Do We Live in a Simulation?
I think simulation is a bad argument for a few reasons.<p>First and foremost, I find it a way to try to escape the idea of God. Those who take this stance are admitting the universe is fine-tuned to the point of appearing created, but rather than suggesting some sort of God designed it, attribute it to man. Thus we arrive at a neoCreationism, which results in the unfortunate side effect of complete, rigid, inescapable, deterministic nihilism. It is the only rational outcome of such a world; living with knowledge of its true nature would become torturous. Your existence would be a mockery, a farce with no meaning, and an ultimate condemnation to stochastic noise in the grand scheme of un-reality.<p>At least with a God you can attempt to justify the idea of free will, even with the idea of omniscience. With a simulation, everything is predetermined by various random seeds, so at any given time all that occurs is the whirring of vacuum tubes, or the flipping of bits, which marches onward until things in this false world reach some sort of termination criterion. At that point, there is no hope, the simulation WILL end, and you well before it, with nothing of you to survive the program.<p>Secondly, I think it&#x27;s a bad argument because of how messy the world is. Typically in a simulation you need to make simplifying assumptions, and those tend not to include infinitely irrational numbers, constantly rendering high-poly 3D objects, and all the colors, smells, and other sensory input we deal with constantly. &quot;Just make pi=3.14159 and call it a day, it&#x27;s enough precision for our needs&quot;. Instead, all the messiness we know and have access to would point to this actually being reality, especially if you consider the whole &quot;the map becomes the territory&quot; issue. If some people a layer up in the simulation were capable of producing all this detail, they would need an insane amount of resources to do so, which is unlikely if they&#x27;re also trying to simulate their own reality accurately. Consequently, if they were in a simulation, the production of another computer in their own simulation to run a new simulation would likely take up all the processing power&#x2F;memory of the layer above them, thus causing a cascade of Out Of Memory exceptions until we&#x27;re left with the original reality. Such simulations would be doomed from the start.<p>Thirdly, about the whole history repeating itself thing, I believe it occurs due to a few things. I posit it&#x27;s the combination of the limits of human consciousness to perceive a threat horizon past a few decades, combined with the consequences of disrupting homeostatic systems that have little-to-no error correction for large scale instability.<p>The threat horizon issue is blatantly apparent if you consider modern society: many people are in bad health due to poor decision making (drug addiction, obesity, etc). While the consequences of their actions are not immediate, the rewards are; therefore, the self-harmful behavior continues. This also replicates itself at larger scales of governments due to our inability to effectively regulate behaviors that produce immediate benefit with only a risk of long term damage (see climate change, and lobbying). The long term damage WILL come with enough rolls of the dice, but it&#x27;s easy to justify the behavior when getting a hit of dopamine. That&#x27;s how heart disease, addiction, corruption, and societal collapse happen. One metaphorical cheeseburger at a time.<p>Finally, once these homeostatic systems do collapse, the people placed into these new uncomfortable situations desire to build something better for their families. Thus the slow, Sisyphean march toward a comfortable utopia will repeat itself. To break the cycle, we must either find a way to think rationally about our decisions without considering pleasurable rewards as primary motivators, or stop caring about rewards altogether. Its the desire for them that both drives progress from moral actors seeking the betterment of others, and drives regress from unscrupulous individuals willing to be corrupt for a quick ride to the top. This tenuous balance must err on the side of progress, or unchecked regression will destroy things rapidly.<p>I will conclude with a variant of Pascal&#x27;s wager: yes, we are influence by our pasts. But we may ultimately be in control of our presents, which can hopefully lead us all to better futures. If we are not in control, nothing I can say to you and nothing you can do will change your life or outcome. Thus, this whole conversation is meaningless, and you and I will go on to a predetermined future. But what if we are in control and much more so than we think? Imagine resigning yourself to an &quot;inescapable&quot; fate of least resistance, only to find out later it was all real, and you were in control the whole time. What would you trade for those wasted years? And how much anguish would you be in realizing there&#x27;s no way to trade for lost time? Thus, even if there is no point in trying, I believe that there is so on the off chance I&#x27;m right it may make all the difference.<p>Good luck my friend.