Philosophical Predecessors

The simulation hypothesis is older than it looks. Plato's Cave Allegory described people mistaking shadows for reality two thousand years before computers existed. Hindu philosophy teaches that the visible world is maya — illusion concealing a deeper reality. Descartes imagined an evil demon spinning a perfectly convincing false reality, structurally identical to a simulation.

Bostrom's real contribution was translating this ancient question into computational terms that allow probabilistic reasoning.