Simulation Hypothesis: Mysticism dressed up for the secular age
The Simulation Hypothesis, as it is popularly discussed today, derives its central themes and arguments from Nick Bostrom's 2003 paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”.
The argument goes roughly as follows:
(i) Given the continuous advancement of technology we've observed thus far, we can reasonably expect that descendants far from our day will have access to an enormous amount of computational power.
(ii) Our descendants, wielding such enormous computational power, might use it to run “whole world” simulations of their forebears--i.e., us--where every physical law would be precisely replicated inside the simulation.
(iii) Given that consciousness stems wholly from matter and physical laws, a widely accepted modern consensus, it stands to reason that the individuals being simulated would also be conscious.
(iv) If we are to accept (i) and (ii), we can reasonably expect that many such simulations would be run in parallel. Therefore, there would be many more “simulated” minds than “outside of the simulation” minds.
(v) If we are to accept (iv) and (iii), and we are conscious minds, it would be much more likely that we are among the “simulated” minds.
Given this chain of reasoning, the author then posits that we must refuse a single one of these three assertions: (a) our far descendants won't likely have access to vast amounts of computation (or will suffer an extinction event before doing so); (b) our far descendants won't run numerous parallel simulations of their “forebears”; or (c) we likely live inside a simulation.
The author plainly expects us to refuse (a) and (b), thus, they claim, compelling us to accept (c).
Well... Let's take a few steps back.
The way that the collective “we” forms useful knowledge and useful theories is by coming up with theories that are: simple and parsimonious; that have demonstrated predictive power for empirically observed natural phenomena; and can be falsified through experimentation.
That is to say, inasmuch as theories that explain the world and Nature have to be “correct” in some sense, they have to be useful tools.
In what sense is the “simulation hypothesis” useful for explaining or predicting observed natural phenomena? I claim, in no sense at all. It just pushes all the “problems” that natural sciences attempt to understand down another level.
Assuming this hypothesis to be true, the whole contribution to understanding is that, instead of saying: “the speed of light is constant for all observers because this is how we've verified empirically that nature behaves,” we can say, to the exact same ends, “the speed of light is constant for all observers because 'the simulation' was programmed so, and thus we've verified empirically that this is how 'the simulation' behaves.”
Simply moving “Nature” or “the Universe” to the status of “Computer Simulation” solves no problems and contributes in no shape or form to scientific understanding.
In this same sense, we can see in the history of Western Philosophy the same human tendency toward the enticement of “explaining the world away” after the “intoxicating” notion of a relative major breakthrough.
Ancient Greeks, after discovering the rules of Geometry--the closest thing to science at their time--attempted to explain the whole of logic and nature as simple, aesthetically pleasing “geometrical facts”. This mode of thinking, in the form of Aristotelian thought, persevered for a millennium throughout the Middle Ages.
During the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the success of the Darwinian theory of evolution--now a major consensus--it can be claimed that philosophical thinking was caught in a similar trap: it attempted to “explain the world away” as a naturally evolving inexorable example of Darwinian “law” in many particular disciplines.
Finally, today, in the age marked by Information Technology and Computing, we've again forgotten the same lesson. While we (mostly) believe ourselves to be secular thinkers, unencumbered by mysticism and magical reasoning, but yet again we've come to take the “major advancement of our age”--in our case, computers and information technology--and use that to explain away all the world's natural phenomena.
I need not mention how this same epistemological question of “asserting the existence of a so-called 'real world'” outside the barriers of our senses was already discussed since at least the time of Plato (“The Allegory of the Cave”, c. 400 BC) and Descartes (“Wax argument” and “Evil Demon”, 1641)--it was not invented in the 1999 movie Matrix.
PS: I've continued the critique of the Simulation Hypothesis with a stronger formulation in this second part.