It's hard to take these ideas seriously as long as they're always framed as actually running on a computer in a "real" universe somewhere. Even if we can demonstrate that we live in a simulation-like universe, it never followed that a real universe is necessarily non-simulation-like. Therefore, investigating such matters only serves to reveal a deeper character to the description of nature, but doesn't imply anything about things beyond what we can observe.
Slashdot Mirror
It's hard to take these ideas seriously as long as they're always framed as actually running on a computer in a "real" universe somewhere. Even if we can demonstrate that we live in a simulation-like universe, it never followed that a real universe is necessarily non-simulation-like. Therefore, investigating such matters only serves to reveal a deeper character to the description of nature, but doesn't imply anything about things beyond what we can observe.