What Is Reality?

The idea that the universe was a simulation or a computer has existed for decades. The concept permeates science fiction, fascinating audiences with its mind-bending implications. If the universe is a simulation, what exactly is consciousness? Could my experience really be explained by the equivalent of 1's and 0's pulsing through some futuristic computational substrate? Could we build such a substrate; could we become Gods, simulating our own computational universes?

Science has a way of emulating science fiction. These days the computational universe hypothesis is being taken very seriously. In 2003 Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom put forth his Simulation Hypothesis.  

MIT  cosmologist Max Tegmark published 'Our Mathematical Universe' detailing the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) in 2014. A new proposed 'Theory Of Everything' the MUH claims: 'Our external reality is a mathematical structure'. Conferences of over-powered minds - including Bostrom and Tegmark - with high profile moderators like Neil Degrass Tyson have become increasingly concerned with the question: 'Are We Living in a Simulation?'.

Then in March of 2020, while the world focused its attention on COVID-19, the physicist and computer scientist visionary Stephan Wolfram announced the Wolfram Physics Project with the subscript: 'A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics'. This was a natural yet radical extension of his 2002 publication 'A New Kind of Science' (available for free online). Dr. Wolfram is attempting to definitively solve for the program of our universe.