Are we living in a computer simulation?

10 Reasons Life May Be A Computer Simulation

ROBERT GRIMMINCK 

Philosophers as far back as Plato millennia ago speculated that what we see may not be real at all. With the advent of computers, the idea took on new life, especially in recent years, with films like Inception, Dark City, and the Matrixtrilogy. Is it possible that the world is just a computer simulation?

10Ancestor Simulators

Computers now process huge amounts of data, and some of the most intense and productive tasks involve simulations. Simulations consider multiple variables and use artificial intelligence to analyze them and examine outcomes. Some simulations are games. Some are models of real-life situations, such as the spread of disease. Some are “history simulators,” which can be games (like Sid Meyer’s Civilization) or can mimic the real-life growth of society over time.

That’s how simulations run now, but computers keep getting faster. Processing power has doubled periodically for decades, and computers 50 years from now may well be millions of times more powerful than any today. Better computers would bring much bigger and better computer simulators—including history simulators. If computers get powerful enough, they would create history simulations so real that the self-aware beings within them would have no idea they were part of a program.

Think that’s too far out there? Harvard’s Odyssey supercomputer can simulate 14 billion years in only a few months.              READ MORE....

Are we living in the matrix?

Is our universe real?

SEXPAND

This the classic Cartesian question. It essentially asks, how do we know that what we see around us is the real deal, and not some grand illusion perpetuated by an unseen force (who René Descartes referred to as the hypothesized ‘evil demon')? More recently, the question has been reframed as the "brain in a vat" problem, or the Simulation Argument. And it could very well be that we're the products of an elaborate simulation. A deeper question to ask, therefore, is whether the civilization running the simulation is also in a simulation — a kind of supercomputer regression (or simulationception). Moreover, we may not be who we think we are. Assuming that the people running the simulation are also taking part in it, our true identities may be temporarily suppressed, to heighten the realness of the experience. This philosophical conundrum also forces us to re-evaluate what we mean by "real." Modal realists argue that if the universe around us seems rational (as opposed to it being dreamy, incoherent, or lawless), then we have no choice but to declare it as being real and genuine. Or maybe, as Cipher said after eating a piece of "simulated" steak in The Matrix, "Ignorance is bliss."

Perception is Reality

 IDEALIST PHILOSOPHY

George Berkeley, the father of Idealism, argued that everything exists as an idea in someone’s mind. Berkley discovered that some of his comrades considered his theory stupid. The story goes that one of his detractors kicked a stone with his eyes closed and said, “There I’ve disproved it!”

The idea being that if the stone really only exists in his imagination, he could not have kicked it with his eyes closed. Refutation of Berkeley is hard to understand, especially in these days. He argued that there is an omnipotent and omnipresent God, who sees all and all at once. Realistic, or not?

 PRESENTISM.

Time is something that we perceive as a matter of course, if we view it at the moment, we usually divide it into past, present and future. Presentism argues that the past and the future are imagined concepts, while only the present is real.

In other words, today’s breakfast and every word of this article will cease to exist after you have read it, until you open it again. The future is just as imaginary, because time cannot exist before and after it happened, as claimed by St. Augustine.

 ETERNALISM.

Enternalism is the exact opposite of presentism. This is a philosophical theory that says that time is multi-layered. It can be compared to a pound cake (however, unlike the time, a biscuit is not up for philosophical debate). All time exists simultaneously, but the measurement is determined by the observer. What he sees depends on which point he is looking at.

Thus dinosaurs, World War II and Justin Bieber all exist simultaneously but can only be observed from a specific location. If one takes this view of reality then the future is hopeless and the deterministic free will is illusory.

 THE BRAIN IN A JAR

The “brain in a jar” thought experiment is a question discussed by thinkers and scientists, who, like most people, believe that human’s understanding of reality depends solely on his subjective feelings.

So, what is the debate? Imagine that you are just a brain in a jar that is run by aliens or mad scientists. How would you know? And can you truly deny the possibility that this is your reality?

This is a modern interpretation of the Cartesian evil demon problem. This thought experiment leads to the same conclusion: we cannot confirm the actual existence of anything except our consciousness. If this seems to sound reminiscent of the movie “The Matrix“, it is only because this idea was part of the very basis of the story. Unfortunately, in reality we have no red pills…