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Dr. Joscha Bach (MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics) is an AI researcher who works and writes about cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent[…]
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Are we living in a video game? If so, the joke is on us, says cognitive scientist Joscha Bach. When people debate the possibility of human existence as a simulation, it’s predominantly assumed that we are the players. Our overlord simulators are watching us, right? Well, that doesn’t seem to gel with the amount of detail present in our world and the observable universe beyond. Why did our cosmic creators bother to code trillions of galaxies into the viewfinders of our telescopes? The Higgs boson, for example, is not necessary for our existence, so who would have the time to add such irrelevant frills just for our amusement (maybe the simulators had a really great intern that summer)? The answer? It’s not made for us. According to Bach, if this is a simulation it’s unlikely that we are the main attraction and much more realistic that the simulators wanted to make a model of a universe to explore hypothetical physics. That tiny blue dot with primates mixing concrete all over the surface? “We are just a random side effect or an artifact of the fact that evolution is possible in this universe,” says Bach.


But, that explanation is purely hypothetical because Bach is confident that we are living in base reality. However it’s not bubble bursting from Bach: while we are not living in a simulation, we are living in a computer program. How can that be? Above, he explains why, and also gives his response to the ‘game console probability’ hypothesis popularized by Elon Musk.


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