Are We Living In A Video Game?

The Simulation Hypothesis — Why Quantum Physics, AI, and Eastern Mystics Agree We Are In A Video Game

- Hackernoon

Recently, the idea that we may be living in a giant video game, or as it’s sometimes called, the Simulation Hypothesis, has gotten a lot of attention because of prominent figures like Elon Musk who have openly discussed the idea. As Virtual Reality technology has gotten more sophisticated, we are starting to contemplate virtual worlds like that of the omni-present Oasis in Ready Player One, soon to be a blockbuster movie directed by Stephen Spielberg.

Some like sci fi writer Philip K. Dick, believed strongly that we were living in a kind of simulation. Others, like futurist Ray Kurzweil, have popularized the idea of downloading our consciousness into a silicon based device, which would mean we are just digital information after all. Some, like Oxford lecturer Nick Bostrom, goes further and thinks we may in fact be artificially simulated consciousness inside such a simulation already!

Science Fiction Or Mysticism?

Why Might This Be A Video Game After All

1. Pixels, Resolution, Virtual and Augmented Reality
2. Pixels, Quanta, and Xeno’s Paradox.
3. An Open World and the Illusion of Infinite Possibilities.
4. The Collapse of the Probability Wave, Future Selves, and Parallel Universes
5. Observables and conditional rendering.
6. The World is an Illusion
7. Multiple Lives, Points, Levels & Experience.
8. Quests, Karma and God-like AI
9. Player Characters (PC) vs. Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
10. Speed of Light, Wormholes, etc.

Nick Bostrom, on the faculty at Oxford University, has long been a proponent of the simulation hypothesis. The argument that he makes is different — that civilizations are unlikely to survive and if they do, then they would have powerful computers that can do “ancestor” simulations. We are more likely, concludes Bostrom, simulated consciousness than actual biological beings. From his famous paper:

One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones

All of these areas, Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Physics, and Eastern spiritual traditions point to one likely scenario: That we are living inside a very sophisticated Video Game.

Like all simulations, our world may only be real while the “simulation” is running.

“Dreams are real while they last. Can we say any more of life?”

~ Havelock Ellis

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