Scientist claims to have 'evidence' from 'Second Law of Infodynamics' that humanity lives in a simulation

A scientist at the University of Portsmouth claims to have 'evidence' that humanity exists with a simulation. In the 1999 movie The Matrix, the plot centers around the fact that we live in a digital simulation, and scientist Melvin Vopson claims that fact may match the fiction of the popular blockbuster.

Vopson has written extensively on the topic of the possibility that the known universe is a digital facsimile. He has provided articles for The Conversation and authored a book, Reality Reloaded, on the theme.

But while many of the theories posited about the universe being a simulation are in the realm of the abstract, Vopson now claims to have evidence that support his theory. “In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics,” the scientist said in 2022, reports Popular Mechanics.

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“One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that entropy—a measure of disorder in an isolated system – can only increase or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

If it was consistent with this law, entropy in information systems, sometimes referred to as the ''fifth state of matter'', should grow over time. However, evidence suggests that, instead, it decreases to a minimum value of equilibrium. This goes against the second law of thermodynamics. This finding promoted Vopson to embrace the Second Law of Information Dynamics (or Infodynamics).

“We know the universe is expanding without the loss or gain of heat, which requires the total entropy of the universe to be constant,” mused the expert in The Conversation . “However we also know from thermodynamics that entropy is always rising. I argue this shows that there must be another entropy—information entropy—to balance the increase.”

Vopson insists that this law could be influential in atomic physics (electron arrangement), cosmology, and biological systems. Opposing the wisdom of Charles Darwin, the University of Portsmouth academic says that mutations don't take place randomly. Instead, Vopson says that they occur to minimize information entropy.

Vopson published a study in AIP Advances last October, where he analyzed the constantly evolving SARS-CoV-2. The virus shows “a unique correlation between the information and the dynamics of the genetic mutations,'' the scientist wrote. Given these factors, Vopson believes that the Second Law of Infodynamics could prove we exist in a simulation.

“A super complex universe like ours, if it were a simulation, would require a built-in data optimization and compression in order to reduce the computational power and the data storage requirements to run the simulation,” he wrote in The Conversation . “This is exactly what we are observing all around us, including in digital data, biological systems, mathematical symmetries, and the entire universe.”

These claims require more scrutiny, but Vopson’s Second Law of Infodynamics certainly provide food for thought.

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