Have you ever thought that the reality of life is not what exactly you assume, but something built up in a computer? If your answer is “yes,” then let’s take it further. Have you ever faced any problems related to your identity? You are suspected that you are actually not a real person but created by an advanced computer. And the life you are living is nothing but a simulation, and maybe this simulation is created by our posthuman civilizations.
There are chances that reality may be existing under rapidly increasing technological and theoretical communication.
There was a time when I started playing a kind of prototype game of virtual reality (VR) using the headset that was developed by a company Dream Reality Interactive. This company was founded by Sony’s VR division, David Ranyard.
Ranyard says that the Ph.D. he has done is useless for nineteen years. However, he accepts that there is something going to be a connection between Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence (AI). And he says that his company would also be there when it happens.
Whatever is changing is nature. What we had ten years ago to play was Virtual Reality (VR), but this was only affordable for some wealthy people. And now, it is all changed, it is available at a low price, and even an ordinary person can easily experience this VR. According to Ranyard, the cost will always fall the headset’s size until it comes in size, similar to a pair of glasses.
Now, I am wearing headphones and a large case over my eyes. This makes me feel that I am out of my environment instantly. I can even move a ball just by looking at a cursor which I see in front of me. The ball I see can travel with a high narrow driveway in a vertiginous 3D simulation created by a computer. And I should definitely guide it into several aims to reach the next stage. The stage where there is a series of ever more wonderful backdrops occur.
If we take it as a skill, it is quite simple; however, something that is a prominent feature of the game is actually the physical sensation of playing it. I genuinely believe this is because I experience that physically; I am moving back and forth as if I am on a chair of wheels. I feel that reality has gone so far, and I am somewhere in an unusual world. I am not curious at all to escape from anxiety. My brain is continuously sending signals to my body that causes creating an illusion, and it is something like shooting a pinball. But the fact is I am stationary.
Hence, if we observe this from another viewpoint, it seems similar to the video game with some added thrills. However, it is not quite simple; something is going on here, a change of narrative perspective in a radical. We can say that computer games are set up for a story while human beings are committed to storytellers.
Many things are explained in the book “Sapien,” written by an Israeli public intellectual, historian, and professor in the Department of History, Yuval Noah Harari. In his book, he talked that almost 70 thousand years ago, there were nearly six human species on the Earth. They were considerably like animals, and their ecological impact was less than that of jellyfish or fireflies. And in present-day, there is only one species left, that is us. In his book, he argues that creating binding fiction authorized us to be the most ruling species on Earth. And what is another story could be if it is not a simulation or representation of reality?
Ranyard says that I talk about this theory as I have this picture of Harold Lloyd, who is likely to diminish this clock. And he said that whatever points I make are considerable and one has to care about him. Hence, the purpose of the film is to make you like him. It is quite different in virtual reality. You do not require to set up because it is you. There is a complete series of emotions because we always have had to do this through empathy.
Virtual Reality (VR) is not like a film; it is different in VR. You watch other people in an originated reality. Actually, you are like a star of someone who feels similar to another reality.
Let’s leave the righteous suggestion of this change side for a moment. Whether social detachment or heralds greater self-absorption, what exactly remarkable for me is the reality aftereffect. It would be a piece for me, but it might also be a cause of losing sense. The real world can be experienced by removing the headset. I feel a kind of philosophical harshness, as it consumes a few minutes before the known one comes back to the valid concrete self.
And in that stiffness, a body does not feel stable. It makes a more intense and confusing question: What if the reality where I have come back is not actual reality but another realistic virtual reality? How if things even our senses can be fooled only by a headset and that tell us about real-life is, in fact, an explained creation. Every single bit we observe is an illusion, and whatever I had experienced is built out of pixels.
It is a horrible figurative debate that has troubled many thinkers as diverse as Zhuang Zhou, Descartes, and even the Godfather of philosophy, none other than Plato. Countless sci-fi films have been made based on simulation. One of them which got popular and influenced this theory is The Matrix. However, what do we have as evidence that we can be sure that reality is actually real?
The movie The Matrix was made by the Wachowski sisters in 1999. This movie shows that humans have been made paralyzed; advanced machines have used slaves and their energy. These humans are locked in an unreal reality. Their master of the machine creates a massive simulation to defeat them.
In short, this movie was a reworking of “brain in a vat” by the philosopher Hilary Putnam. Here human brains are attached to the computer, and that master computer runs them in a false reality. Actually, Putnam’s vision was updated in return or the first mediation by the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. He proposed the idea that some evil had constructed the external world.
For everyone, it’s a philosophical legacy. Movie The Matrix was one of the best cinematic provisions for alienated teenagers. A few years later, after releasing this movie, Nick Bostrom wrote a paper that became the center of discussion about Simulation Creationism. He wrote in a paper with the title “are you living in a Simulation.” He gave an argument that one of the three propositions would be true:
- The civilization will be extinct before reaching the posthuman stage who can develop such a technology that can run realistic simulations.
- Posthuman would have the technology to run a great many simulations, but they would not be interested in doing so.
- We are indeed in a simulation right now.
The argument is well-known as a simulation argument. There is no doubt that it is a fabulous piece of intelligent projection. There have been several critiques of the hypothesis given by Nick Bostrom. There are some critiques on a complicated logical level. And there are some arguments; it is impossible to be convinced that running an ancestor Simulation is impossible.
Bostrom’s hypothesis argument has gained the great interest and attention of many Silicon Valley types and futurologists. New Yorker reports that two tech billionaires are working on it, and even they have hired some scientists secretly to work on how to break out this simulation and how we can come out in front of this unreal world.
The most shocking thing about this hypothesis is that the third proposition that we are already in a simulation is somehow a challenge to our concept’s primary foundation. However, it is also illogical that it plugs into some well-established human engrossment. The story of the oldest human may be that whatever we see or experience is a creator’s product. Hence, in this way, a kind of religious belief enters in this simulation. Something higher, superior, purer reality, this is only we can hold it.
(There is a hostage, Nicolas Hénin, who was held by the Islamic State of Syria. It was reported on his release that one jihadi possessed with the Matrix and had a belief that he had broken out the Matrix by going to Syria.)
Suppose I would be given two options: back to the real world or around in the simulation. Then I would choose to be in a world that is completely real and advanced in all aspects of technologies. In the present day, we can notice how computer science has been developed. It is also developed in quantum computers, whose enormously potential capability would be the key to creating a large-scale simulation.
Meanwhile, there is rapid development in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, virtual reality, and other fields that would create a simulation that would be even more convincing. And we can experience that in every advancement in terms of technology, we tend to make even better and clear delineation of this world, not only of the current day but also the past.
If this is the case with the development of technology, we started creating simulations of the world. Then there would be a point in the future, whether after 100 years or 100,000 years later, simulated beings with their conscious mind in the majority. There would hardly be any differences between the simulation and reality. No doubt the simulation would become identical to the reality.
However, suppose this is the unavoidable conclusion of an unending technology process unless any nuclear war is negotiated. In that case, likely, it has already happened. And we are nothing but an ancestor simulation created by an advanced future human civilization.
A thought given by a business magnate, industrial designer, and engineer, Elon Musk, can blow the mind. In the code conference, he said that he had concluded a one in a billion chance that we live in a real physical world. Elon Musk has given an example of the rate at which the technology is being developed; soon, we will have a game that would be complete Realistic Virtual Reality where the player would have a conscious brain. He compared a time when we had a game Pong to play with, containing two rectangles and a dot. But, now we have photorealistic 3D simulation playing by a countless number of people playing at the same time simultaneously. He also said that if anyone assumes any single improvement rate, then the game will become identical to reality.
Elon Musk is the man who is running an electric car company named Tesla SpaceX. He has an aim to send people to Mars and occupy it. He has almost evoluted to be worth nearly $14bn; this money has been gained from technological innovation by commercial exploitation. He is sponsoring an enormous global study of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is a man whose eyes are stably fixed on the future and its fantastic prospects.
Therefore, when Musk says that he trusts that we are already in a simulation, it is not the same as noted by David Icke, who claims that a secret brotherhood of shape-shifting reptiles is dominating us. But, it does not seem different. And this is one problem among all of the issues with Simulation Creationism. Even though this argument is completely based on logic, the reason is, it is not falsifiable by any experiments. Based on simulation theory, an idea gives rise to all probability modes; many are far-fetched as Icke’s wicked lizard people.
Let’s make multiverse theory even more complicated when you are sighting at the infinite number of simulated reality. With those simulated realities, there would be endless other simulations. In those simulations, I might be the one who is standing in a Euston office block along with the headset on and pursuing a ball and stabilizing on a high narrow pathway.
Several incidents also have taken part as a glitch in the simulation. One of them is for the best picture award at the Oscars. First, it was announced the winner was La La Land, but when their cast members came to the stage to get the recognition and even ready to deliver their speech, it was realized that the envelope was mistakenly changed. The final winner was “Moonlight.” Another example is Brexit’s election, and the US electing Donald Trump as an unthinkable president for eighteen months. And the doubtful late return by the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl proved that we are living nowhere but in a matrix, and something occurred as a glitch in the creator’s program.
There is one more example of a glitch in the Matrix we can take, the Mandela Effect. It is the effect when a group of a larger number of people claims to remember such an event that actually had never happened. Some people said that they retain TV coverage about the death of Nelson Mandela in the 1980s. However, he actually died in 2013. Or it may be possible that this incident happened in the parallel Universe, where Nelson Mandela died in the 80s and in which he lived to the age of 95 years. There are many more bugs in the Matrix. If we think from a different perspective, we may assume that these bugs have also been made intentionally so that the creator can see our reactions to these glitches. The programmer of this computer simulation might desire to observe their simulated being to see how far we can catch the creator.
Actually, it was just a piece of lighthearted, but what it made is a serious point. If the truth is we are living in a simulation, then is there any probability, similar to other computer software, it is an open bug? And some events, for example, the second world war, be described as a programmatic failure. Or whoever is in the power of the simulation is a devil in the sense of Cartesian?
(In the movie “The Matrix,” machines first created a utopian simulation at the starting point, but people did not believe in the reality. Hence, it was adjusted, and then it included all pain and drama humans connected to being alive.)
If we see what Bostrom says about the possibilities we live in a simulation, it is a 20% chance. However, it does not mean good news for us. On the other hand, Elon Musk says there could be possibly two things, either we would start creating simulations in the future, or human civilization would become extinct.
There could be a third choice too, that would be for any reason if we will be bored by being run for billions of ancestor simulations, and then that fake reality will become passe.
That is something to think about whether to splash out on some VR entertainment or not. In the next 10,000 years, no doubt the time would be entirely outdated.
Here, we will discuss five mind-bending theories;
The Universe is a hologram.
In a nutshell: Whatever we observe or experience is not a real thing but an illusion. We can’t see the 2-dimensional surface on which our 3 Dimensional reality is rendered. If you ask about the evidence, scientists from Southampton University stated that they had discovered something that supports this theory by researching the radiation left over from the Big Bang in the universe background.
Multiverse Theory
In short, there is an endless number of the Universe, including the Universe we live in. There is an enormous number of theories and classifications about the types of the multiverse that might be existing. For this, we can take as evidence that Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson put forward their thoughts that there are possibilities, another universe in which Zayn Malik had not left one Direction due to stress. The theory of simulation is actually of such a nature that it is impossible to prove.
Ekpyrotic universe theory
What we know is that the Universe has come into its existence after the Big Bang occurred. However, the reality could be the Big Bang was a transformation from the past period of shrinking to the current period of augmentation. The main event that was essential to the creation of our Universe happened before the Big Bang, and this Universe is sustained in a cycle of expansion and contraction.
Scientists from Princeton University suggested the concept based on the ideas that were actually not proved from string theory in 2001 is the evidence to support this argument. However, it has been widely rejected; the discovery of Higgs boson is just 98% of the mass needed to keep the Universe steady, seemingly providing the theory of some belief.
White Holes
If we believe in a black hole, then there must be something opposite that can be called while holes. These white holes are assumed to be continuously releasing light and matter and allowing nothing to enter them. The evidence for this idea can be a paper that was published in 2011, which expressed that the Big Bang was nothing but a white hole and what gamma-rays carries out might also be white holes.
Quantum entanglement
It is possible for two particles that they can be connected to each other whether they got separated by billions of light-years of space and a switch induced in one will influence the other one.
And to support this theory, we can have evidence that Albert Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance” during the 1930s and contemplated it to be impossible. On the other hand, most of the physicists in the present-day accept it to be real.
