The idea that we might be living in a simulation has gained newfound traction in recent years, even though its roots can be traced back all the way to Plato’s cave. What I find most fascinating about the topic is taking the gaming analogy further and thinking about the various depths of this possible digital deception.
Parallels between video games and the possibility of us living in a simulation are endless. The rapid advancement from the likes of Pong to today’s immersive virtual worlds and the abundance of generated content make the trajectory clear. We will soon have the capability to run entire universes in self-contained environments.
Whether what we perceive as reality is a simulation is impossible to verify. The possible degrees of complexity of such constructed worlds is still an intriguing thought experiment nonetheless. To conserve resources, video games only render what you’re actively engaged with. Yet, making background scenes actually play out could make a game more entertaining or an experiment more accurate.
I differentiate four distinct levels of simulation, based on the extent to which they consume resources for seemingly marginal returns. These might as well be just major releases of the same product. The initial level could be closer than most of us might dare to believe, while the later versions could require us to build a Dyson sphere to provide the required computational power.
v1: Me, myself and I
When we talk about being alone in the universe, we usually refer to our civilisation being the only one. Yet, the simulation that is arguably the easiest to implement is a solipsist one. I am the only one having consciousness and reality is limited to my experiences. Everyone I meet is but an advanced hologram, no place beyond the ones I’ve visited exists. Places I haven’t seen yet are not even loaded.
Shanghai only comes to existence if and when I set foot there. The simulation hastily constructs it for me, complete with fabricated history and artificial inhabitants. Whether it matches my expectations is solely based on how high I set the “culture shock” variable when launching the game.
The whole world is my stage, the rules are unclear and I’m not even sure what difficulty setting I’m on. There needs to be a few cheat codes.
v2: Only You
In the next evolution of the simulation, the engine is sophisticated enough to grant some consciousness to characters interacting with the player. There’s still only one player, but now it’s you. While it could be anyone I’ve ever interacted with, assuming the the simulation aims to optimise its resources, the most likely candidate is you. Yes, you, reading these words right now.
In this scenario, you exist and are conscious, while I and all other individuals you've ever encountered are also granted something we perceive as consciousness. Still, our entire reality is contingent upon your presence. What a weird dependence.
My level of consciousness might be significantly limited compared to yours, depending on your configuration. The actual person watching or controlling you might have some old device running our meaningless, transient world — and that’s why I feel so dumb all the time.
v3: Butterfly Effect
The identity of the “true” player remains unknown to us. Most likely it’s not me or you. Resources in the original world are virtually limitless and everyone having a consciousness introduces countless variations to the simulation.
For all we know, our entire existence could serve a purpose we can’t fathom. It could all be about a widowed grandmother reliving memories in 2184 Vietnam, or just background scenes for a child’s playtime in future Lagos.
In this context, we are essentially sophisticated decoration — robots with consciousness, albeit a strange one: we are oblivious to our constraints, and thus eternally trapped in illusions of overcoming our otherwise immutable boundaries.
v4: Professor Mahavishnu
In Hindu cosmology, Mahavishnu, the supreme form of Vishnu, reclines on the Causal Ocean. With each breath, universes bubble out and dissolve back into his pores. Sigh. A single exhalation—and our entire cosmos, with all its vastness and complexity, springs into being. An inhalation—and everything we know or could ever comprehend fades from existence.
Through a cyberpunk lens, what we perceive as spirituality might be nothing more than data leaking through the simulation's cracks. Easter eggs, an engineer’s elaborate jokes at our expense, or a clever spin on time travel. Future engineers seed information about their world into a simulation of the past, fast-forward through centuries of simulated time, then harvest and implement our "discoveries" in their real world.
Mahavishnu then is no longer a deity, but head of a research lab on Europa, orbiting Jupiter. There’s no player, we are just one of millions of instance of a universe prototype. They just managed to push the execution time of a universe down to 100 femtoseconds. The goal? Discovering whether adjusting a few parameters, making some minute adjustments could yield a solution to save Earth.
There’s no way to tell
We might be in the root world, or it could revolve around me, you or someone unknown to us. Perhaps we're merely an experiment ran by the last survivors of our race. The common thread is that from my perspective, I maintain consciousness. That is, I have no way to tell which scenario is most plausible.
If full scale simulations are indeed possible, the probability of this one being the “real” world are ridiculously low. In that case, we don’t have much of anything resembling free will.
Yet, given a choice from the above options, I’m certain of only one thing: I hope it’s not the first one. I hope you exist.