Life inside a computer game. 

By GRAHAM PHILLIPS. 
 
27 April 2003
Sunday Telegraph 
37 

SURVIVAL in the future may simply mean playing a drama queen and sucking up 
to celebrities. 

After much philosophising, Nick Bostrom at Yale University, has come to the 
disturbing conclusion that the real world is probably not real after all. 

You and I are probably living inside some pimply teenager-from-the-future's 
computer game. Perhaps we should be changing our lives because of this 
finding, before the kid is tempted to delete us. 

The Yale professor's logic goes something like this. 

Each year computers get more and more powerful. Eventually they'll become as 
powerful as a human brain. 

When this happens, they'll also be conscious, just as our brains are. This 
breakthrough will trigger the beginning of a new generation of computers. 

The self-aware machines will evolve too, just as today's computers do, 
getting more powerful by the year. Eventually they'll become trillions of 
times more sophisticated than our mere thinking organs and at that point our 
descendants will have some pretty impressive computers at their disposal. 

The question is, what will they do with these hyper computers? Run games on 
them of course, just as we do today. But imagine what the computer games of 
the future will be like. 

There will be so much number-crunching power, the graphics will be as 
realistic as real life. 

The characters in the computer games will be completely realistic as well. 

And, the hyper computers will be able to make the characters self-aware. 

Bostrom's philosophical conclusion is that the characters won't know they 
are just programs in a computer. They'll think they are real and leading 
real lives. 

So the obvious question is: how do we know we ourselves are not characters 
inside some future computer game? We don't, insists Bostrom. In fact, by his 
calculations, it's almost certain that we are. Again, it all follows from 
simple logic, he insists. 

There can be only one real universe. The original one where the first hyper 
computers were built. But there are no guarantees we live in that one. 

Once the hyper computers come along, countless simulated universes will be 
created for Play Stations of the future. Imagine a billion of these games 
are made. 

The chances of us being in the real universe rather than one of the 
simulations would be a billion-to-one against. In other words, Buckley's 
chance. 

Does all this matter really matter? It certainly does, says Professor Robin 
Hanson at America's George Mason University. 

If life in the future becomes just a game for mass entertainment, then you'd 
better start being entertaining if you don't want to be written out of the 
script. 

Indeed the kid at the controls may be playing one of the main characters in 
the game - so suck up to any celebrities you meet. 

It's a good thing the philosophers are looking out for us! 
grahamp@bigpond.com.