One of the on-going discussions amongst high-profile thinkers, physicists and philosophers is whether or not we are living within a simulation.
If you, me, everyone and everything are actually elements or characters within a giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it – according to this theory. This might sound similar to the plot behind “The Matrix,” but it is also legitimate scientific hypothesis. The University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom developed a popular argument for the simulation hypothesis back in 2003. Here is the abstract from his paper:
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
If you wish to delve deeper, take a look here.
What are your thoughts?
