Reality

NB: This is written with the assumption that there exists, somewhere, an absolute world, although that point is somewhat arbitrary at many points in this paper.
NB2: When I refer to the ‘real world’, I am referring to the world which we consider to be real, whether it really is or not.

What does it mean for something to be real? Most people assume it needs to be tangible or comprehensible, but I don’t think either are the case. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to be absolutely certain that anything is real. We can be fairly sure, but never completely certain. In order to explain my case, let’s take the Brain in a Vat scenario. In this case, we have a brain which is placed into a vat of life-sustaining liquid and connected by a series of wires to a supercomputer which sends electrical impulses exactly the same as those it would receive inside a human skull, thus completely simulating reality.

However, some may be concerned over the finer details: our moral obligations, mind independence and its effect, the overall meaning of life, and whether or not we can do anything about our situation of being in a virtual reality.

Our moral obligations really rely on one critical variable: the AI. I’d like to make two distinctions, Conscious AI and Reactive AI. Conscious AI is aware of its own existence, just as we are aware of our own. They can think as we think; they can feel as we feel, and we are completely indistinguishable except from the fact that we have flesh and blood bodies which they do not. They are merely stored inside of a supercomputer. If we were to assume that this simulating supercomputer housed a plethora (approximately 6.3 billion) entities like this, we would find something rather unsurprising. We would act in the same way as we would in the real world. Since these ‘people’ around us are the same as those we would encounter in the real world, any sort of moral, religious, or ethical beliefs we had concerning humans will be exactly the same in the virtual world.

Now the situation is quite different if we assume Reactive AI. By this I mean that all the other ‘people’ are not really people. They are just programs, expertly and perfectly designed to emulate human interactions, personalities, and emotions just as we or a Conscious AI being would have. The basis of our actions turns much more primeval. We no longer are concerned over the well-being of others because there are not any others, so instead we would live our lives according to the consequences of our actions. Since this is Reactive AI, if we break a law, we will be punished. If we kill, we will be sent to prison, just as if this were a real person, even though it is not. So basically, if we could get away with a normally unethical act, or are willing to pay the consequences, we will do it, even if it may contradict our moral, religious, or ethical values. Likewise, if we cannot get away with it or are not willing to face the consequences, we will not do it.

However, there comes with that a caveat. Since we could never know if the other beings in this supercomputer were Reactive or Conscious, we will be forced to live as if they were Conscious, whether they are or are not. So by examining moral behavior, it would be impossible to distinguish whether a person is living in the real world or a virtual world, because their moral behavior would be the same in either.

Now the issue of mind independence. To say that there is mind independence basically states that we all have minds and that each of them is separate from the other. If one were to die, all the others would live on. Obviously, this issue of mind independence only applies to scenarios in which the AI is conscious, because Reactive AI beings do not have minds. Initially, there are two scenarios relating to this: one in which the supercomputer shuts off upon our death, and the other in which the supercomputer does not shut off.

In the first case, we can see that there is no full independence. If my mind were to die (assuming my brain was the brain in the vat), then everyone else (the approximate 6.3 billion computer beings) would then cease to exist. Therefore, my survival is indispensable to each being, making each one wish do its utmost to help me survive. At first glance, this seems to lead to the conclusion that every single being will immediately start giving everything to me: food, water, home, friends, money. Anything that would help sustain my life. However, this wouldn’t happen for one simple reason: the other beings can’t possibly know that I’m central to their survival. They think they’re humans just as I do. If anyone told them otherwise, they wouldn’t believe it in the same way I wouldn’t believe it if you told me I wasn’t human. This basically causes the virtual world to be exactly the same as the real world. Even if I did die, their consciousness immediately ends just as mine had, so they won’t even know they weren’t humans! It’s impossible to distinguish the real world from a virtual world on the basis of mind independence.

Now, to ponder the possibilities of having a supercomputer environment that lives on after death, we can see that there is now complete mind independence, which is good news to the conscious beings, but ultimately has no bearing on the process of life.
So one might want to yet challenge the claim that we cannot be certain of our reality by asking how this reality came to being within our consciousness. The two possibilities: one was born into this world and has lived there hereafter or one was taken from the real world, put into this virtual one, and has lived there hereafter.

Let’s examine the former case first. A comparable scenario would be to imagine The Matrix. In this movie, almost everybody in the real world (which is the absolute world in this case) is connected, from birth, to a giant supercomputer network which creates and maintains a virtual world in which they all live. In this matrix (as the supercomputer network is called), no one has any idea that the life they live is not actually real. This is so because we need a baseline to determine if things are possible (this could be real) or not possible (this cannot be real). To get this baseline, we use the world into which we were born because it’s the only thing we have! So naturally, when we compare our world to our baseline, it comes out that this world is real, using circular logic at its best. Since it is impossible to get an accurate, unbiased baseline, it is impossible to determine if any single world is real or not!

Now the latter, which as it turns out finds itself at the exact same conclusion as the former case. A very comparable scenario is the Brain in the Vat. At some point we enter this world, whenever this may be is uncertain, for it is not in our knowledge the time we entered. It naturally follows that if we want to be able to prove that this world is false, we must find a discernible difference as defined as something which conflicts with our ideas of possibilities as made by our baseline of reality. However, it was just shown that it is impossible to have a reliable baseline of reality, making it impossible to have a reliable discernible difference. This means that we cannot prove a world is false, ever!

Let’s say, though, I give to you a reliable baseline. It naturally follows that if we never find a discernible difference, we will never realize that the virtual world is not real. However, if we do find a discernible difference, it wouldn’t even cross our minds that this world isn’t real for one simple reason: our minds always try to justify what we see. If we were to see a pig flying in the sky, we would say something like, “How did that happen” or “I bet it was shot out of a cannon”. The most ridiculous explanations would seem like the obvious answers. In fact, we do this habitually every night. We dream. Dreams are not real, they are merely constructs of our mind, yet we, while submerged in them, take them as real and justify anything that speaks to the contrary. It’s reality’s version of crimestop. There is one exception to the dream analogy which, in turn, applies to the vat scenario: lucid dreams. There are times when a sleeping person will become aware that they are dreaming. This is called lucid dreaming; being conscious while asleep. It comes about from committing a reality thoughtcrime: realizing that the justification is absurd and not based on logical premises. That is the only way a person could transcend their reality.

Unfortunately, it mandates a baseline of which an accurate one is impossible. Fortunately, however, if a person wished to know whether the reality they live in now is the same as they lived in at any time beforehand, this method could be used to good effect, but cannot be used to find an absolute reality.

In addition to our inability to be certain of our world’s own reality, it is also impossible for us to be certain that we exist! With the rest of this paper in mind, it is not hard to imagine. I previously mentioned Conscious AI. What if we are such? It is impossible for humans and Conscious AI beings to be distinguished, so it is entirely possible that we are nothing more than ingenious programming. Cognito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, can no longer be used as a stepping point for all of our knowledge because it’s not true.

To move on to the meaning of life. Since it has been shown that we cannot distinguish between an artificial and real world, nothing has really changed. We know that we cannot be sure that our material surroundings are real; we know that we cannot be sure that we ourselves are real; we cannot know that anything is any which way! The only thing we can really know is that we can know nothing except that this statement is true. So whether or not we’re living in an artificial world, regardless of whether I really exist or you really exist, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, so the only thing we can do is make the assumption that this is really happening and keep that small voice in the back of our minds that keeps telling us we don’t exist quiet.