We Are Definitely in a Simulation; Also the Simulation Argument is Poorly-Defined With Many Unjustified Assumptions

Periodically I re-write an argument about both the relevance of the simulation argument, as well as its poorly defined nature. This leads to people overextending its meaningfulness and smuggling in other assertions.

First, here's why it's irrelevant - because we're all already in a simulation, with high certainty, just not the one you think. People who lived in the middle ages believed the world was flat and there were dragons and trolls. This is a form of simulation. If you're outraged at this assertion, then tell your definition of a simulation. Full sensory immersion like in the Matrix? Why a sensory-only simulation? While we're using science fiction for our thought experiment - are the robots in Westworld not in simulations? On witnessing any potential epistemological disturbance to their world (e.g. being shown a picture of the late twenty-first century cities) they don't register it, instead saying "it doesn't look like anything to me".

This means that all of us - all of whom have some false beliefs - are in a simulation. An extremist position would be that to have any beliefs at all, even if they are accurately based on prior observation, is to be deluded, because your perception of here-and-now is polluted by past experience. Leaving that aside, pain, pleasure and emotions are entirely contained within nervous systems and do not represent anything in the external world - meta tags at best - and yet they are inextricably part of our experience of the world.

Even assuming we are living in a Matrix-like sensory immersion simulation, and we find some way to detect this and pierce the veil as it were - we would still be in a single, unitary material universe, albeit one with more complicated rules than we realized that led us previously to a distorted understanding. Isn't this what science has already been doing for centuries? The Egyptians thought the sky was a ceiling with holes letting in light from heaven, then we built lenses to pierce the veil of the inadequate model our naked senses had given us.

Second, these arguments often smuggle in simulators with agency. (Here is where we can more clearly see the clear parallels between theology and simulation arguments – always suspicious when familiar outlines re-emerge in high-status, low-data discussions, probably revealing more about the shape of the human mind than the universe that mind inhabits.) Why must there be simulators? Certainly there were no demons actively hiding the Milky Way from us. What we now call a simulation might be a natural feature of the wider universe that has so far tricked our senses.

Third, even assuming simulators - how can you know their nature and intentions? Often an argument is made that if we ever did figure out one way or the other that we're in a simulation, the simulators would adjust things so we forgot. So why are we bothering to talk about this then? (Boy does the discussion start to sound like religion at this point.) It also doesn't follow, at all, that the simulators would not want us to know we are being simulated. Maybe that's the point of the experiment!

And fourth, assuming we can know the nature of the simulators, why assume that they would be palatable to us, or relevant to our choices? There's an obvious track to monotheism's goal to learn and glorify the desires of the one true god, which are assumed to be (curiously) similar to the morals of the worshippers. But we're still arguing whether human morality is generalizeable between humans, much less to hyperintelligent 13th-dimensional squid aliens. They might not care, any more than a human scientist cares about the E. coli in a petri dish. Their sense of morality, if such a concept even applies to them, might be (it seems mostly likely) completely inscrutable to us. It might be grotesque. And again, should the E. coli (or one of your video game NPCs) suddenly figure out your morality, so what? What can they really do for you; what can we do for squid-god? If I had to pick, I would want a simulator that doesn't care, because their desires are likely to be repugnant or incomprehensible to us. Living in a universe created by a simulator that cared, and actually wanted us to do something, would be the same as every being in the universe being kidnapped by sadistic terrorists and turned into brains in a vat, utterly at their mercy.

It should not be missed that these are exactly the same questions an atheist asks a believer. I ask my many fellow atheists who are proponents of poorly-defined versions of the simulation hypothesis why they miss asking these questions; I also ask religious believers who may have accepted these arguments regarding the simulation hypothesis, why they don't turn them on their own beliefs. After all, don't you want to know the truth about whether there's a supreme being, and what they're like, and what we should do as a result? Isn't that the point of many religions?

Expanding on the fourth point, here's a problem not unique to the simulation argument, but to any "super" being. If you're a utilitarian (greatest good for greatest number), there's a familiar problem put forth by Robert Nozick, the utility monster, a being who experiences sublime pleasure (and suffering) that "swamps the signal" of the collective happiness and suffering, so that you spend all your time pleasing and avoiding hurting the utility monster and neglecting everyone else. A simulator who cares could be such a utility monster, and on learning of their existence, you must give up caring about anything or anyone else, and bring glory to their name (or whatever it is they want you to do.) You could waste your time on improving the pale blunt emotions of the primitive beings in your family, or the sublime simulator squid-god. Indeed this is what aesthetics do.

Fortunately, based on the best empirical evidence, our present preferences do not appear to influence the type of universe we're already in. We are definitely in some kind of simulation, owing to the way our nervous systems work; in fact it’s not clear how it could be otherwise. If we find this is true more than we knew beyond even the functioning of our brains, it could well be a revolution in science, but would not overturn the brute fact of monist reality.