The Simulation Hypothesis Says Nothing About Objective Reality
Good puzzle. Bad explanation.
In a recent episode of the Code with Jason podcast, Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmers, expressed doubts about the existence of objective reality.
To argue this notion, Dave invoked the simulation hypothesis.
Do we know if we’re living in a simulation or not? No, so if you were to say no, that’s probably the case that we can’t tell, and there are some people that believe it’s ridiculously likely that we are. But if we can’t tell, then what happens to your objective reality? Is the objective reality the rules of physics or is it the programming that some 13-year-old wrote in their bedroom that makes you you?
I don’t find this line of reasoning convincing. At all.
The fact that we cannot say for certain we’re not living in a simulation does not give credence to the so-called hypothesis. Quite the opposite. Asserting that the simulation idea is not falsifiable immediately downgrades it to an appeal to the supernatural.
That some people believe it’s “ridiculously likely” that we are in a simulation is inconsequential. The laws of nature do not depend on people believing in them.
And then there’s the image of the 13-year-old simulation programmer.
From within the simulation, is objective reality the simulation itself, or is it the reality of the kid’s bedroom?
The laws of physics in the bedroom affect the hardware running the simulation and have an effect—direct or indirect—on the simulation software, too. Therefore, the one and only objective reality is the reality of the kid’s bedroom.
This continues to apply even if the reality of the 13-year-old is itself a simulation, this time devised by some 40-year-old in their research lab, who is also in a simulation, and so on. We cannot have an infinite regress of simulations all the way down. Eventually, we’ll reach the bottom: the objective reality that runs the root of all the simulations in the stack.
Leaving implementation details aside, the core reason I don’t find this line of reasoning convincing is that the simulation hypothesis is not a true hypothesis. It makes no measurable predictions. It doesn’t solve a problem. It doesn’t explain something in the world that we cannot otherwise explain. As such, it’s merely a story, a fairy tale.
Stories like this can be good food for thought. But they are not explanations.
Maybe one day we’ll run into a problem that can only be explained in the context of reality being a simulation. Until then, the simulation idea will only serve as good material for science fiction.
Coda: What makes you you?
Dave’s question “Is the objective reality the rules of physics or is it the programming that some 13-year-old wrote in their bedroom that makes you you?” is twofold. First, which reality is the objective one. Second, what makes you you.
The post answered which reality is the objective one in the context of a simulation. But what about the second part?
That’s a distinct question, orthogonal to the existence of a simulation. I have neither answers nor criticism.
All I have is a guess. What makes us us must exist within the laws of nature, but its explanation is above them.
We can explain the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology that regulate our bodies, brains, and the world we interact with, but that is not enough. We emerge from those laws and must obey them, but we are more than a complicated equation. As with any emergent phenomenon, our explanation will require moving to the next level of abstraction.
What that level is, I don’t know. But if I were to look for it, I wouldn’t start with logic puzzles about simulations.