Why do half of Internet users think we are living in a simulation?

If it is possible that to make a simulation which matches our experience, then it is likely possible to make an unbounded number of such simulations. Thus, if such simulations are possible, it is vanishingly unlikely that we are executing directly on the underlying substrate.

If it is not possible, then, well, it's not.

So to a good approximation, the question "do you believe it is more likely than not that we are living in a simulation?" is equivalent to the question "do you believe that a simulation of the phenomenon you have observed is possible?"

And... well, sure, there's not a strong reason to think it's /impossible/, based on the evidence available to us. So, yeah, more likely than not.

Another way of phrasing this: Do you think it's more likely than not that there's some physical law, as yet discovered, that makes high fidelity simulation impossible? Such a law is certainly imaginable (limits on information density, magical-ness of souls, whatever); but if you don't have a reason to believe such a law is likely, then you probably believe we are more likely than not in a simulation.

It's unlikely to be half of all internet users.

* The 4 million internet users that self selected to answer a philosophical question on Matrix type simulations are unlikely to respond to general questions in the same manner as, say, 4 million K-Pop fans.

* Neither of the above groups are likely to be a good and true representation of the mean responses of the 5.3 billion internet users worldwide.

I find the simulation argument is little different in nature to the argument that because something exists, someone (a god) must have made it.

And I think humans are highly susceptible to creating explanations without evidence.

People often believe in things without rational proof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

It's trendy. I'm sure that on some level, many people just think that it makes them look smart, and even a little edgy without appearing politically incorrect.

You asked in the poll “are we living in a simulation?” but here in this post you say “computer simulation”, is that what you meant with the original poll? Because I might say yes to this being a simulation but no to it being run by a computer.

This is a religious stance, like many worlds theory or any religion you know. You can’t prove it. You can spend your live chase evidence, but there is no experiment to prove it. So, go warship if that’s your thing.

Having just completed a first year university philosophy subject on the matter I feel I am an expert and will share the answer.

The people who think they are living in a simulation because they can't argue their way out of it should tell the people who accuse them of it to prove it.

(I think I passed the subject. Waiting for the results.)

/ please appreciate the humour in that I know nothing more than I knew last year

In a perfect simulation with no outside influence, there's no distinction between "real" and "simulated" - the simulated world is real, and the outside world is not observable (effectively doesn't exist).

So unless the "entity" doing the simulation interferes with it in some way, it simply doesn't matter.

It's a trendy narrative.

The argument goes like this, summarized: if ancestor simulations are possible then there are more ancestor simulations than real worlds. Therefore it is highly likely you're in an ancestor simulation.

First, we forget the importance of the word "ancestor". Dive into the details if you like, but suffice to say this word was not included in the initial argument for no reason. Second, it is unfalsifiable by definition. Third, it is inconsequential unless it is detectable. Finally, and this is a subjective claim, it would appear that something much more interesting is going on with regard to this whole existence thing than something as small minded as an ancestor simulation.

We are obviously in a simulation, at least two layers. The fact that we are built up from a set of consistent rules and atoms, basically pixels, rather than an open and free canvas, is direct proof of one of these layers. The second is that every single experience a human has is inside the brain rather than "out there", as it's a model synthesized from raw sensory data. You can't directly experience "out there".

The question is not whether we are in a simulation, but rather is there an experiential reality outside of this simulation, or did the simulation pop into existence from nothing.

This whole argument is meaningless because the term Simulation isn't well defined. In the narrowest sense, you could define simulation as "human-like creatures running computer-like machines that we're part of, just like the Matrix". In the broadest sense you can define simulation as "The universe follows a set of fixed physical laws, and we are part of that"

While the former is just ridiculous, the latter is pretty plausible. When people are answering this question they can imagine any definition of simulation they like.

Why do the majority of the people in the world think the universe was created by an all powerful deity? It’s the same phenomenon. Wanting to believe in something because it strikes a chord despite an absence of evidence.

OP asks: why so many people are now convinced that we are living in a simulation?

Not whether we think we do or don't.

Which is a quite different question.

For my 2 pennies, whether or not it makes a difference (as mentioned in simulation argument) does itself not matter, all that matters if people think it matters (it is, after all, entirely in our head at this point). Does it create a disassociation effect where counter-intuitively a constructivist approach allows is to see the world more positively (positive, as in positivist). And if not, are poll answers blunder or is there no disassociation of self determination.

This is all name magic. Anyone can call reality a simulation. Computation is substrate independent, so there is literally no difference, functionally, between a Turing machine made of sticks and one made of bits. My VMWare-based Windows doesn’t worry about whether it is running on “real” hardware.

It’s like when people ask “what was before the beginning?” The answer is something that can’t possibly matter; can’t be settled and wouldn’t matter if it were settled.

Half of the internet probably believes in God. Does that surprise you?

Some people feel that there's a hidden, unprovable reality beyond what we can perceive, which dictates the things we cannot explain in our own reality. Religions are features of basically every human culture; "simulation theory" folks are of this mindset, but it's couched in the language of technology, rather than theology.

I work on soft real-time simulations as a career, so I think this reality being a simulation is exceedingly unlikely.

One argument I've encountered says that if, in the future, we are capable of creating a simulation where the laws of physics are pretty much the same as of the 'real' world and the entities within it are conscious, then it's probable that we are already residing in such a simulation, operated by someone else.

I'm personally agnostic on whether or not we're in a simulation. However, some say the "Double-slit experiment" is perhaps proof we are in some sort of simulation. Particularly the part where particles/waves behave differently only when they are directly being observed.

I think it's fun thought to play with from technical perspective. How would you make an ethical simulation with limited processing power in 1000 years?

- Dark energy would make it less compute-intensive towards the end of the simulation. If you knew where your observers are you could simulate less and less over time, while also reaching an ethical endpoint for the simulation

- and with Double-slit experiment, we kinda know that universe knows when things are observed

- Cosmic Microwave Background would hide a lot of signals further away, giving a possibility of aggregating or dropping signals further away from observers

- Diffraction Limit would limit the resolution of observations we can make from further away, limiting the resolution of the needed simulation.

- Quantum uncertainty principle would be easy way to make the simulation non-deterministic by just adding some jitter / variance.

I might have written some things that are wrong. Also it doesn't really answer your questions as this doesn't really lead me to believe we surely live in a simulation, it's just something I like to think about sometimes.

I wouldn't trust that people clicking yes actually believe we live in a simulation. There's a funny aspect to joust about that, to pretend you believe it, even discuss that you believe that, even if to your core, you don't.

>Two thirds of adults globally (64%) report being happy

I think the idea that this reality is a simulation gives people comfort that all their problems are not real and there's a reality somewhere else which is more fair?

One of the biggest mistakes people make thinking the simulation theory is the idea that the "host universe" resembles anything like ours or has any of the limitations that our universe has.

It doesn't.

> Why is the night sky dark if there is an infinity of stars, covering every part of the celestial sphere?

Because of stellar dust? I'm not sure what makes this a paradox. There's a well-known explanation.

This is how it's done - https://bit.ly/simulation-proof-script

I find the idea super unnerving. It means there is the possibility that your consciousness could be trapped in a virtual prison Black-Mirror style for an eternity.

This whole simulation thing is fun, but that people genuinely believe that baffles me. I guess this is why religions exist.

Are there any other options available? Like, what is it all if not a simulation?

Religion can be seen as a special case of God’s simulation

People who believes in simulation is more likely to vote with extra interests.

Old conversation I once witnessed online years ago:

"It won't let me see the article without filling out a survey."

"I enjoy being a 19 year old Black woman with a PhD on such surveys." -- Male with PhD in his 50s, either Caucasian or ethnically Indian (as in the country), iirc.

Why do half of Internet users click random answers to stupid questions?

My favorite exchange on the topic from "Matter" by Iain M. Banks where one character explains their argument, based on morality, for why he believes they are living in the base layer of reality and not a simulation:

Xide Hyrlis: "War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale."

Choubris Holse: "Of course, your god could just be a bastard."

There's a difference between a simulation and a computer simulation. If our world is contained in a vastly more advanced world that we don't know about, I doubt they'd use something as primitive as computers.

since bots are programmed, they can argue they 'live in a simulation'...

seems you're at about 50/50 human traffic :)

Because philosophy, computer science, and cosmology aren't taught anymore. It was a fad for a year because of the big mouths of certain billionaires.

tl;dl: There's no way to know so it's a thought experiment that has no pertinence to reality.

Here's my systematic answer about 'questions'. First, broadly, a question is either falsifiable, or not. Even if it is hypothetically falsifiable, if it's not falsifiable in some reasonable time frame, or within some agreed upon framework for determining the "right" answer, then it's effectively not falsifiable. I think this question about if we're in a simulation is not falsifiable at the moment.

As an aside, if the question is falsifiable, then you don't want to simply ask people what they think. Asking people questions is usually a waste of time. Setting up an accurate poll is really hard. Even in good faith, anonymously, people will answer based on social norms and expectations. Knowing if you have an accurate population to poll is really hard, too. I think it's more reliable to set up a scenario where people can bet money or other another resource on the answer. You have to define how the "right" answer will be determined, and time box it. Assuming you set this up well, you might get some approximation about what people actually think about your question, and how confident they are in their assessment. It's still not foolproof, but it's meaningfully closer than just asking them.

For a question that's not falsifiable, or that you can't pin down a way to determine the "right" answer, such as if we're living in a simulation or not, there will be a small margin of people who will refuse to answer either way. A question that's not falsifiable is not a question at all. It's source material for fiction writers. This is a very small sliver of the population though. Most people will play along.

Among the remaining population (which is most people) you will get two broad groups. One doesn't think very hard about the question at all (if they did, they'd realize it was not falsifiable, and so kind of silly). These folks will split roughly along the proportion of the prevailing society at large. They're just answering whatever seems the most fun or heartwarming to them. It might be interesting to know, though. It'd tell you which way the "wind is blowing" so to speak.

The second group will actually think about the problem, and suspend their philosophical apprehensions about non-falsifiable questions, and kind of mull it over in their heads. They'll be willing to consider arguments. They might even (shudder) search the internet for articles or videos about it. The most you can ever hope for is that some of these folks have actual credentials or education in the field your question relates to, so their answers might actually even be credible. You won't know if they're credible or not though. And even if they have credentials, you probably don't have any way to judge the credibility of their credentials. But even still, they've given it some though, and are answering with a bit of investment. You'd probably like to know how this population sees the question, as it's the closest you can get to a "right" answer, given that the question is not falsifiable.

Here's the rub though. You have no way of separating the people who answer flippantly from the people who answer with some modicum of thought put into it. You can't know if somebody is trolling you, or a subject matter expert with decades of applicable scientific knowledge. And you can't judge a person's decades of scientific knowledge if (just as one example) their job depends on them answering a certain way. There are so many unknowns involved, that the proportion answering the question one way or another is basically noise. If I told you that half of people think gremlins are real, or that the God of the Bible is real, or that aliens are among us, I haven't really told you anything at all. It'd be like saying "I took this six sided die, rolled it, and it came up a 3. What does that mean?"

this is a case for making-more-comfortable delusion.

Because we do.

says who?