I thought for a long time about this question. I looked up Descartes' Daemon Deceiver, The Allegory of the Cave, The Matrix.
But does it really matter if it is a simulation or not? We still have preferences (I love pizza), physical stimuli (I have a bruise from bumping a table), and there is a flow to this reality (nothing ever is exactly like I imagined). If this is a simulated reality, someone needs to change the settings.
We are also still are here on steemit making a different reality. In this regard we definitely took the blue pill, but yet there are things to be discovered here. Relationships to be made, in the world void web.
In conclusion, I always found this question interesting but less than fruitful. So what if it is real or not? Does knowing (or not knowing) this 'fact' change anything? Have you ever chosen a different path or action because you believed it was simulated?
'If you can't be, with the one you love, love the one you're with.'
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
The question here is not the what if.
The question here is would you take the red pill and go to the real world or take the blue one and stay here.
I'm just saying, it wouldn't matter to me. The connections that I have to the 'real world' and the 'simulated world' are just cognitive structures. Reality, like meaning, is something that I think we create for ourselves. You could be real, or not, I still am enjoying this dialog.
Also a 'simulated hypothesis' is a fancy 'what if'.
The Allegory of the Cave is just a much older version of this simulated reality.
Truth. It poses the same question. And therein lies my answer, I would take the red pill if it afforded me a way to return and help others find 'reality'. Much like a true philosopher after leaving, who returns to the cave to help those still inside.
What I am trying to get at, is the can of worms that this question proposes. Are somethings real (ex: my mind) and some false (ex: my simulated body)? Are there 'others' to show the light outside the cave?
Both are real in the sense that mind and body are subsets of the greater 'set of all realities'. However, it may be prudent to ask, which is more real? Goedel's set theory revealed that contradictions can coexist within nested sets, without being invalidated. So Plato's cave needs addendum here; the falsity of the reality inside the cave is not guaranteed by the perspective of being outside of the cave.
Well, the hypothesis that it is all a simulation might open up to possibilities that don't seem to be open in a totally material universe. For example it might be the case that we should interpret chance, and luck differently. There just might be a "meaning" to events for us to try to decipher, that would otherwise just be coincidence and chance.
This question really recurs on all levels of life. Not only is it possible that the physical universe as a whole is some sort of illusion, you can also (and you probably do) live within layers of illusion within this physical universe.