I get what a simulation is, at least in the very literal sense. What I’m experiencing feels like reality, it would have to, it’s all any of us have ever known. But what would it mean for us if we truly lived in a simulation? Can it just be turned off and we cease to exist? If we found out we did live in one, how could it change our reality? How do we even hypothesize such a thing? I have zero background in physics just so we’re at an understanding of my physics understanding.
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Like others have pointed out, it’s just philosophical thought experiment and not grounded in physics. The assumption behind it is that since we see our computing power increasing to a point where it seems possible to create a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality, any sufficiently advanced civilization should be able to come up with such a simulation. Then, the simulated beeings in those simulations should also be able to create a similar simulation (within their simulation) and so on. This means, that given the original assumption is true, there would be an enormous amount of simulations within simulations but only one true “originial” reality. Therefore, the odds of us actually living in that one true reality are small compared to those of living in one of these simulations.
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