This is the third part of the Pitless Pit series. For your convenience you can find other parts in the table of contents in Part 1 — Furmanek Test for consciousness

Let’s assume that we live in a simulation. Can we interact with the outside world, i.e., with the world of the beings that simulate us? (Un)surprisingly, the answer may be “yes”. Let’s see how.

Can your script talk to you?

Can your script talk to you? It may seem impossible for a script/program/application/code to interact with the external world, however, it is in fact pretty reasonable. Take any of your scripts and see that it already interacts with our universe – the script most likely produces side effects like printing documents, sending packets over the network, displaying things on the screen, or generating sound. All of that impacts our “real” world, so your beloved Python script indeed interacts with the real, physical universe.

Can your script figure out how it impacted the real universe?

Now, can your beloved python script figure out how it impacted our real universe? Maybe. This depends on the “API” the script can use. Let’s see an example.

If your script has access to both speaker and microphone. In that case, the script can produce a sound, and then wait for the microphone to pick the sound back. Depending on how the script can control the speaker (its direction, power, etc.), it can measure how the sound bounces in the room. That would work as a very basic sonar.

In other words, your script could deduce the size and shape of the room the computer sits in. Obviously, that would be highly limited with speaker and microphone, but that could be improved with other devices. Long story short is, the script can learn a lot about the surrounding of the device running the script.

Can your script “break” your world?

Let’s carry on. Can the script “break” our universe? Can it change our world significantly? Again, that depends on the interface.

Let’s continue with the speaker metaphor. If the speaker is powerful enough, the script could produce a sound that would shatter the glass or break windows.

Is our universe a simulation?

Is our universe a simulation? That I don’t know. I don’t know if there is “an interface” that would help us interact with the beings that simulate us. However, if they do simulate us, then they probably do it for a reason, so they must have a way to peek into the state of the simulation. This means that there should be something that would let us “talk to them”, something equivalent to displaying labels in the UI.