I have recently come across a debate over the simulation hypothesis which roughly says that the universe is an artificial simulation, just like a computer simulation, and that reality is a virtual one like The Matrix. My intention here is not to explain the formation of one’s reality, a subject that is addressed into my publication on Jacque Lacan’s concept of the Mirror Stage, but to make an intervention that adds to a previous article I wrote.
The prementioned debate gives rise to the question of why, independently of whether the simulation hypothesis is true or false, it would be so important for someone to believe in or even to go against such an idea - “against” is still a dependence on its existence. Would this affect their way of living? We could agree on the aspect of our desire to find out how things work, and via these discoveries construct tools that will assist our life. Yet, the current insistence takes place over a topic that has no practical application but only bears a satisfaction for verifying or falsifying one’s limitations. We may also wonder here as well, which limitations?
Hence the simulation hypothesis is only sustained in its philosophical dimension, that is to say in the ancient play of thought invented by man to address their premordial questions that concern their subjectivity and ultimately life itself. Removing ourselves from the debate of true or false, we can very well say that the exploration of the universe is at the same time an exploration of our consciousness. Literally, because the universe we know is not what it is in itself but what we merely perceive, observe, measure, describe or puzzle ourselves onto. In these terms, the universe as we know it is already a simulation of our thought in the same way that Descartes stated “I think therefore I am”. Adding this to the fact that thought itself is part of the universe, we can even further say that universe and thought are reflections of one another, summed up in Alan Watts’ beautiful statement “You are the universe experiencing itself.”
However, what is usually omitted in the philosophical thought is the dimension of enjoyment and the desire of the speaking being. What we can thus say if one puts too much stress on the belief of a universe as simulation, is that they undoubtedly require it as a support, but to what? Not in order to explain the universe as simulation of their thought, but to rather make up a reasoning for their thought as simulation of something else, i.e. how they find themselves living remotely, in a third person’s perspective, just like a simulation, whereby their thought process unwillingly takes their life out of control and their true desire out of track. Proving that the universe is a simulation would then mean unveiling the truth of their unwanted choices and actions, something that is not always clear at first glance. If, for example, one would lose the motivation for their actions in the case of discovering that the universe is a simulation, it means that they never wanted to perform those actions, which were therefore directed from the very beginning by whatever or whoever is supposed to control the simulation, and, by extension, controls their very thought!
Would, then, the attachment on such a hypothesis mean that one is searching for a reason to stop their unwanted actions, or would they simply go on by accusing something beyond themselves for their decisions? The answer is irrelevant, because in either case what is at stake is that one denies their responsibility for the actions they never take! Which actions? These towards the things that cannot be found in any sort of studies which attempt to simulate what it is for one to live by a univers-al formula for well-being with statistics and numbers, namely, the very actions that constitute one’s own way of breathing and that we call “desire”.
For those who are truly in line with their desire, the non-existence of a simulation is irrelevant too.
