According to unpublished documents, Check Point Research a.k.a CP<R> division stumbled upon unequivocal proof that we are living in a digital simulation.
One of researches, Uval Kerby, has decided to blow the whistle on an accidental discovery of that fact. He reached out to me the last week, and I have no other option but to publish what he told me. To make it simple, I am just posting the transcript of my phone call with Uval. Here we go (and you do want to sit down before continuing):
Author: Uval, hi. How are you doing?
Uval: Thanks, I am doing fine. I have only about 10 minutes, so let's just go to the main subject.
Author: Sure, although, I have to admit, I have a hard time with the whole idea. Your email said, you have proof the world is a simulation, right? So what, are we all living in Matrix, like in the movie?
Uval: No, no like in the movie. Matrix means there is a physical world outside of the simulation, and one can exit from the artificial construct into reality. That is not our case. We are all trapped in the simulation, and the boundaries are impenetrable for us.
Author: Right... In your email, you have mentioned the work of Nick Bostrom, where he basically debunks the simulation theory, saying even if it is true, we do not have any practical means to prove it. Then, how come?
Uval: Bostrom is good, and the work you are quoting is quite compelling. Before him, by the way, the same idea was contemplated by Mayans, Antique Greeks and even Rene Descartes. To prove you are in the simulation, you have to step out of that simulation. Like any character in your favourite computer game, you cannot do that, ever. But there is a catch. Bostrom, and any other philosophers are/were not coders.
Author: How does that make a difference? I do not understand.
Uval: Yes, it is only simple when you already know the answer and look at whole idea in retrospect. Let me put it in this way. Even if you cannot step out of the simulation, you still can hack it. Or could, as in our case. We hacked the universe.
Author: Hacked?! What does even mean?
Uval: Well, maybe not exactly hacked, but we managed to turn on some kind of "debug mode" in it, more than once.
Author: Can you elaborate?
Uval: I can try. In short, there are quite a few tell-tale signs all around us. My own revelation happened when I learned about Chronon, the quantum of time. The idea is about one century old. Robert Lévi came up with that theory in 1927, and since then it gained weight. Piero Caldirola is the author of compelling theory. For scholars, that is a way to simplify description of the observed results in quantum decoherence. For a coder it is something completely different. Why would time be discrete? It only makes sense if you are using a program which is calculating certain iterations. It looks like computational cycles, don't you think?
Author: Maybe... But there is a huge difference between any aspects of quantum theories and your original claim. Can we stay on topic, please? Tell me what happened.
Uval: Sure. As part of my freelance, I am doing digital quantum calculus for CERN. There was an issue with interpretation of one of the experiments. The program worked, and the experiments show consistent results, but if we would run real time digital analysis an experiment, the outcome was odd. The particle chamber would go to a weird state, where the interacting particles would suddenly "freeze" for a moment. It looked like time in the chamber would freeze, while outside of it time was still ticking.
Author: How did CP<R> come into the picture?
Uval: That's the best part. I wanted Check Point researches to look into any problem with the code we run, to make sure it is not compromised. CERN suffered multiple hacking attempts (some of them partially successful) over the last ten years. We wanted to be sure nobody plays us for a fool. I called Oded Vanunu, and his team helped us. This is where we found what we found.
Author:... not sure I understand.
Uval: Our code was okay. But then cyber security researches found a way to freeze time without that particle chamber. In fact, we have discovered a combination of events leading to a relatively short time freeze in a certain portion of space. There is also way to define, how big this bubble of frozen time is, and how to manipulate it. Time is not just freezing, you can move it forward and back at will, within certain limits. It looks like certain chain of events "breaks" the simulation, and it goes to a limited debug mode of sorts, before recovering.
Author: I am still trying to comprehend. Anyhow, why was not it published? Why the secrecy? Too dangerous? Military implications? Political pressure? Too crazy?
Uval: Potentially, it could be all of the above, but... don't laugh... I think the main reason is that "debug mode" vulnerability in the universe is now patched. We cannot reproduce the effect anymore. Whoever runs the simulation, they detected our experiments and blocked us for good. We are now back to square one...
