Coping with the Simulation Question
One of the strangest ideas that’s emerged in recent years is the notion that we’re all living in a computer simulation. Have you come across this notion? The proponents suggest that artificial intelligence has created the experience of human consciousness and that we’re all living inside a carefully-crafted programme that replicates all aspects of our daily experience. The conclusion is that nothing is real because every thought and sensation is a product of the simulation. We’ve learned to trust computers so much that it’s now possible for us to credit them with the apparent existence of the universe. This should not be so surprising.
From a psychological perspective, we’ve been describing human consciousness in terms of our technology for centuries. It wasn’t so long ago that philosophers described the Creator as a watchmaker, the ultimate artisan who manufactured all the moving parts of the Universe – including humans – and made them fit together perfectly to produce a harmonious and eternal mechanism to fulfil his will. Analogies to steam engines, mechanical engineering and, more recently, to computers provide us with descriptions that reflect our understanding of the world. An invisible algorithm that designs and runs the world satisfies our deep-seated need to explain things in terms that closely match our model of reality. The map, however, is not the land it describes. A description is not the reality it refers to. The simulation model places us in an essentially passive mode of existence without the means to step beyond the parameters of our perception.
If we step back in time and consider more ancient interpretations of human consciousness, we learn that it is the human mind that projects its distinctive form of reality and creates the cosmos. Unlike the simulation model, this concept can be tested by learning to turn off the mind’s persistent habit of generating images, thoughts and feelings. In the silence that follows, the sense of self dissolves, the ego ceases to function and the projection no longer occurs. In this state of absolute reality, there is no algorithm, no computer, no simulation and no illusion. This is the illumination referred to by generations of mystics and philosophers, the enlightenment that transcends all knowledge and understanding. All else is a product of the ego and is, therefore, an illusion.
Recommended by LinkedIn
In our busy lives where we face challenges and difficulties every day, it must be tempting to explain the deeper questions of reality by referring to a super-sophisticated computer that controls all the elements of the universe. This is how our mythologies were born. We’ve always sought the answers to these questions in the projections that provide our version of cosmos. Yet, as ever, the answer can only be found within ourselves.
翻译：