posted on Jan, 12 2023 @ 12:00 PM
Suppose you belong to a hypercivilization in the Alpha Mensae solar system, i.e., you are capable of manufacturing space vehicles that travel at the
speed of light. Suppose your species is biological. Suppose you face no existential risk and yet you wish to travel to Earth. Suppose that, despite
all this, consciousness cannot be separated from its substrate, the brain.
Under these conditions the question arises as to whether you really need to travel to experience what the Earth is like.
As you can see, even being a hypercivilization, the biological limit is insurmountable for your trip. However, that does not prevent you from visiting
Earth and experiencing it. It would be enough for you to lie down in a room and inject into your brain all the simulations of the Earth that you have
collected by probes. Remember that your probes can travel to Earth, but you cannot. Your simulations are so realistic that, for all intents and
purposes, your brain cannot distinguish them from reality. For all intents and purposes it is as if you were on Earth.
Your simulations are so accurate that you can simulate the feel of fine beach sand, the smell of wet grass, the thousand colors of a sunset, frosted
wastelands, an iceberg, or a jungle with its animals and sounds. Nothing in your brain, absolutely nothing, can distinguish the experience of a
simulated Earth from the real Earth.
You can even simulate interaction with humans (a simulated one, that is). Your probes recorded all that when they visited Earth (when they moved
slowly over fields collecting data, when they flew over oceans and lakes, when they plunged into storms, or when they scanned a poor farmer on a
deserted road).
You don't need to travel to other planets to recreate them exactly in your brain. Your probes do.
This raises the question: what if everything you are experiencing right now is nothing more than a simulation of what it would be like to be a human
being on a planet called Earth?
What if, after all, you are the real alien from Alpha Mensae right now? There was never a Fermi Paradox. Relax: we can stop the simulation the moment
you really wish.