Your real brain requires the sun and Earth and life on Earth to form-all too complicated, compared to a random structure simulating your perception of the world around you.īoltzmann brains are a paradox because, while they are much more likely to form than real brains, they dissolve the next moment, while you continue to perceive reality consistently.
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This virtual brain is called a Boltzmann brain, and the problem is that since our universe is so much larger, possibly infinitely larger, than your dining room, the probability of the appearance of Boltzmann brains in it is much higher than the probability of the appearance of your real brain. The probability of this event is much tinier, but still not zero. Imagine now the air molecules group together in an intricate structure, again by pure chance, to form a virtual brain simulating exactly your perception of reality around you. In the next moment, the molecules will be all over the room again, so that there won't be enough time for you to suffocate. The probability of this event is tiny, but not zero. Imagine all molecules of air in your dining room get together, by pure chance, in one half of the room. This impasse illustrates the point that once we take one step along this dead-end path, its solipsistic end is just a few steps away.Ī somewhat similar example is the Boltzmann brain paradox, a much likelier scenario than the simulation hypothesis. It is entirely unverifiable, unfalsifiable, irrefutable, and thus unscientific. In principle, the strong version of the hypothesis cannot be tested. What experiment would you design to test whether we're living in a simulated world? Some researchers have said that the simulation theory could be tested. However, if we acknowledge the more consistent and strong version (different physics here and there), then we cannot say anything at all about our simulators, other than they must be good at what they're doing, as apples always fall, birds sing, politicians speak, while quantum particles entangle.
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In other words, I think that the simulation hypothesis in its original weak form (similar physics here and there) is self-defeating as logically inconsistent. Therefore, all our discussions and speculations about our simulators, including the simulation hypothesis itself, cannot be correct, since we've made a wrong assumption that their real physics and our simulated physics are similar. With high probability, we are in one of such worlds. Most of these simulations are simulations of worlds completely different from theirs, with completely different physics. Since they are super powerful, they simulate a humongous number of such worlds, so that the probability that we are simulated is much higher than that we are real.īut according to the same logic, the simulations of worlds similar to theirs must comprise a negligible fraction of all their simulations. The simulation hypothesis assumes that some future posthuman civilization that is super powerful is simulating worlds of their ancestors-including us. "Given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality," he said, "it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions." Simply put, do you think we are living in a simulation? Musk cites the speed with which video games are improving as his primary reason for believing that we're living in a simulated world.
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We asked him to explain the logic behind the simulation argument and whether we might be living in a Matrix–style world. "We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence." As Musk put it, "There's a billion to one chance we're living in base reality."ĭmitri Krioukov, associate professor in the Department of Physics, directs the Network Science Institute's DK-Lab, which focuses on network theory. "I think the likelihood may be very high," Tyson said. For Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson, there's a good chance that our entire existence is a program on someone else's hard drive, that we're the playthings of our technologically advanced future descendants.