Are We Living in a Simulation?

The Philosophy Bites guys have posted a fascinating podcast interview with Nick Bostrom in regard to his writing on the Simulation Argument. Hold on to your brains, lest they explode, because this is the basic gist of Bostrom's theory:

If we assume some non-negligible fraction of civilizations at our stage reach technological maturity, and that some non-negligible fraction of those are interested in creating ancestor simulations, then we can show that each one of those creates astronomical numbers of them because it is so cheap for a mature civilization to create an ancestor simulation.

If those two assumptions hold, then therefore there will be many, many more simulated people like us than non-simulated people like us. In other words, almost all sentient beings with your types of experiences will be simulated, rather than non-simulated. From that, we can infer that you are almost certainly among the very typical simulated ones, rather than among the very rare, original, historical, non-simulated people.

So, if we accept that some non-negligible fraction make it through, and some non-negligible fraction of those are interested in this, then we get to the simulation hypothesis that we should think we are almost certainly simulated.

Basically then, from a statistical point of view, it is far more probable for you, me, and everything around us to be a simulation than it is for us to be "real."

Wikipedia includes a little more background about the Simulation Hypothesis:

There is a long philosophical and scientific history to the underlying thesis that reality is an illusion. This skeptical hypothesis (which can be dated in Western thought back to Parmenides, Zeno of Elea and Plato and in Eastern thought to the Advaita Vedanta concept of Maya) arguably underpins the mind-body dualism of Descartes, and is closely related to phenomenalism, a stance briefly adopted by Bertrand Russell. In a narrower sense it has become an important theme in science fiction, and recently has become a serious topic of study for futurology, in particular for transhumanism through the work of Nick Bostrom. The Simulation Hypothesis is a subject of serious academic debate within the field of transhumanism.

Bostrom and other writers postulate there are empirical reasons why the 'Simulation Hypothesis' might be valid. Bostrom's trilemma is formulated in temporal logic 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).

Of course, the idea of living in a simulation is certainly noting new to anyone familiar with Star Trek, The Thirteenth Floor, The Matrix, and numerous other science fiction movies, TV shows, or books. Still, to consider that we are statistically more likely to be living in a simulation than not is a simple, profound, and unsettling idea.

Give a listen to the podcast at Philosophy Bites, and check out the Wikipedia article for more background and detail...