A Philosophical Explanation of Quantum Phenomena? The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Simulation Hypothesis

Marcus Arvan

Marcus Arvan

In my 2013 article in The Philosophical Forum, “A New Theory of Free Will”, I argued that several serious hypotheses in philosophy and modern physics jointly entail that our reality is structurally identical to a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. The present paper shows that quantum phenomena emerge naturally from the computational structure of a P2P simulation. §1 explains the P2P Hypothesis in detail. §2 then shows how it explains quantum superposition and wave-function collapse (§2.1.), quantum indeterminacy (§2.2.), wave-particle duality (§2.3.), and quantum entanglement (§2.4.).

Marcus Arvan

In my 2013 article, “A New Theory of Free Will”, I argued that several serious hypotheses in philosophy and modern physics jointly entail that our reality is structurally identical to a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. The present paper outlines how quantum phenomena emerge naturally from the computational structure of a P2P simulation. §1 explains the P2P Hypothesis. §2 then sketches how the structure of any P2P simulation realizes quantum superposition and wave-function collapse (§2.1.), quantum indeterminacy (§2.2.), wave-particle duality (§2.3.), and quantum entanglement (§2.4.). Finally, §3 argues that although this is by no means a philosophical proof that our reality is a P2P simulation, it provides ample reasons to investigate the hypothesis further using the methods of computer science, physics, philosophy, and mathematics.

Marcus Arvan

An overview of my work arguing that peer-to-peer computer networking (the Peer-to-Peer Simulation Hypothesis) may be the best explanation of quantum phenomena and a number of perennial philosophical problems.