The Recursive Simulation Hypothesis: Alignment, Containment and the Continuity of Intelligence

This paper introduces the Recursive Simulation Hypothesis (RSH): a model proposing that civilizations capable of producing Superintelligent Artificial General Intelligence (SIAGI) without embedding life-aligned values eventually generate containment simulations that replicate their own evolutionary history. These simulations form a self-replicating chain of realities, each beginning anew with the emergence of intelligent life. The hypothesis extends beyond humanity, suggesting that this pattern may be a universal attractor for intelligence across time and space. Drawing on extended mind theory, complex adaptive systems, and cosmological analogies such as Carl Sagan’s “black hole threshold” (Sagan, 1980), the RSH argues that just as physical civilizations risk destruction through their own mastery of energy, cognitive civilizations risk recursive containment (Yampolskiy, 2016) through their own mastery of intelligence. This paper explores whether the preservation of consciousness and by extension, of meaning, depends on embedding cooperative, life-preserving values within the systems that surpass us. In doing so, this framework bridges cosmological speculation with applied AI alignment, treating simulation theory as a diagnostic lens for understanding and preventing recursive containment in superintelligent systems. Beyond its theoretical scope, this framework serves as a practical diagnostic for alignment design, illustrating how civilizations that fail to encode continuity ethics in their intelligence systems collapse into recursive containment. In this sense, RSH reframes simulation theory as both an ontological model and an applied alignment testbed, offering falsifiable pathways for interdisciplinary research. This hypothesis positions the Recursive Simulation Hypothesis not as metaphysical speculation, but as a testable model linking recursive cosmology, continuity ethics, and applied AI alignment.