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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

People have been asking these questions for thousands of years.

Take a look at Hindu mythology. The idea that the world is an illusion or a dream was quite common as far back as 3 or 4 thousand years ago, and has lasted on through the present.

Another version of that belief was made famous by Plato 2500 years ago. Then Zhuangzi's famous "Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man." came about 2300 years ago. Then yet another version by Berkeley about 250 years ago.

The whole "the universe is a simulation" is just the most recent variation, that came about with the advent of computers.

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The Upanishads posit a reality of consciousness that upends the common ("worldly") conceptualization: dream state was held to be a higher and more fundamental experience of reality. In this sense, the "worldy" experience was actually "slumber" and the dream world more "real". In the Gita, Krishna declares that what common people experience as "day" and "awakened" is "night" and "sleep" for the yogin.

The Sufis symbolized the worldly existence and our apparent multiplicity as 'foam on the surface of an ocean' (c.f. Quantum cosmology and quantum foam), with the true reality being the eternal sea.

In both, "the Real" is the true Self, the "infinitesimal" that is "the Most High"; and the "outward world" the microcosom and the true macrocosom the inner reality of Man.

There are Hindu myths that speak of the world being a dream of Brahma (or of Vishnu, depending on the myth), and of the world ending when the dreamer awakes.

Buddhism (how could I have neglected to mention it?) also has the illusory nature of the world (and of the self) as a central tenet -- though what that actually means varies with the strand of Buddhism you're talking about.

The world as illusion was even a belief of some Gnostics, who lived a couple of thousand years ago.

To complete this list (and also follow up to your hoped-for "escape from the simulation" /g) the Qur'an explicitly says that "this life is an illusion and a pastime" and in the Sura of the Jinn, we are informed by these non-Human sentient beings that they have been trying for a very long time to escape but have always been frustrated in their attempts.

Regarding Buddhism, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha, to the apparent dismay of a few thousand attendees -- they get up and leave! -- informs that the Three Vehicles are merely devices to reach various levels of understanding, and that this world ("a burning old house") was an attraction that attracted his children but unfortunately they got caught up in the illusion and now need enticements (the Three Vehicles) to rescue them from the burning old house.

But a dream isn't a simulation.

People in this thread are being way too dismissive of an idea that couldn't possibly have been expressed or understood without modern computational science, specifically the notion of Turing equivalence.

But regarding its philosophical implications, being a simulated person is a lot like being a person someone else dreamed up.

True, but this new variation is fundamentally different exactly because now it's not just an abstract process of unknown nature, but a "computation". It will be interesting to see how the idea will be reconciled with "science". E.g. with "random mutations" allegedly driving evolution, to name just a single aspect.

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