Shitty intro for what is otherwise a vaguely interesting possibility which I highly doubt will pan out to anything. Regarding the not-even-mentioned simulation conclusion, there is the question of how the fuck the universe calculates any of its results, but the simulation answer doesn't solve anything, because what is the simulation running on? Computers all the way up? (as opposed to turtles or gods all the way down). Here's the actual talk.

I have so much in common with these panel members. Well, as long as you limit that statement to the chairs they are sitting on which are the same as mine!

There's an explanation here, written by the same guy. He actually does suggest 'signatures of virtual reality' there, but I think fails to ask why they would be necessary unless the next universe up was exactly the same, in which case it would be a simulation too, and so on.

If that sounds crazy to you — well, you could be right. It is certainly possible to overstate mathematical links between different systems: as the physicist Eugene Wigner pointed out in 1960, just because a piece of mathematics is ubiquitous and appears in the description of several distinct systems does not necessarily mean that those systems are related to each other. The number pi, after all, occurs in the measurement of circles as well as in the measurement of population distributions. This does not mean that populations are related to circles.

Yet for a moment, let us imagine that this alternative Matrix-style world contains some theoretical physicists, and that one of them asks, "How could we discover whether we live inside a Matrix?". One answer might be "Try to detect the presence of codes in the laws that describe physics."

Damn, Morpheous got old

5mins in he talks about "static" on a line, when computers send info. you can loose packets, but you have check sums to make sure the payload is correct.

This is exactly what he says showed up as... some... symmetry folding variables in their.. uh.. things - classical checksum codes or something.

Certainly given me something to ponder over beers tonight.