BEFORE cursing the indolence of today’s youth, absorbed in the ever-more intricate virtual realities of video games rather than scrumping the ripe fruits of real reality outside, consider this. Perhaps they are actually immersing themselves in our future – or even our present.
The story of our recent technological development has been one of ever-increasing computational power. At some future time we are unlikely to be content with constructing tightly circumscribed game worlds. We will surely begin to simulate everything, including the evolutionary history that led to where we are.
Flicking the switch on such a world simulation could have fundamental ramifications for our concept of reality, according to philosopher Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford. If we can do it, that makes it likely it has been done before. In fact, given the amount of computing power advanced civilisations are likely to have at their fingertips, it will probably have been done a vast number of times.
So switching on our own simulation will tell us that we are almost undoubtedly in someone else’s already. “We would have to think we are one of the simulated people, rather than one of the rare, exceptional non-simulated people,” says Bostrom.
Probably, anyway. There has to be a basement level of reality somewhere, in which the “master” simulation exists. It is possible that we live in that reality. Depending on its laws of physics, the basement’s computing resources are likely to be finite. And those resources must support not only the master simulation, but any simulations people in that simulation decide to create – perhaps limiting their number, and thus increasing the chances that ours is the base reality.
Either way, our ability to check our own status, and that of the fundamental physical laws we discover, is limited. If we are in the basement, we have nowhere to drill down to, and if we aren’t, whether we can depends on the rules put in place by those who built the simulation. So even if we do end up constructing what could be reality for someone else, we’ll probably never know for sure where we ourselves stand. Who’s to say video games are the lesser reality?
The story of our recent technological development has been one of ever-increasing computational power. At some future time we are unlikely to be content with constructing tightly circumscribed game worlds. We will surely begin to simulate everything, including the evolutionary history that led to where we are.
Flicking the switch on such a world simulation could have fundamental ramifications for our concept of reality, according to philosopher Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford. If we can do it, that makes it likely it has been done before. In fact, given the amount of computing power advanced civilisations are likely to have at their fingertips, it will probably have been done a vast number of times.
So switching on our own simulation will tell us that we are almost undoubtedly in someone else’s already. “We would have to think we are one of the simulated people, rather than one of the rare, exceptional non-simulated people,” says Bostrom.
“SWITCHING ON A SIMULATION WILL TELL US THAT WE’RE IN SOMEONE ELSE’S ALREADY”
Either way, our ability to check our own status, and that of the fundamental physical laws we discover, is limited. If we are in the basement, we have nowhere to drill down to, and if we aren’t, whether we can depends on the rules put in place by those who built the simulation. So even if we do end up constructing what could be reality for someone else, we’ll probably never know for sure where we ourselves stand. Who’s to say video games are the lesser reality?
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