Too complicated for algorithms: the universe cannot be a simulation

3 November 2025

The bus I’m on arrives at an interchange stop but a minute late and misses the connecting service which left a minute earlier than scheduled. The bean grinder at the cafe breaks down just as I arrive.

The door phone at a friend’s apartment is on the blink, and I’m in a phone black spot and unable to call them. The internet connection drops mid way through a bank transaction, and refuses to reconnect for several minutes, leaving me wondering whether the payment went through or not.

A micro-tear in my water bottle partly soaks the contents of my day bag. A succession of late-evening (no less) traffic delays sees us reach the supermarket a minute after closing time. My laptop crashes as I open the lid to resume a session. This is what happened one day.

They’re all minor irritations, but were pretty much consecutive. Of course it was a run of bad luck, yet occasions like these are enough to make me think the universe is a simulation, I’m a Sim, and am being cruelly manipulated by player of the game that is the universe we live in.

I need no longer think that though. An international team of researchers, lead by Dr Mir Faizal of Canada’s University of British Columbia, have found the universe is, in essence, too complicated an entity to be the product of a computer generated simulation:

Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we’re not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.