Apparently scientists cannot confirm whether we are living in a simulation after all
A few days ago I posted about an article in "Science Advances" which had been taken by the media as evidence that we are not living in some giant computer simulation like the one in "The Matrix."
However, the authors of the original paper, Zohar Ringel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Dmitry Kovrizhin at the University of Oxford told New Scientist they are a bit taken aback at the conclusions the media ad drawn from their work.
There are people on both ends of the spectrum - those who think it is unlikely that we are living in some kind of computer simulation and, surprisingly, one or two like technology mogul Elon Musk who think that there is only a billion-to-one chance that we actually live in reality and that it is more likely that we are merely data circling inside someone’s supercomputer.
However, the scientific consensus as reported by the New Scientist is that we cannot possibly know whether or not our universe is a simulation unless the model has blatant flaws like the ones Nardole and Bill discovered in "Doctor Who."
The New Scientist article quotes Marcelo Gleiser at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire as saying that
“To me, both the ‘are we living in a simulation’ question and any response to it based on current computer knowledge is silly.”
Gleiser argues that point: trying to answer these questions based on our current knowledge and machines is inevitably based on unreliable assumptions. As the article points out,
Quantum computers – if and when they become truly operational – may be much more versatile than we can imagine at this point. If we were in a simulation, humans would have little idea of what the laws of physics in the outside “real world” were like, whether quantum mechanics ruled, and what kind of computation was possible outside the bounds of our simulation.
So we're back to square one - until and unless we find a flaw in the Universe which can only be explained by its' being a simulation rather than real, we have no way of answering the question.
However, the authors of the original paper, Zohar Ringel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Dmitry Kovrizhin at the University of Oxford told New Scientist they are a bit taken aback at the conclusions the media ad drawn from their work.
There are people on both ends of the spectrum - those who think it is unlikely that we are living in some kind of computer simulation and, surprisingly, one or two like technology mogul Elon Musk who think that there is only a billion-to-one chance that we actually live in reality and that it is more likely that we are merely data circling inside someone’s supercomputer.
However, the scientific consensus as reported by the New Scientist is that we cannot possibly know whether or not our universe is a simulation unless the model has blatant flaws like the ones Nardole and Bill discovered in "Doctor Who."
The New Scientist article quotes Marcelo Gleiser at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire as saying that
“To me, both the ‘are we living in a simulation’ question and any response to it based on current computer knowledge is silly.”
Gleiser argues that point: trying to answer these questions based on our current knowledge and machines is inevitably based on unreliable assumptions. As the article points out,
Quantum computers – if and when they become truly operational – may be much more versatile than we can imagine at this point. If we were in a simulation, humans would have little idea of what the laws of physics in the outside “real world” were like, whether quantum mechanics ruled, and what kind of computation was possible outside the bounds of our simulation.
So we're back to square one - until and unless we find a flaw in the Universe which can only be explained by its' being a simulation rather than real, we have no way of answering the question.
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