Elliot Bonner - May 5, 2021 - Tufts University
Simulation Theory is the idea that we all could be beings in a computer simulation of reality created by a society with far more advanced technology. Many people intuitively believe it could shatter all our beliefs about the world. However, I argue that it does not.
To illustrate how a simulated world might work, see the diagram below:
We think of our reality as made up of high level objects, like people and chairs, made up of lower level pieces, like cells and molecules. This is the first column in the diagram. However, if we were to be living in a simulation, we don't know what level the simulation would work at. It could simulate people and other high level objects directly, only simulating concepts like individual cells when required (for example, because somebody looked in a microscope). This is the second column in the diagram above. Alternatively, the computer could be simulating individual atoms accurately enough for concepts like cells to work properly. This would require greater computing resources, but is theoretically possible. This is the third column above. These are just two possibilities; the simulation could work at any level or even some sort of hybrid.
As David Chalmers argues in The Matrix as Metaphysics, it does not. We only interact with the world in terms of high level objects (generally speaking). The fact that our world is actually made of protons, neutrons, and electrons doesn't really affect us, so why would living in a simulation? Despite many people's first impressions, simulation theory does not destroy the idea of our world because, in some sense, our world is real and really exists regardless of whether it is made of quarks or bits. Our senses would not be wrong if we were living in a simulation since they would be accurately showing us our world.
We can't know whether we are in a simulation. A key distinction here is between simply not knowing, and knowing for certain we can never know. The latter is true in this case. This is true because if we were in a simulation, the simulation would control everything we perceive so. We can only perceive our world, so we cannot compare to "true" reality. In addition, if we were to be in a simulation, the creators could decide they wanted to hide any "glitches" by modifying our memories. We have no way of knowing whether they would do this, but we cannot rule out the possibility. Another problem is the fact that we have no idea what the "true" laws of nature are. This means that even in the case of a blatant problem with the simulation, we could not rule out the possibility that the laws of nature we came up with failed to account for some case.
While simulation theory might not affect our day to day lives, knowing one way or another might have philosophical consequences, since it would tell us something about the core nature of our world. However, the fact that we can be certain we will never know changes this. If we can't know whether we are living in a simulation, we can't make assumptions based on that idea. Even if we are not living in a simulation, we will always have some level of uncertainty about the low level nature of our world (we know about some subatomic particles, but at some level something has to be assumed to just exist). Another interesting note is that some physicists have proposed that we could be living in a multiverse where what we can see as the cosmos is just one bubble among many. While this may not seem related to simulation theory, it demonstrates that there could be other universes out there regardless of whether we are in a simulation. Therefore, simulation theory has negligible consequences even philosophically because we can never draw conclusions from it.
While simulation theory seems like a major change in how we look at the world, it turns out to just be one uncertainty among many. Since it just adds more uncertainty, it ends up not affecting our perception of the world even philosophically.