The universe I inhabit has a nearly one hundred percent probability of being a simulation.
This is my worldview.
Theoretical Basis#
My theoretical basis is as follows: when a civilization in a universe reaches a certain level of development, they will simulate their own universe for various reasons.
To explain the terms in this theory in more detail:
- Cosmic Civilization: Refers to intelligent beings in a particular world. This world could be like the universe we inhabit; these intelligent beings could be humans like us. How this is concretely manifested is not important. What matters is that, like us, it is a container that can be considered a world, containing conscious entities.
- About conscious entities: I have my own ideas about what consciousness is and what life itself means. Simply put, conscious entities represent objects in the universe that can lead to a decrease in entropy. From our human perspective, perhaps there must also be spontaneous, rational, and unpredictable behavior to be considered a conscious entity.
- Reaching a Certain Level of Development: The development of a civilization refers to its individuals and the collective they spread to beginning to contemplate their own existence. They become aware of the "self," realize the world as this "container," have a desire to explore, and wish to understand themselves and the surrounding world, thus creating theories, tools, and practices to satisfy their desires and fulfill their cognition.
- Simulation: They will create another universe that resembles their own understanding to conduct experiments to achieve cognitive effects.
- For Various Reasons: As mentioned above, the desire for exploration brought about by development is one reason, but this reasoning arises from my limitations in thinking as a human. If there are different universes and different forms of life, their ways of thinking, lifestyles, theoretical foundations, and technological means may be entirely different, and they will have their own causal inferences, so they may simulate the universe for other reasons. However, as long as there is one reason, such as the one mentioned above, it is sufficient for our theory to hold.
- Specific Forms of Simulation: It could be like humans, simulating through computers; it could also involve other means. But this does not affect our inference.
This foundation may not have universality, but it holds true regarding the exploratory desires of humanity and all other life on Earth. As long as it holds true for at least one civilization (which I believe), it is enough for us to continue inferring.
Why do I say this? Because of its consequences—once a civilization possesses such technological means, it can effortlessly simulate countless universes, and all of this happens in an instant. Taking humans as an example, it may manifest as our future software and hardware technology being sufficiently advanced to write a computer program that can run billions of simulated universes every second. And these simulated universes may again simulate universes, forming a tree-like recursive structure.
So returning to the initial conclusion, the reason I say that the universe we inhabit has a nearly one hundred percent probability of being a simulation is that if one randomly selects a universe from these billions of universes, it is very likely that the selected universe is simulated rather than real.
The argument is complete.
Nick Bostrom's Trilemma#
In 2003, British philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed the simulation trilemma:
- The proportion of human-level civilizations that reach a post-human stage (i.e., capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero;
- The proportion of post-human civilizations interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history or variations thereof is very close to zero;
- The proportion of all beings with our kind of experiences living in a simulation is very close to one.
Only one of these three propositions can be true. If the third proposition is true, then the probability that humans live in a simulation will be certain (approaching one).
He stated: "If (1) is true, then we are almost certainly going to extinct before reaching post-human status. If (2) is true, then there will be a strong convergence in the process of advanced civilizations, such that almost no civilization contains any individuals who desire to run ancestor simulations and can do so freely. If (3) is true, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation. In our current ignorance in the dark forest, it seems wise to distribute trust roughly evenly among (1), (2), and (3). I notice that people who hear the simulation argument often say: 'Yes, I accept this argument, and it is clear that proposition n is true.' But different people choose different n."
As a corollary of the trilemma, he also pointed out: "Unless we are currently living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly not run an ancestor simulation."
It can be seen that Bostrom does not seem to directly state that we live in a simulation, but through this trilemma, he leads people to lean towards believing that the third proposition is true.
Common Objections and Their Rebuttals#
I have discussed this theory with others and encountered the following common doubts and rebuttals.
1) No Evidence Argument: What you say is just a hypothesis, with no empirical evidence to support whether it is true.#
Yes. This is a philosophical thought experiment that cannot be verified through experimentation. However, it provides a possibility and prompts people to think about our existence and the nature of the world. Moreover, there are many precedents in the history of science where some scientific theories were not empirically supported for a long time after being proposed but were later proven to be correct.
2) Technological Limitation Argument: High-fidelity simulations by computers cannot create consciousness, meaning such perfect simulations are impossible.#
As I mentioned earlier, the specific form of simulation could be computers (this is just a metaphor and viewed from a narrow human perspective), or it could involve other means, and the simulation may manifest as an entirely different world and civilization. We only need to ensure that the civilizations within the simulated universe believe in their own reality.
Based on this rebuttal, a further claim is that: humans cannot replicate themselves because they cannot understand their own existence. Conversely, you must first understand your own existence before discussing replication. This claim essentially affirms the first proposition of the trilemma, namely that humans will never be able to conduct ancestor simulations. Such belief is pessimistic and unfounded. It is unfounded because the inference of "understanding first, then replicating" is taken for granted. Furthermore, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the manifestation of the simulation can be entirely different, and the simulator does not need to replicate themselves one-to-one to create an identical civilization.
3) Bug Argument: If it is a simulation, we must be able to find bugs; but we currently do not, so we are not being simulated.#
This argument is similar to saying that if there are aliens in the world, we must see traces of them; but since we do not, there are no aliens in the world. The major error lies in the premise. We can say that if we find bugs, it indicates that the world must be simulated. But the correctness of the proposition does not mean that its inverse is also necessarily correct. Simply put, if there are bugs that we can discover, it is possible that we have not yet found them.
Moreover, many physical experiments attempt to prove the existence of bugs from the "simulation precision." For example, there is already a phenomenon of energy spectrum cutoff of high-energy particles in our universe, known as the GZK cutoff. It states that there is an upper limit to the energy of high-energy particles we observe in the universe. If the energy of a particle exceeds this limit, it will interact with the photons of the cosmic microwave background radiation and lose energy. This corresponds to a lattice distance of d = 10^(-27) m. In other words, if the computer discretizes using a lattice distance smaller than this scale, the high-energy cutoff brought about by this simulation would be masked by the GZK cutoff, making it impossible to distinguish whether the universe comes from a supercomputer simulation, which is extremely regrettable. However, in 2012, several physicists published a research paper in which they inferred that the existence of minimum simulation precision would discretize the universe's space based on the theory of finite computational resources, meaning that space is discretely simulated using "lattices." They calculated the impact of lattice space on the high-energy particle spectrum, and besides the cutoff energy spectrum, there is a very significant phenomenon: the angular momentum distribution of high-energy particles is not spherically symmetric (spherical symmetry means isotropy of space, meaning that observations from all directions are the same), but cubic symmetric. That is, the direction of cosmic high-energy rays is not isotropic (different in all directions). Clearly, the discretization of space during computer simulation of the universe creates something akin to "ether," which breaks symmetry. Therefore, in principle, we can test the simulation hypothesis by observing whether high-energy cosmic rays exhibit anisotropy. However, this effect also faces the problem of being interfered with by the GZK cutoff effect. If the simulated universe uses distances far smaller than d = 10^(-27) m for discretization, we would see nothing.
But upon further reflection, even if bugs exist, it is possible that some rules of this simulation prevent us from discovering the existence of bugs. In other words, the simulator can completely interfere with the observational results, making us unaware of anything, without needing to go to great lengths to explain the logic or let us perceive the bugs.
4) No Distinction Argument: If a person cannot distinguish whether they are simulated, then that person's experience can be considered entirely real.#
You could say that this person "believes their self" is real and cannot objectively deny the fact.
5) Inapplicable Analogy Argument: One cannot use human thinking to analogize the thinking of other civilizations, meaning other civilizations may have no or not necessarily the desire to simulate.#
This affirms the second proposition of the trilemma.
First, regarding "completely no." This inference is absurd. I can say that human thinking cannot be analogized to the thinking of other civilizations, but I cannot say that human thinking is entirely opposite to that of other civilizations, meaning that if we simulate, they will not.
Next, regarding "not necessarily." "Not necessarily" affirms that there will be other civilizations also simulating, but the rebuttal of such statements will immediately follow with "so our world is not simulated." This inference is absurd without further thought. Many people, when debating and inferring, will first take their own stance and then make unfounded inferences.
Some better "not necessarily" theorists will try to continue inferring—"so the probability of one hundred percent does not hold." But note that the derivation of "one hundred percent probability" is not because all civilizations will do this, but because of the low difficulty of simulating universes and the exponential growth of the number of simulated universes under a tree-like recursive structure. As I mentioned earlier, as long as there is at least one civilization (like ours) that has the desire to do so, it is sufficient.
6) Off-Topic Argument: So what is the end of the simulated universe?#
"If universe A is a simulation of universe B, and universe B is a simulation of universe C, ..., then how did the ultimate real universe come into being?"
This question indeed stumped me. I often wonder: what is the meaning of the universe's existence? Without any willful intervention, does it exist out of thin air? Then why does it need to exist? In other words, what is the meaning?
However, note that the end of the universe is unrelated to our discussion of "the universe is simulated." I can disregard what is beneath the roots of the tree while knowing the existence of these branches and leaves.
A friend once complained to me about the off-topic nature of the simulated universe: "I ask you how chocolate is made, and you tell me it is bought from someone else's house, brought home, melted, and refrozen. I go to someone else's house and ask them how they make it, and they give me the same answer. But how is the real chocolate made?"
Indeed, the simulated universe theory does not answer the essence or root problem of the universe; its significance to me is that it provides the possibility of the truth of our current universe.
The chocolate analogy can actually be reversed to illustrate this simulated universe. Perhaps there is one house where the chocolate is real, but the chocolates in thousands of households are "simulated chocolates" bought from others, melted, and refrozen. If we randomly select a household's chocolate to taste, there is a nearly one hundred percent probability that we will taste "simulated chocolate."
My Influence#
Knowing the fact that the world is simulated may lead some people to abandon certain life pursuits, but for me, it does not have any impact. Objectively speaking, this knowledge does not change the current state of the world. Even if there is sufficient evidence (such as bugs) to argue for this knowledge, as long as the simulator does not shut down, the world will not change. Subjectively, I tend to think that the source of this hypothesis may be my strong skepticism and disdain for arguments that assert humanity and this universe are the ultimate truth.
Of course, I may not stubbornly believe in this hypothesis for a lifetime. After all, the skepticism that nurtures it may also kill it.
Conclusion#
Therefore, I must assume that there is a demon, rather than a true God (who is the supreme source of truth), whose cunning and deceit are no less than those of a powerful God, who has exhausted all efforts to deceive me. I must consider that heaven, earth, air, colors, shapes, sounds, and everything we see in the external world are merely illusions and tricks he uses to deceive my credulity. I must regard myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, and no senses, yet mistakenly believe that I possess these things. I must resolutely maintain this idea; if by this means I still do not recognize any truth, then at least I have the ability not to make judgments. For this reason, I must be cautious and not believe in any falsehoods, and prepare myself mentally to deal with all the cunning tricks of this great deceiver, so that he can never impose anything on me, no matter how powerful or cunning he may be.
— Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
Image Credit
The image was generated by Midjourney with this prompt: The vast expanse of the universe is depicted as a digital construct, with stars, planets, and galaxies appearing as intricate lines of code or shimmering pixels. In the foreground, Earth is shown as a hologram, partially transparent and showing its complex digital framework. The image should evoke a sense of awe and curiosity, inviting the viewer to ponder the possibility that our world and the entire cosmos might be a sophisticated simulation.
The Midjourney prompt was generated by ChatGPT with this prompt: Help me write a midjourney prompt to create an image describing that the world might be simulated.