Elon Musk has been making headlines for a decade every time he brings up the idea that we are probably living in a computer simulation. It’s not a new idea but it’s one I happen to agree with. It also makes no difference in how we live our lives.
Philosophers and religions have questioned the nature of reality since the dawn of time. Plato’s allegory of the cave says most of us believe reality is shadows on the wall of a cave, without understanding that there is a fire behind us casting those shadows. A few decades later, Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi described having a dream he was a butterfly that felt real but when he woke up being human then felt real. The monotheistic faiths believe in judgement and life after death, Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation until we get it right. They can all be correct if we’re living in a simulation.
Here is why it seems probable to me. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. The oldest solar system with planets, HIP 11952, formed about 12.8 billion years ago. Our sun, relatively young, formed 4.6 billion years ago. That’s a long time for life to evolve in other locations, which given its prevalence in every environment on our planet, it surely did.
Homo Sapiens, barely around for 200,000 years, are mere infants in the universe. Yet in the mere 60 years since the invention of the microchip, we have invented technology that can fool two of our most vital senses – sight and hearing. We will likely figure out how to fool our brains with touch, taste and smell in the next century, perhaps sooner, if we survive the climate disaster.
The observable universe has a billion trillion stars, yet we see no evidence of any alien civilization. There are many possible answers to the Fermi Paradox as to why we have not detected these potential civilizations, from alien species inability to get past The Great Filter to periodic natural disasters to our being deliberately isolated and a dozen other possibilities. I would argue that we cannot see them because we are in a simulation. Such an argument is impossible to prove – if we’re living in a simulation, then we too are a part of it, which is why it doesn’t matter in our day to day lives since we are subject to its rules.
Two justifications I see online (from meta-bullshit sites like Gaia) that we are in a simulation are the Observer Effect and the Fibonacci Sequence – neither of which prove anything. Quantum physics’ observer effect, whereby the observation of a particle effects its position, isn’t caused by our consciousness but the act of “seeing” the electron by hitting it with a photon. Likewise, those who claim the fibonacci sequence is “everywhere” in nature like some No Man’s Sky-generated algorithm to draw our world because it’s in trees, flowers, fruit, some DNA, and honeybee ancestry seem to forget that we all evolved from the same single celled organism in the distant past, which is why you share about 50 percent of your genes with a banana. Quasars, planets or stellar gas clouds don’t follow the sequence, just some living stuff on our world, so it’s not the universal algorithm.
Believing that we are in a simulation is like believing in God, it’s neither provable nor disprovable. But I’ll give you my thoughts on it. We haven’t fully figured out consciousness yet. Many of us believe in a soul, an ineffable thing that lives beyond our bodies. Most of our ancestors across most religions believed this soul had something to do with the heavens, which is all the stuff we see in the sky and the place our souls are supposedly from and return to after our death, depending on the life we led.
This idea of judgement is also fairly universal. Our words, our actions, even our thoughts are recorded somehow like a more detailed version of our browser and comment histories. This brings us to the question of why?
I would suggest that Earth is a testing ground.
Human beings are, essentially, violent apes. Going back far enough, we are all the descendants of murderers, rapists and thieves. The good, as Billy Joel says, died young. What advanced civilization would want such creatures turned loose upon the universe?
Our bloody religious texts are surprisingly similar in their definitions of goodness – compassion, kindness, forgiveness, charity and love. It is we who don’t live up to the ideal. It is we who give in to our senses, our desires, to commit selfish acts. If our senses and desires can fool us into committing selfish acts, I ask again, why would an advanced civilization (or God) want us turned loose upon a universe where such senses can be faked?
Many beliefs hold a oneness to the universe that courses through everything. It stands to reason that we can’t join communion with a oneness as long as we are selfish, jealous, and vain. We are imperfect beings who learn through trial and error. Wisdom doesn’t come easily to us, it takes time and it often takes pain, which is why we need this testing ground.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the secret of the universe anymore than the next human but I choose to believe it’s love.
Wes Clark Jr. 