this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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Very simple fix for that perceived contradiction: A simulation doesn't need to simulate everything. All it needs to simulate is the inputs and outputs perceived by a single human being, the observer, me.
For me it would be indistinguishable if the universe I am living in is real, if it's a simulation or if it doesn't exist at all and instead only the things I can perceive are simulated.
Simulating the perception of a single human being should be in the reach of our current calculation power.
Kind of how in a computer game only areas around a player are simulated.
"In order to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe"
If you don't create the universe, then you aren't really making an apple pie from scratch. In the same way, what you're referring to doesn't simulate the universe - not in the way that it is simulated in the simulacrum hypothesis.
In the simulacrum hypothesis, the entire universe is simulated. You exist entirely inside the simulation rather than being merely plugged into it, and so do I and so does every other consciousness that exists.
I think you might be confusing something. The simulation hypothesis is rooted in the concept of the Boltzmann Braun, which is exactly what I described: A simulation of reality as in "the perceptions of a being is simulated" not "all of reality is simulated".
I haven't heard a single time so far by anyone seriously into that topic that a simulation would need to simulate reality to a perfect degree. That wouldn't even really make any sense, neither from the argument, nor from the words. A simulation is always an abstraction, and since you bring up the world "simulacrum", a simulacrum is something that by definition lacks the detail and sophistication of the original. A plastic apple is a simulacrum of a real apple, and in no way does a plastic apple replicate the cell structure or the biological details of a real apple. It's just something that from a distance looks vaguely like the real thing.
And that's what all forms of simulation hypothesis are based around: simulate everything necessary for the conciousness living in the simulation to believe it lives in reality.
In fact, humans have a mechanism that does just that built right into their brains: dreams. While dreaming your brain doesn't accurately simulate reality down to the atom-level. All it does is simulate enough of your perception to make you believe you are experiencing what is happening in the dream.