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But Wait, There's More

Entry 2316, on 2024-01-16 at 21:18:51 (Rating 2, Philosophy)

Before I move onto more mundane matters, I want to do one follow up from my previous post which posited that the universe might be a simulation. There are more reasons to think this idea has some merit beyond those I mentioned yesterday, and there is also an interesting corollary to this argument.

First, we have a big problem today explaining why and how the universe got started. If there was nothing before the Big Bang, then how could anything have happened? What was the cause? Where did the mass, energy, and even the basic laws of physics come from?

There are possible "conventional" explanations for this, which I have mentioned in past posts. For example, the universe could be just a small part of an infinite (in time and space) multiverse. The multiverse always existed so the mass, energy, and laws also existed. This is the classic multiverse theory, which has some support and tidily answers a few awkward questions.

Or maybe the universe expands like it is now, then contracts down to a point, and is "reborn" infinitely into the past and future. This is the old "oscillating universe" idea which has been around for many decades.

But another possible explanation is that the Big Bang represents the universe simulation being "booted". Maybe that's when the creator of the simulation started it. Maybe the real universe the creators live in has always existed and has no origin.

Another difficult question for cosmology today is the apparent fine tuning of various physical constants. If certain fundamental constants were just slightly different than they are then the universe as we know it couldn't exist, and no life would be possible.

By the way, here are the constants: the ratio of the strengths of gravity to that of electromagnetism, the strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei, the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe, the cosmological constant, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, and the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime.

But if the universe is a simulation then the constants were purposefully chosen by the creator to get the type of universe we now have, and no further explanation is necessary.

There are many other aspects of out universe which might be construed as showing it is a simulation, but let's just summarise the reasons I have listed in these two posts. Our universe has pixels and a basic clock speed, similar to a computer, and it seems to have been started, and deliberately designed with particular parameters which favour the existence of life.

There are plenty of alternative, more conventional, explanations for all of this, of course, but the simulation hypothesis isn't totally crazy, is it?

Finally, I noticed as these posts went on that my argument sounded more and more like those I hear from religious people who prefer a theological explanation to a scientific one. Notice how often I used the word "create" (or creation, etc) above? Sounds like a religious argument, doesn't it?

There's an old joke that religious people only need three words to explain anything. Those words are "God did it". Maybe my idea is similar to this, except it is in a secular form which has no need for the supernatural. Maybe God actually did do it, except this god was more an incredibly advanced alien rather than a traditional supernatural entity.

In my defence, I did try to make my argument more scientific by making it falsifiable. There are particular attributes we would expect in a simulated universe (mainly those I listed in the previous post), and when we look, we might be seeing them (notice my caution here: this is obviously controversial).

This argument has the simplicity of a theological one without the need to invoke the supernatural. It's brilliant, I tell you! Also note that I am not totally convinced by my own points here. There are many problems, and many alternative ways to interpret the data, but it is kind of fun to speculate.

Comment 1 (7551) by Anonymous on 2024-01-17 at 15:17:03:

Hello OJB. Have you heard about the simulation hypothesis at all?

Comment 2 (7552) by OJB on 2024-01-17 at 15:44:58:

Um, yes. I used it in the generic sense in this post, and discussed Nick Bostrom's specific version in at least 2 other posts. I am very aware of it, but Bostrom approaches the idea from a different direction from me.

Comment 3 (7553) by Dad on 2024-01-17 at 21:30:01:

It is good to see that at last you are at least considering that God did create the Heavens and Earth, although I cannot agree with your suggestion of who God is. In Johns Gospel Jesus says "I have told you about things that happen in this world, and you do not believe me. Now I am telling you about things that happen in Heaven so I do not think you will ever believe about those things".

Comment 4 (7554) by OJB on 2024-01-18 at 09:05:47:

Yeah, while I appreciate some of the positive philosophy in Christianity (despite its terrible past where the peaceful message of Jesus was ignored) I don't think it is literally true. I see it in the same way as I do some moral philosophy: contains some interesting ideas, but not to be taken as absolute fact.

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