Because DNA is essentially digital code, it inevitably raises a profound question: could we one day simulate our own existence and create virtual copies of ourselves?
According to Roger Penrose [14], the operation of the human brain might not be an axiomatic system. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem states that within any sufficiently powerful axiomatic system, there exist statements that are true but cannot be proven within that system.
Since computers and Turing Machines are equivalent to formal axiomatic systems, this implies that there are well-defined mathematical truths that no algorithm can ever compute. In other words, some problems are fundamentally uncomputable by any machine, regardless of its speed or memory.
Penrose speculates that the human brain can, at least in principle, apprehend such truths. If true, this suggests that human reasoning is not confined to algorithmic computation: the mind may access insights that no Turing machine can produce.
What Penrose effectively argues is that mathematics is more expansive than what a Turing machine is capable of describing. Even if the machine had an infinitely long tape and infinite time to run, it could not implement all of mathematics. If human consciousness resides on that ’far side’ of math, several consequences follow from this hypothesis:
Taken together, these points indicate a profound divide between what is algorithmically computable and what the human mind can achieve. Even if mathematics itself can be formalized into axiomatic systems, the processes of human understanding may transcend those systems entirely.
Let us explore the opposite assumption: that a faithful simulation of a human genome would produce a conscious being.
The current technology does not allow us to run full scale human DNA simulations yet. However, this does not prevent us from exploring it as a thought experiment. So we digitize a human genome and run it inside a sufficiently detailed computer simulation. We also simulate a sufficiently large world with it to avoid our simulated human developing psychosis in empty space. Nine months later, in simulation time, our virtual copy takes its first breath in its simulated world.
How would such a simulated human perceive its environment? Would it sense the limited memory space of the computer running it? Would it be able to bump its head against the upper boundary of RAM and feel pain? Would the flipping of bits tickle its nose, or the rotation speed of a hard drive make it dizzy?
Would it eventually discover that its entire universe is driven by storage devices, memory chips, and an overclocked multi-core CPU?
The simulated human is not created within our universe. It does not consist of real-world particles such as electrons or quarks. Instead, it exists entirely within a virtual universe that we simulate alongside it. As a result, it has no access to our physical hardware. It cannot observe transistors, memory cells, voltages, or processor clocks.
The only thing the simulated human can study is the internal structure of its own virtual world.
Within that world, there are virtual particles, virtual forces, and virtual laws of physics. When the simulated human bangs its head against a simulated wall, the simulated particles in the wall respond exactly as the laws of that virtual universe dictate.
Every measurement the simulated human performs inside its universe will match those we real people carry out in our real world. The outcomes of experiments will match the predictions of the simulated physical laws, just as our measurements match the laws of physics in our own universe.
To the simulated observer, the experience is indistinguishable from how real particles behave when we humans bang our heads against real walls.
But would banging simulated head against simulated wall cause the simulated person pain?
Both the real world and the simulated world are axiomatic systems. Mathematics does not care whether it is applied to apples, bananas, electrons, or bits. The statement 2 + 2 = 4 holds regardless of the physical substrate that implements the system.
For the simulated human, there is no experiment it could perform that would reveal the presence of the computer running the simulation, because that computer exists outside the axioms of its universe.
From the inside, the simulated universe would feel precisely as real as our universe feels to us.
The brain of a computer—its central processing unit (CPU)—consists of a set of electric switches called transistors. The CPU does not need to be an electric device. Just as 2 + 2 = 4 holds for both apples and bananas, simulations should work regardless of the substrate on which they are implemented.
In theory, one could implement a DNA simulation as a mechanically operating computer consisting of wooden components. Instead of using transistors in a silicon chip to control electrons, one could use wooden parts on a plywood platform to control wooden balls. When such a machine stepped through its logic, a virtual potentially pain sensitive human would take its first steps in its virtual universe.
What then is this strange phenomenon that creates consciousness and pain from a jerking pile of wooden pieces?
If a huge number of moving wooden components can create pain, then what does one moving piece of wood create?
Can current physics even describe this action?
No man-made device is perfect, and wooden ™ is no exception. Friction, tolerances, and things like that introduce resonances and other unintentional vibrations to the operation of wooden ™. If the actual logic in the wooden ™ creates a virtual universe with pain and consciousness, then what do these unintentional side effects create? Do they get reflected in some form into the created virtual world too?
Would the virtual fellow in its virtual universe discover these in the form of strange quantum foam? Would it observe them as strange cosmic background radiation with 2.725K temperature? Maybe that indeed explains why we measure quantum foam and cosmic background radiationin our universe. We are being simulated in a wooden Universal Turing Machine!
It would be difficult to argue why large movements of wooden components would count, but their small resonances would not.
Let’s say we run DNA simulation in a modern computer. How would the clock speed of the CPU running the simulation appear in the created simulated universe? Would the simulated human observe that particles in its universe appear to follow some strange abstract square wave function, whose origin it could not explain, but which it might end up calling Wintel’s (TM) abstract square wave function?
How would the human simulated in wooden computer sense the workings of such a computer? Due to the large number of concurrently rolling spheres, the simulated human could conclude that the wave function must be complex-valued with phase coherence, and imaginary numbers would provide a natural formalism.
In addition to electric and wooden computers, it is easy to picture rich set of other possible ways to implement computers, and therefore, systems potentially capable of creating virtual universes with conscious observers.
Computer software is ultimately a sequence of bits—nothing more than a series of binary switches. Theoretically, one could use a thermostat, a device with only two states (open and closed), to describe any computational procedure.
By allowing temperature to fluctuate in a carefully controlled way, a simple thermostat could theoretically run the digital code of a DNA sequence. If the underlying mathematics holds true, conscious experience—and even pain—should emerge.
The simulated fellow would be totally unaware of the fact that a trivial thermostat is responsible for the illusion of its existence. Crucially, the thermostat itself cannot be regarded as conscious by any means.
It is still the very mechanical deterministic system stepping through its two state sequence without any choice. Yet, the rattling of that thermostat creates a virtual parallel universe in which a conscious human marvels at the deep nature of reality.
Correspondingly, running such DNA simulations on any type of computer does not make the computer itself conscious or pain-sensitive. Pain and consciousness live in the virtual world the computer simulates.
A person walking through two subsequent doors implements the logical operation door1 ∧ door2 (AND). Conversely, if a hallway splits such that one can pass through using either a left or a right door to reach the destination, the system executes the operation left ∨ right (OR). This is exactly how our computers work—the only difference is that the logic is implemented mechanically via human bodies instead of electronically via silicon. What unfathomable complexity do billions of human beings create by navigating streets and passing through doors on their way to work?
Even a regular pencil and a piece of paper could be the source of consciousness. Start writing down the evolution of DNA with pencil and pen, and soon virtual people suffer tooth pain in their virtual universe. Both pencil and ballpoint pen should work equally well. Due to the higher friction, the temperature of the cosmic background radiation in a universe created with pencil might be a bit higher though!
The only conclusion one can draw from these is that whatever it is that we call consciousnes and pain must be subtrate independent. The source of pain cannot be any physical attribute, such as mass, electric charge, elementary particle such as photon, because it is always possible to find an implementation where such a property does not play any role.
The only common factor across different implementations is the logic they execute. That logic itself is nothing more than structured information—data in an abstract form.
If we can utilize electrons or even macroscopic components to create virtual universes that replicate the biological and structural motifs of our own—such as DNA—we reach a logical crossroads. Because these simulated observers are functional duplicates of their "real-world" counterparts, they will inevitably begin exploring their own substrate.
They will discover the principles of computation and, eventually, construct their own Turing Machines. The procedure these virtual entities use to simulate their own existence is identical to the procedure we used to create them. We can express this transition mathematically. If our world is rn and the simulated world is rn+1, the mapping is:
This nested stack of simulations continues as long as the host level contains sufficient computational density to support the sub-level. Because we know the deterministic nature of the Turing Machine we used to initiate the first step, we must admit that the relationship is strictly recursive:
We know that these sub-simulations are ’virtual’, since we created them in our computers, with the software that we can fully understand. In a recursive formula, it is notoriously difficult to argue for "ontological seniority." There is no parameter within the fDNA function that distinguishes a "real" world from a "virtual" one; the operator remains invariant across all levels of the recursion. The logical conclusion is that our "base" reality is as computationally contingent as the simulations we produce. To an observer inside the recursion, the substrate is always invisible; we perceive our level as "solid" simply because we are defined by the same logic that governs it.
Is the universe made of abstract information?
There is, however, a significant physical constraint to this hypothesis: the Information Bottleneck. Simulating the human genome, let alone the consciousness of eight billion humans and the staggering complexity of 1022 stars in the observable universe, requires an astronomical amount of information.
Those sub-simulations would soon run out of information.
The “Anthropic Principle” states that the universe must be compatible with the existence of intelligent observers. We should not therefore wonder why everything appears to be so delicately adjusted to make our existence possible. If this wasn’t the case, then there wouldn’t be us either.
According to Stephen Hawking, the universe contains vastly more galaxies than strictly needed for life to develop on one planet, suggesting that a strong anthropic principle (requiring life everywhere) is unnecessary. Only one would be enough to produce the raw materials and get us important humans developed.
One might question this reasoning. If the probability for development of intelligent life happened to be extremely small, then isn’t this huge universe precisely what one needs to get intelligent life developed at least on one planet? So it actually boils down to probabilities. Even if the probability of life turned out to be high, maybe God, or whoever wanted to get us created, is a perfectionist and only good (e.g., sin-free) humans will do—which we apparently are not.
The current best estimates of the number of galaxies in the observable universe are around 1 to 2 trillion galaxies. Maybe God is impatient! God doesn’t want to wait two trillion years to see life. Why not create 2 trillion galaxies and wait only one year?
Can we resist the temptation to play with our genome? Researchers are currently trying hard to create artificial self-aware systems on all possible fronts.
if (God exists) {
// God creates a man,
// for his own image creates he him
} else {
// man creates virtual man
// for his own image creates he him
}
As soon as we get the first full scale DNA simulations executed, we humans will then play the role of God.
Despite their virtual nature, these abstract, virtual simulated universes might possess very "real" emergent properties. Pain, joy, and consciousness could emerge in them.
A further question arises: is the emotional spectrum observed in humans the complete set of possible conscious states, or merely the subset produced by biological evolution? It might be plausible that other forms of conscious architecture could produce emotional states not present in the human repertoire. One might imagine hypothetical “orphan emotions”—states permitted by the informational structure of cognition but never realized in biological evolution.
Evolutionary systems frequently become trapped in local optima: configurations that function adequately but do not represent the global maximum of possible adaptation.
If conscious experience depends on underlying information architecture, then human emotions may represent only the default configuration produced by our evolutionary history.
There may exist hypothetical emotional states—feelings that evolution has not yet brought about.
In the software industry, the term cross-cutting concerns is used to refer to systemic requirements such as security and vulnerability management. These are not merely features of a single component; rather, they are essential aspects that must be integrated into every software component throughout development.
One may ask whether a certain threshold of informational complexity is required for genuine subjective experience. As we build faster computers and more sophisticated software, we remain entirely blind to the light—or the fire—we may be igniting within them.
Should we add Pain Management to our palette of cross-cutting concerns in the future?