Conversations with a Snot-Nosed Kid: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

By Stephen Davis

“The Kid” tells us about the planet Apex, and how it became extremely polarized over the years until it looked a lot like our planet Earth does today – so polarized that nuclear war eventually made the planet’s surface uninhabitable and forced its humanoid population underground where they went through drastic changes to their bodies, including losing the ability to feel any emotions. The nuclear war also caused Apex to change positions in our galaxy, winding up in the constellation of Zeta Reticuli. When the Zeta Reticuli resurfaced again, they began the process of trying to recover the ability to feel, and The Powers That Be asked for help from the younger children as well. As a science project, The Kid (thirteen Earth-years old) created an ancestor simulation of Apex, starting around 1940, calling it Earth. It was through this simulation that the Zeta Reticuli hoped to find answers for their own challenged future, and in turn assist the Earthlings in avoiding the same nuclear destruction that Apex experienced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Davis
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463440667

Stephen Davis

Stephen Davis is America’s pre-eminent rock journalist and biographer, having written numerous bestsellers on rock bands including Watch You Bleed and the smash hit Hammer of the Gods. He lives in Boston.

Book preview

Conversations with a Snot-Nosed Kid:

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

A Novella by

Stephen Davis

Copyright © 2020 by Stephen Davis. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9780463440667

Published: February 28, 2020

Cover design by Annie Ahsen

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

PART ONE: ARE WE LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

PART TWO: CONVERSATIONS WITH A SNOT-NOSED KID

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART THREE: UNILATERAL DE-POLARIZATION

Chapter Twelve

FOREWORD

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I think the likelihood [that we are living in a simulation] may be very high. And my evidence for it is a very simple thought experiment. When I look at what we measure to be our own intelligence, we tend to think highly of it…. If we look at other life forms on Earth with whom we have DNA in common, there's none we would rank with us and our level of intelligence – ever, in the history of the fossil record. So given our definitions, we are the only intelligent species there ever was, because we have poetry, and philosophy, and music and art.

And then I thought to myself, "Well, the chimpanzee has 98-whatever percent identical DNA to us, but they cannot do trigonometry. So if they can't do trigonometry, and they have such close genetic identity to us, let's take that same intelligence gap and put it beyond us, and find some life form that is that much beyond us as we are beyond the chimpanzee. What would we look like to them? We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence.

"So, if you brought Stephen Hawking, the smartest human, in front of this other species, they're chuckling and saying, ‘This happens to be the smartest human.... He's slightly smarter than the other humans because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head, like our little Timmy over here in preschool.’ That is not a stretch to think about, and if that's the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just the creation of some other entity for their entertainment.

~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate

I find it hard to argue against the possibility that we are living in a simulation. You look at our computing power today, and you say, I have the power to program a world inside a computer. Well, imagine in the future when you have even more power than that, and you can create characters that have, for example, free will, or their own perception of free will. So, this is a world, and I program in the laws that govern that world. That world will have its own laws of physics and chemistry and biology.

Now, you're a character in that world and you think you have free will, and you say, I want to invent a computer. So, you do. Hey, I want to create a world in my computer, and then that world creates a world in its computer. And then you have simulations all the way down. So now you lay out all these universes and throw a dart. Which of these universes are you most likely to hit? The original one that started it, or one of the other countless simulations that unfolded thereafter? Obviously, you're going to hit one of the simulations.

So, statistically, based on that argument, it's hard to argue against the possibility that all of us are not just a creation of some kid in a parent's basement, programming up a world for their own entertainment.

~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson, interviewed by Larry King, July 2017

PREFACE

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The definition of simulation: The production of a computer model of something, especially for the purpose of study. The Simulation Hypothesis is the concept that we are digital beings who are so technologically advanced that we're not able to realize that we aren't actually real, because the technology that we're built on is indistinguishable from real-life sensations and experiences. (Are We In a Simulation: Why We Are not Real)

In the late 1990s, as soon as computing had reached sufficient power to make a world simulation a real possibility, an Oxford University philosopher, Nick Bostrom, proposed three different scenarios for the likelihood of computer simulations:

1. A civilization will go extinct before creating technology powerful enough to run convincing simulations of reality;

2. A civilization will live to see such technology but decide, for whatever reason, not to run any simulations;

3. A civilization will create that technology and run many different simulations of its evolutionary history (ancestor simulations) – in which case there would be lots of simulated realities and only one non-simulated one.

Bostrom later said that he thought the chances that we are living in a simulation to be less than 50%, since there were two other options any civilization would have: never getting there technically or deciding not to create simulations. However, in 2019, he also said, the advances toward ever-faster computers have slightly reduced the probability that civilizations at our stage will go extinct before reaching technological maturity. (Vulture Magazine, Feb. 6, 2019)

Clearly, we are rapidly approaching the level of computing power and talent where we can create whole new worlds with very realistic environments, many of them indistinguishable from reality, that exist only inside our computers. Here's a list of ten video games whose graphic sophistication has already reached an astonishing level of realism:

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Forza Motorsports 7

Call of Duty WWII

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Last of Us Remastered

Grand Theft Auto V

Battlefield 1

Assassin's Creed: Origins

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Project Cars 2

And I'm sure that by the time you read this, that list will be out of date and video reality will be even closer to the real thing.

So today, in 2020, like Bostrom, we can say his scenario #1 is not very likely – that we will go extinct before developing the technology to the point where we have the computing power to create convincing simulations of reality; and with the proliferation of secret military and government programs, can anyone really say with 100% certainty that we haven't already created our own simulations somewhere deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, or in Area 51?

It is also clear at this time that we are very ready and willing to use that technology, ruling out Bostrom's #2. If that's the case, it raises the very real (odds on) probability that #3 is true and we are a living in a computer simulation.

I would humbly add a corollary to the 3rd scenario on Bostrom's list:

3A. Any civilization that arrives at the technological point to ask the question whether they are living in a simulation is most likely living in someone else's simulation.

Who might that someone else be? It could be us in the future running an ancestor simulation for the purposes of better understanding how and why we got to that point. Or, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson has suggested, just some snot-nosed kid sitting in front of his computer in the basement of his