# Simulation Hypothesis **Domain:** Philosophy / Cosmology / Computation **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Are You Living in a Computer Simulation]], [[Simulated World]], [[Layer-Relative Reality]], [[Physicalism]] --- ## Definition The **simulation hypothesis** proposes that experienced reality may be implemented by computation in a surrounding substrate. ## Corpus Context The corpus distinguishes the broad hypothesis from [[Nick Bostrom|Bostrom's]] specific probabilistic argument and from fictional recursive worlds such as [[Simulacron-3]] and [[The Thirteenth Floor (1999)]]. Implementation dependence does not settle the rights or reality of inhabitants. ## Key Insight **This node connects its historical or conceptual subject to the corpus without treating analogy as proof of direct influence.** ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts <!-- BEGIN SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > "If we build this brain right, it will do everything." > **— Henry Markram**, *2009-era discussion of what a complete brain simulation could reveal* *Verification Status: Editorially quarantined — `everything` does not identify the abilities attributed to a complete simulated brain. Recover a complete, self-contained passage before promotion.* [[reminders/Simulation/A Complete Brain Simulation Could Do Everything by Henry Markram|A Complete Brain Simulation Could Do Everything by Henry Markram]] > "If we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk." > **— Henry Markram**, *TEDGlobal talk (2009), wording candidate* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: TEDGlobal talk (2009), wording candidate.* [[reminders/unverified/If We Do Succeed by Henry Markram|If We Do Succeed by Henry Markram]] > "The correctness of our philosophical system will be tested by comparisons between the beliefs of the program and our observations." > **— John McCarthy and Patrick Hayes**, *Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence (1969), excerpt candidate* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence (1969), excerpt candidate.* [[reminders/unverified/Let the Program Test the Philosophy by John McCarthy and Patrick Hayes|Let the Program Test the Philosophy by John McCarthy and Patrick Hayes]] > "Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple." > **— Herbert A. Simon**, *The Sciences of the Artificial, attribution clue* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: The Sciences of the Artificial, attribution clue.* [[reminders/unverified/Viewed as Behaving Systems by Herbert A. Simon|Viewed as Behaving Systems by Herbert A. Simon]] > "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in ten years." > **— Henry Markram**, *TEDGlobal talk (2009), widely reported wording* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: TEDGlobal talk (2009), widely reported wording.* [[reminders/unverified/We Can Do It in Ten Years by Henry Markram|We Can Do It in Ten Years by Henry Markram]] <!-- END SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > “A physicist at CERN said to me recently that they likely wouldn't have built a new $8 billion collider if there was a better way of moving the field forward. The Blue Brain Project is using supercomputers to construct a mind because the neuroscientists involved believe it is the best way of attaining an overall understanding of the brain. Robots, I now appreciate, are not simply novelty items or tools of automation, but can be a way of gaining unique insight into humans. From simulation to supercomputing, technology is now (or at least I now see) one of science's very best friends (I could say the same for the arts). And the design, magnitude, and complexity of these technological feats satisfy my (and our) need for romance in our pursuit of truth.” > **— Adam Bly**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Building Minds in Computers May Be the Best Way to Understand Brains by Adam Bly|Building Minds in Computers May Be the Best Way to Understand Brains by Adam Bly]] > “What makes immersive 3D virtual environments the perfect medium for learning basic math skills is not that they are created digitally on computers. Nor is it that they are the medium of highly seductive videogames. Rather, it is because they provide a means for simulating the real world we live in, and out of which mathematics arises, and of doing so in a way that brings out and confronts the player (i.e., learner) with the underlying mathematical structure of our world. If Euclid were alive today, this is how he would teach math.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Immersive Simulation Can Make Mathematical Structure Visible by Keith Devlin|Immersive Simulation Can Make Mathematical Structure Visible by Keith Devlin]] > “Our desire for entertaining virtual realities is increasing. As our understanding of the human brain also accelerates, we will create both imagined realities and a set of memories to support these simulacrums. For example, someday it will be possible to simulate your visit to the Middle Ages and, to make the experience realistic, we may wish to ensure that you believe yourself to actually be in the Middle Ages. False memories may be implanted, temporarily overriding your real memories. This should be easy to do in the future — given that we can already coax the mind to create richly detailed virtual worlds filled with ornate palaces and strange beings through the use of the drug DMT (dimethyltryptamine). In other words, the brains of people who take DMT appear to access a treasure chest of images and experience that typically include jeweled cities and temples, angelic beings, feline shapes, serpents, and shiny metals. When we understand the brain better, we will be able to safely generate more controlled visions.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Virtual Reality May Rewrite Memory Itself by Clifford Pickover|Virtual Reality May Rewrite Memory Itself by Clifford Pickover]] > “Recent models of how the brain controls behavior have begun to clarify how the mechanisms that enable us to learn quickly about a changing world throughout life also embody properties of expectation, intention, attention, illusion, fantasy, hallucination, and even consciousness. I never thought that during my own life such models would develop to the point that the dynamics of identified nerve cells in known anatomies could be quantitatively simulated, along with the behaviors that they control. During the last five years, ever-more precise models of such brain processes have been discovered, including detailed answers to why the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of all our higher intelligence, is organized into layers of cells that interact with each other in characteristic ways.” > **— Stephen Grossberg**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION? ... WHY?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Brain Models Can Simulate Neural Dynamics and the Behaviors They Control by Stephen Grossberg|Brain Models Can Simulate Neural Dynamics and the Behaviors They Control by Stephen Grossberg]] > “Can we develop a procedure that, in principle, would tell us whether or not our universe is a simulation (analogous to the way the now proven Poincaré Conjecture can tell us the universe’s shape)?” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Can We Test Whether the Universe Is a Simulation by Keith Devlin|Can We Test Whether the Universe Is a Simulation by Keith Devlin]] > “In 1995, Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo already pointed out how conscious experience exactly is a virtual model of the world, a dynamic internal simulation, which in standard situations cannot be experienced as a virtual model because it is phenomenally transparent—we “look through it” as if we were in direct and immediate contact with reality.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Conscious Experience May Already Be a Virtual Model of Reality by Thomas Metzinger|Conscious Experience May Already Be a Virtual Model of Reality by Thomas Metzinger]] > “By seeing experience as a construct that merges prediction and sensory evidence, we begin to see how minds like ours reveal a world of human-relevant stuff. For the patterns of sensory stimulation that we most strongly predict are the patterns that matter most to us as both as and as individuals. The world revealed to the predictive brain is a world permeated with human mattering.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?”* [[reminders/Simulation/The Predictive Brain Constructs a World of Human-Relevant Reality by Andy Clark|The Predictive Brain Constructs a World of Human-Relevant Reality by Andy Clark]] > “Will we soon cease to care whether we are experiencing normal, augmented, or virtual reality?” > **— Andy Clark**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Will Normal Augmented and Virtual Reality Become Indistinguishable by Andy Clark|Will Normal Augmented and Virtual Reality Become Indistinguishable by Andy Clark]] > “Physical universes are user interfaces for minds. Just as the virtual worlds experienced in VR arcades are interfaces that allow the arcade user to interact effectively with an unseen world of computers and software, so also the physical world one experiences daily is a species-specific user interface that allows one to survive while interacting with a world of which one may be substantially ignorant.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2004, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Simulation/The Physical World Is a Species-Specific User Interface by Donald D. Hoffman|The Physical World Is a Species-Specific User Interface by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “What is historically new, and what creates not only novel psychological risks but also entirely new ethical and legal dimensions, is that one virtual reality gets ever more deeply embedded into another virtual reality: The conscious mind of human beings, which has evolved under very specific conditions and over millions of years, now gets causally coupled and informationally woven into technical systems for representing possible realities.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2016, Edge Annual Question: “”* [[reminders/Simulation/One Virtual Reality Is Being Embedded Into Another by Thomas Metzinger|One Virtual Reality Is Being Embedded Into Another by Thomas Metzinger]] ## See Also [[Are You Living in a Computer Simulation]], [[Simulated World]], [[Layer-Relative Reality]], [[Physicalism]] ## Sources / Provenance - [[articles/Beyond the Sea|Beyond the Sea]]