Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation
Something that most people never consider in these discussions:<p>If you accept the hypothesis that mind is generated by a computation, and that this computation is finite, then the same computation that produces &quot;you&quot; can be performed in different places and at different times. The same computation can be performed inside a simulation, inside a simulation inside a simulation and so on.<p>Whatever environment around you can be included in this computation.<p>As long as the computation is finite the larger and&#x2F;or more temporally extended the universe is, the higher the probability that the computation that is generating this current moment for you is being executed more than once. If the universe is infinite in some sense, this probability converges to 1.<p>And yet you would have no way of knowing that this is happening.<p>So I claim that, if you assume that mind is generated by a computation, then then question of wether we are in a simulation or not can be replied with &quot;both&quot; or &quot;it doesn&#x27;t matter&quot;.