Arguments in favor of simulism date to the dawn of philosophy, when thinkers like Parmenides of Elea insisted that the world of appearances was an illusion. Though the suggestion that you exist in a simulation may seem incredible, consider the arguments in this paper with an open mind.

Before I present my own thoughts on the subject, I first want to consider Nick Bostrom’s influential contentions in favor of simulism, which can be summarized 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). Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.”[1]

While the argument is intriguing and even in line with recent suggestions that the universe seems to be a projected “hologram,” scholars might disagree with Bostrom for several reasons. The first two have been mentioned by others; the third is my own reflection.

1. Information which we gather from within a simulation might not be an accurate reflection about the limits and possibilities in the world beyond the simulation, just as Mario’s knowledge of what happens when you eat a mushroom in his universe tells him nothing about what eating one in our world would do to him. In other words, even if our universe seems to hold the capacity of the creation of simulations containing conscious beings, why can we assume the same thing about the world beyond our universe which gave rise to us? This argument can be mitigated at least somewhat, however, by suggesting that given knowledge of our own existences and of the nature of our universe and the possibilities within it, we can make meaningful assumptions about what might have given rise to it.

2. The mathematics in question is based on pure conjecture. Bostrom suggests: “While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~10³³ – 10³⁶ operations as a rough estimate… We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 10⁴² operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second.”[2] The entire premise of his argument is predicated on this idea, though in reality, we know almost nothing about what it would take to create a simulation of the entire mental history of humankind. We must buy into his math, however, to believe that there are likely vastly more “posthuman computerized consciousnesses” than everyday, mundane consciousnesses derived from an original universe.

3. Because Bostrom believes there are likelier to be more simulated consciousnesses than actual consciousnesses due to the enormous theoretical processing power of computers the size of the planets, he suggests we are already in such a simulation, or almost no beings in the universe will ever reach the level of being to create such simulations. However, from the perspective of our giant universe as a whole, it seems like there is evidence (if Earth is not atypical) of a great deal of animal consciousnesses, and life (if not consciousness) down to the bacterial level. The upshot of all this is that the chances of being born a live organism somewhere in the enormous universe might well be higher than the chances of being born a conscious being trapped in a consciously designed simulation created by sophisticated beings like postmodern humans.

At first glance, then, Bostrom’s formulation seems neither sound (because he makes assumptions about over-simulations on the basis of a random under-simulation) nor valid (because his justification for the high number of sims relative to base realities is unfounded). Yet despite some disagreement with Bostrom, I am ultimately a simulist, but partly for independent reasons. (Note that Bostrom himself is not a simulist—he says that we are either in a simulation or likely to never create them.)

I shall use the example of Mario throughout the discussion. Our world and Mario’s world aren’t as different as you might first imagine. To begin poetically, is life possible with no consciousness, so that something can be alive but not even realize it? The existence of plants proves that this is so. Is rationalism possible without sense perception, so that something can make accurate calculations but possess no conscious will of its own? The existence of robots and computers proves that this is so. Is experience possible without three dimensional consciousness? The existence of dreams proves that this is so. Is consciousness possible after total oblivion? Our own existences as human beings prove that this is so. After all, we were all effectively dead before we were born. We know that plants can be very much alive in our three dimensional world with no awareness of this fact—and so we, too, can potentially exist within a world of meaning that is all around us and yet beyond us.

1. Mario might imagine that he is completely unique in the universe and randomly came into being by a process of pixels spontaneously assembling (that is, he imagines that he is the one and only Mario on the one and only television set on the one and only game device in the entire universe, and all these devices came into being by random chance). Or, he might guess that he is one of a large number of similar beings conveyed on a large number of things called game cartridges that are deliberately designed. The latter is likelier than the former. But why? Consider this scenario. If in the future, an archeologist discovers a single book from the lost civilization of 2015—and no other books survived—on what would you place a bet? That the book would be a popular one like the Bible or Harry Potter, or that the book would be someone’s single copy of a lost doctoral thesis? The former is likelier. For analogous reasons, Mario is right to begin to be suspicious that he is a unique thing and not a common one. That is, he is right to guess that he is likelier to be only a version of himself than the one and only version. And if he came into being by some process that worked over time, it is likely that the process would operate more than once and not only in his unique case, since something itself must have given birth to the process and organized it. And the same is true of you—if you won the chance to be yourself, you are likelier to be one of many such winners than the one and only winner, because in any game of chance, the existence of more winners implicitly means more chances to win. Remember, your possession of your conscious will in the form of an individuated consciousness is a separate and distinct fact from your mere existence. David Vincent Kimel might exist somewhere in time and space because a sperm and egg came together, but this fact is distinct from my actually being the one experiencing his consciousness as a singular rational entity and writing this blog post. The inevitable implication of “I think therefore I am” is that the very existence of the “I” requires a separate explanation from the existential implications of its thoughts. It could be that your consciousness’ possession of your specific body was random. But it would seem more rational to assume that you exist as you for a reason, which would give rise to and raise the probability of your existence. If chaos alone governed the universe, the odds would be highly stacked against life in general, let alone the evolution of your individual consciousness—I’ve read that even forming a protein would be (2) (10^-32) unlikely. We need to begin imagining some kind of a process that could give rise to the experience of individuated conscious wills.

2. Now, think about Mario again. Even if he realizes he is more likely to be one of many Marios than the only version of himself, this would still not explain why he acts as he does–for example, why he leaps over a pit rather than into it. Of course, the answer why he jumps over the pit is that he is simulated to do it; someone is playing him. Simulism, or the seemingly ridiculous idea that Mario is basically a video game, doesn’t just explain why something called a “Mario” exists and that there are likely very many versions of him, but also shows why Mario is this particular Mario; why, for example, he grabs the coins that he does. The same is true of you. It could be the case that we are all born in a random and infinitely complex universe governed by no designer. But even if a sperm and egg came together to make you, this does not explain why you are experiencing your consciousness and not somebody else’s, or infinite other ones. Only simulism gives the answer. The only implausible alternative is that everything else in the world is something caused, with the sole exception of your possession of your own conscious will. The only answer to why you are yourself is either “this is the only thing in the universe that has no reason” or “I’m probably one of many versions of my consciousness, and I am being simulated to act in one way and not another, in the same way that Mario decides whether to grab a coin or not.”

3. The question arises, even if we realize that our possession of our individuated consciousness is a fact that is distinct from the facticity of my being (that is, the fact that David Vincent Kimel exists somewhere in the universe is a distinct fact from “my” (the author’s) actually being the individuated consciousness writing this document), and even if we concede that it is likelier than not the case that this fact exists for a specific regulated reason which increased the odds of my coming into existence as a member of a non-unique class rather than the unique result of random chance,(for the same reason that Mario should suspect he is a non-unique thing and that a random book from the world of 2015 is likelier to be The Bible than a random thesis), why should we suspect an intelligently designed entity is behind it all and not merely some natural process we don’t understand (karma, etc.)? Now, imagine this possibility. What if in the whole history of the vast original universe, at least one original civilization existed that was so advanced, it started to deliberately construct simulations, even of its own past—what Bostrom calls ancestor simulations. Why would it do it? Perhaps to cure boredom. Perhaps to figure out all the secrets of the past. And perhaps even to download the conscious minds of all the unfortunate individuals who lived in history before simulations allowed people live out their dreams. Regardless of the reason, imagine it happened even once in the whole history of the universe. What would happen when the simulation of history reached the point when the simulation itself was created? The answer is, it would create a simulation of itself. Then, it in turn would create a simulation of itself, and there would be infinite simulated identical realities.  Bostrom is on the right track when he says: “It may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine – a simulated computer – inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it’s possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily many steps of iteration.”[3] What he misses is that an ancestor simulation that truly replicated its own history would create a situation where the “stacked simulations” were in fact exact replicas of each other. And even if the creation of an ancestor simulation may seem to face insurmountable odds, it may also be the case that a simulated civilization (a civilization simulated in the first place, of some kind) became sophisticated enough to understand its own programming enough to tap into its own coding and examine its underpinnings in fine enough grain to recreate the conscious life of the past. The end result would be the same.
4. If Bostrom’s formulation of the Doomsday Hypothesis is apt, if we consider the present moment not “a year of human civilization” but rather “a year in the existence of the universe,” if the universe is finite and if we find ourselves in a random year of its existence, it is likelier to be nearer the end of the series of years than toward the beginning. This would only be true if the entire universe were in danger of being shut off altogether, which could only be true in the case of being in a simulation.

Now, what is likelier? That you are a single random combination of atoms that came together by chance and that you experience your specific life equally randomly, or that you are one of an infinite number of versions of yourself created when a single very unlikely simulation in an original universe (or within a simulation) simulated itself? The upshot of this is, that it is likelier we exist in a universe designed by a rational will than that we are alone in random space, and that life after death might really be possible, since it should be theoretically possible to upload consciousnesses once the simulation ends.

(Note that the argument that a perfect ancestor simulation might have been created, or that a simulation might have simulated its own coding, mitigates the problem mentioned in the opening critique of Bostrom that we cannot make assumptions about the nature of the environment beyond our universe on the basis of assumptions of the conditions within our universe; yet we can indeed make meaningful assumptions about the environment beyond our universe if we posit that it exists as a copy of itself. However, in this case, we should posit that Bostrom’s logic only applies if we are in an ancestor simulation specifically, and not in a simulation of some kind, despite however many simulations of various kinds might be produced by civilizations within our solar system.)

***

[1] http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.