Many works of science fiction, as well as some forecasts of renowned technologists and futurologists, predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct.
One thing that later generations could do with their super powerful computers would be to run detailed simulations of their ancestors or similar people. Because their computers would be really powerful, they could run many simulations of this type.
Suppose that these simulated people are aware, then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race, but to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. Then it is possible to argue that, if this were the case, it would be rational to think that we are probably among the simulated minds and not among the original biological ones. In short, our life and everything in it is a computer simulation.
Or at least that’s what Nick Bostrum, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, suggested in 2003, when he said that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power would have the ability to perform simulations of their ancestors.
Although the most surprising of all is that there are many investigations that show that it is very likely that we are interacting with simulated minds. But now, George Hotz, the most famous hacker and programmer, is the latest technological celebrity to ensure that our universe is a simulation built by a society more advanced than ours. What’s more, he wants to hack it.
“We are living in a computer simulation”
The American computer and hacker expert George Hotz has ensured during an exhibition at the SXSW 2019 conference, held in Austin, USA, that he is convinced that all of us live in a computer simulation created by beings much more advanced than us. either extraterrestrial or artificial intelligence, which is far beyond the scope of human conception and understanding.
“There is no proof that this is not true ,” Hotz said on March 8 at the exhibition called “Jailbreaking the Simulation.” “It’s easy to imagine things that are much smarter than you and could build a cage that you would not even recognize.”
It seems that the American hacker is one of the believers in the simulation hypothesis, proposed by Nick Bostrom in 2003. Hotz, 29, became famous for being the first hacker to unlock the first generation iPhone. But he went further when he managed to release the Sony PlayStation 3. Since then he has worked for Facebook, Google, and Vicarious, an artificial intelligence company based in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California. In 2015, he founded the Comma.ai company, whose objective is to democratize access to auto driving software.
During the conference, Hotz assured that all the negative elements of the universe could be eliminated if we are able to ‘hack’ the operating system that creates this imperfect simulation.
“Are you a player or non-player character?” Hotz added. “The player characters know they are at stake. Hack the computer that operates the simulation and rewrite the operating system of nature.“
In addition, the computer expert even said he is thinking of founding a religion dedicated to “breaking up” with the simulated universe.
“I’m thinking about founding a church,” Hotz said, referring to the end result of any capitalist enterprise being to maximize profits, sell the company or destroy it, all that is considered failures.
“There are many structural problems with companies: there is no real way to win. With companies, you only really lose. I believe that the churches could be much more aligned with these objectives, and the goal of the church would be to realign the efforts of society to get out of the simulation. I do not know how close you think of the singularity, but I think it’s very close. Once we reach the singularity, if we have the same motivations that we have now, mainly the power over people, things are going to be horrible. Gather the right people and start saying: ‘What does it mean to go out?’ No charlatans, it’s not garbage. Everything you say better will be rationally justifiable.“
George Hotz joins the long list of influential people in our society who also think that we live in a simulation. PayPal co-founder and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly revealed that we are all+9+9* stuck in a virtual Matrix-style simulation . In 2016, the best analysts of the Bank of America Corporation affirmed that there is a 50% probability that our world is a computer simulation and that we are all connected in a virtual reality.
Even researchers from the University of Southampton, in collaboration with scientists from Canada and Italy, suggested that the universe could be a “vast and complex hologram” and our perception of life in 3D would only be a mere illusion.
Now, do the most privileged minds of the world suffer delusions of greatness? Or can they be right in their beliefs? Maybe the theory of simulation could explain the most absurd things in our lives, like politicians or wars. As it did with the iPhone or PlayStation 3, we will have to wait to know if “our reality” can be hacked, saving us all from this simulation in which we live.
Do you think we live in a computer simulation? Are we simple gamers of a video game?
