Why “this could all be a simulation” is such a dangerous argument
It’s tempting when everything seems to be falling apart, yet latching onto this narrative could make things much worse
Are we living in a simulation? And, if we are, what does that mean?
I generally don’t listen to anything that comes from the mouth of Elon Musk, but he once quipped “there’s a one in billions chance we’re in base reality”. What he was suggesting is that in all probability, we are living in a simulation.
Now, Mr Musk is no expert on quantum physics or whatever it is you need to be an expert in to know about these things, but given the enormous amount of influence that he has it’s no surprise that “ah, well, we might all be living in a simulation, anyway!” is something I’ve heard more and more in casual conversation over the last couple of years.
The logic is this: as our technology advances, it’s likely that computer games and virtual reality will continue to advance, until they become indistinguishable from reality. At some point, we — or whatever we have become (“posthumans”, apparently) — are likely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history. This could involve running countless simulations of all the ways in which history could have gone.
