How can we define that the world that we live in is real? Could we just be simulated minds living inside of world similar to The Matrix? The idea that the world is a simulation has gained some popularity recently, with people like Elon Musk and Neil DeGrasse Tyson believing it to be incredibly likely. What exactly does this mean though?
Imagine that the rate of growth for technology stays constant and we are able to create a computer with near infinite computing potential. This computer could be used to run what Elon describes as "Ancestor-level" simulations, where entire consciousnesses are simulated in order to see how events might play out in a real scenario given that these consciousnesses have no real discernable difference to our own. If this possibility exists, it is argued that it is almost infinitely more likely that we are in fact the consciousness that is being simulated.
The idea of this simulated world was first publicized by Oxford Professor Nick Bostrum in 2003. He prefaces his argument by stating that at least 1 of these conditions has to be true: "(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation." His idea also has the assumption that what we see in this simulated world is not the entire universe, but only what we can interact with and see. One of the examples of this that he gives is that the center of the Earth could just not exist in a meaningful sense until we're directly observing it, much the way that physicists think about wave-particle duality (short video).
The first point of his argument talks about if humans would go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage. Posthuman here refers to the idea that humans have mastered any technology to a physical limit and an energy limit. Clearly, we have not reached that point and will not for the foreseeable future, but will humans go extinct? There are still existential threats to humanity that we can and cannot control. Nuclear war, genetically engineering superviruses, and gamma-ray bursts are just a couple ways we could all end up dying. We could also die from things that we have yet to even discover or observe. The Fermi Paradox asks an interesting question along the same lines as well. It argues that life may exist throughout the universe, but we may not have seen any of it because of their civilizations dying out before they become an interplanetary species. Whatever it is that could have destroyed countless and nameless alien civilizations could also destroy us. As a result, we can't rule out this first option from happening yet, so simulation or not, we would have bigger problems to worry about.
The second point argues that if we were to create this sort of computer that could simulate human existence, there may not be a need for it. If humanity has evolved to such a point that we are able to create these machines, what need would we have for simulating the lives that we live in now? Surely any problems that our society runs into would be vastly different in size and scope from what these evolved humans would experience. Advanced alien civilizations that have this sort of computing power may exist or might exist in the future, but that's no guarantee that they would gain anything out of sitting down and watching me type this post. However, we may not even come close to understanding what they could gain from such simulations by the same idea. Since they would be so different to us, we may only be able to grasp at straws in an attempt to understand their actions. We probably can't rule this option out either way.
What if we were able to actually create a computer that was able to handle these sorts of simulations? A short story by an anonymous author highlights the idea of being able to create it and then the repercussions after the fact. An interesting point brought up by this story is the idea of whether your actions will influence the actions of either simulators or simulatees. If the simulation would be based on creating a consciousness that is exactly the same as the person running the simulation, actions taken in scenarios should always be the same, but actually having it happen is a different story. Additionally, this gets into another sort of paradox where if you were to create a simulated consciousness if it would actually be the same person or not (5 minute video).
There still lies the question of knowing if we were in a simulation or not. Is there any way that we could tell if we were in a simulation? The answer is probably not. Unless humanity goes out and creates a cosmic empire that would require constant computations greater than our supposed supercomputer, there's not exactly a way that we can tell we are in one. The easiest way to refute it, is to simply take one of the routes that does not involve living in a computer simulation. That leaves 2 options for us: extinction, or that we are unlikely to run simulations of our ancestors or of ourselves. Given those 2 options, I'd prefer the second.
Discussion Questions:
Do you think that we might be living in a simulation?
What do you think that humanity could gain from simulating our own history?
Is there a way that we could tell we were in a simulation?
Do you think that we could ever simulate a consciousness?
If humanity were to go extinct, how would we do it?
Sources outside those linked in text:
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-simulation-hypothesis-why-some-think-life-simulated-reality-ncna913926
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/227126-neil-degrasse-tyson-says-its-very-likely-the-universe-is-a-simulation
https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
My Comments:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/04/economic-inequality-and-post-secondary.html?showComment=1556313365948#c9092065543630206975
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/04/lsd-assisted-psychotherapy-final-report.html?showComment=1556316451369#c2108518936974676036
