Ignorance is Bliss
Living a Lie: Why Should We Care?
A. W. J. Stock
OFTEN A FACETIOUS THOUGHT, akin to believing in a flat earth, or rather a real existential crisis we’ve all pondered once before, I’m sure it has come to everyone’s attention the (everyday increasing) chance that we are living in a simulation. I mean, why wouldn’t we be worried? Over the past 30 years we’ve watched video games go from 64-bit resolution with two controls, to graphics that are indistinguishable from reality. Less than 20 years ago, the first iPhone was released, and now everyone walks around with more computing power in their pocket than was used to put man on the moon. Even two years ago, ChatGPT was released, the most impressive and innovative AI that humanity has seen to date.
The simulation hypothesis proposes that what sentient beings experience as the world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which humans themselves are constructed.
Depending on where you go, and who you ask, the chances of this theory being a reality vary immensely. Nick Bostrom, the creator of the simulation hypothesis, estimates a 1-in-3 chance that we are simulated. David Chalmers, one of the world’s most famous philosophers, believes it is 25%. Even Elon Musk stated that there is a “one in a billion chance that this is base reality.” In other words, Musk believes that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation – quite scary coming from the founder of Neuralink and one of the richest men in the world.
But I’m not trying to scare you into an existential crisis. Rather, I’m proposing that perhaps, if we are in a simulation, it wouldn’t be as bad as it seems. In fact, it wouldn’t matter at all.
Ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuang Zhou, created the parable of the butterfly to serve as an articulation of the challenges toward definitions of reality vs illusion. The story tells that Zhuang Zhou once dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and fluttering around, happy, and doing as he pleased. As a butterfly, he did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly, he awoke and found he was Zhuang Zhou, solid and unmistakably human. But then he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.
What’s interesting about this parable is the fact that Zhuang Zhou only comes to this abrupt realisation of his true nature when he wakes. Before he wakes, he is steadfastly a butterfly. Everything he experienced as a butterfly seemed real, and until he woke, it practically was real, as he had no idea otherwise.
So, there’s a chance that the pain, the emotion, the relationships we feel every day in our lives could be artificial. It could all be part of some grand narrative that tells how to feel and how to act. But at the end of the day, it is still real to us, whether or not we know if we are real.
