Billionaire entrepreneur, space (and EV, solar-battery, and AI) enthusiast Elon Musk seriously believes we are living in a game. In virtual reality created by some advanced civilization - something like the proposal of the philosopher Nick Bostrom, which he put forward back in 2003.
The idea is that a fairly sophisticated simulation of virtual reality with conscious beings will generate consciousness; the models will become self-conscious and believe that they are living in the "real world". Funny, is not it?
This is the newest version of a thought experiment that Descartes proposed, only he had an evil demon who mocks him. Over the years, the idea has taken on many different forms, but it is based on the same assumption.
Everything that we know about this world, we comprehend through the five feelings that we experience internally (when neurons are fired, although Descartes did not know about it). How do we know that these neurons correspond to anything real in the world?
After all, if our senses were systematically and universally deceiving us, at the behest of a demon or someone else, we would never know. Well, how? We have no tools, other than our senses, to test our senses for relevance.
Since we cannot rule out the possibility of such deception, we cannot know for sure that our world is real. We could all be the Sims.
This kind of skepticism sent Descartes on a journey within himself in search of something in which he could be absolutely sure, something that could serve as the basis for the construction of true philosophy. In the end he came to cogito, ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am." But the philosophers who followed him did not always share his beliefs.
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In short, all we know is that thoughts exist. Perfectly.
(As a side note: Bostrom says the simulation argument is different from the brain-in-a-vat argument because it increases the likelihood much more. After all, how many evil geniuses with brains-in-a vat can exist? Given that any sufficiently advanced civilization can run virtual reality simulation.
If such civilizations exist and they are ready to run simulations, there can be an almost unlimited number of them. Therefore, we are most likely in one of their created worlds. But this does not change the essence of the matter, so let's return to our rams).
The Red Pill and The Matrix's Persuasiveness
The most iconic representation of the idea of life in simulation in pop culture is the 1999 Wachowski film The Matrix, in which humans are either brains-in-vats or bodies in cocoons living in a computer simulation created by computers themselves.
But The Matrix also shows why this thought experiment relies a little on deception.
One of the film's most poignant moments is the moment when Neo takes a red pill, opens his eyes and sees real reality for the first time. This is where the thought experiment begins: with the realization that somewhere out there, behind the vat, there is another reality, to see which it is enough to understand the truth.
But this realization, tempting as it may be, ignores the basic premise of our thought experiment: our feelings can be deceived.
Why should Neo decide that the “real world” he saw after taking the pill is really real? It could be a different simulation. After all, what better way to keep the determined people in check than to enable them to wage a sandbox-simulated rebellion?
Regardless of how many pills he eats or how convincing Morpheus will be in his stories about how real the new reality is, Neo still relies on his feelings, and his feelings, in theory, can be fooled. So he goes back to where he started.
Here's a starting point for a mental simulation experiment: it can't be proven or disproved. For the same reason, it may not make sense to suck. What, in the end, is the difference if so?
As long as the deception is perfect, it doesn't matter
Let's say you were told the following: "The universe and all of its contents are turned upside down." This will take your brain out for a minute as you imagine swallowing a red pill and seeing everything upside down. But then you realize that things can only be upside down relative to other things, so if everything is upside down … what's the difference?
The same applies to the argument “probably all this is an illusion”, on which the thought experiment of modeling is based. Things are real about people and other parts of our experience (just as the world of the red pill is real about the world of the blue pill in The Matrix). We are real about other things and people. "Everything is an illusion" makes no more sense than "everything is upside down."
These assumptions cannot be called true or false. Since their truth or falsity is not related to anything else, has no practical or epistemological implications, they are inert. They can't matter.
The philosopher David Chalmers put it this way: the idea of modeling is not an epistemological thesis (about what we know about things) or a moral thesis (about how we value or should value things), but a metaphysical thesis (about the finite nature of things). If this is so, then the point is not that people, trees and clouds do not exist, but that people, trees and clouds do not have the finite nature that we thought.
But again, this is equivalent to asking: so what? One ultimate reality, which I cannot get into, turns into another final reality, which I also cannot reach. Meanwhile, the reality in which I live and with which I interact through my feelings and beliefs remains the same.
If all this is computer simulation, then so be it. It does not change anything.
Even Bostrom agrees: “On closer examination, it turns out that you will have to live in the Matrix exactly as if you were not living in the Matrix. You still have to interact with other people, raise children, and go to work.
Pragmatists believe that our beliefs and language are not abstract representations that correspond (or do not correspond) to some supernatural realm of independent reality. These are the tools that help us live - in organization, in navigation, in forecasting the world.
Giving up certainty in favor of probability
Descartes lived in an era that preceded the Age of Enlightenment and became an important predecessor, because he wanted to build philosophy on what people could learn for themselves, and not on what religion or tradition could impose - not to take anything for granted.
His mistake, like many Enlightenment thinkers, was that he believed that such a philosophy should imitate religious knowledge: hierarchical, built on a foundation of solid, indisputable truth from which all other truths flow.
Without this solid foundation, many feared (and still fear) that humanity would be doomed to skepticism in epistemology and nihilism in morality.
But as soon as you give up religion - as soon as you trade authority for empiricism and scientific method - you can also give up certainty.
What people can extract for themselves, choose, prefer, is always partial, always temporary and always a matter of probabilities. We can weigh parts of our experience with other parts, check and repeat, remain open to new evidence, but there will be no way to go beyond our experience and create a solid foundation under it all.
Everything will be good, true, real only in relation to other things. If they are also good, true, real in some transcendental, independent, “objective” framework, we will never know.
Indeed, in essence, human existence is reduced to making decisions in conditions of an insufficient amount of data and information. Feelings will always give an incomplete picture of the world. Direct experience of communicating with other people, visiting other places will always be limited. To fill in the gaps, we have to rely on assumptions, biases, beliefs, some internal framework, qualifications and heuristics.
Even the science with which we try to suspend our assumptions and get to hard data is full of value judgments and cultural attachments. And it will never be specific - only up to a certain degree of probability.
Whatever world we live in (in the present or not), we will act on the basis of probabilities, use unreliable and imprecise tools of knowledge, live in a constant haze of uncertainties. This is human life. But because of this, people are worried. They crave certainties, points of fixation, so they force philosophers to get to the bottom of the truth and simply believe in predestination, a higher plan or free will.
If there are no clear reasons, we will have to learn to live with uncertainty and relax. If they are not there, philosophy will not help us. (This saying belongs to Richard Rorty, one of the proponents of American pragmatism.)
Elon Musk believes that the whole world in which we live, where his relatives and friends live, is an illusion, a simulation. He is unreal, his family is unreal, climate change is unreal, Mars too. And yet, what does Musk spend his time on? He works by the sweat of his brow and does what he can to reduce the volume of carbon emissions on Earth, and we settled on another planet. Would he work so hard if he knew that the world is unreal?
Somewhere deep in his soul, he knows that the world is real to the extent that all this will be important.