Suppose, dear viewer, that everything you own: your NES collection, your youth sports
participation trophies and all of your wonderful memories are merely fabrications -- 1s and
0s of binary code in an advanced computer simulation.
It may sound like science fiction, but is it actually possible?
According to the inventor and CEO Elon Musk, it’s not only possible, it’s almost certain.
Bollocks, you say?
Perhaps.
Although Musk has made this simulation theory mainstream, it was proposed over 15 years
ago by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in his essay, aptly titled: “Are you living
in a computer simulation?”
"A computer simulation in which the simulated people are conscious."
Bostrom argues that at least one of the following three statements is true:
According to Bostrom, if future humans don’t go extinct, and don’t opt out of super simulations,
than you, dear viewer, are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
Bostrom’s thesis rests on the concept of ancestor simulations – the idea that humans
will one day be able to recreate their own history in perfect detail.
"This is the world that you know."
Perhaps future humans would want pop on a VR headset and see what London was like in
the 21st or 17th century, or take a trip to 12th century Mongolia and meet Genghis Khan himself.
They would be so detailed that the simulated humans would, for all purposes, think that
their lives were real.
With enough computing power, simulated people may eventually run their own simulations,
and their simulations may run their own simulations -- like Russian nesting dolls.
When Elon Musk says that there is a billions in one chance that we are not living in a
computer simulation he does have math on his side.
Let’s say that your next-door neighbor will create a simulation of you next Tuesday.
If they are replaying last week in order to better figure out a way to ask you out, it
would mean that there is a 50/50 shot that you are a simulated being created for your
neighbor’s enjoyment.
If this idea is expanded to the totality of humanity things get a little scarier.
It only takes one future person to create one replica of our reality, let’s call it
the “Party Like It’s 2017.exe,” to make the odds that you are living in that simulation
1 in 2.
If, in the future, someone creates 3 different versions of “Party Like It’s 2017”,
then our odds of living in that simulation are 3 in 4 – 75%.
Minecraft has sold over 100 million copies in our own world.
If in the future “Party Like It’s 2017” were as popular as this, your chances of living
in a simulation today would be 100 million to 1, a 99.999% chance of living in a fictitious reality.
Given enough time: say thousands of years, billions of people could own 2017 simulations
and it would mean that you would have a billions in one chance of living in base reality: or
the really real world.
Odds are you exist in one of the billions of 2017 simulations.
Musk believes that with any real amount of technical progress, widespread simulations
like this are inevitable.
For Bostrom, it isn’t simulation or bust though— Bostrom believes people may very
well be able to create ancestor simulations and choose not to.
If you’re hoping you are real, this possibility is your only saving grace.
But does it really matter?
Will the fact that our universe is simulated make it any more or less meaningful?
What do you think dear viewer, would the truth of an other-worldly creator bring you solace,
or would we be obliged to make like Neo, and bring it all crashing down?