Simulation Theory: A Fresh Look
sixthsun | 23 Feb 2026

THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS — the belief that we are living in a computer simulation — is becoming a popular theory. Although this computer simulation theory was first proposed by Nick Bostrom in his 2003 paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation”, the idea of living in some kind of illusory reality goes right back to Plato and his allegory of the cave, and probably before that.

Most of us now have interacted in computer simulations when playing computer games, or even using standard computer graphic interfaces, so we largely understand how fooling a computer simulation can be.

While computer simulation theory seems quite clearcut, and many would argue provides a more understandable explanation for counterintuitive scientific theories such as quantum theory, it can be too easy to grasp at a superficial simulation-theory understanding, one in which we lose the real gift of simulation theory. For simulation theory is absolutely fundamental to spiritual development, whereby we focus on a reality far beyond our standard space-time reality.

So where is standard simulation theory being misconstrued? We need to elucidate the foundation of this theory, and ask the questions that most of us are taking for granted.

Firstly, we need to ask “what” is being simulated. Well “reality”. But what is reality? Reality is that which is real. But this tautology hides an ignorance of what reality actually is, and if we don’t know what reality is, how can know what a simulation of reality is? So our understanding of simulation is predicated on our understanding of what is being simulated, which is generally regarded as “base reality”. (It is called ‘base reality’ because a simulation of reality is itself another reality. So base reality is the primary one… the one that spawned everything else.)

There are two possibilities here: the first is that base reality is objective… that what is being simulated is a material universe. This is the the most common premise of simulation theory. From this perspective, the simulation behaves as a pseudo-objective reality, because it is a copy of an objective reality. And that copy is made once the beings in the objective reality advance their technology enough so that they can generate and support simulations.

This is a central part of modern simulation theory: when a civilisation gets advanced enough, it simulates base reality using computers, to create simulated realities for various reasons. But in those realities, the simulated scientists could have, in turn, simulated their experience, creating a simulation of a simulation of base reality. And this series of simulations can stack up to infinity. If we then assign an equal probability of being in any of these realities, whether simulated or not, then it is infinitely more more likely that we are in one of the simulated realities, rather than the base reality.

What is the justification to assign equal probabilities? The justification would have to be that each simulation is identical to the next in the series of simulations. But while this can hold true for basic systems — copies of copies of copies of static computer files are identical in theory — copies of complex dynamical systems are impossible to make without some loss of information. So there is less information in the simulation than there is in what is being simulated, and this is called simulation degradation. There has to be some information loss to make the simulation feasible — otherwise you would need to simulate every atom, electron, photon and other particle, and that would require more atoms and energy (computers are physical computation devices running on energy) than are in the thing being simulated. This necessary mathematically generative process increases the syntropy of successive simulations, but at the same time it also decreases the complexity.

After enough of these iterations, the complexity might not be high enough to support consciousness (if indeed one believes that consciousness is predicated on a minimum level of complexity). Knowing how quickly the decrease in complexity happens over successive simulations to the point of no-consciousness would allow the probability of being in a simulation to be more accurately assessed. (For all we know, complexity might drop off precipitously in a single simulation, making it more likely we are actually in base reality.) But until simulation degradation is examined and estimated, claiming that it is more likely we are living in a simulation than a physical base reality is fanciful.

The second foundation factor in simulation other thing that is important in simulation is to ask “who” or “what” is experiencing the simulation — or bringing it to life. This is because a simulation requires some level of “mind” to realise it. This is similar to the character Cypher, in the film The Matrix, watching the green streams of codes that comprise the matrix and saying to Neo that he does not see the code anymore, but the things being encoded. So is the green dynamic code the simulation? Or is some level of decoding within a nervous system necessary for the system to e granted the status of a simulation?

If not, you could argue that this type of interface is merely a mapping process, where a very complex system (a real environment) is mapped to a less complex system (the simulation) in order to allow some level of processing of or assessing the environment in a practical way. An extreme of this might be a textbook of physics: in theory that is a static and extremely concise simulation of reality, but one would not call it a simulation unless those equations were put into a computer system to recreate the a 3d representation in time.

And suppose an AI system were to look at such a simulation. It might work more at the level of the green codes in the Matrix, and in this way it would not necessarily be experiencing the 4d space-time simulation, but a lower level of machine code which is manufacturing that simulation, in the same way that AI system talk to each other with GibberLink. In that case, is the simulation a simulation for a system that is reading it at the construction level?

So “what” is being simulated and “who or what” is experiencing the simulation is central to understanding simulation theory. Otherwise, it is too easy to fall into a facile understanding that the simulation has some level of independent or objective existence, in a non-objective way. And this comes to a central tenet of simulation theory — the simulation must have some degree of objectivity.

If we go back to Plato’s cave analogy, the shadows on the cave wall are reflections of a “real” reality, but they themselves have a reality of their own. Shadows exist, and they can be viewed by anyone in that cave, or any measuring device such as a camera or visual AI system. A simulation that is purely subjective is considered more of an individual dream or illusion, and would not be regarded as a simulation. After all, if what is being simulated is a shared (and therefore considered to be objective), then the simulation itself must have some of those properties.

This is all well and good if the base reality is a material universe. But suppose the foundation of reality is consciousness. Where does that leave simulation?

If reality is fundamentally subjective — but only appears objective due to shared subjective states — then what would be a simulation of that reality? Would it suffer simulation degradation as happens with an objective base reality? And if consciousness is central to the base reality, would a simulation be anything other than consciousness too? And in such a case, does it even make sense to call it “base reality”? So while simulations of an objective base reality are called simulations because they appear like that base reality but are something else entirely, simulation of a subjective reality would not really be called a simulation at all. For it is the nature of consciousness to be fractally recursive and infinitely reflective. So a simulation of a subjective reality is just a similar subjective reality, with no change in essence. And with no change in essence, nothing has actually been simulated.

We might have a dream of a friend of ours, but we would not call that dream a simulation of that friend. Or we might imagine the place we grew up, but we would not say we were simulating that environment. We might say we were remembering these things, but our minds are not so much memory devices as they are recreation devices, and that recreative process is never perfect because the mind embellishes details. So with the objective simulation there is a loss of information — simulation degradation — whereas with “subjective simulation” there is only a modification of information, leading to what might be called simulation drift.

We live in times when the bedrock of reality is increasingly considered to be more mental than physical. Indeed, at the edges of experience, objectivity seems to meld into a subjective experience. Anyone who has had unusual experiences — such as psychic or UFO experiences — knows that there is a very strong subjective component, implying that these experiences are as much in our minds as they are “out there” in some objective world. This is noticed with unusual experiences because they are so unusual, but with ordinary experiences we have enough familiarity to psychologically hide the subjective base, so that it is covered by a blind spot in our objective fantasy.

The big draw with objective simulation theory is that many techies believe that the mind of a person can be downloaded into a computer system and then simulated, so that, effectively, that person can live forever with a different essence (or indeed the same essence if such a download is a simulation of a simulation). This ideology take no regard of simulation degradation, and makes the assumption that the process of the self is fundamentally objective, or already a simulation of an object. This is a double whammy to the fantasy of simulated consciousness. But there is such a desperation for objective survival that that some kind of change in essence is regarded as the only strategy to escape the material entropic process.

Of course, if the bedrock of reality is consciousness, then survival is assured in some form or another because the identity is not associated with just a brain, but with reality itself, with the brain appearing to be some kind of localiser (or antenna from an objective perspective). In this case, simulation is nonsensical.

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