When we think of computer simulation programs, we think of types of software developed to receive input information, either manually entered or automatically generated through sensors and other devices. This data is then used to generate a model or mathematical algorithm that can be used to simulate and predict several different behaviors and reactions. In the theory of Simulation Creationism, proposed by Nir Ziso, the Creator – God – views his simulation like a movie. It is generated by a supercomputer but seems “real life” to humans. When compared to known software, this supercomputer needs information to work properly. What is this information and its role?
It goes to the question “of what is reality made”. Physicists and metaphysicists have been debating this question over and over. One of the answers is that reality is based on information, an abstract term indeed. The physicist John Archibald Wheeler describes this notion as “It from Bit”, “it” meaning all things in the universe with “bit”, meaning information. We live in the age of computation, and its narrative influences our thoughts and understanding of God’s creation. Computers are devices that systematically process information. They are physical systems that contain bits of information, organized as 0 and 1, and the computer basically breaks the information into bits and then systematically flips bits. When we apply this definition to the universe or our earth, we can see it is a physical system in which every elementary particle carries with it a bit of information. And when two electrons, each carrying a bit of information, come and interact with each other, these bits flip systematically. The universe is a giant supercomputer, and we can see the computational substrate. It is not a metaphorical claim but a technical reality.
Another view would argue that information is like entropy or energy, or a way to explain reality but not the fundamental one. We could go on without talking about information, so it is not something that influences the fundamentals of life. The place of information here is not ensured, although it is useful in understanding our world. However, in recent times, information has come up in many areas of physics as a fundamental thing. While the information was previously thought of as knowledge or experience, we came to learn a lot more about information since we have been able to count it and forget about the meaning and realize that everything is measurable by bits. If we know how many bits are contained in an image, a sound, or a word, then we can learn a lot about how the universe has been put together. Firstly, we would have to know what a piece of information does before saying what it means.
Let us see how it works in light of some of the most famous physical theories. Gravity is not a force, but mere geometry. It is bodies moving as straight as they can in what is a bent space-time continuum. Today, astrophysics tries to unify Einstein’s gravity with quantum mechanics of which quantum information is the essence. Namely, there is a tremendous correlation between the shape of space-time and the amount of information that can be obtained in a region of space-time. Too much information in one region will force gravity to collapse into a black hole. This somewhat strange relation should have a deeper origin. Mass and energy are just forms that information takes. While physicists point to fields and matter, they are just mathematical devices to describe reality. The values of these fields are information. Physics is about numbers and numbers are information.
If a supercomputer is simulating the world and carrying out the evolution we think the world really evolves according to, information consists of the true laws of physics and not our current approximation of these laws. This brings forth a problem that everything, including our consciousness, can be reduced to basic physics and even digital events. Our reality is a lived reality, the only reality we have direct access to coming also from integrated and intrinsic information. To put it bluntly, when I talk to another person, I have an experience, I see the other person, I hear what he/she tells me. Inside my brain, a movie shows this person.
The universe is quantum mechanical and inherits everything a quantum supercomputer can do. By its very nature, the universe can do many various things. There are 200-300 elementary particles we know about. If we take 300 electrons, immensely smaller than the universe, they can perform 200-300 different things. So, even a tiny fraction of the universe can do more things than the elementary particles in the universe as a whole. Such a quantum computer would be completely feasible to simulate the whole world.