Key idea: A computer scientist at the University of Louisville explores ways that humans could try to hack our way out of this reality and enter the baseline reality.
Original author and publication date: Darren Ort (Popular Mechanics) – March 24, 2023
Futurizonte Editor’s Note: If the only thing we know is an illusion, that illusion is the whole reality for us.
From the article:
University of Louisville computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy explores this very question in a detailed post outlining how to possibly hack our way out of our simulated existence.
The idea that humans possibly live in a simulation is a surprisingly old one. French philosopher René Descartes tossed around the idea back in the 17th century, but the idea really captured the science community when Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote an influential article on the possibility of a simulated reality back in 2003. Bostrom put the odds of us living inside some super-advanced alien computer at about 20 percent.
Yampolskiy continues this tradition of exploring the boundaries of a possible simulation and specifically exploring ways to escape it. Yampolskiy pulls examples from real-world examples of hacks, exploits found in video games, as well as more philosophical meanderings about attempting to communicate with our simulator overlords with an avatar.
Yampolskiy also includes a compendium of sorts of escape plans theorized by other thinkers, which include “generating an incalculable paradox” or stressing the simulation’s computational capacity, such as requiring millions of people to meditate at the same time and then suddenly becoming very active.
The article admits that there are some compelling bits of evidence that are potentially damaging to the idea of escaping the simulation—or if there’s a simulation at all.
