Is Everything a Simulation?

Wednesday, September 05, 2007 | 20:05

This article was originally published on October 13, 2001; my old writings are being moved to my blog.

Can we be sure that we are living in a common-sense world where everything is as it appears to be? Can we be sure that we are not part of a giant simulation?

I believe that if we live in a simulation there probably is no way for us to know this for sure. This is because if we are part of a simulation, whoever or whatever created the simulation could very well have made sure that we cannot find anything that supports the idea that everything actually is a simulation. However, there would be no danger in allowing people to philosophize about it because theories and hypotheses are not facts. It might destroy the purpose of the simulation if we knew the truth about ourselves and our world. If we are being simulated for research purposes, it is preferable that we have no knowledge about this, because we would most likely not act very natural if we had that knowledge in our possession. Besides, how would a simulation know that it is a simulation?

By whom could everything be simulated? Perhaps highly advanced beings are simulating us for various reasons, be they scientific, entertainment, and what not. Maybe the beings have developed artificial intelligence and we are thus living inside an artificially intelligent machine, in its "mind". As you may have guessed, artificial intelligence is not required for the simulation. It could be computer software running in much the same way as you run an ordinary computer program, with the exception that this software is a vast number of magnitudes more advanced and allows individual parts of the software to develop different kinds of characteristics and consciousness (humans, animals, etc.).

Another possibility is that we are being simulated by humans living in our own future. Though we might live in a simulation now, we could in the distant future prove to be the ones creating the simulation from which we originally came.

This is a really interesting idea. Imagine that we sometime in the future have a perfect way of simulating an entire universe with living and conscious beings in it. We start simulating a world reminiscent of our own as we think we know it. Later on it turns out that this simulation is the very reason that humans in the future exist and can create the simulation. In other words, a real paradox.

The evolution of the universe and everything in it might be simulated, or it is devised so that we think that the universe has a long history of development. The simulation could have started quite recently, perhaps just when you read this sentence.

On the one hand it could be that somebody or something created the simulation and gave it general rules and laws. After that, the simulation was allowed to go on as it wished, and here we are today. Every living thing can decide for itself what it wants to do. Nothing is predetermined.

On the other hand, it is possible that the entire simulation is governed by rules and laws that are very precise and exact. These rules and laws would encompass everything, and the entire simulation would be minutely controlled. Our entire lives are determined in advance and everything that is ever going to take place in the simulation is known before the simulation is started.

If the latter case is true, one might ask what the purpose of the simulation is considering that the creators already know every little detail that is going to happen in it. Maybe the simulation is just for entertainment: it is being run for fun, relaxation, fascination, or something like that. Furthermore, it could be run on an ordinary computer (perhaps not in our definition of the word), similar to computer games available today that simulate living societies. The simulation need not be run in some laboratory or research facility by specialized people, but could be run in someone's house by just about anyone capable of operating a computer.

Think about it: our entire universe might be controlled by somebody who is actually just playing a kind of computer game. If so, then every copy of the game has worlds with simulated beings. Supposedly, you are not limited to one universe per copy of the game. You can start one world, run it for a while, then save it, start a new world, run it for a while, save it, go back to the first world, and so on. Our simulation would not be very unique in that respect.

Personally, I do not believe that our world and we ourselves are simulated as discussed above, but as I have mentioned we can probably never be certain about it. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting idea.