Super Computer to Simulate Life

Headline from Science Daily on May 28th:

ScienceDaily (May 28, 2010) — Scientists are planning to use the largest supercomputers to simulate life on Earth, including the financial system, economies and whole societies. The project is called “Living Earth Simulator” and part of a huge EU research initiative named FuturIcT.

Full article @ Science Daily.

This plays neatly into one of my favorite science fiction themes – the universe as we know it is a simulation running on a giant computer. In short, The Matrix. It’s a thought that comes to mind frequently as I’ve observed the steady increases in realism achieved in gaming. As the march towards a “perfect simulation of reality” continues, one has to wonder when we’ll see people leaving this reality forever for another, simulated one. And one has to wonder how many times previously that same transition might have been made.

We could all be a simulation running inside a simulation, inside another simulation.