Are we all just part of a computer simulation? Scientists are trying to find that out.

[Rayaan]

I have wondered whether quantum effects are in fact the manifestation of flaws in a simulation program.

I've read that quantum effects might be manifested in our DNA mutations, in things like DNA copying errors and ionizing radiation, for example.

A passage on this from a book titled, "Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega," by Gregory Chaitin:

Jacob Schwartz once surprised a computer science class by calculating the bandwidth of human sexual intercourse, the rate of information transmission achieved in human love-making. I’m too much of a theoretician to care about the exact answer, which anyway depends on details like how you measure the amount of time that’s involved, but his class was impressed that the bandwidth that’s achieved is quite respectable!

What is this software like? It isn’t written in 0/1 binary like computer software. Instead DNA is written in a 4-letter alphabet, the 4 bases that can be each rung of the twisted double-helix ladder that is a DNA molecule.Adenine, A, thymine, T, guanine, G, and cytosine, C, are those four letters. Individual genes, which code for a single protein, are kilobases of information. And an entire human genome is measured in gigabases, so that’s sort of like gigabytes of computer software.

Each cell in the body has the same DNA software, the complete genome, but depending on the kind of tissue or the organ that it’s in, it runs different portions of this software, while using many basic subroutines that are common to all cells.

And this software is highly conservative, much of it is quite ancient: Many common subroutines are shared among fruitflies, invertebrates, mice and humans, so they have to have originated in an ancient common ancestor. In fact, there is surprisingly little difference between a chimp and a human, or even between a mouse and human.

We are not that unique; Nature likes to re-use good ideas. Instead of starting afresh each time, Nature “solves” new problems by patching—that is, slightly modifying or mutating—the solutions to old problems, as the need arises. Nature is a cobbler, a tinkerer. It’s much too much work, it’s much too expensive, to start over again each time. Our DNA software accumulates by accretion, it’s a beautiful patch-work quilt! And our DNA software also includes all those frozen accidents, those mutations due to DNA copying errors or ionizing radiation, which is a possible pathway for quantum uncertainty to be incorporated in the evolutionary record. In a sense this is an amplification mechanism, one that magnifies quantum uncertainty into an effect that is macroscopically visible.

- Chaitin, Meta Math: The Quest for Omega, pp. 67-68