"The movie The Matrix had already done its part to popularize the notion of simulated realities. And the idea has deep roots in Western and Eastern philosophical traditions, from Plato’s cave allegory to Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream. More recently, Elon Musk gave further fuel to the concept that our reality is a simulation: “The odds that we are in base reality is one in billions,” he said at a 2016 conference....
...Kipping, despite his own study, worries that further work on the simulation hypothesis is on thin ice. “It’s arguably not testable as to whether we live in a simulation or not,” he says. “If it’s not falsifiable, then how can you claim it’s really science?””

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/

It's a variation of the "who created the creator" argument.

And don't forget that Elon Musk is the scammer who wants tax dollars for his hyperloop scam.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's a variation of the "who created the creator"
> argument.
>
> And don't forget that Elon Musk is the scammer who
> wants tax dollars for his hyperloop scam.


Don't forget Musk is the guy doing NASA's job right now, sending astronauts to the ISS and more satellites (895) into outer space than any other country.

...goddam Alzheimers...

"Musk is the guy doing NASA's job right now" ... It's a variation of the "Mussolini made the trains run on time" argument.

NASA's job is set by grandiose presidential claims and budget cuts with ever shifting political goalposts.

That's an interesting but curious article that, I suspect, is closer to make-believe than science.

The Zhuangzi episode, for instance, is not about simulations but rather about the uncertainty of human experience and knowledge. Saying the story is about different simulations is a reading of current preoccupations into 3rd or 4th century BCE philosophy.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2248698,2248721#msg-2248721

Also, I don't think Elon Musk is an expert at anything but self-promotion. What training in science or philosophy does he have that enables him to estimate the probability that what we experience is "base reality?" Kipping points that out, identifying the assumptions Musk unwittingly makes. Truth be told, no one would give his musings much attention if he were not spectacularly rich.

Finally, Bayesian analysis doesn't work the way the article suggests. You can't just assume 50/50 probability and then think your way towards an answer. You need falsifiable propositions and actual data. On the basis of that data you formulate an initial estimate, rough as it may be, test it, refine your probabilities, and run the experiment again and again until you end up with probabilities that fit the evidence relatively tightly.

In this case, though, Kipping is choosing to start with a 50/50 probability because he doesn't have any data and then using his own mind rather than any sort of empirical experimentation to improve his estimates. Did it work? Well, it says something that he ended his analysis with virtually the same 50/50 estimates that he started with.

Musk has a physics and also economics degree and started a phd in physics.

I think he's smart. not public/social smart and the social media feedback machine is not healthy for him. He needs a better social filter and fewer yesmen around him.

Getting off Twitter would be a good first move for him.

Oh, he's definitely intelligent. But it's a mistake to assume that getting accepted into a Ph.D. program is the same thing as doing any work in it. I think he was only in the latter for a couple of weeks, so that's meaningless. Moreover he's spent the last 25 years on business and self-promotion, meaning he hasn't had time to learn much more about science.

Do you think a guy with an undergraduate degree in physics can contribute significantly to the debate over simulated realities? I don't think there is anyone else who's really smart but only has a B.A. in physics who would get the time of day in Scientific American on a topic so arcane. It's also significant that Kipping defeated Musk's argument in about two sentences.

I think his opinion is his opinion and he has a big soapbox.

I don't quote him.

That's my point. No one would quote him on science if he weren't so rich--and rightly so.

Recall also that this is the guy who last week accused the experts of overestimating the deaths caused by COVID by a factor of 10 or even 50--with no basis but his own ego and his reluctance to slow production at Tesla to obey "fascist" SIP rules.

Another variation of “We are the playthings of the gods.”

Not necessarily.

We don't even perceive what we think base line reality is. Our current theory is excitations of fields is the baseline. So our everyday experience of cars and trees is a simulation we run on our personalized concentration of fields as a simplification of reality our sloppy consciousness uses to get by.

All the thisness of qualia in philosophy would be just a mental shortcut to save computation and simplify survival.

Sounds like Donald Hoffman. It’s hard to draw the system boundary of what “we” are when our notions of “reality” are basically survival mechanisms. Hate the church if you want, but it does provide a reproductive advantage.

Some parts of the BoM, cobbled together as it is, contain great wisdom. As an encapsulation of 19th century theology, you could do worse. That’s why many of us were TBM. The church “felt true” because it conferred some kind of advantage at a certain level of consciousness. The fact that it’s entirely made up, if you agree with Hoffman, doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. Still, I wouldn’t go back.

Not even worth more than a one-word reply. Sheesh, I wrote a sophomoric piece on this subject when I was in high school.

Fifty-fifty, my Aunt Sadie. Science works partly on the phenomenon of "reproducibility," and the probability that a group of people will agree on something approaching objective reality is overwhelming.

Some folks need to lay off the holiday egg nog.

I look at the animals and ask myself what their perception of the universe is. Animals understand birth, death, food and shelter as well as I do. But what do they know about calculus or algebra? What makes us as humans, capable of understanding the universe? Our intelligence is probably not at the top of the scale if the scale ever even does have a top. Perhaps just as my dog doesn't understand calculas, I may never be capable of fully understanding the universe.

Actually there are several pieces of evidence for us being in a simulation.

When we get down into the quantum realm, things get very weird indeed. This is what you would expect in a simulation where nanoscopic detail would not be required.

More controversially it also provides an explanation for the paranormal phenomena people believe they've seen.

Uncle Festered Wrote:
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> Actually there are several pieces of evidence for
> us being in a simulation.
>
> When we get down into the quantum realm, things
> get very weird indeed. This is what you would
> expect in a simulation


https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/new-hypothesis-argues-the-universe-simulates-itself-into-existence?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5

When I first encountered the double-slit experiment in high school physics (a few decades ago) I was absolutely blown away. How does a TBM explain that? But really, how does *anyone* explain that? For a single particle-wave to "know" where it's supposed to show up on the interference-pattern screen says to me the particle-wave is not really "real" but is instead following rules found in a de facto program of some kind. (And, of course, there are many other phenomena at the quantum level that defy explanation.) So who or what created the program? Did it arise from nothing--self-organize--"simulate itself into existence" as the article linked by schrodingerscat suggests? Will we ever know the answer? Can we ever know the answer?

Fascinating (and disturbing)!

lurking in Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I first encountered the double-slit
> experiment in high school physics (a few decades
> ago) I was absolutely blown away. How does a TBM
> explain that? But really, how does *anyone*
> explain that? For a single particle-wave to
> "know" where it's supposed to show up on the
> interference-pattern screen says to me the
> particle-wave is not really "real" but is instead
> following rules found in a de facto program of
> some kind. (And, of course, there are many other
> phenomena at the quantum level that defy
> explanation.) So who or what created the program?
> Did it arise from
> nothing--self-organize--"simulate itself into
> existence" as the article linked by
> schrodingerscat suggests? Will we ever know the
> answer? Can we ever know the answer?
>
> Fascinating (and disturbing)!

Have you ever tried to make a soccer ball?
It's not very easy is it?

Turns out that what is more complex than a platonic solid
https://tutors.com/math-tutors/geometry-help/platonic-solids#icosahedron

is the easiest thing in the world for the Cosmos to make, and the first thing it makes, out of plasma emanating from black holes like lava from a volcano,
carbon.
like soot burning off of a flame, after Dark matter, most of the cosmos is plasma, ionized gas, which is the result of energy slowing down, (m=E/C^2) decay, from ionized gas, to carbon atoms, which form, naturally,

"The molecules, sometimes also known as “buckyballs”, comprise 60 carbon atoms arranged in a shape resembling a soccer ball."

https://cosmosmagazine.com/chemistry/buckyballs-found-in-space/