It sounds like your friend is using 50-50 to mean “we have no evidence either way”. In itself, that’s problematic; but probably the bigger issue is violation of Conservation of Expected Evidence. In other words, there are things he could see which would make him think it more likely that this is the Matrix (e.g. unmistakable glitches in ordinary physics), so the fact that he hasn’t seen any of them should make him think it less likely that he’s in the Matrix.
If I’m parsing what she’s saying correctly, her friend is claiming that there’s absolutely no evidence either way, since we ought to expect to see every piece of evidence with equal probability whether or not we’re in a simulation; so expected evidence is conserved.
In which case TheaterAddict can say something like, “if all our time in this universe has given us zero evidence for or against being in the Matrix, that suggests it makes no difference to our lives whether we’re in the Matrix or not, and your Matrix hypothesis is of no real importance.”
It sounds like your friend is using 50-50 to mean “we have no evidence either way”. In itself, that’s problematic; but probably the bigger issue is violation of Conservation of Expected Evidence. In other words, there are things he could see which would make him think it more likely that this is the Matrix (e.g. unmistakable glitches in ordinary physics), so the fact that he hasn’t seen any of them should make him think it less likely that he’s in the Matrix.
If I’m parsing what she’s saying correctly, her friend is claiming that there’s absolutely no evidence either way, since we ought to expect to see every piece of evidence with equal probability whether or not we’re in a simulation; so expected evidence is conserved.
And yet, going through the plot of The Matrix would seem to be an example of receiving evidence that we’re in The Matrix.
In which case TheaterAddict can say something like, “if all our time in this universe has given us zero evidence for or against being in the Matrix, that suggests it makes no difference to our lives whether we’re in the Matrix or not, and your Matrix hypothesis is of no real importance.”