The simulation hypothesi.., p.21
The Simulation Hypothesis, page 21
Thus, we see that a theoretical model for information storage and processing for the Eastern traditions of reincarnation and karma are remarkably consistent with the simulation hypothesis. In fact, you might say that the only way that they could be implemented would be in some form of simulation that we download consciousness into and become a part of.
The simulation hypothesis then gives new color and meaning to both the idea of a magical play that creates our illusion, the lila of the Vedas, and Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
Chapter 10
Some Unexplained Areas: God, Angels, NDEs, and UFOs
When I was at MIT, one of the most important lessons I learned about science was that it wasn’t meant to describe reality exactly but rather to come up with a set of workable models that could approximate reality under certain conditions. The models needed to be reliable and fit the existing data. Every now and then, scientists would realize that observed data didn’t fit the existing models; new models were needed.
As an example, an 18th- or 19th-century scientist trying to explain how galaxies are formed or how stars burn would be at a loss. They wouldn’t have a model or description that included things like the nucleus of the atom, the periodic table, nuclear fusion (or fission), or black holes. For these strange things to become explainable, scientists would need to create better models of the how the physical world works. These better models would turn the unexplainable into explainable phenomena.
As I’ve stated before and would like to repeat here: when a better model comes along, it behooves the scientific community to explore the new model. In the previous chapters, we have seen how the simulation hypothesis provides a better model that explains many of the mysterious findings of modern physics and even provides a scientific basis for the Eastern mystical teachings of old.
But we won’t stop there. This chapter brings together some ideas from the Western religious traditions—angels, the afterlife, God—with some other unexplained paranormal experiences like NDEs (near death experiences), OBEs (out-of-body experiences), synchronicity and even UFOs. None of these fit into a materialistic view of the world. Not only are these things unexplainable using our current scientific models, most scientists today won’t go near them, as they are seen as “career killers,” or at the very least dismiss them as “pseudoscience.”
We’ll show in this chapter that, viewed through the lens of the simulation hypothesis, the dual ideas of information and computation can provide a scientific basis for some things that were previously unexplainable and/or ignored by mainstream science. By looking into the idea that our physical reality is computer-generated (that underlying everything is information and computation), we can come up with a better working model for all of these strange phenomena and even provide a bridge between religious and scientific ideas of how the universe works.
God and the Creation of the Physical World
While the Eastern religions (and the mystical traditions which spawned them) strongly support the idea that our physical reality is a kind of simulation, how does this idea fit into the Abrahamic traditions that are dominant in the West and the Middle East—namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam?
The main focus of these monotheistic religions is a single God who is the supreme “creator,” called Allah in Islam and Jehovah in Judaism. God is a very big topic, perhaps too big for us to cover in one section of this book, but we’ll consider the roles that God plays in these religions, including in creating the physical universe, in directing his angels and messengers, in judging our deeds, in listening to our prayers, and, finally, in sending us to the afterlife—either to Heaven or Hell. In doing so we’ll see if the simulation hypothesis might provide a better underlying model that explains how all of this might actually work.
Since followers of these religions are known as the “people of the book” (namely, the Old Testament and New Testament of the Bible for Judaism and Christianity, and the Koran for Islam), we’ll look closely at what these books and the oral traditions of these religions have to say.
In Genesis 1:3, it tells us that the world began when “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Genesis goes on to say that the world was created in six days and that on the seventh day God rested. While many scientists have dismissed this idea of a supreme creator who could create the world in such a short period of time, adopting the point of view of the simulation hypothesis, we see this may not be so unreasonable after all.
How long does it take for a computer-programmed reality to come in to existence? In fact, if the programming was already in place, then it would take only seconds. However, getting back to the idea of computational irreducibility, some things need to be created by computer programs that need to be run over a period of steps. This is true of procedural generation in video games and just may be true in our physical reality. It is possible, even probable, if you subscribe to a religious point of view that the physical universe was created in six clock units—saying days is a misnomer because, while the Earth is part of the physical universe, the days in question may have nothing to do with Earth days. Also, if you were spinning up a computer program, you would be using electromagnetic signals (in other words, light!) to create the world, so the statement “Let there be light” would be proven to be literally true!
It is a popular trend for today’s scientists to be atheists, which wasn’t always the case. Both Newton and Einstein often talked about God in their writings. Oxford’s Nick Bostrom, who first popularized the idea of the simulation hypothesis among academics, has said that speculation of being in a simulation might cause some of them to reconsider their position. Beings that are “outside” the simulation might seem like “angels” or “gods” to the limited worldview of the beings inside the simulation. We’ll revisit this idea of who is “outside” the simulation in our last chapter as we consider implications of the simulation hypothesis.
But once again, we see that if we adopt the model of the physical universe as information and computation, it provides a reasonable, almost scientific, explanations for unexplainable concepts that most scientists would have thought ludicrous using an older materialistic model of the physical universe.
God and the Afterlife
Let’s look at how each of the Western religions views the afterlife. While the mainstream sects of these religions do not support the concept of reincarnation, each of them supports the idea of an afterlife, in fact you might say that is the central tenet of these religions.
Though they do not explicitly support karma, they do believe in “sowing what you reap” (which is, of course, a quote from the Bible), in that the final resting place of your soul is based upon, among other things, your good deeds and bad deeds while on Earth.
Al-Akhirah and the Day of Qiyamah in Islam
In Islam, the afterlife is referred to as Al-Akhirah in Arabic, the language spoken by the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, which translates in English to roughly, the “hereafter.”
Belief in the hereafter is considered one of the six pillars of beliefs of all Muslims. Al-Akhirah is compared to Al-Dunya, the “here and now”, or the physical world around us. In the Islamic tradition, our life on Earth is meant to be temporary; it is a training ground or a test for the day of judgment when God will decide about how we fared.
In Islam, the soul is judged on the day of judgment, called the day of Qiyamah, based on the person’s good and bad deeds, in front of Allah, the Muslim name for God. Heaven (or paradise) is called Jannah, literally translated as “garden,” is depicted as running with rivers of milk and honey. The Islamic version of Hell, which is a place of fire, is called Jahannam, the place where those who are either judged as doing more evil than good or those who reject the “true faith” of Islam will go.
What happens on the day of judgment? According to Islam, it starts with an angel blowing a trumpet, and then the Earth shall have its mountains razed, and the dead shall be resurrected and judged. Each person will have a “scroll of deeds” that is a record of both one’s good deeds and bad deeds. Also, since each person may not even know the full extent of their deeds or their full impact, they are shown those deeds while being judged.53 This is not just a matter of reading from a book but actually being shown visually what impact your deeds have had on those around you. This is the first example of a “life review,” which we’ll revisit several times in this chapter. The “life review” is much easier to understand in the context of the simulation hypothesis.
Now we ask ourselves, if there was a Heaven or Hell, where would it be located in our physical world? And if each person has a scroll of deeds—where would this scroll be recorded? Not in the rendered world around us, clearly, or we would be able to see it.
We have seen this concept before, a record of a person’s deeds/actions and their consequences while they were in the physical (or rendered world) in the idea of a quest manifest and character scorecard in a video game. The actual record is stored somewhere outside the rendered world in a place that is invisible to us but is nevertheless linked to our character—somewhere in the cloud. We now find ourselves in a similar situation with the notion of a karma manifest, which is stored along with a player and their particular character in the Eastern traditions.
The simulation hypothesis provides the best answer—that someone or something is watching our actions and “keeping score”—not just what we do but how it affects other people in the game. While karma and the scorecard were mentioned in the previous chapter, Islam is much more explicit, in that our deeds will be “shown to us,” which amounts to a highlight reel, or replay, of our life and how it affected others—or the life review. It is a common practice today in video games, even in shared MMORPGs, to record the gameplay sessions and to play them back visually after the game is over to review what has been done well and what hasn’t.
Christianity and Judaism
In Christianity, there is some variation on the process of the afterlife among different denominations. With its greater emphasis on sin and forgiveness, it still resembles the Islamic traditions fairly closely, though with some key differences.
A clear explanation is offered in the catechism of the Catholic Church of the soul going to Heaven or Hell depending on the particular judgment: “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death … either entrance into the blessedness of heaven—through a purification or immediately—or immediate and everlasting damnation.” 54
The Catholic church also introduces the idea of purgatory, a third place where souls may end up after death. Purgatory is a state where a soul must “undergo purification” before it is allowed to go to Heaven.
The Eastern Orthodox Church of Christianity (which was the first major schism in Christianity—when the church divided into Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox churches) doesn’t explicitly recognize purgatory but does recognize the idea of an “intermediate place” for certain souls, which it refers to as Hades, borrowing the old Greek term for the underworld.
Although the scroll of deeds is not as explicit in Christianity as it in Islam, there is a very similar concept. From the New Testament: 55
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (Rev 20:12)
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. (2 Cor 5:10)
Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, doesn’t go into so much detail about the afterlife or the mechanism of going to Hell or Heaven. These concepts, though they feature in Judaism, are a matter of debate with some scholars. In Jewish traditions, there is the idea of the soul being immortal and going to the Jewish Heaven (called either Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, or Olam Ha-Ba) or Hell (with names closely tied to the Arabic: Gehinnom). In Jewish traditions, Gehinnom is a place that souls might only go for a period of time to reflect on their past misdeeds, before being allowed into the Garden of Eden.
The book of life exists in traditional Judaism as well, in an abridged form, where it is a list of those individuals who are going to Heaven or Hell.
We see that the “book of life” serves the same function as the scroll of deeds, and if someone is recording all our actions and “playing them back” to us after we die, showing us our score and then telling us the next step, this would be very similar to the idea of a video game—and the simulation hypothesis may be the only possible explanation!
Angels
Who keeps track of our deeds in these religions? Who writes in the scroll of deeds in Islam and the book of life in Christianity and Judaism?
In the Islamic and some Christian traditions, it’s believed that there are angels who are keeping track of our deeds. The idea of “recording” angels is actually more explicit in Islam than in Christianity or Judaism. When I was growing up in the Islamic tradition, we were told there were two angels (named Raqib and Atid, or collectively the Kiraman Katibin angels) recording everything we said and did, and keeping two types of scores—swab, which was for good deeds, and haram, which was for bad deeds.
In Christianity, guardian angels are known to be protectors and guides who help us stay on the path of God. The guardian angels also serve as an individual’s recording angel, so the two “recording angels” of Islam aren’t needed for the book of life (Malachi 3:16).56 In the Jewish traditions, Gabriel is thought to be the recording angel who has this responsibility, with the “writing case at his side” (Ezekiel 9:3-4).57
In popular cartoons and media, guardian angels are often depicted as a good angel over one shoulder and a bad angel (drawn as a little horned devil) over the other shoulder, encouraging us or discouraging us from doing good deeds (or bad deeds, as the case may be).
Where did this cartoon idea come from? It’s not explicitly stated in the New Testament. But in Islam, the prophet Muhammad explicitly says: “There is no one among you but he has with him a constant companion … from among the jinn and a constant companion from among the angels.”58 One of these, the jinn, which is the origin of the term genie, is depicted as being behind you, and the angel is depicted as being in front of you—these are both kinds of “guardian angels.”
In the wildly popular movie It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, is considering suicide, so his guardian angel, Clarence (played by Henry Travers), shows him what life would have been like for his family and acquaintances if George Bailey had never been born. This is kind of like the life review, showing the results of a person’s deeds but in reverse, showing the results by showing what would’ve happened had he not been there!
AI: Gods and Angels and the Simulation Hypothesis
So, if guardian angels and recording angels actually exist, where would they be located and why can’t we see them with our physical eyes? Thus far (before the simulation hypothesis), modern science has been silent on this front, calling angels “hallucinations” or otherwise ignoring them altogether.
As we look to the recording angels, we see they are as much “functions” as they are “entities”—i.e., they have a specific purpose and rules to follow to achieve that purpose in supporting us through this “testing ground” of life on Earth
If we were living in a simulation, then we might conclude that these angels were outside the rendered world but were keeping watch and recording our activities. It’s unlikely that there are 14 billion angels watching over us at all times (two for each of the humans on Earth, not counting souls that might exist on other planets, which is accounted for in at least some religions).
What kind of rules are they following? This brings up the question of whether angels (which means messengers) are actually “conscious” entities or simply automatons that follow rules, record deeds, transfer messages, and intervene in our physical reality from time to time. In the biblical traditions, there is a hierarchy of angels who seem to have different purposes and powers.
Computer science provides the answer: The recording angels, if we assume they exist, are most likely some form of computer program that is recording, either visually or in some other format, what is happening in our lives. Like an intelligent screen recording while we are playing a video game, it provides not just a record but an evaluation of the gameplay and help us to keep score in the video game. These recordings are available for us in the afterlife, and “God” reviews them with us to give us the “judgment” according to the Western religious traditions.
Guardian angels, on the other hand, may be a little more sophisticated than simple automatons. They need to make judgments and guide us or protect us in a more complex way. In some traditions, they are advanced souls that are given the task of watching over a small or a large number of souls. This means that they may actually be conscious entities like us or master players of a game who are leading “guilds” or “soul groups.”
In the Western religions, adherents are encouraged to pray to God, which might include recitation of particular rote prayers (as in Islam and Catholicism), or it might be asking God for help. Again, if there were one billion adherents of Islam or Christianity making prayers every day to God, what kind of entity could be on the receiving end of these prayers? Is there an entity we know of that could not only keep track of but reply to billions of incoming requests?
In the case of the simulation hypothesis, God, if he exists, is most likely some kind of intelligent computer program (or conscious entity outside of the simulation being helped by billions of individual “angel” computer programs responsible for tracking each individual’s actions and recording and guiding them).
