Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Good video on why we don’t live in a simulation. I would add that the simulation hypothesis doesn’t solve a scientific problem: we can do without it.https://twitter.com/reasonisfun/status/1066756181937532928 …

And all scientific problems in the simulation are solved in precisely the same way, giving precisely the same results whether it’s a simulation or not.

Wouldn't solving scientific problems in the simulation (initially) only give us knowledge of the false reality created by the designer, which, even if designed to mimic true reality, would be limited to the designer's own limited knowledge (that they programmed into the VR)?

Yes. But if, by the terms of the thought experiment, one can only ever possibly have access to the simulation then for all practical purposes, science is about the workings of the simulation and what goes on outside never makes an observable difference to people on the inside.

Does the thought experiment preclude us ever learning of and escaping the simulation? Without that arbitrary and unreasonable condition, it seems less implausible.

If it doesn’t then science & reason can work as normal. It means there is a sequence of physically possible steps leading to knowledge we are not in a simulation. In other words: reality isn’t what we previously thought. Which is normal science. Realism. Happens all the time, no?