Have you ever looked at your life or the world around you, or even at the universe more generally, and wondered whether everything is exactly as it seems? If you have felt like this, perhaps you’ve come across potential explanations for what might be going on. One increasingly popular idea is the so-called Simulation Hypothesis that suggests our lived experience is actually a simulated reality, similar to something in a video game, like The Sims.
Although many question this idea, there are plenty of others who support it. For instance, Elon Musk is a firm believer in the Simulation Hypothesis, while Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, once said the odds that we live in a simulation are “better than 50-50”. However, deGrasse Tyson has now added that he knows a compelling argument against the hypothesis.
But despite its growing popularity, the Simulation Hypothesis has one very large problem: it simply can’t be confirmed or rejected either way. As such, it is more pseudoscience speculation than scientific possibility. So why do people find it so compelling?
Just another form of skepticism?
The Simulation Hypothesis is the latest example of a family of philosophical views known as skeptical hypotheses. Throughout history, various manifestations and variations of these ideas have occurred, some with more critical power than others.
Probably the most famous version of this concept was that devised by the French philosopher, René Descartes, in 1641. In a thought experiment known as the Evil Demon hypothesis (or Deus deceptor), Descartes explored the limits of our knowledge of the external world by imagining an evil god or entity of “utmost power and cunning” that has set about deceiving us. The evil thing is so strong that it can provide a complete illusion of the external world. How can we be sure the things we smell, hear, taste, or see are not part of this nefarious illusion?
Following this line of doubt, Descartes eventually concluded that the only thing he could be certain of was his own capacity to doubt, that he was a thinking thing. This, he believed, was the limit to our knowing, which gave rise to his famous statement cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).
A modern version of Descartes’ concept is the Brain-in-the-Vat hypothesis that adds a technical/sci-fi spin to the old idea. In this version, we are asked to imagine that we are in fact nothing more than brains connected to a sophisticated computer program that can simulate reality for us. If we cannot find a way to show that our experiences are real and not a result of being brains in a vat, then we may have to rethink some beliefs about the external world.
This, at the end of the day, is the purpose of these skeptical hypotheses. They are designed as philosophical tools that allow us to question the basis of our assumptions about objects in the external world.
However, the Simulation Hypothesis is a different beast. It has somehow transcended beyond this humble basis and become a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of reality itself. In other words, the hypothesis is not a tool to test our thinking, it is an explanation about how things really are.
Simulating what?
This development came from the work of Nick Boström, a Swedish philosopher, who added statistical reasoning to the idea. According to Boström, we are likely living in a simulation for the following (radically simplified) reasons: if there are many civilizations and these civilizations are capable of building computers to simulate conscious beings, then there are likely more simulated forms of consciousness than real ones. As such, we are likely among the simulated and nothing more than complex computer code and all our experiences are programmed by a higher being.
We don’t even know how to put the known laws of physics on a computer (we only ever approximate them with computers).
Sabine Hossenfelder
Boström’s ideas have been debated and criticized for some time, so there is no need to go over the objections here. But it is worth stressing that, as Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, has argued, the Simulation Hypothesis “is not a scientific argument”. This is because there is currently no way to prove or disprove the idea. So, belief in it is just another form of faith, just like any other metaphysical explanation. Only this one has scientific words like “computers” and “algorithms” to make it sound more technical, but it is a bit of a trick and one of the reasons why scientists do not take it seriously.
“Boström didn’t just say ‘this might be a computer simulation’. His point was that it is LIKELY we live in a computer simulation”, Hossenfelder explained to IFLScience. “This argument hinges on his idea that it is much easier to simulate lots of consciousnesses than having real ones.”
“And to make that work, he had to assume that in the simulation where all those consciousnesses reside, lots of the physics actually isn’t calculated when no one looks.”
But that is not how things work. No one “has any idea how such an algorithm is supposed to work. We don’t even know how to put the known laws of physics on a computer (we only ever approximate them with computers).”
“You see, the idea that all our observations can be described by some sort of algorithm run on a computer is basically a statement about the properties of the laws of nature. But the laws of nature that we have found are not of that form. We don’t know any computer that could produce our reality. And without that, it’s just empty words.”
Just another religion
This computer language also adds an element of sophistication, linking the idea to the popular Matrix franchise about a computer-simulated universe ruled by malevolent machines. But it ultimately says very little about either reality, natural laws, or computers.
This is partially why it is popular, Hossenfelder added, because “most people don’t know how either computers or the laws of nature work”, which makes it possible to conflate the two.
The ideas are also vague and non-prescriptive. “I don’t think it’s well-defined and it doesn’t have any ‘principles’ behind it”, Hossenfelder added.
“Indeed, that’s part of the problem: one doesn’t even know what one is arguing about. If you e.g. want to say that the laws of nature ‘compute’ our reality, then I think most physicists would agree with this. If you want to take that to mean that we live in a computer then that’s just a meaningless statement in which you have replaced ‘universe’ with ‘computer’”.
But perhaps another aspect of the concept’s appeal lies in the supposed “meaningfulness” it can offer our lives, as a computer program pre-supposes a programmer, and this programmer is therefore responsible for our experiences, good and bad.
“[A]s with any religion”, Hossenfelder said, “you have a god (the ‘programmer’) who is basically omnipotent and stands above the laws of nature. So if you’re nice and behave well, then he or she can presumably make a miracle happen to help you. Also, you can’t really die because you’re just code anyway.”
In many ways, the underpinning nature of the hypothesis is not dissimilar to 16th century Calvinism, in that it regards the world and our futures as pre-established by a creative entity and we all operate as to the grand design, or algorithm, in this case. In Calvinist ideology, there was the idea that our fates were decided long before we were born, so only those “predestined” for salvation would actually receive it.
There is a lot of similarity here with the Simulation Hypothesis as the programmer ultimately controls our fates and our experiences, the highs the lows, the injustices or frustrations, all make sense because they are part of the program. If the world sucks, there is a reason for it.
