Maybe this is a Virtual Universe (P1)

There is a theory that our universe is most likely a simulation. Basically, as technology progresses, it becomes possible to simulate realities indistinguishable from reality, and when that happens there will be so many simulations that the odds of finding yourself in the “real” reality are very low. Since we have no way of knowing if that has already happened, our own reality is likely to be a simulation.

As far as I know the idea was a philosophical exercise and not a serious claim about the nature of the universe, and is not taken seriously in science. But I find it fun to think about, and it oddly fits with observed experiences.

For one thing, we really do live in a sort of VR. Have you ever noticed how large the moon sometimes appears on the horizon? Especially the “Harvest moon”? One night I tried to take a picture, and the moon in the photo was disappointingly normal. In fact, as I held my phone up and compared the moon in my vision to the moon in the phone’s display, one was clearly bigger. The large moon is just one of many, many illusions our brain creates as it takes shortcuts and makes assumptions about reality. Then there’s color. Color does not exist in the way we perceive it. Color is a visual illusion the brain creates to help us distinguish different spectrum of radiation. It turns out that everything we “observe” is a false reality created by our brain based on sensory stimulations with the brain filling in some gaps. We can correct for that somewhat with scientific instruments (and cellphone cameras) but that data is still injected and interpreted by the brain.

That gives me hope that we may one day achieve full dive/immersive VR, and a fear that it may have already happened. I imagine that if a person was born into VR and never experienced the greater reality, that person would have no frame of reference or ideas to compare their reality to and expose it as a fake. Imagine being born in a black and white VR world where the concept of color is completely absent (visually and in literature…) A person from our world would immediately notice the missing color, but a person there would have no idea…