Simulation hypothesis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Simulation Hypothesis (simulation argument or simulism) proposes that reality

Reality

In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...

is a simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

and those affected are generally unaware of this. The concept is reminiscent of René Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

' Evil Genius but posits a more futuristic simulated reality

Simulated reality

Simulated reality is the proposition that reality could be simulated—perhaps by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation....

. The same fictional technology

Fictional technology

Fictional technology is proposed or described in many different contexts for many different reasons:*Exploratory engineering seeks to identify if a prospective technology can be designed in detail, and simulated, even if it cannot be built yet - this is often a prerequisite to venture capital...

plays, in part or in whole, in the science fiction film

Science fiction film

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...

s Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction film directed by Josef Rusnak and loosely based upon Simulacron-3 , a novel by Daniel F. Galouye...

, The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...

, Open Your Eyes, Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film directed, co-produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe. The film is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre los ojos , the screenplay for which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil...

, Total Recall
Total Recall
Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox & Mel Johnson, Jr.. It is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”...

, and Inception
Inception
Inception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...

.

Origins

There is a long philosophical and scientific history to the underlying thesis that reality is an illusion

Illusion

An illusion is a distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most people....

. This skeptical hypothesis (which can be dated in Western thought back to Parmenides

Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

, Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".- Life...

and Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

and in Eastern thought to the Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta is considered to be the most influential and most dominant sub-school of the Vedānta school of Hindu philosophy. Other major sub-schools of Vedānta are Dvaita and ; while the minor ones include Suddhadvaita, Dvaitadvaita and Achintya Bhedabheda...

concept of Maya

Maya (illusion)

Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...

) arguably underpins the mind-body dualism of Descartes, and is closely related to phenomenalism

Phenomenalism

Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli situated in time and in space...

, a stance briefly adopted by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

. In a narrower sense it has become an important theme in science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, and recently has become a serious topic of study for futurology

Futurology

Futures studies is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch under the more general scope of the field of...

, in particular for transhumanism

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...

through the work of Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...

. The Simulation Hypothesis is a subject of serious academic debate within the field of transhumanism

Transhumanism

.

In its current form, the Simulation Argument began in 2003 with the publication of a paper by Nick Bostrom. Bostrom considers that the argument goes beyond skepticism

Skepticism

Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...

, claiming that "...we have interesting empirical

Empiricism

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...

reasons to believe that a certain disjunctive claim about the world is true", one of the disjunctive propositions being that we are almost certainly living in a simulation. Taking this position, one might view the simulation hypothesis

Simulation hypothesis

The Simulation Hypothesis proposes that reality is a simulation and those affected are generally unaware of this. The concept is reminiscent of René Descartes' Evil Genius but posits a more futuristic simulated reality...

as a logically possible world

Possible world

In philosophy and logic, the concept of a possible world is used to express modal claims. The concept of possible worlds is common in contemporary philosophical discourse and has also been disputed.- Possibility, necessity, and contingency :...

. Bostrom and other writers postulate there are empirical

Empiricism

reasons why the 'Simulation Hypothesis' might be valid. It is related to the Omphalos hypothesis in theology. Bostrom's trilemma

Trilemma

A trilemma is a difficult choice from three options, each of which is unacceptable or unfavourable.There are two logically equivalent ways in which to express a trilemma: it can be expressed as a choice among three unfavourable options, one of which must be chosen, or as a choice among three...

is formulated in temporal logic
Temporal logic
In logic, the term temporal logic is used to describe any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time. In a temporal logic we can then express statements like "I am always hungry", "I will eventually be hungry", or "I will be hungry...

as follows:

"A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true:

The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero;
The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero;
The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).

Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."

Chalmers, in The Matrix as Metaphysics agrees that this is not a skeptical hypothesis but rather a Metaphysical Hypothesis

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

. . Chalmers goes on to identify three separate hypotheses, which, when combined gives what he terms the Matrix Hypothesis
Simulation hypothesis
The Simulation Hypothesis proposes that reality is a simulation and those affected are generally unaware of this. The concept is reminiscent of René Descartes' Evil Genius but posits a more futuristic simulated reality...

; the notion that reality is but a computer simulation:

The Creation Hypothesis
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

, that "Physical space-time and its contents were created by beings outside physical space-time"
The Computational Hypothesis, that "Microphysical processes throughout space-time are constituted by underlying computational processes"
The Mind-Body Hypothesis
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....

, that "mind is constituted by processes outside physical space-time, and receives its perceptual inputs from and sends its outputs to processes in physical space-time".

The term Simulism appears to have been coined by Ivo Jansch in September 2006. His websites invite contributions, essays, comments and discussions.

Greek precedents

The roots of skepticism

Skepticism

can be traced back to the early 5th Century BC, in Parmenides

Parmenides

' work The Way of Truth, in which he argued that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole. Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea

, (c. 490 BC ) put forward three paradoxes concerning the nature of motion, and questioning the reality of what we see around us. In the final Paradox of the Arrow, he suggests:

If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.

The paradoxes taken together appear to support Parmenides

Parmenides

' doctrine that "all is one" and that contrary to the evidence of our senses, motion is nothing but an illusion. The challenges offered by the paradoxes can be dealt with through the use of calculus

Calculus

Calculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...

; however, even as recently as the 1950s variants of these paradoxes were still causing puzzlement. (see for example, Thomson's lamp

Thomson's lamp

Thomson's lamp is a puzzle that is a variation on Zeno's paradoxes. It was devised by philosopher James F. Thomson, who also coined the term supertask....

a paradox proposed by J.F.Thomson

Plato

Plato

, (c. 428-348 BC) in the seventh book of The Republic relates the Allegory of the cave

Allegory of the cave

The Allegory of the Cave—also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave—is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education"...

, in which a prisoner is chained to a wall in a cave lit by a fire, and can only see vague shadows on the wall caused by unseen hands moving statues. The prisoner's mind interprets these shadows, ascribing form and structure, and this is what the prisoner takes to be reality. When the prisoner is freed from the cave, he begins to understand that the shadows on the wall were not 'reality', and sees that he has been deceived. Outside, in the real world, the prisoner is initially blinded by the light of the sun, but then realises that real objects are illuminated by the sun, just as the shadows were lit by the fire in the cave, and what he thought was reality was merely an imitation of the real world. Plato's metaphor of the sun

Plato's metaphor of the sun

Plato, in The Republic , uses the sun as a metaphor for the source of "illumination", arguably intellectual illumination, which he held to be The Form of the Good, which is sometimes interpreted as Plato's notion of God. The metaphor is about the nature of ultimate reality and how knowledge is...

is thus understood to be intellectual illumination. The prisoner's stages of understanding correlate with the levels on the so-called divided line

Analogy of the divided line

Plato, in his dialogue The Republic Book 6 , has Socrates explain through the literary device of a divided line his fundamental metaphysical ideas as four separate but logically connected models of the world. The four models are arranged into a first pair for the visible world, and a second pair...

, which is divided into the visible and intelligible worlds, with the divider being the Sun. In the cave, he is in the visible realm, receiving no sunlight and outside he is in the intelligible realm.

Hindu & Buddhist philosophy

In Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta

, a branch of Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

philosophy, the 'reality' which our everyday consciousness experiences is the result of Maya

Maya (illusion)

, a complex illusionary power, disguising the real nature of Brahman

Brahman

In Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...

, the true, unitary self & cosmic spirit. Maya has two main functions — one is to 'veil' Brahman from the human minds, and the other is to present the material world in its stead. Maya is believed to be a temporary state and is destroyed with 'true knowledge or by the 'lifting of the veil'. The concept of Maya is expounded in the Upanishads (Hindu Scriptures); see, for example the Bhagavad Gita

Bhagavad Gita

The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...

7.14 .

A related concept, Bodhi

Bodhi

Bodhi is both a Pāli and Sanskrit word traditionally translated into English with the word "enlightenment", but which means awakened. In Buddhism it is the knowledge possessed by a Buddha into the nature of things...

, is found in Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. Bodhi is the awakening experience attained by Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha

Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...

, the awareness of the true nature of the universe. After attainment, it is believed one is freed from the cycle of Samsara

Samsara (Buddhism)

or sangsara is a Sanskrit and Pāli term, which translates as "continuous movement" or "continuous flowing" and, in Buddhism, refers to the concept of a cycle of birth , and consequent decay and death , in which all beings in the universe participate, and which can only be escaped through...

, that of birth, suffering, death and rebirth to reach nirvana

Nirvana

Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...

. The Nirvana Sutra teaches that:

"The attributes of Nirvana are eightfold. What are these eight? Cessation (nirodha), Wholesomeness / Loveliness (shubha
Shubha (Hindi)
Shubha is a female given-name among Hindus and means auspicious, or bringing good luck. The meaning comes from the root, Shubh .Notable people named Shubha:* Shubha Mudgal: a Hindustani classical music singer...

), Truth (satya
Satya
Satya is a Sanskrit word that loosely translates into English as "truth" or "correct". It is a term of power due to its purity and meaning and has become the emblem of many peaceful social movements, particularly those centered on social justice, environmentalism and vegetarianism.Sathya is also...

), Reality (bhuta
Bhuta
Bhūta is a Sanskrit word that has several meanings:* true, matter of fact, reality, existing, present, being or being like anything, consisting of, mixed or joined with...

) / (tattva
Tattva
Tattva is a Sanskrit word meaning 'thatness', 'principle', 'reality' or 'truth'. According to various Indian schools of philosophy, a tattva is an element or aspect of reality conceived as an aspect of deity. Although the number of tattvas varies depending on the philosophical school, together they...

), Eternity (nitya), Bliss (sukha
Sukha
Sukha is a Sanskrit and Pāli word that is often translated as “happiness" or "ease" or "pleasure" or "bliss." In Buddhism's Pali literature, the term is used in the context of describing laic pursuits, meditative absorptions and intra-psychic phenomena....

), Self (atman
Atman (Buddhism)
The word Ātman or Atta refers to a self. Occasionally the terms "soul" or "ego" are also used. The words ātman and atta derive from the Indo-European root *ēt-men and are cognate with the Old English æthm and German Atem....

), and Purity (parishuddhi): that is Nirvana.".

Descartes

Descartes (1596–1650) is one of the first 'modern' thinkers to attempt to provide a philosophical framework of mind and the world we perceive around us, seeking a fundamental set of truths. In his writings, Descartes employs a version of methodological skepticism, the first precept of which he states is "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such".

In his work Meditations on First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy is a philosophical treatise written by René Descartes and first published in 1641 . The French translation was published in 1647 as Méditations Metaphysiques...

, he writes that he can only be sure of one thing: thought exists - cogito ergo sum

Cogito ergo sum

is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...

, normally translated as "I think, therefore I am". One of the fundamental ideas explored by Descartes is Mind-Body Dualism

Dualism (philosophy of mind)

In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....

which impinges on the nature of reality as we perceive it, and concerns the relationship which exists between mental processes, and bodily states. Descartes mused whether his perception of a body was the result of a dream, or an illusion created by an evil demon. He reasons that: "The mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence is thought." From this stance, Descartes goes on to argue:

"I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking, non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create."

Descartes concludes that the mind, a thinking thing, can and does exist apart from its extended body. This relationship of the mind to the body, is arguably one of the central issues in the philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

. Descartes also discussed the existence of the external world, arguing that sensory perceptions are involuntary, and are not consciously directed, and as such are evidence of a world external to the mind, since God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things.

Later critics responded to Descartes's 'proof' for the external world with the brain in a vat

Brain in a vat

In philosophy, the brain in a vat is an element used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning...

thought experiment, suggesting in that Descartes' brain might be connected up to a machine which simulates all of these perceptions. However, the vat and the machine exist in an external world, so one form of external world is simply replaced by another.

David Hume

Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

(1711–1776) argued for two kinds of reasoning: probable and demonstrative (Hume's fork

Hume's fork

In philosophy, Hume's fork may be used to refer to one of several distinctions and dilemmas drawn by David Hume .They are:...

), and applied these to the skeptical argument

Skepticism

that reality is but an illusion. He concludes that neither of these two forms of reasoning can lead us to belief in the continued existence of an external world. Demonstration by itself cannot establish the uniformity of nature (as laid out by scientific laws and principles), and reason alone cannot establish that the future will resemble the past (e.g. that the sun will rise tomorrow), Probable reasoning, which aims to take us from the observed to the unobserved, cannot do this either, as it also depends on the uniformity of nature, and cannot be proved without circularity by any appeal to uniformity. Hume concludes that there is no solution to the skeptical argument except, to ignore it.

Immanuel Kant

Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

(1724–1804) was an advocate of Transcendental Idealism

Transcendental idealism

Transcendental idealism is a doctrine founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Kant's doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that...

, that there are limits on what can be understood, and what we see as reality is merely how things appear to us

Phenomenon

A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...

, not how those things are in and of themselves

Noumenon

The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...

. In his Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Pure Reason

The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...

he notes:

"Everything intuited or perceived in space and time, and therefore all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomenal appearances, that is, mere representations [and] have no independent, self-subsistent existence apart from our thoughts".

An important theme in Kant's work is that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of our senses and faculties.

Hegel, Husserl & Heidegger

These three philosophers form the core of Phenomenological thought.

Hegel (1770–1831) proposed a conception of knowledge, mind and reality in which the mind itself creates external forms and objects that stand outside of it or opposed to it. The mind recognizes itself in these external forms, so that they become simultaneously 'mind' and 'other-than-mind'.

Husserl (1859–1938) observed that the 'natural standpoint' of our perception of the world and its objects is characterized by a belief that the objects exist and possess properties. Husserl proposed a way of looking at objects by examining how we "constitute" them as (seemingly) real objects, rather than simply figments of our imagination. In this Phenomenological standpoint, the object ceases to be "external", with mere indicators about its nature, its essence arising from the relationship between the object and the perceiver.

Heidegger (1889–1976) in Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...

questions of the meaning of Being, and distinguishes it from any specific thing "'Being' is not something like a being". According to Heidegger, this sense of being precedes any notions of which beings exist, as it is a primary construct.

Phenomenalism

Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli situated in time and in space...

is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptions or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data. For a brief period, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

(1872–1970) held the view that all that we could be aware of was this sense data; everything else, including physical objects which generated the sense data, could only known by description, and not known directly.

Modal realism

Modal realism is the view, notably propounded by David Kellogg Lewis, that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. It is based on the following tenets: possible worlds exist; possible worlds are not different in kind from the actual world; possible worlds are irreducible entities; the...

asserts that all possible world

Possible world

s are as valid as this world. A "possible world" is a term devised by Leibniz to enable logical analysis

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

of proposition

Proposition

In logic and philosophy, the term proposition refers to either the "content" or "meaning" of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence...

s. The idea was first proposed in papers by David Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...

in the late 1960s, but elaborated upon in Counterfactuals (1973) . This latter work contained an analysis of counterfactual conditional

Counterfactual conditional

A counterfactual conditional, subjunctive conditional, or remote conditional, abbreviated , is a conditional statement indicating what would be the case if its antecedent were true...

s in terms of the theory of possible worlds and modelled counterfactual

Counterfactual conditional

A counterfactual conditional, subjunctive conditional, or remote conditional, abbreviated , is a conditional statement indicating what would be the case if its antecedent were true...

s using the possible world semantics of modal logic. In On the Plurality of Worlds

On the Plurality of Worlds

On the Plurality of Worlds is a book by the philosopher David Lewis that defends the thesis of modal realism, "The thesis states that the world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds," as he writes in the Preface, "and that we who inhabit this world are only a few out of all the...

, (1991), Lewis argues that "the thesis that the world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds, ... and that we who inhabit this world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds."

C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

, author of The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages...

regarded possible worlds as a way of thinking about possibility and necessity. In the Chronicles, C. S. Lewis uses possible world

Possible world

s in the form of a parallel universe

Parallel universe (fiction)

A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...

s to discuss various Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

themes. He says, in a 1958 letter: "What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia?" An interesting parallel here is the notion of World as Myth

World as Myth

The idea of World as Myth was created by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his book The Number of the Beast. According to this idea, myths and fictional worlds exist as an almost infinite number of universes which are parallel to our own...

put forward by the Science Fiction

Science fiction

writer Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

in novels such as The Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast (novel)
The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...

.

Constructivism

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Ernst von Glasersfeld was a philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia, Research Associate at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...

is a proponent of Radical Constructivism, which claims that knowledge is the result of a self-organizing cognitive process of the human brain. The process of constructing knowledge regulates itself, whereby knowledge is constructed rather than compiled from empirical data. It is therefore impossible in principle to know the extent to which knowledge reflects an external reality.
"The function of cognition is adaptive and serves the organisation of the experiential world, not the discovery of ontological reality"

Social constructivism

Social constructionism

Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...

is a sociological theory of knowledge which rose to prominence in 1966 with the publication of The Social Construction of Reality
The Social Construction of Reality
The Social Construction of Reality is a book about the sociology of knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann and published in 1966....

. Social constructivism (or constructionism) attempts to uncover how individuals and groups participate and negotiate their perceived reality, and shared understanding; in this way reality is socially constructed. Paul Ernest

Paul Ernest

Paul Ernest is a recent contributor to the social constructivist philosophy of mathematics. He illustrates this position in his discussion of the issue of whether mathematics is discovered or invented...

(1991) summarises the main foundations of social constructivism as follows:

"Knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject. The personal theories which result from the organization of the experiential world must fit the constraints imposed by physical and social reality. This is achieved by a cycle of theory - prediction - test - failure - accommodation - new theory. This gives rise to socially agreed theories of the world."

Computationalism

Computationalism claims that cognition

Cognition

In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...

is a form of computation

Computation

Computation is defined as any type of calculation. Also defined as use of computer technology in Information processing.Computation is a process following a well-defined model understood and expressed in an algorithm, protocol, network topology, etc...

, and underpins much of the work in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

. It is related to Functionalism

Functionalism (philosophy of mind)

Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...

, a philosophy of mind put forth by Hilary Putnam

Hilary Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...

in 1960, inspired by the analogies between the mind and the theoretical Turing Machines, which according to the Church-Turing Thesis are capable of processing any given algorithm which is computable

Computability theory (computer science)

Computability is the ability to solve a problem in an effective manner. It is a key topic of the field of computability theory within mathematical logic and the theory of computation within computer science...

. Computationalism rests on two theses: (i) Computational Sufficiency, that an appropriate computational structure suffices for the possession of mind, and (ii) Computational Explanation, that computation provides a framework for the explanation of cognitive processes.

Computationalism assumes the possibility of Strong AI

Strong AI

Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of artificial intelligence research and an important topic for science fiction writers and...

, which would be required in order to establish even a theoretical possibility of a simulated reality. However, the relationship between cognition and phenomenal consciousness

Qualia

Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...

is disputed by Searle

John Searle

John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

in an argument known as the Chinese Room

Chinese room

The Chinese room is a thought experiment by John Searle, which first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980...

. Further critics have argued that it is possible that consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

requires a substrate of "real" physics, and simulated people, while behaving appropriately, would be philosophical zombies.

Transhumanism

The first known use of the term "Transhumanism

Transhumanism

" was by Julian Huxley

Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...

in 1957. During the 1980s a group of scientists, artists, and futurists began to organize into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman

Posthuman

Posthuman may refer to:*Posthuman, a hypothetical future being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by our current standards...

". Proponents draw on future studies and various fields of ethics such as bioethics

Bioethics

Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....

, infoethics, nanoethics, neuroethics

Neuroethics

Neuroethics is the ethics of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of ethics.The ethics of neuroscience deals with matters as a subclass of bioethics...

, roboethics

Roboethics

The term roboethics was coined by roboticist Gianmarco Veruggio in 2002, who also served as chair of an Atleier funded by the European Robotics Research Network to outline areas where research may be needed...

, and technoethics

Technoethics

Technoethics is an interdisciplinary research area concerned with all moral and ethical aspects of technology in society. It draws on theories and methods from multiple knowledge domains to provide insights on ethical dimensions of technological systems and practices for advancing a technological...

, and are predominantly secular posthumanist and politically liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

.

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...

, in A History of Transhumanist Thought (2005) locates transhumanism's roots in Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

and the Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

. Transhumanism can be defined as:

The improvement of the human condition through applied reason, and technology to eliminate aging and greatly enhance human capacities.
The study of the technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the ethical issues involved in their use.

The Simulation Argument is part of the Transhumanist debate, located within Digital Philosophy

Digital philosophy

Digital philosophy is a direction in philosophy and cosmology advocated by certain mathematicians and theoretical physicists, e.g., Gregory Chaitin, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, and Konrad Zuse ....

Dream argument

The dream argument

Dream argument

The dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and...

contends that a futuristic technology is not required to create a simulated reality, but rather, all that is needed is a human brain. More specifically, the mind's ability to create simulated realities during REM sleep affects the statistical likelihood of our own reality being simulated.

Types of reality simulation

Simulation of reality is currently a fictional technology

Fictional technology

, and non-fictional examples are limited to reality TV or computer simulations of specific events and situations. Current technology in the form of virtual, augmented

Augmented reality

Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is...

or mixed reality

Mixed reality

Mixed reality refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time...

is very limited in comparison to what would be needed to achieve a convincing simulation of reality. The following typology of the different forms of reality simulation is drawn from examples from both science fiction

Science fiction

and futurology

Futurology

. One may usefully distinguish between two types of simulation: in an extrinsic

Intrinsic and extrinsic properties (philosophy)

An intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. An extrinsic property is a property that depends on a thing's relationship with other things...

simulation, the consciousness is external to the simulation, whereas in an intrinsic

Intrinsic and extrinsic properties (philosophy)

simulation the consciousness is entirely contained within it and has no presence in the external reality.

Physical simulation

Here, the body and functions of participants remain intact, entering into a simulation and participating using their normal physical body. Examples range from Reality TV shows such as The Big Brother House
Big Brother (TV series)
Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...

which are social simulation

Social simulation

Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, geography, archaeology and linguistics ....

s, through online social network service

Social network service

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...

s such as Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

and Massively On-Line Role Playing Games

MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

to fictional simulations such as the Star Trek Holodeck

Holodeck

A holodeck, in the fictional Star Trek universe, is a simulated reality facility located on starships and starbases. The first use of a "holodeck" by that name in the Star Trek universe was in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint", although a conceptually...

. In the extreme case as fictionally portrayed in the original Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...

episode "The Menagerie

The Menagerie (TOS episode)

"The Menagerie" is a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episodes #11 and 12 of the show's first season, and is the only two-part story in the original series. Part one of the episode was broadcast on November 17, 1966 with the second part broadcast a week later on November...

", participant's minds were convinced not only of a simulated reality, but also that their physical bodies had been transformed.

Brain-computer interface

In a brain-computer interface

Brain-computer interface

A brain–computer interface , sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface , is a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device...

simulation, participants enter the simulation from outside, directly connecting their brain to the simulation computer, but normally keeping their physical form intact. The computer transfers sensory data to them and reads their desires and actions back; in this manner they interact with the simulated world and receive feedback from it. The participant may even receive adjustment in order to temporarily forget that they are inside a virtual realm, sometimes called "passing through the veil", a term borrowed from Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, which describes the supposed passage of a soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

from an earthly body to an afterlife

Afterlife

The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...

. While inside the simulation, the participant can be represented by an avatar

Avatar (computing)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

, which could look very different from the participant's actual appearance. The Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...

genre of fiction contains many examples of brain-computer interface simulated reality, most notably featured in The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...

trilogy. This type of simulation has most recently been portrayed in the blockbuster

Blockbuster (entertainment)

Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...

"Avatar".

Brain-in-a-vat

A variant of the brain-computer-interface simulation is the brain-in-a-vat. This is used in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

as part of thought experiments, (for example, by Hillary Putnam).

Emigration

In an emigration simulation, the participant would enter the simulation from an outer reality, via a brain-computer interface, but to a much greater degree. On entry, the participant is subject to mind transfer

Mind transfer

Whole brain emulation or mind uploading is the hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device...

which temporarily relocates their mental processing into a virtual-person which holds their consciousness. Their outside-world presence remains in stasis

Stasis

The term stasis may refer to* A state of stability, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other....

during the simulation. After the simulation is over, the participant's mind is transferred back into their outer-reality body, along with all new memories and experiences gained. Mind transfer is portrayed in Science Fiction

Science fiction

novels such as Mindswap (1966) by Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...

and the TV series Quantum Leap; most notably, mind transfer

Mind transfer

was the primary mechanism by which consciousness

Consciousness

was transferred in The Thirteenth Floor

The Thirteenth Floor

The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction film directed by Josef Rusnak and loosely based upon Simulacron-3 , a novel by Daniel F. Galouye...

(1999).

Virtual world simulation

In a virtual world simulation, every inhabitant is a native of the simulated world. They do not have a 'real' body in the 'outside' reality. Rather, each is a fully simulated entity, possessing an appropriate level of consciousness that is implemented using the simulation's own logic (i.e. using its own physics). Typical of such a simulation at one extreme (but with no level of consciousness) would be an artificial life

Artificial life

Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...

simulation such as The Sims

The Sims

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...

computer game. In many computer games, inhabitants lacking consciousness are referred to as NPCs (Non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...

s), or bots

Computer game bot

A bot, most prominently in the first-person shooter types , is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player. Computer bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison,...

(see Philosophical zombies). Where virtual entities achieve the level of artificial consciousness

Artificial consciousness

Artificial consciousness , also known as machine consciousness or synthetic consciousness, is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics whose aim is to define that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artifact .Neuroscience...

, they could be downloaded from one simulation to another, or even archived and resurrected at a later date. It is also possible that a simulated entity could be moved out of the simulation entirely by means of mind transfer

Mind transfer

into a synthetic body. Ancestor simulations as described by Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...

would fall into this category.

Virtual solipsistic simulation

In this type of simulation, an artificial consciousness

Artificial consciousness

is created; the "world" participants perceive exists only within their minds. There are two possible variants of this: in the first, there is only a single solipsistic conscious entity

Solipsism

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...

in existence, and is the sole focus of the simulation; in the second, there are multiple conscious entities, but each receives a separate but globally consistent version of the simulation . This scenario is a counterpart of social constructivism

Social constructivism

Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge that applies the general philosophical constructionism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings...

which concerns the ways in which groups participate in the creation of their perceived reality.

An intermingled simulation would support both extrinsic and intrinsic types of consciousness: beings from an outer reality visiting or emigrating, and virtual-people who are natives of the simulation both artificial consciousness

Artificial consciousness

es or bot

Computer game bot

s, lacking any physical body in the outer reality. Sometimes this is termed a metaverse

Metaverse

The Metaverse is our collective online shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet...

. The Matrix trilogy features an intermingled type of simulation: it contains not only human minds, but also the 'agents'

Agent (The Matrix)

Agents are a group of characters in the Matrix series. They are sentient computer programs, displaying high-level Artificial Intelligence, and are representatives, or "Agents", of the main antagonists within the Matrix fictional universe. They are guardians within the computer-generated world of...

, who are sovereign software programs indigenous to the computed realm, and NPCs

Non-player character

A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...

Consequences of living in a simulation

Based on the assumption that we are living in a simulation, philosophers have theorized about the nature of their creators. A conclusion reached by Peter S. Jenkins at York University argues that there would be multiple reasons to create a simulation; In order to avoid the simulation creating another simulation, the first would be deleted. As it is predicted that we'd have the technology to create simulations in the year 2050, long-term planning after that "would be futile". This, in turn, raises questions as to why the creators of the simulation would delete the simulation. More importantly, if our universe were one of many being simulated, the simulation argument could therefore be statistically applied to the creators saying they are in a simulation.

Science fiction themes

For more than twenty years, the science fiction

Science fiction

genre has risen to the forefront of popular culture, highlighting themes such as virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

, artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

and computer gaming. One of the first references to simulations occurred in the 1959 novel Time out of Joint
Time out of Joint
Time Out of Joint is a novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. An abridged version was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960, under the title...

by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

. In this the central character is trapped in a "bubble" of 1950s small town America. Simulacron-3
Simulacron-3
Simulacron-3 , by Daniel F. Galouye, is an American science fiction novel featuring an early literary description of virtual reality.-Plot summary:...

(1964) by Daniel F. Galouye

Daniel F. Galouye

Daniel Francis Galouye was an American science fiction writer. During the 1950s and 1960s, he contributed novelettes and short stories to various digest size science fiction magazines, sometimes writing under the pseudonym Louis G...

(alternative title: Counterfeit World) tells the story of a virtual city developed as a computer simulation for market research purposes, in which the simulated inhabitants possess consciousness; all but one of the inhabitants are unaware of the true nature of their world.

Permutation City
Permutation City
Permutation City is a 1994 science fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, via various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust" which dealt with many of the same...

(1994) by Greg Egan

Greg Egan

Greg Egan is an Australian science fiction author.Egan published his first work in 1983. He specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness...

explores quantum ontology via the various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulations of intelligence. Other Egan novels, such as Diaspora
Diaspora (novel)
Diaspora, a hard science fiction novel by the Australian writer Greg Egan, first appeared in print in 1997.-Plot introduction:This novel's setting is a posthuman future, in which transhumanism long ago became the default philosophy embraced by the vast majority of human cultures.The novel began as...

(1997) and Schild's Ladder
Schild's Ladder
Schild's Ladder is a 2002 science fiction novel by Australian author Greg Egan. The book derives its name from Schild's ladder, a construction in differential geometry, devised by the mathematician and physicist Alfred Schild...

(2002) also involve simulated consciousness. In Iain Banks

Iain Banks

Iain Banks is a Scottish writer. He writes mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies...

's The Algebraist
The Algebraist
The Algebraist, a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first appeared in print in 2004. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005....

, a simulist religion called "The Truth" is the dominant belief system of a considerable proportion of interstellar humanity.

In the 20th Century both drama and film have repeatedly explored alternative realities, such as the Theatre of the Absurd

Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...

, and cropping up unexpectedly in films such as It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....

, and the 1960s television series The Prisoner
The Prisoner
The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.The series follows a British former...

. The Truman Show
The Truman Show
The Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The cast includes Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, as well as Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone...

(1998) was a fictional example showing the logical extension of this trend, in which the central character is trapped within a physical simulation and whose life is controlled by a director. The idea that reality might be a computer simulation

Computer simulation

A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...

was the central thesis of The Matrix Trilogy (1999–2003). However, many earlier science fiction

Science fiction

plot lines incorporated variants this theme and its associated elements such as artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

.

Other feature films whose plot lines have explicitly involved the simulism hypothesis:

Dark City (1998)
The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction film directed by Josef Rusnak and loosely based upon Simulacron-3 , a novel by Daniel F. Galouye...

(1999)
eXistenZ
EXistenZ
eXistenZ is a 1999 body horror/science fiction film by Canadian director David Cronenberg. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law....

(1999)
Source Code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

(2011)

Role-playing and wargaming

Role-playing

Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...

simulations have a long history stretching back to ancient times, and have been used extensively in vocation-oriented higher-education courses (e.g. Law, Medicine, Economics) as well as politics and international relations contexts, for example SimSoc

Simulated Society

Simulated Society is a "game" used by universities and other groups to teach various aspects of sociology, political science, and communications skills. Originally created by William A. Gamson in 1966, it is currently in its fifth edition. It provides a way for participants to better understand...

is a "game" used to teach various aspects of sociology, political science, and communications skills, originally created by William A. Gamson

William A. Gamson

William Anthony Gamson is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, where he is also the co-director of the Media Research and Action Project ....

in 1966, and currently in its fifth edition Role-play simulations can be described as "multi-agenda social-process simulations" in which "participants assume individual roles in a hypothesised social group and experience the complexity of establishing and implementing particular goals within the fabric established by the system". . Simulations involving role-play also have therapeutic uses within psychotherapy, in the form of psychodrama

Psychodrama

Psychodrama is a method of psychotherapy in which clients utilize spontaneous dramatization, role playing and dramatic self-presentation to investigate and gain insight into their lives. Developed by Jacob L. Moreno, M.D. psychodrama includes elements of theater, often conducted on a stage where...

, developed by Jacob L. Moreno

Jacob L. Moreno

Jacob Levy Moreno was a Jewish Romanian-born Austrian-American leading psychiatrist and psychosociologist, thinker and educator, the founder of psychodrama, and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy...

in the 1920s. Later on in the 20th Century this was termed play therapy

Play therapy

Play therapy is generally employed with children aged 3 through 11 and provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a natural, self-guided, self-healing process...

.

Role-play is also an important part of military training. The Prussian term for live-action military training exercises

Military exercise

A military exercise is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat...

is "Kriegsspiel" or wargames

Wargaming

A wargame is a strategy game that deals with military operations of various types, real or fictional. Wargaming is the hobby dedicated to the play of such games, which can also be called conflict simulations, or consims for short. When used professionally to study warfare, it is generally known as...

, and are used for training and evaluation purposes. A similar use of role-playing

Role-playing

Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...

is an essential feature of the Incident Command System

Incident Command System

The Incident Command System is "a systematic tool used for the command, control, and coordination of emergency response" according to the United States Federal Highway Administration...

(ICS), widely used by emergency response agencies to manage and evaluate responses to large and/or complex incidents. Battle

Combat reenactment

Combat reenactment is a side of historical reenactment which aims to depict historical forms of combat. This may refer to either single combat, melees involving small groups, or nearly full-scale battles with hundreds of participants....

and other historical reenactment

Historical reenactment

Historical reenactment is an educational activity in which participants attempt torecreate some aspects of a historical event or period. This may be as narrow as a specific moment from a battle, such as the reenactment of Pickett's Charge at the Great Reunion of 1913, or as broad as an entire...

s also involve role-play, and have been practised for millennia, but with entertainment appearing to be the primary purpose, rather than training or system evaluation.

The history of role-playing games

History of role-playing games

The history of role-playing games begins with an earlier tradition of role-playing, which combined with the rulesets of fantasy wargames in the 1970s to give rise to the modern role-playing game. A role-playing game is a type of game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and...

begins with the earlier tradition of role-playing

Role-playing

Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...

, which combined with the rulesets of fantasy wargame

Fantasy wargame

A fantasy wargame is a wargame that involves a fantastical setting, and employs rules for elements such as magic and non-human intelligent creatures.- History :...

s gives rise to the modern role-playing game

Role-playing game

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...

. This can take a variety of forms: live action role-playing game

Live action role-playing game

A live action role-playing game is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world, while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may...

s, theatre-style live action role-playing

Theatre-style live action role-playing

In role-playing games, theatre-style live action role-playing is a style of freeform, live action game distinguished by four principal attributes...

, freeform role-playing game

Freeform role-playing game

Freeform role-playing games, also called freeforms, are a type of role-playing game which employ minimal or no rules. Instead, actions are adjudicated on the spot by the referee. There are also several variations, some of which lack a referee....

s, indie role-playing game

Indie role-playing game

An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published outside of traditional, "mainstream" means. Varying definitions require that commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator, or that the game should just be produced outside of a corporate...

s, storytelling game

Storytelling game

A storytelling game is a game where two or more persons collaborate on telling a spontaneous story. Usually, each player takes care of one or more characters in the developing story...

s, are all games in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories using a role-playing game system

Role-playing game system

A role-playing game system is a set of game mechanics used in a role-playing game to determine the outcome of a character's in-game actions...

. Such games may require the players to remain in character or to allow players to comment on action

Metagaming (role-playing games)

In role-playing games, metagaming can be defined as any out of character action made by a player's character which makes use of knowledge that the character is not meant to be aware of...

by stepping out of character. The participants do not all need to be present: play by mail

Play-by-mail game

Play-by-mail games, sometimes known as "Play-by-post", are games, of any type, played through postal mail or e-mail. One example, chess, has been played by mail for centuries . Another example, Diplomacy, has been played by mail since the 1960s, starting with a printed newsletter written by John...

and play-by-post games both allow for asynchronous

Asynchronous communication

In telecommunications, asynchronous communication is transmission of data without the use of an external clock signal, where data can be transmitted intermittently rather than in a steady stream. Any timing required to recover data from the communication symbols is encoded within the symbols...

and distance game-playing. A computer version of play by mail (Yahoo! Role-Playing) became popular in the 1990s.

The GNS theory

GNS Theory

The GNS Theory, as originally developed by Ron Edwards, is a relatively amorphous body of work attempting to create a theory of how role-playing games work...

, originally developed by Ron Edwards

Ron Edwards (game designer)

Ronald Edwards is a game designer, theorist, and an influential member of the indie role-playing game community. Notably, he is the creator of the Sorcerer RPG, the GNS Theory of gameplay, and The Big Model....

, is an attempt to document how role-playing games work. The theory divides participants into three categories: gamists (who are concerned with competition and challenge), narrativists (who are concerned with story and theme) and simulationists (who are concerned with the gaming experience and exploration).

Computer games and simulations

Computer gaming has a history

History of video games

The history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and...

originating in the late 1940s , when Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, were granted a patent for what was, to all intents and purposes, a video game. During the 1950s and the 1960s various such games were developed , and by the early 1970s such games were becoming commercially viable. The first generation of personal computer game

Personal computer game

A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...

s were often text adventures or interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

, in which the player communicated with the computer by entering commands through a keyboard. By the mid-1970s, games were being developed and distributed through magazines, such as Creative Computing
Creative Computing
Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from 1974 until December 1985, Creative Computing covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically-oriented BYTE. The magazine...

and Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...

The development of role-playing video games began in the mid 1970's, when stand-alone role-playing video game

Role-playing video game

Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...

s were being developed as an offshoot of mainframe

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

text-based role-playing games on PDP-10

PDP-10

The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...

and Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

-based computers. Amongst the first of these were pedit5

Pedit5

pedit5 was perhaps the first dungeon crawl video game , written in 1975 by Rusty Rutherford for the PLATO system...

and dnd

Dnd (computer game)

dnd is a computer role-playing game. The name dnd is derived from the abbreviation "DND" from the original role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which was first released in 1975....

, whose name derives from an abbreviation of Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

(D 'n' D), the original role-playing game

Role-playing game

which had been published earlier in 1974. This gave rise to a whole genre of dungeon crawl

Dungeon crawl

A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters, and looting any treasure they may find...

games. In 1980, probably the most seminal of this genre, Rogue
Rogue (computer game)
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game first developed by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading...

was released, inspiring a host of roguelike

Roguelike

The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...

clones. Two notable examples of these were Ultima (1980) and Wizardry
Wizardry
Wizardry is a series of computer role-playing games, developed by Sir-Tech, which were highly influential in the development of modern console and computer role playing games. The original Wizardry was a significant influence to early console RPGs, such as Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. ...

(1981).

Innovations in these games eventually became standards of almost all role-playing video game

Role-playing video game

s produced. Later games such as Dungeon Master (1987) introduced real-time gameplay and several user-interface innovations, for example, direct manipulation of objects and the environment with the mouse. Later developments in this genre have tended to involve on-line interaction with other players (see below), rather than played on stand-alone machines. One variant, computer-assisted gaming

Computer-assisted gaming

Computer-assisted gaming and computer-asssited wargaming refer to games which are at least partially computerized, but where on important part of the action is not virtual but performed in real life or on a miniature terrain. Regulation of the game can be done completely by a computer or partly...

, is still very much alive ; here the games are only partially computerized, but actively regulated by a human referee. It is claimed that there are Cultural differences in computer and console role-playing games between Eastern and Western versions .

Online gaming and virtual worlds

The origins of today's virtual world

Virtual world

A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...

s and virtual communities lie in the interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

and adventure game

Adventure game

An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

s of the 1970s. The first text-based computer-based interactive fiction was Colossal Cave Adventure

Colossal Cave Adventure

Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...

created by Will Crowther in 1975 (later extended by Don Woods). In 1976, Dungeon

Dungeon (computer game)

Dungeon was one of the earliest computer role-playing games, running on PDP-10 mainframe computers manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation.-History:...

was a version of Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

, a role-playing video game

Role-playing video game

based on a medieval fantasy scenario. This was followed in 1978 by Multi-User Dungeon

MUD

A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...

, a text-based multi-player on-line role playing game

Online text-based role-playing game

An online text-based role playing game is a role-playing game played online using a solely text-based interface. Online text-based role playing games date to 1978, with the creation of MUD1, which began the MUD heritage that culminates in today's MMORPGs...

. However it took the advent of Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

in 1980 as a distributed community, to allow the idea to develop effectively. From these early beginnings came several variants on the gaming theme: MUCK

Muck

Muck can refer to:*Muck *Muck, Scotland, an island in Scotland*Isle of Muck, a small island connected by sand spit to Portmuck, County Antrim, Northern Ireland*Muck , a number of actions...

, MUSH

MUSH

In multiplayer online games, a MUSH is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time...

and MOO

MOO

A MOO is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users are connected at the same time.The term MOO is used in two distinct, but related, senses...

(collectively MU* ), all developed out of TinyMUD

TinyMUD

TinyMUD is the name of a MUD server codebase, and the first MUD running that codebase. The MUD itself has subsequently come to be known as "TinyMUD Classic" or simply "Classic", or occasionally "DaisyMUD"...

(1989) a social game variant of the original MUD

MUD

. In the early 1990s these became more sophisticated and found uses outside gaming, particularly in education.

In 1985 the Whole Earth eLectronic Link was founded as a virtual community

Virtual community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...

. This was one of the precursors to the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. Initially online games were primarily text-based; however, in 1994 WebWorlds (later called ActiveWorlds) was created as the first on-line 3D virtual reality platform. This was quickly followed in 1996 by The Palace

The Palace

The Palace is a British drama television series that aired on ITV in 2008. Produced by Company Pictures for the ITV network, it was created by Tom Grieves and follows a fictional British Royal Family in the aftermath of the death of King James III and the succession of his 24-year-old son, Richard...

, which provided graphical chat room

Chat room

The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...

s with a flexible avatar

Avatar (computing)

system. The 1980s and 1990s also saw the development of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

s, growing out of initial offerings such as MUD1

MUD1

Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD is the first MUD and the oldest virtual world in existence. It was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw at Essex University on a DEC PDP-10 in the UK, using the MACRO-10 assembly language...

(1978) which were text-based, but then developed through Rogue
Rogue (computer game)
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game first developed by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading...

(1980) and other similar games, such as Islands of Kesmai
Islands of Kesmai
Island of Kesmai was an early commercial online game in the MUD genre, innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern MMORPGs.-Launch date:...

(1984), to using ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

graphics. In the 1990s, games such as Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights (AOL game)
Neverwinter Nights was the first multiplayer online role-playing game to display graphics, and ran from 1991 to 1997 on AOL.-Gameplay:Neverwinter Nights was developed to be played similarly to the Gold Box series of games...

(1991) and the later Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...

(1997) were primarily visual-graphics based.

Since 2000, Massively Multiplayer On-line Gaming

Massively multiplayer online game

A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...

has developed in various directions. Computer simulation

Computer simulation

A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...

s such as VATSIM and IVAO

International Virtual Aviation Organisation

IVAO or International Virtual Aviation Organisation, is a non-profit organisation that operates a global and free-of-charge online flight-simulation network....

offer the user the ability to fly virtual planes

Flight simulator

A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...

in a world wide air traffic control simulation. Virtual communities

Virtual community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...

such as MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

(2003) use social software

Social software

Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...

to facilitate social interaction and networking. Massively Multiplayer Online Social Games such as The Sims Online
The Sims Online
The Sims Online was a massively multiplayer online variation on Maxis's highly popular computer game The Sims. It was published by Electronic Arts and released on December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows. In March 2007, EA announced that the product would be re-branded as EA-Land and major...

(2002), There
There (internet service)
There is a 3D online virtual world created by Will Harvey and Jeffrey Ventrella. There Inc. was founded in the spring of 1998. Closed beta began in July 2001, with various stages of beta following, and ending with an October 2003 launch date...

(2003) and Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

(2003) which are virtual reality environments where the user is represented by an avatar

Avatar (computing)

have developed from earlier offerings such as Habbo Hotel

Habbo Hotel

Habbo is a social networking site aimed at teenagers. The website is owned and operated by Sulake Corporation. The service began in 2000 and has expanded to include 11 online communities , with users in over 150 countries. As of August 2011, over 230 million avatars have been registered...

(2000). These focus on socialization instead of objective-based gameplay, and might best be described as Multi-User Virtual Environments

MUVE

MUVE refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes called virtual worlds. While this term has been used previously to refer to a generational change in MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPGs, it is most widely used to describe MMOGs that are not necessarily game-specific. The term was first used...

. MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

s, such as World of WarCraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...

(2004) have also become interactive communities but based more on fantasy worlds rather than real-world scenarios. Such communities are sometimes called metaverse

Metaverse

s, a term taken from the 1992 novel Snow Crash
Snow Crash
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy....

by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...

Artificial intelligence & virtual reality

Although the idea of an automaton

Automaton

An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...

has been in existence since the time of the ancient Greeks

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, both in fact and fiction, the first use of the term robot

Robot

A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

was in 1921, derived from the title of a play by Karel Čapek

Karel Capek

Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...

called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.The...

. While Capek's creatures have intelligence, they are biological rather than mechanical, similar to the replicants in Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...

.

External links

Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...

's Simulation Argument webpage.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.