{"id":176405,"date":"2021-01-04T12:02:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T12:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=176405"},"modified":"2021-02-19T09:14:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T09:14:42","slug":"living-within-a-self-engendered-simulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/01\/living-within-a-self-engendered-simulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Living within a Self-engendered Simulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re-cognizing an Alternative to Living within the Simulation of an Other<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is an ongoing debate among scientists as to whether humanity and the planetary environment are best understood as part of a simulation developed and maintained by an advanced race of extraterrestrials. As a speculative argument, this offers one way of understanding why humanity has not been contacted by ETs — if humans could comprehend the form which such contact might take. The question has notably been framed by the Fermi paradox<\/a>, namely the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for\u00a0extraterrestrial<\/a>\u00a0civilizations and various high estimates for their\u00a0probability.<\/p>\n

There have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox,\u00a0primarily suggesting that\u00a0intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare, that the lifetime of such civilizations is short, or that they exist despite the inability of humans to detect them (for various reasons). The paradox continues to be debated in a context in which there is increasing attention to the number of exoplanets<\/a> detected, now held to be capable of supporting life as it is known to humanity — understood as planetary habitability<\/a>. The SETI quest for extraterrestrial intelligence<\/a> continues (Daniel Clery, How big money is powering a massive hunt for alien intelligence<\/em><\/a>, Science<\/em>, 10 September 2020). This is complemented by the challenge of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence<\/a> (CETI).<\/p>\n

As addressed here, the question follows from a long philosophical and scientific history of speculation as to the possibility that reality — as perceived and comprehended by humans — is an illusion of some kind. Such speculation includes the renowned “Butterfly Dream<\/a>” of\u00a0Zhuangzi<\/a> and Indian reflection on Maya<\/a>.\u00a0The first to state the basic concept of reality as a simulation was\u00a0Plato<\/a>\u00a0in 380 BCE in the famous\u00a0Allegory of the Cave<\/a>, describing people imprisoned since childhood (but not since birth) and led to believe that artificial light-based representations of reality were truly real when, in fact, they were a fabricated illusion.\u00a0Experience of simulated reality has long been explored by science fiction.<\/p>\n

Recent focus has been given to the possibility by Nick Bostrom<\/a> with regard to what is now termed the simulation hypothesis<\/a> (Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0Philosophical Quarterly<\/em>.\u00a053, 2003, 211; The Simulation Argument: why the probability that you are living in a matrix is quite high<\/em><\/a>, Times Higher Education Supplement<\/em>, 16 May 2003). The possibility has been framed as a form of video game by Rizwan Virk (The Simulation Hypothesis: an MIT computer scientist shows why AI, quantum physics and Eastern mystics all agree we are in a video game<\/a><\/em>, 2019). Whether this is of significance or not\u00a0is another matter, as argued by Peter Ball (We Might Live in a Computer\u00a0Program — but it may not matter<\/em><\/a>, BBC<\/em>, 5 September 2016)<\/p>\n

Bostrom’s argument, understood as a trilemma, posits that at least one of the following statements is very likely to be true:<\/p>\n