I had a disturbing idea a few days ago. Whether I was firmly on the ground during its conception, I leave upon the reader to judge. It made me so uneasy that I consoled myself off of the one major limitation which could prevent its fruition, until the next day when something so utterly insane was revealed that it removed said limitation almost entirely.
The f**k are you talking about Kaushik, I hear you say? Come, lets fast forward to a distant, distant future...
Assuming, humanity has survived all this time, and our current trend of exponential growth in computation power continues, we must have sufficient technology to run a simulation of reality itself, but a million times faster. Not everything in our universe needs to be present in the simulation, but it must be comprehensive enough to support life.
Assume this has happened. We have created a simulated universe that contains life. Now fast forward until they are as technologically advanced as us.
Can you imagine what they might do?
Will they not at some point end up creating a simulated child universe within their own?
A recursive pattern emerges. Like a rabbit digging a hole, the creation of child universes continues to an infinite depth.
According to the theory above,
- No living being within a simulation is aware they are in a simulation.
- There must be an original base reality, the first (which is what you think this is).
- The recursion only stops when some simulation down the line realises they are in a simulation and doesn't create another within them.
Still with me? Good. Now comes the scary part.
Assume that 3. happens very far down the line, which makes the number of possible realities very very large. Therefore if a being (like you) were to be assigned randomly to any reality, then the probability of you being in the original base reality is VERY very very small.
In simple english, it is very VERY likely that we are in a simulation.
At first I tried to console myself with 3., thinking maybe civilizations would make it illegal to make such simulations and since the masses won't have access to such computation power or might go extinct, there might be realities where a child is never simulated, increasing the odds of us being in the base reality (because number of overall realities is smaller).
Then Microsoft dropped a bomb which I honestly didnt expect to see for a few decades. 5 years ago on April 18 2020 (how the f**k is that 5 years ago), in my first blog I predicted that quantum computing will be the way towards true AI, I was thinking small. Yesterday Microsoft told us that they invented a new state of matter to make a quantum chip called Majorana 1 that could outperform the entire computational power of our universe, combined.
With this sort of power available to the masses, we will be generating realities in no time. Its not a question of a few dozen centuries anymore, but possibly within this very century. And since literally only one out of our billions and billions of inhabitants needs to make a simulation for the chain to continue, point 3. will never happen. The recursion will never stop. And if there are an infinite number of realities, then the chance of us being in the original reality is ZERO.
We are in a simulation.