Is It More Than Just A Simulation?
I started this essay as a response to a story by Matthew. “We are Not in Base Level Reality”. It is something I’ve thought about before.
Mathew mentioned that at the end of C.S. Lewis Narnia books, the characters go through a doorway and realize that they had been in a world that was an imitation of a real one. The real world was the one they found themselves in after going through the doorway. It was like the old one they left, but also quite different. The discussion that follows is a good take on a common current discussion of if we live in a simulation. The idea that the world is a simulation is not a new idea. One could perhaps say that Plato’s perfect forms in the Allegory of the Cave was a similar consideration. Descartes certainly discussed it. More recently Nick Bostrom wrote about it. What might be the most interesting discussion of this idea comes from Stones of Significance by David Brin. The book is generally free, possibly because of how intriguing the idea is to Mr. Brin. Like Simulacron 3, by Daniel F. Galouye (1964), it also considered the idea of simulations being created in simulations.
There are various reasons given for believing that we live in a simulation, particularly reasons from physics. If you look very closely at the world, it seems a bit pixilated with pixels that are Planck-length in size. Also, there are other physical constants like the speed of light that are not only unexpected and seemingly arbitrary, but if they were different, things essential to life would not happen, such as the formation of galaxies or planets. It is almost like this universe is designed to support life. Another reason given is that our reality seems created from repeating patterns until you look at the atomic level and it becomes ambiguous between particles and waves. It has been said that the existence of consciousness proves this is a simulation, but I cannot start to evaluate that. Another reason given is that it is statistically likely to be a simulation, because if advanced civilizations can make simulations, as would be expected, then this is far more likely to be one of many simulations that exist rather than the (presumably) single Base Level Reality.
Of course, then there is also the belief floating around that we and everything we call reality is just part of a larger consciousness, but that does not fit with this narrative.
There are also reasons that have been given for why it is probably not a simulation. A primary objection to the simulation idea is the energy and computational requirements to simulate an entire world of people. Really though, is the entire world needed? All that needs to be simulated is what is available to the senses of a person in the simulation. That is a concept that repeatedly shows up in philosophy with the question of does something exist if there is no observer perceiving it. Much current gaming software works that way as do the Second Life and Meta simulations. Another reason it might be unlikely this is a simulation is the moral implications of “playing God” and creating any life. It implies a certain responsibility. An advanced civilization will necessarily have advanced moral nature and systems that are not going to be casually comfortable with that. Even we take moral responsibility for our pets. In Stones of Significance, both the energy requirements and the moral problem of creating life in simulations were discussed.
Still, in all the discussions of life as a simulation, there is one important question about it that I never see answered adequately. Why was it made? The commonest guess is that it is a science experiment of “the child of some super being”. Other guesses are that is for studying humans in this time period, or for entertainment. Simulacron 3 said it was created for doing marketing research. These may be problematic as answers because as mentioned, there are great moral implications to making this kind of a simulation. Humans have trouble violating their moral nature. Any being advanced enough to make the simulation, will have an advanced moral nature and be aware of those moral implications. They will be cautious of them, or they may even endanger their own morality.
So is there reason to believe that this world we see is a simulation, aside from children’s stories and the reasoned opinions of some scientists and billionaires? There is good reasoning offered that it must be, but is there something better available, a compelling reason why the simulation was made? Is there a moral aspect that would supersede that moral problem of playing God? Interestingly, maybe Narnia (Christianity) at least suggests something. Is the simulation really more of a virtual reality (VR) serving as a school for individuals from the “Base Level Reality” that created the simulation? Note that Abrahamic religions generally say that you live in this reality and then live again in another. Hindus and Buddhists believe you live and die multiple times. In those cases, the religions say that there is a mystical “soul” that is continued between “lives”. This discussion does not consider that and is just to consider using technology to project the “consciousness” or senses of a “Base Level Reality” individual into a virtual reality, for educational purposes. Then the person would eventually leave that simulation and return to the “Base Level Reality”. This is to avoid any need to consider the mysticism of religions, including souls. This is about using technology to solve an education problem we already face right now in our reality, an incredibly difficult learning curve of the modern society.
Since I study human survival, I am naturally going to look at this in a that context. What reason would supersede that moral inhibition against creating life? It does not need to be a powerful reason, but there would need to be a valid reason. One does not create intelligent, self-aware life for the fun of it. At least not the way we think.
Consider these points here and see if they describe a good reason for the creation of this simulation, if that is what our world is.
I’m a biologist and the question to me is always, how can humans survive long term by adapting genetically and strategically to the new ecology we are developing to replace the tribal ecology we left for the farms and cities of civilization. I have spent a lot of time at it. One problem you notice related to “development” is all the addictive distractions and entertainment available, often what the Greeks called “Kinetic Pleasures”, and that is before you get to all the powerful drugs available today, let alone in the future. These can be dangerous to survival in the biological sense.
Then there are all the anti-social and simply predatory behaviors of the day. It turns out that humans have instincts for two primary survival strategies, the blind red of tooth and claw competition commonest to nature, and the cooperation we developed after we “left the trees” and developed our “large brains”. One of the most important lessons for a person in life is about those strategies and making a choice between them.
There are so many other moral lessons we need to learn.
I think that so many people, when and if they get older, know of the moral and other mistakes they have made and usually they wish they had avoided some of them. But how could you? There are so many mistakes to make and we learn more from mistakes than from successes. To us, life does not seem to be a dress rehearsal and it is always so hard to get things right the first time. It gets worse than that.
What one notices is how unique this time is in human existence. We are in the middle of the largest transition between ecologies any species has attempted. It is a notoriously dangerous time. In ways, this century is even more unique. I once thought that our parents, living through WWII and the atomic age experienced the greatest change. Then my generation had to deal with drugs and computers as the society fractured from the excessive change. Now, my children, like everyone else, is wondering how to adapt to climate change, AIs and more powerful drugs. In evolutionary timespans, a century is the rapid blink of an eye. It just seems so improbable that we are here is such a unique time. At no time in the past has there been so many unknowns. At no time have we had anything like the opportunity to make the choices we can now, with such limited direction to work with. Because of the certain technological and intellectual developments that are in progress or quite predictable, much uncertainty is going to be removed and with that, many choices we must make now.
It is like the probability of the universe being suitable for life added to the improbability of Earth being suitable for life, the existence of life that has evolved into an intelligent species, plus that species being in just this stage of development, transitioning between ecologies, at this time. Then again, no one would be here to know if it did not happen, so that we do experience it is just a matter of luck, no matter how improbable. Still, could that improbability have a different explanation? By itself, that would make for a very interesting target for a simulation by some future scientist, but again, what if it is more. What if it is for education?
All species retain their evolutionary past to a significant degree. Our eyes and hands developed for life in the trees. We are though behaviorally much more adapted to the tribal world using a hunter-gatherer strategy for food. We also have the much older instincts for blind “red of tooth and claw” competition. In that tribal time and ecology, there were huge and important developments in our brains such as cooperation, communication, tool use, art, culture, and complicated social behaviors that we call “tribal”. Now that we have mostly left that ecology and are starting to leave the feudal-agricultural ecology, we can still clearly see our tribal past in current human behavior. While it includes some of our best features, it also includes some of our worst. So much of philosophy was education to replace tribal behavior with more advanced social behaviors. Did “humans” from a future, make “our world” as a VR more than a simulation, as a school?
It is about more than social behaviors. Consider how many people have trouble adapting to the modern world. It used to be if you could get along (some), were healthy, worked hard, and wanted to, then with a little luck you could have a family (survive in the evolutionary sense). Now you need to have all those and be smart. Still, we are very adapted to tribal living with a long evolutionary history that includes mindless, violent competition. There is a lot more that needs to be learned. Think about 100,000 years in the future or 1,000,000. That is not so long in evolutionary time and change will slow once we reach the next stable ecology. We will have developed science enough that resources should not be a limitation and we must have developed enough to be smart to control ourselves enough to not ruin a good planet we depend on for survival. The Earth would be transformed into a garden. One problem is people are still people with evolutionary baggage we cannot get rid of and still be people. Some of that “tribal” part. Another problem is the incredible learning curve. Yes, we will have improved our genes, but the world will be incredibly different from anything else our ancestors, including the tribal ones, evolved for. What could we do to solve these and so many problems? Make a VR simulation that works as a school to get people up to speed. For us here, the horse and buggy is not that novel, let alone alien. Computers are just normal, even if they were not for our parents. We have had time to wonder just what an AI will be capable of as well as a bunch of speculation, part of which that makes sense and some that is senseless. We encounter many moral dangers in less lethal forms than they will be in the future. We have so many possibilities and choices we must make. For millions of years before this time, it was never like this current state where we are not only changing between ecologies, but this is almost certainly the time of maximum change. (There are genetic reasons for this that I discuss in Genetics For A new Human Ecology.) For millions of years in the future, change will not be like this because all change will be within that same ecology, rather than between ecologies. We are only going to survive if we create and maintain a new “long term, stable” ecology like the hunter-gatherer one was before the transition between ecologies started (approximately a 3 million year period). This new ecology does not exist in nature and must be built. “Technological civilization” seems to be the best name for it because that describes the resource strategy and the social nature. It will be a challenge to build and preserve. Perhaps this will be one tool to accomplish that.
What are the moral implications of all this for the person in the simulation, or should I say VR? The philosophers said it was to live a good life and that was described as moral, honest, just, fulfilling, challenging, supportive, productive, sometimes altruistic and that was “loyal to our city” and loyal to our friends. Keep in mind, that almost all societies in the past had rites of passage to see if the individual should be accepted into the society.
Some interesting questions arise. If this was true, we have no idea how idea how many people exist in the base reality, how long they live, how intelligent they are or if they have moved beyond Earth. We do not know what forms of competition there would be or reasons for it. We can be pretty sure that we face some great challenges. And then there’s that other thing I thought of, that I am not mentioning here.
Another consideration I have wondered about when studying human survival is the consequences of smaller family size. It could be argued that the fairly large families of the past are necessary to the proper development of children. We already see family sizes so small that children are nearly isolated from other children. Growing up in a simulation could solve that. There is no reason that many, or maybe all, of the people you perceive in a simulation could really be NPCs — computer generated Non-Player Characters rather than human avatars.
What to think of this? Maybe we’ve been told, even if not clearly or exactly why. Narnia was a story derived from Christianity, which is a story of a created world and another better “real” world.
If this is a simulation are we the children of humans from the future, spending our youth in a simulated time and society that is easier to understand and easier to survive the moral dangers of, than the world our parents live in?
It is so hard to get things right the first time. Maybe this is a dress rehearsal. Many religions and thinkers have thought so. Some described it like a “rite of passage’ where one proves they can be a useful and safe member of society. It would be pretty neat. What is that world like? I think in many important ways, in the difficult problems of dealing with others, and in choosing my destiny, that I have done a poor job. That would be expected as there is so little guidance. I have learned though. I think I could do a much better the second try.
It is a great solution to part of the problem for human survival that I see and I love the poetry of the solution.
So, do you think you could get more of it right the second time?
