Actually, that’s an interesting thought. The usefulness of the notion The Tao of Physics implies EITHER that there actually is some underlying distribution from which possible physical laws were sampled for our universe, OR (perhaps as a subset of the first horn of this dilemma?) that there is an intelligent designer with actual preferences over mathematical style of physical laws. The only non-infinitesimal scrap of evidence we have for a supposed creator with any preferences at all beyond our universe’s mere existence.
So much of the discussion and thought ends up being in debating “are we in a simulation?”
But a significantly more interesting discussion is “if we are in a simulation…”
Because unlike with magic where infinite turtles are a valid conclusion or adversarial tricksters can be accused of hiding dinosaur bones to fool the faithful, simulation has anchored principles that can be applied to better reverse engineer what’s more or less meta-plausible if we are in a sim.
We may never be able to concretely know if we are in a sim, but we can very plausibly rule out aspects of what kind of sim it would be if it is a sim, and this rarely gets seriously engaged with as the debate stops at sim vs no sim.
The recent discussion here has me thinking about working on a piece about this.
Actually, that’s an interesting thought. The usefulness of the notion The Tao of Physics implies EITHER that there actually is some underlying distribution from which possible physical laws were sampled for our universe, OR (perhaps as a subset of the first horn of this dilemma?) that there is an intelligent designer with actual preferences over mathematical style of physical laws. The only non-infinitesimal scrap of evidence we have for a supposed creator with any preferences at all beyond our universe’s mere existence.
So much of the discussion and thought ends up being in debating “are we in a simulation?”
But a significantly more interesting discussion is “if we are in a simulation…”
Because unlike with magic where infinite turtles are a valid conclusion or adversarial tricksters can be accused of hiding dinosaur bones to fool the faithful, simulation has anchored principles that can be applied to better reverse engineer what’s more or less meta-plausible if we are in a sim.
We may never be able to concretely know if we are in a sim, but we can very plausibly rule out aspects of what kind of sim it would be if it is a sim, and this rarely gets seriously engaged with as the debate stops at sim vs no sim.
The recent discussion here has me thinking about working on a piece about this.