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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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I've heard that 'our reality is made of math' before. Does this mean that we do in fact live in a simulation, even if that simulation wasn't necessarily programmed by 'higher dimensional' beings?
If that is the case, could we conceivably 'hack' the universal code and unlock cheat mode?
We don't need to "live in a simulation" for "our reality to be made of math". Math could very well exist outside of anything, as a formal concept. This is the old debate asking whether math is invented or discovered. If it is discovered, then it can exist without any reality, as a pure abstract concept.
It's confusing. I don't understand what the difference is between something which is made of 'a pure abstract concept', specifically math, and a simulation- which is also made out of math.
I'm not saying it's something ran on a computer somewhere, just that the abstract concepts that make up our universe, if it is "made of math", clearly has rules that it obeys- like the speed of light in a vacuum or the other constants. Which would seem to be analogous to parameters in a more traditional simulation. If 'math' is something that exists independent of sentient beings, couldn't whatever that is be the 'thing' that the 'simulation' is ran on?
I guess where I'm getting hung up is the idea that the universe can be 'made of' something that has no 'reality'. Am I just misunderstanding what it's meant by 'made of math'? Like even if math is 'discovered', how would that be any different than us inventing it, if it exists 'without any reality'?
To be fair, there is lots of stuff I don't understand, but I am trying- go easy on me.
I was being cheeky about the 'cheat mode' thing (unless it's real then I'm in).
Don't worry, it's confusing for everyone (including me), this is a very fascinating, yet forever (I think) out of human reach, question.
What I was trying to say is that our entire universe/reality could be like a "conway game of life" : In this "game", every step is fully determined by the previous one, in order to know what the next step is going to be, we human run a simulation, on a computer, or on paper or whatever.. But is it to say that all the future steps don't exist before we "simulate", we could consider that, since they are all predetermined, the steps exist even if we don't know what they are, they could simply be. Just like the number "1" could be a fundamental truth, that could exist outside of any universe.
If mathematics is discovered rather than invented, then that would imply that it exists without anyone or anything, an undiscovered theorem would still be true. The universe could be a big mathematical game of life that exists because it cannot be any other way, and that is fully determined. Then again this could also not be. Who knows !
Stephen Wolfram is a very controversial physicist, who explored those abstract and unprovable concepts, even though his statements should be taken with a grain of salt, it is nonetheless very interesting philosophically: he came up with the concept of the ruliad and the idea of computable irreducibility, if you want to explore these philosophical questions you can look it up, he has a few ted talks and YouTube videos where he details his thought. I cannot stress enough that he should be listened to with extreme skepticism, this is not science "yet", and it might never be.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply in detail, thanks :)
I've never heard of the Ruliad before- I will definitely look into that.
I feel like there is a misunderstanding in this thread.
The universe is described by math. Math itself is also very fundamental though.
However even the Singularities are disputed and generally not liked by physicist. We try to find other explanations for how black holes work (lots of papers on this). Moreover, we never really have a singularity, but ringularities, as all black holes rotate changing the singularity to a singularity (they probably also have a charge but that is a different matter).
And on the other hand, if you are a follower of the simulation argument (I know a few physicists that are) there are also counter arguments against this (which I believe are more likely).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis