Why Life Is Not a Simulation
And what this tells us
In 2016, Elon Musk stated that from the moment the game “Pong” was invented in 1972 until now, so much has changed in terms of virtual reality, that chances are, we are already in a simulation. Or as Musk puts it: “There is a one in a billion chance that our current reality is base reality.” The idea of life being a simulation is known as the simulation hypothesis. Rich Terrile, a scientist at NASA, shares this idea.
That we might be in a simulation is, Terrile argues, a simpler explanation for our existence than the idea that we are the first generation to rise up from primordial ooze and evolve into molecules, biology and eventually intelligence and self-awareness. The simulation hypothesis also accounts for peculiarities in quantum mechanics, particularly the measurement problem, whereby things only become defined when they are observed.
Although this is a very interesting idea, the hypothesis is very ‘hypothetical’ because:
- Thinking that we’re in a simulation because we have progressed in creating virtual reality is no basis for believing it is there. Based on the fact that we’ve invented virtual reality, “there must already be virtual reality”. We are (or Musk is) also getting closer to inventing spaceships and maybe even life on another planet someday. Does that mean it must already be there?
- To believe that there is ‘something’ or ‘someone’ out there feels awkwardly familiar to another big story that helped to clarify phenomena we haven’t yet come to understand.
To believe that there is ‘something’ or ‘someone’ out there feels awkwardly familiar to another big story that helped to clarify phenomena we haven’t yet come to understand.
Fortunately, there are enough people (even in the same article) that would disagree as well. Now, I wouldn’t have written an article about this if there wasn’t anything interesting, and there is.
The simulation hypothesis is a modern version of numerous philosophies. There’s Plato’s cave which states that we don’t know the ‘actual world’. There is only our perception of the world, and we only see the shadows of the objects around us. Once we get out of the cave, become true philosophers, we will truly know how and what the world is like. Much later, Descartes argued that an evil demon could be deceiving us while we’re dreaming. This demon would be simulating a complete illusion of our external world.
The modern-day argument is coined as “The Brain In A Vat”-argument. If I know apples are green, then I would know that I’m not a brain in a vat. But since I can’t possibly be sure that I’m not a brain in a vat, I have no reason to believe apples are actually green. What is there to know if I can’t be sure whether I’m a brain in a vat?
We have to acknowledge first that there are different kinds of knowing. As understood from Plato’s cave, we know that we don’t see the actual world, we can only grasp it. We know how ‘our’ world looks, through space and time, but not the world apart from ours. Some would call this ‘super knowing’. Yet on a lower level, we do ‘know’ things, like if you’d ask me, “Do you know what the time is?” And I would tell you the time.
Yet on a lower level, we do ‘know’ things, like if you’d ask me, “Do you know what the time is?” And I would tell you the time.
As a true annoying philosopher, one could argue that there isn’t anything you can possibly be sure of. What is time? What is death? What can we know? Was there ever a man called Plato that wrote about a cave? But on a day-to-day basis, we still know things. What I know could be false, but probably isn’t. The sun will possibly not be there when I wake up, but probably will. There’s enough to probably know in order to live my life. I don’t know what our origin is, what or who we truly are and I definitely can’t think outside of space and time. This doesn’t bother me in getting to work on time.
Furthermore, George Berkeley would say that there isn’t something distinct from what we perceive:
Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. [In truth, the object and the sensation are the same thing and cannot therefore be abstracted from each other.] from The Principles Of Human Knowledge (1710)
There are three things we can make of these observations:
- When I tell you the time, we have agreed upon a sense of time, and a clock. Meaning that my 10 AM is the same as your 10 AM. This is an agreement. We have agreed upon what we probably know in order to function.
- Tomorrow, your 10 AM will still be the same as my 10 AM, and since we have been able to agree upon this, we have also been able to agree on some sort of stability or consistency. This is not 100% certain outside of our perception, but certainly, enough to have an understanding of how the world works.
- These sorts of agreements are perspectives. It’s how we have decided we are looking at the world in order to understand it and in order to function in it.
Remember the debate about the tree in the woods? Does it make a sound if no one hears it? In the same way, we can ask: is there a reality separate from ours if no one knows about it? There will be, and are, numerous answers to these questions, not one of them more true than the other. To believe that there is a simulation because we don’t ‘super know’ things seems like something medieval. It is a nice explanation in the course of virtual reality and also works great to talk about on parties or events, but it is only an explanation in terms of recent developments.
This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to know, but it does tell you that for each of us, the world holds a certain amount of subjectivity and our claims about the world are built upon this subjectivity. It should allow you to see the world in a lot of different perspectives. The world being a simulation is also one of these perspectives. We are unable to know whether this is true, or not, but thinking it is, because we don’t know, feels like a bit of a stretch.
