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Physicist Suggests the Universe Could Be a Vast Neural Network

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Physics Professor Suggests the Universe Might Be a Giant Neural Network



It’s not often that a scientific paper tries to redefine our understanding of reality. Yet, in a recent preprint published on arrive, Vitaly Vancuren, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, presents an intriguing hypothesis: we might be living inside an immense neural network that governs everything in the universe.

In other words, Vancuren suggests, "it's possible that the entire cosmos, at its most fundamental level, operates as a neural network."

For years, physicists have struggled to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity. While quantum mechanics treats time as absolute and universal, relativity sees time as flexible and intertwined with space. These two theories, each incredibly successful in their own realms, have resisted unification—until perhaps now.

In his paper, Vancuren claims that artificial neural networks can exhibit behaviors similar to both quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. He writes, “On the most fundamental level, the universe is believed to follow the laws of quantum mechanics, and even gravity might emerge from it.” Quantum mechanics, he adds, is an exceptionally successful framework for modeling a wide range of physical phenomena.

But Vancuren goes beyond suggesting neural networks are just useful tools. "We are not merely proposing that neural networks can help explain physical systems," he says. "We’re claiming this is how the world actually works." If true, this idea could be considered a "theory of everything"—though Vancuren notes it should be simple to disprove.

Despite the boldness of his claims, most physicists and machine learning experts remain skeptical, and many declined to comment on the paper. In an interview with Futurism, however, Vancuren elaborated on his theory.

Explaining the Universe as a Neural Network

When asked how he would explain his theory to someone unfamiliar with neural networks or physics, Vancuren offered two approaches:

  1. The Neural Network Approach: Starting from the basics of neural networks, Vanchurin shows that when a large number of neurons are involved, their behavior mimics the equations of quantum mechanics near equilibrium and the equations of classical mechanics further from equilibrium. "Coincidence? Maybe," he says, "but both quantum and classical mechanics describe the physical world as we know it."

  2. The Physics Approach: Beginning with established physics, he points out that while quantum mechanics works well on small scales and general relativity on large ones, unifying the two remains a challenge—referred to as the quantum gravity problem. Adding to this difficulty is the role of observers, which is still unresolved in both quantum mechanics and cosmology. Vancuren proposes that instead of just unifying quantum mechanics and relativity, we should also consider observers as part of the equation. His hypothesis suggests that the universe is fundamentally a neural network, from which quantum mechanics, relativity, and observers all emerge.

The Birth of the Idea

Vancuren didn’t initially set out to reshape our understanding of the cosmos. His journey began with a curiosity about deep learning. "I wanted to learn more about machine learning, so I wrote a paper titled 'Towards a Theory of Machine Learning.'" He discovered that under certain conditions, the learning dynamics of neural networks resembled quantum dynamics in physics. This led him to wonder: could the physical world itself be a neural network? While acknowledging that the idea seems “crazy,” he remains open to the possibility that it might be true.

Proving or Disproving the Theory

In his paper, Vancuren challenges others to test his theory: "To disprove it, all you need to do is find a physical phenomenon that neural networks cannot explain." While that might sound simple, Vancuren acknowledges the difficulty, primarily due to our limited understanding of how neural networks and machine learning truly function.

Ultimately, whether the concept is "insane enough to be true" remains to be seen. As Vancuren puts it, "We’ll just have to wait and see."

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