Reality as Simulation: The Programmer’s Universe

Perhaps no metaphor captures the imagination of the twenty-first century like the idea that reality itself is a simulation. From popular science to philosophy podcasts, we are invited to envision the universe as a computer program, running on some cosmic server somewhere, complete with code, bugs, and perhaps a hidden programmer.

The conceptual danger is obvious. This metaphor imports design, intentionality, and control where none exists. It extends the brain-as-computer idea from our minds to the cosmos itself, implying that the universe is a crafted artefact rather than a relational field of actualisations. Free will becomes a software setting; déjà vu, a bug; randomness, a miscalculated line of code.

Relational ontology offers a corrective. Reality is reflexive relational alignment, not a simulation of something else. What unfolds is not being executed from a hidden script but emerges from interactions, constraints, and potentials co-aligning across contexts. There is no programmer, no cosmic IT department, no debug mode — only the ongoing actualisation of possibilities.

Parody makes the problem vivid. If reality were truly a simulation, then your morning coffee could be a rendering glitch, and gravity would occasionally pause for a system update. Black holes might crash like frozen spreadsheets, and evolution would be nothing but random commits pushed to the master branch. Philosophers would debate whether moral responsibility is a licensing issue, and déjà vu would be the only glitch anyone remembered.

The lesson is simple: seductive as it may be, the simulation metaphor misleads ontologically. It gives the illusion of control and design, concealing the relational, context-dependent processes that actually produce the cosmos. Reality does not run code; it aligns relational potentials — messily, beautifully, and without instruction.