• Question: Do you think it is possible that we are all inside of a computer simulation ran by a more intelligent being?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Wow, that question could really mess with your head! I guess it’s possible, but if they really were that much more intelligent than us, would we ever be smart enough to notice everything was simulated..?

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Elon Musk (who’s basically real life Tony Stark) seems to think it’s highly likely.

      http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-ai-artificial-intelligence-computer-simulation-gaming-virtual-reality-a7060941.html

      I remember reading this article and thinking it was kind of a silly idea. Then I read some more about it and started to see why the arguments kind of make sense.

      I think the logic goes something like this:

      -As a civilisation gets better at building computers, it gets way cheaper to build and run them.
      -They could choose to run simulations on them that were so good, people couldn’t tell them apart from reality, and the people created by the simulations couldn’t tell the difference either.
      -The civilisation could cheaply run billions of simulations that can’t be told apart from reality.
      -The probability that we’re in the civilisation that created the simulations and not in one of the simulations they created is tiny.
      -We could even be in a simulation created by one of the simulations.

      My question would be, why would people bother to simulate us?
      Maybe they could build very complicated simulations that are designed to look at how people make decisions, which could be kind of interesting. You could run a million simulations about your life and just to determine what would happen if you tweaked the tiniest thing like, “did I wear the pink or the blue shirt” or “did I snooze for an extra 10 minutes”?

      We’d probably never notice if we were in a simulation, because if we started to wonder about it, the simulation could alter the part that codes for our minds so we stop thinking about it any more.

      It really messed with my head that idea.

      Then I realised, if it is a simulation, I still feel like I’m aware, and I can still enjoy life, so why is that any worse or different to actually being alive?

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I don’t think that we are, but mostly because I approach this as a lazy physicist, and I tend to cut out anything that is unnecessary. If I can’t test it, and can’t detect it, then I might as well ignore it.

      Further to what Edward said, I remember reading a popular science magazine that argued about the probability, out of thousands of simulations, that we’re in one of the simulations and not the civilization that created the simulations. It sounds convincing! But I think it’s just a neat concept, a fun topic to discuss, because there’s no way of testing it.

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