The simulation hypothesi.., p.27
The Simulation Hypothesis, page 27
In Nick Bostrom’s original simulation argument, he argues that we are not only part of a simulation but are likely to be simulated consciousness, rather than real beings. While this is at odds with the models put forth by mystics of a consciousness or soul that goes in and out of the rendered world, both remain possibilities and cannot be ruled out.
Downloadable Consciousness.
While today what we think of as consciousness is inseparable from our brains, scientists believe that if they can capture the trillions of neural interactions in a person’s brain they can simulate that person’s consciousness and ways of thinking after the person’s death. While this goal of downloadable consciousness remains out of our grasp at the moment, some do think that is mere decades away. Mystics argue that downloading was how we got into this body in the first place: at birth our consciousness, which comes from a soul, is downloaded into our body. Downloading consciousness raises interesting questions about whether we are real beings or just information and has been hinted at in most religious and mystical traditions.
A Quantized, Pixelated Reality.
Quantum physics arises from the idea that instead of living in a solid physical world of macro objects, we actually live in a world that is made up of smaller objects. There seems to be a practical limit to how small the building blocks of matter can be—beyond which it is impossible to measure. The idea is that physical reality is not continuous but quantized. The quanta originally were levels of energy, and, in fact, at the atomic level, most of what we think of as physical objects are actually empty space. The quantized nature of space and the fixed nature of the speed of light lend to the idea of “quantized time” as being part of our physical reality as well.
This means that rather than being analog, our physical reality is better expressed as a digital reality of discrete pieces of information—just like the pixels in a computer game or the bits stored in digital information. The bits are more like qubits, or quantum bits, than simple digital ones or zeros in this model. Still, the fact that we live in a quantized reality is reminiscent of a world rendered with pixels. The fact that it appears three dimensional, which would have been an argument against a simulation in the past, just means that our pixels are not on a two-dimensional screen. Three-dimensional printers have shown us that even 3D objects can be rendered using 3D models and pixels that are built using some minimum “pixel” or “object.”
A Rendering Engine That Is Based on Quantum Indeterminacy.
Most video games (and other computer programs) require optimization of computing resources. They only render what needs to be rendered from the observational point of view of the player. This directly relates to the modern idea of quantum indeterminism, which suggests that the physical world may only exist when someone observes it. Quantum indeterminism, then, becomes an optimization technique. Just as in video games, where there is no single rendered world (it is rendered on everyone’s hardware), it’s possible that in the Great Simulation our hardware is our consciousness, and while there is a shared reality, we are all seeing only the parts of it that are needed. This would explain the modern idea of quantum indeterminism, which suggests that the physical world may only exist when someone observes it.
A Physics Engine Based on Classical and Quantum Physics.
All modern video games that have a virtual world have a physics engine, which determines the rules of physics within the virtual world. This may or may not define the rules outside the virtual world.
In our physics engine, the speed of light has been found to be a constant in physical space-time. If space-time is pixelated, then we can use the constant speed to get a quantized time, a clock-speed of the simulation. In video games, too, there are restrictions to how long it takes to move from point A to point B unless you teleport from one part of the world to another. Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes, show a way to accomplish this in our simulated space-time reality. Moreover, quantum entanglement and non-locality show that there may be ways to transfer information between different parts of the system at faster than the speed of light—or, rather, instantaneously.
If this is the case, then there must be ways to transmit information that does not pass through normal space-time constraints. This all suggests that there is something outside of normal space-time, which means that space-time is a construct, not unlike a simulation. Quantum entanglement seems to show proof that information can be at least shared instantly, and this is more explainable via the simulation hypothesis than by our current understanding of physics.
All of these elements bring together ideas from modern video games in a way that can be applied to a shared billion-plus multiplayer online role-playing game. Not only can they be applied, but, as we’ve seen throughout his book, the nature of the physical world around us, as found by physics and modeled by computer science, points to the simulation hypothesis as a very likely scenario.
Conscious Beings or Unconscious Simulations—PCs vs. NPCs
One of the debates within the community of simulation hypothesis speculators is whether we are all just simulated beings inside a simulation. Bostrom’s original simulation argument would imply this.
However, the reason that I have chosen to use the metaphor of the video game as the dominant description of the simulation hypothesis is that I do not believe this. In a video game, there is a player outside the game who controls or inhabits the character inside the video game. I chose this metaphor deliberately because I believe that the Eastern mystics may be closer to the nature of the Great Simulation than many of the scientists, although the simulation hypothesis bridges this gap really well. This doesn’t mean that the Great Simulation is not technologically based, in fact, one of the critical stages on the road to the simulation point is a downloadable consciousness.
You’ll recall arguments we explored in Part III about how the simulation hypothesis not only parallels but provides a scientific basis for the mystics who claim to have “peeked outside the simulation”—mystics like Buddha and those who wrote the Vedas (not to mention the founders of the Western religions, including Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and others in the Abrahamic line of prophets).
Dreamlike Nature of Reality
Mystics of all traditions have told us that what we perceive as reality is actually more like a dream. This is particularly strong in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In the Hindu Vedas, there is the idea of the lila, the grand play that we get caught up in, which is the maya or illusion that formed the basis for Buddhism. In certain forms of Tantric Buddhism, there are whole schools of training related to Dream Yoga—which is learning to recognize that you are inside a dream. In a dream, we are unaware that there is another part of us asleep in bed, and the elements within the dream seems real while we are in the dream. In fact, we saw how dreams pretty much already exhibit all of the technology we have laid out in the road to the simulation point.
Souls, Reincarnation, Karma, and Quests.
Building on the modern idea of downloadable consciousness, the Eastern religious traditions teach us that we are either soul or consciousness that gets downloaded into a physical body for the duration of the dreamlike state, which we call life. This happens multiple times, and we end up with multiple lives, not unlike what happens in video games.
In these traditions, there is some part of us which is outside the simulation, and there is an accounting of everything that happens to us as we play our characters, just like we keep track of xp (experience points) and levels and quests inside video games. This builds on the concept of karma, the law of cause and effect. Karma is, in fact, like an endless quest engine in video games, keeping track of our achievements and our goals, and creating situations with other players that we need in order to resolve previous karma. In Buddhism, the endless wheel of karma is what drives us to keep coming back—like an ongoing manifest of quests. We create new quests for ourselves by our actions.
Where are these quests stored? As in a multiplayer video game, they are stored outside the rendered world and whatever logic is being used to keep track of them keeps us going. What kind of being or entity could keep track of billions of individual items of karma and experience? Some kind of computer or AI is the most likely option, and suddenly we do not need the metaphorical “Lords of Karma.”
A Godlike AI, Angels, and the Afterlife.
In the Western religious traditions, we typically pray to God, and God sends angels who keep track of your deeds (the recording angels who are writing the “scroll of deeds” defined in Islam or the book of life described in the Bible). This might point to the existence of some kind of godlike entity outside the Great Simulation that could keep track of billions of people or players and their actions.
The descriptions in the Western religions of angels and judgment of the eternal soul based on the actions in the physical world are also consistent with the simulation hypothesis. Just like in a video game, our actions are recorded (by recording or guardian angels) and then used to keep score of our actions.
Thus, the religious and mystical traditions, as they try to explain the nature of reality, are referring to the physical world around us as a place we are “downloaded to,” and where our actions are recorded, and we return to some place outside the physical world. In modern computer science terminology, the Great Simulation explains this perfectly, and if we had computers and video games in ancient times, it’s very possible that our religious traditions might use similar terminology to that used in this book.
The Big Picture: Computation Underlies the Other Sciences
As a video game designer myself, I have been amazed at how quickly video games have evolved from very simple 8-bit arcade-style games that I played in my youth into very complex multiplayer online role-playing games with seemingly endless possibilities.
When I first heard about the simulation hypothesis, I, like many others, was skeptical. As I delved more deeply into it using my own training in computer science, I saw that it was consistent with where our technology is going and brought together many different threads of the search for knowledge or ultimate truth, which is restricted not just to science but includes philosophy and religion.
Moreover, it seems that, with each passing year, information science is expanding beyond our simple understanding of computing. Software is not just merging with, but, to paraphrase Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, it is eating up other fields of science and human endeavor.
We see this everywhere in today’s world. Communications technology, for example, which started off transmitting physical signals over wires—in devices such as the telegraph and telephone—today is a digital field consisting of bits of information that are bundled and transmitted in layers of algorithms. The entertainment world, which started off with physical frames of film, is now just information that can be transmitted in packets or over the air, moving away from the traditional TV broadcast to an entirely digital world.
The information of the world is being digitized, and as we move into 3D printing, it’s becoming apparent that physical objects can be constructed easily, using computer models and machines that turn information into physical pixels in the 3D world around us. While this may have started with CAD (computer-aided design), it is now becoming apparent that physical objects and processes are much better represented as information, and more intelligent digital machines can turn this information into physical objects much more efficiently than traditional machines of the industrial revolution.
Even the biological world, which is thought of as a very separate field from computer science, is slowly starting to overlap with information science. The biological world, it turns out, is also based on information, though, of course, of a different type—one which creates cells based on instructions in DNA through various biological processes. Within computer science and AI, biological processes have shown that they can be utilized to get much smarter and more unique results—most of today’s machine learning is based on the conditioning of neural networks, which are based on biological algorithms. While there is still some way to go, the burgeoning field of bioinformatics and modeling of biological processes has made information and computation an integral part of the organic world!
Most importantly, the physical world, which was thought of in classical physics as a set of physical objects moving in continuous paths around the heavens, has been updated. As quantum physics reveals that there is no such thing as a physical object, that most objects consist of empty space and electrons, we start to get into metaphysical questions about what is real in the world. Quantized space and quantized time start to look much more like digital pixels and digital clock-speed, which we invented for modern computers—at a much more finite scale. The information or “state” of a particle, which is being used in quantum computing, may be the only real way to define a particle, and again, information and computation are taking on more important roles in physics.
Even legendary physicist John Wheeler, who has played such a role in many of the concepts we’ve discussed from quantum physics, ultimately came to the conclusion that most of physics is based on information, which he termed “it from bits”. In his autobiography, Wheeler summarized three phases of his long career in physics: “Everything is Particles” evolved to “Everything is Fields” which eventually evolved to “Everything is Information”.80 The “it” is the physical world. The “bits” are the information (note that when he wrote this, quantum computers were not yet practical, but he referenced the idea of information in the spin of particles, which later became the basis for qubits in quantum computers).
The future of almost all fields of science, which started as a path to explore the mysteries of the physical world, it seems, evolve to being all about computation and information. At MIT, one of the premier institutions of science and technology in the world, which had only five colleges until recently, a new college has recently been created in recognition of this idea that computation is affecting all fields of human endeavor. With a billion-dollar endowment, the brand-new Schwarzman College of Computing was created and specifically dedicated to the idea that computer science in general, and AI in particular, rather than being the province of a group of computer scientists, will impact every other science and industry.
In the past, the simulation hypothesis was thought of by most scientists as science fiction—better material for a Philip K. Dick novel than for serious study. That is no longer the case. One of the reasons why the simulation hypothesis is taken more seriously now is the evolution of video games, and more importantly, information science and computation. We are increasingly seeing that, in fact, rather than being distinct fields, the other sciences may be joined together by a layer of information and computation. This means that just like mathematics, computer science may be a fundamental building block of the universe around us. This trend is only accelerating, and we will see more scientists taking the simulation hypothesis more seriously in the years and decades to come.
Parting Thoughts: Bridging the Great Divide
One of the great debates over the past 500 years has been the dichotomy of the physical nature of reality argued by science and the spiritual (a euphemism for nonphysical) nature of reality argued by religion and mysticism. While the religious views dominated for much of our history, in the 19th and 20th centuries, science became the dominant way to describe the world around us, and religion was relegated to a secondary branch of reality concerned with morality and spirituality, forever removed from the serious study of the physical world.
Einstein once said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” You might say that he rejected the idea that there is a conflict. As the twentieth century has advanced, many scientists, however, do reject the idea that religion is scientific in any way, or that what the mystics may be telling us is quite literally true! The study of consciousness is thus reduced to chemicals and the study of religion and spiritual experiences is social science. As a result, most academics have given up trying to create scientific models that might be consistent with the mystical worldview: that the physical reality around us is not all there is and consciousness is important. Physics giant Max Planck once wrote, “I regard consciousness as fundamental.”
The development and evolution of computation and information science has, in fact, provided us with another model and a way to bridge the gap between all of science, consciousness, and many religious concepts. As Werner Heisenberg, another of the Nobel Prize–winning pioneers of quantum physics, tells us in the quote from the beginning of Part IV of this book: when two different lines of thought pulled from different cultures and context meet, then “one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.”
The simulation hypothesis is one of those new and interesting developments. It may just be the answer that provides a single framework, a coherent model that brings together science and religion.
Einstein once said “God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery.” We may now be in a position to understand, explain, and, soon, with the development of simulation technology, reconstruct many elements of that mystery ourselves.
