On Simulations and Simple Minds.

Today has been a bad one on several fronts. I suppose it had to be in order to balance yesterday’s good one, because that’s how life is. And talking of how life is, I came across an interesting theory last night. I daresay many people will have encountered it already and I’m just running late as usual, but I’ll offer it for the sake of those who haven’t.

When computer games were first invented they were simple affairs consisting of symbols which moved around the screen at the will of the gamer. Since then they have become very much more sophisticated constructions in which real-looking characters operate within a real-looking environment, but they’re still only simulations.

It is now being speculated that with the development of AI, the characters in these simulations will eventually develop a level of sentience which will grow into advanced intelligence as we understand the term. And over a long period of time – maybe even billions of years – they will reach the point where they will be able to create further simulations of their own. The first generation of simulation dwellers will, of course, be convinced that their version of reality is the true one, and the alternative version they’ve created is an artificial one which only ‘exists’ within a machine.

I’m sure it must be obvious where this is going. How do we know that our version of reality is the true one, and that we’re not just one of many progressive simulations? Several spiritual traditions have been telling us for thousands of years that the reality in which we think we’re living is actually an illusion. How do we know they were wrong?

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So, let’s go back to the idea that this world really is real, and consider the question of tonight’s celebration in Red Square, Moscow following Putin’s declaration of annexation. It seems to have been a packed event with thousands of people joyously waving Russian flags and chanting ‘Russia! Russia!’ (Or whatever the Russian word for Russia is.)

This is interesting because I wonder what we should make of it. My instinct suggests that either Putin managed to engineer the whole thing in order to dupe the world into thinking he’s hugely popular with the Russian people, or that a large majority of Russians really are as brutal and bestial as western propaganda told us they were during the Cold War. Off hand I can’t think of any other realistic explanation (except, perhaps, that it’s a simple case of mass hysteria driven by nationalistic stupidity), so I think I’ll take refuge in the possibility that life really is just an illusion after all.