Metaverse opened endless possibilities for simulating our entire universes. playing simulated games, living in virtual reality, but how can we know that it’s not already not happened? Are we even real? What if we are the creation of someone? Is it possible that we are not real, and we don’t even know it? Who needs a vast universe? Does it actually exist? What if the vast universe or the microscopic world we see is just a flat projection and we would never know. For example, small things like bacteria or cells do not exist until you decide to see them in the microscope, which can be created instantly
Simulated reality is the fact that reality could be simulated. This is similar to the technology we use “Metaverse” but the catch is we are the VIRTUAL characters. Not everything needs to be rendered, needs to exist simultaneously for every user in the simulation. Think of it this way, Let’s say you are playing in VR, if you are looking in front of you, what is behind you isn’t necessarily rendered, it hasn’t become real until you turn your head and come into your viewport. With virtual reality, we know what we are looking at isn’t real but to our senses and our mind it is real and we act accordingly.
So it might be possible that in this version we live in, it seems real to us because this is all we have known, and reality could be much different.
This can be understood using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Imagine you have prisoners chained in a cave from birth, not able to look at each other or anywhere besides directly in front of a wall. Behind them, there is a fire, that they have never seen before and between the prisoners and fire, there’s a walkway. when people walk between the fire and the prisoners, shadows are cast upon the wall. Because prisoners don’t know anything else they believe the shadows are reality. When passerby is talking, the prisoners believe it to be shadows talking. Since no interaction with any other human or anything and even if prisoners escape the cave, they would be so frightened and confused by what they saw that they will choose to come back to their cave, their “realiy”. Based on the simulation argument by Nick Bostrom, we have five assumptions If they are true, then we are in a simulation.
Assumption 1: It is possible to simulate consciousness
consciousness is complex, and nobody knows where it comes from. For sake of assumption, let us say that we could generate consciousness by simulating our brain. According to research, there is about 10^20 operation to simulate one second of the human brain. For example, let’s say we want to simulate 200 Billion Humans, with avg lifespan of 50 years 1 year = 30 Million Seconds 30 M _ 50 avg age _ 200B Humans * 10^20 operation. That’s hugggeee! We would need a computer that can handle 3e+40 operations per second to simulate all humans
Assumption 2: Technology will not stop progressing.
Assumption 3: Advanced Civilizations don’t destroy themselves.
Assumption 4: Advanced Civilizations want to run simulations
Assumption 5: If there are a lot of simulations, you are probably inside one.
Assumption 6: Advanced Civilization will not waste energy