Simulation Theory, Happy 20th Anniversary

Life inside the Matrix

Graphic courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Scientists have been debating a somewhat radical idea for the past 20 years. It is called Simulation Theory, and was first proposed by Nick Bostrom in 2003. Bostrom is not alone; some of the world’s most eminent scientists have said it is virtually impossible that we don’t live in a simulated world. Yet even though the scientific community has only recently discovered this possibility that we live inside a giant computer program they call 'The Simulation,' the idea of an illusionary world (albeit without computers) was already known and studied by the Gnostics in the 2nd century, the Cathars in medieval France, the authors of the Sanskrit texts the Upanishads, and a host of other spiritual seekers and philosophers.

It’s a pretty far out idea that everything we see and experience–possibly even our own thought process–has been created by a software program. Yet it's a theme that we've been seeing in films, TV shows and books for some time. If the purpose of the Simulation is enslavement of humans, as depicted in the Matrix movie for instance, then the proliferation of wars, evil, and tyranny on Earth over the centuries makes perfect sense.

We ask ourselves, if God is loving and benevolent, why would He/She/It create a world where everything eats everything else, and the beings living here exist for such a short time and often die in horrible ways? Why is there disease, and natural disasters? And why are there some people who enjoy doing evil? According to the Gnostics, the world was created not by a benevolent God, but by a lesser deity called the Demiurge who made a world of strife because It feeds on that energy. The Gnostics believed that Jesus Christ came in order to defeat the Demiurge and his team of rulers, known as the Archons.

Attention: the world of the Demiurge has been rebranded. It is now referred to as the Simulation.

If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities...

Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief‐states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as‐needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

–excerpt from Bostrom's original paper

Later in the paper Bostrom says the following, which is especially interesting in light of the current era's frequent references to the 'zombie apocalypse.'

...one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual. The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow‐people” – humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious.

Up until recently the Amazon AWS service terms agreement actually had a clause removing their liability in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I recall reading it a couple of years ago. Tech reporters laughed it off, but if you know anything about law you know that nothing in a legal document is a joke. Everything is in the contract for a reason. (Possibly the clause has now been moved to one of the AWS partner site's TOS as I could not find it on the updated October 2023 document.)

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. —  Burton Watson translation of Zhuangzi: Basic Writings

I have heard that the Wachowskis' idea for the Matrix series stemmed from Jean Baudrillard's 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation in which he states that future societies would idealize not the original of a thing, but rather its copy. We've certainly seen this scenario play out in many areas already. One example that stands out to my mind is the note-for-note re-creation of the classic Miles Davis album Kind of Blue by the band Mostly Other People Do the Killing. This copy of a beloved and revered work in the field of modern jazz created a scandal when it first appeared in 2014, but in typical postmodern fashion its existence has been defended in various intellectual arguments.

Perhaps an even earlier Matrix movie influence than Simulacra and Simulation could be Rene Descartes' "Evil Demon" concept, which he wrote about in his Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641. Descartes proposed that the world is actually an illusion created by an evil deity. He says: "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which [the Evil Demon] has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things."

What is Descartes’ theory if not an echo of the Demiurge of the Gnostics?

In this preamble to my Simulation series, I wish to show that the idea that we live inside an illusional reality is not new. The Buddhist concept of Maya (illusion) is described in Vedic texts (2nd - 1st millenium BCE) as a world which is a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem." Plato’s Allegory of the Cave told of the inhabitants of the cave whose reality consisted of the shadows projected on its walls. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), in his Critique of Pure Reason, said that objects have no reality in themselves, but rather are made real by the mind.

How, exactly, do its perpetrators pull off this simulated world?

In modern science fiction scenarios we find the "Brain in a Vat" concept, where a mad scientist extracts a brain from a human, keeps it in a jar with a life-sustaining fluid, and connects it with artificial neurotransmitters to a computer that simulates the electronic impulses the brain would normally receive from the 'real world.' This is exactly what happens in The Matrix. Additionally, Wikipedia lists 18 stories and novels with this theme, as well as another 16 in television and film, not to mention other genres like comic books, anime and video games.

In order to learn more about the Simulation, which has been on my radar for years without my having investigated it deeply till now, I've been following the work of various philosophers and scientists on the subject. One of these is Howdie Mickoski, a Canadian-born author whose book Exit the Cave (referring to Plato's Allegory of the Cave) has launched him onto the worldwide stage. He has a number of fascinating YouTube videos, and is being interviewed on the foremost 'alternative philosophy' podcasts, like Jeff Mara and Age of Truth TV.

On one of Mickoski’s broadcasts he speaks of a 1986 book called Replay by Ken Grimwood, which won the World Fantasy Award in 1988. When he said the book was the basis of the movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, I had to read it. The movie, however, makes the replay into one single day, whereas in the book the main characters replay multiple years of their lives, over and over again.

To summarize very briefly the plot of Groundhog Day, we would say the main character wakes up every morning on the same day. After this happens for a few days and he realizes he is caught in some kind of time loop, he begins to take advantage of the replay to enact some of his fantasies (rolling down the car window when he's pulled over by a cop: "Yeah, I'll have a double cheeseburger and a large fries"); kidnapping the groundhog; and of course, experimenting with the best courting behavior to get the girl. Whatever happens, he still wakes up the next morning at 5:59 am on Groundhog Day.

In the Replay novel, the male protagonist has a heart attack, but instead of dying he wakes up 25 years prior in his college dorm room. He replays the next 25 years of his life with full awareness that he is doing so, just like in Groundhog Day. Rinse and repeat. The third time around he meets a female Replayer, who becomes the love interest in the novel. Every replay they arrange to meet up again. During their replays they have free will to lead whatever sort of lives they wish...or do they?

Some readers may notice a plot similarity with the recent film Everything Everywhere All At Once, in which moments of extreme stress plunge the female lead into other lives she either has led in the past, the future, or simultaneously with the present one. This plot, in turn, nods to Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five in which the character Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" and finds himself, at random moments, reliving his time as a World War II POW, the survivor of a plane crash, or an abductee on the planet of Tralfamadore.

Nor is the life-replay plot element new in philosophical circles. P.D. Ouspensky's novel The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin has the main character meet a magician who offers to send him back to his childhood to relive his life with his full adult awareness, so he can correct his past mistakes. Alas, he is unable to change the events in his life and ends up repeating everything the same way. As a 4th Way philosopher and one-time student of G.I. Gurdjieff, Ouspensky is pointing out that Man cannot change anything in his life unless he engages in the difficult work of becoming conscious. Gurdjieff's assertion that "Man is asleep" is echoed by New Age pundits and modern psychologists who point out that we mostly think and act according to the programming of our subconscious minds.

Or....is it the programming of the Simulation?

Yet another film, released in 1998, tells the story of a young man named Truman who as a baby was adopted by a TV producer and brought up on the set of The Truman Show, where everyone but Truman (who is filmed–or shall we say 'surveilled'– 24/7) is an actor. As Truman grows up on the set of The Truman Show, he can react only to a scripted scenario. At one point a former cast member is heard from on a call-in show interviewing Christof, the producer. She is part of the Free Truman Movement. Christof refutes her claim that he should feel guilty for holding Truman hostage. He insists that the world he has created for Truman is an ideal world, whereas the real world is sick.

Perhaps the creators of the Simulation–whoever they are–feel the same way.

But Simulation pundits insist that the current Simulation is not the only one. In fact, word is that the current Simulation is in its death throes. This begs the question, what will the new one be like?

Just as the Simulation idea is not new, neither is the idea of Time being cyclical rather than linear. Nietzsche spoke of the concept of Eternal Recurrence, as did the Stoics of Ancient Greece whose philosophy was that the world was periodically destroyed and reborn in great cycles of Time. And before the Stoics, we have the ancient Hindu cosmology built upon four Yugas, or eras, that cycle repeatedly. While some experts say we are currently in the Kali Yuga, or the shit cycle, others say we have already left the Kali Yuga and are now in the Dvāpara Yuga, which is not quite as bad. Time will tell.

It's said that some of our legends and even physical constructs are not of the current Simulation, but are in fact relics imported from previous versions of the Simulation. One of these could be the legend of Jesus. Another could be the Egyptian pyramids. Calling upon the deus ex machina of Simulation theory offers an explanation of why it is so difficult to ascertain the truth about these and other phenomena such as Biblical characters, or the Great Sphinx, or Stonehenge.

Perhaps clues that the current Simulation is breaking down are more prevalent than we realize. Many people have welcomed the emergence of computer language models like Chat GPT and Bard, but the models have proved not to be reliable for research as they have shown a propensity to invent fictionalized reports. Furthermore, when the language model is asked for more details on the fictional 'evidence,' it invents even more fictional evidence to support its fable.

The current thinking goes: “But A.I. programs are so convenient….they make life easier.” The modern desire for instant gratification is nourished by the internet; but such food may be a poison in disguise. Gone are the days when Taoist monks, through their meditations, discovered the meridian pathways and energy points used in acupuncture. Gone are the days when Gurdjieff and his students meditated in the presence of ancient sculptures in order to discover their true meaning:

"There are figures of gods and of various mythological beings that can be read like books, only not with the mind but with the emotions, provided they are sufficiently developed. In the course of our travels in Central Asia we found, in the desert at the foot of the Hindu Kush, a strange figure which we thought at first was some ancient god or devil. At first it produced upon us simply the impression of being a curiosity. But after a while we began to feel that this figure contained many things, a big, complete, and complex system. It was in the body of the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head, in its eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there was nothing accidental, nothing without meaning. And gradually we understood the aim of the people who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts, their feelings. Some of us thought that we saw their faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across thousands of years, and not only the meaning, but all the feelings and the emotions connected with it as well. That indeed was art!" --Gurdjieff, as related by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous.

Plato told us that we live inside an illusion–a cave where we can only see shadows on the walls and we assume that is reality. The Hindus told us that history repeats itself in a series of endless cycles called Yugas. Ouspensky told us that even if we could go back in time with full awareness of our adult selves, we would make the same mistakes because we are not living life in a conscious manner. That is, without consciousness, without a highly developed sense of awareness which includes understanding the cycles of history, we will remain prisoners of the Simulation.

Painting depicting Hindu concept of reincarnation courtesy Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii

Where does the concept of reincarnation fall in all this, you may be wondering. Well, this is quite a can of worms. Traditionally reincarnation assumes that the spirit/soul inhabiting a physical body will be reborn in a new body after the previous one's death. Spiritual circles have traditionally claimed that we are in the reincarnation cycle in order to learn spiritual lessons, and ascend in spiritual understanding. However, one is hampered by the fact that usually one is reborn in the new body without any awareness of one's previous life, or lives. But memory is the main component of learning! If we lose the memory of our previous lives, how are we to learn anything? How are we to ascend in spiritual understanding?

Hence we are brought to the doorstep of an alternative idea that's been gaining popularity recently:

Reincarnation is a trap.

In the movie The Matrix we're shown humans raised in incubators while their minds are plugged into the false world of the Matrix. The energy generated by the mind's interaction with the Matrix is what powers the machines running the real world. The new concept of reincarnation is that at the moment of physical death, we are lured back into the Matrix so that we can keep feeding the Simulation and its creator(s).

Because the Simulation (like Big Brother) knows what we're thinking, at the moment of death we're 'met' by familiar people who have passed on–but according to the new theory these apparitions are illusions designed to suck us, and our energy, back into the Simulation. We're told we must 'go back' in order to correct our past mistakes, which are paraded before us in the so-called 'life review' that's been reported by countless survivors of the near-death experience (NDE).

In the work of Carlos Castaneda, the teacher/sorcerer Don Juan continually speaks of an energy force he calls The Eagle that eats our awareness when we die. In Don Juan's sorcerer's world, then, one cultivates the awareness that will allow a seer to escape the path leading to the Eagle's beak. One of the compulsory sorcerer's exercises is called the Recapitulation and is also recommended by Howdie Mickoski, the philosopher mentioned earlier. Recapitulation involves going over every personal interaction and event in one's life. The purpose is to remove any energy imprints one has unknowingly received from others, and to reclaim any energy one has left behind in those interactions. Essentially the Recapitulation exercise is the same as the 'life review' one experiences at death. If we do the life review while we're still very much alive, in the form of the Recapitulation exercise, we add to our strategy of avoiding reincarnation.

The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity.

 As the seer gazes on the blackness that the Eagle is, four blazes of light reveal what the Eagle is like, The first blaze, which is like a bolt of lightning, helps the seer make out the contours of the Eagle's body. There are patches of whiteness that look like an eagle's feathers and talons. A second blaze of lightning reveals the flapping, wind-creating blackness that looks like an eagle's wings. With the third blaze of lightning the seer beholds a piercing, inhuman eye. And the fourth and last blaze discloses what the Eagle is doing.

The Eagle is devouring the awareness of all the creatures that, alive on earth a moment before and now dead, have floated to the Eagle's beak, like a ceaseless swarm of fireflies, to meet their owner, their reason for having had life. The Eagle disentangles these tiny flames, lays them flat, as a tanner stretches out a hide, and then consumes them; for awareness is the Eagle's food.

The Eagle, that power that governs the destinies of all living things, reflects equally and at once all those living things. There is no way, therefore, for man to pray to the Eagle, to ask favors, to hope for grace. The human part of the Eagle is too insignificant to move the whole.

It is only from the Eagle's actions that a seer can tell what it wants. The Eagle, although it is not moved by the circumstances of any living thing, has granted a gift to each of those beings. In its own way and right, any one of them, if it so desires, has the power to keep the flame of awareness, the power to disobey the summons to die and be consumed. Every living thing has been granted the power, if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it. It is evident to the seer who sees the opening, and to the creatures that go through it, that the Eagle has granted that gift in order to perpetuate awareness.
—from The Eagle’s Gift by Carlos Castaneda

For centuries certain individuals and groups have perceived the unreality of our world and expounded upon it. We see, then, that the idea of the Simulation is just pouring new wine into old bottles. And it is fitting, indeed, to speak of an A.I. simulated world today, since we are surrounded by computers and A.I. at every turn.

For those hearing about the Simulation for the first time, though, it may present more questions than answers. The first of these questions might be: if one realizes one is living in a computer simulated world, how might that change the actions one takes within it? The second question might be: does a computer simulated world necessarily imply a deterministic world where free will does not exist?

We have before us a subject worthy of further investigation, and over the coming weeks I will be deep diving into it. Please be advised that my Simulation articles may not be sequential, however. Be patient and let the meat marinate.

Hasta la vista, baby!