Basically, one of the following statements should be true:
1- Humanity will never achieve the ability to create ultra-realistic simulations of universes and people.
2- Humanity will achieve that capacity, but will not be interested in simulating anything.
3- Very likely we live in a simulation.
This is the argument of philosopher Nick Bostrom, and it puts us in a difficult situation, right? Obviously, we don’t want to go extinct as a species, and it seems impossible that if we reach the ability to create realistic simulations our curiosity wouldn’t lead us to do it. But then, this leads us to conclude that option 3 is true: we surely live in a simulation.
Why?
If we manage to simulate realistic universes with conscious beings in them, those beings sooner or later will create their own simulations, and within them new beings will create new simulations, and so on in an ever-growing cascade of nested simulations (just like in Rick and Morty, Season 2, ep 6 👽), so the number of simulated universes and people will soon far exceed the number of real universes and people. Therefore, the odds that we are the real universe are tiny compared to the odds that we are one of those countless simulations.
KNOCK KNOCK NEO
Well, let’s suppose the argument is valid (which I don’t share) and that it is practically certain that we live in a simulation. Could we ever prove it somehow, or would it forever remain a metaphysical hypothesis?
I think there could be a way to know: by creating our own simulations.
Remember we are talking about nested universes, so each one of them demands computing power from its parent universe to exist. If we keep creating simulations and extending the chain of universes, that demand will eventually exceed the capacities of the central computer of the original universe, and then… maybe we could start to see “glitches,” flaws in the physical laws and in reality itself that would reveal the simulation.
Or… maybe those in charge of the simulation would decide to shut it down once they see we are getting close to that point... 💀
What do you think?
