Are we living in a virtual reality?

“Are We Living In a Virtual Reality”

Subject: Theory of Knowledge

Submission Date: 12/10/18

Word Count: 934

Content Page

Introduction……………………………………………1

Implications……………………………………………2

Conclusion……………………………………………..2

References…………………………………………..…3

Computer simulation is the technique of representing the real world by a computer program. The idea that we might be living in a virtual reality insinuates that everything on this planet and in the cosmos is part of a huge video game controlled by other people perhaps. There have been numerous theorists suggesting that this might be true such as Elon Musk, and Nick Bostrom. In my essay I’m going to weigh in the different arguments against the possibility that we are in fact living in a virtual reality by exploring several different sources and aspects of this question, and also questioning the importance of this information as maybe we are living in a computer simulation, but is it really going to bring much change in our daily lives?

The article by (Baggini, 2018), ‘We are Simulations Living in a Virtual Realm Says Elon Musk. But Why do we Like the Idea?’ published on the Guardian discusses the views of Elon Musk on the fact that we might be living in a computer simulation. I agree with this article as it questions the possibility that we’re living in a computer without necessarily disagreeing with this possibility. I particularly agree with one point raised in this article which is “if people like us created this virtual world, why on earth are the diseases so nasty, the poverty so widespread and the television so awful? If you could make a perfect simulacrum of a world, why would you make one so imperfect?”(Baggini, 2018). This is the main question that comes to my mind when thinking of this matter as if we were in a made up world it would only make sense that the creators of the ‘game’ strive to make it perfect. However of course, like in any game, there could be glitches, horrific events such as World War 2 could possibly be seen as an irregularity in the game, but maybe it is just another way to blame anyone but ourselves for everything that is going wrong in the world.

The ‘Are you Living in a Computer Simulation’ (Bostrom, 2003) argues that one of these statements is true: “humans are likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; any post-human civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history; we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation” (Bostrom, 2003). In the journal it is mentioned that “at our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in

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