markus spiske
You’ve likely come across the idea online before — are we living in a computer simulation? Perhaps you’ve seen the clip of Elon Musk telling an audience at a tech conference that the probability of us not living in a simulation is “one in billions.”
I never gave it much thought beyond some leisure reading. But I saw The Truman Show for the first time recently, which immediately reminded me of The Matrix—a far darker version of a very similar story.
For those who haven’t seen either and without spoiling things, both films deal with a hero who through a series of chance events begins to doubt the nature of his reality. He confides with close friends and family about his doubts, and they all poo poo his silly thoughts. The hero then ventures further to find some of those doubts well founded.
The films ask the same question philosophers and scientists have been asking for years—how ‘real’ is what we call reality? Is what our senses pick up all there is, or might they deceive us? What’s to say our waking lives are not a vivid dream, or perhaps a very convincing computer simulation?
For some, these are silly questions—of course we’re living in reality! The difficult part comes when one tries to prove that.
Early ponderings
Plato is probably the earliest person to raise these question in Republic with the Allegory of the Cave.
Imagine a group of prisoners chained in a cave, facing a blank wall. There’s a fire behind them and puppets used to cast shadows onto the wall they face.
For the prisoners, the shadows are reality. It’s all they may ever know. But their reality is untrue.
Suppose one prisoner escaped. They would see the fire was not sunlight, and the figures on the wall were shadow puppets. If they left the cave, real sunlight would hurt their eyes because they wouldn’t be accustomed to it. They may wish to return to the safety of the cave where things were dark and familiar.
How can a person who knows more return to the old ways?
Powerful computers of the future
While Rene Descartes and many others have touched on these themes since Plato, Oxford University philosopher and author Nick Bostrom brought the argument into the modern age with “Are you Living in a Computer Simulation?,” a paper he wrote in 2003.
The argument goes like this:
Anyone with even a passing awareness of computer games can see how far we’ve come from early Atari games in a very short period.
Assuming any rate of progress at all, Bostrom poses it’s likely our descendants will have extremely powerful computers able to run very realistic simulations. Simulations indistinguishable from reality.
Those simulated worlds would be populated by simulated beings.
How can we prove we are not one of those beings, dwelling in one of those simulated worlds?
It’s a very difficult thing to do.
michael dziedzic
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Where this leads
If we assume this argument is correct, there are numerous reactions one could have, among them:
If this reality is a simulation, does anything I do really matter?
Am I the only “real” being in this simulation, or are there others?
If there aren’t other “real” beings, do I have license to behave immorally?
Sadly, things have already gone in this direction.
In 2003, a teen with undiagnosed mental illness became obsessed with The Matrix. Thinking he was living inside a simulation, he decided to shoot and kill his adoptive parents with a shotgun. The trial spawned what’s now called The Matrix Defense.
Some have made the point that simulation theory is merely a 21st century spin on religious ideas, some of them quite ancient — our relationship with a higher power, living within its Creation, etc. A new film explores these themes — I’m curious to check it out.
Conclusion
When it comes down to it, even if it’s true, does it matter if we are living in a very convincing simulation?
Only if we realize that this is as real as it gets. As far as we know, this reality is all we have. But there’s a very good chance a lot more is going on than what our senses tell us.