What if the universe were a huge neural network?

Vitaly Vanchurin is a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth and author of a paper entitled "The world as a neural network", published last summer and already rightly defined by many as "provocative". A total of 23 pages in which he explains why the possibility that the entire universe is nothing more than a gigantic neural network should not be ruled out a priori.

Founded theory or sci-fi novel madness?

By reducing the complex theory to a minimum it is based on a rather simple principle: if every observable phenomenon can be reproduced with a model by a neural network, by extension the same can be true for the entire universe that hosts them . Confused? We too. To those willing to go into deep questions about the origin of everything (incredibly the answer may not be "42"), about quantum mechanics and the space-time continuum we recommend reading the document on arXiv.

Let's consider the possibility that the entire universe, at its most fundamental level, is a neural network.

A thought not so distant from the one that gave birth to sci-fi novels and films (by the way, of Matrix 4 remains fixed for this year) which lends itself to philosophical interpretations even before physical or scientific.

We are not only stating that artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing phenomena or for discovering the laws of physics, we are saying that they are the basis of the functioning of the world around us.

If we want to accept what Vanchurin hypothesized, it becomes legitimate to ask ourselves whether the universe we know is a finite neural network, only a layer of a larger system or a single node of a network that includes billions more. Or even just one of the infinite cycles through which to contribute to the education of a greater artificial intelligence, beyond our understanding.

Source: The Next Web