The “Simulation Hypothesis” holds that the universe you see around you is not “real,” but instead is a terribly advanced computer simulation. Presumably you (and everyone you meet) are also a simulation, as opposed to being a “real” person plugged into the Matrix. As goofy as the idea may sound, the math behind it actually does kinda hold up. Based on a few not-unreasonable assumptions – like the idea that advanced computers could in fact simulate an entire universe – then is becomes not just possible, not just likely, but a virtual mathematical certainty that our universe is a simulation.

Some people are kinda freaked out about the possibility that they aren’t “real.” But there have been religions for millenia that have taught at least the possibility that mankind or the world itself is just the dream of some god or other, to be swept away into oblivion when the god awakens. Personally, I gotta agree with Conan the Barbarian:

“Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

The universe may be simply a really advanced first person shooter. But it certainly seems real enough to me. it and I have the same basis. So… meh.

But other folk are, as I said, freaked out about the possibility. Take, for example:

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

The author is a professor of philosophy. He discusses the possibility of physicists designing experiments that could potentially provide evidence that we are living in a simulation. He’s afraid of that, because if humanity realizes that it is, in fact, part of a simulation, and if the simulation is some sort of experiment with humans as the simulated lab rats, then humans learning that will ruin the experiment. And the experimenter will simply shut off the simulation, since it is ruined.

Well, maybe.

It seems unlikely to me that this universe is the *first* simulation. Conseqeuntly, the simulator probably has some experience. Thus if “if the puny simu-humans realize they’re simulated, the experiment is ruined” is an actual problem, you’d expect there to be some programming that would either prevent humans from dreaming up the simulation hypothesis, or from believing in it. Donkey Kong, after all, doesn’t realize the futility of hurling those barrels. He just keeps doing what he does… just like humans. Sorta.

So it seems to me that humans realizing they’re simulated is not a “shut off the machine” trigger. Hell, if the entire observable universe is simulated to the same fidelity as out little corner, then it’s a pretty ironclad certainty that many other civilizations elsewhere in the universe have realized it before us, and yet the model keeps running. As with the threat of a vacuum collapse wiping out the world in a flash with no warning whatsoever… it’s just not something that seems worth worrying about.