As humanity’s access to computing power has grown, some people extrapolating into the future have suggested that since we may have the power at some point to create simulated universes, how can we know for certain that we ourselves are not in a simulated universe, Matrix-style?
Nick Bostrom takes the argument to its logical conclusion arguing that unless there is something preventing advanced civilizations from creating simulated universes that it is almost certain we are, in fact, living in such a simulated universe.
But Rick Searle suggests that there may be a good reason that advanced civilizations achieve the capability to create simulated universes and do not–maybe creating such simulations is highly unethical.
Bostrom doesn’t seem to think there would be much ethical impetus to hold back such computer simulations,
However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral. On the contrary, we tend to view the existence of our race as constituting a great ethical value.
But Searle disagrees,
Any civilization that has reached the stage where it can create realistic worlds that contain fully conscious human beings will have almost definitely escaped the two conditions that haunt the human condition in its current form- namely pain and death. The creation of realistic ancestor simulations will have brought back into existence these two horrors and thus might likely be considered not merely unethical but perhaps even evil. Were our world actually such a simulation it would confront us with questions that once went by the name of theodicy, namely, the attempt to reconcile the assumed goodness of the creator (for our case the simulator) with the existence of evil: natural, moral, and metaphysical that exists in the world.
Searle goes on to note that even in our civilization, there are rules that govern things such as animal experimentation that forbid experiments where excessive, unnecessary pain is inflicted on non-human animals. A simulated universe that has a serious chance of being much like ours would like fail current such tests, and it is likely that a civilization advanced enough to pull off simulating universes would have even lower threshholds for considering the pain and suffering of sentient creatures.
There is, of course, the possibility that as a civilization advances that it loses that moral compass or loses the ability to prevent individuals from defying social norms and laws and creating their own rogue simulations. But Searle notes, this raises other problems,
Any society that is unable to prevent rogue members from creating realistic ancestor simulations despite deep ethical prohibitions is incapable of preventing the use of destructive technologies or in managing its own technological development in a way that promotes survival. A situation we can perhaps see glimpses of in our own situation related to nuclear and biological weapons, or the dangers of the Anthropocene.
This link between ethics, successful control of technology and long term survival is perhaps is the real lesson we should glean from Bostrom’s provocative simulation argument.