LIFE IS REAL…REALLY?
Out-of-the-Ordinary
For centuries, countless brainiacs have chewed this question over and shaped theories in order to capture the true nature of their existence. Recently, the circle widened to incorporate the affluent elite as well, as it has surfaced that two tech billionaires from Silicon Valley are surreptitiously engaging scientists to liberate us from -let’s say- The Matrix. But has this perception already carried the day with them? And whether there is some concrete evidence as yet signaling towards it?
What if I told you that you are merely a character in someone’s remarkably sophisticated video game? Well, this question seems to have prompted Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom to devise the popular “simulation theory” that essentially proposes that the whole cosmos may just embody an artificial simulation akin to a computer simulation. Although sounding whimsical on the face of it, this notion induces a probe into the meaning of life and is a subject of heated debate among scientists and philosophers currently.
The advocates of this hypothesis premise it on a number of arguments. One such argument is buttressed by the evolution of physics from “everything is a particle” to “everything is information”, implying that all this information may potentially constitute a high-tech computer program. Similarly, as we know it, the universe cracks up to be rigorously mathematical and is splintered into subatomic particles, like the code of a pixelated video game. In fact, an esteemed present-day theoretical physicist S. James Gates Jr. even claims to have encountered error-correcting codes (these are what make our browsers work) in the very fundamental equations describing our universe! Furthermore, an artifact inheres in each computer simulation: in our daily used computers, that is the processing speed. In the real world (or rather the putatively real world) the speed of light impeccably fits the characteristic niche of a simulation artifact, thus giving us a cue of our simulated reality. Last but not the least, simulation theory also seems to be consistent with religion and faith. If we are simulated by someone, then wouldn’t that entity (being our creator, omniscient and omnipotent) make for God? The convictions of eternal afterlife and resurrection are also firmly established, as Gates acutely points out,
“If we’re programs in the computer, then as long as I have a computer that’s not damaged, I can always re-run the program.”
Mind-meltingly convincing it is, right? Perhaps only so far.
On the contrary, the skeptics of the simulation theory also possess their own set of reasons to refute it. Going even so far as to term it as ‘the mother of all conspiracies’, they intimately deem the simulation theory as self-contradictory, reasoning that why would a species of higher intelligence simulate such characters as self-centered humans who would go on to destroy its computer program (consider the mounting evidence that humans are destroying the world). Besides, they contend that the discovery of error-correcting codes in the fundamental equations portraying the universe may not essentially hint towards a simulation. Rather, it might just be influenced by a confirmation bias, “kind of like if you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Moreover, the argument pertaining to the speed of light being a universal constant — simply on account of a limit put up by the simulator — falls flat, as such an explanation for anything as-yet-obscure must be unfounded since it ceases humanity’s exploration to unravel nature, and had this stance been adopted by humanity since its advent, we would probably still be living in the stone age! Lastly, the simulation theory does not necessarily reconcile science and religion by proving the existence of God. Even if we are in a simulation, it can just be a “teenage hacker” playing us in his video game, just as we do.
“We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have power over how high Mario jumps,” Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and America’s favourite science popularizer, remarks.
To sum it up, humans are still ambivalent about whether they dwell inside someone’s computer or not. Worse, the balance may even never incline towards one side since any experimental proof they obtain in this regard is itself likely to be simulated (if we are in fact simulated). Hence, in such a case, the question may continue to stare us in the face while each generation of ours successively recedes into time.
