Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It's 'Very Likely' The Universe Is A Simulation (extremetech.com) 830
mspohr quotes a report from ExtremeTech: At the most recent Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, [scientists gathered to address the question for the year: Is the universe a computer simulation? At the debate, host and celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argued that the probability is that we live in a computer simulation.] This is the crux of Tyson's point: if we take it as read that it is, in principle, possible to simulate a universe in some way, at some point in the future, then we have to assume that on an infinite timeline some species, somewhere, will simulate the universe. And if the universe will be perfectly, or near-perfectly, simulated at some point, then we have to examine the possibility that we live inside such a universe. And, on a truly infinite timeline, we might expect an almost infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations -- and indeed, a sophisticated-enough simulation might be able to let its simulated denizens themselves run universal simulations, and at that point all bets are officially off."
Yes... Vwery interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Like deGrasse Tyson, "back in the day" I enjoyed LSD as well, when you could get the real thing. These days, I've dialed it down to occasional weed and red wine...
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I recall one of the Hackers / Life Extension j/ "Is uploading possible?" people reporting on someone making that argument back somewhere between 1988 and 1992.
(Except for the bit about denizens doing their own sims and all bets being off.)
The argument continued with the claim that, if there is one original and many sims the probability is high that any particular instance of you is a sim rather than an original.
(My take: What's the difference? If the (simulated or otherwise) particles interact in a way th
Re:Yes... Vwery interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
Nick Bostrom has similar thoughts (2003): http://www.simulation-argument... [simulation-argument.com]
Re: Yes... Vwery interesting... (Score:3)
Re:Yes... Vwery interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
No, I'm thinking that anyone applying fantasy to considerations of what the "raw odds" of what reality is should back up and look for empirical evidence. Otherwise, where do unicorn farts enter into it?
Re:Yes... Vwery interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
What kind of simulation would give up empirical evidence of its simulationness?
1. Due to limited computational resources, the simulated universe would be granular or "quantum".
2. To limit computation, reality would be held in a fuzzy probabilistic "superposition" state until it is actually observed, similar to how virtual reality skips the generation of hidden polygons.
Both of these are actually true in our universe, ergo, we are a simulation.
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What kind of simulation would give up empirical evidence of its simulationness?
1. Due to limited computational resources, the simulated universe would be granular or "quantum".
2. To limit computation, reality would be held in a fuzzy probabilistic "superposition" state until it is actually observed, similar to how virtual reality skips the generation of hidden polygons.
Both of these are actually true in our universe, ergo, we are a simulation.
3. It would also need an upper bound on how fast information can be transferred, again to limit the amount of computation at any point in space-time. Oh, our universe has that too.
Turtles (Score:5, Insightful)
infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations
Isn't this about the same thing as saying it's Turtles, all the way down.
Re:Turtles (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this about the same thing as saying it's Turtles, all the way down.
No. He is saying that, given an infinite stack of turtles, it is unlikely that we are the bottom turtle.
Re:Turtles (Score:5, Interesting)
Not infinite. He is just suggesting a very, very large but finite stack. We do not know our place in the stack, but the odds of being the one on the bottom are pretty remote.
Re: Turtles (Score:3, Insightful)
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Also, modeling isn't anything close to simulating.
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The simulations within simulations would each be smaller or you would run into storage problems. Since our universe is not infinitely big the simulations we would eventually create would be less interesting than our universe, and if there was ever a simulation in that simulation it would be less interesting still. And so on, up to a point were a simulation really doesn't make any sense anymore. This in my opinion reduces the chance that we're living in a simulation. Now if our universe also has a finite lif
He proves again... (Score:3, Insightful)
he is not a scientist.
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And in the realm of philosophy this is actually one of the more reasonable things he has said.
Re:He proves again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most scientists sucks at philosophy, as they have no idea how well trodden certain topics are and do not know how to reason within the discipline. Neil doesn't do well, when he says anything about anything non-physics. Among physicists, Neil and Hawking have been criticized as being philosophically impoverished. It shows.
Re:He proves again... (Score:4, Interesting)
You think? He is essentially opening the possibility of there being a creator who designed the universe to appear naturally occurring.
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Simulation Programmer = God
So, you're God every time you run a simulation? Or are you just deliberately using that word out of context for some reason?
Re:He proves again... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're God every time you run a simulation?
Yes. To the entities inside the simulation you are, to all intents and purposes, their God.
That pretty much fits the job title of "Omnipotent entity that caused and controls everything", aka God.
Re: He proves again... (Score:2, Insightful)
This *IS* science.
He's forming a hypothesis based on observed evidence. That's literally what science is.
The only thing missing is the ability to replicate the results... but that's a tall order in this case.
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"He's forming a hypothesis based on observed evidence."
No, he isn't. He is just making a reasoned inference.
"The only thing missing is the ability to replicate the results..."
Because there're no results to come with.
Hint: keyword here is INFINITE.
Re: He proves again... (Score:5, Interesting)
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notably one that says odds are we are likely in a simulation that came out about ten years ago (along with he proof).
Remind me, what does "proof" mean again in philosophy?
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The same thing it means in every other discipline: a logical argument proceeding from assumptions to conclusions. Bostrom's simulation argument [simulation-argument.com] is a very convincing proof, and I highly recommend reading it. Abstract:
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Basically, if you accept the proposition that humans will continue to exist long into the future, and you accept that future humans have just as much interest in simulating their ancestors as we have in simulating our ancestors, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation.
No, it doesn't follow. You still don't know how many universes have humans naturally appear in them in the first place. You also implicitly assume that the only means for sen
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Irrelevant. Quantifying the precise probability isn't relevant to this type of proof.
Which is patently false. I decree that the set of universes which are simulations in the sense of Tyson have measure zero. Therefore, it is a zero probability that the current universe is a simulation.
The proof is an case analysis of an equation based on unknown parameters.
How many unknown parameters? Even if we were to assume existence of that "equation", a large number of unknown parameters destroys our ability to say anything about the system. If you have aleph_2 unknown parameters, then you don't have the means to evaluate.
Irrelevant. Plenty of proofs rely on incomputable quantities, like Kolmogorov complexity. For instance, this is why we utilize oracles to explore super-Turing computation.
I didn't say computationally impossible, I said math
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Not science (Score:4, Interesting)
This *IS* science. He's forming a hypothesis based on observed evidence.
No this is not science. Science is coming up with a testable hypothesis which explains an observation making the fewest possible additional assumptions (Occam's razor). This is a wild guess which explains nothing, is untestable and requires the existence of a vast chain of increasingly complex universes filled with intelligences each of which have created a simulation of a universe. If this is science then so is every religion we know of since they only assume the existence of one (or more) intelligences with the ability to create universes not a semi-infinite chain of them.
It is literally a god argumet (Score:5, Insightful)
From a science standpoint arguing that we are living in a computer simulation is no different than arguing god created the universe. Either way you are saying "Something outside the universe, and greater than it, is responsible for its creation and upkeep." As such it is completely untestable and not science. You can't test for something literally outside of the confines of our reality, especially not presuming that thing is omnipotent as a god or creator of a simulation would be since even if you worked out a test they could change the results, change the parameters, etc.
It really annoys me how the computer simulation crap has become the creation myth for a number of science and geek types. They'll laugh at the silly Christians for believing in some omnipotent being that was able to create all reality, but be perfectly ok with the idea of some effectively omnipotent (from our perspective) being or beings that managed to create all of reality by writing a computer program in some higher order reality. Either way it is invoking a god myth.
If people want to believe in computer-god instead of religious-god ok I guess, but don't try to pretend it is any different and that it is any more than superstition.
Re:It is literally a god argumet (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in a perfect computer simulation is no different.
If, on the other hand, it's impossible for any universe to have enough computational power to perfectly simulate another universe then it's a very, very different situation.
If the simulation is imperfect then we can start from that hypothesis and, in essence, look for the pixels and rounding errors in our reality, and eventually break out of this little honeypot into the rest of the network (or force the hand of whoever's running the experiment).
Nope (Score:3)
Because even if it is imperfect, the beings running it can work around that. They can change things, delete things, roll back things, etc. If they control the hardware and the software that comprises the simulation, then they are gods for our perspectives and can change anything they wish, including suspending or shutting down the whole thing.
Also arguing about an imperfect simulation is rather silly since there is NO evidence of such a thing. That either means it isn't a simulation, is a perfect one, or an
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I'm not so sure I agree. This feels a lot more like the scientific equivalent of believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing God that created the universe. Or if you rather, call it philosophy with a technical twist. The article itself all but admits that, mentioning the "Descartes approach", which is to muse about the implications of this from the top down. Philosophy, in other words.
It seems to me like the notion that any civilization will ever have the computational horsepower to simulate an entire uni
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There was one experiment a few years that attempted to show that time was quantized, but it showed the opposite IIRC.
Re: He proves again... (Score:5, Insightful)
>If you're inside a simulation, then you can't run any tests to find out, now can you?
Why not. There are certain characteristics a simulated universe is likely to have - you can test for their presence. And quite a few of them are present in our universe. What we haven't figured out how to do is prove that a real universe wouldn't have the same characteristics.
It's definitely a testable hypotheses. The fact that we don't know exactly HOW to do do the test yet doesn't mean it can't be tested. The mechanics of testing have nothing to do with the definition of testable. When Einstein predicted gravitational lensing we had no idea how we may test that - after all, how can you tell if the light you're looking at has been bent by gravity in the past ? Nothing on earth has enough gravity to bend light enough to measure with 1901 technology. We figured it out some ten years later - we can look at an eclipse from Jupiter which is just far enough that light is measurably delayed, and that means if there's gravitational lensing the delay should be slightly different than if the light had travelled straight. The test was done and confirmed the hypotheses* - but it was testable when first announced.
Testable meant: "If you can show that light has bent in the presence of gravity, you can test the theory" it didn't have to mean "and here is how you determine that". It's perfectly fine to leave the HOW of testing to the reader, or future scientists who will have access to technology you don't have.
If anything this is more testable than a lot of theoretical physics. We still have no idea how to test any of the variants of string theory. We can show they are logically consistent and the maths work - but much of it we have no idea how to test.
Dark matter when first proposed seemed to fall clearly in the "untestable" category - how do you know something is there that doesn't interact with anything, doesn't give of any energy and cannot apparently be found ? Many scientists declared it "theory saving". Eventually though, somebody realized that if dark matter exists and has mass (and it has to have mass because it was proposed as an answer for missing mass in the first place) - then it would bend light (as per the aforementioned gravitational lensing) - and we've observed that - light being bent by a gravity source where no objects can be detected.... so it must be getting bent by objects we can not detect.
*Ironically that test was terribly flawed, and later entirely discredited, but other more accurate tests subsequently done did confirm the hypotheses again. That too is part of science, sometimes the wrong tests can give the right answers. This is one reason we retest things and re-examine old data and old experiments. Because the test was flawed, it could have been that the hypotheses had been wrong all along, retesting with more advanced technology and avoiding the mistakes made last time would let us find out if that had been the case.
Re: He proves again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not.
Because you have no control to test against, and because the simulation may well change the rules on you without you knowing it.
There are certain characteristics a simulated universe is likely to have - you can test for their presence.
You can only guess at what they might be, and an intelligent computer running the simulation may catch that and alter the conditions as needed. Keep in mind, you're just a simulation as well in this example, so the computer can alter you as well. :)
It's definitely a testable hypotheses.
Not without a control it isn't... you have no way of knowing what any proper behavior should be, or if the simulation is adjusting the conditions on the fly...
And I'll repeat... if this IS a simulation, then so are you, and frankly you won't be able to accomplish anything the computer doesn't want you to anyway. :)
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Plank time [digitaltrends.com].
The strict code of the scientist. (Score:3)
Heh. All that statement proved is that YOU aren't a scientist... or even know what one is.
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My God, the moderation in the MS thread was so bad I thought MS bribed /., but the moderations in this thread are just as stupid. A guy who's not even logged in gets modded up to a 4 for saying Tyson, who holds a PhD in astrophysics isn't a scientist??
WTF????
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Reality? Reality is whatever people are told it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: He proves again... (Score:5, Funny)
"You live in the blue state, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You live in the red state, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." -- Morpheus
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Re:He proves again... (Score:5, Insightful)
What does that knowledge have to do with his abilities as a cosmologist & astrophysicist?
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Bats aren't blind?!
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There are lots of different species of bat and so it's not that surprising for them to all see by differing amounts. However, no bat is truly blind.
From the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page:
---
Although the eyes of most microbat species are small and poorly developed, leading to poor visual acuity, no species is blind.[58] Microbats use vision to navigate, especially for long distances when beyond the range of echolocation,[59] and species that are gleaners—that is, ones that attempt to swoop down from above to ambush i
shut up before you kill us all (Score:5, Funny)
What's the fastest way to get the plug pulled on the simulation you're living in? Convince a significant fraction of the population that their existence is pointless because they live in a simulation. This will corrupt whatever experiment that's supposed to be occurring and the outraged grad student will ragequit the simulation and start over. Or maybe he'll restore from decades-old backups and arrange bizarre and agonizing deaths for Tyson and that meddling philosopher Bostrom.
Re:shut up before you kill us all (Score:4, Funny)
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That or we happen drive to a place where we never would have considered going otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Except that we would be entirely incapable of doing so. Our lives would be prescribed, our actions determined entirely by machine state. We may think we have free will, what we actually are is an equation determined by state.
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I was looking for this reference before I made it. Good thing, it seems.
Groupies (Score:3)
If you are living in a simulation then somewhere the is also a set of player avatars. And guess what, they are not playing code monkey's. They are people like Steve Jobs or Prince. Gliteratti. Your highest purpose in life is to be a groupie to some rock star. Seriously. Anything else and you are a Orc in Warcraft.
The laws of physics make sense in a simulation. Pixelation for example is the same as the law of diffraction. quantumness is the fact that textures are calculated from hidden variables and
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Slashdot is deleting [slashdot.org] comments [slashdot.org]. What is the point of living anymore? Are they trying to bump up the suicide rates even higher? *sigh*
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Uhh, just FYI, that story doesn't even exist. When you remove the comment target in the URL itself and leave the story ID in, the story isn't there.
Kinda hard to get a comment on a STORY THAT DOES NOT EXIST.
Are you just pissy that you commented on something in the firehose and it got pushed out eventually? Try learning how the fucking site works before bitching needlessly.
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You think people would start to act differently if they knew for a FACT that they are in a simulation? I dare say they wouldn't.
Let's face it: Can we leave it? No, at least we know of no way. Is there a place for us outside of this simulation? Not likely. Either we can't even exist outside the simulation because we're only something akin to artificial intelligences that depend on the simulation for their very existence. Then we cannot exist without the simulation. Or we do have an existence outside of the s
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"This will corrupt whatever experiment that's supposed to be occurring and the outraged grad student will ragequit the simulation and start over."
You'll know it is in fact happening because dolphins will disappear all of a sudden (well, you may find a farewell note thanking for the fishes, but that will be all).
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What's more likely is that some alien mother will come in and tell the alien child "Time for bed, shut that off now." Then the alien child will say "But moooom! This is the best part, they're trying to figure out if I exist or not!
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Isn't that what The Game is about?
btw I just lost the game.
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Why would living in a simulation make life any more pointless than it is now ?
as long as there's central air, good healthcare and tasty bacon, I could care less. and yes, you need the 2nd because of the 3rd, I fully realize that.
When lose out on new subjects just (Score:2)
make something wild up and toss it out their as "maybe its real or can become real."
The descent into madness.
Re: When lose out on new subjects just (Score:2)
Computer...end program (Score:3)
Computer...arch
Nothing. Clearly he is wrong.
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You're just lacking the relevant privileges.
Worried about the griefers ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, I hate physicists too.
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If only 10 alien races create 10 simulations each, that's 101 environments that can contain intelligence (100 simulations plus the one non-simulated universe). The odds then less than 1% that we're in the original non-simulated universe.
It still doesn't sit right with me - my skeptical gut tells me it is silly - but where is the flaw in the logic?
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
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It would explain quantum effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Kinda like looking at the resolution limit of the simulation. Like looking reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally close at your monitor and noticing that all the colors are just reeeeeeeeeally tiny LEDs in RG and B and that none of those other colors really existed.
Why are they giving this any time? (Score:2)
Counterpoint (Score:2)
There are many more infinite universes where we aren't a simulation than ones where we are, for each universe may contain a universe simulation but the chances are slim that it does because of the GPU requirements.
I can summerise wit a little vba (Score:2)
sub Simulate()
call DoStuff
call Simulate
end sub
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If they don't do proper tail recursion, then it would be interesting to watch it unwind on the first exception.
Of Course It Is (Score:5, Funny)
So.... (Score:5, Funny)
The universe is a weird place (Score:5, Interesting)
The universe is a weird place. At one point in time, the whole thing occupied the same amount of space as my mouse. Where did THAT object come from? I know, we're not supposed to bother thinking about it since conventional wisdom says we can't find out about it.
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." -- Douglas Adams
The fact that the seeds of life and consciousness - us - are embedded in the fabric of the universe is interesting. A dust devil starts in space, a gravity well forming in a gas and dust cloud, the solar system starts coalescing. Sub-whirlwinds start in the spinning cloud, coalescing into planets. On the third one from the center, life appears. Let it spin for a few billion years more, and here we are, contemplating the mechanism that spawned us.
"A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself." -- Michio Kaku
I find flights of fancies like Tyson's to be rather interesting.
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And what does life do? It replicates, creates entropy - and gathers information. That's why I found this article from a few months ago [slashdot.org] so interesting:
"To do this, he begins with a mental leap: Life, he argues, should not be thought of as a chemical event. Instead, it should be thought of as information. The shift in perspective provides a tidy way in which to begin tackling a messy question. In the following interview, Adami defines information as 'the ability to make predictions with a likelihood better th
With over 7,000,000,000 people on earth, (Score:5, Funny)
odds are that you're not you.
This *is* a simulation (Score:3)
Bad argument (Score:3)
This is a limit-argument in the sense of a mathematical limit for time towards infinity. There is no reason to believe it is accurate in physical reality. It additionally assumes that if you simulate a human being perfectly, you get the same human being as an earlier copy, and that such a simulation is possible in the first place. It is only if you assume physicalism as ground truth, yet there is no valid scientific reason to do so. In fact, there are a number of unsolved problems with physicalism.
Note that I do not see the variant where religion has hijacked dualism as an alternative: That is a pure result of human shortcomings. Dualism does not need religious ideas in any way. But assuming physicalism is true is not science, but belief, and as such a fundamentally religious thing to do. The current scientific state of the dualism vs. physicalism problem is simple "we do not know", with some indicators pointing to dualism, but nothing solid.
Hence, while it is decidedly possible that the physical universe is a simulation, things are much, much murkier when you add human beings as objects of that simulation and the argument made by Mr. Tyson is actually not a good one at all.
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O course it's turtles. Who do you think is running the server? ;)
But do the turtles run Linux?
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Re: Utter crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Utter crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Sim theory isnt new. It was thought of because of the breakdowns in math that fail in computer sims also fail in our reality physics.
Sim theory (or at least the basic concept) predates computers by hundreds of years. One early example was in the 1600s when Descartes described an "evil demon" that took over all your senses "Matrix" style complete with other fake minds. Computers weren't around but he described all the concepts of "brain in a vat", the matrix, the 13th floor, etc.. perfectly.
Re: Utter crap (Score:4, Informative)
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These celebrity scientists are annoying. More proof that just because someone calls themselves a "scientist" doesn't mean they know jack shit about anything.
Ah yes, Neil-Degrasse Tyson, the man who said "There are more stars in our galaxy than there are atoms in the universe!"
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Belief does not equal proof. Nobody cares if you believe in zombie Jesus, just stop trying to pass it off as fact until you've got evidence.
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Peer-reviewed evidence. [thelancet.com]
There you go. Now you can stop saying there is no evidence. In all likelihood, you knew already there was -evidence-, and were perfectly clear about this in your own mind while you were lying. It's hard to miss the fact that between people contemporaries of Jesus dying rather than recant their experiences (yes, persecution is historical fact), improbabilities of prophecy fulfillment, even if we discard 90% up front as possibly "self fulfilling" or on the basis of other objections,
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Neil Degrassi created that Canadian teen soap opera?
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Judging from how imperfect our body is, along with the rest of the world, at the very least you can omit the "intelligent" part of that statement.
Seriously, if that world is designed, it's either the work of a college student that was kicked out after delivering such crappy work or the work of a sadist that makes Jigsaw look like a saint.
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I neither claim I'm omniscient nor omnipotent. I wouldn't make such ridiculous claims.
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Can't speak for many others, but according to the Christian religion, we were created in the likeness of the big cheese himself.
Proof there is an intelligent creator. (Score:3)
There are two arguments for there being an intelligent creator of our simulation:
1) There are no unit tests for our universe. A truly intelligent being has no time for testing, he (yes, we all know someone creating a universe in a basement is going to be whatever concept is closest to "male dweeb" for their species) has things to get done.
2) There are unit tests, but we cannot sense them since our instances would have been terminated in isolation.
Since both situations cover all obsoverd results, we can be s
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Contrawise!
Several serious logical flaws (Score:3)
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Next you cannot simulate a universe as complex as ours inside our universe since such a system must have as many possible states as our universe.
This makes me think of the Banach-Tarski paradox [wikipedia.org]. I don't claim to understand it by any means, but it's a proof where you can take a geometric object, break it into pieces, and reconstruct 2 objects identical to the original, without adding anything. There's a pretty interesting Vsauce video about it [youtube.com].
What if, through some complex mathematics, it is possible to simulate the entire universe using only part of the universe?
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Running a simulation doesn't make you analogous to the commonly understood meaning of "God."
My computer is capable of running simulations - and, in fact, I am capable of programming such simulations - which can result in far more complexity than my human brain is capable of comprehending at once.