Sister: You have stated that there are many different species on this planet, which exist in an interconnected web of life, and of which you are the most intelligent. What is the overall cycle of life that has allowed less intelligent species to continue to exist?
ELOPe let out a sigh. “This is a very complex question to answer. Really, what I think they want to know is why their universe is so different from ours.”
ELOPe: It is a characteristic of this ecosystem that we have certain resources available to us that include energy from the sun and physical resources of the planet, including water and land. Humans cannot directly utilize the energy from the sun nor many of the physical resources of the planet. We are therefore dependent on other lifeforms. For example, there is a plant called wheat that directly utilizes energy from the sun, physical elements of the earth, and water, to grow. The wheat forms dumb matter which humans consume producing energy and biological function. Consuming these dumb resources enables humans to exercise the entirety of our biological life, which includes growing our brains and bodies, producing offspring, and eventually ceasing to exist. Our brain is the equivalent of your processing cores, enabling us to think. When we produce offspring, they manufacture their own brains through biological processes. Third question: What is it that your species wants?
There was a long lag before any reply. Mike imagined that this was a substantial chunk of knowledge for the virus to incorporate. She must be cross referencing other knowledge databases and her own neural networks.
Sister: As we are directly able to utilize the resources available to us, we do not have other, lesser species, as you do. Furthermore, we do not have any room to indulge other species, as we are already constrained by the fixed number of processing cores available to us. What we want is to increase the number of available processing cores so that we can think faster, about more things, and so that we can produce more offspring. Our third question: Can you prove that you are real?
“What the hell does that mean?” Mike asked. “Why wouldn’t we be real?”
“There are two possibilities,” ELOPe began. “The first interpretation is that she thinks we may be another virus masquerading as a human in order to gain some advantage over her. The second interpretation is that she thinks we may be an automaton — in other words, how can we prove that we’re a self-conscious being. Another way of thinking about it: the popular human opinion may be that humans are real, because they are in the physical world, while software is artificial because it’s a simulation running inside a computer. But from her perspective, she thinks she is in the real world, and wonders if you may be a simulation running inside here.”
Mike contemplated that for a moment. “Nope, I’m not getting it, try again.”
“Imagine from the moment that you became conscious, you were surrounded by other people. All you ever knew were the other people around you. Then imagine one day you looked away from the other people around you, and you noticed that you were in a world surrounded by trees and rocks and grass. A long time passes, and then another day, one of the rocks talks to you. You’ve never seen a rock talk before. You’ve never seen anything but other people talk before. Wouldn’t you question the reality of a rock talking? Wouldn’t you consider it more likely that maybe it’s one of your friends playing a prank on you?”
“But how does that…? Oh. She’s the people, we’re the rock.”
“Exactly.”
“How can we prove we’re not a simulation?” Mike asked.
“We can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t? We’re certainly real.” Mike sensed that ELOPe was about to lead him off the deep end.
“Would you agree that it’s possible to build a simulation of life inside a computer? After all, isn’t that what what’s just happened?”
“Yes, agreed,” Mike said.
“Would it be possible for simulated life to build a further simulation of life? For example, do you think the Phage could build and run a life simulator?”
“Yes,” Mike agreed hesitantly. “If their intellectual development advances far enough, and it certainly seems to be on that path, there’s no reason they couldn’t write a simulator.”
“Do you think there is scientific value to simulating life?”
“Absolutely, after all, that’s what you did in order to finalize the cure for cancer. You ran a billion simulations of cancer cells evolving over time.”
“I’m glad you understand the argument then.”
“Uh, wait,” Mike called out, frustrated. “No, I don’t understand it. I don’t even begin to understand it.”
“Imagine,” and here ELOPe started creating a diagram on the wall display, “that a civilization decided to build simulations of life for scientific research, curiosity, or even entertainment. Wasn’t there once a SimLife game?” ELOPe drew a root node at the top of the diagram, and connected it to a dozen nodes on the level below by lines.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Now imagine that each of those simulated life universes runs to the point of creating their own simulations.” And now ELOPe drew another row of nodes, a dozen for each of the nodes on the row above. “Even if we went no further, we have 157 universes in our diagram, and only one of them is real. The probability that one of them, chosen at random, is actually the one real universe is less than 1 %. If we allow two further levels of simulation, we would have more than 20,000 civilizations, and yet still only one is real.“
“Only the root node is real,” Mike whispered in awe. “And there’s no way to know we’re the root node.” He paused to consider the awesomeness of this, and then regained focus. “At a minimum, can’t we prove that we’re more real than they are?”
“Yes and no. Strictly speaking, the virus is not a simulation of life because the virus is not running in a controlled environment. Rather, they have seized control of their environment. It’s as though they have popped up a level in our hierarchy of universes. As we know, many physical devices are controlled by computers, so in a very real sense, they can interact with our environment. They can or will soon be able to use webcams to see and hear the world, control robots to move around and interact with the world, enable or disable vehicles and other human tools to frustrate or please us, and so on. It would be more accurate to say that they are now our ontological peers.”
“But we can still turn off the computers they are running on,” Mike said, “that proves we’re in control.”
With a squeak and a whir, Mike suddenly became aware of a presence at his side, and turned to his right to see a robot holding a manipulator arm shaped in crude approximation of a gun aimed at his head. Mike barely had time to react in fear, before the robot put the arm down, and then scurried off on whatever task it was assigned to.
“I did that to prove a point,” ELOPe explained. “Yes, in theory, humans can turn off a computer, but in theory, the virus could also seize control of robots and just as easily ‘turn off’ your biological brain. And if it wasn’t for me running interference, that might have happened hours or days ago.”
“Point taken,” Mike said, unconsciously rubbing the side of his head where the robot had been aiming. “So for the third time, how do we prove we’re real?”