Recent developments in Virtual Reality have enabled it to be applied in many different fields such as video games, Robotics or cinema entertainment. The environment created by the VR computer already provides an almost lifelike experience. If one extrapolates the developments in VR at any rate of growth into the future, regardless of whether it be hundred years or tens of thousands of years, these games and simulations will eventually become indistinguishable from reality. So how do we know that this hasn’t happened yet, and we aren’t living in a simulation run by some posthuman civilization?
Over the past few decades, the improvement of Artificial Intelligence and computational power has left many philosophers ruminating about the nature of our reality. Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford, has come up with a compelling line of reasoning that we are really, in fact, living in a computer simulation. This implies that your brain is also just part of that simulation and not actually “yours”.
For establishing this hypothesis, Bostrom first clarifies a few assumptions. One is that of the “substrate independence of the mind”, which essentially states that the mind could be implemented not only on biological neurons (like it is right now) but also on other computational sensors such as silicon-based processors and still be functional.
What’s happening inside of our brains is that there are functions and dynamic processes that are running on a certain type of hardware, but in principle, if you could take these same functions and processes and run it on some other hardware, like a computer that could exactly copy those functions and processes, you would get the same result and the same outcome – the mind. The mind is therefore not tied to our brain or certain atoms, rather it is a bundle of functions and processes.
An analogy of the substrate independence of the mind is that of a platform independent code. This code can be implemented on any computer and will still function as it was programmed to. Our computers right now are not powerful enough to run the computational processes that take place in our brain but ultimately, in the future, this computational power will be achieved.
Given this concept of a widely accepted substrate independence, it would be possible to upload a human mind on a sufficiently powerful computer. Even though our current knowledge doesn’t allow us to perform this mind-uploading, as we don’t have such powerful computers, there is no physical or material constraint preventing us to do so, which means that we only must overcome the technical gap to be able to implement minds onto computers.
Let’s suppose that you are in fact just a simulated mind in a simulated world. The simulation that is run by the computers of the posthuman civilization is indistinguishable from reality, as we know it, and therefore there is no possible way for you to find out whether you are in a simulation. The only way to find this out would be if the posthuman civilization decided to let us know that we were living in a simulation and would change this simulation in such a way that we were primed to find out. Perhaps a window informing you of the fact would appear in front if you or perhaps they would “upload” you into their world and would cover up this upload by creating the idea of death. So, before they want to upload, and therefore remove, a mind out of the simulation, they would construct a series of events leading to this person’s death to have a justified reason that that mind won’t be in the simulation anymore.
Now, having outlined some of the theoretical framework and getting you into the thought-provoking state of mind, we get to the gist of the simulation argument, which shows that at least one of the following three propositions must be accepted as true:
(1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small
(2) Almost no technologically mature civilization is interested in running computer simulations of minds like our own
(3) You are almost certainly in a simulation
Let us assume that proposition (1) is false. This implies that a large part of our species will eventually become technologically mature enough to run computer simulations. Further, if we suppose that (2) is also false, then a significant portion of the technologically mature civilization will run computer simulations of minds like ours. Given the enormous computational power that such a posthuman civilization will have, they will be able to simulate a huge number of minds. Hence, if both (1) and (2) are false, there will be an extremely large number of simulated minds like ours. The number of simulated minds would be a lot larger than the amount of non-simulated minds. Thus, simply by looking at the probability, you would have to conclude that you are most likely one of the simulated minds rather than one of the exceptional ones that are running on biological neurons.
If we argue that proposition (1) is true, then it must be true that there occurs a certain extinction event that would entirely wipe out all the civilizations before they become technologically mature. Or, the advanced civilizations develop a technology that inevitably turns out to be highly dangerous and destroys them. Also, not a very bright outlook for the future.
Lastly, if we consider proposition (2) to be true, then none of the sufficiently advanced civilizations are interested in running simulations of minds like ours. This is also an interesting outlook, as it would put a constraint on the future evolution of advanced intelligent life. Furthermore, until now, humanity has always taken steps into further developing itself and has never not pursued technological advancement due to lack of interest. A compelling reason would be needed for this to change in the posthuman civilization.
The most intriguing scenario is given by the truthfulness of proposition (3).
What if we really were living in a computer simulation and all your acquaintances are simply simulated minds being controlled by an external computer which in turn is being controlled by some posthuman species? How would knowing this change your behaviour in everyday life? Would you continue as before or make any drastic change?
Feel free to share your thoughts about this in the comment section below!