The World is Not a Simulation

The simulation argument, formulated by Nick Bostrom, goes as follows: imagine that that a civilization is capable of creating a computer simulation complex enough that it can simulate consciousness. Since there could be infinitely many simulations with infinitely many conscious beings inside them, the probability that we are in a "real" world, not a simulation, is infinitesimal. Therefore, we can say with an extremely high degree of confidence that we live in a simulation.

This kind of thought experiment is not new. Many philosophers have considered the idea that our experience of the world may be false. 20th century analytic philosophy thought that we may be merely brains in a vat, and in the 17th century, philosopher Rene Decartes imagined an evil all-powerful demon determined to deceive us and manipulate our senses.

The simulation argument has all sorts of problems (be suspicious of any philosophical argument structured as a set of premises and a conclusion). But its core flaw is shared between all these thought experiments and which begins with Descartes. It is the problem of the subject. Descartes imagines our existence as something like this:

The little man in the chair is the "subject" or "I-thing". In other words, in this model, the thing that we "are" is the thing inside ourselves experiencing the world through our senses. This is the ground upon which all these arguments rest: the idea that such an I-thing exists, and therefore that it is possible for that thing to exist in some sort of realm that is not the world, be it a computer simulation, a brain in vat, or a Demon's hallucination.

Martin Heidegger provides an alternative view of our existence in Being and Time. He rejects the I-thing, the subject, Cartesianism. The object of his study is instead "Dasein", literally "there-being", the kind of entity that we ourselves are, the kind of entity for which its being is an issue. This language is circuitous, but it helps us get away from Cartesian assumptions about subjectivity, which you may find difficult to shake, particularly if you grew up in the West.

Heidegger points out that, among other things, our being is always "being-in-the-world" and "being-with (others)". The thing that we are (Dasein) is not an entity separate from the world, but rather one which always exists within the world and in relation to others. We may be able to imagine ourselves as the little man in the chair watching the world through our senses, and may experience that sensation at times, but that is not properly speaking what we actually are. Dasein finds itself, in Heidegger's language, "always already" in the world, in an environment, at a place and time. This is why it is hyphenated: there is no distinction between "me" and "the world", the thing that I am (Dasein) is being-in-the-world.

The simulation argument assumes that the thing that we are could somehow be separated from the external world. It takes at its basis that we are our subjective, reflective experience of the world, that this experience has some sort of substance that is separable from the world in which it inhabits. While we can understand as a matter of hypotethical consideration what it may mean to say, "what if I am actually in the Matrix right now?", that question is not consistent with the actual fact of our existence. We find ourselves "in the middle" of the actual world in which we inhabit, a world in which it is simply inconceivable for us to "be" outside of.

It is only through this actual experience in the world that one can come to even imagine the concept of a simulated world. Consider, for example, the evolving cultural metaphor used in the three problems I discussed. Descartes, in Christian Europe, imagined a manipulative Demon. 20th century philosophers, reacting to developments in neuroscience and psychology, imagined a brain in a vat, and 21st century philosophers, in a world where computing dominates our lives, imagine a computer simulation. All of these analogies draw from our actual experience in the world and in a particular environment to come up with thought experiments which are culturally legibile to us.

The question of the simulation argument is not just academic or speculative. Simulation thinking is popular among so-called "rationalist" communities and in the tech industry. These communities discard the actual, specific realities of their existence, ie, as ambitious upper-middle-class men subject to the economic and social realities of a particular industry in a captialist society, in other words, inhabiting a specific place and time, and instead find their "reality" in speculative ideas about the simulated nature of the world itself.

Heidegger called this forgetting of being "nihilism". The simulation argument destroys the world and eliminates our relationship with it, by positing that the most "real" thing is our intellectual consideration of the the world as computer code, code which is merely a reflection of an "actual" reality outside of us. This idea separates ourselves from the world — from each other, from our roots, from our communities, and from our homes. It requires and reinforces a kind of alienation where one imagines oneself as a free-floating rational subject outside of space and time, in a world of pure analytical thought.

It's no wonder this idea is so attractive to some of the most powerful people in the tech industry, like Elon Musk. In the simulated world, there is no space for ethics, at least ethics as respect or care. It lessens the impact of the very real exploitation and destruction happening to this world, our real home, and elevates the importance of scientific and technical dominance over the world as the highest pursuit.

We must instead assert the realness of the world, of this world and of our specific places in it. We must study and respect particular places, cultures, environments, and so on, and not use and abuse each other or our world towards some imagined end, because these things matter in themselves, the world is in a meaningful sense, and as such deserves our respect, consideration, and care. We cannot imagine the world as a simulation to conquer, analyze, or escape, but something to be experienced and lived. We must assert the importance, reality and significance of the actual world, the one in which we inhabit, our home.