Over the past century, physicists have gained a better understanding of physical reality in terms of the relativity of space and time, the curvature of spacetime as a manifestation of gravity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particles and their four known interactions.
Clearly this is a work in progress. The inference of dark matter, dark energy, and space-time singularities indicates that we have much more to learn about the physical world. Nevertheless, the limited scientific knowledge we have acquired so far has been used to advance computer and information technologies to levels that allow us to simulate reality in virtual worlds with unprecedented detail.
This amazing progress led to the creation of the simulation hypothesiswhich states that our perceived world is actually a simulated reality, similar to a computer simulation.
While this idea may apply to speculative mathematical worlds without experimental verification, such as string theory, it stands in stark contrast to the tradition of empirical science that is based on testing theoretical ideas against experimental data collected by well calibrated instruments from an external company. reality. The use of experimental data to gain scientific knowledge about a reality independent of our minds formed the basis of modern science and technology.
Of course, you can argue that these experiments are also part of the simulation, but this idea has no added value if it cannot be distinguished from a world in which it is absent.
We must remember that a simulation always takes place in the background of an underlying physical reality. If our world is a simulation, what is the reality in which this simulation is embedded? Without specifying that reality, the simulation conjecture contains no testable content.
The known laws of physics are derived by observing physical reality with instruments, and not by our brains philosophically insisting that this must be so. The history of science is full of examples where evidence gave a different answer than what the human brain expected.
Examples include wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics, time dilation, and the equivalence of mass and energy in special relativity, where gravity is not a force in general relativity, and that the observable universe contains trillions of billions of planets and not is centered. on us.
If the observable universe were a simulation, there is certainly a lot of wasted memory space devoted to parts of it that we cannot see. Whoever created this simulation was either very wasteful or did not consider us important in the global scheme of things.
The human brain is not a reliable detector and our senses are limited in sensitivity. This is why physicists use instruments. When terrestrial astronomers study the universe with telescopes, the data collected has little to do with the human brain.
Instrumental data are not hallucinations of the brain. Of course, physicists can ignore or misinterpret data through wishful thinking and be misled by overconfidence or other evolutionary traits. All these shortcomings slow down the progress of physics.
Twenty years ago, Nick Bostrom suggested that if “post-human” civilizations became capable of creating simulations, there would be so many simulated beings that a randomly chosen conscious entity would very likely be in a simulation.
However, we must remember that even if aliens were to create a simulated new world on their computer, neighboring civilizations could still live in their physical reality. Just like Vegas, what happens on an exoplanet can stay on that exoplanet. Even if advanced scientific civilizations figure out how to produce a baby universe in their lab, this baby universe is expected to pinch off from our spacetime and not interact with us.
A conjecture must be falsifiable to be scientifically credible. If we ever discover experimental evidence for the pixelization of reality or for a computer error in the code that simulates the world, I will reconsider my position against the simulation hypothesis.
At this point, believing the simulation hypothesis seems to me like choosing to get high on drugs. This choice does not lead to a productive life, but there will always be people who choose this lifestyle as an escape route from our shared physical reality. Likewise, there would always be those who believe that we live in a simulation as a way to avoid the frustrating limitations of life as we know it. It is my personal choice not to belong to any of these communities.
Instead, I devote my remaining time on planet Earth to the scientific search for technological remains of aliens. If alien sentient beings choose to live in a virtual world simulated on their computers, without any involvement with the physical universe at large, then the only way to discover that they exist is from the garbage they throw into the spreading into interstellar space.
But if aliens are truly intelligent, they would aim to send functional gadgets that could arrive in our backyard. By discovering technological probes among the interstellar rocks arriving near Earth, we can expand our current scientific knowledge, because these probes could represent technologies of our future.
To learn from aliens, we must be humble and admit that there is a world independent of our minds. It would be self-limiting if we locked ourselves in a philosophical bubble by forgetting the curiosity and humility that have advanced our scientific knowledge to date. Only those who believe that there is a real, awe-inspiring world beyond what we imagine will be lucky enough to learn something new.
While simulated worlds are limited by the imaginations of their creators, scientific curiosity is the engine that helps these creators grow beyond their limited imaginations.
All simulation creators are embedded in a physical reality greater than their imagination. The goal of physicists is to figure out this underlying reality, whether it includes simulation creators or not. Who cares? The creators are part of that physical reality.
