Simulating C. Elegans: Potential for Human Simulation

OpenWorm is an open-source project simulating a C. Elegans nematode's behavior, raising questions about the plausibility of the Simulation Theory.

### OpenWorm: Simulating the World's First Virtual Organism and Its Implications for Simulation Theory
* 🪱  OpenWorm is an open-source project dedicated to creating the world's first whole organism in a computer, a C. Elegans nematode, by **mapping every single neuron and simulating its behavior**.
* 🤯  If we can simulate this small worm with **302 neurons**, there's a possibility of scaling up to simulate **humans completely**.
* 🧬  The C. elegans nematode is a small, transparent worm with **302 neurons**, making it the first multicellular organism to have its **entire genome sequenced**.
* 💻  The simulation predicts the worm's behavior by calculating a system of equations to produce a **readout of the changing membrane potential** of a neuron over time.
* 🤔  Simulation Theory, proposed by Nick Bostrom, suggests that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation, with technology advancing rapidly towards creating **indistinguishable simulated realities**.
* 🧠 " If the universe is truly infinite and **infinite possibilities are out there**, that pretty much proves this to be **false**.
* 🦾  Simulating a human with **86 billion neurons** would require massive computing power, but the advent of **quantum computing** could make it feasible.
* 📺  The TV show "Devs" explores the concept of **simulation theory**, making it an interesting watch for those intrigued by this topic.

this worm is real, but it is 100% simulated. Does this prove simulation Theory? And here's the weird thing: you can run this entire simulation directly on your own computer. This stuff is absolutely mind-blowing, and I'm going to break it all down for you, and by the end, you might be questioning your own reality. So here is the OpenWorm website, and the whole thing is really weird, to be honest, but it's really cool. So first, let me just break down the basics. OpenWorm is an open-source project and open science community dedicated to creating the world's first whole organism in a computer, a C. Elegans nematode, via bottom-up systems biology computational modeling. If you don't know what any of that is, don't worry, neither did I, but here's the gist: our main goal is to build the world's first virtual organism and in silico implementation of a living creature for the purpose of achieving an understanding of the events and mechanisms of living cells. So basically what they did was they were

able to map this very basic organism down to every single neuron within it. So, once you do that, you're actually able to predict exactly how it's going to react in any environment. Now let me blow your mind for a second. If we're able to do this, and granted, it takes a lot of compute power to simulate this tiny worm, if we scale up to human level, we might be able to actually simulate humans completely. So, the C. elegans is a small and transparent nematode, a worm. It's about 1 mm in length. It lives in soil, and particularly in temperate regions, and it's actually a really popular organism to study because of its simplistic properties. Its lifespan is about 2 to 3 weeks, and it contains 302 neurons. Now, that's the key. With 302 neurons, we are able to simulate every single one of them and how it's going to react. We have mapped out this organism to a T. It is the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced. Now, check this.

out on browser. open.org, we can actually see it completely. Watch this, we can see every single element of this nematode. How cool is this? I believe that's probably its stomach, maybe. And so, you can play around with this yourself. It's free, check it out. But we have mapped this organism exactly, and with that, we can simulate it exactly. All right, and let me take a step back for a second. You might be asking yourself, what is simulation Theory? Let me read a little bit about it from Rochester edu. So, 20 years ago from today, and this was published about eight months ago, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom first proposed the argument that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. We, being humans, everything around us is just a simulation on someone else's computer, introducing several topics of intellectual debates, many of which are still going on today. So, think about this. Look how quickly technology has advanced, even in the last 10 years, even in the last 50 years. Technology is advancing at such a rapid clip, and specifically artificial

intelligence, virtual reality, all of these things that could potentially one day simulate the entire world easily and to the point where humans won't be able to tell the difference between what is reality and what is simulated reality. And if that is the direction the world is headed, what's to say that it hasn't already happened? If it's going to happen, it probably already did happen, and we're all living in a simulation right now. There's this guy who's in a kind of virtual world, and he finds out that there's a real world, and he's really questioning what's real and not real, and he really wants to know what's real. And the young girl was like, Why? And I was like, What do you mean? She was like, Who cares if it's real? And of course, there are plenty of articles, plenty of studies debunking simulation theory. Here's one of them from bigthink.com: According to the simulation hypothesis, everything we experienced was coded by an intelligent being, and we are part of that computer code that we live in some kind of

computation, in and by itself, is not unscientific. For all we currently know, the laws of nature are mathematical, so you could say the universe is really just computing those laws, and that makes a ton of sense, at least to me. Here, the article says Elon Musk is among those who have bought into it. He too has said it's most likely we're in a simulation, and even Neil deGrasse Tyson gave the simulation hypothesis better than 50/50 odds of being correct. But here is how they debunk it: If there are many civilizations that run many simulations of conscious beings, then you are likely to be simulated. First of all, it could be that one or both of the premises is wrong. Maybe there aren't any other civilizations, or they aren't interested in simulations. Now, if the universe is truly infinite and infinite possibilities are out there, that pretty much proves this to be false. If there are infinite possibilities, there are definitely other civilizations, and if there are infinite other civilizations, at least one of them is interested in

simulation, and here they say he just assumes. He, being Bostrom, it is possible to simulate human-like consciousness. We don't actually know if this is possible, but it seems like we're getting quite close to that with artificial intelligence. And if the scaling laws prevail, which they tend to always do, we will reach human-level consciousness with artificial intelligence. So let's read a little bit more about our very special worm that we can simulate. By far, are the most understood and studied animals with a brain in all of biology. It is the first multicellular organism to have its genome mapped. It has only 1,000 cells and exactly 302 neurons, which have also been mapped, as well as its wiring diagram, making it also the first organism to have a complete connectome produced. And what does it do? Well, it can find food, it mates, it avoids toxins and predators, it lays eggs, and it crawls. And there are a bunch of different crawling motions. Another question is if the virtual organism lays eggs, is that also

a new virtual organism or is fertilization not the goal. So currently, the project does not have fertilization, egg laying, or development in its capacity, but they might be able to do that in the future. And then at that point, we have an entire civilization of these worms. And so, how does it actually act like a worm? How does it know with these neurons, with these cells, how to actually behave like a worm? The logic, quote unquote logic part, comes from the dynamics of the neurons interacting with each other. It is a little unintuitive, but that's how it makes up how it thinks. We are simulating those dynamics as well as we can, rather than instructing it what to do when. So again, if we are able to break everything down into the individual cells and neurons, and then simply by just modeling them, we can produce behavior that we thought was going to happen in the worm. Why can't we do that for humans if we have enough compute power? And so, how does it actually simulate their neurons? So it calculates a system of equations to

produce a readout of the changing membrane potential of a neuron over time. Some simulators enable ION channel Dynamics to be included and enable neurons to be described in detail in space. So, basically, they're just predicting how it's going to behave. Inputs equals outputs. So, what if simulation Theory were real? What would it take to actually simulate a human and then from there a civilization of humans and even beyond that? What about every single atom in the entire world and then Universe? It would take massive computing power. Here's a way to think about it. This worm has 302 neurons, and we can simulate it. I am running it on an absolute monster of a PC, and it took a while, a couple of hours, to fully simulate about 23 seconds of that worm behaving. Humans have 86 billion neurons, so imagine the compute power necessary for that. Then we start to think, okay, what if we had Quantum Computing, which we kind of do. We have the very beginnings of quantum Computing, but if quantum Computing were actually solved and

really usable then we might actually be able to compute the entire world. And here's the thing, there was this show devs which I loved. It was one season only and it is exactly about this topic. So if you're into this stuff, check out that show. I loved it. So that's it. I got it up and running on my computer completely locally. I have the code. It's open source. I'll link everything in the description below. And at the end of all of this, it's going to give me another fully simulated worm. If you want to see me do a full tutorial on how to get this up and running, let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed this video, please consider giving a like and subscribe. And I'll see you in the next one.

Does This Worm Prove We're In a Computer Simulation? 🤯

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The Simulation of a Worm and Its Implications

OpenWorm is a project dedicated to creating the world's first whole organism in a computer, specifically the C.

Elegans nematode, by mapping every single one of its 302 neurons.

This simulation has the potential to not only understand the worm's behavior but also raises the possibility of simulating humans at a larger scale.

Elegans nematode, with its simplistic properties and fully sequenced genome, serves as a key model for this groundbreaking simulation.

Advancements in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence and virtual reality, have sparked the debate about whether we are living in a computer simulation.

This theory, first proposed by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, suggests that the rapid advancement of technology could lead to a simulated reality indistinguishable from actual reality.

Despite the intellectual debate it has generated, there are also many studies and articles debunking the simulation hypothesis.

The Scientific Debate on Computation and the Universe

Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson believe in the simulation hypothesis, but it is debunked by the possibility of infinite civilizations and infinite possibilities in the universe.

The potential for simulating human-like consciousness is being driven by advancements in artificial intelligence and the study of the worm, which is the most understood organism with a brain, is contributing to this understanding.

The worm's behavior and capabilities make it a significant focus in the debate on simulating consciousness.

Simulating Worms' Neuronal Dynamics and the Potential for Human Simulation

A project is simulating worm behavior based on neuron interactions, with the potential for future fertilization and egg laying simulation.

The simulation involves calculating neuron membrane potential over time and requires massive computing power, as demonstrated by the challenge of simulating a worm with 302 neurons.

The prospect of simulating human civilization and beyond would demand a colossal leap in computing power, potentially involving quantum computing.

The Impact of the Show "Devs" on Simulated Worms

The show "Devs" is a one-season series that explores the concept of simulating the world.

The code for this simulation is available as open source and can be run locally on a computer.

The show has inspired the creation of a fully simulated worm, with the possibility of a future tutorial on how to run the simulation.