What if we are living in a simulation ?
Ever thought you were a character in a movie or video game?
If you’ve watched the 1999 blockbuster movie, The Matrix, you probably have an idea of what this article is about. What if everything that you perceive as reality, your surroundings, your family, your own body and mind, is part of a carefully curated illusion ?
More often than not, we absentmindedly assign the reality tag to “something that is not fictional” and the fictional tag to “something that is not real”, and so on. Why is the meaning of reality so elusive ? Perhaps it is just a construct that has been laid down by us, something so intuitive that we do not even think twice before declaring something as “real” or “not real”. Wouldn’t it then be easy to find loopholes in the meaning of something that is already vague in the first place ?
Think of it this way — everything around us is governed by the laws of physics. We are bound by rules and regulations that can be expressed as mathematical equations. Is it really impossible to simulate them using an immensely powerful machine ? Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, in his compelling research paper titled “Are we living in a simulation?”, argues that there can be one out of three possibilities :
1) Humanity will die out before developing technology that is advanced enough to simulate the universe.
2) Human civilisation will reach a stage where it is capable of producing such simulations, but will decide not to create them.
3) Humans will definitely produce said simulations, in which case, we might already be living in one.
This mind boggling hypothesis has fascinated many over the years, including renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. In fact, Elon Musk believes that the probability of us not living in a simulation is a billionth of a fraction.
Is it really possible to harness the energy needed for such detailed simulations, even for a super advanced civilisation ? Bostrom speaks of hypothetical machines such as the Matrioshka brain, a computer the size of a solar system, that has colossal computational power. Moreover, he argues, it is not necessary to simulate the universe in its entirety all the time. All we
require is enough power to create an illusion such that the simulated beings do not notice any irregularities around them.
The question that now arises is-if we are indeed living in a simulation, should we try to break out of it ? Would it be wise to do so, knowing nothing about the nature of its creators ? And if we are successful, do we really want to know the truth, or are we better off living our lives under this blanket of security ?
