Simulation Theory

Category Error

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Simulation Theory, the idea our entire existence is part of a simulation, that we are just code running on some more advanced civilization’s supercomputer has come up in conversations of late. I’m writing to say it’s not just wrong, but bullshit. A category error, at best, and cover for a nefarious agenda at worst.

The first problem with Simulation Theory is unless there’s some way to get outside the simulation, to access base reality, so to speak, the theory has no meaning. It’s just a semantic game.

Consider for example the theory (one I came up with on my walk back from the track) that you are actually a sleeping elephant dreaming of this human life. You are sleeping peacefully under a quiet grove of trees, and you won’t wake into elephant consciousness for another four hours when the sun rises. Moreover, the pace of your dream is glacial — you will experience tens of thousands of human incarnations, full lifetimes, before daybreak. You will not wake up before then as your elephant self.

Maybe this theory is true, maybe it’s not, there’s no way to know. Anything that could possibly happen in this lifetime would not invalidate it. When there is nothing that could possibly falsify a theory, it’s neither true nor false, but meaningless. Elephant Dream and Simulation Theory are similar in this respect. You might as well call them The Universe. It’s just substituting one word-concept for another to describe an inaccessible structure containing all of reality.

Now some proponents of Simulation Theory posit a base reality beyond our simulation, namely that of the simulators. But there are two problems with that: (1) If you can’t access it because you’re just code within their closed system, you are stuck back at Elephant Dream; and (2) Even if you could somehow figure this out and access the “reality” of the simulators, why would you assume they too were not a simulation of some even yet more advanced civilization?

If they could simulate us, why couldn’t someone else simulate them? Why would their reality be any more real than ours for the exact same reasons? There could conceivably be an infinite regress of simulations within simulations, and even worse it could turn out to be circular, i.e., we will one day create a simulation that becomes the “base” simulation for all the simulations all the way down, eventually including our own.

So not being able to falsify any simulators’ reality, n-simulations deep, you are back to Elephant Dream. The elephant when he awakes similarly could himself be the dream of a person, who is the dream of another elephant ad infinitum. These are just empty words that don’t describe or affect the content of your “reality.”

(As an aside I like the infinite circular loop simulation theory as a short-circuit to the false logic it purports. It reminds me of that scene in Animal House where the students get high with Donald Sutherland (their professor.) When they opine his new book must be amazing, he says, “piece of shit” and they talk about how each atom in their hands could be an entire universe, and our entire universe might be an atom in the hand of some giant being. I always thought this could also be an infinite regress of universes as atoms in yet larger universes, and also circular wherein our universe could actually reside in one of the atoms in our own hand.)

These thought experiments reveal category errors in that they purport to describe something that’s outside the range of describability. To describe something is to distinguish it from the things that it is not, so to describe everything is the same as describing nothing in particular. You cannot describe the totality of reality any better than you can its absence. It’s like imagining how it is to be dead.

. . .

What I wrote above is the most generous interpretation of Simulation Theory, but at worst it’s actually being pushed to further an agenda. Just as a “science-based” materialism (everything is atoms) underpinned communist ideology where material resources were the only thing, and their equitable distribution at all costs the moral imperative, a code-based reality supports its own distorted, dark worldview.

If we are merely code in a simulation, then humans have no special claim to individual rights and resources any more than artificially intelligent robots. It’s only a small step from there to trans-humanism, utilitarianism and a technocratic state that subverts the principle of the individual being an end in himself.

The category error, in this view, is a convenient one — it removes the obstacles for the power-mad autists into quite literally playing God.

. . .

But back to the original inquiry: If Simulation Theory is no better than Elephant Dream, how can people hope to understand their reality? Are we stuck simply pushing back the impenetrable wall of truth via incremental scientific advances, doomed never to connect to the ultimate ground of our existence?

I think not. For the same reasons Simulation Theory fails, all of our theories will ultimately fail, and the best we can do is create better descriptions and explanations about particular phenomena that occur within our observational range.

But just because our logical minds can never reach beyond that expandable but necessarily limited spectrum, doesn’t mean it’s off limits. The problem is that to know consciousness itself, i.e., the base reality, outside of thought concepts like “code” or “atoms” one must be consciousness, not grasp at the perceptible phenomena within it.

That’s why religions emphasize faith, or in some cases, doubt. Trust in God, or doubting everything else that would impede you, is the path to that level of understanding. Logical explanations like Simulation Theory then are at best a misunderstanding to keep the deepest questions at bay, at worst a justification for unholy schemes at the heart of which is simply a will to power.