Some Quotes in the News Lately
"There's a 'one in billions' chance our reality is not a simulation"-Elon Musk
"Universe Is Probably A Simulation"- Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Living in a Simulated Universe?
Recently a number of leading scientists have stated that we are most likely living in a simulation. Their logic seems sound. They point out that the universe likely has had billions of intelligent civilizations since the big bang and it is likely that at some point in each of these civilization's development they have created multiple (thousands, millions, billions, etc.) simulations of the "real universe" to make predictions. So given straight probabilities, the likelihood that we are living in a simulation as opposed to the real universe could be high as a billion to one. Thus logic dictates we are very likely living in a simulated universe.
Good Logic, Bad Premise
Scientists, Engineers and Programmers can be tough to argue with. They spend most of their time honing their logic skills to a razor sharp edge. It is hard not to admire their dexterity of thought when it comes to starting at a certain point and then following a series logical steps to a particular conclusion. To make sure their conclusion is correct, they usually will check and recheck their logic, just as you might check and recheck the lines of a program to make sure it runs correctly, or the steps of a math derivation to make sure you reach the correct solution.
Unfortunately, the best logic is powerless if it started with a bad premise. This is a very modern fallacy that seems to plague modern intellectual dialogue. Obsessing over the minutia of logic while insufficiently testing the premise it is built upon. In fact there is an overused and in this writer's opinion, annoying cliche that Scientists, Engineers and Programmers often can't see the "big picture". Ultimately this cliche has come from us technical types doggedly holding onto a conclusion that ultimately is wrong due to an insufficient or narrowly focused premise.
Bias Leads to a Bad Premise
Take the simulation argument. The logic is undeniably sound. The problem is that the assumption that all intelligent civilizations will develop similar to us is just not remotely true and is biased in an annoyingly cliched way. We humans have been making this mistake forever. When people say intelligent life will inevitably develop simulations of the universe, what is really being said is, all intelligent life must be similar to human intelligence. Ugh. This of course is Anthropocentrism, The assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective.
Fermi Paradox
There is a great mystery in science today summed up by the Fermi Paradox. Roughly it states - With all the billions of stars in our galaxy, Earth should have been visited by intelligent species by now or should have detected intelligent species around the universe. Now people sometimes argue the vast separation in time between the existence in civilizations combined with the inevitable self destruction of intelligent civilizations is to blame, but really the mistake is we are looking for signs of ourselves around us.
Why do we expect other intelligent life to behave like ourselves? Anthropocentrism is why. We as a species have been doing this forever. Just look into it and you'll see over and over again the best minds in the world throughout history couldn't help but be seduced by Anthropocentrism.
Other Intelligent Life
To expect an intelligent species that evolved isolated from our evolutionary forces to end up thinking the same as us is absurd. Intelligent life in the universe, and it must exist given the number of exoplanets out there, could view the universe in a way we can't even comprehend and yet be just as effective as us at taming nature (which truly is what civilization is when you get down to it).
When we search the universe for intelligent alien life, we shouldn't be looking for anomalies in signals we might produce, we should be looking for statistical anomalies in the disorder of the universe in general, since intelligent life, by imposing civilization, essentially imposes order where it shouldn't naturally exist. We humans do it by building cities and roads with distinct patterns and sending out EM waves with certain patterns that shouldn't occur randomly.
Do intelligent aliens build cities? Maybe, maybe not, but they undoubtedly affect their environment somehow. Searching for statistical anomalies is how you find something when you don't know what it is you're looking for. Instead we have focused on human like signatures like radio waves, laser signals, etc. Fermi assumed intelligent aliens would explore- why? There is nothing implicit in intelligence and civilization at their deepest levels that require exploration.
Beware of Sound Logic Built Upon Bad Premises
The premise of a logical argument is its foundation. No matter how sound your logic is, if it is built upon the shaky foundation of a bad premise, don't expect your conclusion to stand for very long. This is why we humans use math and the scientific method to test for self-consistency. Math protects us from our own biases and misconceptions. That's why when ordinarily smart scientists start wandering into philosophy where the self-consistency of math isn't present, or worse, the illusion of self-consistency of math is present but not really present, speculation can be confused with truth.
That's why I don't think you should give too much thought to the idea we are living in a simulation. In my opinion, it's a conclusion, derived from excellent logic, built upon a bad premise. After all, scientists are just as susceptible to bias and a bad premise as anyone else.
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Op-Ed: Are We Living in a Simulated Universe?
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