Human Pioneers
NEWS AGENCY

Pei Pang (Cultural Committee Member of the Central Committee of China Zhi Gong Party)

If you and I are merely code, and the Earth is but a projection of cold instructions, are the touch of your fingertips, the text before your eyes, and the heartbeat in your chest at this moment nothing more than an elaborate illusory performance? This is the ultimate question posed by the simulation hypothesis. It is not a sci-fi fantasy, but a serious philosophical inquiry inherited from Descartes' "Evil Demon" argument and Putnam's "Brain in a Vat," reaching its logical peak in Bostrom's "Simulation Trilemma": we are highly likely living within a program run by a posthuman civilization, and in truth, "we do not exist at all."

Let us begin with epistemology. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" cannot hold up in a simulated universe. If all perceptions can be programmed, then "I think" may merely be a clever response from the code. Kant believed that "time and space" are the foundations of experience, but if they are merely the initial parameters of a simulator, we are trapped in a cage where we can never reach the essence of things.

Turning to ontology, Aristotle's material cause—the foundation of matter—crumbles in the face of bitstreams. Berkeley's "esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived) becomes "to be is to be computed," and the material world turns into a structured illusion of consciousness. Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis goes further, asserting that only mathematical structures are real, and we are merely their programmed instances.

Ethical dilemmas follow. If pain is merely a neural signal simulated by an algorithm, does it still require moral consideration? Bostrom reminds us that if advanced civilizations possess moral conscience, the simulated world we inhabit is more likely to exist, as they would avoid creating "conscious programs" that suffer. Nozick's "experience machine" paradox is also upgraded: does the simulator have the right to terminate the program? Can the simulated demand an "upgrade of consciousness"?

When existence itself hangs on the virtual tightrope, the grand wars in human history—piled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood, staking millions of lives as bets—are exposed in their absurdity, like bacteria fighting under a microscope. If you and I are but code, the territories we fight over are virtual coordinates, the beliefs we defend are preset narratives, and the thunder of artillery and mutual destruction are merely logical errors in the program.

Against this backdrop, the "drone track" concept of non-contact warfare reveals a cruel yet realistic sobriety. Since "existence" may be illusory, at least let destruction stay away from flesh and blood. Just as virtual battles in video games replace real bullets, drone warfare, while unable to eliminate conflict, offers a relatively low-risk solution for a possible "simulated world," confining destruction to the realm of machines and data rather than consuming real lives. This is not a praise of war, but a technological reduction of the absurdity of traditional warfare.

The simulation hypothesis is inherently transcendental, as Carnap would say, rejecting the ultimate judgment of empiricism. But philosophy has not abandoned its response. The pragmatist William James argues that as long as the "causal efficacy" of the simulated world remains stable—apples still fall, fire still burns—then "reality" is the "belief that works" in our actions. Phenomenology, like Husserl's call to "return to the things themselves," transforms into a pure description of experiential structures: regardless of the ontological foundation, the experience of the present moment is the only reality.

The simulation hypothesis does not proclaim the end of existence, but allows us to understand existence in a new dimension. Heidegger said: "To question the being of beings is itself a mode of the manifestation of being." Even if human consciousness is merely recursively running code, this doubt about our own origin, this reflection on the atrocities of war, this quest for a path to peace—this reflexive questioning—establishes our true "secondary ontological status" in a possibly void universe.

Under the sobering reminder that the universe may be illusory, the true courage of civilization lies not in obsessing over the absolute proof of "existence," but in building a world with less suffering through clear-eyed humility. When drones replace bloody trenches on the track, this is not just a technological upgrade, but a profound redemption of the value of "existence." Even if we are but phantoms in a program, we must endow this phantom with an algorithm of dignity.

July 23, 2025