which should win?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

My point is that disagreements surrounding evolutionary theory are not comparable to the disagreements surrounding MW.

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Absolutely, but I was not making the comparison between the actual disagreements in evolution VS the actual disagreements about MW; rather, I was noting what the equivalent would be between the common disagreements about MW are and evolutionary theory. When someone proposes the mechanism behind evolutionary theory, you cannot criticize it because the end-result consequences are too complex, counter-intuitive, or non-testable. What you're saying about the fossil record are legitimate disagreements about what the actual mechanism predicts; the equivalent in MW would be if someone found the supposed "split" between the micro and macro world.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

What one ends up with if one accepts MW does not agree with our experience and so one has to ask what is wrong with the assumptions or the logic leading to that conclusion.

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Many Worlds actually DOES agree with our experience in that it explains why we experience what we do. What you're really saying is that MW does not agree with our intuitive interpretation of our experience. Gravity and a spherical Earth doesn't agree with our intuitive interpretations of experience either. Throughout scientific history, the truth has been frequently been clouded by the hidden assumptions/interpretations we make regarding our experiences, rather than illuminated by it.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Let me summarize my objections to MW:

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1) There is no "evidence" in the form of scientific testing for any interpretation of QM; that's why they're "interpretations" and not "theories" or even "hypotheses." All of the "evidence" is found in the history of science and via epistemic rationality. For the former, we have no examples of mathematical models modeling non-real things, so the fact that mathematical models have always modeled what is real would favor MW, because MW treats the QM equations as real representations of real things. For the latter, MW abides by Occam's Razor and does not unnecessarily add anything to those equations, like the WF collapse, for which there is no explanation or evidence for anywhere, and for which creates contradicts with everything else we know.

2) This is the only legitimate complaint about MW; but your statement about not even considering an interpretation that is incomplete is absurd. This means you don't accept Evolution and General Relativity! Even if you look at Newtonian mechanics, it was obviously incomplete very early on, in that it couldn't account for the orbit of Mercury. Did this mean Newton was "wrong?" No, what it meant was that Newtonian mechanics was incomplete, and this incompleteness was "fixed" by Einstein; and Einstein was proven "incomplete" via the discovery of QM. All of these theories were "incomplete," but were rightly accepted in their time as being the best theoretical model at the time. Even if you were to argue (fairly) that MW lacks the experimental results of the above physics, MW is, at the very least, compatible with older physics.

3) I am no expert on CH, but from what I can gauge it seems to be a "middle-ground" between CI and MW, one which keeps the decoherence of the latter but, like the former, seems to propose that the wave-function is non-real, or, at least, the other worlds are non-real. I really don't see how this is CI "done right," since it removes the fundamental element of the collapse in CI. It still has the problem of explaining why only PART of the WF would be real (the part that ends up as our world when measured).

4) As I said in an early post, there really isn't any "splitting." In MW, all of the other worlds are already "there." Decoherence is really more of a "pairing off" between observer and observed. Interference patterns are evidence of all the worlds already present at singular point. I don't really know what you mean by the splitting happening "in reality." MW proponents think that the wavefunction IS reality. You seem to be talking about reality as our perception of a singular world, and perception is not reality (the map is not the territory). I'm not quite sure what you mean in the Bell part either. It still seems to me like you subtracting the observer from the equation, you're still forgetting that one observer in one location makes one observation and observer and observed decohere; yet, from a long ways off, you have the same observance and the same process. From the one world both observers and observed end up in, it seems as if locality has been violated, but if you take into account that there are now two separate worlds, they have not been. The violation is a result of our perception, of our not being able to be in both worlds at once.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't follow what you are saying here. There are no "particles". (Nor are there any "waves".) The "superpositions" are only a mathematical model (or, metaphor, like the "selfishness" of genes) that works.

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This is just you making the "non-real" assumptions of CI. We can see the effects of these wave-particles in the double-slit experiment. This is what we mean by observing superposition. Tests have been done that have placed entire molecules with over 2000 particles in a superpositioned state. Eventually, via CI, there SHOULD be a point where those particles AREN'T superpositioned, as CI proposes a "split" between the micro and macro worlds. If they are superpositioned from one single particle all the way up to groups of molecules, even to the point of making up living things, then one of MW's assumptions (all particles in all things are superpositioned, including us) is correct. While such observances could never confirm that the wavefunction is actually real, it's Occam's razor that tells us there's no reason to treat it as unreal, and your (and others') distaste for MW's implications is not a good reason.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

A possible solution to the paradox would be to consider that the demon, in order to change the temperature of the two compartments, must be able to perceive the speed and direction of the particles approaching the gate from his side of the chamber in order to "decide" whether or not to open the gate and let them pass to the other side.
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Well, the necessary demon would have to be quite small, yet he would also have to be capable of perceiving and making decisions based on what he perceives.

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It looks like what is needed is for something to be able to make a choice. That implies consciousness of some sort. I wonder if I can conclude if I observe objects with less entropy that implies the previous work of some form of consciousness that made a choice?

I don't know enough about physics to be able to say if that solution of Maxwell's demon paradox actually resolves it or not.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

All of the "evidence" is found in the history of science and via epistemic rationality. For the former, we have no examples of mathematical models modeling non-real things, so the fact that mathematical models have always modeled what is real would favor MW, because MW treats the QM equations as real representations of real things.

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Ptolemy had mathematical models for astronomy that got the right results, but those models are not the way we see reality today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I am no expert on CH, but from what I can gauge it seems to be a "middle-ground" between CI and MW, one which keeps the decoherence of the latter but, like the former, seems to propose that the wave-function is non-real, or, at least, the other worlds are non-real. I really don't see how this is CI "done right," since it removes the fundamental element of the collapse in CI. It still has the problem of explaining why only PART of the WF would be real (the part that ends up as our world when measured).

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I'm reading Roland Omnès's Quantum Philosophy again to see if it makes more sense now. I don't know much about Consistent Histories either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

As I said in an early post, there really isn't any "splitting." In MW, all of the other worlds are already "there."

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If wave function collapse is a problem for CI, splitting is a problem for MW. Hopefully, Consistent Histories will resolve both.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I'm not quite sure what you mean in the Bell part either.

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Although Frank Tipler would disagree (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0003146v1.pdf), he does describe the problem that I think MW has with the experimental results showing Bell's inequality was surpassed.

Basically, the problem is this. Experimenters showed some "non-locality" features of quantum mechanics in the process of testing Bell's inequality. That data now needs to be explained by these interpretations. If MW accepts the data, then it is non-local. If it doesn't then it violates QM. Tipler thinks there's a way out of this, but I don't think he's right.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Ptolemy had mathematical models for astronomy that got the right results, but those models are not the way we see reality today:

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Yeah, but nobody is proposing that astronomy is about things that aren't real. I don't know exactly what you mean about his mathematical models "getting the right results," but the fact remains he was trying to model real things, not non-real things.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

If wave function collapse is a problem for CI, splitting is a problem for MW. Hopefully, Consistent Histories will resolve both.

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"Splitting" is basically "decoherence," and this is not a problem for MW at all because decoherence is what's in the math; if you take the math as describing something real.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Basically, the problem is this. Experimenters showed some "non-locality" features of quantum mechanics in the process of testing Bell's inequality.

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They've shown these "non-locality" features while assuming both collapse and a single-world. The moment you factor in the observer's role in MW, the apparent non-locality is explained in local terms. I'm not sure why you don't understand this. All of the non-locality in Bell and Bell-like tests RELY ON THE COLLAPSE AND SINGLE-WORLD ASSUMPTION to be non-local. If there is no collapse, if the wavefunction is real, and if humans function just like aggregate wavefunctions, then we get many worlds and locality, but the appearance of non-locality due to us being part of the system we're observing.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

It looks like what is needed is for something to be able to make a choice. That implies consciousness of some sort....

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That was my point about the Demon, that he would have to be "conscious," i.e., able to perceive the speed and direction of the particles approaching the gate on his side of the two chambers, and he would need to be able to either open or close the gate depending on what he perceived. The Demon does not behave just like any other "simple" particle in his system. He has to have some sort of "complex" organization (such as what we think of as a nervous system in macroscopic organisms) that would allow him to behave "consciously." It's difficult to imagine what sort of "nervous system" could exist in a Demon of the microscopic dimensions required for Maxwell's thought experiment. Nonetheless, the Demon must be able to do what is required of him, and this would require that he have a complex organization. We would therefore need to calculate the Demon's entropy value (a more or less large negative value due to his organizational complexity) into the entropy values of the two chambers at the start of the thought experiment. Let's assume (as the thought experiment requires) that the two chambers are at the same temperature, and there is this "conscious" gate-controlling Demon in one of the chambers. Could this Demon effect a temperature difference between the two chambers, in apparent violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

The answer is that the Demon could effect a temperature difference, but only within limits, without violating the Second Law. The limit of the Demon's ability to effect an inter-chamber temperature difference would depend on just how much the Demon's complexity (negative entropy) would allow this to occur.

IMHO, one of the neatest things about classical thermodynamics compared to, say, quantum mechanics, is that thermodynamics always makes theoretical "common" sense and always seems to jibe with "common sense reality." Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the thermodynamic "laws" are primarily statistical and based on common experience. For example, there is nothing in thermodynamics that would absolutely preclude a glass of water at room temperature from suddenly turning into ice, though that would be extremely unlikely... It's possible to "explain away" the Maxwell's Demon paradox and understand that it really doesn't "violate" the Second Law. There is nothing at all "spooky" about Maxwell's Demon, as there is with lots of QM paradoxes, like Schrodinger's cat.

I will go so far as to say that as far as "scientific" ways of understanding the behavior of the Universe go, thermodynamic theory seems to be "always true." The only other scientific theory that seems to be "always true" is the theory of natural selection.

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I will go so far as to say that as far as "scientific" ways of understanding the behavior of the Universe go

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I am not sure I like the expression ''the behaviour of he universe''. I think to say it behaves one could almost predict it will misbehave. I would say the universe is platonic in that it is strictly ironic not one scientist can a grip on it. it is very simple yet science likes to skim to around to avoid it in a way. what you see is what you get with the universe and what you do not it is because you can't. that is the bottom line it is not because the universe likes to play hide and seek. it is because the naked eye cannot be in two places at one. the universe is a vast multifaceted visually and science is anything but that.
a tool in a lab a cannot abrase the mechanism of how the universe challenges us because the sheer of it cannot compare to the way scientist thinks or behaves. I put it down to the scientist behaviour and not the universe.

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thermodynamic theory seems to be "always true." The only other scientific theory that seems to be "always true" is the theory of natural selection

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I am not too familiar about thermodynamics and I sure think natural selection lags behind. it is not natural it is patron selection to me. in other words it is patronising.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

That was my point about the Demon, that he would have to be "conscious," i.e., able to perceive the speed and direction of the particles approaching the gate on his side of the two chambers, and he would need to be able to either open or close the gate depending on what he perceived. The Demon does not behave just like any other "simple" particle in his system. He has to have some sort of "complex" organization (such as what we think of as a nervous system in macroscopic organisms) that would allow him to behave "consciously." It's difficult to imagine what sort of "nervous system" could exist in a Demon of the microscopic dimensions required for Maxwell's thought experiment. Nonetheless, the Demon must be able to do what is required of him, and this would require that he have a complex organization. We would therefore need to calculate the Demon's entropy value (a more or less large negative value due to his organizational complexity) into the entropy values of the two chambers at the start of the thought experiment. Let's assume (as the thought experiment requires) that the two chambers are at the same temperature, and there is this "conscious" gate-controlling Demon in one of the chambers. Could this Demon effect a temperature difference between the two chambers, in apparent violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

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I suspect anything that's alive is conscious in some way with or without a nervous system. For all I know, even something that is not alive could be "conscious" in some sense. If it can make a choice it must be conscious enough to make that choice.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

The answer is that the Demon could effect a temperature difference, but only within limits, without violating the Second Law. The limit of the Demon's ability to effect an inter-chamber temperature difference would depend on just how much the Demon's complexity (negative entropy) would allow this to occur.

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That makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

IMHO, one of the neatest things about classical thermodynamics compared to, say, quantum mechanics, is that thermodynamics always makes theoretical "common" sense and always seems to jibe with "common sense reality." Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the thermodynamic "laws" are primarily statistical and based on common experience. For example, there is nothing in thermodynamics that would absolutely preclude a glass of water at room temperature from suddenly turning into ice, though that would be extremely unlikely... It's possible to "explain away" the Maxwell's Demon paradox and understand that it really doesn't "violate" the Second Law. There is nothing at all "spooky" about Maxwell's Demon, as there is with lots of QM paradoxes, like Schrodinger's cat.

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I'm reading Roland Omnes, Quantum Philosophy. He tries to bring back common sense to QM. Regarding Schrodinger's cat he notes that the wave function of a dead cat could not interfere with the wave function of a live cat anyway, so there is no such thing as a cat that is both dead and alive. Or to use his own words (page 201):

If a cat is dead, its internal wave function will never regain the fine phase tuning of a living-cat wave function. Adding a dead=cat wave function and a live=cat one in a sum Ψ1(x,y)+Ψ2(x,y) is like adding sea waves and the bubbling of a whale: they do not interfere, they ignore each other, they stay apart.

That was enough to demystify the cat for me although the example would still work with entities whose wave-functions could interfere.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

I will go so far as to say that as far as "scientific" ways of understanding the behavior of the Universe go, thermodynamic theory seems to be "always true." The only other scientific theory that seems to be "always true" is the theory of natural selection.

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I was reading Rupert Sheldrake recently (The Science Delusion) and he suggested moving away from always true laws. His basic argument is that the universe changes more like an organism than a machine. Why shouldn't the "constants" and "laws" change as well depending on place and time. They wouldn't be able to change too much or we wouldn't be able to make assumptions about what is happening elsewhere in the universe or in the past.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Yeah, but nobody is proposing that astronomy is about things that aren't real. I don't know exactly what you mean about his mathematical models "getting the right results," but the fact remains he was trying to model real things, not non-real things.

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The quantum stuff is real. It is just not real the way Einstein defined reality. For him the property of something is real only if one could know it for certain.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

"Splitting" is basically "decoherence," and this is not a problem for MW at all because decoherence is what's in the math; if you take the math as describing something real.

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Decoherence does not require many worlds. It could be used by both CI and MW.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

They've shown these "non-locality" features while assuming both collapse and a single-world. The moment you factor in the observer's role in MW, the apparent non-locality is explained in local terms. I'm not sure why you don't understand this. All of the non-locality in Bell and Bell-like tests RELY ON THE COLLAPSE AND SINGLE-WORLD ASSUMPTION to be non-local. If there is no collapse, if the wavefunction is real, and if humans function just like aggregate wavefunctions, then we get many worlds and locality, but the appearance of non-locality due to us being part of the system we're observing.

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Roland Omnes describes the non-locality that was observed to decide that Bell's inequality as a "non-separability" between entangled entities, not a full non-locality which involves faster than light communication. Consistent Histories doesn't have a problem with this data and it doesn't have a collapse model that I could see. There is only one world for CH.

The reason I think this data may be enough to falsify MW is because there are two parts to it, entanglement and interference: One has two entangled particles each representing an interference between two different spin choices. Separate them far enough apart and measure them close enough in time to fulfill separability conditions. The measurements induce a split at both of the particles. This generates 4 worlds, 2 for each particle. The data shows the entanglement correlation between the measurements. How does MW stitch these 4 worlds back together so there are only 2 which show the correlation? Tipler thinks he has a way by claiming the comparison check is another measurement event, but that is where he becomes unclear. My conclusion is that either MW is non-separable (non-local) or it does not model the data.

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Originally Posted by cacian

I think to say it behaves one could almost predict it will misbehave.

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I like the idea that the universe could "misbehave" when it doesn't follow one of our laws. The universe is not deterministic, so our laws have to account for that.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The quantum stuff is real. It is just not real the way Einstein defined reality. For him the property of something is real only if one could know it for certain.

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You say the "quantum stuff is real," but both CI and CH define the wavefunction as non-real. It's only MW that assumes it's real.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Decoherence does not require many worlds. It could be used by both CI and MW.

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Decoherence + realism requires MW. Decoherence can't work in CI because of CI's collapse (the collapse and decoherence are mutually exclusive). If you assume decoherence but non-realism you get CH, apparently.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The measurements induce a split at both of the particles. This generates 4 worlds, 2 for each particle. The data shows the entanglement correlation between the measurements. How does MW stitch these 4 worlds back together so there are only 2 which show the correlation?

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What in the world makes you think MW has to have only two worlds? Keep in mind that in the double-slit experiment with one particle, through different trials you have the particle going through either, both, or neither slit. Since MW takes the wavefunction as real, this would itself imply 4 distinct "worlds" (possibilities) within the wavefunction (within that test, at least). Besides, you have to keep in mind General Relativity in terms of measurement; there is no universal "now," merely different perspectives in space. So no two measurements of the same particle could be simultaneous since there is no simultaneous time. One observation has to happen "first" (Implying one is first shows the limitations of the language keeping in mind the perspective aspect of GR), and once it happens decoherence happens locally; so the other observer is no longer observing the same wavefunction of the same particle. The apparent affect happens as a result of decoherence.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

You say the "quantum stuff is real," but both CI and CH define the wavefunction as non-real. It's only MW that assumes it's real.

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Whether the wavefunction is real or not is not the question. That is the mathematics that represents it. Personally, I don't think it is real, but it doesn't matter. The quantum stuff, things like electrons and photons, are real in the common sense definition of real. Some of the properties about them are not certain. That is what makes these properties unreal, but the underlying stuff that could have these properties is "real".

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Decoherence + realism requires MW. Decoherence can't work in CI because of CI's collapse (the collapse and decoherence are mutually exclusive). If you assume decoherence but non-realism you get CH, apparently.

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I'll stick with CH to avoid using the wave function in these discussions.

I claim that if realism requires determinism, not even MW can provide this since the facts of the matter are the quantum stuff is not deterministic. MW hopes it will one day get around the problem that the facts present, but it has yet to produce an interpretation that is complete enough to generate even one wave function.

Perhaps it is important to make explicit just what it means to not be able to produce the Born probabilities. What that means is that MW cannot produce the coefficients for even the simplest wave function.

The only interpretation I am aware of that is deterministic and complete enough to generate a wave function is Bohm's interpretation which is superdeterministic (we are in the Matrix without any Zion-like resistance movement) and deliberately non-local.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

What in the world makes you think MW has to have only two worlds? Keep in mind that in the double-slit experiment with one particle, through different trials you have the particle going through either, both, or neither slit. Since MW takes the wavefunction as real, this would itself imply 4 distinct "worlds" (possibilities) within the wavefunction (within that test, at least). Besides, you have to keep in mind General Relativity in terms of measurement; there is no universal "now," merely different perspectives in space. So no two measurements of the same particle could be simultaneous since there is no simultaneous time. One observation has to happen "first" (Implying one is first shows the limitations of the language keeping in mind the perspective aspect of GR), and once it happens decoherence happens locally; so the other observer is no longer observing the same wavefunction of the same particle. The apparent affect happens as a result of decoherence.

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Because the two particles are entangled, once the data from the two observers is matched a correlation needs to be observed to account for the quantum facts. How is that accomplished in MW?

I've tried to find how this might be answered and so far have only found three kinds of answers.

1) Claim that the experimental data showing non-locality is incorrect. This would avoid the problem entirely for all interpretations. I understand that the tests are still being refined to eliminate any loopholes, so there is a slight possibility this might work. Of the three, this is the only valid argument.

2) Claim that it can't happen in MW, but not explain why. For example, here is Lev Vaidman's comment (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/)

The most celebrated example of nonlocality was given by Bell 1964 in the context of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument. However, in the framework of the MWI, Bell's argument cannot get off the ground because it requires a predetermined single outcome of a quantum experiment.

However, after the data was collected, not only did it "get off the ground", but now MW has to get off its butt and account for it.

3) Claim that there is some third measurement that patches all this together. Here is Frank Tipler's comment (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0003146v1.pdf):

Furthermore, this ignored third measurement is actually of crucial importance: it is performed after information about the orientation of the second device has been carried back to the first device (at a speed less than light!). The orientation is coded with correlations of the spins of both electrons, and these correlations (and the linearity of all operators) will force the third measurement to respect the original split.

How does this happen in MW? That is the problem. It is not enough to just state that it all works out in the end.

YesNo, I propose we cease this QM discussion. It's not that I can't answer your points/questions, it's just that I'm realizing that this will be at least the third, if not the fourth, thread that we've been through this; and not only am I doubting that anyone else is reading by this point (if any objective third party wants us to continue, feel free to chime in), I'm tiring of having to type the same things ad nauseam only to have you make points/posts that act as if I've never addressed them. Half of the time, you're (still) making invalid objections to MW that only reveal that either you (still) don't know what MW is, or that you're very desperate to latch on to anything you feel could discredit it, and you don't care if those objections are invalid or not. I thought I made it very clear that MW's inability to derive the Born rule is the ONLY valid objection to MW; Bell is not a valid objection as all Bell experiments assume the truth of CI's single-world collapse. That you don't think whether one thinks the wavefunction is real or not is important is also very telling, as the different assumptions of realism VS non-realism are one of the defining elements that separate the various interpretations.

It also occurs to me that the reason I've been pulled back into these conversations after the first thread was your continuing insults that MW was invented by atheistic metaphysicians that are inventing fantasies to support their a priori beliefs. That is nothing but a steaming, heaping pile of wombat crap. Ignoring the fact that no interpretations are inherently "better" for any (a)theistic metaphysical philosophy, MW was proposed by a guy who, like ALL post-QM physicists, thought the seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes that CI produced needed solving. His solution was to assume realism and remove the collapse; to, essentially, treat the wavefunction as encompassing all of reality, including observers. The many worlds came about as a result of following those assumptions to their conclusion. Under those two assumptions you get an interp. that is local, deterministic, real; that can't derive the Born rule; and had diddly squat to do about any metaphysical system, atheistic or otherwise. If you don't understand why MW is local and deterministic, then all that means that you still don't understand MW, and I'm sick to death of explaining it.

There are scientific studies that have documented evidence that this, the universe as we know it, is some sort of simulation. It's also very likely that it's a simulation within a simulation within countless other simulations.

It is very unlikely that there is a singular god. It's unlikely that there are any gods. If there are, there may be an infinite amount of them.

It's impossible to know what all of this is or how it came to be. I don't think there's any burden on science to prove a god does exist. Ruling out impossibilities at least simplifies answers to very complicated questions.

Human beings invented religion. We're not gods. We're animals. We're in the dark. The physical things we all have in common, the things we can measure, weigh, and quantify, that's what science is comprised of. The rest is completely beyond our reach. If we ever want to reach closer to knowledge, we have to do away with pigeonholing ourselves into the confines of religious norms.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

There are scientific studies that have documented evidence that this, the universe as we know it, is some sort of simulation. It's also very likely that it's a simulation within a simulation within countless other simulations.

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What scientific studies? This just sounds like a rather classic thought experiment for which there are good mathematical arguments against.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

The physical things we all have in common, the things we can measure, weigh, and quantify, that's what science is comprised of. The rest is completely beyond our reach.

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Assuming, of course, that there's any "rest" left, or that we won't ever find ways of measuring/weighing/etc. the "rest" we currently can't.

I'll simplify it further, Sandman. It's not a given that there's a god. Science doesn't have to prove that there's a god. It would be a waste of time.

As for the simulation theory, I'll refer you to google. My point was not that it's a fact, it's not. My point was that it's a much more likely scenario than the theory that there's a single deity pulling the strings of the tiny lifeforms on this tiny planet. Probabilities matter when deciding on a direction for scientific research. Why should scientists put even more effort into proving or disproving debunked religious ideas? Religion is like...kid stuff. Sorry if that bothers you.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

There are scientific studies that have documented evidence that this, the universe as we know it, is some sort of simulation. It's also very likely that it's a simulation within a simulation within countless other simulations.

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What evidence? If they had evidence then Nobel prizes would have been handed out, and it would be Top of the News for a *long* time. This is physicists indulging in wild speculation (again!)

http://news.discovery.com/space/are-...n-2-121216.htm

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I'll simplify it further, Sandman. It's not a given that there's a god. Science doesn't have to prove that there's a god. It would be a waste of time.

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I am not so sure. it will give them something to do. now according to some half science half religious belief an alien and god are one and only. the stuff I watch on documentaries is littered with alien/god stuff it is riveting.

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As for the simulation theory, I'll refer you to google. My point was not that it's a fact, it's not. My point was that it's a much more likely scenario than the theory that there's a single deity pulling the strings of the tiny lifeforms on this tiny planet. Probabilities matter when deciding on a direction for scientific research. Why should scientists put even more effort into proving or disproving debunked religious ideas? Religion is like...kid stuff. Sorry if that bothers you.

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religion is kid stuff? I am not sure about this. I think it is likely to bigbro stuff. people kill themselves for it. that is not kid that's big stuff.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

As for the simulation theory... My point was that it's a much more likely scenario than the theory that there's a single deity pulling the strings of the tiny lifeforms on this tiny planet. Probabilities matter when deciding on a direction for scientific research. Why should scientists put even more effort into proving or disproving debunked religious ideas? Religion is like...kid stuff. Sorry if that bothers you.

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But there must have been a first intelligent species that created the simulation, and so we are still left with the "multiverse vs. God" situation. I agree "God" is a bad idea, not worth considering, but shouldn't we be checking out the multiverse speculation before getting involved in serious investigation of something even more speculative?

One good point for the simulation idea is that it solves the Fermi Paradox (where are all the space aliens?) The aliens who programmed the universe could easily stop at one life form. But you would have to wonder why they bothered simulating all those stars and galaxies if they were wanting to simulate one life form! For me, the "intelligent life is just extremely rare" idea seems the front runner for solving the Fermi paradox.

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QUOTE=mal4mac;1244805]But there must have been a first intelligent species that created the simulation, and so we are still left with the "multiverse vs. God" situation. I agree "God" is bad idea, not worth considering, but shouldn't we be checking out the multiverse speculation before getting involved in serious investigation of something even more speculative?

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god is not a bad idea what is bad is ignoring it. science has a task on its hand and that is one of them. surely the logical thing to do to prove that god is neither here or there. it has much to gain from it.
the other thing is this 'intelligent species' concept. is one saying man is stupid?

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One good point for the simulation idea is that it solves the Fermi Paradox (where are all the space aliens?) The aliens who programmed the universe could easily stop at one life form. But you would have to wonder why they bothered simulating all those stars and galaxies if they were wanting to simulate one life form! For me, the "intelligent life is just extremely rare" idea seems the front runner for solving the Fermi paradox.

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I think the whole thing is alien. to think of an alien being at the heart of anything when the word itself means strange different foreign does not match. the universe suits our need to a T. how is an alien know what a human needs if it is an alien. the whole thing is flawed.

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Originally Posted by cacian

religion is kid stuff? I am not sure about this. I think it is likely to bigbro stuff. people kill themselves for it. that is not kid that's big stuff.

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Like Santa, it is kid stuff. Unfortunately, unlike Santa, it tends to involve kids with real guns. It's big stuff for anti-terrorist squads, but kid stuff for cosmologists.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

YesNo, I propose we cease this QM discussion. It's not that I can't answer your points/questions, it's just that I'm realizing that this will be at least the third, if not the fourth, thread that we've been through this; and not only am I doubting that anyone else is reading by this point (if any objective third party wants us to continue, feel free to chime in), I'm tiring of having to type the same things ad nauseam only to have you make points/posts that act as if I've never addressed them. Half of the time, you're (still) making invalid objections to MW that only reveal that either you (still) don't know what MW is, or that you're very desperate to latch on to anything you feel could discredit it, and you don't care if those objections are invalid or not. I thought I made it very clear that MW's inability to derive the Born rule is the ONLY valid objection to MW; Bell is not a valid objection as all Bell experiments assume the truth of CI's single-world collapse. That you don't think whether one thinks the wavefunction is real or not is important is also very telling, as the different assumptions of realism VS non-realism are one of the defining elements that separate the various interpretations.

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I think the experimental evidence that shows non-separability falsifies the MW interpretation and I provided three ways that MW might escape that, only one of them being reasonable.

Perhaps there is a fourth way: Ignore the claims that MW has been falsified through scientific evidence and go on as if nothing happened.

That doesn't work either.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It also occurs to me that the reason I've been pulled back into these conversations after the first thread was your continuing insults that MW was invented by atheistic metaphysicians that are inventing fantasies to support their a priori beliefs.

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I do think MW is a way for some people to maintain their metaphysics in spite of the facts against them. Perhaps it is more useful to study MW from a psychological perspective rather than to continue pretending it is a legitimate interpretation for QM.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Ignoring the fact that no interpretations are inherently "better" for any (a)theistic metaphysical philosophy, MW was proposed by a guy who, like ALL post-QM physicists, thought the seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes that CI produced needed solving. His solution was to assume realism and remove the collapse; to, essentially, treat the wavefunction as encompassing all of reality, including observers. The many worlds came about as a result of following those assumptions to their conclusion. Under those two assumptions you get an interp. that is local, deterministic, real; that can't derive the Born rule; and had diddly squat to do about any metaphysical system, atheistic or otherwise. If you don't understand why MW is local and deterministic, then all that means that you still don't understand MW, and I'm sick to death of explaining it.

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I guess I find the existence of parallel universes as absurd as you find the existence of superhuman agents.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

As for the simulation theory, I'll refer you to google. My point was not that it's a fact, it's not. My point was that it's a much more likely scenario than the theory that there's a single deity pulling the strings of the tiny lifeforms on this tiny planet.

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You'll refer me to Google? Really? That sounds like it translates to you saying "when I said there were scientific studies I didn't have any actual studies in mind, I just wanted to sound authoritative and am now too lazy to try and support the claim." I'm fairly sure there are no studies on that subject.

As for the issue of probability of "reality being a simulation" VS "reality being controlled by God," well, I don't know how you'd assign the probabilities for either. The only "simulations" we know about have been created by us, so how could a simulation come about separate from someone creating it? As for Gods, we equally have no evidence of any intelligence coming about except through the confines of material, biological evolution. I think the probabilities of either is vanishingly small and worthy of equal dismissal in science.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

http://news.discovery.com/space/are-...n-2-121216.htm

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Ha! I'm ashamed for Discovery that they're allowing such hokum on their website. I'm just as ashamed for Nick Bostrom, a philosopher I have a lot of respect for and whom even employed Yudkowsky for a while. I'd think he'd realize the rational, mathematical arguments against such a notion and see the anthropomorphic bias inherent in it (not to mention the worn-out "fine-tuning" arguments).

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I think... I do think... I guess I find...

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Think, guess, and find better, as you are still stumbling in the dark despite having no less than 4 different posters turn the lights on for you. Just stop with the insults aimed at MW and its proponents. I'm tired of having to defend it against someone who doesn't even know what it is. I would seriously pay to set up a debate between you and physicists like Caroll, or even a non-physicist like Yudkowsky, just so I could replay the video and expose your ignorance every time you insist on insulting MW and save myself the time and trouble of typing. Right now, you're the equivalent of Creationists who insult Evolution because Evolution can't explain where life came from. You don't know what MW is, you don't know what it assumes, and you don't realize that Bell experiments does nothing to falsify it because those tests assume something MW does not assume.

~

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise arguments.

Posts containing inflammatory comments will be removed without further notice.

~

I was offering my opinion. I try to stay up on science currents. I thought more of you might have already heard about the simulation theories. I'm not writing a college paper. I don't need to offer citations. It's not because my argument doesn't hold water. I just didn't feel like branching off completely into a lecture that would have veered away from my point. My point is that there are far more possibilities than just, "A God did all this." It doesn't make sense to fixate on the god fantasy. It's a little too simplistic.

People saying, "There are a lot of things and someone had to make all this," just leads to the question: who or what created the god you want to believe in? And what created that? Something HAD to have, right? Or maybe nothing did. Maybe this is a machine, or a wheel; some perpetual motion mechanism that is cycling over and over again. Maybe it always has. Maybe it always will.

As for aliens, I imagine that if they do exist, a lot of them are just as small and confused as we are. "Alien creator" and "god creator" are interchangeable to me. I still say it's very improbable that there's only one, and only slightly more probable that there are many, and much more probable that there are no gods of any kind. Energetic phantoms accidentally causing paths of chaos are more likely than a bipolar invisible sky man who likes to watch humans 24 hours a day.

It seems naive to cleave to one idea as the definitive answer in a vast sea of infinite ideas. If you deconstruct it enough, existing or whatever it is, eventually there's nothing but wonder. Wonder or horror, depending upon your perspective, and eventually...void.

The world will end for you when you end. It will be like these questions never were. Earth will be as dead as Mars. Someday bits and pieces of it might fall as meteorites on some other where and when, but we'll never know. We just have moments. Moments with no gods in sight.

I meant no offense earlier by being frank. I respect everyone on Litnet. I don't feel the need to respect what is, in my experience, utter nonsense, but that doesn't have to be an impetus to discord here.

If everyone agreed with the god idea, would that be preferable? Easier to stomach? Easier to cope? I'm so far removed from Christianity that I really don't know what the motivators are toward that cult mentality anymore.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Like Santa, it is kid stuff. Unfortunately, unlike Santa, it tends to involve kids with real guns. It's big stuff for anti-terrorist squads, but kid stuff for cosmologists.

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That's gold, Mac.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

You'll refer me to Google? Really? ...

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It's good advice!

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... I'm fairly sure there are no studies on that subject.

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Oh come on, it's the web! There are reams of stuff on every speculation you can think of. This one even has a domain name:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

... and is taken seriously by several top thinkers, including at least one top cosmologist:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/barrowsim.pdf

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Ha! I'm ashamed for Discovery that they're allowing such hokum on their website. I'm just as ashamed for Nick Bostrom, a philosopher I have a lot of respect for...

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Well he's a philosopher, so you can't expect his maths to be up to much, but Barrow is a serious equation juggler. What mathematical arguments have you seen against the notion?

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I was offering my opinion. I try to stay up on science currents. I thought more of you might have already heard about the simulation theories.

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For the simulation theories to work, the universe needs to be computable. For the universe to be computable it must be deterministic. That would put the simulation theories in conflict with quantum mechanics.

However, I think you could get to something similar to what you are proposing if you consider that you are part of a bigger organism rather than part of a simulation. And then this organism could be part of even a larger one. The organism would evolve through natural selection just like other organisms do. This organism doesn't have to be a "god". It doesn't have to know anything about you. Then the theory would avoid the dead-end of determinism.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

People saying, "There are a lot of things and someone had to make all this," just leads to the question: who or what created the god you want to believe in? And what created that? Something HAD to have, right?

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Good post on the matter: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I meant no offense earlier by being frank. I respect everyone on Litnet. I don't feel the need to respect what is, in my experience, utter nonsense, but that doesn't have to be an impetus to discord here.

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Just for the record, I'm an atheist, but I don't like when someone says "there have been studies done," but then when someone asks what the studies are that person says "go check Google." It makes the former statement seem like a lazy attempt at authority, so just keep that in mind in the future.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

It's good advice!

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Well, yeah, in general; but not after a person has claimed that there are studies. One would expect they'd know what studies they're referring to.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Oh come on, it's the web! There are reams of stuff on every speculation you can think of. This one even has a domain name:

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Right, there are "reams of stuff on every speculation," but studies requires more than just speculation, they require some kind of tangible data. I'll look through the site later, but I'll be very curious as to how they get around the conjunction fallacy (the mathematical argument I was referring to). A simple version would be this: Either we're living in reality, or we're living in a simulation inside reality. Since the former probability is contained inside the latter, it is automatically more likely. The latter has to suppose that not only is there reality, but that there is another intelligence species that reached a stage where they could create computer simulations and did and that we are the result of those choices. Expressed in language, perhaps that doesn't sound far-fetched, but you have to compound a lot of probabilities making it more and more unlikely with each necessary element you apply (the probability of an above-human intelligence arising, the probability of this intelligence creating reality-reproducing simulation technology, the probability of them deciding to do this, the probability that they don't wipe themselves out before all of that happens, etc.), which makes it far more complicated than just "we're in reality." I doubt we even know yet what such a simulation would entail, technology wise, or if there are even enough resources in our own reality to reproduce them.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

That would put the simulation theories in conflict with quantum mechanics.

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Litnet needs a facepalm smiley.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Like Santa, it is kid stuff. Unfortunately, unlike Santa, it tends to involve kids with real guns. It's big stuff for anti-terrorist squads, but kid stuff for cosmologists.

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that is not the way I see it. kids don't play withguns. adults do. let's put that into prospective. kids play with toys and adults with guns.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Right, there are "reams of stuff on every speculation," but studies requires more than just speculation, they require some kind of tangible data.

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To be worth a Nobel prize they do, but there are studies on string theory, interpretations of quantum mechanics, exotic cosmologies, etc., that involve little if any tangible data. Are they any worse than good science fiction stories? :)

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Either we're living in reality, or we're living in a simulation inside reality. Since the former probability is contained inside the latter, it is automatically more likely. The latter has to suppose that not only is there reality, but that there is another intelligence species that reached a stage where they could create computer simulations and did and that we are the result of those choices. Expressed in language, perhaps that doesn't sound far-fetched, but you have to compound a lot of probabilities making it more and more unlikely with each necessary element you apply

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Good points, probably arguments that grant awarding bodies will use to put this speculation on the most distant back-burner. It's an area that young physicists without tenure should avoid! But I like it better than the God speculation, as the creators are at least "limited", like us humans, so we don't have to bring all sorts of other stuff like omnipotence, omniscience, etc, for which there is no evidence, and (again) compound the probabilities.

The biggest problem is that, if we accept the simulation speculation, we still need to find out who created the simulators, or is it simulations all the way down?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

To be worth a Nobel prize they do, but there are studies on string theory, interpretations of quantum mechanics, exotic cosmologies, etc., that involve little if any tangible data. Are they any worse than good science fiction stories? :)

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I guess it depends on what we mean by "studies." I see "studies" as the gathering of data, facts, and the interpretation of that data. If there's no gathering and no data, where was the "study"? Otherwise, it's just an argument, or speculation, or an interpretation, or even an hypothesis, but I wouldn't call it a study. So I'd expect a "study" on a simulation universe to produce some factual data to argue for the hypothesis; it was that data that I doubted existed.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

The biggest problem is that, if we accept the simulation speculation, we still need to find out who created the simulators, or is it simulations all the way down?

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I see what you did there, LOL. Seriously though, the problem of infinite regress exists in all of science, of always being able to ask "why" to any answer. Eventually, I think it has to get to a point where something was always there. I think that something is likely quantum fields, or other things that can, of their own nature, give rise to matter and spacetime. It's just difficult for us to imagine anything existing "beyond" time and space.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I guess it depends on what we mean by "studies." I see "studies" as the gathering of data, facts, and the interpretation of that data... I'd expect a "study" on a simulation universe to produce some factual data to argue for the hypothesis; it was that data that I doubted existed.

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I think your definition of "study" is too narrow. What you are describing are "proper scientific studies", the ones that garner Noble prizes, or at least government funding, but you have to allow for more speculative studies. It doesn't seem wrong to say, "Barrow has studied the simulation hypothesis, and, although he finds it highly speculative, doesn't dismiss it out of hand." I think scientists, especially young scientists, should pursue "proper scientific studies" 95% of the time, but a little speculation is fun, if nothing else. So if Barrow, and his ilk, want to spend a few hours a week studying the idea of a simulated universe, in their spare time, they shouldn't be shot down for doing it. Who knows, one of these million-to-one chance speculations might lead somewhere.

That's a fair enough point. My mind just went to "proper scientific studies" when Varenne mentioned studies on simulation universes.

First off, thanks for your reply. It's always good to see a discussion going. I'm a little confused by your first argument though, as you seem to be implying (by asking who I am) that there are people with the authority to discuss (maybe even decide) this, but I'm not one of them, while from my point of view, anyone who can justify his opinion by means of reasoning is entitled to one. That aside, you've sort of misunderstood the essence of the argument (that it's not a common focus amongst scientists), I guess that happens. I just thought it was kind of funny to find your sort of reaction on a forum thread that asks specifically after people's opinion on a subject. It seems kind of off. Second, I don't see the point of regarding all believers, regardless of what they believe in, as naive, dangerous, or in dire need of scientific disproof of their beliefs. I'm not a believer myself, but I can see there's a value to it, in some cases. If Darwin, after having experienced his voyage on the Beatle, hadn't believed (for there was really rather little proof of it at that point, just some indications of movement amongst the tetonic plates) that the earth was in fact older than 6000 years, he might never have gotten to writing his opus magnum. Belief often precedes scientific or rational proof. That being said, not believing in global warming has some actual consequences while believing in god to most people is limited to a personal choice. In sum, to oppose irrationality is a noble enough goal, and the responsibility of any philosophically minded person (obviously, not just scientists), which means that whether god exists or not is as much of an issue to me as to a believer, as there is no evidence towards the contrary. I'm not sure in how much detail I want to go here, as this whole debate seems to miss the initial point of this threat. You're absolutely right about the god particle though, that was a poor example.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Who are you to say how most scientists should spend their spare time? No government will fund most scientists to do this, so its only ever going to be a spare time activity for most. Campaigning against irrationality seems a worthy way of spending ones spare time.



The opponents of the idea of global warming are just like Christian believers in ignoring the evidence. They believe there is no global warming so they can can carry on gobbling up the Earth's resources without feeling guilty. Why shouldn't they believe without knowing? Christians do it all the time. There are many crank doctors out there pushing quack medicine that, again, go against the scientific evidence. Why shouldn't they believe in the quack medicine? You don't need to to know, belief is enough, Christians have shown this.

To oppose irrationality in the pursuit of religious belief is to encourage rational thought in general, and to attack the basis on which irrationality holds sway in other areas.



The "God particle", the Higgs boson, has nothing to do with God, here "God" is used as a metaphor for "of central importance", it's like describing Alexander the Great as "a God amongst men". There is no "whatnot" in which scientists try to find God, unless you want to extend the title of scientist to include Biblical scholars who look for evidence of God in biblical texts (and have found no good evidence.)

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Science or religion? Hmm. I read somewhere inside an intro to ethics book sitting on my shelf, that Existentialism makes the claim that reason is an inadequate means for formulating morals because it does not account for desire. At this moment in time I feel that reason is subservient to desire and passion because desire and passion provide the impetus for action or reasoning. We do things because we desire to do them. We WANT things. One can make the case that we do things that we don't want to do, but I think in most of those cases you could make the counter argument that you only do them because you do not want to suffer the consequences of not doing them. Many people work, doing a job they don't have passion for and do not desire to do, but they do them anyway because reason says that if they don't then there will be negative consequences. The thing is though, reason makes a great case, but desire tramples over reason ALL the time. Love is a good example. Faith is another. The desire and passion for love will make people do completely unreasonable things and even cause them to make up reasons to support these irrational actions. The stronger the desire or passion, the more likely it is to over-ride reason.

Science is all about reason, and thanks to applied science we enjoy all the technological marvels we currently have and use on a daily basis, but reason has a hard time dealing with emotions, consciousness, morality, faith, life, death, God etc.

I guess my point is that science may never be able to adequately explain everything. Maybe it will. AI/robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology are all exponentially progressing so maybe science will have ALL the answers some day, but at the moment it doesn't, and I think for that reason alone, both science and religion should exist. If one day science can answer all the questions and finds religion little more than myth making then religion should be abolished because at that point it is a demonstrable impediment to the progress of humankind, but until then can't we all just get along?

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Originally Posted by Vota

Science or religion? Hmm. I read somewhere inside an intro to ethics book sitting on my shelf, that Existentialism makes the claim that reason is an inadequate means for formulating morals because it does not account for desire. At this moment in time I feel that reason is subservient to desire and passion because desire and passion provide the impetus for action or reasoning. We do things because we desire to do them. We WANT things. One can make the case that we do things that we don't want to do, but I think in most of those cases you could make the counter argument that you only do them because you do not want to suffer the consequences of not doing them. Many people work, doing a job they don't have passion for and do not desire to do, but they do them anyway because reason says that if they don't then there will be negative consequences. The thing is though, reason makes a great case, but desire tramples over reason ALL the time. Love is a good example. Faith is another. The desire and passion for love will make people do completely unreasonable things and even cause them to make up reasons to support these irrational actions. The stronger the desire or passion, the more likely it is to over-ride reason.

Science is all about reason, and thanks to applied science we enjoy all the technological marvels we currently have and use on a daily basis, but reason has a hard time dealing with emotions, consciousness, morality, faith, life, death, God etc.

I guess my point is that science may never be able to adequately explain everything. Maybe it will. AI/robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology are all exponentially progressing so maybe science will have ALL the answers some day, but at the moment it doesn't, and I think for that reason alone, both science and religion should exist. If one day science can answer all the questions and finds religion little more than myth making then it should be abolished because at that point it is a demonstrable impediment to the progress of humankind, but until then can't we all just get along?

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You hit it on the nail, Vota. Bravo. This is exactly what I've been telling people in both camps. Both science and religion operate on boundaries. On the one hand scientists can only really know as far as their data and theories tell them. Aristotle thought the Earth was the center of the universe, it was later disproved by another popular scientist, Galileo. But then Galileo thought comets were optical illusions, and that there was no way the moon could cause the ocean's tides, of course, his theory was later disproved by another well known scientist, Isaac Newton, who, mind you, would later die eating mercury. On the other hand you have religious leaders trying to tell you exactly when Jesus was born, and that they found his coffin in some cave somewhere in the Middle East.

Point is both science and religion operate on faith. Each side tries to convince the masses that what they say is the truth and nothing but the truth. Nobody here has seen any of the data that scientists dig up in their research, same as nobody's actually seen God. Nobody will ever win as long as both sides remain in their shells.

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Originally Posted by Vota

At this moment in time I feel that reason is subservient to desire and passion because desire and passion provide the impetus for action or reasoning. We do things because we desire to do them. We WANT things.

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One famous philosopher said (I forget who): "We can choose what we will, but we can't will what we will." A great many have discussed how most "reason" is really just rationalization for unconscious desires and passions. That's one of the reasons for the more rigorous forms of logical studies out there, to try and make sure that the conclusions we come to aren't clouded by irrational biases based on desires.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Good post on the matter: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/

Just for the record, I'm an atheist, but I don't like when someone says "there have been studies done," but then when someone asks what the studies are that person says "go check Google." It makes the former statement seem like a lazy attempt at authority, so just keep that in mind in the future.

Well, yeah, in general; but not after a person has claimed that there are studies. One would expect they'd know what studies they're referring to.

Right, there are "reams of stuff on every speculation," but studies requires more than just speculation, they require some kind of tangible data. I'll look through the site later, but I'll be very curious as to how they get around the conjunction fallacy (the mathematical argument I was referring to). A simple version would be this: Either we're living in reality, or we're living in a simulation inside reality. Since the former probability is contained inside the latter, it is automatically more likely. The latter has to suppose that not only is there reality, but that there is another intelligence species that reached a stage where they could create computer simulations and did and that we are the result of those choices. Expressed in language, perhaps that doesn't sound far-fetched, but you have to compound a lot of probabilities making it more and more unlikely with each necessary element you apply (the probability of an above-human intelligence arising, the probability of this intelligence creating reality-reproducing simulation technology, the probability of them deciding to do this, the probability that they don't wipe themselves out before all of that happens, etc.), which makes it far more complicated than just "we're in reality." I doubt we even know yet what such a simulation would entail, technology wise, or if there are even enough resources in our own reality to reproduce them.

Litnet needs a facepalm smiley.

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I wasn't arguing that the universe is a simulation. If I had been, I might have felt less lazy about educating everyone on the theory. It was beside the point. I won't restate the point. You decided to remove context. Could I have provided links? Sure. Did I care to? Eh. Not really. Criticism accepted.