Reality

One of the more fascinating yet bizarre theories to emerge over the last decade or so suggests that human beings are in fact living in a simulation; a convincingly rendered virtual reality. Movies such as the Matrix, science fiction novels and even a few physics journals have advanced this thesis, but unlike dozens of other conjectures, conspiracy theories and sheer crackpot ravings it has its adherents, including some credible scientists and commentators.

The origins of this notion appear to have first surfaced around 2003 in a paper advanced by Swedish philosopher, Nick Bostrom. I cannot do service to his lengthy arguments in support of the simulation concept in this brief post but boiled down, Bostrom’s theory essentially says that we will eventually reach a point where simulation becomes indistinguishable from reality, and either we will deploy it or not, unless humans become extinct.

Anyone familiar with the state of video gaming will attest to the extraordinary advances in simulation technology since 2003—from blocky barely rendered depictions to starkly real universes that are hard to distinguish from live action media. At the rate of progress we have experienced in less than 20 years it does not seem outside the realm of possibility that we might achieve an immersive reality entirely generated by silicon. The technology in our phones and on our wrists today is already exponentially beyond what we imagined a few decades ago—its march forward appears to have no practical limit, and the speed and processing power of quantum computation is at what many consider an inflection point.

So, it would seem that Bostrom’s thesis has some credible basis. But what if humans had already achieved that stage of development; what if they had already deployed it and we are living in one of many simulated universes the rules of which are algorithms determined by an advanced version of ourselves, or perhaps some entirely different race of beings? One might well ask what that portends for humanity?

Before I take up that question, I want to add that the massive amount of computing power required to envision an entire universe for each of its billions of inhabitants, is mind boggling. So much so that theoretical physicists suggest it would exceed the number of atoms in the universe; an impossible achievement. The counter argument rests on an equally fantastic thought; that an entire physical universe need not be rendered, only a moment-by-moment slice of it, enough to satisfy our waking minds.

Regardless of what you may believe, this line of thought poses a host of ethical questions and as arresting as it is, one might find the possibility a welcome one. If our reality is a simulation than our worst fears for humanity might never be realized—extinction might never occur; a Deus Ex Machina solution will intervene before we can destroy ourselves. But if we are living in a simulation what then does life, death, love, good or evil mean? Are these merely abstractions that harness human’s emotional penchants, or a reflection of a more profound nature? Are our divisions, wars, destructiveness and inhumanity just a way of allowing humans to dispel their worst in the safety of an imagined world or are they all too real?

If we pursue this thought further, we might conjecture that God is a programmer, the creator of a Sims game that he has created to play out millions of possible variations on life. It is not an idea to which I subscribe. What is the point of life if it does not have real outcomes, and real consequences? I cannot imagine a being so devoid of care for its creations that it would subject them to an eternal game solely for its own edification or amusement. Are we merely shadows on the cave wall, as Plato conjectured, or are we real? For better or worse, I believe we are all too real, and while we may one day be capable of inventing an alternate reality my hope is that we would deploy such power to a better end.

Imagine the possibility that we could in fact simulate our universe with it limitless range of variables and alternative outcomes. Rather than fighting one another to attain our ends, we might run a Monte Carlo simulation testing the most probable outcome. For surely, if humanity has reached the stage where such a thing is possible than we have also conquered, disease, war, famine—the ills of the world, especially those we have made. Enticing as that thought may seem, our universe is what we have made of it—and we are bound to live within it and accept the consequences of our actions. Much as we might wish to divorce ourselves from that reality, life is not a video game.