Did Plato know about simulation hypothesis ?
Intended audience :
- For people who like the term ‘philosophy’ and have not started digging.
- For people who would like to cross-pollinate ideas.
Plato’s thought on reality
The way Plato thought about the existence of the universe, he came to only one conclusion — that there must be a world of Ideas, or Forms, which is totally separate from the material world (the world that we inhabit).
Plato’s line of thought goes like this. The real world is the world of Ideas, which contains the Ideal Forms of everything. We are born with the concepts of these Ideal Forms in our minds. The illusory world (also called the Maya in the Indian context) in which we live is the world of the senses — contains imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms. This argument eventually led to “Everything in this world is a shadow of its Ideal Form, in the world of Ideas.”
To illustrate this theory, Plato presents what has become to be known as the “Allegory of the Cave”. He asks us to imagine a cave in which people have been imprisoned since birth, tied up facing the back wall in the darkness, They can only face straight ahead. Behind the prisoners is a bright fire, which casts shadows onto the wall they are facing. There is also a column between the fire and the prisoners along which Ideal Forms can be projected onto the wall. Hence the shadows of all these Ideals forms are cast on the wall.
These are all the shadows the prisoners know of the world, they have no concept of the actual objects/ideas themselves. Plato believes that everything our senses perceive in the material world is like the images on the cave wall, merely shadows of reality.
He concludes that the genuine knowledge on the Ideal Forms can only be attained through knowledge/reason and rather than through our senses.
Although what he concludes was interesting, What was more interesting for me was the possibility of combining the idea of ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ with Plato’s ‘Allegory of the cave’ in trying to explain reality.
Are we living in a simulation ? or rather, Are we a living simulation ?
Although there has been enough arguments and contradictions on the stance philosophers and scientists take about our reality, it is intriguing to explore the interconnections between the hypothesis that our entire universe is a simulation (which is pretty modern) and Plato’s cave (which dates back to ~380 BC).
When Plato’s talks about the Ideal Forms, he talks about a mystical cosmic force that puppets these Ideal Forms. (Undoubtedly, why his hand always points to the sky in paintings)
But, modern scientists have not captured any such force acting on us, both through experiments or through reasons.
Here is where Simulation Hypothesis jumps in to offer an alternative. It suggests that this force is not necessarily cosmic in nature, but an equivalent piece of code by more advanced life-form which wants to run this simulation (our world).
This ties back to Plato’s ideology that the reality, as we see it, is bound to have variations from the Ideal Forms. Just like how the shadow is distorted based on the characteristics and texture of the cave wall. The advanced life-form need not have created every variation present in the world. It just has to simulate an ideal form of everything and the randomness would be induced by the fabric of the universe itself.
What is the fabric of our universe ?
The main contestants for the fabric of the universe as we see it, are space-time and energy. This is because every point in the reality we observe can be defined solely by these scales. In that case, its quite plausible that the advanced life-form can shake things up for us, without even us knowing about it. Though, it sounds like a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ argument. I am open to place my bets on the simulation hypothesis.
It’s just that, if it’s true, we are living in a Westworld.
The outcome from this article is to encourage cross-pollination of ideas and more people to think about philosophy and our existence. There are arguments which I am unable to address at this point of time. Probably you can try giving them a shot, in the comments.
- If this is true, why would the advanced organism(s) want to run this simulation ?
- How to tell if we are/aren’t in a simulation ?
