Hacking the Reality Code

I've been thinking a lot lately about the possibility of the universe being a mass simulation. This is similar, though not synonymous, with the idea that I am unwittingly living in some virtual reality, either as the sole conscious inhabitant or one of many, a la The Matrix. This is also similar to the idea of Descartes' demon, where his entire idea about reality may be deceptions by a malicious entity. These are things people have thought about for as long as metaphysics have been around. What makes this worth reconsidering, however, is that I recently have become fascinated by an argument that presents the artificial nature of our reality as a question of statistical analysis rather than epistemological musings.

The name of this argument is the Simulation Argument, and it can be found here: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html Essentially, the idea is that the greater capacity for creating simulations, either of an entire universe from scratch or of an immersive virtual reality world, the greater the probability that we ourselves are living as said simulation. Right now, the author argues, the probability that we are living within a computer program is roughly equal to the probability that we will wipe ourselves out before said program becomes developed.

But as the capacity to create a full virtual universe capable of internally generated artificial intelligence that is likewise capable of creating full virtual universe capable of internally generated artificial intelligence, possibly ad infinitum, equals 100%, the chance that we ourselves are part of one such artificial reality rather than in the one non-artificial generative reality likewise will equal nearly 100%.

And as for the assumption the author makes about our universe being an ancestor simulation- I personally reject that hypothesis, which is why I'm starting to think the chances are actually closer to 50-50 that we will either wipe ourselves out or are a simulated reality. The society that wrote our program may exist within a universe where technology or the laws of physics or the history of said universe or even what we consider to be consciousness itself are nothing like what they wrote into our program. We could be living in, say, a universe where a simulation was run to see what history would be like if the dinosaurs died out, or…I mean, basically anything.

In my mind, this is similar to an inverse of the argument about a monkey given an infinite amount of time writing Hamlet. It is distinct from the metaphysics of Buddhism or Descartes- it takes the existence of self as a given- but from my perspective it allows for the overthrow of our scientific axioms in a more thorough way without discarding any of the proven realities of science itself. The former two philosophies lead towards solipsism, nihilism, or a reliance on a benevolent creator. This leads more towards greater scientism.

And it can, in some ways, be tested. Physicists are currently attempting to prove if we are actually in one form of simulation (and keep in mind that we can never prove definitively that we are not), as can be seen here: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429561/the-measurement-that-would-reveal-the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation/ This may prove fruitless- the premise that we can in any way predict the parameters of a possible simulation or that we can in any way differentiate between the limitations of our universe and the limitations of an artificial is arguably absurd. But still, it is to my knowledge the first legitimate scientific experiment being done in metaphysics, and as fruitless as that may be epistemologically it’s still pretty awesome.
 
This is not pointless- it's all about figuring out exactly what the universe is and what we are. But it’s also quite dangerous, as the ethical implications of a consciousness or an entire society of consciousnesses discovering that they are in fact simulations run on some sort of program could lead to either a direct intervention from the creators of that program. This could mean a communication with said creators, or equally possible a termination of our program as it may have possibly proved the entire point of our simulation.

So what does this mean for our ideas about life, reality, religion, and the afterlife? Well, for one, it proves that our notions of reality could quite easily be tweaked. We could live on a planet that was at one time programmed to have a history of, say, only 6427 years, but which was later reprogrammed to have existed for 4.5 billion years. The concept that we exist as part of a program allows the possibility of all truths within that program to not necessarily stand as true for all eternity. 

Furthermore, we have no idea how much of our history would have occurred within our universe, as the simulation in which we exist could have began with the big bang and lead up to the development of life and the creation of consciousness within that very program. However, we could also be in a simulation that began at our birth, where the entire history of everything known and unknown up to that point was part of the initial program. We could even go so far as to suspect that we are in a simulation that began as we awoke this morning, or even at this very instant. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed save the existence of our self, in some form, in this very instant, though exactly what material reality this self has is highly questionable.

The simulation we may exist within is still real- we cannot assume that we are the only thing that truly exists, as there must at least be an external force from what we consider to be our "self" creating the delusion of external reality. But reality as we know it may be more mutable than we generally accept. This may allow for the existence of so-called miracles, the evidence of which is later easily rewritten as plausibly deniable. This may allow for the existence of "gods", beings who have either learned how to hack the program codes or who are avatars of the programmers themselves.

What the idea of existence within a simulation definitely allows for is the freedom from Descartes' need of an omnibenevolent creator. As LaPlace said, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. All deities, all miracles, could easily be disguised simply as ways in which a programmer kept the program running smoothly, yet who reprogrammed things to cover its tracks. God not as a father creating out of love, but as a scientist creating to test a hypothesis. Given enough advances in technology, we could even concievably be the captive consciousnesses in a commonly available simulation program bought and run by a mischievous trickster entity, an interventionary demiurge who did not write the program from scratch but ran it in the way we might play The Sims- solely for its own personal amusement.


This is all, of course, nothing new. The only thing revolutionary about Bostrom's argument is that it speaks from probability rather than possibility. While it proves nothing, it does lay a good case that we should no longer discount the possibility of higher worlds or altered states of reality. We are conditioned to live as if we were not in a simulation, but I think it's worth wondering- what would it look like if we lived as if we were?