Were You Programmed To Read This?

Tuesday morning, as I was getting ready for the day, I was thinking to myself. As most people hopefully do. I then realized that I was not necessarily thinking about my next thought, but rather filling in the blank based on what I was used to hearing. This probability-based approach reminded me of how artificial intelligence works in much the same way, using weighted probabilities to produce outcomes based on learned patterns. Which then made me think, how do I know I am not an AI? Which then led to a question that I always loved thinking about: How can we be sure we’re not living in a simulation? 

This concept originated from a 2003 paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who proposed that one of three propositions was true (Bostrom 2003):

1. The human species is likely to become extinct before reaching a ‘posthuman stage’
2. A posthuman civilization is unlikely to run a significant number of simulations due to a lack of interest 
3. We are certainly living in a simulation 

The answer has become a matter of great debate, becoming even more prevalent with the unprecedented boom of artificial intelligence (Berkealpkeskin 2025). The consensus, however, is that we can’t be sure. It’s 50/50 (Ananthaswamy 2020). 

A recent article published by a physicist, Dr. Melvin Vopson, a leading physicist from the University of Portsmouth, suggests that we are. Dr. Vopson compares the known properties of thermodynamics to theoretical properties of data: infodynamics. This theoretical property suggests that, over time, the entropy of information tends to approach equilibrium, requiring it to decrease or remain constant. This is seen in biological species like viruses that evolve to reduce Shannon information entropy, or in Hund’s rule that causes atoms to organize to reduce information entropy (Lukaszyk 2023; Ostrowski et al. 2024). Similarly, computers work more efficiently as data is compressed. Dr. Vopson suggests the universe is just a computer that compresses data through one key mechanism – gravity (Vopson 2025). 

If space-time is treated as discrete, as supported by quantum mechanics, it can be represented as a mesh, similar to that of pixels, storing information about position and momentum in each unit. Using Shannon’s information entropy formula, it is possible to calculate the average information per event over the span of these units. Unsurprisingly, having lots of information at different points has high entropy, whereas combining these points at one location has significantly lower entropy (Fig. 1). This effect is eerily similar to the effects of gravitational attraction (Vopson 2025). 

Dr. Vopson is not the first to propose this mechanism. Professor Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam came to similar conclusions in a paper published in 2011. Verlinde proposed that complex space can be represented by simpler space projections – the holographic principle. Using this in tandem with information-theoretic principles, Newtonian formulas for gravity arose naturally (Verlinde 2011). 

Alternatively, what can be said about the observation effect? While gravity acts at the macroscopic level, electrons on the microscopic level alter their behaviour based on observation (Borowski 2012; Baclawski 2018). They behave as particles when observed and as waves when not (Borowski 2012). This too could act as a mechanism of data compression, similar to culling in games (“Photon Quantum 3 | Prediction Culling” 2026). 

Whether you choose to believe we live in a simulation is up to your interpretation. Most of what we can postulate is highly theoretical, but still stands to highlight the intriguing intersection of philosophy and science, and what unique theories and hypotheses we can create. 

References

Ananthaswamy, Anil (Scientific American). 2020. “Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50.” October 13. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/. 

Baclawski, K. 2018. “The Observer Effect.” 2018 IEEE Conference on Cognitive and Computational Aspects of Situation Management (CogSIMA), June, 83–89. https://doi.org/10.1109/COGSIMA.2018.8423983. 

Berkealpkeskin. 2025. “Are We Living in a Simulation? AI Just Made the Question Impossible to Ignore.” Medium, November 1. https://medium.com/@berkealpkeskin/are-we-living-in-a-simulation-ai-just-made-the-question-impossible-to-ignore-8c7c0ecf7c59. 

Borowski, Susan. 2012. “Quantum Mechanics and the Consciousness Connection | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).” July 16. https://www.aaas.org/membership/scientia/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness-connection. 

Bostrom, Nick. 2003. “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (211): 243–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00309. 

Lukaszyk, Szymon (ResearchGate). 2023. “Shannon Entropy of Chemical Elements.” November. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1112.v3. 

Ostrowski, J., M. Ozimek, and K. W. Fornalski. 2024. “Entropy of Mutating Viruses.” Acta Physica Polonica A 146 (3): 265–265. https://doi.org/10.12693/APhysPolA.146.265. 

“Photon Quantum 3 | Prediction Culling.” 2026. June 11. https://doc.photonengine.com/quantum/v3/manual/prediction-culling. 

Verlinde, Erik. 2011. “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton.” Journal of High Energy Physics (Berlin/Heidelberg) 2011 (4): 029–. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep04(2011)029. 

Vopson, Melvin M. 2025. “Is Gravity Evidence of a Computational Universe?” AIP Advances (Melville) 15 (4): 045035-045035–37. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0264945.