---
title: "Sim-to-Real Gap"
description: "A machine-learning term Bratton borrows and declines to read as a gap."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/sim-to-real-gap"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/sim-to-real-gap"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Sim-to-Real Gap

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/sim-to-real-gap), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

A machine-learning term Bratton borrows and declines to read as a gap. Embodied AIs like driverless cars learn in toy worlds, reductive simulations where they can bump into walls and run many generations in an instant before entering physical reality. For a General Theory of Simulations holds that for the AI the boundary between a world built of data and a world perceived as data is already blurred, so the crossing is a hybridization of virtual and physical inputs, not a border; Speculative Philosophy of Planetary Computation names the program's interest as the mixing of thing and shadow; the Agentworld brief extends this into real-to-sim-to-real relays many orders deep. Vivarium, by contrast, treats Sim2Real as an engineering problem, simulations mismodelling physics or missing the real's indeterminacies, and Maughan's Infinity Mirror supplies the failure case: a dog missing from Walmart's drone simulation. Relates to Digital Twin and Reflexive vs. Recursive Simulation.

## Appears in

- [Agentworld (Research Brief)](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/agentworld-brief) (2026-06-25)
- [57 Ideas & Questions about Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra-film) (2025-05-10)
- [Infinity Mirror](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/infinitymirror) (2025-05-10)
- [For a General Theory of Simulations](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/theoryofsim) (2025-05-10)
- [After Alignment](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/afteralignment) (2025-05-10)
- [Speculative Philosophy of Planetary Computation](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/spoc) (2025-05-10)
- [Antikythera](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/research) (2025-05-10)
- [Vivarium](https://antikythera.wiki/work/studio/vivarium) (2023)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._