---
title: "Trees · explorable histories · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees
description: "Technology trees for how virtual worlds became possible, what we’ve learned to simulate, where our rules came from, and how people could become synthetic."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

# Trees · explorable histories

Each tree is a history laid out like a technology tree in a strategy game. The nodes are dated and sourced, and you read them left to right. Every node is open from the start. Two trees end in published forecasts, one in open questions, and one in forecasts plus the site’s own projections.

[82 nodes Technology tree The inventions behind virtual worlds. Two trunks, illusion and computation, run from painted caves and the abacus to the headset, with dead ends and cited forecasts.](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/technology)[107 nodes Simulations tree A ladder by scale, from matter to whole worlds. It shows the first time each thing was simulated, whether in a mind, by people, with a physical model or on a computer, and the methods that made it possible.](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/simulations)[91 nodes Ethics tree How rules for living together grew from cooperating cells and animal societies into written law. They survived the loss of gods, and now they meet animals, synthetic minds and simulated lives. The tree ends in open questions.](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics)[100 nodes Becoming synthetic The breakthroughs a biological species would need to move into synthetic space and raise generations there. They include replaced organs, brain interfaces, brain mapping and emulation, the computers and power to run it, and the beings that could follow.](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/synthetic)