this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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How are they not logically justified? You and I live in the world that is claimed to be a simulation. It’s entirely logically justified simply by virtue of the fact that we can verify these things. Again, to borrow your example, if parameters and material items are being changed and modified while the simulation is running then we’d have to observe those things happening in at least some instances. We don’t have any evidence of anything changing without cause. If those changes can be done without us knowing about them in every case, then it’s just as pointless as debating the idea that every person alive is only 1 day old.
I'm not arguing any specific purpose of controlling a simulation in these ways, just that the arguments saying it wouldn't happen are too weak. A multipurpose simulation (imagine one shared by many different teams of simulation researchers) could plausibly be used like this where they mess with just about anything and then reset. Doesn't mean it's likely, just that it's unreasonable to exclude the possibility
It’s not unreasonable to exclude that possibility if there’s no way for us to ever know that. The same logic applies to scenarios like the one I mentioned before where everyone is only 1 day old.
You can’t prove that everyone alive isn’t one day old and simply born with memories of previous events. It’s a silly example but it’s the same argument as what you’re suggesting. If it gets reset in way that no one can possibly know, then, logically, the only option is to exclude it because you could never prove or falsify it either way.
You're conflating things. We have no reason to argue those are true with any certainty, but we still can't exclude the possibility. It's the difference of "justified belief" vs coherent theory. Physics have had a ton of theories postulated without evidence where decades later one option was proven true and many others proven false. Under your assumption you shouldn't have made that theory before it could be tested.
What am I conflating?
We can exclude that possibility because it’s a possibility that we can’t observe by any means. If what you’re suggesting is true, that a higher being is interfering and modifying our reality, then we should be able to test that assumption. Anything that can have a physical effect in our world is testable in our world. Since we don’t observe that happening, and according to you can’t observe it since doing so would end the simulation, it’s a possibility we don’t have to consider because it’s impossible to prove it or test it or, most importantly, to falsify it.
Again, it’s the exact same argument as the one day old suggestion. It’s ultimately meaningless.
By this same logic we can exclude the possibility of simulation theory, no? By your own logic it's not a stretch to "exclude the possibility" of something "because it’s a possibility that we can’t observe by any means". I believe goes back to the point of the meme: self proclaimed logical actors believing in something unprovable and thus proving themselves to be hypocrites...
It’s not unprovable, though. That’s where you’re wrong. A simulation can be provable so long as functions in line with its own internally consistent rules and what we observe about it.
For the sake of argument (this is an oversimplification but the point is the same), imagine that this simulation was running on a computer with 8MB of memory. Within the simulation (as in inside of it), we would be able to observe situations where things are not internally consistent as a result of, for example, running out of memory. Other observations we could make that would support the theory and be internally inconsistent would be things disappearing, as mentioned before, or moving without cause. Details could be internally inconsistent.
The only reason to exclude simulation theory completely would be if we have to assume that the simulation is perfect and, therefore, not distinguishably different from reality. This was the premise of the movie “The Matrix” in its initial concept when humans were used as computer brains to run the simulation rather than giant batteries (which makes no sense as our bodies are terrible energy storage mediums).
So, yes, there are situations where simulation theory could be excluded by the same premise but nothing that has been presented so far that would allow for the changes described to our current reality that would go unnoticed. The difference is that there is evidence (although not admittedly strong) that makes simulation theory more probable than any religion. It’s not hypocritical to accept the possibility of something based on some objective evidence rather than something meant to be accepted without any evidence at all.
But by this same logic anything can be "proven". If I see evidence of an abrhamic god, then I can prove its existence. This is not a novel or sufficient observation to meet the criteria that imperical based science is held to. The claim must also be falsifiable, just how a metaphysical God can always escape attempts to disprove it by relying on the imperical nature of science i.e. we can't really prove or disprove anything objectively, the counter effect is that it can't be proven under the scientific imperical framework either. I will admit I'm not well versed in the evidence for ST which you have referenced, but how would it be falsifiable? It seems any attempt can always be handwaved away as it's simply too complex a simulation... God works in mysterious ways right. To me this puts it squarely in the metaphysical realm, which isn't a bad thing per say, but again speaks to the intent of the meme.
How do you draw the conclusion that anything can be proven by that logic? The entire issue with religious gods is that there is no evidence nor logic which can be used to prove or falsify the hypothesis of their existence. You can’t see evidence of an abrahamic god because it doesn’t exist. If it did, he wouldn’t be a religious god, he would be empirically proven to be god because there would be evidence that he exists that people could see or otherwise observe with their senses.
I don’t understand your line of reasoning when you’ve just confirmed how metaphysical gods can escape any attempt to falsify them. If we live in a simulation, then that wouldn’t be the case. We’d be able to prove we are in a simulation by exploiting the limits of the simulation. If it doesn’t have any limits, then it’s a moot point since it’s perfect and we wouldn’t have the capacity to distinguish that from any other layer of abstraction of simulation. What if we’re living in a simulation that’s being run inside of another simulation? What if this reality is a simulation running in a VM running on a host machine? At some point, if we can’t objectively tell a difference then it’s a moot point as I would compare it, yet again, to the one day old world hypothesis. If we can’t tell the difference (meaning we are unable to or incapable of distinguishing), then it doesn’t matter how many layers of abstraction there are. If we have the ability to know that and just haven’t observed it yet, that still makes the other options impossible since our very existence predicates a simulation that is still ongoing and that we are a part of.
You're conflating "possible" with "probable", and refusing to address possibilities you don't have proof of.
When higgs bosons were predicted they were untestable. When gravity waves were predicted they were untestable. When black hole rings were predicted they were untestable.
Then we discovered how to build the sensors and instruments to test them.
You're saying those scientists should've dropped their ideas because at that point it was still impossible to test or falsify.
What scientists do instead is to develop many different alternative theories, then design tests and experiments, and then once data is in then they decide what do believe about the theories based on what the could prove or not.
Edit: why are people like this so aggressively wrong in the dumbest ways... Not only did they pick only one of 3 examples of mine to attack and ignoring the rest, they also did so maximally incorrectly all while failing to understand the consequences of their own policy of rejecting anything you don't know how to test.
The core of my argument is really just "sometimes scientists works on stuff nobody knows how to test, because maybe they'll find out how in the future", and this dude's argument is essentially "if you don't know how to test something it's literally impossible for it to be true and therefore it shall be rejected, but also scientists always knows the path forward and therefore I don't have to reevaluate my understanding of science"
No, I’m not. I’m really not understanding what this straw man is that you’re arguing.
When bosons were predicted, the method by which they would be measured was also predicted. Just because it took 40 years to do that doesn’t mean that they were untestable. “Unobserved” is not the same as “untestable” which is exactly the distinction that you’re missing with the simulation idea.
I’m not saying anything of the sort. You suggested that it is possible for our reality to be a simulation where the creator of said simulation is actively making changes. Those changes would have to be observable by the people inside the simulation. You then retreated to the idea that the creators are perfect and simply stop the simulations where those changes are detected. Epistemologically, that idea is both untestable and unobservable because, according to you, any simulation where either of those things were true would have been stopped. That makes it impossible for our current reality to be one of those because it has not stopped and, again, any simulation that is indistinguishable from physical reality is pointless to discuss because it’s non-falsifiable. It’s just like the one day old example I’ve given several times now that you keep ignoring and never addressing.
Besides the fact that it wasn't actually known if those tests would work, there's also hypothetical tests for simulation theory (eg. testing for pixelated resolution of spacetime, plus endless "consistency tests") so doesn't that make it all the same thing anyway? You're making much too strong assumptions.
What do you mean? They knew, at the time that the particle was predicted, that if it did exist it would have to be within a certain range of mass and would have to be the result of particle collisions where decay or exchange cause the particle to be emitted. Saying that it wasn’t known if those tests would work just isn’t true. The tests would only work if their theories were correct. It wasn’t the testing that was the issue. It was the very rare, specific conditions under which the particle could be observed that was the issue. If they were right, the tests would allow them to observe the particle and they knew this when they theorized its existence.
Doesn’t what make it all the same thing? You’re the one that said these beings could be changing things mid-simulation. If the boiling point of water was suddenly changed, we’d be able to tell. If the structure of carbon changed, we’d know. Then you walked that back and said that they’d just stop the simulation if we noticed these things. But they haven’t because you and I are still here discussing that. So the only options left over, if we assume they can make changes, is that either they haven’t done that or the simulation is perfect and so the distinction between a simulation and a real, physical world is a moot point.
Found via Wikipedia. From the 70's:
— John R. Ellis, Mary K. Gaillard, and Dimitri V. Nanopoulos,
So you're literally as wrong as you could be. It wasn't until what once was a wild hypothesis had been explored more that they could start to make better predictions around where it might be, decades later, and after tests narrowing down where it wasn't.
I didn't "walk back" either. Exploring multiple possibilities is called hedging, not walking back (since that means you retracted something which I didn't do), and scientists does it too. I didn't say either one option is more likely, I told you there are many possibilities and then you insisted on calling several of them impossible not because any mechanics exclude it's possibility but because you can't see it. That's plainly wrong. You can definitely argue it's improbable, but you don't get to call it impossible without proving it impossible.
LOL. Are you seriously trying to claim that you disproved my point by providing a citation that literally proves what I said? You just provided a range of masses within which they knew the Highs Boson particle would be. They predicted that range and they were right. How is that an example of “no idea”?
Direct quote from CERN, where they both predicted and discovered the boson (emphasis mine):
The properties they were looking for were predicted by Higgs’ initial theory. The only unknown property was the specific mass but, as I’ve mentioned and you confirmed, they knew a range. Every other property of it was already known. If he was wrong, they wouldn’t have found anything. They knew what tests they needed to do because they knew what properties they were looking for. In this case, a boson with a large mass, within a large range, that quickly decays. The only reason it took so long to observe using these tests was because the lifetime of the particle is so short which means it cannot be found in nature.
You did walk it back. You’ve walked back your original statement and are misrepresenting what I said. I never said that it’s impossible because you can’t see it. I said that your suggestion that they’re changing parameters mid-simulation is impossible because we’d be able to observe those changes. That doesn’t mean we can’t see them. It means we can’t measure them or detect them using any of our senses. Then you moved the goalposts to them removing or ending any simulations where we did observe these things which makes that a meaningless scenario that is unfalsifiable.
I’ve only been making one point. You’re the one that keeps moving the goalposts and changing the argument.
Physicists tends to work with precision in decimals, not multiple orders of magnitude. They didn't know it would be there either, all they knew is the theory they had would be simpler if it was there than not.
Your quote from the website is a bad attempt at backdating current knowledge from very recent research and experiments to the original discoverers
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-higgs-boson-ruined-peter-higgss-life/
It's not even known if there's more than one Higgs boson, because the theory allows multiple variants.
Look at that graph of how many different variants would decay differently;
https://home.cern/news/series/lhc-physics-ten/higgs-boson-revealing-natures-secrets
They had thousands of different predictions and couldn't know which were right until the data was in.
It was legitimately not known if we could find it. It could have been big enough that LHC would've failed, and then it could have taken us 50 more years to build a collider large enough (mostly due to cost, but still)
In fact they're only mostly sure still
You don't even understand what I'm saying, how can you accuse me of walking back?
You keep making unjustified claims even now. What if a simulator knows what you're looking at and simply don't mess with that? Clearly not impossible. Implausible? Absolutely, AND I KEEP SAYING SO, there's no reason to believe it's happening, and yet it's possible. Your inability to comprehend doesn't change the meaning of my statements.
Your persistence in calling it meaningless because it's unfalsifiable with no further context is equivalent to you calling most theoretical physics meaningless. A ton of theories like string theory is by your standard equally unfalsifiable and therefore we shall declare it impossible and stop investigating.
Instead we develop endless hypothetical scenarios specifically so we can look for evidence when new tools for investigating fundamental physics become available.
How could it be backdating current knowledge when those properties are literally in his paper where he posited the theory to begin with! You’re either being disingenuous or intentionally misleading. The reason he didn’t expect to find it in his lifetime was because the chances of observing the particle were infinitesimally small because of its short lifetime and the fact that it decays into other common bosons. It is not found in nature and can only be produced in a lab.
I really don’t know how much clearer you can be about their ability to predict what they were looking for other than repeating the quote and linking the paper:
Are you saying CERN is lying on their Highs Boson page?
https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson/what
https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.508
And you’re also wrong about the idea of “variants” that you’re claiming. The variants they’re referring to are the byproducts of the decay. Since the Higgs Boson decays into the same products as normal Z and W bosons and photons.
You’re mischaracterizing what they’re saying and arguing that what they are saying, and what I’ve quoted directly from their website where it says that all the properties except the mass were known, is not true. You’re also confusing us having the capabilities, using technology available at the time, with the ideas underpinning how it would be observed and what would have been observed based on the theory associated with it. They knew what they were looking for but being able to observe a particle that decays immediately isn’t easy. Your chart and quote are talking about the variations of interactions with other bosons and photons. How am I supposed to take any of your replies seriously?
I’m not making unjustified claims. You keep moving the goalposts away from the initial statement and are now arguing probability instead of the actual argument. The fact is that it is impossible for us to be in a simulation where the creators can change conditions if they end any simulations where we’d notice them. It’s not improbable. It’s impossible. You can keep making more straw men all you want. It doesn’t change the initial argument.