Are we living in a simulation?

22

September

2021

No ratings yet.

Have you ever wondered if what you perceive as reality is real life? Who decides what is classified as real and what is not? The majority of the population probably classifies the thought of living in a simulation as rather surreal. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why this might be true and not such an absurd thought at all. Currently, Elon Musk is one of the most famous public figures advocating the pro simulation stance. His explanation is simple; several years ago video games were as simple as two rectangles and a dot advertised as a game called pong. Today, we have virtual reality, augmented reality and photorealistic 3D simulations amongst others. Those technologies bring video games so close to reality that it becomes difficult to tell the difference. It enables several players to play real-life games simultaneously and collectively. With the speed technology has advanced over the last years, we will soon have video games indistinguishable from reality. Even if the speed of advancement decreases significantly, humanity will reach the state of creating such games at some point. This advancement could take thousands of years while still counting as revolutionary due to that length being rather insignificant on an evolution scale. Elon Musk believes this argument to be the primary reason for us living in a simulation. We cannot know if this advancement has already been made in the past. If yes, we already live in a game so close to reality that we cannot tell the difference anymore. Due to artificial intelligence, we advance throughout the game and will eventually reach the point where we create further simulations within the simulation we already live in. Musk rates our chance of not living in a simulation to be one in billions. Not only Elon Musk but also several other professionals in the field support this theory. Another famous advocate, Nick Bostrom a philosopher at the University of Oxford, believes the simulation hypothesis to be as follows. Our experiences and lives are a result of an advanced civilization setting up millions of computers where several simulations are running, with our reality being one of them. Below you can find the link to the full two-hour interview of him explaining this theory further. In addition, you can find the link to a website collecting all information that could hint to us living in a simulation. Even though there is no hands-on evidence, several arguments do sound very convincing. What do you believe? Is this world ‘real’? Leave a comment below and let me know how you feel about this!

Sources and additional information

Joe Rogan & Elon Musk – Are We in a Simulated Reality?

Why Elon Musk says we’re living in a simulation
Nick Bostrom – The Simulation Argument (Full)

Additional readings

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-simulation-hypothesis-why-some-think-life-simulated-reality-ncna913926

https://www.simulation-argument.com

Please rate this

The Terrifying Rise of Deep-Fake Content

17

October

2018

No ratings yet. Earlier this year the famous actress Drew Barrymore had to deal with some bizarre fabrications of her life that had been published in the magazine of Egyptair: “HORUS”. Celebrities often have to deal with stories about their life that are based on half truths or even lies, but the lengths to which the interviewer went are pretty scary. They accurately photoshopped an original photo of Barrymore holding the magazine “Nisf Al-Donia” and swapped it with their own magazine and unashamedly published it in Egyptair’s magazine. The only reason why this has been discovered is because of the content, Barrymore’s forged answers, did not reflect Barrymore’s life at all. But what if the interviewer had been a bit more clever. Than this magazine article had been gone unnoticed, and had been passed on to passengers without any remarks.

This brings me to the topic I want to address in this blog post. Something that I have been worrying about for quite some time now, that is deep-fake content. Deep-fake learning is an AI based human image synthesis technique used to combine existing with fake images, audio or video into source material. Creating fake content that looks like reality. Deep-fake is mostly used to create fake celebrity or revenge pornography [1]. Of course there are also less harmful use-cases of deep-fake content. For instance to create comedy sketches that are called derpfakes (see below).

From a technological point of view, deep-fake techniques are a marvel of engineering. Pushing the boundaries of what can be done with graphical processors and algorithms. However, deep-fake technologies are sadly enough mostly used in either pornography or even worse, revenge pornography [2]. The latter is really important because celebrities are often well protected due to their popularity but regular people like you and me will find themselves in a much trickier situation. In the UK creating harmful deep-fake material is considered a crime but in other EU member states this is not the case. Recently the ministry of Defence of the United States developed a tool that is designed to catch deep-fakes [3]. But governments are still hesitant on policy making to make deep-fake crimes are specific type of crime. The public is not enough aware of the rising technological possibilities of deep-fakes and thus governments do not make it an priority either. With this blog post I have hoped to give you some insights into this topic and make you aware of the dangers, and convince you that this should be explicitly be made punishable.

For females out there reading this post, please be careful with what you post on social media and how accessible your content is. Numerous studies have shown that females are more often victims of deep-fake content than men.

1 : “What Are Deepfakes & Why the Future of Porn is Terrifying”. Highsnobiety. 2018-02-20. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
2 : https://tweakers.net/nieuws/134449/vervangen-van-gezicht-in-pornovideos-met-ai-neemt-grote-vlucht-door-tool.html
3 : https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611726/the-defense-department-has-produced-the-first-tools-for-catching-deepfakes/

Please rate this