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It is as plausible as the existence of God, or the multiverse possible, certainly, but scientifically unhelpful.
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With so many possible scenarios, it is easy to believe we are more likely to be living in a simulation than we are in the real world.Įven before dealing with the scientific issues, this argument hits a few walls: the assumption that such a future civilisation could ever exist, for example, or that the species would want to simulate humans, the Earth, or indeed even this galaxy.
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It seems inevitable that future civilisations will improve even further and could simulate scenarios from their distant past. 40 years ago, the height of technology was Pong, a mere two pixels and a rectangle now, we have photorealistic graphics at our fingertips, along with deepfakes and virtual reality. The argument for a simulation can seem attractive, at least on its face. This world is the real one because our universe cannot be simulated, and mathematicians have known this for years precisely because they are trying to simulate it. As far as we are currently aware, that is. Silicon Valley billionaires have even reportedly attempted to investigate it themselves, with two going “ so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation”.įortunately – or perhaps unfortunately - there is nothing to break us out of. Over the decade that followed, the idea has been promoted by Elon Musk (who has said the odds are ‘one in billions’ that our world is real) and Neil DeGrasse Tyson (who reduces the odds to a still-troubling 50:50). If that is the case, the likelihood of us being in one of the billions of historical simulations seems almost certain – or else post-human societies have no reason to simulate histories, or never reach the technological capability. He argued that future civilisations could have access to vast amounts of computing power, which could run a near-infinite number of simulations. In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom made the possibility seem inevitable. “If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain”, Morpheus infamously tells Neo, before revealing the horrifying truth. The idea, and fear, that reality is not as it seems can be traced back thousands of years, through the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s ‘butterfly dream’ to films such as, most famously, The Matrix. Is it possible, maybe even likely, that the chaos of the world around us is the result of an advanced computer simulation? That we are simply characters in someone else’s game? What if the world around us was not real? Could it be that the screen you’re looking at, the air you’re breathing, the ground beneath your feet and even the smallest particles that make up your body do not really exist?