Simulation hypothesis

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“I wish I could summon a strong argument against it, but I can find none.” — Neil de Grasse Tyson

One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely-accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.

It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.

Therefore, if we don't think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.

Nick Bostrom, Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (2003)

That's from the mouth of the most public proponent of this a priori nonsense.

To help Professor Tyson, here are some more reasons. For this to work, the simulation would not just have to be very good: it would need to be identical to real human sentience, in every respect. This would involve not just a perfectly accurate — that is to say transcendently true — theory of human cognitive activity, but a perfectly accurate — that is to say transcendently true — theory of all events in the universe. These theories would not be models as any sense of the word, but actual replications of the actual world, that is to say, the territory itself, not a mere map.

Any shortcuts would lead to potential variances, and as we know from our modern morality tales about, butterflies and rain forests, jointed pendulums and so on, any atomic variations in initial conditions have colossal, non-linear Knock on effects.

So firstly the sheer computing power required to run this algorithm would be so great as to not only be practically impossible, but theoretically impossible. In fact, its operation would not so much skew the functioning of the real-world, but but duplicate it: but but you cannot duplicate the energy in a closed physical system without violating the laws of thermodynamics.

And about those laws of thermodynamics: in order to draw a complete, functioning, comprehensive theory of the universe, one must first have comprehensive, true, knowledge of the total canon of all laws of science. But science being an inductive process, and quite incapable of establishing anything by way of proof, this is again theoretically impossible. Our present state of knowledge of the laws of the universe is contingent and incomplete.