There are a whole bunch of different versions of the theory that are possibly falsifiable. For example, “Is the universe that we are experiencing being simulated on a TI Calculator?” It’s pretty easy to show the answer is no. How about “Is the universe that we are experience being simulated on a digital computer?” I.e. are there are provably continuous elements of reality such that they could never be simulated on a digital computer? The answer isn’t entirely obvious.
The problem of figuring out whether you are in a simulation or not actually has real world applications. For example, suppose you are writing a computer virus but you don’t want the virus to become active unless it is on a computer that can launch nuclear weapons. You know that the nuclear weapons security people are looking for viruses like yours by having simulation of the same computer to run the virus on. How do you get the virus to tell if it is in the “real” universe, vs. being in a simulation?
Playing devil’s advocate here. When did falsifiability (or for that matter, Occam’s Razor) become the gold standard for deciding whether something was worthy of serious consideration? Popper was just a philosopher, and “Willy” Ockham was a monk and theologian. Yet the principles they are famous for seem to have entered scientific canon – or at least, are invoked any time something outside our knowledge is discussed. Who are these guys (men) that get to tell science how it should work?
ETA I didn’t meant that to be a reply to your comment, @prooftheory
The simulation runs on money. Human imagination fills in the cracks. Get enough people to buy into it, they mob anyone who isn’t fooled. Hindu philosophy was all over this, many centuries ago.
That’s not really what I meant. Yes, philosophers are qualified to think and pronounce on these matters, more so than probably most of the rest of us, but many philosophical ideas have fallen by the wayside (or worse, much worse). The idea of falsifiability in science and its practice are currently in vogue, to the point where it can be used to reject meaningful discussion of “crazy”-sounding ideas.
If something is not falsifiable (that is, cannot be proven wrong) then they are not investigatable. They are, in essence, divine decrees which cannot be questioned. In fairness, not because “Thou shalt be smitten” but because they are literally not subject to investigation at our current level of scientific knowledge. As I said above, Planck time is on the order of 10exp-44 sec. The smallest time unit we have established is on the order of 10exp-19 sec. That is a 25 orders of magnitude difference. We cannot look at that, we may never be able to do so. AS well argue about the weather on a planet outside of our light cone. Theoretically, if we develop warp drive, we could explore that, and it is an intellectually stimulating discussion to have, but given our current level of technology and scientific knowledge, not only can we not explore it, we are quite incapable of ever exploring it, barring a revolutionary breakthrough. That is not science, it is speculation. Could it become science one day? Maybe, but my money is on “no.”
The universe we inhabit is a simulation running on an underlying non-Newtonian universe. Its not a computer, Its not made by people, but its underlying mechanisms are closer to logic than physics as we understand it.
To me, that’s part of the rub. How do we know that something can’t be proven wrong? Is it possibly because we don’t know enough about it? If so, then why should we stop investigating it?
This will rapidly spiral to nowhere, but I will go with it for now. If the gap between the knowable and the speculative (in the current discussion, time) sits at 25 orders of magnitude, then no, studying it is a waste of time. Perhaps put that time into decreasing the gap. (Or into inventing warp drive, in my other analogy.) It is potentially reasonable that at some point in the future, that gap narrows to something that could be crossed, but at this point, it is not anywhere even close. For comparison, a nanometer is tiny, even by our current standard. 10exp-9 meters. A lightyear is on the order of 10exp16 meters. If your limit of detection is measured in lightyears, and the thing you want to study is measured in nanometers, you need to work really hard on your technology. You ain’t getting data on your target of any sort any time soon. In that setting, yes, I can say that is unstudyable. Will it always be? I am not God, and have no idea about the distant future, but in the here and now, no.
Not at all. Nor am I of the “we should not take religion seriously because it’s not science” mindset. I think they are making different kinds of truth-claims based on different criteria, and both can and do provide valuable insights into the world.
I do object to things that are not scientific in nature being tarted up as science. I think taking the whole idea of a simulation to be an interesting thought experiment of the philosophical variety, more akin to the sorts of investigations into human nature that theologians make.
At this point, all scientific signs point to a universe that came to be via an organic, non-constructed manner.
Really? How about tone down that condescension just a bit maybe?
Except of course for the fact that it “began” and we have absolutely zero idea for how that might even logically be possible, that particles and antiparticles emerge from “nothing” even though that’s not really logically possible, and then that little thing where 95% of everything that exists as matter and energy in the universe is essentially a mystery. But other than all of that stuff it certainly seems unlikely.
“Digital physics” is very much taken seriously in certain segments of the scientific community, and it’s really not necessarily a different paradigm (I’d argue) than “simulated reality.”
