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portal contents outline glossary history categories philosophies by period ancient egyptian greek medieval renaissance modern contemporary analytic continental by region african egyptian ethiopian south african eastern chinese indian indonesian japanese korean vietnamese indigenous american aztec middle eastern iranian western united states british french german italian russian by religion buddhist confucian christian hindu islamic jain jewish taoist branches epistemology ethics logic metaphysics aesthetics education history language law metaphilosophy mind ontology phenomenology political religion science philosophers aesthetic philosophers epistemologists ethicists logicians metaphysicians philosophers of mind religion philosophers social and political philosophers women in philosophy v t e the simulation hypothesis proposes that what one experiences as the real world is actually a simulated reality such as a computer simulation in which humans are constructs 1 2 there has been much debate over this topic in the philosophical discourse precursors include zhuangzi s butterfly dream and rené descartes s evil demon 3 4 in 2003 philosopher nick bostrom proposed the simulation argument suggesting that if a civilization becomes capable of creating conscious simulations it could generate so many simulated beings that a randomly chosen conscious entity would almost certainly be in a simulation this argument presents a trilemma either such simulations are not created because of technological limitations or self destruction advanced civilizations choose not to create them if advanced civilizations do create them the number of simulations would far exceed base reality and we would therefore almost certainly be living in one this assumes that phenomenal consciousness is not uniquely tied to biological brains but can arise on systems implementing the right computational structures and processes 5 6 variations on the idea have also been featured in science fiction appearing as a central plot device in many stories and films such as simulacron 3 1964 the matrix 1999 and the thirteenth floor 1999 7 8 origins edit human history is full of thinkers who observed the difference between how things seem and how they might actually be with dreams illusions and hallucinations providing poetic and philosophical metaphors for example the butterfly dream of zhuangzi from ancient china 9 or the indian philosophy of maya or in ancient greek philosophy where anaxarchus and monimus likened existing things to a scene painting and supposed them to resemble the impressions experienced in sleep or madness 10 aztec philosophical texts theorized that the world was a painting or book written by the teotl 11 a common theme in the spiritual philosophy of the religious movements collectively referred to by scholars as gnosticism was the belief that reality as we experience it is the creation of a lesser possibly malevolent deity from which humanity should seek to escape 12 in the western philosophical tradition plato s allegory of the cave analogized human beings to chained prisoners unable to see reality rené descartes evil demon philosophically formalized these epistemic doubts 13 14 to be followed by a large literature with subsequent variations like brain in a vat 15 in 1969 konrad zuse published his book calculating space on automata theory in which he proposed the idea that the universe was fundamentally computational a concept which became known as digital physics 16 later roboticist hans moravec explored related themes through the lens of artificial intelligence discussing concepts like mind uploading and speculating that our current reality might itself be a computer simulation created by future intelligences 17 18 19 simulation argument edit nick bostrom in 2014 bostrom s simulation argument edit in 2003 bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called the simulation argument despite its name the simulation argument does not directly argue that humans live in a simulation instead it argues that one of three unlikely seeming propositions is almost certainly true 5 the fraction of human level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage that is one capable of running high fidelity ancestor simulations is very close to zero or the fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history or variations thereof is very close to zero or the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one the trilemma points out that a technologically mature posthuman civilization would have enormous computing power if even a tiny percentage of ancestor simulations were run that is high fidelity simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor the total number of simulated ancestors or sims in the universe or multiverse if it exists would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors 5 bostrom uses a type of anthropic reasoning to claim that if the third proposition is the one of those three that is true and almost all people live in simulations then humans are almost certainly living in a simulation 5 bostrom s argument rests on the premise that given sufficiently advanced technology it would be possible to represent the populated surface of the earth without recourse to digital physics that the qualia experienced by a simulated consciousness are comparable or equivalent to those of a naturally occurring human consciousness and that one or more levels of simulation within simulations would be feasible given only a modest expenditure of computational resources in the real world 20 5 bostrom argues that if one assumes that humans will not be destroyed nor destroy themselves before developing such a technology and that human descendants will have no overriding legal restrictions or moral compunctions against simulating biospheres or their own historical biosphere then it would be unreasonable to count ourselves among the small minority of genuine organisms who sooner or later will be vastly outnumbered by artificial simulations 20 epistemologically it is not impossible for humans to tell whether they are living in a simulation for example bostrom suggests that a window could pop up saying you are living in a simulation click here for more information however imperfections in a simulated environment might be difficult for the native inhabitants to identify and for purposes of authenticity even the simulated memory of a blatant revelation might be purged by a programme but if any evidence came to light either for or against the skeptical hypothesis it would radically alter the aforementioned probability 20 21 bostrom claims that his argument goes beyond the classical ancient skeptical hypothesis claiming that we have interesting empirical reasons to believe that a certain disjunctive claim about the world is true the third of the three disjunctive propositions being that humans are almost certainly living in a simulation thus bostrom and writers in agreement with bostrom such as david chalmers 22 argue there might be empirical reasons for the simulation hypothesis and that therefore the simulation hypothesis is not a skeptical hypothesis but rather a metaphysical hypothesis bostrom says he sees no strong argument for which of the three trilemma propositions is the true 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 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 i note that people who hear about the simulation argument often react by saying yes i accept the argument and it is obvious that it is possibility n that obtains but different people pick a different n some think it obvious that 1 is true others that 2 is true yet others that 3 is true as a corollary to the trilemma bostrom states that unless we are now living in a simulation our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor simulation 20 criticism of bostrom s anthropic reasoning edit further information anthropic principle bostrom argues that if the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one then it follows that humans probably live in a simulation some philosophers disagree proposing that perhaps sims do not have conscious experiences the same way that unsimulated humans do or that it can otherwise be self evident to a human that they are a human rather than a sim 23 24 philosopher barry dainton modifies bostrom s trilemma by substituting neural ancestor simulations ranging from literal brains in a vat to far future humans with induced high fidelity hallucinations that they are their own distant ancestors for bostrom s ancestor simulations on the grounds that every philosophical school of thought can agree that sufficiently high tech neural ancestor simulation experiences would be indistinguishable from non simulated experiences even if high fidelity computer sims are never conscious dainton s reasoning leads to the following conclusion either the fraction of human level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage and are able and willing to run large numbers of neural ancestor simulations is close to zero or some kind of possibly neural ancestor simulation exists 25 the hypothesis has received criticism from some physicists such as sabine hossenfelder who considers that it is physically impossible to simulate the universe without producing measurable inconsistencies and called it pseudoscience and religion 26 cosmologist george f r ellis who stated that the hypothesis is totally impracticable from a technical viewpoint and that late night pub discussion is not a viable theory 27 28 some scholars categorically reject or are uninterested in anthropic reasoning dismissing it as merely philosophical unfalsifiable or inherently unscientific 23 some critics propose that the simulation could be in the first generation and all the simulated people that will one day be created do not yet exist 23 in accordance with philosophical presentism the cosmologist sean m carroll argues that the simulation hypothesis leads to a contradiction if humans are typical as it is assumed and not capable of performing simulations this contradicts the arguer s assumption that it is easy for us to foresee that other civilizations can most likely perform simulations 29 physicist frank wilczek raises an empirical objection saying that the laws of the universe have hidden complexity which is not used for anything and the laws are constrained by time and location all of this being unnecessary and extraneous in a simulation he further argues that the simulation argument amounts to begging the question due to the embarrassing question of the nature of the underlying reality in which this universe is simulated okay if this is a simulated world what is the thing in which it is simulated made out of what are the laws for that 30 brian eggleston has argued that the future humans of our universe cannot be the ones performing the simulation since the simulation argument considers our universe to be the one being simulated 31 in other words it has been argued that the probability that humans live in a simulated universe is not independent of the prior probability that is assigned to the existence of other universes arguments within the trilemma against the simulation hypothesis edit simulation down to molecular level of very small sample of matter some scholars accept the trilemma and argue that the first or second of the propositions are true and that the third proposition the proposition that humans live in a simulation is false physicist paul davies uses bostrom s trilemma as part of one possible argument against a near infinite multiverse this argument runs as follows if there were a near infinite multiverse there would be posthuman civilizations running ancestor simulations which would lead to the untenable and scientifically self defeating conclusion that humans live in a simulation therefore by reductio ad absurdum existing multiverse theories are likely false unlike bostrom and chalmers davies among others considers the simulation hypothesis to be self defeating 23 32 some point out that there is currently no proof of technology that would facilitate the existence of sufficiently high fidelity ancestor simulation additionally there is no proof that it is physically possible or feasible for a posthuman civilization to create such a simulation and therefore for the present the first proposition must be taken to be true 23 additionally there are limits of computation 33 34 physicist marcelo gleiser objects to the notion that posthumans would have a reason to run simulated universes being so advanced they would have collected enough knowledge about their past to have little interest in this kind of simulation they may have virtual reality museums where they could go and experience the lives and tribulations of their ancestors but a full fledged resource consuming simulation of an entire universe sounds like a colossal waste of time gleiser also points out that there is no plausible reason to stop at one level of simulation so that the simulated ancestors might also be simulating their ancestors and so on creating an infinite regress akin to the problem of the first cause 35 in 2019 philosopher preston greene suggested that it may be best not to find out if we are living in a simulation since if it were found to be true such knowing might end the simulation 36 economist robin hanson argues that a self interested occupant of a high fidelity simulation should strive to be entertaining and praiseworthy in order to avoid being turned off or being shunted into a non conscious low fidelity part of the simulation hanson additionally speculates that someone who is aware that he might be in a simulation might care less about others and live more for today your motivation to save for retirement or to help the poor in ethiopia might be muted by realizing that in your simulation you will never retire and there is no ethiopia 37 besides attempting to assess whether the simulation hypothesis is true or false philosophers have also used it to illustrate other philosophical problems especially in metaphysics and epistemology david chalmers has argued that simulated beings might wonder whether their mental lives are governed by the physics of their environment when in fact these mental lives are simulated separately and are thus in fact not governed by the simulated physics 38 chalmers claims that they might eventually find that their thoughts fail 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