Are we in a simulation? Does it matter?

6 min readApr 27, 2021

The simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the proposal that all of reality, including the Earth and the rest of the universe, could in fact be an artificial simulation — Simulation Hypothesis

This would be more like the tip of the iceberg what are possible “outcomes” on the family of the simulation hypothesis. Briefly condensated food for thought from more perspectives.

Since the computation era came up with virtualization abilities, human nature found about simulation possession. Human creatures are curious thus we want to run ancestor simulations.

Ancestor Simulations

High-fidelity simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestors, the total number of simulated ancestors in the universe (Multiverse) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors. What’s the purpose of simulation at all? Probably learn to act better next time in a non-conflict sustainability way, even it seems every time to “be different”? Reload game and re-run simulation with updated variables?

The various questions could be answered through a simulation like

What causes war?
Which political systems are the most stable?
How will climate change affect global migration?
How we can mitigate resource over-consumption?

To qualify outcomes without costs any human lives — if are alive, we are used to doing some sort of simulations at the expense of computation power we have.

From this point, you may realize, that probabilities we are in some kind of simulation near to one, yet we don’t know how long is running this simulation or eventually will be terminated whenever we find out evidence about it.

Brain in a Vat

What if our brain was actually in a vat hooked up to computers sending electromagnetic waves to the brain make a reality that we see as 100 percent real? How would we know it was a fake reality?

How one could refer to things outside of simulation? If BIV can only refer to objects within the simulation, not to the things to things outside the simulation it does not have a relationship with.

Experience Machine

Our brains are a mix of chemical imbalances at the end of the day and whenever we managed to flip the switch to put the brain in a self-reinforcement pleasure loop, whenever the effort to make favourable sensations would be less, we most likely switch to be machine natives.

imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. In this thought experiment, psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person’s brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not distinguish from those he would have apart from the machine. He then asks, if given the choice, would we prefer the machine to real life?
Nozick also believes that if pleasure were the only intrinsic value, people would have an overriding reason to be hooked up to an “experience machine,” which would produce favorable sensations.

Computationalism

Computationalism is a philosophy of mind theory stating that cognition is a form of computation.
It is possible that consciousness requires a vital substrate that a computer cannot provide and that simulated people, while behaving appropriately, would be philosophical zombies.
Some theorists[6][7] have argued that if the “consciousness-is-computation” version of computationalism and mathematical realism (or radical mathematical Platonism)[8] are true then consciousnesses is computation, which in principle is platform independent and thus admits of simulation.

Dreaming

It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false?

Butterfly Dream

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)
The “dream argument”, proposed by both René Descartes and Zhuangzi, supposes reality to be indistinguishable from a dream.

Five-minute hypothesis

Even with ancestors' records, it’s pretty hard to figure out, how long we are running and how one could determine we’ve potentially been fast-tracked to the current self-explaining universe. Speaking on the past timelines records, there is a thing called historical negationism. Trying denial some historical events which had negative impacts on society. Kingdoms we’re numerous times caught forging records from history. Probably for reason.

The “five minute hypothesis”, most notably proposed by Bertrand Russell, suggests that we cannot prove that the world was not created five minutes ago (along with false memories and false evidence suggesting that it not only five minutes old).

Nested Simulations? Probably closest one.

The existence of simulated reality is seen to be unprovable in any concrete sense as there is an infinite regress problem with the argument: any evidence that is directly observed could be another simulation itself.

In August 2019, philosopher Preston Greene suggested that it may be best not to find out if we’re living in a computer simulation since, if it were found to be true, such knowing may end the simulation.
In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization. He argued that if you believe that our civilization will one day run many sophisticated simulations concerning its ancestors, then you should believe that we’re probably in an ancestor simulation right now.
If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#Dimensions_of_spacetime

The takeaway to your reality

We can’t be sure whenever we are living in a self-explaining universe, with a closed explanatory or causal loop, i.e. “perhaps only universes with a capacity for consciousness can exist — Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle

What you can proceed to your brain whatever fake reality is it, fetch some sci-fi book on simulated reality to speculate on multiple dimensions of reality you are at now.