What are the chances that we're living in a computer simulation?

If you took the blue pill your chances are 99–100%.

His “strongest argument” is the evolution of video games? No.

I’m more interested in the Holographic Universe idea than the “simulation” idea.

The premise of the simulation idea is that “a sufficiently advanced civilization could create it”... I don’t think that’s actually true except maybe possibly just in theory. That premise, for me, is shut down by the question “would they have any reason at all to do that?” to which I think the answer is almost certainly “no”... (well actually I do have one idea why they might do that, but it’s esoteric, and in my sci fi about it, they accomplish the same goal is a vastly more direct and simple way.)

Hmm, and also, much like the arguments that we’re destined to somehow replace ourselves by an artificially intelligent computer program that will somehow replace and be better than physical lives (e.g. “The Singularity”(tm)(sigh)(no)), I think it’s the kind of thing that very analytical people propose or entertain, and don’t reject because they aren’t quite right-brained enough, or are in some sort of emotional control pattern that that idea is compatible with.

Even from an analytical perspective, such arguments seem to me to miss out massive issues of proportion, assuming that there will be infinite resources somehow brought to bear in a way that can overcome such problems.

And as for video games “soon” becoming anywhere near indistinguishable from reality, no. Maybe when seen for a few seconds as a video clip, but no in so many other ways.

All civilisations will go extinct before they reach the ability to create universe-level simulations: not very likely.
All civilisations that reach the technological level to run universe-level simulations will decide to never create one: I think, not very likely. Whether it is for science, entertainment, or just-because-they-can, someone will do it.
A civilisation capable of doing so, will probably create multiple instances of simulations.
Coupled with assumption that there will be more than one civilisation with that capability, the number of simulated realities will outnumber the one singular physical reality by quite a large factor, making it almost certain that you live in a computer simulation.

Besides, you can easily overcome computational resource issues by limiting the scope, and applying LOD (level of detail) systems, depending on what you want to achieve with the simulation.

”Besides, you can easily overcome computational resource issues by limiting the scope, and applying LOD (level of detail) systems, depending on what you want to achieve with the simulation.”

Not if what you want to achieve, is fooling billions of intelligent consciousnesses at a time that they are in a universe with practically infinite detail and size and freedom to do and think and build whatever they want etc., and having the laws of physics apply to every speck consistently, and every microbe, and never have a software bug or hardware problem… very much not easily overcome.

Or you’re a genius and should help me figure out how to program 1 septillionth that level of sophistication in the world sim game I’m working on. ;-)

Simulation theory is a little bigger than just ancestor simulations. It’s not necessary for “us” to create a simulation to have a computed universe. It’s not such a big step to start to really think it works this way.

@Zaku
Right now, just for Earth, you do not need to render out the universe in infinite detail.
You can limit that to the planet itself, and locally increase the resolution wherever humans send some astronauts or robots or where they point their telescopes at. And even then, you only have to be superficial. And even when they use electron microscopes, you only need to increase the resolution in the area of where they are looking.
In fact, if all you want to do is social experiments on your simulated humans, you can scrape by, by just making the simulation detailed enough to be convincing for the limited senses of humans.

This universe certainly works that way

@ragingloli Not if you want your scientists and telescope-owners to be players, too. At any time, you also have to be able to support anyone looking up at the sky and seeing a full real-time view that’s fully supported by astronomy and meteorology, and consistent with what the scientists are observing, in case they ever talk to each other and compare observations. And so on for everything anyone can choose to put their attention to. You also have to consistently store the results of everything everyone does, so archaeology & forensics never discover an inconsistency or bug in the software. Games do fake shortcuts like you’re talking about, but they require the players to be willing to not experiment or suddenly do unexpected things or develop outside interests. And they don’t fool people they’re real unless their imagination and suspension of disbelief cooperates. Not for long. Certainly not for lifetimes, as reality seems to. Reality can’t afford to take shortcuts because people are smart enough to notice logical consistency errors not just at the time, but after the fact.

@Zaku
”At any time, you also have to be able to support anyone looking up at the sky and seeing a full real-time view that’s fully supported by astronomy and meteorology”
And that is, as I already said, where you locally increase the resolution.
Pay attention.

@Zaku
“Reality can’t afford to take shortcuts because people are smart enough to notice logical consistency errors not just at the time, but after the fact.”
Has a deja vu ever made you question reality?
Has a dog staring at a wall ever made you question reality?
Or all the accounts of ghosts and UFOs.

All of those could be glitches in the Matrix.

The berinstain bears thing is kind of a cool take on glitches. I think it’s probably because of how many names are spelled stein that we remember it this way. If the universe glitches we would not really know, especially if there is sufficient error correction built in. Who says if things were played back properly we would even be aware of it anyway. The computing end can be noncausal too.

As we have no idea what the ultimate reality is one theory is as good as another and it makes no practical difference to us which is true. I’m not even sure Elon Musk is a real person and not an anagram thought up by a computer programmer.

The “argument” relies on a whole bunch of “well you can’t prove otherwise”—and depending on how the discussion goes, the simulated-reality advocate can adjust the parameters of the simulated reality as needed to avoid any disproof. It’s not an argument as much as it is a game.

I can do this sort of game with all sorts of situations. Many such games have been used as arguments against higher powers. It doesn’t make them true or likely, it just makes them a product of human imagination that successfully dodges methods of verification. If it’s fun for someone to imagine these sorts of unverifiable situations, then they should have at it… but they shouldn’t mistake that for proof or defense.

In this case, Elon Musk tries to argue: “Either we’ll create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist.” It’s a false dichotomy with very little substantiation. He assumes that such virtual realities are inevitable, and a higher intelligence would be inevitably interested in making them, without offering much argument at all for either assumption. He points to the technological progress we’ve made so far in video game graphics—which would be only one small component of a self-contained simulated reality complete with AI-consciousnesses. He claims that we’ll continue to become more advanced (with an apparent assumption that there isn’t some upper-limit to our advancement, or at least we don’t hit that upper limit before we create artificial realities), that we’ll invest the time and energy into creating and maintaining these artificial realities (rather than other pursuits), that it’s even technologically possible for computers to create such internally-aware simulations, that it’ll become so technologically simple to create these simulations that billions will be sitting on the desks of higher intelligences, and that those intelligences will want billions of artificial realities sitting on their desks…. And even if all of those assumptions are inescapably true—that given enough time, a civilization not only could, but eventually will create so many virtual realities that an entity more likely exists in a virtual reality than an actual one—he gives no reason for why it isn’t more likely the “or” part of the “either/or,” that the civilizations become extinct before they reach that point. He only offers “we should hope that that’s true”—which, again, isn’t an argument.

@ragingloli I don’t think that works unless you don’t have to do it in real time, and are also able to control the users’ memories. If time and memory are things you can deal with at leisure, and if only some minority of the thinking people in the simulation are actually consciousnesses rather than AI’s, then I think you may be much closer to able to do something like what you suggest. You’d just need to handle certain lucid parts of certain people’s days, and you could do it at leisure rather than needing immediate consistent full-resolution data, AND you could just mess with memories if you screwed up.

So ya, that’s many orders of magnitude more feasible, and matches actual experience of life anyway. After all, I often wake up and need to remember what reality has been like and when and where and who I am, as opposed to the dream worlds I was just believing.

But still, this reality is so detailed and consistent that it’s ridiculous to think about simulating all of it, without cheating like that. In real time for all those people, it’d be ridiculous to just zoom in because you need consistency, and the most efficient way to get consistency is probably to simulate it all. At least, that seems to be true in the sims I’ve worked on, even at very crude levels of detail and sophistication. It’s usually more complex to try to have zoomed levels of detail IF you really need everything to reconcile later, and you can’t “retcon”.

As for the interesting phenomena, yes and no. While they might be flaws in the Matrix, I tend to have other ideas about them that I prefer.

There is no actual “real-time” in a simulation, only the perception of it.

How do you do design an experiment that distinguishes between a real and a simulated Universe? The statement cannot be falsified. It is fun to think about, but ultimately it makes no difference one way or the other.

Here is a fun thought experiment about reality vs simulation, or would it be simulation vs simulation of simulation?

It occurs to me that there is a set of circumstances under which we might at least strongly suspect that we are in a simulation. What if there was a bug in the simulation code? You might ask how we would recognize that there is a bug, since whatever goes on in the simulation is the only reality we know.

One thing that has held for the laws of science so far is that they are always and everywhere consistent. If, for example, the law of gravity were different in one place than another, it would shake our confidence in science. How could a simulation guarantee that the laws of science are consistent? There could not be just one copy of the code that determines a particular law. The simulation is too large and complex for a single piece of code to be shared among what would have to be a large number of processors. Therefore the code must be duplicated. What are the chances of there being a duplication error, and how likely is it to be detected?

I’m not sure it would have be code like we use. If we can prove that the universe can be computed then that greatly increases the odds that it really is. Hell, if we can prove that it’s just discrete then it can be. I think it’s a high probability. Quantum computing could do it but even regular computers and code can make convincing small scale simulations right now. Give it about 10 years and see what all of this VR tech and procedural games that are just now becoming mainstream does. More and more people will start thinking this way.

atoms resemble pixels.i have seen the matrix after taking alittle too much lsd.i’ve seen licence plates change their numbers.is our sight really that factual?sight is only what our optic nerves interpret.animals see differently than we do.does the universe resemble a computer program with all it’s constants?

I, too, have nearly solved the mysteries of the universe during a trip induced by LSD, @greatfullara.

Good times.

The chances are 99.99999999999999999999999% certain that our universe exists in a quantum computer. We have even discovered some of the phantom particles that are the pixels of the matrix. The question is WHO IS THE PROGRAMMER?