Neil deGrasse Tyson led a debate on whether the universe is a simulation. He took the affirmative side. He agrees that there’s no way to prove it one way or the other, but he claims that the probability that we may be part of a simulation “may be very high”. Aargh. Facepalm.
Lisa Randall is the voice of reason who says she thinks the question is only interesting if we have a way to test it. You go, Lisa Randall. That’s how a scientist should think, and she finds the whole argument hilarious.
The others trot out these incredibly shallow excuses.
The universe seems to operate in a way that’s very similar to the way our simulations of the universe operate. Isn’t that circular? Have they considered that they have the arrow of causality going the wrong way?
The rules that regulate the behavior of the universe seem to be very mathematical. Computers are mathematical. QED, the universe could be a computer. Ugh.
Some of the equations that describe the behavior of the universe are similar to equations found in web browsers — specifically, error-correcting code. Fortunately, the person making that argument doesn’t believe in the simulation paradigm, and pointed out that biology also uses error correction, and it’s not evidence that biology is designed.
David Chalmers, the philosopher, also points out that the simulation hypothesis is a naturalistic version of the god hypothesis, that claiming the universe is a simulation implies that there is a great Simulator, “someone” who built this code with some intent.
But I am disappointed to say that Tyson gives the worst argument in favor of the simulation hypothesis. It’s the idea that of course there could be super-intelligent beings, and of course what super-intelligent beings would do is create us.
Tyson points out that we humans have always defined ourselves as the smartest beings alive, orders of magnitude more intelligent than species like chimpanzees that share close to 99% of our DNA. We can create symphonies and do trigonometry and astrophysics (some of us, anyway).
But Tyson uses a thought experiment to imagine a life-form that’s as much smarter than us as we are than dogs, chimps, or other terrestrial mammals.
“What would we look like to them? We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence,” he says.
Whatever that being is, it very well might be able to create a simulation of a universe.
“And if that’s the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just the creation of some other entity for their entertainment,” Tyson says. “I’m saying, the day we learn that it is true, I will be the only one in the room saying, I’m not surprised.”
That really is an intelligent design creationism argument: I can imagine a superior being outside our universe, therefore, it is highly probable that there is a superior being outside our universe, and furthermore, it cares so much about us personally that it created this universe simulator so it can watch us for millions and billions of years.
I just wonder…does Neil deGrasse Tyson see dogs or cats or chimpanzees as deformed, inferior versions of ourselves? Does a chimpanzee look like a “drooling, blithering idiot” of a human, or would it be better to see it as a competent, successful chimpanzee? Chimps may not do astrophysics, but only an astrophysicist would be self-centered enough to consider that narrow discipline to be the defining character of a superior being. Yet again, Tyson reveals that he desperately needs some basic education in biology.
I also have to wonder if this is a general property of physicists, that they think they know so much that the only people they can imagine having a conversation about unverifiable, untestable, undetectable, hypothetical, imaginary foundational properties of the universe is a group of their fellow physicists (with one token philosopher).
Congratulations. They’ve discovered that they have something in common with theologians.