The Simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the idea that the reality we perceive is actually an artificial simulation, like a computer-generated virtual environment. I find the idea intriguing and I accept the possibility of it, as we cannot prove or disprove it at the moment.

With advances in technology and AI, provided the exponential rate of technological advance remains stable for the foreseeable future, it seems likely that humankind will in time be able to develop simulations of itself. Much of the technology we use today seemed utterly impossible 500 years ago, hence 500 years from now perhaps simulations of “humanity” could take place in labs or elsewhere.

If we accept such a possibility, then we must also ask ourselves if we are the human “pioneers”, the actual real humans in real time, or are we a mere representation of real humans, a simulated environment that someone in the future is running for any given purpose. Study of history was given as a good reason for one to run such a simulation.

Imagine you could recreate historic events with the accuracy of the grass on the battle field being the way it was at the time. Wouldn’t that be something?

There other idea that intrigues me is that the simulation theory is very close to ideas we find in many religions. Christianity is about God creating the world in its image which is not so far from the idea of a superior being creating a more limited world with more limited beings in a more limited realm. In Buddhism, life is a dream and in Hinduism we are born and reborn again, as if someone is running simulation after simulation reusing our souls in the process.

In the simple process of acknowledging that we are limited in many ways, and observing the cosmos around us, we cannot avoid contemplating the possibility that there is more. I often find that our imagination is not merely fiction, depicting illusions and impossibilities. I tend to think that our imagination is actually a depiction of the possible, of truth, in another time perhaps.

Nothing we imagine is essentially impossible, it is only something that has not manifested yet.

The post Thoughts on the Simulation Theory appeared first on Ars.md.