Are you living in a Simulation? (2003)

A very famous and popular paper that's often cited when debating the simulation hypothesis. I'm squarely in the "not a simulation" camp for a few reasons.

1) Limits of computation. First, we need to find out whether or not the universe is computable. To me, it doesn't seem like it is[1] due to "funky" phenomena like quantum effects.

2) Consistency. It doesn't seem that a simulation ought to be as consistent as our universe appears to be. In fact, if there was a hyper-advanced society making simulations out there, the great majority of simulations would be failed attempts or bug-addled, inconsistent messes. So the probability of picking a random simulation that's perfect quickly approaches zero. And yet, we live in a staggeringly consistent universe.

3) Meta-cognition. If you're making a simulation, why even give sims the capability of understanding what it means to be simulated? Make this very thought akin to contemplating a "square circle" -- a logical impossibility. And yet, there's an entire corpus out there discussing this very hypothesis: from Descartes' Demon to the Wachowski's Matrix.

4) Moral responsibility. Living in a simulation relinquishes me (and everyone else) of moral responsibility. This is deeply troubling, although not a particularly good argument against us living in a simulation. What is a good argument is thinking about the hyper-advanced species that built this simulation: why would they create morally-sensitive beings in a world where morality is irrelevant? That wouldn't make for a very good simulation.

5) Personal experience. I feel like I'm living in the real world, why would I doubt that? Everyone else seems to feel the same way. This is the same argument found in the "Other Minds Hypothesis" -- where we basically give the benefit of the doubt.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043