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According to a Physicist, the entire Universe may be a Neural Network

Papers that aim to alter reality are uncommon to find.
In a document that was just published to arXiv, Vitaly Vanchurin, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, makes the very astounding assertion that we are living inside a massive neural network that governs everything around us.

The unification of general relativity and quantum physics has been a long-standing goal of scientists. The former maintains that time is universal and absolute, whereas the latter asserts that time is relative and tied to the geometry of space-time.

Many of the physicists and machine learning experts we reached out to expressed skepticism about the paper’s conclusions and declined to comment on the concept’s validity. In a Futurism Q&A, Vanchurin, however, delved deeper into the subject and provided additional information about his objectives.

Futurism: Your study suggests that the cosmos might ultimately be a neural network. How would you describe your reasoning to someone who was not familiar with neural networks or physics?

The first approach starts with a precise representation of a neural network, and then carefully analyzes how the network operates when there are many neurons present. I’ve found that when a system is close to equilibrium, quantum mechanical equations explain it quite well, and when the system is further from equilibrium, classical mechanical equations pretty much do the same.

Coincidence? Perhaps, but as far as we can tell, quantum and classical mechanics govern how the physical world functions.

Using physics as a starting point is the second tactic. We are aware that both quantum mechanics and general relativity operate rather well on large scales, but we have not yet been able to bring the two theories together inside a single framework. The quantum gravity issue refers to this. Clearly, there is something crucial that we are overlooking, and to make matters worse, we have no idea how to handle observers. In the domain of quantum mechanics and cosmology, this is referred to as the measurement issue, respectively.

My attention was sparked by your original email when you suggested that you might not fully comprehend everything. Why did you say that, exactly? Other than the intricacy of the neural network itself, what were you referring to?
Yes, I’m only addressing the problems with neural networks. I didn’t even have time to think about the philosophical implications of the outcomes.
I must inquire: Does this hypothesis imply that our world is a simulation?
No, we reside in a neuronal network, but we may never be aware of the difference.

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