Can someone explain in very basic terms the difference between these two?
In: Physics
The holographic principle is a principle in quantum physics which tells you about how to think about the information contained in a particular volume of space. It *basically* says that the whole internal volume can be encoded as information on the surface of that volume. It’s a pretty cool thing for laypeople to think about, but the real, practical implications of the holographic principle are pretty much beyond the reach of ordinary laypeople to understand. You have to know a *lot* of physics. It’s hard science.
The simulation theory is an idea which doesn’t really depend on or have much to do with physics directly. It’s more an idea of metaphysics. The simulation hypothesis suggests that the world we experience, and all the physical interactions that happen in it, all the atoms bouncing around which make *us*, are actually taking place in something like a computer, the same way we might simulate the bouncing of billiard balls in a video game. And the computer-or-whatever which is running the simulation, in turn, would exist in some more “real”, more “physical” world than the world we live in. This theory is sometimes supported by some kind of probabilistic, “what fraction of all possible worlds” type of argument, but those generally aren’t very rigorous. Questions like how such a computer-or-whatever should come to exist in whatever world it’s in, who would design it and why, and what this all is a simulation *of*, are raised but not really answered by the theory.
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