| Summary: | Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck
many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the
nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant
attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to
the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will
one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that
we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay examines a troubling
but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination
risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes
into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination
risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation
technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for
debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary
physics.
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