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We humans are unable to experience the true nature of the universe, unfiltered. Our senses and brains can only process a fraction of the world. So we have to use concepts and tools, to learn about the true nature of reality Technological progress not only widened our knowledge about the universe, it also made us aware of unsettling possibilities. In the future, it might become possible to simulate entire universes. But if this is an option, how can we know that it's not already happened? What if we are not creators, but creations? Is it possible that we are not real, and we don't even know it? If our current understanding of physics is correct, Then, it's impossible to simulate the whole universe, with its trillions and trillions of things. But we don't actually need to, anyway. We only need enough universe to fool the inhabitants of our simulation, into thinking that they're real. Who needs billions of galaxies? We only need the space our subjects are allowed to explore. The vast universe could just be a flat projection, and they would have no way to know. What about small things like cells or bacteria? We don't really need them. When you use a microscope, what you see could be instantly created. Same with atoms the chair you're sitting on right now does not need to be simulated with quadrillions of atoms. We just need the outermost layer of it, it might be empty inside, until you decide to break it open. Your body might feel like it's filled with bubbly things, but it might be empty, until you open it. The minimum requirement for our simulation, is only the consciousness of our virtual humans. Our subjects just need to think the simulation is real. Okay, so are we being simulated? Well, maybe, but there are a few conditions that need to be met. Obviously, we have no authority over this topic, so please take everything we say with a grain of salt. Based on a modified version of the original simulation argument by Nick Bostrom, we have five assumptions for you. If they're true, you dear viewer are living in a simulation. Assumption one, it's possible to simulate consciousness Nobody knows what consciousness is. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you could generate consciousness by simulating a brain. Brains are pretty complex. If you count every interaction between synapses as one operation, your brain runs at about ten to the power of seventeen, for one hundred million billion operations, per second. Let's generously assume we need ten to the power of twenty operations, to simulate one second of human consciousness. But, we don't want to simulate just one human... We want to simulate all of human history at once, so we can skip around. Let's say we want to simulate two hundred billion humans, with an average life span of fifty years. One year has thirty million seconds times fifty years times two hundred billion humans times ten to the power of twenty operations. So we need a computer able to handle million, trillion, trillion, trillion operations per second. More operations than there are stars in the observable universe. The computer like this is just impossible. Except, maybe it isn't. Assumption two, technological progress will not stop anytime soon. If we assume that technological progress continues in a similar fashion as it has so far, then there might be galaxy spanning civilizations, with unlimited computer power at some point. Beings on a technology level so advanced, that we could barely distinguish them from god's. A computer that can handle a million trillion, trillion, trillion operations is serious business, but there are actually concepts for computers, which could handle this. The Matrioshka Brain, is the theoretical megastructure, made up of billions of parts orbiting a star, feeding on its radiation. A computer of this scale, would have enough power to simulate many thousands, if not millions of humanities, at the same time. Other technologies, like high-end future quantum computers might lower the size drastically, so it might be possible to do this with a structure the size of a large city, or even smaller. But, only if there's still someone around to build the computer. Assumption three, advanced civilizations don't destroy themselves. If there is a point at which all civilizations destroyed themselves, this whole discussion ends here. Looking into space, you'd expect to universe filled, with millions of alien civilizations, but we see nobody. the reason for this might be, Great Filters. Great Filters are barriers life has to overcome, like nuclear war, asteroids, climate change or a black hole generator. If life is inherently self-destructive, then there are no simulations. We explain this in more detail, in our Fermi Paradox video. Assumption four, super advanced civilizations, want to run simulations. When we speak of posthuman civilizations, we don't know what we're dealing with To think we know what beings as powerful as gods want, is pretty arrogant. Imagine the smartest ant on earth living next to an amusement park, It's curious about what humans are up to, so you try to explain. Unfortunately, the ant just doesn't understand. The concept of rollercoasters and standing in lines and holidays and fun, doesn't make sense to an ant living an ant life. It's the same with us and a posthuman being, compared to them, we are ants. Running simulations for fun or science, might be an absurdly stupid idea to them. But, if they do want to run simulations for whatever reasons and assumptions one, two, three are true too, then the chances are not zero that you are living inside a simulation. Assumption five, if there are a lot of simulations, you are probably inside a simulation. if there are simulated civilizations, It's likely that there are a lot of them. After all, we assume that post human beings have access to practically unlimited computing power. So if they run simulations, it would be convenient to run millions or even billions of them. If there are billions of simulated universes, there are probably trillions and trillions of simulated conscious beings. which would mean that the vast majority of all conscious beings that will ever have existed, are simulated. So, for every conscious being made of flesh, a billion simulated ones exists. Since we have no way of knowing if we are simulated or not, in this case, the chances of you being one of the nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine simulated ones, are pretty high. So, what you consider reality, might not be real at all You really might be... simulated. All of this is based on a lot of assumptions that we can't really test right now So many scientists disagree with this whole thought experiment. So don't burn your house down to test if there will be glitches. If you are simulated, not that much changes for you you might be on a small planet speeding through eternal nothingness, or a simulation inside a computer. your existence does not become more or less scary and bizarre. All we can hope to do is try to live good lives, and have a good time. And hope that if we actually are simulations in a supercomputer, nobody trips over the power cable. Oh, oh, oh no, I think I just unplugged the simulation But what if that doesn't matter, what if we are in one right now? What if you are simulated? Jake, over at Vsauce3 is looking into that. Click here to watch his video and subscribe to his channel. Why are you still here? go over to Vsauce3 watch the video and subscribe, we promise, it's worth your time...


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Vsauce, I’m Jake and we are living in a simulation. Or at least that’s what the simulation hypothesis proposes. That if a civilization, a posthuman civilization, were to become significantly technologically advanced than we would most likely be a simulated. There are two worlds, two realities. The primary world which is where the simulation is being run and the secondary world, the simulated universe we occupy which to us, is the only one. And when creating this world, there are three steps to successfully making the user believe it to be real: Immersion, Absorption, and Saturation. Think about video games like Age of Empires, Civilization, The Sims. They’re about recreating or mimicking reality..reliving past events or creating new ones. And in 20 years we went from games looking like this to this. As visuals advance, as the experiences become more immersive and digital characters start reacting seemingly on their own, our understanding of what is real and what isn’t starts to blur. Now characters in video games are bound by a set of rules, a set of defining laws. A sim can’t walk through a solid wall, even though it isn’t actually solid it is just lines of code that dictate what is or is not solid but it is called a wall. Now think of our own world. This is a collection of atoms that together form an object that we call a wall. It’s been atomically programmed to form a specific shape. We are left with something that looks like, that feels like a wall. We don’t see the microscopic pieces that build it, just like we don’t see the code in a game. We just expect it to act a certain way because of how our world is designed. We trust that it is made of something physical, not just a programmed artificial boundary. When someone comes to your house, how do they get there? Do you see them leave, do you see them on their drive? They leave their home, time passes, and there they are. It’s World Gestalt, a structure or configuration of details which together implies the existence of a world, and causes the audience to fill in the missing pieces of that world based on details given. If I walk off frame left you’d imagine I’d come back around. But if I come back from somewhere unexpected, your perception has been minutely fractured. It’s that World Gestalt, that assumption of how things should be that allows a simulated reality to function. Not everything needs to be rendered, needs to exist simultaneously for every user in the simulation. Maybe the reason the universe is expanding and growing, is that it hasn’t finished loading yet. Think of VR. If you are looking in front of you, what is behind you isn’t necessarily rendered, it hasn’t become real. It isn’t until you turn your head that it comes into existence and what was just in front of you, is now gone. So the question becomes, how do you know anything exists when you’re not looking at it? It’s the technological version of Solipsism. The idea that only your own mind is certain to exist. Everything outside of this frame, the person animating it, the office they are in, the entire world around them, including you, might not exist outside of my own mind. So, let’s say we are in a simulation...why would someone or something do it to this scale in the first place? One of the reasons to run a massive simulation like this is proposed by philosophy professor Nick Bostrom in his paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” He states that it could be an ancestor simulation. A civilization wanting to see what those before them had done. Like a history book but one that is being acted out instead of being read. Or we could just be characters in an incredibly advanced video game. In our Simuverse we would be The Sims, and in this universe we even get to play our own very rudimentary version of simulation games on computers and consoles, thinking we are in control. And in video games, graphics improve, they get better with our technology. But they don’t need to be perfect. With Virtual Reality, we know what we are looking at isn’t real but to our senses to our mind it is and we react accordingly. So in this version we live in, it seems real to us because this is all we have known, but to those that programmed this simuverse, reality could be much different. It is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato suggests that you have prisoners chained in a cave from birth, not able to look at each other or anywhere besides directly in front them at a wall. All they see are shadows projected onto the wall by a fire they’ve never seen behind them. This is all they have known so to them, the shadows are reality and the voices they hear are from the shadows, as well. Since they have never experienced anything else, never seen a real person, had a human interaction, they have no understanding of the outside world, or the world at all. And if a prisoner were to escape and leave the cave, they would be so frightened and confused by what they saw that they would choose to come back to the comfort of their cave, of their reality. And just like the prisoners in the cave, what we see in front of us we believe to be true, believe to be real. The difficulty in deciding if what we are in right now is real life or simulated life is what NYU professor David Chalmers said that, “any evidence that we get could be simulated.” And there is one important distinction to make. We are not in a virtual world, a world that exists independent of us actually being it. In that scenario we are players in a game and there is a flesh and blood version of us somewhere controlling this. That is not the case with this idea. We are in a simulated world which means we are not users, we are not players, we are simulated as well. As Phlip K. Dick said: Fake realities will create fake humans. So why would anybody think that the universe is simulated? Actually, we have five assumptions for you, if they are correct, then you, dear viewer, are simulated. So follow me over to a different reality on Kurzgesagt and, as always, thanks for watching.