The idea sounds like science fiction—until you notice what modern physics keeps whispering

 

“Are we living in a simulation?” is one of those questions that refuses to die, because it sits exactly where our biggest mysteries live: what reality is made of, how information behaves, and why the universe is so mathematical.

But if you’re hoping physics has already cracked the case—yes or no—it hasn’t. What physics can do is something more interesting (and more honest): it can show why the simulation idea feels plausible to some researchers, and why many physicists still treat it as speculation rather than testable science.

Let’s separate the physics-shaped clues from the philosophy-shaped leaps.

 

1) The “simulation argument” didn’t start in a lab—it started on paper

The modern spark is philosopher Nick Bostrom’s well-known 2003 paper, which lays out a trilemma: either civilizations don’t reach “posthuman” capability, or they don’t run ancestor simulations, or we’re probably in one. It’s a probability argument, not a physics experiment—but it’s the foundation of today’s mainstream simulation talk. (Published in Philosophical Quarterly, 2003.) simulation-argument.com+1

Important detail: this isn’t “proof,” and it doesn’t rely on quantum mechanics. It relies on assumptions about future technology and consciousness.

 

2) Physics does treat information like something real

One reason simulation language keeps coming back is that physics increasingly behaves as if information is fundamental.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler famously summarized this with “it from bit”—the notion that physical “stuff” (it) may arise from information (bits), tied to measurement and yes/no outcomes. The phrase is widely cited from Wheeler’s writings on information and physics (late 1980s). PhilPapers+1

That doesn’t mean “we’re in a computer.” But it does mean physics is comfortable saying: information isn’t just a human bookkeeping tool—nature seems to care about it.

 

3) The holographic principle: reality might be “encoded” like data

Here’s where the simulation crowd gets excited, because the language sounds… digital.

The holographic principle (linked to quantum gravity and black hole physics) suggests that the information describing a region of space could be represented on its boundary—like a lower-dimensional encoding. Leonard Susskind’s famous work “The World as a Hologram” (1994 on arXiv) discusses this framing. arXiv

Again: encoding ≠ computer simulation. But it’s easy to see why people hear “encoded on a boundary” and imagine code.

 

4) “Pixelated space” and computational-universe claims: intriguing, but contested

Some recent papers and popular discussions go further, proposing that gravity or space-time behavior could reflect “computational” rules.

For example, physicist Melvin Vopson published a 2025 paper in AIP Advances exploring gravity as an effect tied to reducing information entropy (a kind of “optimization” framing). His university also publicized the idea in April 2025. AIP Publishing