A modern rehash of René Descartes's "I think therefore I am" problem. He asked, essentially, am I living a fantasy dreamed up for me by a "great deceiver".
Replace "great deceiver" with "computer simulation" and the argument plays out the same way (albeit, with more probability in the modern case)<p>Ultimately, your existence is exactly what you perceive it to be. Speculating on the nature of our existence, on this level, is indicative of those who don't have to pay their own rent :-) You can chase your own tail on this one literally forever. As we cannot access the simulation we are running in (just as you can't really think about thinking) this idea becomes a debate on par with the existence of God. It cannot be proven one way or another.<p>All this aside, I'll admit it was a fun read.
I suspect that the best response to this question is not yes or no, but rather "Who cares?"<p>It's in a similar class to "Can you prove that the Universe wasn't created by an invisible pink unicorn?" Well, no, I can't. But when I go to my grave, this inadequacy won't be at the top of my list of concerns.
Quote from the introduction (<i>emphasis</i> mine)
" Then it <i>could be the case</i> that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. <i>It is then possible to argue that</i>, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that <i>we are likely</i> among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, <i>we are not entitled to believe</i> that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully "<p>To distill the above:
It is possible that some people are simulations. Therefore it is likely we are simulations. Therefore if we don't think we are simulations, we are not entitled to believe our descendants will run simulations of people.<p>Not sure if I even need to critique the logic behind that.
Reading a few of the comment here...<p>I feel bad for some of you. This isn't serious (at least I hope not), this is the sort of thing you get to toy around with in your head when you're driving on a long road trip or coming home from a long day at work.<p>It's <i>fun</i> to think about this sort of thing (for me and, aparently, a few others at least...)...the way some of your are commenting on this makes me feel like you would be the type of people to ask<p>"Why? Are we going somewhere?"<p>of an invitation to go for a walk.
No, you're living in my simulation.<p>Prove me wrong.<p>Obligatory: <a href="http://destructionoverdrive.blogspot.com/2005/06/last-answer-by-isaac-asimov.html" rel="nofollow">http://destructionoverdrive.blogspot.com/2005/06/last-answer...</a>
People's stupidity is infinite and therefore it can't be simuleted.<p>On a serious note, even if we are in simulation we are still part of the real world just like many computer programms today.