Is The Universe A Simulation?

Human beings have longed to understand their origins. There are several theories as to why this is the case; maybe it is an attempt to nail down the disruptive thought that our identities are anything but static or that understanding our origins will clearly point out the purpose of our lives. At any rate, countless hypotheses have been advanced as to human origins. One of the newest (or at least the one that is getting a lot of press lately) is the hypothesis that the universe is a simulation run by an intelligence superior to our own. The details of this hypothesis are laid out here in this Discover magazine online article, though if you just want to go straight to the analysis of this poppycock idea, I provide snippets of the text below with a corresponding rebuttal.

The article starts with this gem, “To us, these programmers would be gods, able to twist reality on a whim…are the implications too disturbing?” Well, yes, the implications would be disturbing but not because we would discover these particular gods. In discovering these gods, we would still be inclined to ask who or what created these gods. So, discovering there are gods in this case doesn’t bring us closer to any ultimate truths. These so-called gods would still exist in some universe of their own and whose universe may be a simulation itself. (The article even acknowledges this possibility further on in the reading.) In uncovering these ‘gods of the simulation’ we would solve nothing other than to reveal our own slavery. Any ultimate truth would still be waiting to be discovered.

“Given the rapid technological advances we’ve witnessed over past decades — your cell phone has more processing power than NASA’s computers had during the moon landings — it’s not a huge leap to imagine that such simulations will eventually encompass intelligent life.” That’s a very humorous sentence since the definition of intelligent life is so contentious to say nothing of the fact that people often treat others unlike themselves as though they weren’t human. Do simulations qualify as intelligent life? I suppose we could ask Siri…

“Legislation and social mores could soon be all that keeps us from creating a universe of artificial, but still feeling, humans — but our tech-savvy descendants may find the power to play God too tempting to resist.” In other words, regardless of whether we are or are not simulations, we’d still be assholes. Great.

“John D. Barrow, professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge University, suggested that an imperfect simulation of reality would contain detectable glitches. Just like your computer, the universe’s operating system would need updates to keep working.” This article began by mentioning the amount of computing power and intelligence that would be needed to create our simulation and it came off as sounding as if our simulators would be a whole lot smarter than the team that programmed Windows Vista. Barrow’s suggestion is pure speculation, aiming to suppose that our simulators would be as incompetent as we are. Well, I should hope not. After all, they kept blowjobs as part of the simulation. That implies vast intelligence.

“Most physicists assume that space is smooth and extends out infinitely. But physicists modeling the early universe cannot easily re-create a perfectly smooth background to house their atoms, stars and galaxies. Instead, they build up their simulated space from a lattice, or grid, just as television images are made up from multiple pixels.” Wow, this is exactly the same kind of reasoning that leads people to believe in miracles, events that supersede the laws of physics: If we cannot do it or explain it, then it must have been the Hand of God. Utter B.S.

“Unfortunately, our almighty simulators may instead have programmed us into a universe-size reality show — and are capable of manipulating the rules of the game, purely for their entertainment. In that case, maybe our best strategy is to lead lives that amuse our audience, in the hope that our simulator-gods will resurrect us in the afterlife of next-generation simulations.” First, a ‘universe-size reality show’ is still a smaller universe than the one our simulators are in, meaning, the size of our universe isn’t actually that impressive. Second, we have no idea what, exactly, amuses our supposed audience the most, since our simulators are eerily mum on that account. Much like (insert the name of your god here).

Other thoughts? As one commenter, Chris Pope wrote, “If we can conceive of any test that would prove that we are in a simulation then would not that possibility have already be conceived by the designers of our simulation? If the designers are able to respond to our actions and construct the simulation in such a way that we observe the results that they want us to, then how can we ever devise a test that can prove that we are in a simulation? Unless the designers want us to have that power they will be able to gimmick the results of any "test" such that the result returns to preserve the illusion of the simulation.” We don’t know how the simulators would react to us discovering we are a simulation. Do they want us to know? If we found out could they simply erase that knowledge from our memory? What if we rebelled against the program and would that even be possible? Moreover, theguy126 wrote, “Exactly what would define a real world as opposed to a simulation anyway? If we were to break free of our simulation and enter the real world what would be so distinctively different about that real world that makes it more "real" than a perfect simulation? The answer is nothing. There is nothing substantial about real matter because all that is just information that could have been simulated. There is no meaningful difference between a real world and a perfect simulation of the real world.”

It’s all speculation, folks. And if it turns out I’m not real, well, I’ll just move to California where it’s okay to be as fake as you want.

The utter nonsense of this hypothesis is relatable to solipsism, which I have defeated. Read about it here.   

Hypocritical Mass

In May of 2003 William Bennett, then the right-wing poster boy for virtues, was discovered to be a big time gambler. The trouble wasn’t so much that he’d lost a boatload of money (estimated to be about five million dollars) but that he was caught participating in what many religious conservatives consider a vice. Bennett tried to shrug off his addiction by saying his particular brand of faith didn’t really discourage gambling, but then went on to say that he’d never gamble again anyway. Mmm, okay.

Fortunately for Bennett, that story broke in the middle of particularly terrifying Midwest weather, the global threat of SARS, and Jay Leno and Katie Couric switching jobs for a day. Before long, the new Slick Willy was able to return to being a chubby spokes model for virtues and spewing forth more volumes of biblically confused morality. Bennett is lucky that Americans are as forgetful as they are apathetic. Perhaps people like William count on it. 

Why do religious leaders seem to suffer the most from extreme hypocrisy? It may be that they are more closely scrutinized than the Average Joe, but that is as it should be. Having been in the military I am strong believer in leading by example. I do not look up to people who do not set a good example. Yet these are the religious leaders we’ve been putting up with over the years…

Jesse Jackson was revealed to have sired a love child and allegedly embezzled money from his own Rainbow Coalition; Jim Baker commits adultery with Jessica Hahn; Franklin Graham calls Islam a “wicked and evil religion” while ignoring Christian history. Pat Robertson blames homosexuals for the September 11^th attacks, as if that was the one thing that really riled up the terrorists. Then there’s Osama bin Laden, who used Islamic fundamentalism to inspire incredible homicidal and suicidal violence while he completely ignored the opportunity to be a spectacular symbol of martyrdom himself. What a chicken-shit. By the way, when are priests going to stop abusing little children? Only when we’re looking? Currently, there’s no scandal involving that slick son-of-a-gun Joel Osteen, but you just know it’s coming.

Why is it that the people who would have you and I believe they know the path to God better than we do behave so poorly? The origin of the moral hypocrisy of the pious may have something to do with the fact that such people are held to impossibly high standards, which is the logical consequence when one picks their faith. But I think this is strange because I consider it amazing that people cling to religion in an attempt to curb themselves of the very behavior that makes them human in the first place. Have we not learned as a species that repressing our nature perverts our nature until we have no choice to but to be hypocrites? You know, religious rules should be rejoined with a disclaimer that cautions, “Guidelines Only.” I mean, trying not to scream “Oh God!” when you climax really is impossible. Granted, we don’t want people to get too violent. It must be considered though that something like violence is a part of our human nature and its okay when released in a socially acceptable manner, like rampaging your local downtown district whether or not your team wins the Super Bowl.

What makes these scandals worse? In my opinion that would be forgiveness. Perhaps it is believed that everyone makes mistakes. Yet the mistakes of these particular leaders are all too common and have caused the public to become jaded to the point that some kind of deception is completely expected as if these religious leaders were politicians (refer back to my Joel Osteen line earlier). Oddly, since monotheists in particular like to believe that God doesn’t like sinners and lying is a sin, you’d think that religious leaders caught lying or behaving poorly, thus potentially leading their flock astray, would be more severely punished by their parishioners than the average church denizen. Believe it or not though, they are actually the ones most easily forgiven by the public, never mind that these supposed leaders are the ones who are allegedly pied-piping us to heaven. What the hell? For the believer, enabling their liars will get them exactly what they deserve, which is nothing. When religious leaders fail, it is revealed just how much stock they have invested in their beliefs. Observe how often they say they will reform only after being caught red-handed.

These theocratic representatives alone however are not entirely to blame. It seems to me that the hypocrisy arises from both sides of the playing field. The people we call upon to be our leaders are characteristically of low moral fiber in part because it’s largely recognized that assholes are the only ones insecure enough to put forth the drive and determination required to lord power over others. Everyone knows it takes two to tango, and somebody has got to be the bitch. Saying a politician or priest speaks for you therefore practically makes you an accomplice to all sorts of ghastly behavior.

This also seems to be why no one is willing to be outraged (or be outraged by a lack of outrage). Most people point-blank refuse to criticize those whom they have elected. It’s an admission of guilt or at least of being an accessory. Cripes, canning the boss or your representative would mean one of us other low-lifes taking time out of their busy schedule to be an effective and true leader. Save the world? I’m free on Tuesday I guess, after my massage. Leaders rely on exactly this kind of attitude to remain in power. Then they become prone to thinking that they can get away with just about anything. For the most part I’m sure they do, because the public lets them. Sheep don’t tell wolves what to do.

I’m not going to say that I’ve never said one thing and then done the opposite. It’s just that us decent folk don’t go around doing it all the time in a conscious effort to make a mockery of the beliefs we profess. I’m not shoving beliefs I do not really believe down other people’s throats. When I make a mistake I am man enough to admit it. (It just never happens.) Religious leaders on the other hand might be better off pointing out their flaws to begin with so that their flocks will avoid any letdown (and an inevitable look-the-other-way). It’s like a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free” card played in advance. This would greatly help congregations identify with their leaders. Hmm, but I wonder how many leaders don’t want to be identified with their followers. Ah, now we see what they think of us.

Just how badly are religious leaders needed anyway? We might recall that Jesus told his followers that the kingdom of God was inside of them. But then he also said to his disciples that they would not taste death before seeing heaven on Earth. Did he lie? Even in his last moment Jesus seemed to question his father whom it appeared had forsaken him. When the chips were down, it appeared as if the Son of Man didn’t believe in God or at least couldn’t believe he’d been abandoned to such a terrible fate. Do you think a parent who loved you would willingly allow you to be tortured to death? Holy hand-grenades, the origin of hypocrisy is right there in the Bible!

There’s a lesson to learn here and that lesson is you can’t really trust anyone but yourself to lead yourself, especially when it comes to faith. Sucks, I know. This has been another disappointing message brought to you by Religion, the proud sponsor of Fooled You.

Atheism Fails Fail

There’s a certain comfort in knowing that when I get back from a two week long vacation that is mostly devoid of the internet and news, the world will still be as crazy as when I left it. I submit as evidence this gem found on Facebook in which a theist attempts to use philosophy to argue for the First Cause Argument as evidence for a creator. Here is the text in its entirety:

"But who created God?" is an invalid and tedious argument. It is logically impossible for the "cause" of time to be dependent upon time. Thus, the primary "cause" was "always there" (or it "never was"). Due to the level of fine tuning of the universe, which is orders of magnitude greater than any human engineering achievement, the "cause" of the universe must be an agent which is not restricted by the laws of nature (the "cause" is above nature) and it is indirectly responsible for the applications of science and logic. Due to the algorithmic complexity present within every single cell of every living system (and due to the fact that the digital information therein is not reducible to nature), it can be inferred that the primary "cause" is a personal being which is potentially unbounded in power. When the atheist\naturalist appeals to science or logic (formal disciples which are indirectly the result of the Creator and only possible due the uniformity in nature - evidently the Creator upholds the universe in a consistent manner) in an attempt to refute the existence of the Creator (or assumes that natural processes can explain the origin of natural processes), they demonstrate short-sighted irrational behavior which is not consistent with logic or science. It is outside the realm of science to "disprove" the reality of a Creator and it certainly isn't based on logic. Thus, atheism is merely a metaphysical naturalist philosophy.

So let’s break this down.

"But who created God?" is an invalid and tedious argument. It is logically impossible for the "cause" of time to be dependent upon time. Thus, the primary "cause" was "always there" (or it "never was"). OBJECTION: There are several problems with this line of reasoning for if there was no cause, or, the cause was always there, the cause itself is unchanging and therefore can have no effect on temporal things such as the universe (supposing the universe did have a beginning); that which does not change cannot be a cause as causes are changes. Time may also have always been a dimension of what preceded the universe, if anything did. Though even scientists suspect that time began when the universe began, the reality is that they actually do not know for certain. Moreover, if God had no beginning, this tells us that we know at least one thing didn’t have a beginning. Problem is, for all we know, there may be other things without a beginning, such as the universe.

Due to the level of fine tuning of the universe, which is orders of magnitude greater than any human engineering achievement, the "cause" of the universe must be an agent which is not restricted by the laws of nature (the "cause" is above nature) and it is indirectly responsible for the applications of science and logic. OBJECTION: Again, several problems. This line implies human beings are already at the pinnacle of their knowledge with no chance of going any further. The author is in effect attempted to argue that because human being haven’t perfected cosmological feats of engineering, this means God did it. But since no one knows what it takes to create a universe, doing so may be a simple matter of having the right knowledge or power or both. Certainly human beings do not know how to create a universe, but this doesn’t mean it will never happen. Nor is the universe fine-tuned for life as ‘tuning’ implies a conscious agent. The laws of the universe happen to be what they are and given this fact, there was a 100% chance that life would arise in the universe. (I don’t know why this is hard for people to wrap their heads around, but it is only proper to speak in terms of chance when we don’t know what is going to happen next.) Sure, if the laws of the universe were off just a little tiny bit, life – as we know it – wouldn’t exist. This doesn’t mean life can’t exist in a universe with different laws. (Granted, a definition of ‘life’ would be useful here.)

Due to the algorithmic complexity present within every single cell of every living system (and due to the fact that the digital information therein is not reducible to nature), it can be inferred that the primary "cause" is a personal being which is potentially unbounded in power. OBJECTION: Fancifully worded reasoning does not lend the reasoning itself any credence. The appearance of complexity in any system is simply a matter of degree to which one understands the system. A mechanic or engineer that has worked on or built one type of car for 50 years will find that car less complex than a modern electrical motorcycle that actually has less parts. Just because our DNA looks complex does not mean it is; to a suitably knowledgeable alien, our DNA may appear like child’s play. Even if we grant that there was a cause to this complexity within us, this tells us nothing about the creator. If we know anything about the way in which most things are built, we should suspect that the universe was built by multiple creators. When’s the last time a single person built a skyscraper by themselves? This question alone deflates the insistence of a lone creator seeing how much more ‘complex’ the universe is than a skyscraper. Finally, there is no digital information in our cells; the information may be construed as digital information, but it is not in actuality ‘digital’ information.

It is outside the realm of science to "disprove" the reality of a Creator and it certainly isn't based on logic. Thus, atheism is merely a metaphysical naturalist philosophy. OBJECTION: Oddly enough, the author is trying to use logic to make a case for a creator (based on the First Cause Argument) and then says right here logic can’t be used to deny God’s existence…in other words, you can use logic to prove God but you can’t use logic to deny God’s existence. That’s like saying you can use logic to prove 1+1=2 but you cannot use logic to prove otherwise (even though you can). Moreover, look at all the things science has explained that used to be in the realm of religious explanations but are no longer because those explanations were false, e.g. thunder, disease, the Geocentric model, etc. If scientific explanation are better than religious ones and we continually find this to be the case, we can safely infer that God doesn’t exist. Therefore, theism is merely metaphysical wishful thinking.