Is our reality just a simulation? Explore Nick Bostrom's simulation argument and the evidence for and against it. Elon Musk and Neil DeGrasse Tyson weigh in. The truth may surprise you.
As I see it, this whole 1 in x universes is a logical fallacy anyway. It assumes that every universe is equally possible but if you have 1 universe with 3 universes inside and 1 universe with 100 universes do you still have a 50/50 chance of being in each of the bigger universes. What if the number of individual consciousnesses is the same shared out across the universes? To me it's like saying; I'm in a house so I have a 1 in 25 million chance of being in my house cos I live in the UK until you invent the concept of countries and then just be virtue of their possible existence I am less likely to be in my house. It's bad logic.
@R P I mean...correct me if I'm wrong but they're all doing relatively well right? He's clearly making money, he can afford an entire production team for multiple channels. How does it reek of desperation?
This video was recommended to me under a different video I watched. I watched a few other videos first then went through like 8 of his channels looking for this video. I didn't find it and had to use the search bar and try to remember the name of the video as best as I could.
@@themurmeli88 Well, yes and no. It only technically expands "faster than light" from a relative distance. Space is expanding at a constant rate everywhere at once, but at any given point in space, that same rate of expansion pushing things away is, itself, being pushed away, so it looks to us as if everything is accelerating away from us, when it's really just stacking. So nothing is technically moving faster than light, at least not on it's own.
@@Trey5S5S Point being, it's a bad argument for "maximum processing speed" if this was a simulation. Not to mention, there is no way to tell if the "maximum speed" is limited by "performance" or if it's just an artificial cap.
@@themurmeli88 I mean, there's no real way to tell anything about this; it's just a thought experiment, but it's still fun to talk about. By "maximum processing speed", they could just mean the speed which it takes information to "process", and since space isn't information in and of itself, it doesn't have to be "processed" like everything else does.
I could have sworn this video came out months ago. Am I experiencing a glitch in the matrix right now? Did Simon not cover simulation theory like 3 months ago? Edit: ah, it was like a year ago on Decoding the Unknown. Simon, your infinite channels just made me question my reality.
Personally i'd find being a simulation something of a relief ,if i'm just a pawn (For want of a better word ) being shoved about for someone else's edification, then i'm both serving a purpose while actually not mattering very much .An idea I find both mildly validating and oddly relaxing .My only real problem with the whole concept is why ? Whoever is running me (And an awful lot of other people ) must be insanely bored by my not very interesting existence .I find it incredibly hard to believe that there's any element of entertainment involved .Maybe we are part of some history class program being studied by a lot of unwilling teenagers .If so then i'm really sorry kids .
You don't need to be part of a simulation to accept the possibility that you're just a pawn and don't matter very much. It's the false notion that we have to make something out of our lives or have a destiny that makes so many people unhappy. All we're here for is to reproduce and die like everything else that is alive. Just try to enjoy the ride because it doesn't last that long.
Well maybe our creators are so far evolved that they have reached immortality, which if you think about it, would make life really boring. Watch the last episode of the last season of Alice in Borderland. It really makes sense there, my english is too bad 😂
If we are in a simulation, then we have already found spacial and temporal minimums defining the resolution, which are called the Planck units. Defining the absolute minimums of time, length, heat, and mass that are possible under known physics
The trolley scenario is actually not far from the kind of decisions that commanders in wars have to make. They have to make tough decisions where sometimes the outcome is going to likely end up with someone dying no matter what decision you make, but maybe one decision causes fewer deaths
While the probability of that is never going to be absolute zero I can remember a time before RU-vid and a time before Simon Whistler song gonna have to call b******* on that 1
As someone who has done so-called machine learning professionally for over a decade, "[a simulation indistinguishable from our own reality] is clearly a long way off in the future" is an overwhelmingly vast understatement. Never underestimate the stupidity of computers.
Very interesting, and a coincidence too. I'm (trying) to get through The Game is Life by Terry Schott. The idea is that children go into a suspended state in a simulation and live a whole life in just a few months. However, as I've found out, it goes much deeper by simulations inside simulations. A very good read.
I really do appreciate how quickly you speak and how clearly you propose a concept. Most other speakers get pedantic before they get to the point. Thank you, Francis
Consider, that only when its turned off, will you have chance for reality. And what if in reality, you are in fact everything you ever dreamed off, and this is just a challenge mode you wanted to try out, where you are the least version of yourself that you could be without going insane?
There's an interesting recent documentary film, A Glitch in the Matrix, which delves into this, including talking to some individuals who believe they are in a simulation (appropriately instead of seeing the person interviewed, we see a virtual avatar of them!), some of them had put a lot of thought into it -one concluded it was likely he was in a simulation, but since it still allowed him to live a life, he may as well just get on and enjoy that life. Pretty interesting documentary.
Although briefly stated I find the idea of Simulation interesting when considering subatomic particles; specifically example being the double slit experiment as to whether it is a particle or a wave, and the observers effect.
I have degrees in engineering and physics and I just don't dwell too much on things humans will never know because it could be even crazier than you imagine, but we'll never know.
To shoot down the idea that the speed of light indicates a maximum simulator processor speed: I am an R&D video-game programmer. I make game engines for a living. I was a senior graphics programmer on the Luminous Studio Engine at Square Enix for Final Fantasy XV. There doesn’t need to be a universal maximum speed tied to the simulating computer’s processing speed because the simulation wouldn’t be real-time. Meaning that while the computer works on a single update, nothing inside the simulation perceives time as passing. All things in the simulation would be paused until the update finishes, and then the next update would begin with each object paused until the update finishes, repeat. The computer can have as long as it wants to finish an update, so saying that the speed of light indicates some other-worldly computer’s processor speed really has no meaning at all. If the universe just suddenly stops right now, we would have no idea. We would never be aware of the time gap between when it stops and resumes. Every second, the universe could be paused 1,000,000,000 times while some little machine goes around and adjusts every atom or subatomic particle, and we would have no idea this was happening, even if this updating process took trillions of years per single update.
The argument for simulation theory I heard which is a bit more compelling than speed of light. When we get to subatomic levels, kvantum theory actually resembles optimization processes a little bit. In a way we don't know what's happening with some particles unless we directly query it. This is how optimization can work... basically "what you can't see, we can "fudge" as long as approximation is good enough".
"The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." -- Morpheus
I never got why everyone assumes that the simulation is based on the real world in the past. For all we know, the real Earth could be cube shaped and the programmers are five dimensional squids. It's not like every video game we made was an accurate replica of Earth in the past.
Exactly. Is is much more likely that a simulation will be simplified to run on the hardware used. We often reduce things from three dimensions down to two or simulate fewer particles to get a feel for how a fluid/gas will interact.
True, we could very easily just be living in a fantasy simulation/game conceived by some super intelligent squid like aliens. Let's face it, many people currently play video games where the avatar and game characters are anything but human, that is set in a world that greatly differs and don't fully mirror or represent our own real world. Sometimes those worlds can break the laws of physics, have different technology than our own or playout in a completely made up fictional timeline. Yes, they often share a few simularity's with our own world, however they don't actually aim to represent or to carbon copy our own world or our own real life's. Yes, the simulation could be a fairly accurate representation of the past history of that particular species. However it's far more likely, going by the shear amount and the popularity of fantasy world's in video games, to just be a completely fictional made-up world, with only a few elements within that world that is shared with the real world. We all very easily, could be just either an avatar or a NPC, playing a role in a generated fantasy world. It could simply have been designed by an alien lifeform, purely as a form of entertainment, just like video games, are for us. It doesn't necessarily have to be a simulation, that's designed for the purpose to gain knowledge or some form of insight.
I meant to post this when Simon did this on Decoding the Unknown. Processor speed is entirely independent of the in-universe flow of time, because just as Simon correctly points out that the simulation could be run at 10x speed, it could also be run at 1/10x speed. Speeds could even be variable. The system might bog down under the weight of its data, and we wouldn't know because our minds and anything we could use as a clock would be speeding up or slowing down along with the rest of the universe and the processor it runs on. So the fact that the speed of light in our universe is constant neither supports nor undermines the simulation hypothesis. The one case where this wouldn't be the case is a Matrix-type simulation, where at least some observers exist in the higher reality and plug in to our simulation from there. Their minds would run independently of the simulation and _would_ perceive changes in the rate of passage of time (and, perhaps, therefore force the developers to build a system that ran at a fixed clock rate). The other question is that of what is being simulated. Is our consciousness the object of the simulation, and so the physical world only exists to fuel our perceptions? Or is the physical world the point of the simulation, in which case our consciousness might well be an unintended byproduct, buried unnoticed on a rock circling one star among hundreds of billions in the galaxy, itself lost among trillions of simulated galaxies... galaxies which exist for some higher purpose that has little or nothing to do with us. BTW, that latter case is a counter to the first-or-last argument, which assumes that we humans are central to the simulation's purpose.
Most of the arguments against simulation only apply if we're an ancestor simulation and our world is anything like the world that is simulating us. Though most of the arguments FOR simulation are that we would sim ourselves for various reasons, so it balances out I guess. But we could as easily be someone's equivalent of The Sims or Dwarf Fortress with only a rudimentary physics compared to them.
worrying about whether we're in a sim or not seems like a waste of time. im more concerned with wether i should be entertaining enough to get plot armor or dull enough to be a nameless npc and therefore less likely to be on the chopping block at all
You can. The laws of physics "change" based on how large or small something is. Scale is not actually just a matter of perspective, it is also an absolute property.
4:49 "given enough time..." That's the thing, though: we don't have infinite time. Assuming we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion, we only have about a billion years before multicellular life can no longer exist on this planet. I'm honestly skeptical that we could create a planet-sized supercomputer in that amount of time.
Well that made my brain think hurt. I guess we are in a simulation since Simon seems to be the only person on RU-vid. “Hi I’m Simon Whistler. You might recognize me from such great classics like Today I Found Out, the Top Tenz, or Business Blaze.”
Just to add some more counterarguments to the ancestor simulation (i.e. a simulation of a civilisation's own past): 1. If the speed of light is purely an artefact of the computationspeed, any simulated civilisation that eveloped to the point, that it can measure, use and abuse the speed of light would diverge from the simulators own history. Thus making the ancestor simulation pointless. 2. If there is a base reality with no limit to the speed of light, a civilisation in this reality could not evelop electronic devices (such as computers or quantum computers) to our understanding. Afterall, from nuclear fusion to quantum mechanics, electro dynamics to general theory of relativity, everything depends on the existence of this speed limit. A simulation in which a finite speed of light exists, therefore cannot be an ancestor simulation of said base reality as it would not simulate that reality. 3. To generate any meaningfull results for the base reality entities, the simulated time must proceed much faster than the base reality time. If a simulated civilisation evelopes to the point, where it creates its own ancestor simulation, the time within the new iteration mus proceed much faster than in the previous one. However, as all iterations run physically on the base reality computer, this puts a limit on how fast the iterations can become. Furthermore, if N_0 is the number of operations the base reality computer can compute per unit time, the number of operations N_i of any simulated computer per base reality unit time must be much smaller than N_0. Thus, there must either be a limit on how many iterations can be simulated or the time within the simulations have to be to slowed down (and eventually become slower as the base reality time, to the point, were the simulation is probably shutted down, as it is not longer usefull to the base reality entities.)
The speed of light also varies. Changes in different mediums. Even in a vacuum as space, the light that reaches us has been manipulated already by gravity, cosmic lights, radiations, ect ect ect. Our speed of light calculations could be wrong too. As formulas based on others that are even minutely wrong, are more off target exponentially.
A few points. 1. There is more "evidence" than just the speed of light. A simulation would also have a resolution limit, and ours does: the Planck length. Things don't actually move smoothly through the universe, they actually jump from one Planck length to the next. Similarly, there is Planck time, time does not run smoothly either, it jumps from one Planck time to the next. 2. Just because it would take more atoms than exist in our universe to run a simulation of our universe, that does not matter. If we wanted to run a simulation of a universe, we would just have to be constrained by available resources, meaning our simulated universe would be smaller or simpler. The universe that created our simulation would therefore, just be larger and more complex than ours is. There is also "evidence" for this in that our universe does not seem to be infinite, but is finite in size. Ultimately, it does not matter if we are in a simulation or not, we can only accept the reality of the universe as presented to us. Indeed, we only experience a vanishingly small range of the universe, from the tiny bands of visible light, to not seeing tiny things or even the vast majority of the universe. So even if we assume we are in base reality, we're still only seeing that reality as simulated and processed by our brains. Hell, we can't even be sure everyone sees a color or hears a sound the same way as anyone else. So don't worry about it.
It's a mistake to assume that such a simulation would be an ancestor simulation. It's also a mistake to assume that such a simulation would take place within a super computer. If the universe is a simulation, it could be a simulation similar to the Sims - where each person is an avatar for a conscious being who exists in the world beyond our simulated universe. And while a super computer of some kind might house the physical laws and provide the information for the simulation, the simulation itself could be taking place within the minds of the conscious beings who exist in the world outside the simulation. Thus the simulation might be dependent upon technology that are in their infancy in our universe. Namely, super-computers and neural interfacing. The minds of living beings, through neural interfacing, could provide the memory and processing power necessary for such a super-computer. I think it makes more sense for such a simulation to be an educational simulation in which the memories of those participating in the simulation are blocked so they fully identify with their avatars. When the avatar dies in the simulation, the player (for lack of a better word), moves on to play another avatar until they learn all they need from the simulation. The question remains: What are we supposed to be learning in this educational simulation? We're supposed to be learning how to love and respect each other and our world as a whole. We're supposed to be learning how to be compassionate, to practice justice (balance/fairness) in our society, and to care for the ecosystems we're dependent upon. All of these attributes are necessary for the survival of any civilization, especially a super-technologically advanced civilization. Any civilization that doesn't embrace these attributes is in danger of destroying itself. The simulation hypothesis also might explain the Fermi Paradox and why we haven't found any aliens yet. Either they're not necessary to the simulation; or, if we treat our existence as if it's akin to a computer game in which we must learn to care for one another and the planet while advancing our civilization to a level 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale, then we win the game and we can advance to the next level where alien civilizations will become known to us. Of course, this requires a reworking of the Kardashev scale to not only include advancements in technology but also an advancement in organizing our civilization to a more compassionate and just civilization where everyone has what they need and poverty and exploitation have become things of the past; a civilization where everyone works for the betterment of themselves and society at large; a civilization in which willful ignorance and bigotry have been overcome. We essentially need to build a unified world civilization similar to the way Earth is described in Star Trek.
One of the problems I have with this theory is that an exact simulation of our own universe would need a computer that is able to simulate the state of everything that exists in our universe. And to be able to do that the computer would need some way to store those states. And as far as I understand it you would practically need everything our universe has to offer to be able to do that. So If we want to exist while this simulation is running, the simulated universe would have to be smaller than our own universe. And if you go along with that then at some point a universe would only consist of one bit of information. If simulating a smaller universe counts than I would say that we are already there. But even if our universe is one of those simulations it would still have to be unique in some way and as Simon said we still do experience life which is special on its own so I don't think the answer to the question has any relevance in deciding how to live our lifes.
How else would you explain the duck-billed platypus other than the result of a "bring your daughter to work day" at whatever company designed our world.
There's a very real problem with the premise on which the theory is founded: that it is feasible to both build a perfect simulation of a system within that system to an arbitrarily exacting level of fidelity, and that doing so, and nesting the hypothesized results, will be possible. Suppose that the Universe in its totality is a simulation, and that simulation, without loss of fidelity to its parent universe, takes some energy to simulate. It follows that the sum total of the energy used to simulate the Universe is less than the sum total of energy necessary to run the Universe outside the simulation. This results in two logical flaws each of which would be sufficient for a mathematical Proof-by-Contradiction: (1) As the sums of energy required to run the outer Universe and the inner Universe are necessarily different, the fidelity we assumed was possible is demonstrably not possible. (2) The domains of execution are nested, which means that all of the energy required to run the inner Universe must be less than or equal to the sum of energy required to run the outer Universe, but in the case of equivalence, the outer Universe effectively ceases to exist as all of its energy would be running the inner Universe, which would remain as the only Universe meaningfully extant, thereby violating the assumption that there can be nested simulations. Now, that's all said under the assumption that there are no accessible domains in which we (or other residents of our Universe's space/time curvature) could deploy a nested-universe scheme, in which the laws pertaining to the conservation of energy fail to pertain. If you can throw out the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Laws of Thermodynamics, then gee, yeah, nearly anything would be possible, but there's no evidence that we can reach any such domains of space/time, so the whole thing collapses into implausibility, really. Love the video, though.
Based on HP Lovecraft cosmic horror novels of Cthulhu, we are living in a dream of a monster, if we were to allow to wake up that would end everything, hehe.
“I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.” ― Robert E. Howard, Queen of the Black Coast
I occasionally get a sense of unreality, like something’s not right. It could be unconscious awareness of the simulation or just a nonsense feeling produced by my broken brain
And in a separate post (since the first one rambled a bit) is the sage guidance of the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, "The Discworld operated on the edge of reality, but no-one tried to prove it wasn't real in case they woke up one morning and found out they were right."
From a philosophical standpoint, the basis of a simulated reality simply goes all the way back to Platonic philosophy. To quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (just to have a bibliographical reference point), "Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects - where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental." If we are truly a simulation (taken from an interpretation of this philosophy), and our individual thoughts and decisions are really abstract and do not affect the non-physical and non-mental, then one conclusion would mean that any and all decisions that we make only impact the "simulation" and not the "reality". Therefore, we could theorize, that in our reality today where primary school shootings are becoming more common, the answer to the issue is that it really doesn't matter from a moral standpoint in our "lives", because there could be a reality outside of ours and we are never certain whether our individual actions are being monitored and acted upon. So we could conclude that even though our actions that we make in this "reality" make us "meaningful", the reality is that we can never know if our lives and our actions actually make a difference. It is one of the pessimistic conclusions I came to while studying Platonic philosophy.
Ive always thought that 1 reason that gravity increases and time slows near massive objects is due to the cpu struggling to render everything in detail
The issue with the real world creating a simulation that creates a simulation, etc, is that we do not have a very high chance of being a simulation. We do not yet have the capability of creating an Ancestor Simulation, therefore we have to be either in the real world, or the very last simulation. That gives us a 50/50 chance of being in the real world since there are only 2 possibilities. It's not particularly great odds of us being real, but it's a far cry from basically guarenteeing that we are a simulation. Maybe I should watch all the video first, lol. I see now that he covers this issue.
also each simulation layer likely has lower limits like a slower speed of light and larger smallest point meaning each layer up in the simulation would have an easier time creating simulations beneath it. meaning it doesn't technically have to be possible in our universe, the theory lets our universe be any level of complexity compared to the base reality. Idk what i'm talking about
the funny thing is thinking about it from the point of view from far left field... we wouldnt need to simulate the entire universe, in all actuality all that would need to be simulated in order for the simulation theory to be even remotely plausible is to simulate what each individual person can see/what they can have access to seeing, so on that front if one was to simulate any given persons life they would need to observe what they do on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis even down to the minute and then take it to what they can see/hear/taste/touch, and from there put it into code and theres that persons simulation if they have access to a microscope code that same with a telescope as to what the telescope can see well as a person we cant see whats in space for our selves so what happens we take the word of professionals that work at like the hubble and nasa... so all in all its all thoretically plausible but at the same time if it was a simulation how is it still going? what is the power source as it would need to be huge? so many questions not enough answers... I feel as was said its compelling but ultimately too many questions and a lot of unverifiable variables
Personally, i think the weird behaviour of photons & electrons (e.g. interference/ slit experiment/observer effect) could be down to shoddy programming of the simulation we live in. That said, why should it be an “ancestor” simulation. The universe could just be a very long simulation created by someone for a purpose unconnected to humanity, and we’ve evolved within that.
It's not shoddy programming, it's efficiency. If nothing is looking directly at it, it just runs in low-res with statistical probability to save processing resources. But when observed, it switches to high-res to obtain a more precise answer.
They don't need to create an entire universe, all they have to do is limit the tech in a simulation and only create a single ai with the rest being programs. Then once you do that it's much more likely to have a big enough computer
You don't need to do even that. You just need to stimulate the brain to think that things are happening. E.g. you don't need to create a simulated rubber ball and calculate all the physics for it order to make the brain believe that those things "are happening".
The problem with the idea that we are a simulation within nested simulations is that any failure along the chain of simulations would end the subsequent simulations in that chain. Base reality is the strongest link, so this is most likely base reality and not a simulation that could be ended by the failure of a simulator or the grad student shutting us down after they get their PhD for making the simulation in the first place. If a simulation keeps going after said shutdown, would that imply a good enough simulation is a reality in its own right? The one thing that does make me think there is a slight possibility of us being simulated is the collapse of a wave form when the conscious observer looks at the individual particle in that waveform; that the waveform is the generalized simulation and the simulation focuses into a particle because the particle takes more computational power that is used only when consciousness is actually looking at the central particle.
it doesn't have to be a conscious observer its more when particles interact with each other which is happening all the time, this whole its a particle and a wave until its observed just means its is what it is until it interacts with anything. not just some scientist measuring it. the fact we have a whole universe around us tells us this is happening all the time from the fist milli second of the universe up until now and all the way into the future until what ever the end is.
Simulation “theory” is just a modern western “the world is illusion” but while seeing one’s perceptions as subjective is empowering, the idea that we’re all stuck or in prison somehow removes agency. But by all means let’s build a planet sized computer and call it deep thought.
You could even add another layer to the theory. What if humans are not the main characters inside of the simulation and another civilisation created the next simulation inside of a simulation. 🤯
did you hear about the chatAI driven village characters yet? my guess is this was written before that announcement as that was not brought up at all and it was like the lowest level of a simulator as described here.
It's basically already just a science fiction twist on God. It explains the unexplained, can't be disproven, and assumes there's a creator. It's just God all over again.
we've made our own simulation well enough that it's not as big as the one we live in, but the simulation we've made is called the sims, so the fact that we didn't make one doesn't fit, even though it requires thinking away from the box
It's not actually a certainty that technology will eventually be able to simulate reality. the reason for this is that reality is infinite, but any system we create will be finite, and that's something that is just mathematically impossible to overcome
the argument by John Richard Gott is only true if every civilization only simulates one civilization. If every civilization instead simulates a million civilizations, we could be one of the last million instead of the last one.
The argument of :"Since there is infinity possibilities, then it is infinitly more probable that we are in a simulation then not." is the kind of nonsense you get when you rely too much on math. Like a teacher told me once: "How can movement be possible since to move one meter, you first have to move half a meter. And to move hafl a meter, you first have to move half of that half a meter and so on." If you only rely on math, movement is impossible.
If we are simulated by a "computer" it stands to reason that a further level "down" simulation created by us would tax the primary system/simulator twice as much and every step on such a ladder would do the same if complexity remains equal. Therefore only one level of "simulation" would be likely as nobody builds a computer several times more capable than you imagine you need it to be for the purpose you intend. This would suggest that either we can't build a simulator at that level or if we do we "crash" the whole system rendering our reality destroyed or atleast hard reseted, neither a verry appealing prospect. So if any one are thinking about creating a simulation do keep it as limited as possible will ya.
