If the universe is a "computer simulation" running on the computer called the universe then a computer is a "computer simulation" running on a computer and we all are human simulations running on the computer called the human body.
Occam's razor would say that the simplest explanation is the best. Since this "simulation" works exactly the same as the known universe and we don't know about anything that is outside the universe, we can safely ignore this theory and not lose any information about how the universe works.
As our existence is on a four dimensional level, so naturally we see everything as having a start and a finish, i.e. a line on a two dimensional surface.
But there exists situations where there is no start or finish, i.e. a line on a mobius strip. Since we hypothesize that our universe exists on 10 dimensions, we shouldn't assume that our universe's existence has a set start and finish, even though we can only measure back to the big bang.
Fair point, but you can take initiation with regards to a simulation as being whatever confluence of events is triggered by something external to the universe to cause the universe/simulation to exist.
Point being is that by definition, a simulation has to simulate something, and therefore needs to exist sometime after the thing it is simulating.
>Occam's razor would say that the simplest explanation is the best
_Best_ not as in "the true one", but as in "the most possible, if we don't know any better".
An event could have an elaborate explanation and a simple one, and the elaborate explanation could still be the true one.
E.g a guy is found knifed in a desolate street of New York. His wallet is missing. He had no known enemies. The simplest explanation is "it was a mugging gone wrong". In fact, he was killed by a guy that had an obsession on the girl he recently started dating. The killer didn't even take the wallet to make it look like a mugging: he took it because it had pictures of the girl and the dead guy he wanted to add to his "shrine". (Hmm, I should go write for CSI).
>thus since this "simulation" works exactly the same as the known universe and we don't know about anything that is outside the universe we can safely ignore this theory and not lose any information about how the universe works.
Except if a simulation _doesn_t work_ "exactly the same as the known universe" but has tiny details that could be telling, which is, like, the premise of the whole article.
> In fact, he was killed by a guy that had an obsession on the girl he recently started dating. The killer didn't even take the wallet to make it look like a mugging: he took it because it had pictures of the girl and the dead guy he wanted to add to his "shrine". (Hmm, I should go write for CSI).
But that's not more likely than any one of thousands of other possible explanations which there is no specific evidence for. Proving a negative, that it didn't happen this way, is also not possible. Thus, that the negative cannot be proved is not evidence for this theory either. See Bertrand Russel's Teapot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot.
Occam's razor would say that the simplest explanation is the best. Since this "simulation" works exactly the same as the known universe and we don't know about anything that is outside the universe, we can safely ignore this theory and not lose any information about how the universe works.