Are we living In a Computer Simulation?

Great Debates
1

Here’s the latest hair brained theory that those loverly being known as physicists (of which I am a recovering one) have drempt up to allow time travel. It is based on the idea you might currently be living in a computer simulation, running on a computer built by some advanced civilization. In this future there will be computers advanced enough to create an absolutely perfect simulation of the world enabling future beings to “time-travel” to anywhere or when. This then begs the question that if millions of these perfect universes have been created how do we know we are not in one?

The conclusion of the simulation theory, courtesy of Dr Nick Bostrom, Department of Philosophy, Oxford University, is as follows:
*A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).

Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.*

So, unless the future of mankind involves extinction or people who have no interest in the past, you are living in one of the artifical universes rather than the original one. It is a bit like the matrix (which is becoming less and less original everytime I see it) only without the megalomanical computers.

You can find more information about the arguments here

Are we real or not?

2

I’m guessing you saw the BBC Horizon science programme the other day (what a bunch of tripe that mostly was).

We had a thread about this a week or two ago, but what has occurred to me since then is that (quite aside from being built on wild speculation and assumption about the future growth of computer processing power), as a hypothesis, it is unfalsifiable - it suggests no way we can test if it is true or false.

3

Linky

BTW, welcome to the SDMB.

[sup]Someone will be along shortly to correct your misuse of ‘begs the question’[/sup]

4

Those are the best kinds, aren’t they?

5

In so much as your brain is a computer, and that we live within a simulation provided by that computer based on the information our senses gather, the answer to your question is ‘yes’.