I am sure many of you have heard of Nick Bostrom’s “simulator argument” which puts forward the hypothesis that we are living in a computer simulation.
The Simulation Argument
This idea opens up the question which is similar to the time travel one, that being if people can travel back in time they would already be here or if humans in their entire history of existence are ever able to create simulations they would already have been created and thus the chances are that we are living in the simulation not the original.
I myself think that it is highly likely that this idea is probably correct (or a concept very similar to that of the simulation argument) but we have to ask the question why would we want to live in a simulation or create them in the first place?
What reasoning would we ever have to live in a simulation? By definition we would be unable to grasp the reasons why anything outside of this universe would ever do it but we can ask the question why would humans, people like you and I ever want to create/live in a simulation.
I gave this some thought and came up with a number of reason as to why people may choose to live in simulations if and when we have the ability to create them.
With in say a few hundred and at most a thousand years we can probably conclude that humans will be immortal. With genetic engineering and other scientific breakthroughs’ we will probably be able to for all practical purposes live forever the only loop hole being death by way of an accident which results in the destruction of the body and conciseness e.g. dying of smoke inhalation in a fire and the fire destroying your entire body.
When humans get to this stage and realize that immortalizm is within their grasp they will fear death even more then you and I fear it today because its now become evitable. With this I believe people will do everything they possibly can to avoid dying and will try and limit their exposure to such an outcome and look into all possible remedies in an effort to preserve their conciseness. One of these remedies would be to confine oneself to living in a computer simulation with your body/conciseness in a secure environment.
Fear of death wouldn’t be the only reason to flee to a simulation, boredom would be another. With immortality comes an almost infinite amount of time and what are you going to do with all that time? After all death is the only thing that gives meaning to life! You can only see the Pyramids and Stonehenge a certain number of times before they become boring and ordinary. Then what? We have all heard the stories about the upper class in Europe in the Middle Ages almost driven mad with boredom due to their life style of being rich with nothing really to do but count their money and court prostitutes. Moving to a simulation would give you endless paths to travel and worlds to explore and thus escape the boredom of your infinite life.
Another thing to consider which I think maybe linked to this whole simulator idea is the fact that we have not made contact with advanced civilizations. That famous saying which was coined about 50 years ago “So where is everybody” with regards to the fact that there should be hundreds if not thousands of civilizations in our galaxy more advanced then ours. After all there are billions of stars which are hundreds of millions and even billions of years older then our sun which would have given ample time for a civilizations to become hundreds of millions of years more advanced then human civilization.
So why have we not met any of them yet? It maybe due to them preferring the bliss of the simulator then exploring the galaxy/universe. After all they are probably seeking happiness as much as you and I and if they can create “heaven” in a computer who’s going to give a stuff about exploring the universe when you could be in heaven?
Is this current universe one of these simulations? As Nick Bostrom said we will be able to test this theory in the future if we in this universe create simulators of our own. If we do create them we would have to answer that in all likely hood we are living in a simulation.
It makes the mind boggle.
I know it’s a bit long and I am not very articulate but I am just hoping to bounce these ideas of you people in here and see what you think?
™ Version 4.2