Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

• Book ID: 108531408
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 222 KB
• Volume: 53
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8094
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00309

✦ Synopsis

I argue that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to become extinct before reaching a ‘posthuman’ stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of its evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we shall one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. I discuss some consequences of this result.