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Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It's 'Very Likely' The Universe Is A Simulation (extremetech.com)
mspohr quotes a report from ExtremeTech: At the most recent Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, [scientists gathered to address the question for the year: Is the universe a computer simulation? At the debate, host and celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argued that the probability is that we live in a computer simulation.] This is the crux of Tyson's point: if we take it as read that it is, in principle, possible to simulate a universe in some way, at some point in the future, then we have to assume that on an infinite timeline some species, somewhere, will simulate the universe. And if the universe will be perfectly, or near-perfectly, simulated at some point, then we have to examine the possibility that we live inside such a universe. And, on a truly infinite timeline, we might expect an almost infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations -- and indeed, a sophisticated-enough simulation might be able to let its simulated denizens themselves run universal simulations, and at that point all bets are officially off."
Like deGrasse Tyson, "back in the day" I enjoyed LSD as well, when you could get the real thing. These days, I've dialed it down to occasional weed and red wine...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What's the fastest way to get the plug pulled on the simulation you're living in? Convince a significant fraction of the population that their existence is pointless because they live in a simulation. This will corrupt whatever experiment that's supposed to be occurring and the outraged grad student will ragequit the simulation and start over. Or maybe he'll restore from decades-old backups and arrange bizarre and agonizing deaths for Tyson and that meddling philosopher Bostrom.
Sim theory isnt new. It was thought of because of the breakdowns in math that fail in computer sims also fail in our reality physics.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Personally I'm worried about the griefers who are now going to try to crash the sim.
Most scientists sucks at philosophy, as they have no idea how well trodden certain topics are and do not know how to reason within the discipline. Neil doesn't do well, when he says anything about anything non-physics. Among physicists, Neil and Hawking have been criticized as being philosophically impoverished. It shows.
"You live in the blue state, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You live in the red state, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." -- Morpheus
odds are that you're not you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations
Isn't this about the same thing as saying it's Turtles, all the way down.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
>If you're inside a simulation, then you can't run any tests to find out, now can you?
Why not. There are certain characteristics a simulated universe is likely to have - you can test for their presence. And quite a few of them are present in our universe. What we haven't figured out how to do is prove that a real universe wouldn't have the same characteristics.
It's definitely a testable hypotheses. The fact that we don't know exactly HOW to do do the test yet doesn't mean it can't be tested. The mechanics of testing have nothing to do with the definition of testable. When Einstein predicted gravitational lensing we had no idea how we may test that - after all, how can you tell if the light you're looking at has been bent by gravity in the past ? Nothing on earth has enough gravity to bend light enough to measure with 1901 technology. We figured it out some ten years later - we can look at an eclipse from Jupiter which is just far enough that light is measurably delayed, and that means if there's gravitational lensing the delay should be slightly different than if the light had travelled straight. The test was done and confirmed the hypotheses* - but it was testable when first announced.
Testable meant: "If you can show that light has bent in the presence of gravity, you can test the theory" it didn't have to mean "and here is how you determine that". It's perfectly fine to leave the HOW of testing to the reader, or future scientists who will have access to technology you don't have.
If anything this is more testable than a lot of theoretical physics. We still have no idea how to test any of the variants of string theory. We can show they are logically consistent and the maths work - but much of it we have no idea how to test.
Dark matter when first proposed seemed to fall clearly in the "untestable" category - how do you know something is there that doesn't interact with anything, doesn't give of any energy and cannot apparently be found ? Many scientists declared it "theory saving". Eventually though, somebody realized that if dark matter exists and has mass (and it has to have mass because it was proposed as an answer for missing mass in the first place) - then it would bend light (as per the aforementioned gravitational lensing) - and we've observed that - light being bent by a gravity source where no objects can be detected.... so it must be getting bent by objects we can not detect.
*Ironically that test was terribly flawed, and later entirely discredited, but other more accurate tests subsequently done did confirm the hypotheses again. That too is part of science, sometimes the wrong tests can give the right answers. This is one reason we retest things and re-examine old data and old experiments. Because the test was flawed, it could have been that the hypotheses had been wrong all along, retesting with more advanced technology and avoiding the mistakes made last time would let us find out if that had been the case.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
From a science standpoint arguing that we are living in a computer simulation is no different than arguing god created the universe. Either way you are saying "Something outside the universe, and greater than it, is responsible for its creation and upkeep." As such it is completely untestable and not science. You can't test for something literally outside of the confines of our reality, especially not presuming that thing is omnipotent as a god or creator of a simulation would be since even if you worked out a test they could change the results, change the parameters, etc.
It really annoys me how the computer simulation crap has become the creation myth for a number of science and geek types. They'll laugh at the silly Christians for believing in some omnipotent being that was able to create all reality, but be perfectly ok with the idea of some effectively omnipotent (from our perspective) being or beings that managed to create all of reality by writing a computer program in some higher order reality. Either way it is invoking a god myth.
If people want to believe in computer-god instead of religious-god ok I guess, but don't try to pretend it is any different and that it is any more than superstition.
So, you're God every time you run a simulation?
Yes. To the entities inside the simulation you are, to all intents and purposes, their God.
That pretty much fits the job title of "Omnipotent entity that caused and controls everything", aka God.