In a former ISF article entitled Between the Generalized Holographic approach and Data Science, we addressed the potential of trained artificial neural networks to replace our scientific models, and the possibility of reality being a numerical simulation was discussed. Somehow we had anticipated this next and very recent work from Vitaly Vanchurin, from the University of Minnesota Duluth, proposing that we live in a neural network. It is an audacious idea!

In our prior article we had anticipated the impact of artificial neural networks and deep machine learning … what we had not foreseen was that they would be used literally as the framework for the theory of everything! Given the current scientific state of the art, the proposal of a universal neural network is quite reasonable.

The most recent observations at both quantum and cosmological scales are casting serious doubts on our current models. For instance, at quantum scale, the latest electronic hydrogen proton radius measurement resulted in a much smaller radius than the one predicted by the standard model of particles physics, which then was off by 4%. At cosmological scale, the amount of observations regarding black holes and galactic formation heading in the direction of a radically different cosmological model, is overwhelming. Black holes have shown being much older than their hosting galaxies, galactic formation is much younger than our models estimates, and there is evidence of at least 64 black holes aligned with respect to their axis of rotation, suggesting the presence of a large scale spatial coherence in angular momentum that is impossible to predict with our current models.