Philosophy
Can We Prove the World Isn’t a Simulation?
- You might think we have definitive evidence we’re not in a simulation. That’s impossible.
By Dylan DiScenza January 26, 2022
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What about the other way around? Could we prove we are in a simulation? In The Matrix, Neo realized he’d been living in a simulation when he took the red pill and woke up in a different reality. He shouldn’t have been so sure. For all he knows, his old world was nonsimulated and the red pill plunged him into a simulation.
Still, we certainly could get very strong evidence that we’re in a simulation. The simulators could lift the Sydney Harbor Bridge into the air and turn it upside down. They could show us the source code of the simulation. They could show us private episodes from our past, along with the simulation technology that produced them. They could show me a film of my brain hooked up to wires in the next reality up, with an associated readout of my thoughts and feelings. They could give me control of the simulation, so that I could move mountains in the world around me just by pressing some buttons.
Even this evidence would fall short of absolute proof that we’re in a simulation. Maybe the world we’re in is a nonsimulated magic world, like the Harry Potter world, in which all-powerful wizards are using their powers to convince us we’re in a simulation. Maybe most of my life has been nonsimulated but simulators have put me into a temporary simulated duplicate to fool me. Or maybe I’m having a drug-induced hallucination. Still, I think that if I got evidence like this, I would probably be convinced that I am in a simulation.
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If we are in either, what difference does it make? We still have to “live” with the evidence presented us. And, why would it be this way? Is a wizard, a god, a space alien, or the flying spaghetti monster just playing with the equivalent of a kid’s train set?
Makes my head hurt so I’ll just pretend it’s “real life” until proven otherwise.
Ockham’s razor (i.e., fewest assumptions) says it’s “real life”.
Sigh!
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Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 