You're not real! Trying to explain simulation theory

If we accept the possibility of future humans even existing, then we have to accept that we are almost certainly living in a sim.

You’re not real, I’m not real, none of this is real and it’s Keanu’s fault. The Matrix introduced the movie going masses to the idea of a fake reality. Humanity trapped inside a dark dystopian capitalist rat-race created by evil machines to distract us while they harvest our bodies for energy. Great movie that made it cool to wear sunglasses all the time, but hopefully the future will not be that bleak.

Simulation theory suggests that everything we experience is actually a simulated reality. A super advanced computer game like the Sims or Age of Empires in which humans are software constructs. We are just as real as we always have been, but we aren’t what we think we are. Hopefully our simulation will be more like The Sims than The Matrix. It’s a wild theory and there’s a very good chance that it’s true.

The idea was formulated by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Nick is a smart guy. He presents simulation theory as not just a philosophical speculation, but a realistic possibility.

The Sims video game features animated characters that interact with each other, objects, and with their own feelings. On a 2D screen it’s a mundane imitation of real life, but now we have 3D headsets where you become the character and experience virtual reality with all the sensations of the real world. The graphics trick our brains into thinking that pixels are real. In the future, technology will allow us to run convincing simulations of ourselves.

The rate of technological advances in the last fifty years has increased exponentially. From the first computers to the early days of the internet, we are now living in a connected world full of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, drones, surveillance, chatbots, smart houses and self-driving cars. Data is in the air, all around us. And the technological leaps we will make in the next hundred years will be even more sci-fi, as long as we can avoid the looming threats to our existence. And there are a few of them.

• Artificial intelligence decides humanity is inefficient and unnecessary. We have all seen that movie and scientists are genuinely worried that some form of The Terminator is a distinct possibility.  

• Climate apocalypse from overexploitation of resources and pollution. Highly likely the way we are going.

• Death from above in the form of a giant meteor, cosmic radiation, supernovae or alien attack. Could happen any moment.

• Destruction of the Earth’s environment by nuclear war. This is also a distinct possibility with all the wars raging at the moment and devious despots developing nuclear weapons.

• Scientists predict another viral pandemic is inevitable. It could be a natural occurrence or weaponised biotech. Russia and the USA still hold supplies of smallpox.

It’s a hopeful assumption, but if we survive all of these omnicidal threats in some form, and our technology keeps on increasing at this exponential rate, maybe with the help of a friendly AI, imagine what we will achieve as a species in another hundred years, or five hundred years. Ten thousand years. If we survive, we will surely use simulations at some point in our future as a research tool, and for entertainment.

Imagine a technologically advanced posthuman civilization. A utopian society integrated and augmented with machine superintelligences. We have advanced beyond capitalism, no one has to work for money. Money would not exist. A society that could harness the energy of the solar system with orbital solar farms, helium3 fusion, nanobot replicators farming comets and mining asteroids or even Dyson spheres. We would have enormous energy resources and we would need them to power our spacefaring society and our super computers. Humans would live much longer lives and there would many more billions of us.

So, we have a massive population of advanced humans with lots of time on their hands and no energy restrictions. The chances are that a few of us would want to run ancestor simulations. The graphics would be advanced beyond comprehension. Whether it’s using a headset, a visual field, AR contact lenses or an implant, you would be immersed in a convincing three-dimensional world indistinguishable from reality. More captivating than reality. Maybe even more real than actual reality. Your sim constructs would be just as smart as real humans, everything that makes us human is physical processes, and future technology will allow us to simulate the individual synapses in the human brain.

And because future humans will have superintelligent AI to help, and vast energy resources, they'll run their sims again and again, maybe millions or billions of times. There will be so many more simulated humans than real ones.

Why run simulations? They could be for problem solving or studying evolution. We all learn from our past mistakes and the same is true for an entire society. Create multiple simulated Earth civilisations evolved to the point of where they are about to destroy themselves to see how they cope. Exactly at the point we are at now in our sim.

Imagine you are a religious historian, and you want to create an exact replica of Christ’s crucifixion. Enter every piece of information ever written about the event to recreate it in a tactile, interactive 3D world. An exact replication of Earth and its population in 33AD. You could insert yourself in the sim as a Roman soldier, Mary Magdalane, or Jesus himself.

You could run a simulation faithful to the historical data your AI has provided, an exact replica, or you could tweak it. Run an alternative history where Jesus lives to 75 and introduces his disciples to magic mushrooms. You could run thousands of variations to see how society develops. You could change the outcome of important wars. You could erase Chicxulub, the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs 66 million years ago and see how the Earth evolves. Every slight deviation, every little branch from our known historical data leads to another storyline, and another, until there are millions of separate sims.

You might want to run a simulation for scientific research or an educational exhibit. Or to study a mutating virus and the effect it has on a population. In this case the Earth is a petri dish full of hosts. It could be aliens running this sim for their unfathomably alien purposes.

Your society has survived its existential threats, passed through the Great Filter, but who knows what is around the corner? Space is full of explosive surprises, so you enter every known detail about your entire universe and run millions of simulations to predict future threats.

You might have reached the point in your amazing advanced utopian future where you forsake your physical body with its need for food and space and sublime permanently into a virtual world. The digital afterlife. You willingly transfer your consciousness, your soul into a simulation. It could be a historical ancestor simulation or anywhere you feel most comfortable living for the rest of eternity.

Sims will most likely exist for entertainment. Future humans will need entertainment so imagine the incredibly advanced sim games of the future. Our reality right now, everything we know, everything we are, could just be a game to keep bored teenagers of the future entertained. What will those funny little humans get up to next?

The Sims video game hit 20 million users by 2020. It would take only one single future human running an ancestor simulation to give us a 50% chance that we are living in a sim. If there are 20 million future humans running ancestor sims, then there is a 99.9% chance that we are living in a sim right now.

So, if we accept this is a possibility, that future humans have survived and advanced to the point where they run simulations for whatever reason, then we have to accept the distinct possibility that we are one of those sims. Then we have the likelihood of the constructs in the simulations creating their own sim. Now my brain is hurting!

If we run millions of ancestor simulations, surely a lot of them would reach the stage when they can create their own sims, a sim within a sim, and so on. There could be multiple levels of sims within sims within just one branch. This makes the chances of us, you and me and our world being base reality infinitesimally small. And if we are not in base reality, them we are in a sim.

If we assume that humans will somehow survive and develop this advanced sim technology, and that human descendants will have no legal or moral principles against replicating an Earth or their own ancestors, Nick Bostrom argues it would be unreasonable and even arrogant to count ourselves among the tiny minority of genuine organisms in base reality who, sooner or later, will be vastly outnumbered by artificial sims.

Nick gives us three options:

• Humanity does not survive due to war, environmental collapse, viruses, evil AI or aliens. Take your pick. Game over.

• Humanity survives and evolves into an amazingly diverse and advanced star-spanning utopian society, but they don’t make any sims. They either don’t get around to it because they’re too busy fighting aliens or more likely for legal and moral reasons.

• Humanity survives and evolves into an amazingly diverse and advanced star-spanning utopian society, and they are into sims. In which case we are living in a simulation right now.

The first option is very likely. The second option not so likely because surely even a tiny percentage of the trillions of advanced future humans would want to create a sim. Even if it’s illegal. Which leaves us with the third option.

It’s difficult to comprehend the idea that we are not living in base reality because everything is physical, solid, real. But if we accept the possibility of future humans even existing, then we have to accept that we are almost certainly living in a sim. And the fact that we are alive and conscious right now, means that humanity survived its existential threats and evolved to create this sim that we are living in.

If we accept we are constructs in a sim, then there must exist some higher level being running the sim. And that being is most likely a future version of us. These higher beings probably accept the fact that they are also living in a sim. This brings up the fascinating question of who are the real base reality humans? The only ones not in a simulation. Where are they? Maybe that’s the whole purpose of all these sims, to find base reality. To find the real humans. Our techno-creationist Gods. They might be walking amongst us, inserted into their own invention.

There are people that believe glitches happen in our sim. That the feeling of Deja-vu is apparently code rewriting itself. Deja-vu is a French phrase that means ‘already seen.’ Drug enthusiasts that take the right dosage of MDMA or DMT believe they can see the pixelated patterns that make up the fabric of the universe and legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick became convinced that we are living in a sim after a dose of sodium pentothal he was given at the dentist allowed him to briefly see the world as it really is.

But I’m afraid this enlightening knowledge changes nothing. Our awareness of the fact we are living in a sim doesn’t change the necessity to keep living our lives and interacting with all the other constructs. We still need money to buy chicken. If you steal that chicken, or commit a crime against another construct, you will end up in court. And if your defence is, ‘nothing is real your honour,’ then you will go to jail or an asylum. Knowing nothing is real may be a small comfort. Safer to stay at home, put on your sunglasses and rewatch The Matrix.