Is Living Consciousness a Simulation? Children’s and Adults’ Reactions to the ‘Person Is a Simulation’ Hypothesis

To exclude the unavoidable magical elements in explaining the origins of living consciousness some scientists suggested that a person is a computer simulation run by some kind of Supreme Programmer. Psychological experiments showed that the simulation hypothesis met strong resistance in both children and adults. The participants were happy to imagine Supreme Programmers who could create people like them, yet they strongly denied the existence of such Supreme Programmers outside their imagination. Further experiments revealed that the cause of this denial was the participants’ disbelief in the possibility of the imagined object transcending their living consciousness and entering the external reality. The analysis brings one to the conclusion that although a person’s body could be a simulation, the person’s living consciousness couldn’t.