I wanted to know what you were talking about, and as far as I can tell, the authoritative work on the subject is Paul Davies (“The Matter Myth”).
However, the most recent edition was published more than a decade ago. Being built on the first edition, it’s an extension of his original ideas, and those are much older than the book (you have to know the material before you can write a book on it, and that takes time).
In other words, especially in the world of science, the authoritative work on the subject has long since passed its expiration date.
Could you please explain “The Matter Myth” briefly? I figure there are others here who would benefit as well from an explanation. It’s hard to discuss something without context.
Hi Asthmaticus. Forget the book. Even the phrase. The idea that I was getting at (though the book does talk about this) is simply the idea I mentioned in the last response. Nothing more than that.
Our inability to explain how the universe works doesn’t mean the universe is buggy. Given that the universe does work, it’s more likely that we suck at figuring things out.
To that end, not having grokked our universe isn’t evidence that we’re in a simulation.
A universe with incompatible aspects is such evidence. Currently we have no theory of quantum gravity; gravity and quantum mechanics are mathematically inconsistent, giving rise to troublesome infinities. It is likely this is just lack of knowledge and we will eventually discover a quantum gravity; however it is also possible (though unlikely) that they are in fact truely reductively inconsistent. Consider a simple model of old-style computer game simulation; for computational efficiency reasons, the “physical laws” (computer code) governing various objects are not always reductively and unitarily consistent; some visible objects are moveable, some are not; some objects can be destroyed, others not. It’s possible that laws governing large (gravity) and small (QM) objects is our world are similarly optimized for computational efficiency using inconsistent models, which would be evidence we are living in a simulation. The longer we go without a theory of quantum gravity, the stronger the evidence becomes. Currently, it is weak evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
Even if it is a simulation, all the creator did was pick the initial conditions and set the thing going.
She sure doesn’t seem to be interfering in her sim, so we are still all responsible, God or no God…free will and all that.
That was one of his darkest. I’m still in mourning for Banks. I like to think that elsewhere in the multiverse he didn’t get his cancer and he’s still kicking out his gems. If only there were a way to communicate with the other decohered branches…
“The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion… that what appeared to be real life must in fact, according to some piously invoked statistical certitudes, be a simulation being run within some prodigious computational substrate”…Iain Banks, The Algebraist
You do! Although I created the wikipedia page back when it was the “ultimate ensemble” :). Which gives me dibs… Always a pleasure to meet another mathematical monist…
We could probe for inconsistencies, trying to increase the computational burden so that glitches appear, or demonstrating outright that inconsistencies exist (we might already have such evidence…see my previous post) . Of course, if we are in a simulation, doing so might be an Extremely Bad Idea.
You’ve omitted the second half of that paragraph, which gives it a rather different context…
“This was a thought that had, in some form, crossed the minds of most people and all civilizations. However, everybody quickly or eventually came round to the idea that a difference that made no difference wasn’t a difference to be much bothered about, and one might as well get on with (what appeared to be) life.” ~ The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
Regarding the wider discussion of the Simulation Hypothesis…
From a Prime Mover to The Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, published 32 years before Nick Bostrom was a gleam in his parent’s eyes, it’s nearly always proffered in a way that ignores the possibility of a naturally emerging simulation or the simple fact that we may very well not understand the fundamental differences between simulations and material realities. Indeed, we likely do not.
I could excuse the ancients and even Sturgeon writing in 1941, but the failure to go beyond regurgitating the same arguments ad nauseam suggests that what those who engage in them are doing is more an exercise in anthropic naval-gazing than empirical or rigorous theoretical science. Hence one reason so many eyes begin to roll when the same discussion repeats for the spintillionth time. IJS.
