First, significantly OFF TOPIC!
A universe that may be computer modeled does not necessarily reflect our very natural universe with no objective verifiable evidence that our universe is a computer simulation. I do not agree with the assumptions of those in the references.
Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom makes a compelling logically sound argument why there is a significant probability we are living in a simulated universe.
Lead designer and engineer of SpaceX, Elon Musk states there is a one in a billion chance we are living in a base reality.
In 40 years, Musk explained, we've gone from
Pong to massively multiplayer online games with millions of simultaneous players, games with photorealistic graphics, and stand now on the cusp of a new wave of virtual and augmented reality experiences.
"If you assume
any rate of improvement at all then games will become indistinguishable from reality," Musk said. "Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now, let's just imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale." Given that we're on that trajectory and that these games are increasingly playable on any device, Musk said, the odds that we are living our lives in base reality — that is, "real" reality — is one in billions.
Theoretical Physicist Brian Green has the following ideas about the possibility we are living in a simulated reality:
" imo, there is certainly no new convincing evidence that leads us to definitively conclude that we're in a simulation. Instead, there are interesting theoretical arguments which make that possibility, at least, scientifically plausible.
But being plausible, being possible is a far cry from being definite. And with something as extraordinarily far out and crazy-sounding as "we're living in a simulation", to paraphrase Carl Sagan, we'll need some extraordinary, monumental evidence to really believe it. And I would say we don't have anywhere near that evidence today.
Some of the evidence would be circumstantial. You know, if we can actually build the kinds of simulations that would be necessary for the conclusions to hold, simulations in which within the simulations we, as creators of the simulation, can see that there are sentient, cognizant entities within the simulation, for whom that simulation seems to be as real to them as the reality that we know about is real to us. That would be an interesting piece of circumstantial evidence if we could do that, or if any alien being could do that.
If we get visited in the future, and they show us that they're able to do that, then that would also be circumstantial evidence that maybe we are merely another example of what we're witnessing in the simulation.
People have come up with other, you know, more exotic ideas, looking for glitches in reality, sort of like in
The Matrix when the black cat walks by twice. Remember that scene with Neo? So, looking for mistakes. I don't buy that at all because a very clever error-correcting simulation could simply wipe clean the memory of any such glitch after correcting it. But for me personally, if we could actually see the kinds of simulations that would be required, if we could build them, then I'd start to really take the idea more seriously.
And we don't even know what consciousness is, right? We have no idea whether consciousness can be simulated in any kind of computer, whether classical or quantum. So those-, these are just basic issues that would be, we'd need to have an answer before we would ever be able to claim -- and we need a positive answer before we could ever claim, you know -- it's more than likely that we're in a simulation.
And believe me, you know, again, if we are in a simulation, who's to say that the entities in a simulation are good simulators, good builders of simulations? And so, it's not just for the conclusion to be true. It doesn't require that we be able to build those simulations. For us, to believe that it's possible, it would certainly be an enormous step forward if we were able to build something like that."
Does Musk have access to simulations we don't? Maybe. But until he shows us what he's got, many will continue believing that the world is real and that some
Simsgamer isn't controlling all of this.
