That’s hardly comparable; Paley’s design inference was not unreasonable in a pre-Darwinian world. What it lacked (and where the magical thinking came in) was any attempt to explain how the watchmaker created his watch; watchmakers in this world do not say “let there be watch” and watches magically appear. We do however create virtual worlds.
So what?
The fact that we can create simulations is a fact on its own. Just as the fact that people make watches. Neither are scientific proof that a god exists or not. It doesn’t prove or disprove the possibility of a simulation-based reality any more than a gila monster’s inability to code video games proves or disproves that humans ever made video games.
Adding the unfalsifiable possibility of an unknowable creator with agency, adds nothing to any result of any test you could consider. Positing that “inconsistent” results prove some kind of extra-cosmic agency doesn’t follow, especially when “reality” works just as well without adding a puppeteer.
It’s nice you’re having fun pondering it as a possibility, but you’re dreaming of the possibility of angels. The possibility of their existence has nothing to do with science as long as they’re defined to be completely undetectable or otherwise disprovable. They’re not impossible, but they’re irrelevant to science if every theory or hypothesis works equally well with or without them.
A hypothesis of a motivated Maker, always defined to have no path to falsifiability is just theology.
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Hardly. The current approach is “what detectable signal might an artificial substrate produce?”>> search for such evidence. Failure to find this signal tends to disprove that hypothesis. It’s not any different than searching for evidence of bubble-wall collisions in the cosmic background. If you think that’s all theology rather than science, well… … Anyway, I’m off to read my new book of theology, Sean Carroll’s "Something deeply hidden’.
As I said, learning about and testing the nature of our reality is science. Quantum physics is science.
Any attribution of what we find to “an unknowable and undisprovable intelligent designer” is the part that would make it theology.
It’s the difference between “searching for evidence of bubble-wall collisions in the cosmic background” and “searching for evidence of bubble-wall collisions in the cosmic background to back up a theory of invisible yeti commanders”.
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Alright, I see what you are saying. If someone makes a specific claim about the intelligent creator then it becomes the domain of science. Like if someone says, “God answers prayers and so if people pray for someone who is sick they are more likely to recover” then we can (and have) test(ed) that. It’s within the domain of science.
If someone said, “I think we are running in the Unreal engine” then we would look for specific known bugs in the unreal engine. But the simulation hypothesis is that we are running on unknown technology coded in an unknown coding language by beings with unknown intelligence and psychology. It doesn’t allow specific claims to be made.
I’ve never heard a remotely testable or plausible claim from anyone testing for simulations, which is why I asked what evidence would exist above. In the video they mention two things that make no sense:
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A simulated universe would be finite because of finite computing power. But the reason we can currently believe that computing power is limited is because of the nature of our universe. If we instead knew the universe to be continuous and infinitely divisible, we’d probably be on the hunt for a technology to harness that to get infinite computing power. So, if our reality is finite, that only suggests we are in a simulation if we also assume base reality has finite limitations, in which case, isn’t it a simulation too?
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The idea of universal constant drift being evidence is just foolish. World of Warcraft accumulates bugs over the week so they do a weekly server reset. They don’t change the acceleration due to gravity. If G drifts over time, guessing that it drifts because we are in a simulation is on the same footing as ancients guessing that lightning happens because Zeus throws it.
If someone said, “I have this model of a base reality and it mathematically predicts that G will vary by one trillionth of it’s value every month and then abruptly reset to it’s previous value on the second Wednesday,” and then they proved that was true, I’d be listening.
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Yes, quantum mechanics is science, and so is computer science/information theory. You can search for evidence that the world is a virtual machine without presupposing that the machine was created by the FSM, praise his noodly appendage.
You argument has become an abominable straw-man.
Alright, good. We can agree on that.
You may be correct in that regard, but you shouldn’t base your opinion only on a popularized video. Quantum mechanics applies to any universe made of space, not just our own, so any universe of that type should have finite computing power available. What can be searched for is deviations from what the quantum math predicts we should see; computational short-cuts, as it were, such as if the granularity of space differs from what QM predicts. It’s still a new field, so you can expect disputes about the science (and it is science, and not theology as some interlocutors would suggest).
You actually can’t search for evidence that the world is a virtual machine without presupposing a creator of that virtual machine.
It’s baked in to the very premise. That’s why this is essentially Flat-Earth-framing of quantum physics.
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Sure you can. You can search for whatever evidence you want; evidence is what puts something into the realm of science.(added you can search for the edge of the flat earth if you want. ) Now you are just special pleading, that finding certain sorts of evidence makes something non-sciency.
I didn’t say people aren’t allowed to search for evidence, just that a hypothesis that a Creator exists, requires a base definition of what is meant by a Creator. Same as searching for Angels or Flat Earths.
You need to presuppose a certain kind of Creator to look for evidence that would satisfy you that that kind of Creator exists. (For the hypothesis, of course, I don’t care what you do on your personal time.)
What do you think people are doing when they propose tests based on the ideas that a “cosmic supernatural coder” would cut corners on design, or that they’d have a certain amount of “computing power”, or assumptions about what other motivations might have on the “Intelligent Design” of the simulation?
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I’m no longer sure what your point is. Yes, you can search for the edge of a flat Earth, or for evidence that the Earth is round. And finding such evidence disproves it. The flat Earth hypothesis isn’t theology, however much you seem to want it to be.
The Flat Earth hypothesis fails to meet the criteria of a useful scientific hypothesis whenever it includes unfalsifiable claims.
Yes, as an idea it can be scientifically evaluated (and easily falsified on those claims it makes that are falsifiable). But you can also scientifically test for angels, as long as you haven’t defined them in such a way that no test will ever be adequate.
The premise of Simulation Hypothesis is a moving target where no data could prove or disprove it.
It’s a thought experiment, and a fun exercise, but its premise rests on similar foundations as theorising what an angel’s wingspan would be, based on what we know of birds.
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These people are making reasonable hypotheses based on our scientific knowledge of quantum limitations and virtual machines. Same thing we are doing when we search for evidence of collisions with other (unobservable) bubble universes in the cosmic background. Since these hypotheses result in testable evidence, they are science not theology. You are the one introducing speculative straw-men; we can look for evidence of other bubble universes without speculating about whether Jeebus lived there. Same goes for virtual machines.
Testing for “bubble universes” isn’t the Simulation Hypothesis. You are the one introducing the speculative straw-man that because other hypothesis are better founded, that the hypothesis that someone designed our world with agency is of similar validity.
What is the testable evidence for that hypothesis that doesn’t rely on unfalsifiable assumptions about an intelligent designer?
You’ve already said:
If testing finds deviations from what QM predicts, that will be a challenge for the predictive validity of QM theories (or the quality of the tests). “Evidence of the fingerprints of a Maker that’s super powerful but not powerful enough to simulate a reality-experience fully” would not be in running for best interpretation of the data… (well I’m sure some people would interpret it as that, maybe even you?)
The point is you’re relying on QM to be both true and capable of predicting conditions, and simultaneously to fail to make those predictions, so that we can see something’s “wrong” with the world (since humans have a perfect model of QM?). Circular proofs.
See, look at this stew of unfalsifiable assertion. You’re relying on the condition being true of what your test is supposed to detect.
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Sure. But now we are in a discussion over inference to the best explanation / data interpretation, not theology. Which of “the universe is probably a virtual machine” or “QM applies in some areas but arbitrarily doesn’t in others” would be the best explanation depends on what evidence might be obtained. you seem to be suggesting that there is no conceivable evidence that might favor the former, which does not seem tenable. And in any case, at this point we are no longer talking theology.
QM isn’t an “assertion”… like general relativity, a universe doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.
If by “virtual machine” you mean some unimaginably powerful entity running a reality simulator for “reasons”, then you’ll still have to explain how that’s any different than Intelligent Design.
Not my argument.
If a Yeti walk through the door as positive evidence of Yeti, it would support the existence of Yeti.
But if people make observations about QM that don’t support the theories of QM, that’s not positive evidence of a Creator. It doesn’t disprove it, but it doesn’t affect its unknowability. People thought Gravity was a perfectly understandable Newtonian complete system. Adjusting the theory didn’t involve adding a Creator that was messing with his code just to hide that Creator’s existence.
You can’t falsify “An unknowable creator is hiding their existence and can replicate existence and any mistakes we find point to that maker’s existence.”
That’s also what people did when they pointed to the mathematical rigidity of quartz crystal formation as proof of a Maker, and other such misguided arguments about unfalsifiable claims of divine agency.
Their observations were grounded in scientific process, but they applied them to unfalsifiable claims. That part at the end is theology.
I thought you were making an assertion specifically about your magic world outside the fishbowl you think they may have put us in.
Quantum mechanics and General Relativity are theories supported by science and observation. Their validity and acceptance are not transferable to non-falsifiable hypotheses.
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There is nothing “magic” about it; that’s your own straw man. Just like the hypothetical bubble universes (which are unfalsifiable, strictly speaking) that some cosmologists search for without being accused of doing theology (well, a few extreme positivists do make that accusation, perhaps you’d be among them), QM and GR etc would apply to any external universe running the virtual machine. Unlike certain contingent aspects of the universe resulting from broken symmetries, universes made from space don’t have a choice in the matter. QM and GR are in fact transferrable to any “natural”
universe like ours, which is why Guth can talk about eternal expansion, and we can posit other bubbles. You are getting hung up on the motivations and characteristics of hypothetical creators; evidence weakly or strongly supporting the hypothesis that the universe is a virtual machine would be merely that; evidence that the universe is a virtual machine. The theology is all in your straw man.
I’m not arguing against QM and GR.
You’re the only one making claims you can’t back up with a single observation, about a situation, an “external universe”, that is just speculation and unprovable under the terms you define it.
QM and GR etc would apply to any external universe running the virtual machine
Fascinating!
No, that would be evidence that the scientific model of a universe as a “virtual machine” has not been disproved. In the way you’re defining “virtual machine”, it would also be possible evidence we’re living in a dream.
Non-falsifiable hypotheses can motivate people to explore, but you’re making more of this than what it is. (And theology is full of non-falsifiable hypotheses, that would theoretically add to our understanding of reality, if only they were testable…)
I’ll keep an eye out on whether they ever develop a line of inquiry on whether we’re in a Intelligently Designed fishbowl that doesn’t rely on unprovable and unknowable conditions. They haven’t yet.
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