This seems to be archetype idea present in philosophy, popularized by SF books and recent films (Matrix and less explicitely Inception). It was quite seriously discussed, the reference you provided has 290 citations http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oQwpz3QAAAAJ&hl=en

Moreover, in spite of limited computational power we can access at present, the role of simulation grows. Obtained results are very impressive, see e.g. folding of a proteine chain, Nobel Prize in chemistry 2013, http://csb.stanford.edu/levitt/

However, there are several reasons, for which the idea that we live in a simulated world is rather rejected:

1) Ockham's razor. It seems that so far, most world observations and experiments can be explained without such assumption.

2) Ethical issues. It can be considered a threat for etchical foundations of contemporary societies.

3) Free will issue and non-attractive concept of being programmed. Generally, people believe that they can choose. Actually, we have accepted that we are programmed to proliferate our genotype. However, cultural and economic factors have strong negative influence on this congenital program.

The idea that we live in a simulated world can be analyzed with reference to our understanding of simulation techniques. Obviously, there are many issues to consider, some of them were discussed in the Nick Bronstrom's paper. As the technology changes and new approaches resulting in unseen consequences may arise.

I assume that it would rather be a massivelly parallel system in which many actors animate simulated objects. Those objects can be atoms, elementary particles, structures…

1) The first problem is how the observations are made?

a. The timeflow is frozen, and the components of the reached state are iterated. How often? Every 10E-100 seconds vs. years? What is observed and at which granularity: particles, atoms, compounds, structures, things?

b. Or there are "debug agents" or "beacons", who run in parallel and collect information. How their presence change the simulation flow? Are they visible in the simulated world? Do they exist statically during the whole simulation, or they are born and die? How they operate? Do they send messages to actors and receive responses? Does the act of making observation influence the model, including the behavior actors or state of the simulated objects. Are the answers deterministic?

c. Or there are no online observations? If the simulation stops, the reached state is analyzed.

2) What are the stop criteria? Reaching a point in time, reaching a certain stable state, entering a cycle? No stop?

3) Are bugs possible? Can bugs be detected from inside the model? Anomalies, miracles, "easter eggs"?

I think all those quesions can be mapped on cosmogonic theories (e.g. a big black hole eats everything and a simulation stops) or theological concepts (the beacon collecting information is a soul) but the question is: do we really need such theory to explain the world?

Even if it is true, the main philosophical problems remain. Who created the designers of the simulation? Maybe they live themselves in a simulation, and so on ad infinituum?

Doesn't that question the meaning of "simulation?" If all experience if of a simulation, then the simulation becomes the reality.

@All:

First of all, thank you for all your answers and comments so far.

Before we get too deep into any discussions, I would like to clarify my motivation for asking the present question.

The purpose of my question is to assess consensus and rational acceptability on the possibility that we live in an immaterial reality, as a belief system. I won’t deny that I would love to get some positive answers, because I have dedicated a lot of my time to the possibility —I have provided such indications in the details of the question—, nevertheless all answers or comments are welcome. I hope that researchers of all nationalities and beliefs decide to contribute with answers or express their opinions; don’t be shy, I cannot be offended, but seriously, I would love for all of us (especially me) to take advantage of this wonderful platform that RG is providing for us.

I promise you that I will personally not engage in endless polemics; this question is not about rebuttals, it is about knowledge acquisition.

So that I can keep my promise, I need to disclose my interpretation of some of the terms relevant to my question.

Immaterial reality. A reality where all objects do not possess any “substance” —their manifestation is sensory only— or “permanence” —not always there, not always have been—. Good examples are the reproduction of audio and cinematographic recordings; they exist but are not perceived until they are processed. A movie exists as data on a DVD, but it is not perceived as such until it is reproduced. Another example are memories, they exist in our minds but are not perceived by us until we remember them.

Rational acceptability. For any statement (or belief) to be rationally acceptable it must satisfy the following three simple criteria:

1. It must be relevant to the discussion at hand.

2. It must be understood by the recipient in its entirety.

3. It must be accepted by the recipient as true.

Notice the emphasis on “the recipient”.

For my purpose here, statements do not need to be consensual.

I really would like to pick your brains as much as possible, so I am going to be very attentive to all your answers or comments and I will do my best to comment on all.

Thanks again,

Bernardo.

@Bernardo

I am afraid it may be quite difficult to define what is material and what not. Actually, the wave-particle duality theory prepared us to the idea that we live in a world that consists of electomagnetic waves, which themselves are not considered very material (at least under a common interpretation).

The examples of DVD  or memories are rather related to information. To store information we must materialize it (or sometimes use energy). To read, transform, send, receive and interpret  information we must use energy. Of course, elementary particles and their states can be perceived as matter, energy and information at the same time. 

The problem that was discussed in Nick Bronstrom's paper was rather whether we live in a world of information, a kind of virtual machine that simulates and processes the matter/energy/information  trinity regardless of the underlying technology. In fact, I am not that convinced with the arguments, because they sound like: if something is possible, then it will happen during infinite observation, if not, then not.  Especialy, I am suspicious to the infinite observation part.

@Patrick

You are right, the concept of an immaterial reality does not answer the creation question, which, by the way, I believe is probably the oldest unanswered philosophical question, but I think it makes the question rationally acceptable and at the same time, limits its recursive aspect. Let me explain why I think so.

According to Hans Reichenbach, in his book, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, he explains that the creation question is the result of inductive reasoning, such as, all the things that I have observed so far have had a beginning therefore all things must have had one. His reasoning obviates the logical need for a beginning for all things, thus obviating the question. Although his reasoning is understandable, somehow it appears to me as a logical cop out. By the way, I read his book when I wore much younger man’s clothes, and hair, so don’t take my statements as a quote.

One thing for sure is that the concept of a beginning involves an interval of time and if you read my previous comments, I explain that an immaterial reality requires existent data to be manifested by some process. This means that our concept of time would also be a manifested observable. In other words, an immaterial reality justifies and actually requires creation as we know it. This is what I meant when I said that it made the creation question rationally acceptable.

Now, if time is a unique manifestation of our reality, then the question of a beginning is limited to it, because it is conceivable that the concept of time is not an observable in Infrareality (my term for the reality on which we may reside). This is what I meant when I said that an immaterial reality limits the recursive aspect of the creation question.

In regards to your question on who created the designers of our reality? Knowing that you meant it to be rhetorical, I will answer it for thought munching; I doubt we will ever know and they probably don’t know either, but maybe that’s because the question has not even occurred to them.

@Scott:

Our question here is whether our reality is material or immaterial, not if it is a simulation or not. A simulation implies that something is being imitated (simulated) in some fashion. An immaterial reality may or may not be a simulation and a simulation may or may not be material.

But to answer your question, if the residents of the simulation are not or cannot be aware that they live in one, I suppose it makes no difference to them if their reality is material or immaterial.

Dear Bernardo,

I can accept the existence of an immaterial world, but the 'movie-matrix-like' hypothesis is not an accepted one by me.

Thank you for sharing that view, anyway.

@Piotr:

Thank you for your thoughtful answers and comments.

To save some time and words, I will comment on those answers that I don’t agree with or I have special interest on.

Molecular Modeling. One of the fallout benefits of investigating different forms of IRs is the modeling of our own reality processes, as you point out, such as, modeling molecular structures. If our reality is an IR, we can attempt to “reverse engineer” it and thus model some —or most and eventually all— of its processes to our technical advantage. If we concentrate on the technological advantages of an IR as a predictive model, whether it is “the true” model or not, we need not have to attest to its “veracity” and safely disregard any ethical or religious implications. If the ethical or religious implications don’t offend us, then we can dwell on them, if we so desire.

Ockham’s razor. I know that there are explanations for “most world observations and experiments” but I don’t think they are either consensual or rationally acceptable, at least not across different disciplines. Needless to say, most mathematicians seem to love them, some physicists think of them as “unphysical” —whatever that means—, engineers mostly accept them on faith, philosophers don’t understand them, etc., etc. I suspect that if we accept our reality to be an IR, it is possible to resolve all the present incongruencies in modern physics —some of which I have already listed in my original question—, thus agreeing with Ockham’s razor.

I agree with “it may be quite difficult to define what is material and what not”, I have wrestled with that and still do, so I have loosely defined IRs in terms of information as; an IR is a group of data sets residing (existing) in a reality, which when processed, manifest (express) another reality. Please don’t ask me to define reality, I can’t, but I am sure we all know what it is. By the way, I call Infophysics the future science that is to study IRs.

Wave-particle duality. I believe it should be called wave-particle equivalence, where waves and particles are identical in structure and completely immaterial. Energy and mass are observed (manifested) properties, both of which reflect in different measures the wave property of spatial frequency (spatial density).

The DVD examples. An IR is manifested information only. In an IR, manifested by waves, space and time would be manifested observables, so would be energy and mass, which would themselves be measured properties of an object’s spatial density.

Dear Demetris:

Same here. The Matrix, as science fiction goes, was not too bad and it did develop public awareness to the immaterial, which should make the concept of an IR easier to accept. I preferred The Thirteenth Floor because it had more interesting ideas, to my taste.

Science fiction aside, for the sake of my project, can you come up, without taking too much of your valuable time, with any reasons why you think a scientist should bother researching the possibility? This goes for all.

Positive, negative or in-between answers or comments are welcome.

Dear Bernardo, I think my answer is inside my work and references there in:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264537258_A_new_cosmological_paradigm_universal_locality

The degree of how complicated is Cosmos cannot be understood by any intelligent being.

It can only be reached asymptotically and only for a subset of it.

So, the simulation hypothesis is just one more attempt for explaining a small part of Cosmos and not the 'whole story' - latter is impossible.

Article A new cosmological paradigm: universal locality

Thanks Demetris.

I’ll make sure to read your work.

By the way, the idea I propose, is to utilize one or a set of IRs to model features of our reality so as to approach it, as you say, asymptotically. My paper Spacetime Unveiled is one such preliminary attempt using an Infophysical Spacetime Model (ISM).

We should probably accept that reality is in the eye of the beholder, but about being immaterial, that is a question which begs for the knowledge of the materiality of memory. But memory is, as we can accept easily nowadays, a constructive, deconstructive and reconstructive phenomenon which does not allow us to speak of plain materiality. That is because memory works with data which are transformed into information, but the algorithm of information is not a material one, but a computable one. Therefore, we might say  we do not live in a computer simulated reality, but in one whose computability is growing higher, even if by means of ascribing intentionally the data that contribute to our informational environment only with computable characteristics.

@mircea-ioan:

One could say that:

I define an IR as, information (existence) + process (transformation) + perception (expression), which could explain all of the above.

An IR can therefore be thought of as a transformation from one domain (existence) to another (expression). We can then rephrase the question as: if our reality is an IR (or set of IRs) then what advantages or disadvantages, if any, can result from researching that possibility?

In my judgement there is no clear dividing line between material and immaterial but there is a gradual transition from one to another. More details in following article.

Chapter Consciousness and energy

I think that instead of focusing on the concepts of materiality/immateriality, we should focus on the concepts of permanence/transience. An IR is transient because it can be stopped (it is a process).

I don´t think we have a problem with accepting that the past or the future are IRs, the problem lies in accepting the possibility that our present (our reality) is transient. That is why we have instituted conservation laws that imply that all objects possess permanent properties; mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed, for example.

The fact that conservation laws appear to (or do) apply within our reality, does not mean that our reality is permanent. In other words, is it conceivable that our reality could just stop, be transient? Or isn’t? Should we care?

First of all, I believe it’s possible to determine if our reality is transient (immaterial) or not. What else can the collapse of the wavefunction mean but the transformation of the wavefunction? This is in itself a process, a transient process, which is close to the heart of QM, at the heart of reality.

So my answer is a definite yes. Science should care, because if it turns out that we live in an immaterial reality, the scientific and technological advantages would be endless. Otherwise we won’t know if we are just expanding, complicating and re-running the maze.

I wonder what this rather powerful argument does to materialism. Just because the universe is immaterial does not mean metaphysics returns.

@Scott:

Thanks for up-voting my question, it’s appreciated, though I’m not clear about your statement on metaphysics; can you elaborate on it please?

Thanks.