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Elon Musk says we may live in a simulation. Here's how we might tell if he's right

Is the world around us real — or are we living in a simulation, like characters trapped inside some space alien’s video game?

That sounds like a question you might hear at a midnight screening of "The Matrix," but lately it’s become the subject of serious academic debate. High-profile proponents of what’s known as the “ simulation hypothesis ” include SpaceX chief Elon Musk, who recently expounded on the idea during an interview for a popular podcast .

“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality,” Musk said before concluding, “We’re most likely in a simulation.”

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees, giving “better than 50-50 odds” that the simulation hypothesis is correct. “I wish I could summon a strong argument against it, but I can find none,” he told NBC News MACH in an email.

Reality comes under attack

The current assault on reality began with a 2003 paper by Nick Bostrom . In it, the University of Oxford philosopher laid down some blunt logic: If there are long-lived technological civilizations in the universe , and if they run computer simulations, there must be a huge number of simulated realities complete with artificial-intelligence inhabitants who may have no idea they’re living inside a game — inhabitants like us, perhaps.

These beings might imagine themselves real but would have no physical form, existing only within the simulation.

If computer-loving aliens truly exist, Bostrum argued, “we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation .” And then people like Tyson and Musk found their minds blown.

Now scientists are searching for ways to put the simulation hypothesis to the test. Bostrom is eager to see more concrete developments of his idea. Experiments that could distinguish physical reality from a simulation “are what would be needed for it to be a bona fide scientific assertion,” he told MACH.

The Big Questions Is the universe conscious?

Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, is more expressive about what such experiments could mean. “If there were bugs in the program running our universe, like in the Matrix movies, those could clearly have observable effects,” he says. “Just like God appearing in a thundercloud could be pretty good empirical evidence in favor of religion.”

Looking for gaps in the sim

Any such bugs in our Matrix world would have to be extremely subtle, or else we would have noticed them by now. Silas Beane, a nuclear physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, proposes that we may be able to ferret out previously overlooked flaws by uncovering the mathematical structure used to build our simulated reality.

He points out that scientists in his field use a lattice-like set of coordinates to simulate the behavior of subatomic particles . Maybe the aliens (or whoever built our simulation, if it exists) used that approach, too. If our reality is built on top of a lattice, there’d be a fundamental coarseness to it, since there could be no details in our mock-universe smaller than the resolution of the simulation.

Even if the resolution limit is too small for us to observe directly, Beane says, we may be able to detect it experimentally. In a paper he wrote with two colleagues, Beane proposes that a simulation lattice could affect the behavior of ultra-energetic particles known as cosmic rays , affecting their orientation and maximum intensity.

Instruments like the Telescope Array, a network of 500 detectors scattered across 300 square miles of Utah desert, watch for cosmic rays as they crash into Earth’s atmosphere from deep space. The detectors have already discovered particles as much as 100 quintillion times as energetic as visible light. That seems like a great place to start hunting for bugs in any simulation.

It would be a delicate task: High-energy cosmic rays are rare, and the deviations from ordinary physical effects might not be obvious. But Beane and company are encouraged that making such a measurement is feasible, at least in principle. “There always remains the possibility for the simulated to discover the simulators,” the authors write.

Is our world badly rendered?

Another way to sleuth for glitches in the simulation is by looking inward rather than outward. In a recently proposed test, former NASA engineer Thomas Campbell and his colleagues point out that human video game designers typically maximize the efficiency of their programming by generating only the parts of the virtual world that players can see . If our Matrix overlords are similarly focused on efficiency, they may be meticulous about simulating details while we’re watching an event, but allow a looser style of simulation when they think nobody is looking.

Following that line of thought, Campbell is focusing on subtle quantum physics experiments, where gaps in the simulation might be most obvious. He has conceived several tabletop optics arrangements that would shoot a laser beam through an elaborate sequence of slits, mirrors and detectors. Photons of laser light would follow different paths contingent on whether they are behaving like waves or like particles , which in turn depends on the structure of the setup.

Or rather, it should depend only on the setup. If reality is rendered at the moment we are watching, Campbell theorizes, his experiment could yield results normally considered impossible, such as being able to predict whether an individual photon passes through or bounces back when it hits a half-reflective mirror. That outcome would "represent an unambiguous indicator that our reality must be simulated," he writes.

As a huge bonus, Campbell claims the experiment could also explain the weird way that events in quantum physics seem to be influenced by the observer: It may be a quirk of the simulation we live in, not a fundamental aspect of reality.

Science The 7 biggest unanswered questions in physics

Marcus Noack, a computational physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab with a keen interest in the simulation hypothesis, sees problems with these attempts to outsmart the Matrix. For instance, Campbell assumes that a simulation would be for our benefit only, “but what if the simulator does not simulate us just for us, but rather to observe how everything plays out?” And Noack notes that Beane’s approach would come up empty if the lattice of reality is too fine for us to detect — or if the wily simulators have built in systems to defeat any test we might run.

The bottom line, Noack says, is that it’s impossible to test the simulation hypothesis as a whole. The best we can do is explore a “limited neighborhood” of notions about how the simulation might work, and hope that the designers are too lazy or too indifferent to prevent us from discovering their handiwork.

Simulations all the way down?

That assessment seems to combine the worst of both worlds: We don’t know if we’re living in a simulation, but merely knowing that we might be in a simulation seems pretty depressing. Tyson calls it “a creepy concept.” Bostrom adds that it “seems to foster a sense of absolute dependency.”

But there are also constructive ways to look at the simulation hypothesis. Aaronson sees it as a fresh way to contemplate “the ancient mysteries of where our universe comes from , who or what created it, and why.”

Noack also finds it a fruitful thought problem about where human research might be headed. “I simulate many phenomena that represent only a tiny subset of all the physical things going on around us,” he says. “I’m interested in the computational effort a world simulation would need, and the computer involved.”

The rapid advance of AI research and computer modeling raises the possibility that one day we humans might create our own hyper-realistic simulations containing self-aware digital beings. That possibility is both inspiring and disconcerting. It also introduces a new set of brain-hurting questions. Would these simulations-within-a-simulation be the end? Or could our simulated beings keep going and create yet another layer of simulation, and so on?

“There could be an infinite stack of simulations if there were infinite serial computing power available at the bottom level and in each higher level,” Bostrom says. Fortunately, in a finite universe things can never get quite that crazy, he says: “As far as we can tell, the serial computing power available to a simulator in our universe is finite, in which case we could only create finitely many levels of simulations.”

Phew. So maybe that’s one small consolation: We might be in a simulation, or a simulation in a simulation, but at least we can be pretty sure that it’s not simulations all the way down.

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Farhad Manjoo

We Might Be in a Simulation. How Much Should That Worry Us?

By Farhad Manjoo

Opinion Columnist

Imagine that when your great-grandparents were teenagers, they got their hands on a groundbreaking new gadget, the world’s first fully immersive virtual-reality entertainment system. These weren’t those silly goggles you see everywhere now. This device was more Matrix-y — a stylish headband stuffed with electrodes that somehow tapped directly into the human brain’s perceptual system, replacing whatever a wearer saw, heard, felt, smelled and even tasted with new sensations ginned up by a machine.

The device was a blockbuster; magic headbands soon became an inescapable fact of people’s daily lives. Your great-grandparents, in fact, met each other in Headbandland, and their children, your grandparents, rarely encountered the world outside it. Later generations — your parents, you — never did.

Everything you have ever known, the entire universe you call reality, has been fed to you by a machine.

This, anyway, is the sort of out-there scenario I keep thinking about as I ponder the simulation hypothesis — the idea, lately much discussed among technologists and philosophers, that the world around us could be a digital figment, something like the simulated world of a video game.

The idea is not new. Exploring the underlying nature of reality has been an obsession of philosophers since the time of Socrates and Plato. Ever since “The Matrix,” such notions have become a staple of pop culture , too. But until recently the simulation hypothesis had been a matter for academics. Why should we even consider that technology could create simulations indistinguishable from reality? And even if such a thing were possible, what difference would knowledge of the simulation make to any of us stuck in the here and now, where reality feels all too tragically real?

For these reasons, I’ve sat out many of the debates about the simulation hypothesis that have been bubbling through tech communities since the early 2000s, when Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford, floated the idea in a widely cited essay .

But a brain-bending new book by the philosopher David Chalmers — “ Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy ” — has turned me into a hard-core simulationist.

After reading and talking to Chalmers, I’ve come to believe that the coming world of virtual reality might one day be regarded as every bit as real as real reality. If that happens, our current reality will instantly be cast into doubt; after all, if we could invent meaningful virtual worlds, isn’t it plausible that some other civilization somewhere else in the universe might have done so, too? Yet if that’s possible, how could we know that we’re not already in its simulation?

The conclusion seems inescapable: We may not be able to prove that we are in a simulation, but at the very least, it will be a possibility that we can’t rule out. But it could be more than that. Chalmers argues that if we’re in a simulation, there’d be no reason to think it’s the only simulation; in the same way that lots of different computers today are running Microsoft Excel, lots of different machines might be running an instance of the simulation. If that were the case, simulated worlds would vastly outnumber non-sim worlds — meaning that, just as a matter of statistics, it would be not just possible that our world is one of the many simulations but likely. Chalmers writes that “the chance we are sims is at least 25 percent or so.”

Chalmers is a professor of philosophy at New York University, and he has spent much of his career thinking about the mystery of consciousness. He is best known for coining the phrase “the hard problem of consciousness,” which, roughly, is a description of the difficulty of explaining why a certain experience feels like that experience to the being experiencing it. (Don’t worry if this hurts your head; it’s not called the hard problem for nothing.)

Chalmers says that he began thinking deeply about the nature of simulated reality after using V.R. headsets like Oculus Quest 2 and realizing that the technology is already good enough to create situations that feel viscerally real.

Virtual reality is now advancing so quickly that it seems quite reasonable to guess that the world inside V.R. could one day be indistinguishable from the world outside it. Chalmers says this could happen within a century; I wouldn’t be surprised if we passed that mark within a few decades.

Whenever it happens, the development of realistic V.R. will be earthshaking, for reasons both practical and profound. The practical ones are obvious: If people can easily flit between the physical world and virtual ones that feel exactly like the physical world, which one should we regard as real?

You might say the answer is clearly the physical one. But why? Today, what happens on the internet doesn’t stay on the internet; the digital world is so deeply embedded in our lives that its effects ricochet across society. After many of us have spent much of the pandemic working and socializing online, it would be foolish to say that life on the internet isn’t real.

The same would hold for V.R. Chalmers’s book — which travels entertainingly across ancient Chinese and Indian philosophy to René Descartes to modern theorists like Bostrom and the Wachowskis (the siblings who created “The Matrix”) — is a work of philosophy, and so naturally he goes through a multipart exploration into how physical reality differs from virtual reality.

His upshot is this: “Virtual reality isn’t the same as ordinary physical reality,” but because its effects on the world are not fundamentally different from those of physical reality, “it’s a genuine reality all the same.” Thus we should not regard virtual worlds as mere escapist illusions; what happens in V.R. “really happens,” Chalmers says, and when it’s real enough, people will be able to have “fully meaningful” lives in V.R.

To me, this seems self-evident. We already have quite a bit of evidence that people can construct sophisticated realities from experiences they have over a screen-based internet. Why wouldn’t that be the case for an immersive internet?

This gets to what’s profound and disturbing about the coming of V.R. The mingling of physical and digital reality has already thrown society into an epistemological crisis — a situation where different people believe different versions of reality based on the digital communities in which they congregate. How would we deal with this situation in a far more realistic digital world? Could the physical world even continue to function in a society where everyone has one or several virtual alter egos?

I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of hope that this will go smoothly. But the frightening possibilities suggest the importance of seemingly abstract inquiries into the nature of reality under V.R. We should start thinking seriously about the possible effects of virtual worlds now, long before they become too real for comfort.

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An earlier version of this column referred incorrectly to how likely the philosopher David Chalmers believed it was that we live in a simulation. Mr. Chalmers wrote in his book that a thorough calculation put the likelihood at 25 percent, not that “we are probably sims,” as he said in a previous passage in the book.

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Simulation hypothesis: The smart person’s guide

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The simulation hypothesis is the idea that reality is a digital simulation. Technological advances will inevitably produce automated artificial superintelligence that will, in turn, create simulations to better understand the universe. This opens the door for the idea that superintelligence already exists and created simulations now occupied by humans. At first blush the notion that reality is pure simulacra seems preposterous, but the hypothesis springs from decades of scientific research and is taken seriously by academics, scientists, and entrepreneurs like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk.

From Plato’s allegory of the cave to The Matrix ideas about simulated reality can be found scattered through history and literature. The modern manifestation of the simulation argument is postulates that, like Moore’s Law , over time computing power becomes exponentially more robust. Barring a disaster that resets technological progression, experts speculate that it is inevitable computing capacity will one day be powerful enough to generate realistic simulations.

TechRepublic’s smart person’s guide is a routinely updated “living” precis loaded with up-to-date information about about how the simulation hypothesis works, who it affects, and why it’s important.

SEE: Check out all of TechRepublic’s smart person’s guides

Executive summary

• What it is: Often mislabeled as the “simulation theory” (a hypothesis is a suggested explanation, whereas a theory is a scientifically vetted model), the simulation hypothesis advances the idea that realistic simulations and models of the universe will be the inevitable product of perpetual technological evolution.
• Why it matters: The march towards artificial superintelligence and simulations will create automated technologies that fundamentally change and disrupt the global economy. Additionally, a runaway “intelligence explosion” could result in uncontrollable technologies that produce an existential threat on par with nuclear annihilation.
• Who it affects: In the short term, anticipate disruptions and rapid change propelled by machine learning and big data in every industry that relies heavily on automated algorithms, like the financial services sector.
• When it’s happening: Now. While ideas about simulated reality have been tied to human culture for at least 4,000 years, Alan Turing proposed machines with human-equivalent intelligence in 1950. Ideas Turing developed during the Second World War paved the way for modern computing.
• How to access simulated realities: Though whole brain emulation and realistic simulations are potentially decades away, from advertising systems to video games to the stock market, artificial intelligence research has and will continue to produced dozens of automated tools used by thousands of companies and millions of consumers every day.

SEE: Quick glossary: Artificial intelligence (Tech Pro Research)

What is the simulation hypothesis?

The simulation hypothesis advances the idea that simulations might be the inevitable outcome of technological evolution. Though ideas about simulated reality are far from new and novel, the contemporary hypothesis springs from research conducted by Oxford University professor of philosophy Nick Bostrom .

In 2003 Bostrom presented a paper that proposed a trilemma, a decision between three challenging options, related to the potential of future superintelligence to develop simulations. Bostrom argues this likelihood is nonzero, meaning the odds of a simulated reality are astronomically small, but because percentage likelihood is not zero we must consider rational possibilities that include a simulated reality. Bostrom does not propose that humans occupy a simulation. Rather, he argues that massive computational ability developed by posthuman superintelligence will likely develop simulations to better understand that nature of reality.

In his book Superintelligence using anthropic rhetoric Bostrom argues that the odds of a population with human-like population advancing to superintelligence is “very close to zero,” or (with an emphasis on the word or) the odds that a superintelligence would desire to create simulations is also “very close to zero,” or the odds that people with human-like experiences actually live in a simulation is “very close to one.” He concludes by arguing that if the claim “very close to one” is the correct answer and most people do live in simulations, then the odds are good that we too exist in a simulation.

Simulation hypothesis has many critics, namely those in academic communities who question an overreliance on anthropic reasoning and scientific detractors who point out simulations need not be conscious to be studied by future superintelligence. But as artificial intelligence and machine learning emerge as powerful business and cultural trends, many of Bostrom’s ideas are going mainstream.

Additional resources

• Educate yourself on AI: Seven books to get you started (TechRepublic)
• 10 things you need to know about artificial intelligence (TechRepublic)
• Prepare for the Singularity (ZDNet)
• Are we in the Matrix? Science looks for signs we’re not real (CNET)
• Evolution to AI will be more radical than ape-to-human, says Nick Bostrom (TechRepublic)

SEE: Research: 63% say business will benefit from AI (Tech Pro Research)

Why the simulation hypothesis matters

It’s natural to wonder if the simulation hypothesis has real-world applications, or if it’s a fun but purely abstract consideration. For business and culture, the answer is unambiguous: It doesn’t matter if we live in a simulation or not. The accelerating pace of automated technology will have a significant impact on business, politics, and culture in the near future.

The simulation hypothesis is coupled inherently with technological evolution and the development of superintelligence. While superintelligence remains speculative, investments in narrow and artificial general intelligence are significant. Using the space race as an analogue, advances in artificial intelligence create technological innovations that build, destroy, and augment industry. IBM is betting big with Watson and anticipates a rapidly emerging $2 trillion market for cognitive products. Cybersecurity experts are investing heavily in AI and automation to fend off malware and hackers . In a 2016 interview with TechRepublic, United Nations chief technology diplomat, Atefeh Riazi, anticipated the economic impact of AI to be profound and referred to the technology as “humanity’s final innovation.”

• Why AI could destroy more jobs than it creates, and how to save them (TechRepublic)
• United Nations CITO: Artificial intelligence will be humanity’s final innovation (TechRepublic)
• IBM Watson: What are companies using it for? (ZDNet)
• Artificial intelligence positioned to be a game-changer (CBS News)
• Free ebook: Executive’s guide to AI in business (ZDNet)

SEE: Artificial Intelligence and IT: The good, the bad and the scary (Tech Pro Research)

Who the simulation hypothesis affects

Though long-term prognostication about the impact of automated technology is ill-advised, in the short term advances in machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence represent a paradigm shift akin to the development of the internet or the modern mobile phone. In other words, the economy post-automation will be dramatically different . AI will hammer manufacturing industries, and logistics distribution will lean heavily on self-driving cars, ships, drones, and aircraft, and financial services jobs that require pattern recognition will evaporate.

Conversely, automation could create demand for inherently interpersonal skills like HR, sales, manual labor, retail, and creative work. “Digital technologies are in many ways complements, not substitutes for, creativity,” Erik Brynjolfsson said, in an interview with TechRepublic. “If somebody comes up with a new song, a video, or piece of software there’s no better time in history to be a creative person who wants to reach not just hundreds or thousands, but millions and billions of potential customers.”

• How to prepare your business to benefit from AI (TechRepublic)
• Smart machines are about to run the world: Here’s how to prepare (TechRepublic)
• Artificial intelligence: The 3 big trends to watch in 2017 (TechRepublic)
• The first 10 jobs that will be automated by AI and robots (ZDNet)
• AI, Automation, and Tech Jobs (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature)

SEE: IT leader’s guide to the future of artificial intelligence (Tech Pro Research)

When the simulation hypothesis is happening

The golden age of artificial intelligence began in 1956 at the Ivy League research institution Dartmouth College with the now-infamous proclamation, “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” The conference established AI and computational protocols that defined a generation of research. The conference was preceded and inspired by developments at Manchester College in 1951 that produced a program that could play checkers, and another program that could play chess.

Though excited researchers anticipated the speedy emergence of human-level machine intelligence, programming intelligence unironically proved to be a steep challenge. By the mid-1970s the field entered the so-called “first AI winter.” The era was marked by the development of strong theories limited by insufficient computing power.

Spring follows winter, and by the 1980s AI and automation technology grew from the sunshine of faster hardware and the boom of consumer technology markets. By the end of the century parallel processing–the ability to perform multiple computations at one time–emerged. In 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue defeated human chess player Gary Kasparov. Last year Google’s DeepMind defeated a human at Go, and this year the same technology easily beat four of the best human poker players.

Driven and funded by research and academic institutions, governments, and the private sector these benchmarks indicate a rapidly accelerating automation and machine learning market. Major industries like financial services, healthcare, sports, travel, and transportation are all deeply invested in artificial intelligence. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are using AI innovation for consumer applications, and a number of companies are in a race to build and deploy artificial general intelligence.

Some AI forecasters like Ray Kurzweil predict a future with the human brain cheerly connected to the cloud. Other AI researchers aren’t so optimistic. Bostrom and his colleagues in particular warn that creating artificial general intelligence could produce an existential threat.

Among the many terrifying dangers of superintelligence–ranging from out-of-control killer robots to economic collapse–the primary threat of AI is the coupling of of anthropomorphism with the misalignment of AI goals. Meaning, humans are likely to imbue intelligent machines with human characteristics like empathy. An intelligent machine, however, might be programed to prioritize goal accomplishment over human needs. In a terrifying scenario known as instrumental convergence , or the “paper clip maximizer,” a superintelligent narrowly focused AI designed to produce paper clips would turn humans into gray goo in pursuit of resources.

• Facebook’s machine learning director shares tips for building a successful AI platform (TechRepublic)
• AI helpers aren’t just for Facebook’s Zuckerberg: Here’s how to build your own (TechRepublic)
• How developers can take advantage of machine learning on Google Cloud Platform (TechRepublic)
• Google engineer’s swarm of mini robots could be the future of exploring Mars, and much more (TechRepublic)
• SAP aims to step up its artificial intelligence, machine learning game as S/4HANA hits public cloud (ZDNet)

SEE: Research: Companies lack skills to implement and support AI and machine learning (Tech Pro Research)

How to access simulated realities

It may be impossible to test or experience the simulation hypothesis, but it’s easy to learn more about the hypothesis. TechRepublic’s Hope Reese enumerated the best books on artificial intelligence, including Bostrom’s essential tome Superintelligence , Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology , and Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat.

Make sure to read TechRepublic’s smart person’s guides on machine learning , Google’s DeepMind , and IBM’s Watson . Tech Pro Research provides a quick glossary on AI and research on how companies are using machine learning and big data .

Finally, to have some fun with hands-on simulations, grab a copy of Cities: Skylines , Sim City , Elite:Dangerous , or Planet Coaster on game platform Steam. These small-scale environments will let you experiment with game AI while you build your own simulated reality.

• Kurzweil: Your brain will connect directly to the cloud within 30 years (TechRepublic)
• Why AI is the ‘agent of the economy’: EmTechDIGITAL leaders show global impact of AI (TechRepublic)
• How Google’s DeepMind beat the game of Go, which is even more complex than chess (TechRepublic)
• Turning pings into packets: Why the future of computers looks a lot like your brain (ZDNet)
• Researchers uncover algorithm which may solve human intelligence (ZDNet)
• Why robots still need us: David A. Mindell debunks theory of complete autonomy (TechRepublic)
• Artificial Intelligence and life beyond the algorithm: Alan Turing and the future of computing (TechRepublic)
• Britain’s World War II codebreakers tell their story (TechRepublic)
• Photos: The life of Alan Turing (TechRepublic)
• Why you should watch The Imitation Game and why you might want to skip it (TechRepublic)
• The 10 most interesting portrayals of AI in movies (TechRepublic)
• Rebuilding the brain: Using AI, electrodes, and machine learning to bridge gaps in the human nervous system (ZDNet)
• Researchers awarded $16m to develop brain tech to reanimate paralyzed limbs (ZDNet)
• Hiring kit: Data architect (Tech Pro Research)

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Are we living in a computer simulation? I don’t know. Probably.

Why this computer scientist thinks reality might be a video game.

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Are we living in a computer simulation?

The question seems absurd. Yet there are plenty of smart people who are convinced that this is not only possible but perhaps likely.

In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1) All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2) if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3) advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones.

We can’t know for sure which of these is the case, Bostrom concludes, but they’re all possible — and the third option might even be the most probable outcome. It’s a difficult argument to wrap your head around, but it makes a certain amount of sense.

Rizwan Virk, a computer scientist and video game designer, published a 2019 book, The Simulation Hypothesis , that explores Bostrom’s argument in much greater detail and traces the path from today’s technology to what he calls the “Simulation Point,” the moment at which we could realistically build a Matrix -like simulation.

I know nothing about computer science, but this idea that we’re all characters in an advanced civilization’s video game is, well, kind of awesome. So I reached out to Virk and asked him to break it down for me.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

Pretend I know absolutely nothing about the “simulation hypothesis.” What the hell is the simulation hypothesis?

Rizwan Virk

The simulation hypothesis is the modern equivalent of an idea that’s been around for a while, and it is the idea that the physical world that we live in, including the Earth and the rest of the physical universe, is actually part of a computer simulation.

You can think of it like a high resolution or high-fidelity video game in which we are all characters, and the best way to understand it within Western culture is the movie The Matrix , which many people have seen, or even if they haven’t seen [it], it’s become a cultural phenomenon now beyond the film industry.

In that movie, Keanu Reeves plays the character Neo, who meets a guy names Morpheus, who is aptly named after the Greek god of dreams, and Morpheus gives him a choice of taking the red pill or the blue pill. And if he takes the red pill, he wakes up and realizes that his entire life, including his job, the building he lived in, and everything else, was part of this elaborate video game, and he wakes up in a world outside of the game.

That is the basic version of the simulation hypothesis.

Are we living in a simulated universe right now?

There are lots of mysteries in physics that are better explained by the simulation hypothesis than by what would be a material hypothesis.

The truth is that there’s much we simply don’t understand about our reality, and I think it’s more likely than not that we are in some kind of a simulated universe. Now, it’s a much more sophisticated video game than the games we produce, just like today World of Warcraft and Fortnite are way more sophisticated than Pac-Man or Space Invaders. They took a couple of decades of figuring out how to model physical objects using 3D models and then how to render them with limited computing power, which eventually led to this spate of shared online video games.

I think there’s a very good chance we are, in fact, living in a simulation, though we can’t say that with 100 percent confidence. But there is plenty of evidence that points in that direction.

When you say there are aspects of our world that would make more sense if they were part of a simulation, what do you mean exactly?

Well, there are a few different aspects, one of which is this mystery they call quantum indeterminacy, which is the idea that a particle is in one of multiple states and you don’t know that unless you observe the particle.

Probably a better way to understand it is the now-infamous example of Schrödinger’s cat , which is a cat that the physicist Erwin Schrödinger theorized would be in a box with some radioactive material and there was a 50 percent chance the cat is dead and a 50 percent chance the cat is alive.

Now, common sense would tell us that the cat is already either alive or it’s dead. We just don’t know because we haven’t looked in the box. We open the box and it’ll be revealed to us whether the cat is alive or dead. But quantum physics tells us that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until somebody opens up the box to observe it. The cardinal rule is the universe renders only that which needs to be observed.

How does Schrödinger’s cat relate to a video game or a computer simulation?

The history of video game development is all about optimizing limited resources. If you asked somebody in the 1980s if you could you render a game like World of Warcraft, which is a full three-dimensional or a virtual reality game, they would say, “No, It would take all the computing power in the world. We couldn’t render all those pixels in real time.”

But what happened over time was that there were optimization techniques. The core of all these optimizations is “only render that which is being observed.”

The first big game to successfully do this was called Doom, which was very popular in the 1990s. It was a first-person shooter game, and it could render only the light rays and objects which are clearly visible from the point of view of the virtual camera. This is an optimization technique, and it’s one of the things that reminds me of a video game in the physical world.

I’m going to do the thing that non-scientists always do when they want to sound scientific and invoke Occam’s razor. Isn’t the hypothesis that we’re living in a flesh-and-blood physical world the simpler — and therefore more likely — explanation?

I’ll bring up a very famous physicist, John Wheeler. He was one of the last physicists who worked with Albert Einstein and many of the great physicists of the 20th century. He said that physics was initially thought to be about the study of physical objects, that everything was reducible to particles. This is what’s often called the Newtonian model. But then we discovered quantum physics and we realized that everything was a field of probabilities and it wasn’t actually physical objects. That was the second wave in Wheeler’s career.

The third wave in his career was the discovery that at the core level, everything is information, everything is based on bits. So Wheeler came up with a famous phrase called “it from bit,” which is the idea that anything we see as physical is really the result of bits of information. He didn’t live to see quantum computers come into reality, but it’s looking more like that.

So I would say that if the world isn’t really physical, if it’s based on information, then a simpler explanation might in fact be that we are in a simulation that is generated based on computer science and information.

Is there any way, in principle, for us to prove definitively that we’re living in a simulation?

Well, there’s an argument the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has made that’s worth repeating. He says that if even one civilization got to the point of creating one of these high-fidelity simulations, then they can create literally billions of civilizations that are simulated, each with trillions of beings, because all you need is more computing power.

So he’s making a statistical argument that there are more likely to be more simulated beings than there are biological ones, just because it’s so quick and easy to create them. Therefore, if we are conscious beings, we are more likely to be a simulated being than a biological one. That’s more of a philosophical argument.

If we were living in a computer program, I assume that program would consist of rules and that those rules could be broken or suspended by the people or beings who programmed the simulation. But the laws of our physical world seem to be pretty constant, so isn’t that a sign that this might not be a simulation?

Computers do follow rules, but the fact that the rules always apply doesn’t rule in or rule out that we could be part of a computer simulation. One of the concepts that ties into this is a concept called computational irreducibility, and it’s the idea that in order to figure something out, you can’t just calculate it in an equation; you have to actually go through the steps to figure out what the end result would be.

And this is part of a branch of mathematics called chaos theory. There’s the old idea that the butterfly flaps its wings in China and it results in a hurricane somewhere else in the world. To figure that out, you have to actually go through and model every step of the way. Just because the rules seem to apply doesn’t mean that we’re not in a simulation.

In fact, it could be more evidence that we’re in a simulation.

If we were living in a simulation as convincing as The Matrix , would there be any discernible difference between the simulation and reality? Why would it matter ultimately whether our world was real or illusory?

There are a lot of debates around this topic. Some of us wouldn’t want to know, and would rather take the metaphorical “blue pill” like in The Matrix .

Probably the most important question related to this is whether we are NPCs (non-player characters) or PCs (player characters) in the video game. If we are PCs, then that means we are just playing a character inside the video game of life, which I call the Great Simulation. I think many of us would like to know this. We would want to know the parameters of the game we’re playing so that we could better understand it, better navigate it.

If we are NPCs, or simulated characters, then I think it’s a more complicated answer and more frightening. The question is, are all of us NPCs in a simulation, and what is the purpose of that simulation? A knowledge of the fact that we’re in a simulation, and the goals of the simulation and the goals of our character, I think, would still be interesting to many people — and now we’re back to the case of the holodeck character from Star Trek that discovers that there is a world “out there” (outside the holodeck) that he can’t go to, and perhaps some of us would rather not know in that case.

How close are we to having the technological capacity to build an artificial world that’s as realistic and plausible as The Matrix ?

I lay out 10 stages of technology development that a civilization would have to go through to get to what I call the simulation point, which is the point at which we can create a hyperrealistic simulation like this. We’re at about stage five, which is around virtual reality and augmented reality. Stage six is about learning to render these things without us having to put on glasses, and the fact that 3D printers now can print 3D pixels of objects shows us that most objects can be broken down as information.

But the really difficult part — and this is something not a lot of technologists have talked about — is in The Matrix , the reason they thought they were fully immersed was they had this cord going into the cerebral cortex, and that’s where the signal was beamed. This brain-computer interface is the area that we haven’t yet made that much progress in, but we are making progress in it. It’s in the early stages.

So my guess is within a few decades to 100 years from now, we will reach the simulation point.

This article was originally published on April 18, 2019.

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April 1, 2021

10 min read

Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation

We must never doubt Elon Musk again

By Fouad Khan

Sean Gladwell Getty Images

Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation , there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality. Such public intellectuals as Tesla leader and prolific Twitter gadfly Elon Musk have opined about the statistical inevitability of our world being little more than cascading green code. Recent papers have built on the original hypothesis to further refine the statistical bounds of the hypothesis , arguing that the chance that we live in a simulation may be 50–50 .

The claims have been afforded some credence by repetition by luminaries no less esteemed than Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of Hayden Planetarium and America’s favorite science popularizer. Yet there have been skeptics. Physicist Frank Wilczek has argued that there’s too much wasted complexity in our universe for it to be simulated. Building complexity requires energy and time. Why would a conscious, intelligent designer of realities waste so many resources into making our world more complex than it needs to be? It's a hypothetical question, but still may be needed.: Others, such as physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder , have argued that the question is not scientific anyway. Since the simulation hypothesis does not arrive at a falsifiable prediction, we can’t really test or disprove it, and hence it’s not worth seriously investigating.

However, all these discussions and studies of the simulation hypothesis have, I believe, missed a key element of scientific inquiry: plain old empirical assessment and data collection. To understand if we live in a simulation we need to start by looking at the fact that we already have computers running all kinds of simulations for lower level “intelligences” or algorithms. For easy visualization, we can imagine these intelligences as any nonperson characters in any video game that we play, but in essence any algorithm operating on any computing machine would qualify for our thought experiment. We don’t need the intelligence to be conscious, and we don’t need it to even be very complex, because the evidence we are looking for is “experienced” by all computer programs, simple or complex, running on all machines, slow or fast.

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All computing hardware leaves an artifact of its existence within the world of the simulation it is running. This artifact is the processor speed. If for a moment we imagine that we are a software program running on a computing machine, the only and inevitable artifact of the hardware supporting us, within our world, would be the processor speed. All other laws we would experience would be the laws of the simulation or the software we are a part of. If we were a Sim or a Grand Theft Auto character these would be the laws of the game. But anything we do would also be constrained by the processor speed no matter the laws of the game. No matter how complete the simulation is, the processor speed would intervene in the operations of the simulation.

In computing systems, of course, this intervention of the processing speed into the world of the algorithm being executed happens even at the most fundamental level. Even at the most fundamental level of simple operations such as addition or subtraction, the processing speed dictates a physical reality onto the operation that is detached from the simulated reality of the operation itself.

Here’s a simple example. A 64-bit processor would perform a subtraction between say 7,862,345 and 6,347,111 in the same amount of time as it would take to perform a subtraction between two and one (granted all numbers are defined as the same variable type). In the simulated reality, seven million is a very large number, and one is a comparatively very small number. In the physical world of the processor, the difference in scale between these two numbers is irrelevant. Both subtractions in our example constitute one operation and would take the same time. Here we can clearly now see the difference between a “simulated” or abstract world of programmed mathematics and a “real” or physical world of microprocessor operations.

Within the abstract world of programmed mathematics, the processing speed of operations per second will be observed, felt, experienced, noted as an artifact of underlying physical computing machinery. This artifact will appear as an additional component of any operation that is unaffected by the operation in the simulated reality. The value of this additional component of the operation would simply be defined as the time taken to perform one operation on variables up to a maximum limit that is the memory container size for the variable. So, in an eight-bit computer, for instance to oversimplify, this would be 256. The value of this additional component will be the same for all numbers up to the maximum limit. The additional hardware component will thus be irrelevant for any operations within the simulated reality except when it is discovered as the maximum container size. The observer within the simulation has no frame for quantifying the processor speed except when it presents itself as an upper limit.

If we live in a simulation, then our universe should also have such an artifact. We can now begin to articulate some properties of this artifact that would help us in our search for such an artifact in our universe.

The artifact is as an additional component of every operation that is unaffected by the magnitude of the variables being operated upon and is irrelevant within the simulated reality until a maximum variable size is observed.

The artifact presents itself in the simulated world as an upper limit.

The artifact cannot be explained by underlying mechanistic laws of the simulated universe. It has to be accepted as an assumption or “given” within the operating laws of the simulated universe.

The effect of the artifact or the anomaly is absolute. No exceptions.

Now that we have some defining features of the artifact, of course it becomes clear what the artifact manifests itself as within our universe. The artifact is manifested as the speed of light.

Space is to our universe what numbers are to the simulated reality in any computer. Matter moving through space can simply be seen as operations happening on the variable space. If matter is moving at say 1,000 miles per second, then 1,000 miles worth of space is being transformed by a function, or operated upon every second. If there were some hardware running the simulation called “space” of which matter, energy, you, me, everything is a part, then one telltale sign of the artifact of the hardware within the simulated reality “space” would be a maximum limit on the container size for space on which one operation can be performed. Such a limit would appear in our universe as a maximum speed.

This maximum speed is the speed of light. We don’t know what hardware is running the simulation of our universe or what properties it has, but one thing we can say now is that the memory container size for the variable space would be about 300,000 kilometers if the processor performed one operation per second.

This helps us arrive at an interesting observation about the nature of space in our universe. If we are in a simulation, as it appears, then space is an abstract property written in code. It is not real. It is analogous to the numbers seven million and one in our example, just different abstract representations on the same size memory block. Up, down, forward, backward, 10 miles, a million miles, these are just symbols. The speed of anything moving through space (and therefore changing space or performing an operation on space) represents the extent of the causal impact of any operation on the variable “space.” This causal impact cannot extend beyond about 300,000 km given the universe computer performs one operation per second.

We can see now that the speed of light meets all the criteria of a hardware artifact identified in our observation of our own computer builds. It remains the same irrespective of observer (simulated) speed, it is observed as a maximum limit, it is unexplainable by the physics of the universe, and it is absolute. The speed of light is a hardware artifact showing we live in a simulated universe.

But this is not the only indication that we live in a simulation. Perhaps the most pertinent indication has been hiding right in front of our eyes. Or rather behind them. To understand what this critical indication is, we need to go back to our empirical study of simulations we know of. Imagine a character in a role-playing game (RPG), say a Sim or the player character in Grand Theft Auto. The algorithm that represents the character and the algorithm that represents the game environment in which the character operates are intertwined at many levels. But even if we assume that the character and the environment are separate, the character does not need a visual projection of its point of view in order to interact with the environment.

The algorithms take into account some of the environmental variables and some of the character’s state variables to project and determine the behavior of both the environment and the character. The visual projection or what we see on the screen is for our benefit. It is a subjective projection of some of the variables within the program so that we can experience the sensation of being in the game. The audiovisual projection of the game is an integrated subjective interface for the benefit of us, essentially someone controlling the simulation. The integrated subjective interface has no other reason to exist except to serve us. A similar thought experiment can be run with movies. Movies often go into the point of view of characters and try to show us things from their perspective. Whether or not a particular movie scene does that or not, what’s projected on the screen and the speakers—the integrated experience of the film—has no purpose for the characters in the film. It is entirely for our benefit.

Pretty much since the dawn of philosophy we have been asking the question: Why do we need consciousness? What purpose does it serve? Well, the purpose is easy to extrapolate once we concede the simulation hypothesis. Consciousness is an integrated (combining five senses) subjective interface between the self and the rest of the universe. The only reasonable explanation for its existence is that it is there to be an “experience.” That’s its primary raison d’être. Parts of it may or may not provide any kind of evolutionary advantage or other utility. But the sum total of it exists as an experience and hence must have the primary function of being an experience. An experience by itself as a whole is too energy-expensive and information-restrictive to have evolved as an evolutionary advantage. The simplest explanation for the existence of an experience or qualia is that it exists for the purpose of being an experience.

There is nothing in philosophy or science, no postulates, theories or laws, that would predict the emergence of this experience we call consciousness. Natural laws do not call for its existence, and it certainly does not seem to offer us any evolutionary advantages. There can only be two explanations for its existence. First is that there are evolutionary forces at work that we don’t know of or haven’t theorized yet that select for the emergence of the experience called consciousness. The second is that the experience is a function we serve, a product that we create, an experience we generate as human beings. Who do we create this product for? How do they receive the output of the qualia generating algorithms that we are? We don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, we do create it. We know it exists. That’s the only thing we can be certain about. And that we don’t have a dominant theory to explain why we need it.

So here we are generating this product called consciousness that we apparently don’t have a use for, that is an experience and hence must serve as an experience. The only logical next step is to surmise that this product serves someone else.

Now, one criticism that can be raised of this line of thinking is that unlike the RPG characters in, say. Grand Theft Auto, we actually experience the qualia ourselves. If this is a product for someone else than why are we experiencing it? Well, the fact is the characters in Grand Theft Auto also experience some part of the qualia of their existence. The experience of the characters is very different from the experience of the player of the game, but between the empty character and the player there is a gray area where parts of the player and parts of the character combine to some type of consciousness.

The players feel some of the disappointments and joys that are designed for the character to feel. The character experiences the consequences of the player’s behavior. This is a very rudimentary connection between the player and the character, but already with virtual reality devices we are seeing the boundaries blur. When we are riding a roller coaster as a character in say the Oculus VR device, we feel the gravity.

Where is that gravity coming from? It exists somewhere in the space between the character that is riding the roller coaster and our minds occupying the “mind” of the character. It can certainly be imagined that in the future this in-between space would be wider. It is certainly possible that as we experience the world and generate qualia, we are experiencing some teeny tiny part of the qualia ourselves while maybe a more information-rich version of the qualia is being projected to some other mind for whose benefit the experience of consciousness first came into existence.  

So, there you have it. The simplest explanation for the existence of consciousness is that it is an experience being created, by our bodies, but not for us. We are qualia-generating machines. Like characters in Grand Theft Auto, we exist to create integrated audiovisual outputs. Also, as with characters in Grand Theft Auto, our product mostly likely is for the benefit of someone experiencing our lives through us.

What are the implications of this monumental find? Well, first of all we can’t question Elon Musk again. Ever. Secondly, we must not forget what the simulation hypothesis really is. It is the ultimate conspiracy theory. The mother of all conspiracy theories, the one that says that everything, with the exception of nothing, is fake and a conspiracy designed to fool our senses. All our worst fears about powerful forces at play controlling our lives unbeknownst to us, have now come true. And yet this absolute powerlessness, this perfect deceit offers us no way out in its reveal. All we can do is come to terms with the reality of the simulation and make of it what we can.

Here, on earth. In this life.

Are We Living in a Simulation? Decoding Reality’s Uncanny Glitches

• SuchScience Staff
• January 11, 2022

Exploring the Simulation Hypothesis

Diving into the Simulation Hypothesis is like embarking on a journey through philosophy and science fiction, where the possibility of our reality being a simulation is contemplated by thinkers and tech enthusiasts alike.

Origins and Philosophical Roots

The seeds of the Simulation Hypothesis are deeply sown into philosophical questioning that traces back to thinkers like Plato .

His “Allegory of the Cave” famously questions the nature of perception and reality.

People pondered over such philosophical conundrums for millennia, leading to modern discussions around the nature of existence and reality. David Chalmers , an esteemed philosopher, further explored the nature of our perceived reality, contributing significantly to the philosophy that underpins this hypothesis with his book “Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.”

Nick Bostrom’s Foundational Work

It was philosopher Nick Bostrom of Oxford University who formalized the notion into the simulation argument , a fascinating scenario that suggests we might all be inhabitants of an advanced sim .

In his seminal paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?,” Bostrom posits that if future civilizations were to run simulations of their ancestors, we could very well be existing within one of these vast computational creations.

The crux of this theory hinges on technological advancement and the presumption that simulated consciousness is possible.

Public Figures and Cultural Impact

Public figures like Elon Musk have amplified the debate , musing on the high probability of our lives being digital constructs.

The idea has infiltrated pop culture, capturing the imaginations of millions and prompting serious discourse on the nature of our reality .

What would you like to know about?

The Simulation Hypothesis is not just a philosophical brain teaser; it has sparked a vibrant, ongoing cultural conversation, challenging our most fundamental beliefs about the world we inhabit.

Scientific Perspectives on Simulated Realities

Exploring the intersections of physics and technology, scientists question the very fabric of our existence, probing whether the world we perceive might be an artificial construct.

Physics and the Nature of the Universe

The physical world is underpinned by laws that physicists strive to understand, with theories often suggesting that at its most fundamental level , reality may not be as solid as it seems.

Theoretical physicist James Gates from Harvard University has uncovered what are considered to be error-correcting codes within the equations of supersymmetry, hinting at an underlying structure consistent with digital constructs.

Quantum Mechanics and Computation

Quantum physics has revealed a realm where particles act in ways that can only be described by probability algorithms .

This has brought some, like physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, to consider if quantum computing advancements could, in theory, simulate a universe complex enough to satisfy physical observations.

The implications are profound: if quantum mechanics enables such computational problems to be solved, perhaps our reality is a computer simulation operated by unknown simulators.

Evaluating Anomalies and Evidence

Scientists scrutinize anomalies such as unexpected cosmic rays patterns for evidence that could indicate we’re in a simulation.

When physicists and theoretical physicists observe the universe at the most granular levels, they do so expecting to confirm the base reality .

Instead, they sometimes find perplexing phenomenon which push them to question if what we perceive could actually be the output of a highly advanced algorithm .

Technological Feasibility and Future Projections

In the realm of simulation theory, two key facets come to the forefront: the current state of computing technology and how rapidly it’s advancing toward the realm of complex simulations.

One must ponder if our digital capabilities could support the conception of a “alternate reality.”

Current Computing Capabilities

Today’s computers , while powerful, haven’t quite reached the level necessary to run a civilization-level simulation.

Computational problems that require immense resources, like weather forecasting or economic modeling, already push current supercomputers to their limits.

However, strides in AI and machine learning suggest that improvements are on the horizon.

For example, a computer scientist working with AI must understand the nuances of exponential growth in computing power —a concept central to the prospect of creating more elaborate simulations in the future.

Advancements in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) has taken leaps and bounds, segueing from rudimentary graphics to astonishingly real environments.

Enthusiasts bare witness to a digital revolution, as VR headsets become more immersive.

Rumblings within tech circles hint at advancements that may soon enable experiences indistinguishable from reality, not entirely unlike what one might term a “glitch in the matrix.”

The Road to Advanced Simulations

Looking ahead, the trajectory for simulations is steeped in potential, with simulation theory as an ever-intriguing concept in both pop culture and scientific circles.

As civilization grapples with bigger computational problems , the future may hold a broadening capability for computers to recreate increasingly complex worlds, perhaps even to the extent posited by philosophers and futurists.

Those keen on the subject wait with bated breath for the day a supercomputer might host a digital cosmos.

Philosophical and Ethical Considerations

Exploring whether our reality is a simulation not only tickles the imagination but also dives deep into profound questions about existence itself.

Let’s unpack a few flavorful nuggets of these mind-bending ideas.

The Role of Consciousness

Consciousness is the juicy core of this debate.

It’s all about whether our awareness —that sweet sense of ‘I am’—can exist within a simulated environment.

Could a simulated being ever truly be conscious ? If our thoughts are just algorithms on a cosmic computer, does that devalue our experiences or could it mean that consciousness is substrate independent , able to exist in many forms, not just the biological?

Moral Implications of Creating Simulations

Now let’s sprinkle in some ethics .

If technologically advanced civilisations could create hyper-realistic simulations with sentient beings, what moral duties do they owe these conscious beings ? It’s a spicy ethical stew — deciding whether causing suffering within simulations is as morally reprehensible as it is in the base reality.

Could this be the next animal rights-like movement in an advanced society?

Solipsism and Its Counterarguments

Ever considered that maybe you’re the only conscious observer and everything else is just elaborate scenery? That’s solipsism for you—kind of a philosophical jalapeño, hot and hard to handle.

But chill out, there’s pushback from the community fridge.

Some thinkers argue that the complexity and richness of our world suggest more than a single observer is in play—plus, throwing other minds into the mix really seasons our existence with meaning and connection.

Engagement with the Concept

As the idea that reality might be a simulation captures the public’s imagination, influences range from pop culture to academic discussions, infiltrating various aspects of life.

Media and Entertainment Influences

The theory that we may be living in a sophisticated simulation has been propelled into the limelight by the The Matrix , which depicts a virtual reality so advanced that it’s indistinguishable from the real world.

Science fiction series like Star Trek have toyed with similar concepts, often presenting alternative realities and timelines that challenge the characters’ understanding of their own existence.

These stories have not only provided thrills but also posed philosophical questions about the nature of reality.

Communities and Discussions Online

Online forums and social media platforms, like Twitter , are abuzz with conversations pondering the simulation theory.

Enthusiasts dissect theories put forth by figures such as famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson , who has given the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation some credence.

Diverse communities, ranging from curious onlookers to vehement believers, convene on the internet to discuss how time, space, and even consciousness could all potentially be constructs within a grand simulation.

Practical Implications in Everyday Life

Interest in the simulation theory extends beyond mere theoretical debate.

The American Museum of Natural History explores concepts of space and reality that intersect with the idea of a simulated universe.

Moreover, video games have become an accessible way for people to experience complex simulated environments, leading some to draw parallels between these digital worlds and our own reality.

Podcasts dedicated to science and philosophy often feature episodes examining the impacts of simulation theory on ethics, technology, and the human experience.

Related Posts:

• Do We Live in a Simulation: Unpacking the Reality Behind the Theory
• Schrödinger’s Cat Theory: Peeking into Quantum Mysteries

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Simulation hypothesis videos

Interesting videos discussing the simulation hypothesis.

Is this reality? Well, we're experiencing ... something right now so maybe the better question is: what is reality? Could everything we see, everything we experience, everything that exists in our entire universe -- be artificial? Supporters of Simulation Theory believe that not only is it possible that we're living in a simulation; it's likely. And the more we look for evidence, the more we find. Philip K Dick believed deja vu was the simulation adjusting to new code. Many people experience The Mandela Effect, a or "false memory" shared by a large number of people. But the biggest clues of Simulation Theory come from science. Specifically: quantum mechanics. The only way the Double-Slit Experiment makes sense is if we live in a program. Quantum Entanglement also defies logic. Only our program would have the ability to defy the laws of physics - and the concept of time. Let's find out why. The Why Files

Experiment That May Show Whether We Live in a Simulation

Anton talks in this new video about an experiment that may be able to show whether we live in a simulation. This is not the experiment proposed in the IPI, but Anton refers to the Information Physics Institute, as his next video will cover the experiment proposed by Vopson. 

Credit to Anton Petrov . 

Is the Universe a simulation? Let’s test it! Special thanks to Ian Oakley | MD of Whitestone Media Ltd for producing and directing this video interview, with Dr Vopson. The interview delves into the concepts of information physics and ideas leading to the possibility that the universe might be a computer simulation. Credit to www.whitestonemedia.org   

Is Reality Simulated? E lon Musk has argued that we almost certainly live in a simulated reality. Is he correct? This documentary explores the philosopher Nick Bostrom’s now famous Simulation Argument, and the possibility that we live in a simulation created by an advanced civilization. Please consider supporting the creator's work here: https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos / metaRising  

How Physicists Proved The Universe Isn't Locally Real - Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 EXPLAINED

  Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger conducted ground breaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information. https://www.youtube.com/@DrBenMiles  

The Simulation Hypothesis

  A look at the Simulation Hypothesis, or Simulation Argument, along with its implications for identity, consciousness, and the Fermi Paradox. Credit to Isaac Arthur  @ http://www.isaacarthur.net  

The machine code of the universe is discrete | Stephen Wolfram and Lex Fridman  

 S tephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist. Credit to https://www.youtube.com/@LexClips  

The Matrix Unmasked: Is Our World a Computer Program? | Stephen Wolfram and Lex Fridman  

Have you ever pondered the mind-bending possibility that our universe could be nothing more than a sophisticated simulation? What if every aspect of our reality, from the grandest galaxies to the smallest particles, is merely a complex algorithm running in a cosmic computer? This provocative notion, known as the simulation theory, has captured the imagination of thinkers and scientists alike, challenging conventional views of existence. Proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003, the simulation theory suggests that our perceived reality is a digital construct, orchestrated by advanced beings in a higher dimension. According to Bostrom, if a civilization were to reach a post-human stage capable of creating intricate simulations of their ancestors, it's statistically likely that we could be living within one of those simulations. In recent years, this once-fringe idea has gained mainstream attention, with visionaries like Elon Musk and theoretical physicist Dr. James Gates lending credence to its plausibility. Dr. Gates even points to code-like patterns found in nature, blurring the lines between science and spirituality. Yet, the simulation theory prompts profound questions about the nature of existence and the presence of a creator. Are our lives predetermined by the software of the simulation, or do we possess genuine free will? Scientist Melvin Vopson has furthered this discourse with his "simulation hypothesis," suggesting that evidence supporting this idea may lie in the laws governing information systems. Despite intriguing findings, Vopson stresses the need for continued research to confirm or refute the concept. On the frontier of scientific inquiry, the simulation theory has birthed a new discipline known as digital physics, proposing that the universe fundamentally consists of information. This radical notion challenges traditional views of reality, merging science, philosophy, and spirituality into a singular inquiry. While the debate rages on, one thing remains certain: the simulation theory has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. Whether we reside in a simulated reality or not, our experiences and emotions are undeniably real, transcending the confines of any theoretical construct . Credit to "The Conspiracy Chronicle"  

Are we living in a computer simulation? Two parts video...

Credit to https://www.youtube.com/@Cosmoknowledge Produced, directed, and edited by: Ardit Bicaj. Narrated by: Russell Archey https://www.ravonmedia.com/ . Graphics: Nils Berglund David Butler NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Festival della Scienza from Genova Stock footage: envato.com Music: cleanmindsounds - Dead Space envato.com.

Author: Melvin M. Vopson (Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of Portsmouth) Republished from an article by The Conversation with permission from Melvin M. Vopson. Original article: https://theconversation.com/how-to-te... Title: How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation 

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Of Course We’re Living in a Simulation

The best theory physicists have for the birth of the universe makes no sense. It goes like this: In the beginning—the very, if not quite veriest, beginning—there’s something called quantum foam. It’s barely there, and can’t even be said to occupy space, because there’s no such thing as space yet. Or time. So even though it’s seething, bubbling, fluctuating, as foam tends to do, it’s not doing so in any kind of this-before-that temporal order. It just is, all at once, indeterminate and undisturbed. Until it isn’t. Something goes pop in precisely the right way, and out of that infinitesimally small pocket of instability, the entire universe bangs bigly into being. Instantly. Like, at a whoosh far exceeding the speed of light.

Impossible, you say? Not exactly. As the Italian particle physicist Guido Tonelli has pointed out, it actually is possible to go faster than light. You simply have to imagine spacetime, and the relativistic limits imposed by it, not quite existing yet! Easy peasy. Besides, that’s not even why the theory makes no sense. It makes no sense for the same reason every creation myth since the dawn of, um, creation makes no sense: There’s no causal explanation. What, that is to say, made it happen in the first place?

Tonelli, in his confidently titled book Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began , calls the “it” that made it happen the inflaton . It’s the mystery thing/field/particle/whatever that jump-starts the engine of cosmic inflation. (They thought it might be the Higgs boson, but it’s not. The true God particle is still out there.) Imagine, Tonelli says, a skier cruising down a mountain, who then stalls a little in a depression on the slope. That depression, the unexpected dip or hiccup in the ordered way of things, is the inflaton-induced disruption in the foam out of which the entire known universe, and all the matter and energy it would ever need to make stars and planets and consciousness and us, suddenly springs. But, again, the same question intrudes: What made the inflaton make the dip?

It makes no sense … until you imagine something else. Don’t imagine a snowy slope; it’s too passive. Imagine, instead, someone sitting at a desk. First, they boot up their computer. This is the quantum-foam stage, the computer existing in a state of suspended anticipation. Then, our desk person mouses over to a file called, oh I don’t know, KnownUniverse.mov, and double-clicks. This is the emergence of the inflaton. It’s the tiny zzzt that launches the program.

In other words, yes, and with sincere apologies to Tonelli and most of his fellow physicists, who hate it when anybody suggests this: The only explanation for life, the universe, and everything that makes any sense, in light of quantum mechanics, in light of observation, in light of light and something faster than light, is that we’re living inside a supercomputer. Is that we’re living, all of us, and always, in a simulation.

Three things need to happen, and probably in this order, for any crackpot idea to take hold of the culture: (1) its nonthreatening introduction to the masses, (2) its legitimization by experts, and (3) overwhelming evidence of its real-world effects. In the case of the so-called simulation hypothesis, you could hardly ask for a neater demonstration.

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In 1999, a trio of cinematic mindfucks— The Thirteenth Floor , eXistenZ , and, of course, The Matrix —came out, all illustrating the possibility of unreal realities and thus fulfilling condition (1). Four years later, in 2003, (2) was satisfied when the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom concluded in a much-cited paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” that, heavens to bitsy, you very possibly are. It’s simple probabilities: Given that the only society we know of—ours—is in the process of simulating itself, through video games and virtual reality and whatnot, it seems likely that any technological society would do the same. It could very well be simulations all the way down.

As for the arrival of (3), the real-world proof of such a thing, it depends on who you ask. For many liberals, it was the unimaginable election, in 2016, of Donald Trump. For The New Yorker , it was, rather fogeyishly, the 2017 Academy Awards , when Moonlight oops’d its way to Best Picture. For most others, it was the Covid-19 pandemic, whose utter ludicrousness, pointlessness, Zoominess, and neverendingness couldn’t help but undermine, at a breathtaking scale, any reasonable belief in the stability of our reality.

So, nowadays, the result on the ground is that simulation theorists are a digitized dime a dozen. Elon Musk is their fearless leader, but just below him are eager beavers like Neil deGrasse Tyson , lending something like scientific credibility to Musk’s Bostrom-bolstered claim that “the odds that we are in base reality”—the unsimulated original world—are “one in billions.” In a way, it’s like 1999 all over again: Last year, three more movies about dudes who realize the world they live in isn’t real— Bliss , Free Guy , and Matrix 4 —came out. Only difference now is, lots of regular guys (and it’s almost always guys) in “real life” believe the same thing. You can meet a bunch of them in the documentary A Glitch in the Matrix , which also came out last year. Or you can just poll some randos on the street. A few months ago, one of the regulars at my local coffee shop, known for overstaying his welcome, excitedly explained to me that each simulation has rules, and the rule for ours is that its beings—meaning us—are primarily motivated by fear. Awesome.

If that weren’t enough, this past January, the Australian technophilosopher David Chalmers published a book called Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy , the central argument of which is, yes indeed: We live in a simulation. Or, more accurately, we can’t know, statistically speaking, that we don’t live in a simulation—philosophers being particularly prone to the plausible deniability of a double negative. Chalmers isn’t some rando, either. He’s probably the closest thing to a rock star the field of philosophy has, a respected mind, a TED talker (is that a leather jacket?), and a coiner of phrases non-philosophers might even know, like “the hard problem of consciousness” or, to explain why your iPhone feels like such a part of you, the “extended mind.” And his new book, despite its terrible title, is far and away the most credible articulation of simulation theory to date, 500 pages of immaculately worked-through philosophical positions and propositions, rendered in clean, if rarely shiny, prose.

Chalmers seems to think his timing couldn’t be better. Thanks to the pandemic, he writes in the intro, our lives are already pretty virtual. So it’s not hard to imagine them only getting more virtual, as time goes on and Facebook/Meta metastasizes, until—within a century, Chalmers predicts—VR worlds will be indistinguishable from the real one. Except he wouldn’t quite phrase it that way. For Chalmers, VR worlds will be—are—just as “real” as any world, including this one. Which might, itself, be virtually simulated, so what’s the difference? One way he attempts to convince you of this is by appealing to your understanding of reality. Picture a tree, he says. It seems solid, very there, very present, but as any physicist will tell you, at the subatomic level, it’s mostly empty space. It’s barely there at all. “Few people think that the mere fact that trees are grounded in quantum processes makes them less real,” Chalmers writes. “I think that being digital is just like being quantum mechanical here.”

Makes perfect sense to me, as well as to the great hordes of my fellow simulation theorists out there—but not, again, to the very people who study the makeup of reality. The physicists themselves, unfortunately, still hate us.

“But this is nonsense,” says the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli . “I mean, why should the world be a simulation?”

This is typical of the flustered incredulity mustered up by the physics community whenever the subject of the simulation disturbs the learned serenity of their exemplary calculations. Lisa Randall at Harvard, Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, David Deutsch at Oxford, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin , the list goes on and on, and they all make versions of the same point: Our perceiving brains “simulate” the world around us, sure, but there’s no such thing as a “digital physics” or “its from bits”; real-world things (its) don’t come from code (bits). It’s so reductionist! So presentist! Just play out the thermodynamics! Or consider many-body effects! Even Neil deGrasse Tyson has, more recently, backed away from his Muskian metaphysics. (Though one of his counterarguments is, it should be said, highly untechnical. He simply doesn’t think far-future other-dimensional alien simulators would be entertained by beings as slow-moving and petty and cavemannish as we—in much the way we wouldn’t be entertained by the daily drudgery of actual cavemen.)

OK, but, and with all due respect to these undisputed geniuses: Maybe they should read their own books. Take Rovelli’s latest. In Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution , he puts forward what he calls the “relational theory” of reality. Basically, nothing exists except in relation to something else. “There are no properties outside of interactions,” Rovelli writes. So that tree over there? It isn’t just barely there. If you’re not interacting with it, it can’t be said to be there at all. Well, something is there, it seems, but that something is only and merely the potential for interaction. “The world is a perspectival game,” Rovelli concludes, “a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.”

Note the word he uses there: game . Reality is a game. What kind of game? A video game, maybe? Why not? Though Rovelli wouldn’t take kindly to this interpretation, isn’t that precisely how video games work? When your character is running through a field, whatever’s behind you, or otherwise out of view—trees, items, baddies, something better to do with your time—is only there, meaningfully there, if you turn around and interact with it. Short of that, the game won’t waste resources rendering it. It doesn’t exist, or exists only as a programmed possibility. Video games, just like our reality, are Rovellianly relational.

Or go back to Tonelli. When humans first thought to compare our little corner of the cosmos to all the rest, they made a remarkable discovery: It all looks and feels exactly, almost suspiciously, alike. “How was it possible,” Tonelli asks in Genesis , “that all the most remote corners of the universe, distant from each other by billions of light years, had agreed among themselves to attain exactly the same temperature at precisely the moment when scientists on a small planet in an anonymous solar system of an unremarkable galaxy had decided to take a look at what was happening around them?” Gosh, well, maybe our programmers just rushed to fill in the blanks that way? Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the speed of light might be “a hardware artifact showing we live in a simulated universe.”

In fact, once you start thinking in terms of hardware artifacts and other such indications and requirements of computing, reality really does begin to seem more and more programmed. Making the universe homogeneous and isotropic might be one smart way our supercomputing simulator-overlords, requiring operational speeds far exceeding yottaflops, planned to conserve resources. What might others be? There mustn’t be evidence of alien civilizations, for starters—too demanding on the system. Also, as more and more people are born, you’d want fewer and fewer differences between them. So they should live in the same tract homes, shop at the same stores, eat at the same fast-food restaurants, tweet the same thoughts, take the same personality tests. Meanwhile, to make even more room, animals should go extinct, forests die out, and megacorporations take over. Pretty soon, on this line of thinking, every last aspect of modernity begins to shimmer with a simulated sheen.

Quantum physics most of all. An inflaton? More like a simulaton ! Or “spooky action at a distance,” wherein two far-apart but somehow “entangled” particles mirror each other perfectly? Clearly it’s just the computer halving the energy requirements—much as you running into someone you haven’t seen in 15 years at a random house party in a foreign country might be evidence of the same kind of cost-cutting subroutine by the cosmic machinery. Coincidences, concurrences, redundancies: These things must save lots of power, too.

At this, our polite physicists might finally lose their cool and go entropic on us, raging hotly. But why? Why does this kind of playful speculation so incense not only them but so many other highly intelligent people, from philosopher-historians like Justin E. H. Smith to commentators like Nathan J. Robinson ? They never really say, beyond dismissing simulation theory as either illogical or out of touch, a plaything of the privileged, but one senses in their skepticism a genuine fear, an unwillingness to even entertain the idea, for to believe that our world is fake must, they seem to think, be to believe, nihilistically, and in a way that makes a mockery of their lifelong pursuit of knowledge and understanding, in nothing.

Or must it? In the years since the first Matrix came out, there have indeed been cases of young men—you meet at least one of them in the documentary A Glitch in the Matrix —who, believing their world wasn’t real, went on killing rampages. It’s appalling. It’s also, of course, anomalous, freakish, the kind of novelty that plays into a narrative urge on the part of certain hidebound intellectuals to blame new media for the worst impulses of humanity. Any idea, no matter how good, can go bad, and the simulation hypothesis is no different.

That’s why David Chalmers wrote Reality+ , I think. Some will read it, cynically, as trendy, opportunistic philosophy in the service of Big Tech, designed to weaken our resolve to fight for what’s real, but that’s just the thing: Chalmers thinks it’s all real. If you’re in VR and see Spot run, virtual Spot is no less real than a physical Spot. He’s just differently real. For now, you may be able to kill virtual Spot—or lowly nonplayer characters, or your friend in avatar form—without consequences, but Chalmers isn’t so sure you should . If it’s possible that your own world, the so-called physical world, is simulated, you’re still living meaningfully, compassionately, and (presumably) law-abidingly in it, so why should the virtuality of VR change anything? In the end, Reality+ is the opposite of nihilistic. It’s a humane, anti-skeptical plea to accept any satisfactory appearance of existence, simulated or not, as sacred.

The paradox of Chalmers’ “simulation realism,” in fact, is that, once you embrace it, there does not follow from it some corollary disenchanting of reality. On the contrary, so many isms that in modern times have been dismissed as mystical, supernatural—dualism, panpsychism, animism—here find themselves reenchanted, imbued with a profound new vitality. We and everything around us become not less real but, in a way, more real, animated panpsychically by forces both here and, dualistically, there, somewhere else, somewhere, let’s say, above. This line of thinking extends, as you might have already guessed, to the ultimate ism of all, theism, the belief in a creator, and isn’t that all simulation theory, in the final analysis, really is? Religion by a new, technological name?

It’s been said that the simulation hypothesis is the best argument we moderns have for the existence of a godlike being. Chalmers agrees: “I’ve considered myself an atheist for as long as I can remember,” he writes. “Still, the simulation hypothesis has made me take the existence of a god more seriously than I ever had before.” He even suggests Reality+ is his version of Pascal’s wager, proof that he’s at least entertained the idea of a simulator. Not that he’s sure such a being deserves to be worshipped. For all we know, it’s some little xeno-kid banging away at their parents’ keyboard, putting us through catastrophes the way we might the citizens of SimCity .

But the simulator needn’t be omnipotent and omnibenevolent for us to consider the possibility of their existence. So there’s the Old Testament, where the catastrophes were more fire and brimstone. Then, maybe, the simulator matured a bit, and got slyer with age in their methods of destruction. In other words, here we are, in 2022, at the mercy of a precocious teenage simulator-god running an experiment on fear-driven Data Age humans faced with pandemics and climate change and wars and all other manner of sociopoliticoeconomic mayhem. Can we survive?

At the very least, it’s fun, and oddly calming, to think about. In the beginning, after all, God created light and darkness. Translation: The simulator created 1s and 0s.

Every so often, when I’m feeling frisky, I go outside and twist up my eyes, just to see if I can catch the quickest glimpse of the pixels making up this pure, planetary simulation we call Earth. Sometimes, and even when I’m completely sober, I feel like it’s working. Tiny squares really do seem to be blipping in and out of existence! Other times, and especially when I’m completely sober, I feel like a complete dinkus.

But this is precisely the fun of it: the uncertainty. You might even say the Heisenbergian uncertainty, the quantum-mechanical indeterminacy underlying our reality. Is this thing before me evidence of a simulation? It is, it isn’t, it might be, it must be.

Over the course of writing this essay, I must confess that everything seemed to confirm the truth of the simulation. Every impossible coincidence I experienced or heard about—simulated. The stranger at the café who quoted practically verbatim a line I was reading in a book—simulated. Every new book I picked up, for that matter—simulated. Seriously, how could every book one reads, in the course of writing about reality, be about reality in such a fundamental way? I’ve asked the grumpy old proprietor at my favorite bookstore for recommendations many times. Why, this time, without having any idea of what I was working on or thinking about, did he hand me The End of Mr. Y , by the brilliant Scarlett Thomas (the title puns on “the end of mystery”), in which the protagonist, a writer obsessed with physics (hello), slowly pierces through to another, deeper, video-game-like dimension ( hello )? “When one looks at the illusions of the world,” Thomas writes, in a book within the book, “one sees only the world. For where does illusion end?”

This, it seems to me, is what the physicists, and simulation skeptics of all sorts, are missing. Not a belief in the simulation, per se, but the irresistible possibility of it, the magical conspiracy. It doesn’t diminish or undermine their science; quite the opposite, it enriches and energizes it. How many people, generally unmotivated to learn, find their way to a concept as intimidating as, say, quantum indeterminacy by way of the (far more welcoming) simulation argument? I’d guess a great many, and physicists would do well not to belittle that entry point into their work by calling it fluff, nonsense, the sci-fi pursuits of littler minds.

Nobody knows—most likely, nobody ever will—if this world of ours was simulated by some higher-dimensional alien race, and for what purpose, and ultimately whether our simulators were themselves simulated. At a certain point, really, the specifics of it begin to seem beside the point. If people like Musk, Bostrom, and Chalmers get anything wrong, it’s less their simulation realism than what might be called their simulation literalism. So concerned are they with arguing for the exact likelihood of a simulation, its rules and logics and mechanisms, that they forget the intellectual play, the thought experimentation, of it, the fact that human beings have been wondering if their world was real for as long as they’ve been dreaming. “The origin of all metaphysics,” as Nietzsche called it: “Without the dream one would have had no occasion to divide the world into two.” The simulation hypothesis, stripped of the probabilities and its conflation with technology, is the oldest hypothesis in the book.

So it might not be so wrong to take it literally after all. “Maybe life begins the moment we know we don’t have one,” one character thinks in Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly . It’s a popular French novel ( L’Anomalie ) about people living in a possibly simulated world, and it came out—but of course—during the pandemic. The point of the book, I think, is the same as Chalmers’: to make the case not only that one can live meaningfully in a simulated world, but that one should. That one must. Because maybe goodness is what keeps the simulation going. Maybe goodness, and the spark and serendipity that comes of it, is what keeps the simulators interested. For at the end of The Anomaly , the opposite happens. Someone ignores the possibility for hope, and gives into badness, into base inhumanity. The result is the scariest thing imaginable. Someone, somewhere, in whatever dimension is not our own, turns the simulation off.

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The big idea: are we living in a simulation?

Could the universe be an elaborate game constructed by bored aliens?

Elon Musk thinks you don’t exist. But it’s nothing personal: he thinks he doesn’t exist either. At least, not in the normal sense of existing. Instead we are just immaterial software constructs running on a gigantic alien computer simulation. Musk has stated that the odds are billions to one that we are actually living in “base reality”, ie the physical universe. At the end of last year, he responded to a tweet about the anniversary of the crude tennis video game Pong (1972) by writing: “49 years later, games are photo-realistic 3D worlds. What does that trend continuing imply about our reality?” This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Its modern version is based on a seminal 2003 paper, Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. Assume, he says, that in the far future, civilisations hugely more technically advanced than ours will be interested in running “ancestor simulations” of the sentient beings in their distant galactic past. If so, there will one day be many more simulated minds than real minds. Therefore you should be very surprised if you are actually one of the few real minds in existence rather than one of the trillions of simulated minds.

This idea has a long history in philosophical scepticism (the idea that we can’t know anything for sure about the external world) and other traditions. The Chinese Taoist sage Zhuangzi wrote a celebrated fable about a man who couldn’t be sure whether he was a man dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. René Descartes imagined that he might be being manipulated by an “evil demon” (or “evil genius”) that controlled all the sensations he experienced, while the 20th-century American philosopher Hilary Putnam coined the term “brain in a vat” to describe a similar idea. But while Neo in the Wachowskis’ 1999 film The Matrix really is a brain (or rather a whole depilated body) in a vat, the simulation hypothesis says that you do not have a physical body anywhere. “You” are merely the result of mathematical calculations in some vast computer.

There are many possible objections to this idea even getting off the ground, as Bostrom notes. Perhaps it is simply not possible for computer-simulated beings to become conscious in the way we are. (This would defeat the “assumption of substrate independence”, according to which minds are not dependent on biological matter.) Or perhaps all civilisations destroy themselves before getting to the simulation stage. (Plausible if not necessarily comforting.) Or perhaps advanced civilisations are simply not interested in running such simulations, which would be surprising given the kinds of things humans do – such as developing video deep-fake technology or researching how to make viruses more virulent – even though they seem to be very bad ideas. The simulation hypothesis is perhaps attractive to a wider culture because of its nature as a cosmic-scale conspiracy theory as well as an apparently scientific version of Creationism. The inconceivably advanced alien running its simulation of our universe is indistinguishable from traditional terrestrial ideas of God: an all-powerful being who designed everything we see. But is this god the god of deism (who sets up the laws of nature but then absents himself while creation runs its course), or a more interventionist figure? If the latter, it might make sense to court their favour.

How, though, should we please such a god? Not necessarily by being virtuous, but by being – assuming the simulator is watching us for its own pleasure – at least entertaining. This line of reasoning might imply, for example, that it is one’s duty to become a florid serial killer, or a guy who tries to colonise Mars and buy Twitter. “Be funny, outrageous, violent, sexy, strange, pathetic, heroic … in a word ‘dramatic’,” counsels the economist Robin Hanson, considering that assumption in his 2001 paper How to Live in a Simulation . “If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal it seems that you should care less about others,” he concludes, and “live more for today”. One commonly despairing reaction to the idea that we might all be simulated is that this renders our lives meaningless, and that nothing we see or experience is “real”. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers, in his recent book Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, argues otherwise. For him, a digital table in VR is a real table. It is no more disqualified from being “real” by the fact that it is, at bottom, made up of digital ones and zeros than a physical table is disqualified from being real by the fact that it is, at bottom, made up of quantum wave-packets. Indeed, some esoteric theories of physics consider “reality” itself to be at base quantum-computational or mathematical in nature anyway.

Is there any good reason to actually believe the simulation argument, though? Or is it just aesthetically piquant techno-religion? Chalmers observes that it is at least more plausible than earlier iterations of scepticism such as Descartes’s evil demon, simply because we now have functioning prototypes (video games, VR) of how such a simulation might work. Others have speculated that there may be clues to the fact that our universe is a simulation hidden in the very fabric of the “reality” that we can investigate: perhaps the simulation cuts corners at very small scales or very high energies. Indeed, experiments (for instance in Campbell et al., “On Testing the Simulation Theory”, 2017) have been seriously proposed that might reveal the answer.

But not so fast. Remember that we can’t know what the goal of the simulators is. Perhaps, for them, the game is not merely to observe us as an indefinite planet‑sized soap opera, but simply to see how long the sim-people take to prove that they’re in a simulation. At which point, the game ends and the simulation is turned off. Perhaps we’re better off not finding out.

Steven Poole is the author of Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas, published by Random House. To support the Guardian and the Observer order a copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Further reading

Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy by David J Chalmers (Allen Lane)

Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd (Vintage)

The Simulation Hypothesis : An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are in a Video Game by Rizwan Virk (Bayview)

• Philosophy books
• The big idea
• Science and nature books
• Consciousness
• Computing and the net books

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

The Simulation Argument

Here you can peruse the debate that followed the paper presenting the simulation argument. The original paper is here, as are popular synopses, scholarly papers commenting or expanding on or critiquing the first paper, and some replies by the author. The simulation argument continues to attract a great deal of attention. I apologize for not usually being able to respond to individual inquiries. I hope you might find what you're looking for on this page.

Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? Original

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is 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. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

"The Simulation Argument is perhaps the first interesting argument for the existence of a Creator in 2000 years." - David Pearce (exaggerated compliment)

"Thank you so much, Dr. Bostrom. You have proved that my psychiatrist was wrong all along." - Anonymous correpondent (misfiring compliment)

Some Popular Synopses

Is the universe a code, discussion on the simulation argument with lex fridman.

On anthropics and the simulation argument with Sean Carroll

Explained by elon musk., is reality real the simulation argument, living in a simulation: philosophy rap, the simulation argument: why the probability that you are living in the matrix is quite high.

Another popularization. (Has been translated into Spanish , Russian.)

Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be In One

Yet another popularization, for Matrix-aficionados.

Are our heads in the cloud? Science fiction or fact?

There is a powerful logical argument that they [simulators who constructed the reality we experience] could very possibly be science fact.

Frequently asked questions

The simulation argument faq.

Answers to 16 common questions.

Scholarly commentaries and follow-on studies

How to live in a simulation.

If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you.

The Matrix as Metaphysics

On several Brains-in-vats and Matrix-like scenarios. Argues in support of what is also my contention, that the simulation-hypothesis is not a radical skeptical hypothesis.

Innocence Lost: Simulation Scenarios: Prospects and Consequences

Those who believe suitably programmed computers could enjoy conscious experience of the sort we enjoy must accept the possibility that their own experience is being generated as part of a computerized simulation. It would be a mistake to dismiss this as just one more radical sceptical possibility: for as Bostrom has recently noted, if advances in computer technology were to continue at close to present rates, there would be a strong probability that we are each living in a computer simulation. The first part of this paper is devoted to broadening the scope of the argument: even if computers cannot sustain consciousness (as many dualists and materialists believe), there may still be a strong likelihood that we are living simulated lives. The implications of this result are the focus of the second part of the paper. The topics discussed include: the Doomsday argument, scepticism, the different modes of virtual life, transcendental idealism, the Problem of Evil, and simulation ethics.

Are You a Sim?

Weatherson is prepared to accept the Simulation Argument up to, but not including, the final step, in which I use the Bland Principle of Indifference. In this paper, he examines four different ways to understand this principle and argues that none of them serves the purpose. (For my reply, see the paper below.) Note that Weatherson accepts the third disjunct in the conclusion of the Simulation Argument - i.e. that there are many more simulated human-like persons than non-simulated ones. By contrast, I do not accept this: I think we currently lack grounds for eliminating either of the three disjuncts.

Living in a Simulated Universe

We explain why, if we live in a simulated reality, we might expect to see occasional glitches and small drifts in the supposed constants and laws of Nature over time.

The Simulation Argument: Reply to Weatherson

My reply to Weatherson's paper (above). I argue he has misinterpreted the relevant indifference principle and that he has not provided any sound argument against the correct interpretation, nor has he addressed the arguments for this principle that I gave in the original paper. There are also a few words on the difference between the Simulation Argument and traditional brain-in-a-vat arguments, and on so-called epistemological externalism.

Simulation Scenarios

Covers many related issues, but may be hard to understand without the oral presentation that is meant to go with these 79 slides.

The Simulation Argument again

Short article by Brueckner in which he proffers "a new way of thinking about Bostrom's argument". (See below for my reply.)

The Simulation Argument: Some Explanations

My response to Brueckner (above), in which I argue that he has misconstrued the simulation argument. I also argue that he is mistaken in his critique of the idea that simulated beings may themselves create ancestor-simulations.

Historical Simulations - Motivational, Ethical and Legal Issues

A future society will very likely have the technological ability and the motivation to create large numbers of completely realistic historical simulations and be able to overcome any ethical and legal obstacles to doing so. It is thus highly probable that we are a form of artificial intelligence inhabiting one of these simulations. To avoid stacking (i.e. simulations within simulations), the termination of these simulations is likely to be the point in history when the technology to create them first became widely available, (estimated to be 2050). Long range planning beyond this date would therefore be futile.

Are we living in a Matrix? What Can Computers Tell Us About God?

An MIT computer science grad student theologizes.

Theological Implications of the Simulation Argument

Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument (SA) has many intriguing theological implications. We work out some of them here. We show how the SA can be used to develop novel versions of the Cosmological and Design Arguments. We then develop some of the affinities between Bostrom’s naturalistic theogony and more traditional theological topics. We look at the resurrection of the body and at theodicy. We conclude with some reflections on the relations between the SA and Neoplatonism (friendly) and between the SA and theism (less friendly).

I, Sim - An exploration of the Simulation Argument

A student's MA thesis

A Patch for the Simulation Argument

This article reports on a newly discovered bug in the original simulation argument. Two different ways of patching the argument are proposed, each of which preserves the original conclusion.

Natural Evil and the Simulation Hypothesis

Some theists maintain that they need not answer the threat posed to theistic belief by natural evil; they have reason enough to believe that God exists and it renders impotent any threat that natural evil poses to theism. Explicating how God and natural evil co-exist is not necessary since they already know both exist. I will argue that, even granting theists the knowledge they claim, this does not leave them in an agreeable position. It commits the theist to a very unpalatable position: our universe was not designed by God and is instead, most likely, a computer simulation.

Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation

A low-level physics simulation using the simplest simulation methods, which simulated our universe on a grid with finite resolution, would result in some potentially observable distortions of the simulated physics because of the rotational symmetry breaking effects of the simulation lattice. I would think that even the earliest simulations of systems sufficiently complex to contain observers would make use of powerful computational shortcuts that would eliminate the opportunity to observe any such discrepancies (mostly the simulation would take place at a much higher level of abstraction in order to reduce the computational demands).

On the 'Simulation Argument' and selective skepticism

Develops an objection similar to the one discussed under question 4 in the Q&A.

A critical discussion in the context of the doomsday argument.

The Doomsday Argument and the Simulation Argument

Analyzes some analogies and disanalogies between the doomsday argument and the simulation argument, and concludes that the former fails while the latter succeeds.

Some background readings

Skepticism: a contemporary reader, whole brain emulation: a roadmap, minimum energy requirements of information transfer and computing., superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies, engines of creation: the coming era of nanotechnology., how long before superintelligence, nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation., matrioshka brains., nanomedicine: volume 1: basic capabilities., the age of spiritual machines: when computers exceed human intelligence, ultimate physical limits to computation, mind children, robot: mere machine to transcendent mind, pigs in cyberspace, the physics of information processing superobjects: the daily life among the jupiter brains, the physics of immortality, existential risks: analyzing human extinction scenarios and related hazards, existential risks reduction as global priority, anthropic bias: observation selection effects in science and philosophy, anthropic-principle.com, miscellaneous, the planetarium hypothesis: a resolution of the fermi paradox, atlanta (s02e07): bostrom’s simulation scene, permutation city, the thirteenth floor, vanilla sky, open your eyes (abre los ojos), i don't know, timmy, being god is a big responsibility, welt am draht, world of wires.

Nick Pasztor drops a beat

L'Anomalie (The Anomaly)

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom’s homepage is at nickbostrom.com .

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Simulation hypothesis: Are humans living in a simulated world?

I n recent years, the Simulation Hypothesis has become a subject of fascination among scientists and philosophers while capturing the general public's imagination.

This captivating theory suggests that our reality might actually be an advanced digital simulation . Far from being a mere plot of science fiction narratives, this hypothesis has its roots deeply embedded in philosophical thought and is buoyed by rapid technological advancements.

What Exactly is the Simulation Hypothesis?

At its core, the Simulation Hypothesis posits that our entire reality, including Earth and the universe at large, could be an artificial construct created by a highly advanced civilization.

This concept, which might sound like a narrative straight out of a sci-fi novel, has increasingly found acceptance among philosophers, futurists, and technologists.

Who is Nick Bostrom?

The hypothesis was notably articulated by philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2003 paper, " Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? "

Bostrom's argument, based on probability, suggests a significant chance that our existence is part of a complex simulation developed by posthuman civilizations. This hypothesis is not a novel idea and has its precedents in science fiction, such as in the narrative of The Matrix.

However, Bostrom presented it within a philosophical framework, igniting serious debate about the possibility of our reality being a simulation. His compelling statistical reasoning urged us to consider the possibility that we might be living within an ancestor simulation created by a posthuman civilization.

Though the hypothesis is currently unprovable with the tools at our disposal, it forces us to confront profound questions about existence, reality, and our place within the universe. It challenges us to rethink our assumptions about science, technology, and our understanding of the cosmos.

Growing Support for the Simulation Hypothesis

The Simulation Hypothesis has garnered support from various quarters, including mathematical arguments rooted in quantum physics and information theory.

The essence of these arguments is that if creating complex simulated realities is within the realm of possibility for advanced civilizations, it's more probable that we are residing in one of these simulations rather than in the original "base reality."

Philosopher Nick Bostrom has posited that one of three propositions is likely true: humanity never reaches the posthuman stage, posthuman civilizations have no interest in running simulations, or we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

This hypothesis implies that if advanced civilizations possess both the capability and the desire to run complex ancestor simulations, simulated realities could vastly outnumber actual reality.

Perspectives from Tech Visionaries

Prominent tech figures, including Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, have shown interest in, or outright support for, the Simulation Hypothesis.

Musk, in particular, has suggested the likelihood of us not living in a computer simulation is "one in billions."

Their interest is largely driven by the exponential advancements in computing power, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, making the creation of convincing simulations increasingly feasible.

Philosophical Implications and Ethical Concerns

The Simulation Hypothesis, while fascinating, also presents a series of philosophical and ethical dilemmas. It brings to the forefront the age-old debate about reality, consciousness, and existence.

If our reality is indeed a simulation, it raises questions about free will, the nature of the soul, and the foundation of our existence.

Furthermore, the pursuit of proving or disproving this hypothesis carries its own set of risks. Believing too firmly in the hypothesis could lead to nihilistic attitudes or destabilize societal norms and values.

On the other hand, attempting to "break out" of the simulation, if it exists, could have unforeseen consequences.

Concluding Thoughts

The Simulation Hypothesis opens up a myriad of intriguing questions and possibilities about the nature of our reality.

While it remains a speculative theory with more questions than answers, it encourages a reexamination of our basic assumptions about the universe and our existence within it.

As we continue to explore and understand the mysteries of the cosmos, the Simulation Hypothesis serves as a reminder of the endless possibilities that lie ahead.

In essence, while the Simulation Hypothesis invites us to ponder the very nature of reality, it also emphasizes the importance of approaching such profound questions with a balance of curiosity, skepticism, and ethical consideration.

As we delve deeper into the realms of science and philosophy, the journey of exploring such hypotheses promises to enrich our understanding of the universe and our place within it.

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