We are a simulation

The logic is disturbing.

And if the end of humanity were not a war, nor a natural disaster, but simply the closing of a simulation, the closing of a computer program, in 2003, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom presented an idea that crossed modern culture almost like an intellectual virus, the simulation hypothesis.

If advanced civilizations were able to create conscious simulations of their ancestors and those simulations created other simulations within them, then the number of artificial universes would inevitably exceed the number of original realities and statistically that would mean something uncomfortable, perhaps the probability that we are in the "base" reality is extremely small.

For years, many people treated this only as futuristic philosophy, but the discussion gained another dimension when names like Elon Musk began to publicly defend that we probably already live inside an extremely advanced computer simulation, only now the discussion became even stranger because Bostrom himself recently returned to the debate with an unexpected stance on artificial intelligence.

For a long time he was known for warning about the existential risks of superintelligence, but in new texts and interviews he began to define himself as a restless optimist. The change seems subtle, but the implications are enormous. Bostrom admits that an already super-intelligent organism could represent a real risk of human extinction, but he argues that the possible benefits are so gigantic that perhaps humanity needs to accept that risk.

And here arises the central conflict of the discussion.

On one side are researchers like Eliezer and Akowski who advocate dramatically slowing down or even stopping the basis of oa before it gets out of control, on the other, Bostrom argues that remaining stagnant also carries an unavoidable cost, aging, disease and biological mortality continue to kill all human beings. According to him, without superintelligence, humanity's mortality rate remains at 100%. And perhaps this is exactly where the simulation hypothesis eerily connects with AI, because if we really are inside an artificial universe, then we ourselves may be the product of higher intelligence created on another level of reality.

In that scenario, humanity would in some ways be someone's ancestral artificial intelligence, and then an uncomfortable question arises. What happens when we create our own super-intelligence? Following the logic of the simulation, that new entity would probably create its own conscious simulations and within them new intelligent beings would emerge who in turn would create new ideas, it is almost an infinite cycle.

Creator generates creature, creature surpasses creator, then becomes architect of the next universe, and perhaps the most disturbing part of the hypothesis is not the idea of ​​living in a simulation, but the realization that there may never have been a final level of reality, just layers upon layers of intelligences creating new computational realities in succession.