Why It Is Quite Likely We Are Living In A Simulation

We are probably living in a simulation.

What does it mean? It means you, me, and everything around us, are computed generated. The universe as we know it, is just strings of 0 and 1.

It means we are all living inside a video game. Like Sims.

Of course, as you read this, you are probably thinking how silly it all sounds. I did too, when I first stumbled upon this topic. But after exploring deeper, it did not sound so implausible to me anymore. In fact, some of it sent deep chills down my spine.

So bear with me as I walk you through this entire phenomenon.

THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT

The first question we need to tackle is whether it will ever be possible for us to code a simulated universe ourselves, which will be indistinguishable from reality. For that, let’s take a look back 50 years. What is the best, most complex video game we had to offer back then?

It was Pong. A two player table tennis themed game, where you had white bars at two ends of the screen, and a ball ping-ponging around from one end to another. You won points every time your opponent failed to hit the ball back.

Fast forward to 2020, and we now have incredibly sophisticated computer games, with hyper realistic graphics, freedom to play a thousand different ways, enormous worlds, and hundreds of players playing at once. We are now tinkering with augmented reality, AI and other breakthrough technologies to blur the line between virtual and reality even further.

50 years may seem like a lot to us, but in the grand scheme of things, it actually isn’t. Humans existed for 6 million years. The universe itself is 13.8 billion years old. When you lay out the map like that, 50 years is like a speck of dust on the planet Jupiter. It’s nothing.

So the rate of recent technological advancement has been truly extraordinary. So it stands to reason that, at any rate of future advancement, humans will soon be able to code a simulated universe which will be indistinguishable from reality. Even if you tune down the rate by 90%, we will still get there eventually. Maybe it will take 200-300 years. Which again is like a rounding error when you consider the age of mankind, or the universe.

So now that we have understood that coding a simulation of reality is possible, next comes the question as to whether we WILL do it. Being able and actually doing so aren’t the same thing. This is where the “simulation argument” comes in. It proposes that one of the following three propositions are true:

1) Civilization will go extinct before reaching the technological stage necessary for coding simulation

The threat of mankind’s demise is nothing new. Known as the “Great Filter”, it refers to any event that is almost insurmountable for any civilization in any part of the universe. Right now we obviously don’t know what is, or whether it’s even true. It could be climate change, genetically engineered superbugs (imagine the current coronavirus but fatality rate is 50%), a giant asteroid, nuclear wars, high powered physics experiments gone very wrong, a black hole generator etc.

So the first proposition is that any civilization gets annihilated by such a catastrophic event before they can advance enough to be able to create simulated realities.

2) Civilization do reach the technological stage for coding simulation, but choose not to

At various points in recent human history, global consciousness came together to decide that a particular technological advancement is too dangerous to be adopted, and must thus be discarded. Bioweapons and chemical weapons are two such examples. We are also witnessing steady denuclearization as the world understands the threat of a nuclear war on humanity.

Drugs like cocaine, heroin, meth etc. are also technological developments of their own which have been outlawed for the greater good. Many parts of the world are also banning deepfakes outright.

As mankind wades more and more into complex levels of technology, we can expect to see more of such decisions being made in the future. One of them could very well be the consensus not to engage in coding a simulated universe, when we do get to the point where we are “able” to do so. Perhaps humans realize the underlying threats involved in coding a simulation, or the ethical questions that come with it. Given how much tragic life has been for majority of humans across our history, would you want to create a simulation where billions more suffer the same way?

3) We are most likely living in a simulation

So there is no calamitous episode that ends mankind before we learn how to simulate reality. And we do not have any ethical reservations towards coding one. Perhaps at that point in the future, life is so good for most humans (world is already getting safer and more prosperous as each year goes by), that we forget what mass suffering is like.

Also, in a deeply capitalist society, assuming it still remains that way far into the future, the motivation behind running simulations will simply be enormous. The gaming, movie and porn industries are three of the biggest markets which will be incredibly motivated to adopt simulation technology, due to the financial windfalls it has to offer. Also historians, researchers, anthropologists etc. will be similarly interested in running simulations to understand how civilizations rise and fall, how humans react under different social and cultural contexts, how difference in technological developments alter the course of civilization etc. The scope for learning is colossal for knowledge hungry professions.

So if the first two propositions are false, then it means we will go on to code a simulated universe one day. And if that is true, then we are probably already living in a computer simulation ourselves.

Now one would immediately wonder: why is that the case? Why, if we are going to create a simulated universe in the future, does it automatically mean we’re highly likely to be in one already?

Okay, let’s consider the first civilization that chooses to create simulated realities. We call it universe no. 1. Now this civilization won’t create just one instance of a simulated universe. Much like we create a video game and then millions play it, this civilization will also create millions of simulations.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say one million. Now these one million new universes will undergo a similar journey like our own universe. They will experience tremendous technological advancements of their own. Like us, it also stands to reason that they should reach a stage when they can create simulated universes as well!

To keep it conservative, let’s say 10,000 out of those one million choose to do so, while the rest either get extinct before, or decide against it. So from one million simulated universes, you have 10,000 ones who are now running their own computer simulations too. Each of these 10,000 will create say, one million more simulated realities. And so on.

It will be something like my poorly drawn chart above. The red circle is universe 1, where it all starts. And all of the blue circles are the resulting simulated universes. With each blue circle, one simulated universe gives rise to a million more, 10k of which build a million more each, and thus it goes on.

So essentially you have billions and billions of simulations. Now imagine the entire diagram was put on a giant whiteboard the size of a football field, and you were given a dart. While being blindfolded, you were asked to throw the dart on the whiteboard.

What are the chances your dart will land on that one universe, out of billions, that started the entire chain of simulations? Literally one in billions. So extremely improbable, to say the least. And what are the chances it will instead land on one of the billions of simulated universes? Extremely high.

In other words, your chances of hitting the original universe is something like 0.00000000001%, while your chances of hitting a simulated version is 99.9999999999%.

The same odds applies for whether we ourselves are living in the original universe or a computer simulation of it. The odds are vastly stacked against us being number one.

POWERING THE SIMULATION

Now here is where things get freakier. One of the strongest arguments against the simulation hypothesis is that, to simulate even one virtual universe, mankind would need ungodly amount of computing power. Which is true.

For starters, the human brain is incredibly, incredibly complex. Simply coding to match the operations taking place in one human brain for 24 hours would require the kind of processing power we are not even close to achieving yet. Does not mean we won’t get there eventually, but when you factor in the fact that that to simulate an entire universe means powering billions of human beings, animals, trillions of planets, stars, black holes etc., the entire concept starts feeling a bit far-fetched to say the least.

But there is an explanation to solve this.

Let’s go back to video games. Suppose you’re playing a game where your character is based in New York City. You can roam around the entire city, loot banks, beat up gangsters, fly planes, dance in discos etc. The possibilities are endless.

But the way games work is that, when your character is at a particular location on the map, only the area you can perceive is loaded by the computer. This is an easy and simple way to conserve computing power. Because if you’re, say, in the eastern corner of New York, you have no use of what’s happening in the other areas. It makes no sense for the game to load the entire city when you’re only experiencing a part of it. So the rest of the map is essentially darkness.

Remember those games in the past, the ones with poorer quality, where trees would magically crop up as you walked towards a forest? And they’ll disappear just like that, once you walk back. Games of today work the exact same way, but they are built in a better fashion, so you don’t experience the oddities of objects appearing out of nowhere. They are loaded just before you can perceive them.

Above is an image, even more poorly drawn that the earlier one, that reflects what I mean.

Now why can’t a simulated universe operate the same way? In such a simulation, one would not need to always power every corner of the earth, every animal, every galaxy, star, asteroid etc. Like a game, anything that a human being cannot immediately perceive is not loaded. Those parts remain “dark”. Only when a human comes into vision or interaction with any object does it get loaded into the simulation.

So if right now, you are lying in your bed as you read this, and your brother’s room next to yours is empty, and there’s no human around to perceive it, then that room does not exist. It is not loaded by the computer that powers our universe. It is dark. But the moment you open your door and look around, it pops back into existence.

Same for the ground we stand on. Nothing inside it is loaded. But when we try to dig with a shovel, the dirt underneath is booted up by our universe’s computer.

Reality is only what us humans can consciously experience. Everything else is blank.

Just think about that for a moment.

Final Thoughts

It is important to keep in mind that science does not operate on speculations. To prove something, you need absolute, hard evidence. Since the simulation argument is only conjecture, it is not accepted as a scientific fact. And therefore, one should not take it for granted that it has to be true.

But the hypothesis does have support from a wide range of scientists, mathematicians and physicists. Like Nick Bostrom, a highly accomplished professor at Oxford University, author of four books including a bestseller, who was inducted in Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” list in 2009 and 2015. And Brian Greene, a theoretical physicist, mathematician and string theorist, founder of World Science Festival, who taught physics as a professor at Cornell University, and now at Columbia University. And George Smoot, astrophysicist, cosmologist, with a duel bachelor's and PhD degree from MIT, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006.

Even celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and brilliant billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk are proponents. In fact, Musk once mused that the simulation argument came up with almost every conversation he had with his tech buddies. Since Musk is involved, it is no surprise that many people in Silicon Valley are obsessed with the topic as well. One of the more prominent ones would be Sam Altman, founder of Y Combinator and current CEO of OpenAl (where Musk is a co-founder). And while we don't know who they are, two Silicon Valley billionaires are apparently directly funding scientists working on this theory. All these individuals aren't saying we definitely live in a simulation, but they agree that the possibility is intriguingly high.

None of us will live long enough to know the actual answer, unfortunately. So take it all with a grain of salt. And just as importantly, even if we are in a simulation, it does not change anything. Life goes on as usual!

But if this article interested you enough that you want to dig into this topic even further, I highly suggest you start by searching for “Double Slit Experiment” on YouTube. It is an experiment that produces a mind boggling result which science to this day cannot explain. Going through it is what gave me literal goosebumps. Because the experiment almost makes you believe that there is a glitch in the matrix.

The experiment is in no way evidence for simulation, but it is food for thought. Have fun!

About Me: I am a co-founder of a young food venture, Alpha Catering. My passions include digital marketing, personal development, reading, writing, and entrepreneurship. At Alpha, we are striving to change the perception of catering in Bangladesh through tech, innovation and awesome customer experiences.

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