intelligent designer being at work.

“Civilisations only a little more advanced than ourselves
will have the capability to simulate universes in which
self-conscious entities can emerge and communicate with one
another,” he said.

The idea that life, the universe and everything in it could
be an illusion dates back more than 2,000 years. Chuang
Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, who died in 295BC, wondered
whether his entire life might be no more than a dream.

René Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, raised
similar questions. But he famously came down in favour of
existence, saying: “I think, therefore I am.”

The idea was resurrected last century, notably by Bertrand
Russell, who suggested that humans could simply be “brains
in a jar” being stimulated by chemicals or electrical
currents — an idea that was quickly taken up and developed
by science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov.

However, some academics pour cold water on the notion of a
machine-created universe. Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum
mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, said such a computer would have to be
unimaginably large.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a great book but it remains
fiction,” he said.

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