Are We Living In A Simulation?

 

Image courtesy of agsandrew, Shutterstock.com.

Joel Kontinen

Are we living in a simulation? an argument in Scientific American and then posted in Life Science, say that the probability is 50–50.

The article goes back to the years 2003, when “Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford wrote a seminal paper about the simulation argument, philosophers, physicists, technologists and, yes, comedians have been grappling with the idea of our reality being a simulacrum.”

if we are simulated beings, then we lose our Genesis-given rights to be individuals, who are responsible for their task and duties. That is, we cease being humans with moral skills.

Then comes astronomer David Kipping, of Columbia University who ”began by turning the trilemma into a dilemma. He collapsed propositions one and two into a single statement, because in both cases, the final outcome is that there are no simulations. Thus, the dilemma pits a physical hypothesis (there are no simulations) against the simulation hypothesis (there is a base reality—and there are simulations, too). “You just assign a prior probability to each of these models,” Kipping says. “We just assume the principle of indifference, which is the default assumption when you don’t have any data or leanings either way.”

But the argument has a fair amount of those who say it’s not possible. so maybe, we’ll still living in an un-simulated world,

Source:

Ananthaswamy, Anil. 2020.  Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50–50. Live Science  14 October.