(The image to the left is an AI generated image generated by DeepAI. If you believe this question is so unrealistic it’s pointless to discuss, try to imagine what you would think if someone told you that this kind of AI Generation was possible 30 years ago.)
When I was a child, my teachers didn’t like me very much. In their classes, I was very much prone to zoning out and spending my time elsewhere. What was the “elsewhere” that I was willing to give up studying the intricacies of irregular verb conjugation for? They were fantasy worlds that I constructed in my head. You see, I was a decently imaginative child fueled by a mystical library of wondrous stories known to a select few as Netflix. I vividly remember getting engrossed within one of the Pokemon generations and, for weeks after, manufacturing an alternate life for myself as a pokemon master. All I could think was how amazing it would be to step out of this ordinary world into one created for excitement. And when I say “one,” I mean many of those I yearned to experience. While I am not a huge fan of the original 3 star wars movies (as modern cinematography has advanced well beyond it and current worship stems from the nostalgia for a cinematic time that I never experienced), I was completely captivated by the concept of a web of societies stretching across a galaxy where brave warriors used high energy laser sticks to bring down the tyrannical rule of some scary guy in a mask. While my 4th grade teacher taught whatever they were teaching, I was ‘in a galaxy far, far away’ yielding a gold lightsaber and making Luke Skywalker look like a novice.
As I grew older, unfortunately, the imagination that gave me a glimpse into adventure began to weaken and I was forced actually to pay attention to the Great Gatsby. Redeeming, of that time, I found many video games that offered a similar escape into adventures beyond the bounds of typical reality. The drawback was that the use of buttons and joysticks to interact provided a disconnected experience making the TV screen merely a portal that I couldn’t step through.
However, these problems were resolved when I received an Oculus quest for my birthday. The quest is a virtual reality system where a user wears a computing system that has screens right in front of the eyes which present fluidly changing images as the user moves their head to mimic the visual experience of ‘reality’. Additionally, the user holds two controllers in their hands that coordinate with the computer system to simulate the existence of real hands in the system. With the immersive nature of the visual effects and the use of one’s body to carry out movements, the user can be transported to a different world. For example, I was playing a game called ‘SuperHot’ and I became so immersed in the generated reality, that I ran, and I mean ran, into the standing clock within my living room. For a brief moment, I didn’t consider my spatial existence outside of the experience. The thing about ‘Super Hot,’ though, is that there’s no story, there’s no substantial adventure to be had.
On the other hand, this virtual adventure can be had in the Experience ‘Vader Immortal.’ In this interactive, storyline game, the user is a force-sensitive (one with potential to wield the force) smuggler who is captured and called on by Vader due to your special nature. In one of the early scenes, the user is faced by Vader himself, an intimidating 6'5 to my 5'10 where Vader says that he is going to use your power. Throughout the experience, the user learns how to wield a lightsaber (beyond the extent one picked from having lightsaber battles with friends as a kid) as well as the force. As you embark on the experience, you'll be immersed in a hero’s journey to eventually face off against Vader only like a few brave Jedis before you. The experience gave me a chance to live out one of the many daydreams that expanded my reality for a short period of time.
Okay, okay, what is the purpose of this long-winded description of my experience of fantasy and virtual realities? It has been to provide you with reasoning for my answer to the following question and pave the way for a similar result for you. This question is:
If you were given the opportunity to live in a simulation personally constructed to give you the best life possible, would you take it?
As you have seen, I have always yearned for a world more wondrous than this one, so my answer would be yes. And your answer should be yes too.
The first thing you might be thinking is that you weren’t a weird little kid who fantasized about other worlds. I wouldn’t blame you if not. After all, an equivalent to Pokemon battling in typical reality was explored by Michael Vick and didn’t end very well. But that’s not what it’s about. Modern forms of entertainment all have one key element in common. There is a main character or group of them where life always seems to pan out for them. They don’t need to be a Luke Skywalker saving the galaxy or Harvey Spectre making million dollar deals. The gift of the main character is that there’s always a point to their struggle. These main characters always seem to face adversity and come out better like it was a good thing all along. They aren’t subject to the oppression that plagues our world where hardship just tends to lead to more hardship. A personally tailored simulation would put an end to this. You could live a life where your struggles were for the better, just like the characters that our society tends to get so invested in.
To this, you might respond, well “I’d rather live in the reality of hardship than the illusion of bliss.” I would have no choice but to call on the techno philosopher (techno philosophy: the branch of philosophy that uses technology to answer age-old philosophical questions, and uses age-old questions to confront aspects of technology), David Chalmers. In his work, “Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy,” he asks the question “Are virtual worlds real or Illusionary?” He responds to this question by saying “A virtual chair or table is made of digital processes, just as a physical chair or table is made of atoms and quarks and ultimately of quantum processes. The virtual object is different from the nonvirtual one, but both are equally real.” Whilst he acknowledges the difference between the objects, he gives valid reasoning why this difference doesn’t invalidate the realness of a virtual world. He is arguing that because we accept a world where the substances are quarks in quantum processes and the governing rules are the laws of physics, we must accept a world where the substances are bits and the governing rules are lines of code. At the elementary level, there exists an object that we can interact with made of a particular substance. This, therefore, establishes an equality that confronts the idea of simulations being illusionary and gives validity to the reality of blissful conditions within a simulation.
Maybe you have a partialness to atoms rather than bits because a nice proton decided to buy you an ice cream cone one time. Okay, well maybe it’s actually because those and that which you love are made up of atoms. First, I would like to bring up that one’s experience of someone or something is built on the perceptions surrounding them or it which could be easily replicated, just like one’s self within the simulation. It is supposed to be the optimal reality after all. But larger than that, how can it be known that those individuals are actually made of atoms in the first place. To obtain a deeper understanding of this possibility, we look at another question posed by Chalmers “Can we know whether or not we’re in a virtual world?” Chalmers explores this question by recounting a parable by the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. In this parable, Zhuangzi is dreaming about being a butterfly without knowledge of his true existence as Zhuangzi. He then suddenly wakes up, realizing he is Zhuangzi. But he ponders that maybe he is actually, instead, the butterfly dreaming about being Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi’s inability to be sure which world is truly real illuminates uncertainties about how we can really differentiate our experiences from others to be fundamental truth. Chalmer ties this back to virtual reality by relating this experience to the hit movie The Matrix, where the main character Neo chooses to take a red pill and wakes up in a different world being told that the last one was merely a simulation. Chalmers speculates that maybe Neo was living in the real world and the red pill actually knocked him out to be put in a simulation where he is lied to that his old life was the simulation. Much like Zhuangzi, Neo cannot distinguish which traits make a true reality so he can never be certain what he is experiencing is the true world. In reality, well this reality at least, the ‘reality’ that you know might be a virtual world that you associate with illusion. We’ll dig a little deeper though so you’re not stuck with total uncertainty. This is similar to many of the other uncertainties that present themselves in this typical reality which we can use statistical arguments to simplify. This statistical answer to the likelihood of being the fundamental reality is supported by many great minds and is fueled by the following logic: If it is possible to create a world with beings of free will (which we’re in the steps of: which can be seen in this fascinating article discussing the use of brain stem cells to control a butterfly within a simulation) with the capability of interaction with bits and programs, we can replicate our world. This replication would allow this simulation to create another, or more simulations with this same capability. This creates an exponential expansion of the number of possible simulations there are while there remains only one conventional reality, stacking the statistics in favor of us being in a simulated reality. Whilst Zhaungzi’s parable and deeper analysis of The Matrix draw attention to the great uncertainty whether or not those you love are simulated, the popular statistical analysis argues that it is very likely they are just but a simulation. Thus, it is illogical to decline living in an ideal simulation on the basis that it is a sub-par reality, once again communicating the validity of experience, relative to this reality, available in a simulated world.
It has been demonstrated that a virtual reality is an equal reality to our typical ideas of reality, and even if that’s not believed, chances are, one’s already in the illusionary reality. Choose the simulation because it’s a valid reality that is most likely another version of what you’re already experiencing and enjoy the adventure it can provide you, or, at least, enjoy a world where adversity and struggle can mean something.
I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t believe you’re continuing after that killer conclusion sentence.” I’m sorry but I want to ensure that answering the question “If you were given the opportunity to live in a simulation personally constructed to give you the best life possible, would you take it,” isn’t the endgame of this word jumble of an article. In fact, I’m not hoping for answers from you at all. Instead, I’m hoping for questions. I hope for someone to ask, “What is this all for if we’re merely a simulation?” or “If it’s not my makeup as particles making me real, what does make me real?” or “What might this hold for me living out the best life possible?”
Typically, writers try to make sure that the reader leaves with something that they didn’t have before; I hope that I’ve done that too. What I hope that I’ve left you is uncertainty: uncertainty about what these ideas fostered by technological advancement tell us about what life on this floating disk (or sphere if you’re one of those round earthers) even is and what we should do with it. Allow this uncertainty to lead your mind on an adventure to know it all, much like my 10 year old mind on an adventure to ‘catch em all.’
Image Source:
Headline Image: This is an AI generated image generated by DeepAI.
