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The suggestion that we live in a simulation is really not a "theory" in any meaningful way at this time. It doesn't explain anything that we can't explain other
by sarah180 8y ago
The suggestion that we live in a simulation is really not a "theory" in any meaningful way at this time. It doesn't explain anything that we can't explain otherwise and it doesn't predict any behavior we haven't yet observed.
It is, at present, effectively unfalsifiable and not much different from a claim that "God made all of this." It's just a different notion of God.
This is not an argument that we shouldn't pursue this line of thinking, but we shouldn't call it a theory until it makes new predictions that we can confirm or disprove.
- tlb 8y agoIt's really an umbrella term for a class of theories, some of which do make testable predictions (like anisotropy of space or, in this case, a minimum bound on memory error rate with zero radiation.) It's like the term "string theory". One thing that all simulation theories predict is that our universe is interesting. It's an alternative to anthropic theories to explain why our universe is one with life and not one that re-collapsed to a singularity or expanded out into a thin hydrogen plasma. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant#Anthropic_explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant#Anthro... for one reason why it's only a small range of possible universes that are interesting.