Reality as a mind created simulation
The most basic questions of the human experience come down to — What am I and What is the meaning of life or What is truly real?
Philosophy and religion have been the primary means of approaching these questions for most of human history and they have done a remarkable job of looking into the depths of experience.
From the old earth based faiths that personified the processes of nature and how to live in harmony with them, to Plato and his allegory of the cave, to the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, to the Rishi’s (sages) of old India that sought their true nature through self inquiry there is an enormous body of thought and experience put into these central questions.
In more recent times we have added science into the mix and opened the door to empirical understanding of the physical universe. From Newton and classical physics to Einstein and General Relativity to Schrödinger and Quantum Mechanics; physics and cosmology have attempted to quantify and explain reality from a conceptual point of view.
Computer technology has brought the scientific perspective to a whole new level where we can process large amounts of data and find patterns and meaning in it to help us understand our world. Today, AI technology promises to exponentially increase that power and who knows what that will unlock.
As we begin to build things like virtual and augmented reality experiences new questions arise as to just what we can consider reality to be. If I could create a virtual reality that is nearly indistinguishable from the “real” world can it be said to be real?
The Simulation Hypothesis
In his 2003 paper entitled “Are you living in a computer simulation?” (Bostrom, 2003), Nick Bostrom raises the question of whether our current experience in the world and of ourselves might actually be a simulation created by a future more highly advanced version of ourselves (or even a non-human species simulating other lifeforms).
There are some prominent figures that regard it as a strong possibility such as Bostrom himself, physicist David Chalmers (Falk, 2022), the infamous Elon Musk (Thompson, 2016) and others.
Bostrom suggests three possibilities.
- Humans will go extinct before reaching a highly advanced stage of development that could produce true simulations of reality.
- Humans will evolve to the highest levels but have no real interest in simulating reality or their past.
- We currently live in a simulation produced by highly advanced beings with access to astronomical computing power.
Well whether we go extinct or not before reaching a highly advanced stage is still up in the air but we sure do love to simulate our reality as evidenced by the boom in both AI and VR/AR technologies.
It is conceivable with AI systems, quantum computing and other technologies that in the relatively near future we could have very convincing artificial realities.
Limitations
Simulation theory is not widely or very highly regarded among most physicists because it is not really testable. There is no way to know which of the three points above is actually the case if any.
However it is entirely plausible that in the future we will be able to simulate worlds if not universes as the technology expands beyond its current levels. We can already do this to a limited degree and full immersion virtual reality is likely only a few years or decades away.
The most significant limitation of this theory and really most other theories that try to define reality is a lack of understanding of consciousness. We do not have a very good understanding of consciousness from a scientific point of view. There is a great deal of disagreement as to what it is and whether it is just an emergent property of complex biology or an independent phenomenon in and of itself.
An understanding of consciousness is however critical in simulation theory because we feel that we are conscious or self aware and have subjective experience. This is not something we can currently simulate or reproduce in AI systems. Yet if this is indeed a simulation then consciousness must be a property inherent to any understanding of reality. Otherwise how can a simulated person “feel” conscious or self aware?
Bostrom (2003) theorizes that mental states can be projected onto any medium whether that medium be biological such as the human brain or technological such as an artificial intelligence. This would allow any mental state to be simulated.
But what about consciousness?
Consciousness
This is where those old spiritual traditions can help us. I’m going to focus on Indian spirituality particularly Advaita Vedanta or non-duality which I’m most familiar with.
Vedanta which is based on the ancient Indian texts of the Upanishads offers a profound understanding of consciousness, reality and the nature of ourselves. Advaita Vedanta in particular sees reality as a singular undifferentiated consciousness which all manifest form appears within and depends upon for its existence.
Consciousness or reality is often described with the term — Sat Chit Ananda. This can be translated as Being-Consciousness-Bliss or alternatively Existence-Awareness-Peace.
The first term Sat refers to the most basic aspect of reality namely existence. This is equated with Being. Consciousness first and foremost simply exists. It is not “something” that exists it is existence itself.
The second term Chit means that reality not only exists but is conscious or aware. Not aware ‘of anything’ but rather awareness itself.
The third term Ananda signifies that reality exists and is aware or conscious but is also of the nature of peace or bliss. It is peace because it is completely independent, self existent, eternal and unmanifest devoid of anything that could disturb the absolute peace of being.
In this view, the worldly reality we experience is in truth nothing but consciousness. The forms we see are projections of our minds onto the substratum of this underlying reality. That is, our currently reality is imaginary or mental in nature.
The Mind or the real Virtual Reality
Here the mind is considered equal to thought, all manifest phenomena are based in thought. The only reason we can makes sense of our world at all is because we have the thoughts to describe and define it. Without those thoughts there would be no world, just consciousness.
A newborn baby has no ability to perceive the world. They cannot even differentiate themself from their mother. The newborn must be conditioned into making sense of the unknown experience of the world until it can participate in the consensus reality we take for granted. We must be taught to see the world as it appears, it is not natural to us from birth.
In this sense we do indeed live in a simulation. However not one created by technology but one created by our own minds. Whether it be a dream at night or what we call the waking state we live in a self created world which no one else has access to.
Our individual dream worlds overlap to a degree allowing us to interact in a consensus reality but no one can ever access the full subjective experience of another because that subjective experience which we take to be real is unique to our perspective (our identity, conditioning, physical and emotional state, beliefs and experience).
The way we conceive of reality is highly problematic because if we take our mind created subjective experience to be objectively real we immediately come into conflict with others as their experiences differ significantly from our own.
Further we suffer greatly from this way of seeing reality because we become attached to or have aversion to the things in our dream world we take to be real. Most significantly our bodies.
However if we take our human experience to be a mind created simulation and begin to have some experience of ourselves as consciousness it is a whole new ball game. We can then become grounded in a more persistent and stable identity which is just being or awareness.
The human experience is then taken less seriously removing the dense suffering that plagues humanity at present. In taking the dream to be just that, a dream, we can be more playful and light hearted grounded in the deepest aspect of ourselves which is inseparable from reality.
In this sense there is no outside world, just infinite consciousness/existence/awareness which is what we truly are. All the experiences, the dreams and imaginations are just like images on a screen that come and go in the eternal being.
This results in incredible joy and freedom. The freedom that knowing reality offers to all beings. In not taking ourselves or our world so seriously we unlock the potential of creation which allows us to be the beautiful and unique expression we were meant to be………….
References
Bostrom, N. (2003). Are you living in a computer simulation? The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00309
Falk, D. (2022, January 26). The simulated world according to David Chalmers. Nautilus. https://nautil.us/the-simulated-world-according-to-david-chalmers-238417/
Thompson, D. (2016, June 2). Elon Musk says there’s a ‘one in billions’ chance reality is not a simulation. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q854v/elon-musk-simulated-universe-hypothesis
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