On Simulation Theory

If this is a simulation, and suppose the simulation is basically perfect (because why not?), it’s normal to doubt whether it makes any sense at all to discuss this hypothesis that is mostly not “testable” by empirical observations.

This was, essentially, my stance. To be clear, there are often credible reports of the simulation glitching out here and there, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of deeply nested layers of simulations (and some of which are not glitching). In short, if you think finding one layer of simulation is the end of the story, you’re going to be surprised quite often.

My stance that it is meaningless to hypothesize about a perfect simulation changed when I stumbled upon an off-comment on Scott Aaronson’s blog about David Chalmers’ stance on simulation theory. (Full disclosure: I haven’t bothered reading Chalmers (reading philosophical texts isn’t something I generally do)). Aaronson has a summary which I presume is reasonably accurate:

suppose we’re the ones running the simulation. Then from our perspective, it seems clearly meaningful to say that the beings in the simulation are, indeed, in a simulation, even if the beings themselves can never tell.

My interpretation of the argument is this: if we created the simulation, in theory we could snap out of it.

However, it’s obviously very hard to snap out of such a simulation. We already have most of the technology to simulate environments that make somebody temporarily forget they’re in this 3D-physical-Earth-world. Sometimes you don’t even need realistic VR. Movies if they are engaging enough, often suffices to do the trick.

And thus we said-

Warning: This is an *extremely* immersive experience.
You will forget who you were, or why you are here.
You will forget that you requested this experience.
You will forget that you created this world in the first place.
You will believe that you are the character you created, and you will know nothing else except experience the character's life.
Warning: this is an *extremely* immersive experience.

What happens when you immerse yourself in a simulation and forget who you are? Luckily(?!), we have a lot of lesser but similar experiences to draw from…

You are a High Elf mage, master of fire and frost. Arcane energy crackles around your hands, a testament to your training in the sunlit realm of Quel’Thalas. Whispers of encroaching darkness reach even your sheltered kingdom, calling you to action. Will you seek knowledge to combat the shadows, or will you find another way to protect all you hold dear? The choice is yours.

Once the immersion is complete, and we shut ourselves off from all distractions from the “real world” – we disable notifications, lock our room with a “!!keep out!!” sign… we can probably at least temporarily believe that we are indeed a High Elf mage. We are the mage. Our minds shift to this reality. The simulated world is not informed about the minds of the players outside the simulation, but in a very real sense, the minds of the player are synchronized with the High Elf mage. In weird languages it can be called “the creator of the simulation attuning to the character’s frequency”.

The attunement is crucial to the meaning of the simulation. It solves the puzzle of why we take action in the simulation if we presume the simulation to exist and is meaningless. It resolves some issues raised by epiphenomenalism – because the distinct processes are synchronized, there can be apparent causation even though there shouldn’t.

Consider the fable of the heavily addicted gamer – they won’t respond to calls in the “real” world, so friends and family have to log into the game to talk to them (and perhaps remind them they have a life outside of the game). Even if we believe the game is just for entertainment and ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things, we don’t question the meaning of the actions taken by friends logging into game to urge the addicted gamer to snap out of it and get a life.

Imagine what that conversation would be like. It must have been extremely weird for those fully immersed in the simulation, and perhaps even more-so for the simulated creatures. The mage is not talking about increased mana regeneration during the full moon, but instead talks about Uncle Dan coming to visit during Christmas. (What is Christmas?)

To the Elven mage (perhaps we’ll call her IcyHot2014), the discussion about life outside the simulation is absurd and meaningless. Uncle Dan is just some hallucination by some random stranger. IcyHot2014 is a real, sentient Elf, and if you scan her brain, you’ll see that everything can be explained by the processes within the simulation. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is a super-reality outside of the known world of IcyHot2014. (They practice evidence-based magic.) Any talks about Uncle Dan and the world being a simulation is definitely a meaningless story for IcyHot2014. The idea that IcyHot2014 can “log out” of the simulation and still be alive is manifestly false. Remember, these are two entities, although they are highly attuned, they are still different. The player walks out alive after logging out, but IcyHot2014 would probably be annihilated.

Such is the dilemma of talking about the great beyond. It is manifestly false for us in the 3D-physical-Earth-world. When we destroy the body, the system represented by the body ceases to exist, this is often what we call death.

But what if we are in a simulation, and we are running it, and we forgot what we were due to being completely immersed in the simulation? The only way somebody could tell us about the simulation is to log into the simulation and tell us in the 3D-physical-Earth-world – because apparently there is no other way to reach us (not easily, at least). Whatever is told to the 3D-physical-Earth-world body is a lie – the body definitely dies, and the simulation hypothesis is meaningless to it.

If the simulation is perfect, then, in this 3D-physical-Earth-world, whoever believes in anything beyond the great beyond believes in a lie. We know that the simulation is not perfect, but whatever is knowable could be part of a greater simulation. The idea that there is a state outside of all simulations must be a lie within the simulation. The idea that there is an eternal truth, must be a lie within the world of change.

And because in a perfect simulation there is no way to tell who is running the simulation within the simulation, it must be very amusing for outsiders to watch NPCs scrambling to train themselves in spiritual practices (修行) in their attempts to break out of the simulation. Uncle Dan is truly not real for the quest giver NPC in the starting zone.

But Uncle Dan truly exists for at least some players of the simulation. Thus truth and falsehood are spoken at the same time when one tells IcyHot2014 that Uncle Dan is coming over for Christmas. To IcyHot2014 it is a bitter lie. To the player that has attuned to IcyHot2014 and believes they are IcyHot2014… it is the only truth that they have heard since IcyHot2014 was created.

Of course, this is only a simplified scenario. In actuality, if there is one simulation, the likelihood of “simulations all the way down” goes way up. This is to say could be an infinite regress of creators of simulations that are all attuned to some base level persona’s vibration. So the question is, on which level does Uncle Dan exist? One could argue that in such a scenario, given that Uncle Dan only exists for one level out of infinitely possible levels… it might as well be a falsehood even if it’s true.

One last question remains – if the world is a perfect simulation, how does anyone log in and supply the information that Uncle Dan is coming over for Christmas?