The idea that everything you can touch, all the people you know, every memory, every experience, every sensation you’ve ever had, is all merely a part of some simulation, is an extremely disconcerting proposition to say the least. But, does this crazy idea supported by everyone from Elon Musk to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson have any merit? Is this seemingly outlandish theory just a fun thought experiment, or a serious possibility?
The first thinker to popularize this idea, now known as the simulation hypothesis, is the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. In his defining book on all aspects of philosophy, The Republic, he introduced his concept of what he called the “Allegory of the Cave”. Plato claimed that life is “like being chained up in a cave, forced to watch shadows across a stone wall”. Here’s the allegory: there are a few people who have been made prisoners since birth, residing in a cave, never having heard nor interacted with a person of the outside world. On some occasions, they see shadows of people who pass by them, and this prompts them to name these illusions/shadows. One day, one of the prisoners breaks free, and wanders around, ultimately reaching the outside world which is true civilization. Upon seeing the world for what it truly is, he is shocked and realizes how everything he experienced so far in his life was solely an illusion in the grander scheme of things. Whilst experiencing the world, he decides to enlighten his fellow inmates back in the cave and show them reality for what it truly is. He attempts to let them free and show them the truth that’s been hidden from them for so long, but his attempts are futile. To his chagrin, his friends don’t want to be freed as they believe he has become insane from his visit outside the cave and believe he is lying.
Originally, Plato wrote this allegory to describe the issues early philosophers faced in their attempts to “enlighten” those around them. However, the interpretation of this allegory can be taken in many different ways, especially in terms of the simulation hypothesis. It draws myriad parallels to how we perceive the world and those around us. For example, just like the prisoners would see shadows and treat them to be the full depiction of the object, don’t we also treat simply what we perceive to be the whole reality? As a species, we have a tendency to treat what we see as the complete truth. One will never look at a dog on the streets and think to himself, “is that really a dog or simply a figment of my imagination?” But just due to the fact that nobody questions the most basic of truths cannot be the sole reason we have a good enough reason to take it at face value and accept its “realness.”
Since the many centuries since Plato, only one major philosopher, Nick Bostrom, has been able to systematically establish the rudimentary simulation hypothesis into an actual argument. As a philosopher (predominantly known for his work on the anthropic principle and existential risk), he acknowledges that completely proving/disproving this will likely never be possible, therefore, he assumes that one of these 4 statements is true. Those four statements are:
- The human race has not yet reached a state in which we can use our current technologies to create a simulated reality.
- Any civilization that is capable to harness the powers of technology in this manner (to create a sustainable and realistic simulation) will not do so.
- Anything that we experience is a part of a simulated reality from any type of superior civilization (either humans of the future or a civilization we aren’t aware of).
- We are actually living in reality and everything we experience/perceive is not in a simulation.
Regardless of the likelihood of any of the aforementioned scenarios, the idea of the simulation hypothesis is not to exclusively entertain the possibility of us living in a simulation, but also to question everything we assume to be true without investigation.
Plato frequently claimed that people in general are too ignorant and confident in themselves, something that has not changed in the ages since he lived. As a society, we lack much needed skepticism. The claim here isn’t that question something for the sake of it, but to free ourselves of the boundaries we have trapped ourselves in. Thinking of the most outlandish and unlikely things won’t always lead to an answer, but simply thinking of them is enough for us as a civilization to go beyond what we have accepted and explore the plethora of alternate truths. This is what the simulation hypothesis helps us understand. Simply perceiving something the way we do doesn’t necessarily make it completely true (the underlying moral of the Allegory of the Cave), but going beyond and questioning the most basic of things would just open us to myriad different possibilities that there is. Whether the simulation hypothesis is true or not isn’t something we can surely prove nor disprove right now, but what we can do is ask challenge the status quo; because merely doing that can go an extremely long way in exploring the world and its infinite alternative realities.
The Candid Contrarian 