If reality is a data structure, can the simulation theory hold up? | Donald Hoffman | Big Think

Everything that we perceive around us — space and time, the sun and the moon, apples — are just a virtual reality. We have a headset on. It's very similar, in spirit, to the simulation hypothesis of Nick Bostrom and others that say we're not seeing reality as it is.

And there are many things that are similar from my point of view and Nick Bostrom's, but there are several things that are fundamentally different. So first, the similarities: The idea that this is all a simulation, that we're not seeing reality as it is, is something that I'm saying as well. That space-time itself is just a data structure; physical objects are just a data structure. They're not objective reality.

So on that point, I agree with the simulation hypothesis that we're not seeing the truth. We're seeing something other than the truth. Where I differ is the following: In the simulation hypothesis, there's some programmer at a lower level that has created the simulation that's us. But that programmer, themselves, could be a simulation by another programmer at a lower level.

And this keeps going. There could be a hierarchy of these different levels of simulation until you get to some bottom level. And in the standard story of the simulation hypothesis, at the bottom level, there is a physical space-time world where there's a real programmer in space and time with a real physical computer that's programming the whole thing.

So our space-time might be virtual, but at the bottom, there is a real space-time with a real physical world. And I'm denying that. I'm denying that at any point space-time and physical objects correspond to an objective reality.

A second difference that I have is that in the simulation hypothesis, they assume, or explicitly state, that the conscious experiences that we're having right now — if I'm having a headache, or I'm smelling garlic, or I'm feeling velvet, and so forth — those specific conscious experiences are produced by the program, by the simulation.

And that I claim is not possible. That it's not possible from computer programs, from algorithms that are not conscious, to boot up consciousness. This is the so-called hard problem of consciousness. How is consciousness — your experience of the taste of garlic, the smell of chocolate, and so forth — how are those conscious experiences related to your brain activity and to the physical world more generally?

And most of my colleagues and friends would say that somehow unconscious dynamical, physical systems like neural networks or computer circuits and so forth will somehow give rise to the experience of consciousness. And I'm saying that that's not possible. You can't start with unconscious ingredients and boot up consciousness.

No one's been able to do it. There are no theories about how to do it. And the simulation hypothesis depends on the possibility that unconscious programs could boot up consciousness. And that's not possible.