you probably heard the theory that we're all living in a stimulation specifically an ancestor
simulation this isn't a fringe conspiracy theory but an idea that has been touted by elon musk
neil degrasse tyson and other very intelligent people and in this quick video i'm going to be
going over the initial philosophical argument for this idea called the simulation hypothesis put
forth by nick bostrom and examine if there are any logical grounds to believe we are
really living in a simulation if you like this video at any point i think it's interesting or
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also make sure to subscribe for more videos like it below okay first let's take a look
at the original simulation hypothesis by bostrom and then we'll dive into why it may not be true
so boston proposed a trilemma argument in his paper are you living in a computer simulation
in which he didn't outright state that we're living in a simulation just that
one of the following statements is most likely true number one the fraction of all human level
civilizations that reach a post-human stage that is one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor
simulations is very close to zero or number two the fraction of post-human civilizations that
are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history or variations thereof is
very close to zero or number three the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences
that are living in a simulation is very close to one here's what that means because we believe we
can develop very advanced computing power in the future that could run lifelike simulations we can
conceive that it is most likely that an even more advanced civilization has already developed it
if we live in a multiverse full of different universes as many physicists believe
suppose some of these advanced civilizations were to run what he calls ancestor simulations with a
with this advanced technology or simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable
from reality to the simulated ancestor in that case the total number of simulated ancestors
dubbed sims will far exceed the actual real-life ancestors a typical observer is likely to be
in one of the simulations rather than a member of the top civilization producing the ancestor
simulations so we should assume that we are typical within the set of all such observers
in this simulated multiverse in other words if there was a civilization that made it to the stage
where they can run advanced lifelike simulations and chose to do so which seems possible that could
happen that means that we're most likely in a simulation since there would be far more sims
than real people if we're not in a simulation then according to bostrom all or both civilizations
died out before they could run advanced ancestor simulations or they just never felt like doing so
one of these very unlikely three scenarios is most likely correct and it's probably number
three we're in a simulation in his paper bostrom outlines uh that this isn't your typical highly
skeptical argument like the rene descartes evil demon that tricks our senses but this is a serious
metaphysical hypothesis in which we have real grounds to consider we have useful data that
highly suggests that lifelike ancestor simulations can be run and will be run in our not too distant
future just take a look at how life like video games are now compared to just a few years ago
now imagine what they're going to look like in 20 years or 100 years from now it seems possible
that virtual reality and simulations will be indistinguishable from reality right but wouldn't
we know we're in a stimulation and wouldn't sims be unconscious we have consciousness so we must be
the real civilization right bostrom details that if we are able to model the mind closely enough
artificial minds will work exactly the same way as regular lines do including giving rise to
conscious experience he believes in a physicalist interpretation of what consciousness is plus if we
were to simulate the entire universe in detail and feed it into the artificial mind it would
have no way of knowing it was in a simulation life or it would be exactly like it is now
that is the argument in a nutshell now i'll link to the full paper by him below so you could if
you want to explore it in more detail so are we living in a simulation i think we're not
and there's uh at least more reasons to think that we're not than we are right now and here's why
one objection to the simulation theory comes from paul davies uh physicist who uses reducto out of
sorghum to argue that the idea is self-defeating he says washroom's argument presupposes that
we're living in a near infinite multiverse allowing a universe to contain an advanced
post-human level civilization that could reach the stage to choose to run advanced simulations
however if there's infinite multiverses and then infinite simulated multiverses bostrom's argument
becomes self-defeating and he needs to rewrite it or abandon it we can't have infinite multiverses
that are real plus near infinite simulated multiverses in the argument for it to even work
an even better argument against the simulation theory is questioning if we're really typical
observers this seems like a sort of fake humility that we actually have no grounds to accept as
there could be many types of different simulations and simulated civilizations if near infinite
simulations were run we can probably conclude probably conclude that using bostrom's logic
the most uh most of these simulations won't have the ability to run simulations themselves or even
can be able to conceive of a simulation that the argument states that it's easy to conceive
of creating high-fidelity ancestor simulations now using his own logic if her to be typical observers
we should have no idea what a simulation really is yet we're here and can conceive of running
advanced simulations which is what i'm thinking about right now in this video which means that
his argument doesn't hold and finally there's no actual empirical evidence that shows we are
in a simulation our best known theory of energy and matter shows how our universe
could have been created without the need for a simulator or intelligent crater and scientific
experiments designed to look for evidence that were in a simulation have yet to turn up anything
yes perhaps the simulators were so intelligent that they made sure to carefully hide the evidence
but using bayesian reasoning isn't the better theory just to accept that we're in the real
world as of now than a simulation that's purely hypothetical to this point now overall i actually
like the simulation argument because it shakes up our notions of what ontology is and what we
may consider to be natural laws in reality even though i think it's flawed and i do agree with
him that this is a class separate than the highly skeptical rene descartes type argument and i'll
be looking forward to reading any future papers or books by mr bostrom so let me know what you think
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like it so thanks for watching and let me know what you think of the simulation argument below