The termination risks of simulation science

Abstract

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received signifi- cant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay examines a trou- bling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termina- tion risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termi- nation risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simula- tion technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contempo- rary physics.