My rules for half-believing the universe is a simulation without becoming a lunatic

I think I'd been toying with the notion that the universe might be a simulation for a while before I heard it was actually a respectable idea and that some scientists, including Neil DeGrasse Tyson, think there's good evidence for it. It wasn't science that led me to toy with the possibility that the universe was a simulation; for me, it was something that emerged after a lifelong attempt to try to understand how the universe could have been created by a conscious force that wasn't evil, when so much in the universe seemed to be evil. 

Sometime last year, Amazon, probably using some kind of mind-reading algorithm, advertised to me the Kindle version of a book on the subject. It was The Simulation Hypothesis by Rizwan Virk. I guess I should have figured there was a reason why the book was only $3.99. It wasn't edited very well, and a lot of it was somewhat tiresome reiterations of material written by others, likely to pad the book into something long enough to be published. (The publisher, Bayview Books, seems to exist only to publish Virk's work so far.) Still, I don't think the author is lying about being an MIT computer scientist, and for me, who had never really read any of the scientific rationale behind the plausibility of a simulated universe, it was a decent introduction. I didn't really care for his paper-thin explanations of how the various religions of the world might have actually been talking about a simulated universe all along. That felt like hooey. But he presented the main arguments being put forward by scientists to support a simulation idea. The best two are:

1. Even as primitive as we humans still fundamentally are in our scientific advancement, we're not that far away from being able to create alternate realities that humans can't tell from the real world. And if we can do it, that means others can, too. It's an ability that would be ubiquitous, which suggests that it's very likely, just from a probability standpoint, that we are in a simulation. So are the programmers who created our simulation, and so on.
2. The universe displays properties that we would expect it to if it had been programmed, such as limits to how small (or "pixelated") space can be, as well as limits to how small a unit of time can exist. These limits help explain the answers to Zeno's paradoxes, but they also are what we'd expect if the universe had been set with parameters by a programmer. 

It's universes created solely to provide power for the spaceship battery of their creator all the way down. 

My own moral reasons

I'm glad to know that science doesn't think I'm an idiot for the things I more or less came up with on my own, but those aren't the main reasons I find a simulation-type understanding of existence to be appealing. Both the DeGrasse Tyson interview I linked above and the article from Scientific American concluded by saying that if we are living in simulation, there's nothing we can do about it, so it "might not make much difference." But to me, it makes a whole world of difference.

Unlike a lot of non-theists, I'm not certain there is no god. I'm about exactly 50/50 split on this. That 50/50 split changes day-to-day, but I think on the whole, its balancing point is at just about 51% no and 49% yes. Why not just no, like so many non-theists? Because it's just weird to me that anything exists at all. It's weird that we're here. It's weird that we know that we're here and that we are aware of the weirdness of it. And it's weird to think this weirdness just happens and that it might always have been happening. I understand that believing in God doesn't remove these problems. In fact, believing in God just makes the problem more confounding, because you've gone from the notion that the universe, which we know something about, has always been in a constant cycle of creation and destruction, to thinking that an unknown and unknowable being has always existed. That's why I'm an agnostic. It's a simpler kind of weirdness. 

It's not an altogether satisfying weirdness, though. A universe that just happens isn't especially satisfying. There's no reason to it, no point. An entity with a mind who made the universe, on the other hand, might indicate a point to all of this. The problem with believing in a god who made this universe, though, is that the universe is a fairly brutal place. Everything on our planet lives by killing and eating some other living thing. With plants, that's not an issue, because the plants are generally designed to be eaten, and many even need to be eaten in order to propagate. But everything else would probably prefer not to be eaten. Generally, the strong dominate the weak. Human history is full of a lot more people who lived unhappy and difficult lives than ones who've lived lives of ease and pleasure. So if I am to believe that someone designed this universe with a purpose in mind, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this someone is kind of an asshole. 

If the universe is a simulation, though, it might allow some wiggle room that would leave the creator(s) some slack. I say might, because it's still entirely possible that our simulation designer is either sadistic or merely indifferent to our plight, and that's why the universe is the way it is. There are, however, some possibilities about why this simulation exists that might make the suffering seem less cruel. I hasten to emphasize that these are all just possibilities, and I don't exactly hold to any of these things as a belief. These are ideas that make it easier for me to think both that the universe might have a purpose and that the ones who built it for that purpose might not be simply sitting back and paring their nails while the universe suffers. These possibilities are, in no particular order:

1) There is some higher plane of existence that has problems of its own, and this universe was necessary as research to help them solve that problem. Maybe a conflict-riddled universe, under specific conditions, helps others to observe the dynamics of conflict-riddled worlds in order to help solve their own conflicts. We'd be laboratory rats in this situation, of course, but at least if we knew we were lab rats who were helping cure the ills of some other plane, it might help make sense of our suffering. 

2) The creators have a sense of ethics about this experiment, and every sentient being who is in it was actually part of the design team, or at least they are members of the world in which the simulation was created. They have all agreed that, for the greater good of their world and what it might learn from this simulation, they will enter it and play the parts of sentient beings in our world. They either chose roles based on some criteria we can't guess at or the roles are given out randomly. Their memories of having existed outside the game are wiped when they come inside. Everyone knows when they enter the game that there is a chance of suffering, but they believe that when they come back out of the game, it will have produced some result that makes it worth it. This would help solve one of the things that has always seemed the most unfair to me--the fact that nobody who is here asked to be here. Possibly, once we are done with our roles, our memories will be uploaded to the servers of the designers to help analyze the data. 

3) Perhaps--very much modeling some religions--the creators have prepared some region of bliss for those who were part of the simulation. They recognized that the parameters they created for the world made it possible that sentient beings who suffer might arise, and to make up for this, they have prepared a place where everyone can go and enjoy an eternity of joy to compensate them for having participated in the simulation. Less appealingly, perhaps they, like the creators of Westworld, think that merely wiping the memories of participants at the end of the game is enough to satisfy their ethical requirements. 

What a simulation hypothesis does and doesn't change

As I mentioned above, there are some versions of a simulation theory that might not, in effect, be much different from what some religions have been telling us for a long time. Moreover, we're really not in a very different position from where we are with religion, because we're equally unable to know with certainty what the nature and goals of the creators are. We're equally stuck figuring out on our own what we should do with our time here.

When I was an evangelical, someone asked me once how I knew that the universe wasn't the dream of a god, like in Hinduism. I said that if this was true, we'd never be able to know it, so the only thing to do was to make the best choices we could based on what seemed to be real. That might still be the wisest advice when confronted with the simulation theory. 

Because we don't know what the purpose of the simulation is or what ethical rules, if any, the creators apply to it, we are still stuck with the existence of some of the worst possibilities. The programmers might be sadists. They might be indifferent. There's a very strong possibility we're here for the entertainment of our creators, since humans themselves have been creating stories that are, in a sense, their own little worlds for as long as we've been able to talk. Maybe life creating life that creates life is just what life does, and there's a nearly infinite regress of simulated worlds. Like in Calderon de la Barca's La Vida es Sueño, even the dreams in our world are themselves dreams. The point is that a simulation hypothesis, in some versions, might not be very reassuring. It all depends on what kind of simulation this is, and we don't know the answers to that. 

However, since at least some of the possible versions offer better answers than the ones religion has given to us, or more comforting answers than the ones a world that "just is" provide, I find even this possibility somewhat reassuring. 

My rules for not going crazy half-believing these things

1. Morality still matters. 

One possible difference between this and what most religions tell us is that since everyone who participated in the simulation would have contributed to the goal of its being staged, all would share equally in the reward. The creators needed Hitler as much as Mother Theresa for the experiment to work. Or, in the versions of a simulation that exist for the entertainment of the programmers, they might need villains and well as heroes. They wouldn't fault someone for having played a villain any more than we would fault an actor for having played a particularly wicked role. 

Believing the world is a simulation, then, might tempt some people to think that being good or bad are equally valid choices. Since nothing is real, there is no right or wrong. Those are just part of the illusion. 

To me, though, if the world is a simulation, and the simulation was done with any level of care (which, subjectively, it seems to me to have been), then everything in the simulation is there for a reason. Moral choices seem to be a central element of being a human being in this game. In fact, I more than half think of this simulation as part of a thought-experiment in morality by the programmers. Maybe ethics have always been a central part of human society by design. 

We don't know what view the programmers might ultimately take of ethical behavior, or whether they're likely to punish and reward particular conduct, but since it does seem that morality is a key part of what this whole experiment is about, we at least shouldn't be quick to act like it doesn't matter. 

(I realize that by writing that ethics is the point of the whole theatrical performance, that leaves open the question of why nearly all of the 13.4 billion years of the play that has gone on so far didn't, as far as we know, include beings capable of understanding moral choices. As I've said, none of these things are fully ensconced beliefs for me. They're more ideas that don't sound totally stupid and which maybe make life seem less pointless to me.)

2. Resist the urge to think suffering was done to entertain some god

Writers are often told to "kill their darlings." That is, in order to make a story interesting, something bad has to happen to someone. If we extrapolate this need we seem to have to throw bad things into a plot just to see what happens, we might think that the beings who programmed this world would have a tendency to do the same thing. We could end up thinking that every bad thing that happens to us is being done to further a plot in the very highly advanced Sims game of some coding kid in a higher dimension. 

Maybe it even makes sense of suffering a little bit to think like this, although the reasons for the suffering in this case would be enough to make one literally curse the gods. However, since we don't know the particulars of the simulation, it's equally possible that what's interesting to the designers isn't your individual suffering. At least, it's not interesting enough they'd program in every bad thing that happens to you. Rather, it's possible that what they find interesting is the world they created in which bad things can and often do happen. In that case, your suffering is only generally planned, not specifically. Nearly everyone will have bad things happen, according to the design of the universe, but there is no need to plot the lives of every participant in the machine down to that degree. 

In fact, all the evidence we have suggests that the designers of the universe are happy enough with the broad outline of what they created that they see no need to constantly interfere with it. The laws of physics do not get tinkered with. Early Christianity looked to miracles to prove it was true, but I think the lack of miracles is one reason I tend to think we have a deistic creator, one who set the rules and then left the experiment to run unhindered with. This means you neither need to fetishize your suffering nor feel you've been singled out by the creators. 

3. Treat it like it matters

In Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, a Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover goes insane. His insanity is a matter of "bad chemical and bad ideas." The ideas, in Hoover's case, were supplied by the writer Kilgore Trout, who convinced him that everybody on Earth was a robot except Hoover. Hoover became a solipsist, someone who believes that he is the only person who truly exists, the only one with free will. He believed all of the universe was a test set up exclusively for him by the Creator of the Universe.

Hoover eventually started attacking people in his dealership, believing thereby he was obtaining the approval of the Creator of the Universe. He did not care that he had hurt anyone, because he did not believe the people he was attacking were real people like him. 

I just realized there was a Breakfast of Champions movie and that Bruce Willis played Dwayne Hoover in it. 

Hoover's notion is a bit different from someone who believes the universe is a simulation, because in a simulation, we're all equally experiencing the big lie, but in Hoover's case, he believed that the big lie was all for him. The effect, though, might be the same. People who think we are living in a simulation could be tempted to act like Hoover. They might even try to act like Neo in The Matrix, always attempting to see beyond the simulated world into the real one. 

I suppose everyone is free to come to whatever conclusion seems best, but to me, that's not the conclusion I draw. If the universe is like a big video game, then there should be a lot of freedom to treat it how you want. You can spend your time trying to end poverty or you can fiddle-fart around and try to enjoy yourself. But as far as our relationship to the creators of the game goes, I think our time here is best spent more or less playing the game in the more obvious ways. In Minecraft, you're not given any rules or objectives. You appear and then you move around and figure things out. There's an "end" to the game, but that's far from the only objective. Even though the game doesn't guide you in what you're supposed to do overtly, when you start moving around and figuring out how things work, the design and the intent of the game does become somewhat apparent. 

I think that's how we should treat life if we live in a simulation. We're here. Might as well try to play the game the way the designers seem to have intended it to be played. It'll probably be more profitable that way. Eventually, when you learn a few things, you can decide to play in more exotic ways, and maybe some of those will be ways even the designers didn't guess at. That's all possible, but not unless you at least start by playing it the "right" way. 

Simulation and suicide

Far from making me think life is pointless and not worth living, the possibility we live in a simulation gives me at least some small hope there might be a point. It even helps provide an answer to the question I so often ask of why anyone should keep on trying to live instead of giving up and dying by suicide immediately. 

If the universe is a simulation, then at least there is a chance there is a point to it. Of course, that's true in religion, too, but all religions require me to believe a perfect being created this mess of a universe, and I just can't accept that. If, however, the universe was created by beings somewhat like us, although likely more advanced versions of us, then maybe it ultimately will make some sense in a way we can understand. 

I mean, maybe not. The universe as a simulation isn't a completely reassuring thought. If this is all a big live-action play, then I got kind of a shit part, and I wonder if anyone is even noticing. Maybe I really am just an extra to the Dwayne Hoovers of the world, the ones the creators are actually interested in watching. Maybe rather than giving me a reason to keep living, maybe suicide is the right option because it's the only way to protest to the creators of the game about the nature of their experiment. Mostly, though, I don't feel like that's been my natural reaction since I started seriously considering the possibility the universe is a simulation. 

I don't totally come down on any side, just like I don't totally accept that this is really what I believe about the nature of reality. On the whole, though, I think that that if DeGrasse Tyson (and Elon Musk) are right, then that holds at least some possibilities not open in either religions or nihilism, and I find it more reassuring than not. For now, I, a person who half believes the universe is some kind of simulation or experiment, find enough consolation in the idea that I am still pushing through with a life I'm not totally sure I want and still trying to use that life to do some good.