What if we Live in a simulation?

This article is a brief understanding of mine over this concept, and since I’m an engineering undergrad and not a philosophy major so I hope you chose to take it as a grain of salt, besides mom said it’s my turn for this topic now

So, the idea comes from a probability argument, that if an intelligent civilisation tends to survive, if the computation keeps scaling and if consciousness can arise from physical processes, then running simulated minds becomes not just possible, but pretty plausible. If all this happens, simulated observers should practically outnumber the actual biological observers(if they exist considering that means the original reality might vastly vary from ours!). At that point, the question of whether you and I exist in a “base reality” becomes very anti-intuitive and statistically the answer is probably no.

Crucially this idea doesn’t essentially say “we are in a simulation” which already sounds uncomfortable enough. It says that denying this, forces you to accept something equally heavy. It leads to the assumption civilisation always collapse. Or they deliberately chose not to simulate their past.

the Iffs presented…

A Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom presented this theory, and the idea stems from the probability theory as I said,

Let:

• $f_P$: fraction of civilisations that reach the posthuman stage
• $f_I$: fraction of posthuman civilisations interested in running ancestor simulations
• $N_I$: average number of simulations run by interested civilisations
• $f_{\text{sim}}$: fraction of observers with human-like experiences that are simulated

The fraction of observers with human-like experiences that are simulated is:

$$f_{\text{sim}} = \frac{f_P \cdot f_I \cdot N_I}{f_P \cdot f_I \cdot N_I + 1}$$

If you’re having trouble then lemme explain, the probabilities explain a relationship of limits between the variables. Any one term dominates the other variable become statistically insignificant which leads us to 3 possible scenarios.

He argued mathematically, at least one of these must be true:

$f_P \approx 0$

Hardly any of the civilisations that reach posthuman stage. Some hindrance almost always occurs to developing civilisations that prevent them from reaching that stage. Maybe they nuke themselves to extinction or get addicted to cat Tiktok equivalents.

$f_I \approx 0$

They get to posthuman levels but hardly any of the civilisations want to run these simulations. Either they barely care to run these simulations, or maybe it’s ethically wrong or some other hard rule exists like Back to the Future! Or they turn super-intelligent and decide minimalism is the way to life.

$f_{\text{sim}} \approx 1$

Or they do end up making simulations and run lots of them. And due to probabilities, we statistically are almost living in a simulation, which somehow feels not as heavy as it did last time I pondered over this. Base reality is super rare in this case and well, I don’t feel very lucky since I’ve been conscious. So in other words, an advanced alien super computer is burning out RAM for your “well-articulated” online arguments.

How do we know we are inside a simulation then?

Theoretically speaking, we can’t. Maybe if on a quantum level things feel unconventional and pretty super-computer-like? But then we can’t probably comprehend those supercomputers of those levels. You may say maybe, there’s some glitches in the matrix we could find but no, they can probably fix those, erase evidence, restart sim or just whatever.

You practically can never know. And I think that’s the point.

What this means?

Well, there’s not really a solid conclusion to this theory because it puts some very interesting further questions about the simulation and overlords. I mean does the simulation really need to simulate everyone or just you? Maybe all this is a simulation of your own qualia and you’re never meant to solve this while it’s being rubbed in your face. It’s also the argument for solipsism but that’s just plain evil. Speaking of which, I am pretty sure once they do get to posthuman level, there’s still no way to figure out if THEY are living inside of a simulation, so I guess doesn’t matter which end of the stairs you are at, you never really know which is base reality.

Everything said, the simulation didn’t exactly come with instruction manual so just make the choices that make it worth rendering to you.

Sources & Further Reading if you liked this

• Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
  https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf

  The core paper behind the simulation hypothesis. Presents the argument as a probability trilemma rather than a scientific claim, and forms the backbone of this article.

• Plato: Allegory of the Cave

  A classical philosophical thought experiment about perception, illusion, and reality. Often seen as an early precursor to modern skepticism about whether our experiences reflect the true nature of the world. Haven’t read this yet but you know, classics. They say you should read them.

• Brains in a Vat
  https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20in%20a%20Vat%20-%20Hilary%20Putnam.pdf

  A modern philosophical argument questioning whether we could ever know if our experiences are systematically deceived, laying important groundwork for simulation-style skepticism.