It is just a logical statement. A theory must maximize data fitting and minimize assumption. You cannot beat a theory that fits all the data with only one assumption.
Sadly we are not having a debate as I’m giving arguments and you are not willing to criticize them on a core level. I hope other people find this one sided conversation useful.
Where do you see belief in what I explained? I’m genuinely curious.
It can’t be the observations as you can make them for yourself, and you cannot find a model that fits the data better with less assumptions as it already fits the data perfectly and has no assumption beyond “organisms make copy of themselves with mutations”
Then what is it?
Flies are very different than humans, but they are built using the same building blocks and processes.
It is not belief it is observation: humans are composed of cells that contain chromosomes. Genetic data is mixed with errors during reproduction (both with flies and humans) resulting in different characteristics in the individuals of the next generation (observable with flies and humans)
Sexual attactiveness of individuals will depend on their genes and their environment (also based on observation), which will impact their number of offspring, effectively selecting some genes and discarding others.
All of this is based on simple observation and you sée that belief has no place in this line of reasoning.
Of course there is more to flies and humans than evolution, yet evolution is such a simple process that it applies to both! Nature is truly amazing
Religion is the vehicle of monstrosity
I agree it is not straightforward. Evolution arises from gene reproduction, flies are just one easy example because they reproduce very fast. Humans are also using genes reproduction and our evolution can be also be traced. The evidence for evolution is everywhere and it is the simplest explanation that fits all the data.
Even though our knowledge of physics is incomplete, a VM running a faster simulation of its container would be a paradox. You could stack successive layers of reality that would go faster and faster reaching eventually Infinite processing speed, allowing the computer from the root layer to perform an Infinite amount of computation in a finite time.
You may say that this could be possible as our understanding of physics is lacking. And that’s fine! But I think this paradox shows that the VM can only run slower than reality
I agree with you that science publishing can be of variable quality. One solution for the reader IS to never trust one paper alone, scientific knowledge is established when many papers are published about the same topic and give the same conclusions.
Religion is not a theory because it cannot be falsified.
And the theory of evolution is not belief as it can be observed in real time in labs with flies for exemple.
Your equality is therefore incorrect.
Edit: typo
Even if belief is very present in human nature, the scientific method is not a form of belief because it is just selectionning the model that fits best the data.
Coming up with models does not necessarily require intuition either when we can automate this process.
Belief is human, but science is universal.
I disagree. Science is making models to explain the data and testing them. Whichever model fits best the data becomes a leading theory. There is no belief whatsoever.
This aside, I agree with you that many people tend to mistake scientific theories for reality, they are merely good models. Thinking otherwise is belief.
Let’s say the universe is a clock that we can’t open. Even if we make a perfect model that predicts the exact motion of the hands, it doesn’t tell us anything about what is inside the clock (it could be anything really). Belief is when you start believing your model IS what is inside the clock.
I wish more people were like you on the internet
Try doing some simple physics experiments with pendulum and stuff. It is quite simple to set up and will make you use many different physics concepts.
For quantum mechanics, I suggest diffraction and the double slit experiment that are quite easy to do with a cheap laser pointer.
That way you can rediscover scientific models yourself!
If you are not willing to try it, then you don’t really have legitimacy criticizing thé work of scientists.
There are indeed ways you could make it work, but then you add more hypothesis and thus the cost of the simulation hypothesis increases.
Optimizations are indeed necessary, but just like the player is something special in a game, the observer would need to have a special status in the universe. I don’t like this idea because the history of science always moved in the direction of making us the observers less and less special.
Moreover if life spreads in the universe, the simulation would encounter a scaling issue with an exponential growth of the numbers of observers.
I agree with you that in the end we just don’t know, it’s fun to push ideas to their limits!
There is a cieling though. A computer made of matter of one universe cannot simulate an entire universe at the same speed. It’s like installing a VM on a computer: the VM is always slower. Each layer would then become exponentially slower with a limit of 0 speed.
Having said that, combined with the fact that our Universe is 13B years old, it would make the age of our root universe exponentially larger than 13B years.
It could maybe feasible if we live in the first layers, but beyond that our root universe would have died from Heat death long ago.
Here is an interesting thread about activitypub’s scalability https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/110198847653604631
Try Murena on fairphone!
Ubuntu 24.04!
Pitivi is really nice
What if they are using OpenAI API and they dont have a model of their own?
This never gets old lmao