This article is from The New York Times by Dr. Prestin Green, professor of philosophy.
Since the 1990s, social and natural science researchers have used computer simulations to try to answer questions about the evolution of our world. What causes wars? Which political systems are more stable? How does climate change affect global migration?
The quality of the result of these computer simulations is uneven because it is limited by how well modern computers can recreate our incredibly complex world.
But what if computers can one day be so powerful that they can create the most complex patterns of behavior and development. And at the same time, create each person in such a way that you cannot distinguish an imitation from a real living person.
Or maybe all this has already happened?
In 2003, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom made the ingenious argument that we can actually live in a computer simulation created by more advanced civilizations.
He suggested that if you think that sometime in the future our civilization will be able to develop multitasking complex simulations that recreate the life of our ancestors, then maybe you are living in just one of these simulations right now.
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That is, our world may actually represent one of the many simulated simulations and may be part of a large research project created by the civilization of the future to study the history of human civilization.
Physicist and Nobel laureate George Smoot explained this: "If you are an anthropologist / historian and want to understand how the rise and fall of civilizations, then you will need to do a lot of simulations involving millions and billions of people."
The theory that we live in a computer simulation may seem strange, but it has found many like-minded people. Technologist and entrepreneur Elon Musk once stated that the probability that we are NOT a simulated simulation is “one in billions”.
In recent years, scientists have become interested in testing this theory. In 2012, inspired by the words of Professor Bostrom, physics at the University of Washington proposed an empirical simulation hypothesis experiment.
The details are rather complex, but the basic idea is simple: Some of the modern computer simulations of our space produce distinctive anomalies - for example, there are obvious glitches in the behavior of simulated cosmic rays. And if we carefully look at the cosmic rays in our Universe, then if we see the same anomalies there, this indicates that we are really living in a simulation.
Similar experiences were proposed in 2017 and 2018. However, until now, none of these experiments have been carried out. And I hope they never get fooled. In fact, I am writing this to warn you that conducting these experiments can be a disastrously bad idea - one that could lead to the destruction of our universe.
Think about it this way. If a researcher wants to test the effectiveness of a new drug, it is vital that patients DO NOT KNOW if they are receiving this drug or a placebo (dummy). If the patients manage to find out, the experiment will not make sense and will be canceled.
Thus, if our universe was created by a highly developed civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is critical for these researchers so that we do not know that we are living in a simulation. And if we find out, they will stop the simulation, that is, they will destroy our world.
By: Dr. Prestin Green, Professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
