Does Neil de GrasseTyson believe there is a "good possibility" that our consciousness and reality is all part of a computer simulation?
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answers:
Nyx say: Why not ask him directly?
https://twitter.com/neiltyson?ref_src=tw...
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Ronald 7 say: If is a very small word with very big conotations
Also never Assume
Because when you do
You can make an A$$ of U and Me
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Chris Ancor say: I have no idea what he believe.
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Paula say: No.
At least I never heard him say that.
But he does get on day time TV shows a lot, and he is known to express unorthodox view there sometimes.
He is by no means a second Carl Sagan.
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busterwasmycat say: I have never heard him say that, but a true scientist would say that it is possible, definitely possible, but the "good" part is highly unlikely to be said by anyone, unless they are considering our brains as that "computer", a metaphorical computer, then we could argue that everyone is living a simulation as generated by their own personal computer (their brain). We don't experience an unmodified reality. The brain does an interpretation of signals and presents a model of reality. Apparently we all run the same basic software because we all have the same perceptual interpretation as a gross thing. Whatever the brain does, it does it for all of us the same basic way.
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Acetek say: no
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oyubir say: I haven't ever heard him talk about this (but all I know about him is through his appearances in talk show. As a scientist, I've never read his work. Not the same field, anyway. Plus, I am not even sure that appearance in talk show isn't his main work - no sarcasm intended; communication with general public is a very noble mission also)
But nevertheless, I would bet he thinks so.
1) Because he seems to like to "blow people mind" (as all youtube videos always say about him: "DeGrasse Tyson blow this guy mind about this thing"). So I would not be surprise that he likes to talk about this hypothesis, just because it is a fun one
2) Because it IS a "good possibility".
Not to be confused with "good probability" (see maths theories about possibilities vs probabilities for exact difference).
Nobody knows what the probability looks like (and especially not even Elon Musk, who, it must be recalled as often as possible, has no signle knowledge about any science. He is not a scientist at all. He understand nothing about neither science nor technology). It is pure speculation.
But nevertheless, it is possible. There is no fact, no observation, even no theory, that make this impossible.
Some very serious scientist take this hypothesis seriously
A few years ago, a group of scientists announced that they had designed a experiment to test the "computer simulation theory". They had no asnwer when I read that. But they claimed that their experiment, once completed, would provide the answer. I haven't read further to know what the experiment was. And I haven't heard of them since.
3) Understand that this theory would not at all contradict any scientific theory.
What science produce is not truth. Science has no interest in "founding myth", nor in producing new ones. We, scientists, don't care about who created the universe. What we care about is finding rules that behave like the universe seems to behave.
We are not even looking for equation that rules the universe. We don't believe anymore (it is more than 1 century that science stopped believing that) that we can even find those rules. We are looking for equations whose result is very similar to what we see. So that those equations are "useful" to make predictions.
When a scientist says "big bang", he doesn't at all mean that there were a big bang 13 billions years ago. That would be pointless. Nobody knows, and nobody will never know, what occured 13 billions years ago (unless there is a God, we meet him, and he tells us the answer. And even then, you will not be sure. After all, if there is one god, maybe there are several of them, and the one we met just tells us BS)
Big bang theory is not a theory about what happened 13 billions years ago. Big bang theory is a theory about what happens NOW. NOW everything is AS IF a big bang occured 13 billions years ago. Assuming a big bang occured 13 billions years ago is a good compact way to summarize what we see now (not a perfect one, as you know)
So, even if we were in a computer simulation, that would change nothing to that. We would still need to understand the rules of this computer simulation. And Big bang theory would still be a pretty good, though not perfect, description of how this computer simulation behaves.
Elon Musk's theory (well, no. Not his. I forgot whose theory it is. A philosopher. Elon Musk just likes it. But he is more famous, and people attributes him a theory just because he likes it) is that if there are, indeed, computers able to simulate our universe, then the probability that we are in a real universe is negligible.
After all, if you consider all our video games instances (each guy playing uncharted, or fifa, or gta, has a virtual world running on his ps4), you must see that at each given moment, there are billions virtual world, when there is only 1 real world. Hence the "1 chance over 1 billion that we are not in a virtual world" from Elon Musk.
Of course, the obstacle to this, is that it assumes that there are indeed some alien super computers ("alien" being not the correct word, since it is not people living far away. But people living in the real universe, we know nothing about). If there are, in some meta-universe, computers able to perform a simulation as complex as a simulation of a visible universe for us, then, indeed, there would be far more simulated world than the 1 real world. And then, indeed, we would be far more likely to live in a simulated world.
But that is a big IF.
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