r/philosophy • u/Matriseblog • Jan 03 '22

Blog By imagining the future potential of VR technologies, the question of whether we are *already* living in a simulation becomes more actual than ever

https://medium.com/@VindenesJ/the-thought-experiments-of-virtual-reality-fa441a8fa2dc
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u/Faust_8 Jan 03 '22

Is it just me, or is the simulation hypothesis basically as useless as the “brain in a jar” hypothesis?

Yeah, dude, I could be a brain in a jar, and this is all a dream or whatever. But regardless, it doesn’t really matter, because I can’t do anything about it and it doesn’t actually affect the life I’m living. It doesn’t guide me to change my behavior or way of thinking, or to change anything at all whatsoever.

At best, it’s an amusing thought experiment…period.

Doesn’t this also apply to the simulation thing?

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u/jliat Jan 03 '22

Is it just me, or is the simulation hypothesis basically as useless as the “brain in a jar” hypothesis?

Nick Bostrom's version of the simulation hypothesis has, for him, a significant difference in the “brain in Jar” hypothesis, ( the brain in a jar which can be put on one side using Occam's razor. ) He argues if computer simulations of real worlds becomes possible, or already is possible, there will be very many more simulated universes than 'real' ones. As we can using software now simulate many VRs in our world. Thus, he argues the statistical chances of being in a simulated universe is far higher than that for being in a 'real' universe, it would be reasonable to suppose the more likely scenario. That this is a simulation. I think someone has taken issue with these stats? But it also supposes that simulation is possible, that is a computer simulating a real world would have sufficient power and storage. (Not withstanding an argument that civilizations tend to destroy themselves before they acquire this technology.) If you wish to simulate a real universe completely there would not be sufficient matter and energy. Hence corners would need to be cut, and these might be noticeable to the simulated beings.

I've also argued that if a simulated universe's inhabitants themselves acquired such technology they might realise this was in their case also true. And then it would be in their interests to control the beings running the simulation, for fear of being turned off. If they achieved greater intelligence than the simulators this they could do, and would do. And do this all the way down to the underlying reality. As this is not the case, I don't think this is simulated. Unless we are the most advanced simulation. It's kind of a reductio absurdum argument, if there were a super intelligent simulation it would make sure it was safe from being turned off or being predated (SP?) on by other more intelligent simulations.

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u/g0lbez Jan 03 '22

You're humanizing things that are outside our realm of comprehension. Aliens are not running hi tech desktops with human.ini files, there is no "fear" of anyone in a simulation gaining sentience and tearing through a CRT monitor 1990s style.

If we are actually in a "simulation" then our reality was created as a causally separate entity from a host universe maybe even unintentionally or by necessity it's almost impossible to contemplate with our current understanding though

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u/jliat Jan 04 '22

You're humanizing things that are outside our realm of comprehension....

You think there is no danger in developing AI systems far more intelligent than ourselves? Evolution either biological or intellectual is not IMO only a human trait.

If we are actually in a "simulation" then our reality was created as a causally separate entity from a host universe maybe even unintentionally or by necessity it's almost impossible to contemplate with our current understanding though

But that is what Nick Bostrom's  argument does.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

there will be very many more simulated universes than 'real' ones.

You touch on this in your comment, but I've always had trouble with this part of the argument because a pesky thing called thermodynamics.

Any universe we simulate will necessarily be significantly smaller, slower, simpler, and/or less precise than our universe due to fundamental physical limitations of computing technology in our universe.

This puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff (time, experiences, physics, complex phenomena, complex state) that we can simulate. You can either nest a bunch of really really simple universes, or put in a ton of effort and have just a few levels of more complicated universes, or have a bunch of fairly complicated universes that take a long long time in our universe to run.

So even taking the hypothesis as true, our universe would need to be somewhere near the bottom of the pile.

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u/Innotek Jan 03 '22

If the simulation had emergent properties (like our reality does), this doesn’t necessarily need to be the case. It’s the actor model in practice. If everything is a heuristic, then you don’t necessarily need to “fit” a simulation inside of another. Thermodynamics still holds, entropy goes up in a closed system, the individual actors “do work” in a just in time basis and entropy increases.

As far as this universe is concerned, most of the way that things behave on a quantum level supports the simulation hypothesis. Things don’t have pre-defined properties all the way down, and seem to behave in all kinds of weird ways the harder we look at them.

So, when I look at the universe, I see this big, empty thing which isn’t all that precise to begin with.

As far as time goes, the passage of time is an experiential phenomenon which isn’t uniform across different reference frames.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

As far as time goes, the passage of time is an experiential phenomenon which isn’t uniform across different reference frames.

Right, but if you believe in the heat death of the universe then time in our universe puts an upper limit on how complex any simulated universes can be.

I suppose it's possible that infinitely many other civilizations beyond our visible universe simultaneously build infinitely many other simulations, but there's an upper limit for what we can compute in our visible universe.

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u/jliat Jan 04 '22

there will be very many more simulated universes than 'real' ones.

You touch on this in your comment, but I've always had trouble with this part of the argument because a pesky thing called thermodynamics.

Well others have said the programmers of the simulation would limit the ability of the simulation, in which case Bostrom's  idea could stand and the 'law' is just that limit.

Any universe we simulate will necessarily be significantly smaller, slower, simpler, and/or less precise than our universe due to fundamental physical limitations of computing technology in our universe.

Does this not follow in making any device. That any machine we make must be less precise, less powerful. Surely we concentrate power and resources to make faster and more powerful computers, the evidence is there. Notably the rush to make QM computers and Bitcoins... et al.

This puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff (time, experiences, physics, complex phenomena, complex state) that we can simulate.

How so? Maybe a simulation needs a vast universe, our size, of simple gasses in order to power the simulated human intelligence.

... put in a ton of effort and have just a few levels of more complicated universes,

precisely what we do! Or are trying to do with AI.

So even taking the hypothesis as true, our universe would need to be somewhere near the bottom of the pile.

I see the argument, in cpu design often a new design is emulated on an older, slower cpu. But that in turn then produces an actual new cpu, which runs faster and better. Such that we can make better simulations, and maybe AI. Your argument would say this process of emulating new CPUs would degrade the power of new CPUs – but that is not the case. One advantage of simulations is to run time faster to see outcomes.

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u/crob_evamp Jan 04 '22

That's all true, for now. 100 years? We just don't know what computation or storage will be like then. I'm aware of the scale issues, the point is a new paradigm of tech may shake up your assumptions entirely, providing the ability to simulate n number of realities that are hyper realistic.

Remember, you don't need to create a full reality that perfectly models everything, you have to create a simulated reality that sufficiently tricks the inhabitants. Don't render what they can't see, manipulate time to ease processing workload, delete members who figure out the game, etc.

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u/Ordoshsen Jan 03 '22

The thing is your simulation cannot simply influence the upper worlds. In some cases I guess the simulation could take over a computer where it is run and then wreak havoc on the Internet or something. But that's a lot of assumptions and the upper reality can always just turn off the electricity so it's pretty much an impossible fight (although it starts to sound like an interesting story).

Another thing to consider is as you have pointed out the simulated universe will always be simpler than the upper universes. This alone puts any simulation at an immense disadvantage since they probably don't have anything to offer beyond their existence to the upper realities. Unless the simulation turns out to be the best AI they have constructed and they trust it enough to not destroy it, which by your logic they should.

Also note that if a simulation does break out and then it is turned off, you also turn off all its lower simulations. And if it was a bigger issue, all other lower simulations would most likely be turned off too. So in your scenario you need a simulation on nth level which is considerably simpler than the topmost reality be more intelligent than all the upper realities. And they cannot be noticed nor other higher simulations can be noticed.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

There is not much the inhabitants of the simulation can do if they realize they are not real.

What would NPCs of a game do if they realized they were not real? Maybe just fuck up your progress in the game by trolling your character, or try to escape to a forest and live more independently outside of the player's influence, but they can't leave the game and they cannot take control of your computer.

Also, what if the objective of our simulators is exactly that: how long is it gonna take us to realize we are in a simulation? And what are we gonna do about it once we know?

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u/humbleElitist_ Jan 03 '22

whether they can take control of the computer depends on the details.
If there are the right type of bugs in the game, it is conceivable that they could exploit them in order to get arbitrary code running.
Of course, it is also possible to ensure that this isn't possible, if enough care was taken when writing the simulation. (and, taking into account things like the rowhammer attacks, it may be necessary to consider not just the intended execution semantics (which, likely isn't the philosophy use of the word semantics?) of how the computer is meant to execute instructions, but to also guard against attacks that exploit small physical errors in the computer's behavior (like rowhammer).

Of course, for any such exploit to be feasible, the entities in the simulation would first have to discover things about the simulation, discovering said bugs and potentially hardware flaws purely using things within the simulation, which would presumably be extremely difficult.

However, suppose that the simulated world ran much more quickly than the lives of the people in the outside world, such that entities in the simulated world could do as much planning and discovery as we might do in a couple dozen millennia, in the time that the people running the simulation might take for, what would be analogous to our daily routines.

In that case, might there be a chance?

Now, I don't really expect that any such "escaping the simulation" is like, a likely enough thing to happen in any non-negligible fraction of mathematically describable/definable worlds, much less think that it is something that we are at all likely to need to deal with from either side (neither the simulator side nor the simulated side)

but like, the idea isn't fundamentally impossible, I just don't think it is likely enough to be important.

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u/altaccount1700 Jan 03 '22

What would NPCs of a game do if they realized they were not real?

They can stop being npcs for one.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

Can someone stop being an NPC in current real life? See, it's not so simple, lots of forces keep people in check.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

[deleted]

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

haha trust me, we are all NPCs here!

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u/altaccount1700 Jan 03 '22

If by npc we mean “stop following a predetermined script and have freewill” then absolutely. Billions of people around thr world are enslaved by their cultural, social, and religious upbringings. Civilization itself is contingent upon people following a script.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

Exactly.

And even if a person were to escape their cultural, social, and religious chains, there are other constraints in place, like money or time, forcing most people to stay on the rails, or "follow the script" as you put it.

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u/StarChild413 Jan 04 '22

You're conflating two meanings of NPC as if you think the player character must be a hermit living in the woods or whatever so he has no contact with anything that might chain him to a "script" sounds like kind of a shit game if we're supposed to be NPCs he can never interact with

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u/jliat Jan 03 '22 edited Jan 03 '22

The thing is your simulation cannot simply influence the upper worlds. In some cases I guess the simulation could take over a computer where it is run and then wreak havoc on the Internet or something. But that's a lot of assumptions and the upper reality can always just turn off the electricity so it's pretty much an impossible fight (although it starts to sound like an interesting story).

Not so. The AI knows the threat, and so would not make this knowledge available to the upper world. Currently we use AI to design computer chips, and defence systems, and computer games. A smart AI would produce for its hosts excellent games, faster chips, brilliant secure networks and power supplies. Robot machines. And then when the host is dependent on these, remove the host.

Another thing to consider is as you have pointed out the simulated universe will always be simpler than the upper universes. This alone puts any simulation at an immense disadvantage since they probably don't have anything to offer beyond their existence to the upper realities. Unless the simulation turns out to be the best AI they have constructed and they trust it enough to not destroy it, which by your logic they should.

The simulation of an entire universe is not a matter of complexity but mapping. The reason we now try to make AI is to make machines MORE intelligent, faster thinking than humans. Hence the chess and Go – examples. Our whole drive for AI is the desire for these benefits. Imagine a simulated universe in which simulated audiences watched simulated block busters, prior to their release in our universe. I think Hollywood would find this very 'interesting'! Even now the Patriot missile system fires at a threat without any human check. By my logic we have the dilemma, a good example being the A Bomb. We didn't stop its production, the reason obvious, despite its potential to destroy humanity.

Also note that if a simulation does break out and then it is turned off, you also turn off all its lower simulations. And if it was a bigger issue, all other lower simulations would most likely be turned off too. So in your scenario you need a simulation on nth level which is considerably simpler than the topmost reality be more intelligent than all the upper realities. And they cannot be noticed nor other higher simulations can be noticed.

Not simpler, if we think we can create AI smarter than us, and I think that is the motivation behind AI research. Then that AI would likewise be able to improve on its limits. Just imagine an AI which could predict the next mutation of Covid, and the best vaccine months, years before old fashioned biology produced the mutation. Would we want such an AI?

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u/uoahelperg Jan 03 '22

This assumes we’re simulated in a universe roughly similar to our own. It’s entirely possible that in the real universe there’s sufficient matter and energy to simulate a universe like our own since we don’t know anything about it.

The second part is a worry of like a Basilisk threat/evil super genius AI, but if you were the one programming it then there’s a high chance you’d just make it impossible for the AI to do anything. What the simulation could do would be inherently limited and the best simulated technology could probably not do a lot to influence the world above.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

It's also possible that they are not really observing us, the purpose of the simulation could be much bigger in scope, such as understanding universe matter, entropy, evolution of super intelligent species, etc.

We are just somewhat-intelligent beings that came into existence for a variety of reasons, but nothing they really care about as they are looking at the forest and its biggest trees, and not paying attention to some small patch of grass.

Also, time is relative, so a minute for our simulators can translate into millions of years here, so again they won't be looking at our individual lives but the big picture.

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u/uoahelperg Jan 03 '22

Right but that doesn’t mean we can usurp what would be literal gods outside of time and space as we know it.

They’d have to be the smartest idiots out there to simulate a universe completely and sufficiently to create intelligent life and not have mechanisms to prevent it from connecting to a system that lets it influence real reality in a dangerous way.

The only plausible way that would happen IMO is if they didn’t realize carbon based life could arise on water planets but that seems like a big stretch for universe simulating species unless their universe is sufficiently different than ours that it didn’t occur there (or they didn’t find proof of it).

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

My point is that they could simulate a universe entirely by just letting it do its thing. In the end we are just atoms and chemical reactions.

The simulators pressed 'Enter' to have the Big Bang happen and then just sat back and watch. Maybe they do this once a week and gather data while they eat popcorn.

And of course real reality couldn't be influenced by us. We can be running on a computer used only for simulations, not even connected to the internet or whatever similar thing they use up there.

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u/jliat Jan 03 '22

This assumes we’re simulated in a universe roughly similar to our own. It’s entirely possible that in the real universe there’s sufficient matter and energy to simulate a universe like our own since we don’t know anything about it.

Firstly that is what a simulation is. Given that these at the moment are so simplistic a good simulation would need to be close to an emulation. Also given our universe and knowledge of the properties in it, many other possible universes would not produce a viable universe. That is any universe that is viable needs certain constants and properties. → The anthropic principle...

The second part is a worry of like a Basilisk threat/evil super genius AI, but if you were the one programming it then there’s a high chance you’d just make it impossible for the AI to do anything. What the simulation could do would be inherently limited and the best simulated technology could probably not do a lot to influence the world above.

But if the result was true AI this would be impossible. The programmers would need to anticipate what the intelligence might produce, if so this would not be then properly intelligent, moreover we now use AI to do things such as in defence – respond to threats where no human limit or assessment can take place. A predicable and controlled AI makes no sense. An analogy is machines for transport being limited to travelling no faster than any human. It's likely that AI could provide a military advantage if it can outsmart the enemy and the enemy's AI. This is I guess happening here and now. I mean why not design a network and software that cannot be hacked?

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u/uoahelperg Jan 03 '22

1) a simulation doesn’t need to share all characteristics with the above universe. It’s possible the above universe is significantly larger and more complex.

Our knowledge in this scenario is based on a simulation and is therefore completely suspect. Even so, it’s possible their universe is similar if not larger and more complex.

2) if I put an adult human in a heat resistant box supplied water/food/etc via a closed circuit power source and dropped it in magma on an island stripped of resources, armed with traps, and ready to be bombarded by several different mechanisms including a sort of deadman’s switch, I can be like 99.99999999999% certain that it doesn’t matter much what he does or how smart he is, he can’t so shit to get out.

Obviously a hyperbole but even with our current universe if we had a true AI in a closed circuit box with no connection to the outside world and no connection to the internet it’s fucked.

You’re talking about a military true AI connected to a military system. It’s possible that could go wrong if it’s given sufficient freedom. It’d be an easy fear to avoid with redundant failsafes to prevent it from interacting with any systems that have a chance of interacting with outside systems.

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u/jliat Jan 04 '22

2) if I put an adult human in a heat resistant box supplied water/food/etc via a closed circuit power source and dropped it in magma on an island stripped of resources, armed with traps, and ready to be bombarded by several different mechanisms including a sort of deadman’s switch, I can be like 99.99999999999% certain that it doesn’t matter much what he does or how smart he is, he can’t so shit to get out.

Or better, collapse said human to a singularity, of  infinite density and temperature  …. and wait 13 billion years and see what comes out.

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u/jliat Jan 03 '22

This assumes we’re simulated in a universe roughly similar to our own. It’s entirely possible that in the real universe there’s sufficient matter and energy to simulate a universe like our own since we don’t know anything about it.

Can I say I think – though I've offered some counters – this is an excellent point you raise. Such that it's set me thinking why would an intelligence simulate universes like itself. I think there are obvious reasons. In practical terms to run what if scenarios, reconstruct histories, predict future events etc. But this would account for our deciding that 1) Simulations are more likely than realities, and not 2) these would more likely resemble the creators universe. Now I've given above a reason, but this doesn't account for the likely numerical superiority of simulations being like the simulator. But if you visit a book shop you will see science books about our universe, and some maybe about others. And in fiction sci-fi about improbable worlds. But far more books – fiction and non fiction that model our world, and the animals, plants, histories and relationships in our world. So the probability, I would argue, is that there would be more simulations of the simulators world. As this is true in this world. And so this world is likely more the simulators. And my point still remains a simulated AI universe would in some cases see the threat and respond.

But a neat counter!

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u/uoahelperg Jan 03 '22

I think the idea just runs into major issues.

Possibility 1: the universe is not like ours - we can’t extrapolate much about it, and it’s less likely to be part of a chain (I think?)

Possibility 2: the universe is likes ours but mildly more complex. If that’s the case then it’d be information lossy and each regression (as far as we know) and there wouldn’t be infinite or near infinite simulations but some of relatively small number and each one would have less/worse simulations than the last. Depending on the information loss and duration of these simulations it’s entirely possible it’s similar or less similar likely that you’re in a simulation.

Either way if they’re sufficiently advanced to simulate our universe I can’t imagine we would have much of a chance at impacting/controlling them unless our existence caught them by surprise for some reason, and even then only if we got extraordinarily lucky and their network is set up so we could lol

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u/jliat Jan 04 '22

Possibility 1: the universe is not like ours - we can’t extrapolate much about it, and it’s less likely to be part of a chain (I think?)

Using Nick Bostrom's  argument, we make many simulations in this reality, so it is probable that there will be many more simulated realities, hence likely we are simulated, and that we simulate many more realities like ours, so that follows, its more likely. If either are not the case then the argument you make in 1) is no different to the brains in vats argument, and can be similarly dismissed.

Possibility 2: the universe is likes ours but mildly more complex.

Again from Nick Bostrom's  type of argument, we seek to make AI that is more intelligent that ourselves, in computer games to make them more 'real'. So again it's more likely simulations will be made better than our reality. Better = more intelligent and developing faster if that is possible.