Simulated reality

Simulated reality is a hypothetical process wherein all perceptions and observations are completely and immersively simulated—for example by hypothetical far-future computer simulation technology—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. By definition, a simulated reality is so high-fidelity that conscious minds inside the simulation would have no easy way of determining that that they are living inside a simulation, and therefore might be deliberately tricked into believing that they are not living inside a simulation. Simulated reality is more advanced than the current, technologically achievable concept of virtual reality. Existing virtual reality is easily distinguished from the experience of actuality; participants are never in doubt about the nature of what they experience. Simulated reality, by contrast, would be hard or impossible to distinguish from "true" reality.

While skeptical hypotheses broadly conjecturing that reality could be an illusion have existed for thousands of years, the advent of computer-generated virtual reality and of popular works such as The Matrix have brought into modern mainstream culture the new notion of unknowingly being part of a computer simulation.

Types of simulation

Brain-computer interface

In hypothetical brain-computer interface simulations, each participant enters from outside, directly connecting their brain to the simulation computer. The computer transmits sensory data to the participant, reads and responds to their desires and actions in return; in this manner they interact with the simulated world and receive feedback from it. The participant may be induced by any number of hypothetical means to forget, temporarily or otherwise, that they are inside a virtual realm.

Virtual people

In a virtual-people simulation, every inhabitant is a native of the simulated world. They do not have a "real" body in the external reality of the physical world. Instead, each is a fully simulated entity, possessing an appropriate level of consciousness that is implemented using the simulation's own logic (i.e. using its own physics). As such, they could be downloaded from one simulation to another, or even archived and resurrected at a later time. It is also possible that a simulated entity could be moved out of the simulation entirely by means of mind transfer into a synthetic body.

Consequences

If we are living in a simulation, then it's possible that our simulation could get shut down. Some futurists have speculated about how we can avoid this outcome. Ray Kurzweil argues in The Singularity is Near that we should be interesting to our simulators, and that bringing about the Singularity is probably the most interesting event that could happen. The philosopher Phil Torres has argued that the simulation argument itself leads to the conclusion that, if we run simulations in the future, then there almost certainly exists a stack of nested simulations, with ours located towards the bottom. Since annihilation is inherited downwards, any terminal event in a simulation "above" ours would also be a terminal event for us. If there are many simulations above us, then the risk of an existential catastrophe could be significant.[1]

Arguments

Simulation argument

Main article: Simulation argument

As early as 1995, Hans Moravec advanced the claim that far-future "robots" would create innumerable exact simulations of the present "real" world, complete with simulated humans; and that, because there is only one "real" world and many simulated copies of the real world, it is statistically likely that we ourselves live in such a simulated reality.[2][3][4] Later, the philosopher Nick Bostrom developed an expanded "simulation argument", coming to a more measured conclusion that if our descendents (or the descendents of extraterrestrial species like us, if they exist) are likely to create "ancestor simulations" in the future, then we should conclude we ourselves probably live inside an ancestor simulation.[5][6]

Computationalism

Main article: Computationalism

Computationalism is a philosophy of mind theory stating that cognition is a form of computation. Computationalists tend to believe that a computer program performing a high-fidelity simulation of a human being is likely to itself be fully conscious. Other schools of thought have different attitudes towards simulated reality; a scholar who believes consciousness requires a vital substrate might conjecture that "real" humans possess this substrate and are conscious, while virtual humans are philosophical zombies who do not.

Skeptical hypotheses

The broad notion that external reality could be an illusion has existed since ancient philosophy.[7]

Early hypotheses involving deliberate deception include:

Other skeptical hypotheses, not necessarily involving deliberate deception, include:

Dreaming

Main article: Dream argument

A dream could be considered a type of simulation capable of fooling someone who is asleep. As a result, the "dream hypothesis" cannot be ruled out, although it has been argued that common sense and considerations of simplicity rule against it.[9] One of the first philosophers to question the distinction between reality and dreams was Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the 4th century BC. He phrased the problem as the well-known "Butterfly Dream," which went as follows:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

The philosophical underpinnings of this argument are also brought up by Descartes, who was one of the first Western philosophers to do so. In Meditations on First Philosophy, he states "... there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep",[10] and goes on to conclude that "It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false".[10]

Chalmers (2003) discusses the dream hypothesis, and notes that this comes in two distinct forms:

Nested simulations

Even if we are a simulated reality, there is no way to be sure the beings running the simulation are not themselves a simulation, and the operators of that simulation are not a simulation.[12]

"Recursive simulation involves a simulation, or an entity in the simulation, creating another instance of the same simulation, running it and using its results" (Pooch and Sullivan 2000).[13]

In fiction

Simulated reality is a theme that pre-dates science fiction. In Medieval and Renaissance religious theatre, the concept of the "world as theater" is frequent. Simulated reality in fiction has been explored in innumerable books, games, and films, with The Matrix being a well-known exemplar.[14]

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Why Running Simulations May Mean the End is Near
  2. ↑ Moravec, Hans, Simulation, Consciousness, Existence
  3. ↑ Moravec, Hans,Platt, Charles Superhumanism "In fact, the robots will re-create us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists, at most, only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it's much more likely we're living in a vast simulation than in the original version. To me, the whole concept of reality is rather absurd. But while you're inside the scenario, you can't help but play by the rules. So we might as well pretend this is real – even though the chance things are as they seem is essentially negligible."
  4. ↑ Moravec, Hans Pigs in Cyberspace
  5. ↑ Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? by Nick Bostrom. July 2002. Accessed 21 December 2006
  6. ↑ Tierney, John (14 August 2007). "Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
  7. ↑ Warburg, B. (1942). The Relativity of Reality. Reflections on the Limitations of Thought and the Genesis of the Need of Causality: by René Laforgue. Translated by Anne Jouard. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, 1940. 92 pp.. Psychoanal Q., 11:562.
  8. ↑ Putnam, Hilary. Reason, truth and history. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press, 1981. (Argument republished in 1999 as "Brains in a Vat"). Via .
  9. ↑ "There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us. But although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life, than the common-sense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us causes our sensations." Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
  10. 1 2 René Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, from Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911 – reprinted with corrections 1931), Volume I, 145-46.
  11. ↑ Chalmers, J., The Matrix as Metaphysics, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona
  12. ↑ Bostrom, Nick (2009). "The Simulation Argument: Some Explanations" (PDF). If each first‐level ancestor‐simulation run by the non‐Sims requires more resources (because they contain within themselves additional second‐level ancestor‐simulations run by the Sims), the non‐Sims might well respond by producing fewer first‐level ancestor‐simulations. Conversely, the cheaper it is for the non‐Sims to run a simulation, the more simulations they may run. It is therefore unclear whether the total number of ancestor‐simulations would be greater if Sims run ancestor‐simulations than if they do not.
  13. ↑ Pooch, U.W.; Sullivan, F.J. (2000). "Recursive simulation to aid models of decisionmaking". Simulation Conference (Winter ed.) 1. doi:10.1109/WSC.2000.899898. ISBN 0-7803-6579-8.
  14. ↑ Schneider, Susan, ed. Science fiction and philosophy: from time travel to superintelligence. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
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