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No, We Probably Don't Live in a Computer Simulation, Says Physicist (gizmodo.com)
Science doesn't have all the answers. There are plenty of things it may never prove, like whether there's a God. Or whether we're living in a computer simulation, something proposed by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. From an article on Gizmodo: This kind of thinking made at least one person angry, theoretical physicist and science writer Sabine Hossenfelder from the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany. Last week, she took to her blog Backreactions to vent. It's not the statement "we're living in a simulation" that upsets Hossenfelder. It's the fact that philosophers are making assertions that, if true, should most certainly manifest themselves in our laws of physics. "I'm not saying it's impossible," Hossenfelder told Gizmodo. "But I want to see some backup for this claim." Backup to prove such a claim would require a lot of work and a lot of math, enough to solve some of the most complex problems in theoretical physics.
In other words, "the universe is a simulation" is an unevidenced assertion, much like the multiverse. Yes, there may be some extrapolations of the underlying math that might point in such a direction, but at the moment, it's simply a cool-sounding idea with absolutely no experimental evidence at all. Of course, I feel the same way about string theory, though one thing string theory has produced is some pretty useful mathematical tools, so even when a theory is wrong or indemonstrable, it can still be of some use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The objection in question ignores Bostrom's basic argument. Bostrom's primary argument for being in a simulation boils down to the observation that it is very likely that an advanced civilization would have the ability to run very accurate simulations. Moreover, one of the things they'd be obviously interested in would be their own past ancestors; if that's the case, then over the very long period that such civilizations will exist one will expect many more "copies" of people on ancient Earth than any of the originals, unless one expects civilization to die out well before we get to that technology level. If the laws of physics are simulated badly enough that we can notice, then they aren't doing an effective ancestor simulation, so the objection here doesn't make sense.
There are a lot of issues with Bostrom's argument; for example, one might question whether simulations of that level of detail will ever be able to be made on a large scale. But the argument being made here doesn't grapple with the fundamental issues.
This is exactly what an Agent would say.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
A previous slashdot commenter (I don't remember which, sorry) said it best. It's apparently ignorant and backwards to believe that God created the universe, but quite forward-thinking and intellectual to think a computer programmer did.
Personally the fact that recently we have found the EM drive may actually work says were are in a simulation. We just found a bug in the physics engine. That or we need to rethink many of our basic assumptions of physics.
If the universe is a simulation then one can speculate on the purpose of the simulation. A good bet, based on our own world, would be it's a role playing game. If so the "players" are presumably the Elites in the game.
Ah, so we just need to look for player characters who picked a generic white-male avatar, blundered around because they picked "easy mode," but still wound up doing and completing some of the fun missions and sidequests in the game. For example:
1. Started life as a player character with extra gold
2. Flew fighter planes
3. Managed a baseball team
4. Caught fish in the "pond on own private ranch" cliche
5. Became president of USA. Bonus for second term election.
Hmm, someone like that would be unbelievable and stick out like a sore thumb.