Virtual Us


Virtual Reality Could Explain the Fermi Paradox « Michael Graham Richard

I’ll add my 2 cents to this discussion by saying that there’s a possibility that any civilization that becomes advanced enough discovers that physical reality can’t hold a candle to virtual reality and makes the transition (alien transubstantiation, to coin a phrase). This could explain why they haven’t colonized the galaxy, or why we aren’t bathed in their radio communications.

Well, yes. Of course, to losslessly model the universe you’d have to have the computational power of… well, the universe. (crap, I’ve lost the link, but I think it was Kevin Kelly who quite elegantly made this point) So, if this really is a virtual world, then either it’s a pointless one or one that’s lossy. So how do we find the proof? We find the lossy artifacts, like the edge artifacts in a JPEG. Find those, and soon you’ll have the suited guys saying “Please come with us, Mr. Anderson.”

Didn’t someone write that story already?