• Question: Is it possible life is a simulation?

    Asked by anon-181141 on 5 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Damian Mole

      Damian Mole answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      I don’t think so, because “simulation” means an imitation or a copy. What would it be a copy of, if not life itself? Therefore, by a kind of circular argument, life has to exist so that a simulation could be made of it….confused?…I am!

    • Photo: Daniel Rhodes

      Daniel Rhodes answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      This is an interesting question, and one that has some famous supporters (e.g. Elon Musk). If we believe (as I do) that everything that makes up our universe, including our mind, is in some way measurable or understandable (even if not currently), then it’s not unreasonable to assume that it could be simulated. That just requires really powerful computers and complex models, but if you look at how computation has grown in the last 50 years, it seems like this power is inevitable. So then if you believe these two things, you can assume that a simulation may in turn eventually progress to the point at which the inhabitants of that simulation can simulate their own surroundings. Now if every simulation does this, you would have millions of simulations, and this makes it statistically improbable that you would be living in the ‘real’ world.
      So what does this mean? Well – nothing for us really. It’s an interesting idea, but not one that we are likely to ever find concrete evidence for or against.

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