In 2003, Nick Bostrom, future professor and director of the Institute for the Future of Humanity at Oxford University, and at that time a philosopher from Yale University, shocked the scientific community with his work "Are we living in a computer simulation?", A philosophical study that subsequently had a serious impact on the modern perception of the picture of the world, which raised the question of whether our reality can be a very complex computer model. If you've watched the Matrix trilogy, the basic concept of this idea will be familiar to you.
The film tells about a computer hacker who joins the rebellion against machines that have taken over the world, possessing artificial intelligence and holding all of humanity in a computer-simulated reality (the very "Matrix"), which does not even suspect that their bodies serve for machines as a kind biochemical batteries.
In one of his last interviews with the Vulture portal, Nick Bostrom admitted that he did not actually watch the sci-fi blockbuster that was released in 1999 when he was preparing his article on the computer model of our reality. Could this be called a Matrix glitch? No, Bostrom says.
According to him, the hypothesis of the simulation of our reality proposed by him became the logical culmination of two things: his interest in the anthropic principle (explains from a scientific point of view why in the observed Universe there are a number of nontrivial relationships between fundamental physical parameters necessary for the existence of intelligent life), which became at one time the subject of his doctoral dissertation, as well as his eagerness to find out what potential impact on humanity in the future could have the technological development of our civilization.
Trinity
At first glance, Bostrom's simulation hypothesis does not look as wild as the same bleak future described in The Matrix. There are no oracles, kung fu, and time dilation in it - just the assumption that at least one of the following hypotheses about our future may turn out to be true:
Humanity is likely to die out before reaching a posthuman state (the so-called era of transhumanism)
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According to Bostrom, transhumanism will come when a person can discover and achieve almost all technological capabilities, given taking into account the physical limitations of our Universe. This would include technology that would create a compelling computer model of reality, similar to the one that made the hacker Neo believe that he was an ordinary programmer named Thomas Anderson.
One day humanity will reach the era of transhumanism, but it is "extremely unlikely" that it will be able to create a significant number of stimuli to its history
If so, then I would like to believe that this is only because we will be too busy forming intergalactic alliances or opening the world's eighth Jurassic Park.
We "almost certainly" live in a computer simulation of the history of posthuman civilization
Ironically, this statement has a mathematical argument. After all, if humanity has already reached the stage of "posthuman" and decided to create computer simulations of its history, then there should already be a great many such simulations. Moreover, among all these models there will be only one "real" reality, and this, Bostrom believes, makes it much more likely that we live in one of these "fakes".
Relax
If our reality, how to put it, is really real, then we still have a lot of time and possible ways for how and when to get to the posthuman era (if, of course, we ever reach it at all - see the first assumption). However, this does not prevent people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk from being hypersensitive to Bostrom's hypothesis.
Moreover, some Western billionaires from the tech world are said to be paying scientists to try to "free us from the shackles of computer simulation." Bostrom does not share this idea and says that everyone needs to calm down a little.
Do you understand, Silicon Valley? The Matrix isn't going anywhere, so you better sit back and eat Twix and not try to force humanity to take the red pill.
Nikolay Khizhnyak