True, but I was thinking of something with a bit more content with my latter statement. Two things:
- There really isn’t a solid basis on which to decide if an observed effect is the result of imperfect simulation or the result of a law of the universe. For example, suppose that we find an anisotropy in some physical law e.g. some forces are weaker in one direction than in another. Are we supposed to think that we’ve found the simplices in the FEM ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method ) of our simulation? Or maybe that’s just how the universe is and our idea of what is natural is wrong. It really seems to be a consequence free proposition.
- The usual probabilistic argument about this is really, really messy* and it isn’t clear why you couldn’t take the same argument and induct. i.e. Say that we are simulated by a simulated universe which is simulated by a simulated universe which is… And there really isn’t any end to that tower so none of it is “real” at all. (Whatever that means.)
*: For starters, how are we going to meaningfully talk about probability when we don’t even have a vague idea about the possible space of states?
