Is the Universe fake ?

mg1982

This is something thats been in some of the newspapers recently Surprised it hasnt been discussed here. Whether its true or not i dont know but its an interesting concept.

http://www.space.com/30124-is-our-universe-a-fake.html

endacl

If it is, then we'd all have to be in in it. I'm not, ergo the notion is daft.

Overheal

More of a Humanities topic, unless this somehow involves a conspiracy by learned individuals to suppress knowledge that our universe was indeed fake.

Peregrinus

Reframe the question. How do we know the universe isn't a fake?

Endacl suggests that we know this because, if the universe was a fake, "we'd all have to be in on it". And each of us knows that we ourselves are not in on it.

But it's not obviously true that, if the universe is a fake, we'd all have to be in on it. I think endacl is assuming that, if the universe is a fake, we faked it, but that doesn't necessarily follow. Hypothetically, our consciousness could be the creation of an advanced artificial intelligence program, and all our sensory inputs could be simulations, generated by the same program. In that scenario, we would not be aware that our sensory inputs were simulations; we would assume they were real.

One of the foundational assumptions of the scientific method is that our sensory inputs do, in fact, correspond to objective reality. This is a necessary element of the scientific method because if our sensory inputs don't correspond to objective reality we can never learn anything about objective reality from experimentation or empirical observation. And it has to be an assumption because, quite simply, we have no way of proving it to be true. Any attempt to prove it to be true by observation or experimentation is, obviously, a circular argument.

So, we may not believe that the universe is a simulation, but I'm not sure that we can prove that it isn't. But I think all this does is to highlight something that the philosophers of science have always known. All epistemological methods depend on axioms - unproven, unprovable assumptions. The notion that our perceptions of the universe correspond to an objective external realilty is one of the axioms that underpins the scientific method.

Balf

On the main question, we've no way of knowing. The issue is essentially the same as the whole Descartes business. Although, even that's questionable as the existence of a thought doesn't imply a person is thinking it.

Peregrinus wrote: »

One of the foundational assumptions of the scientific method is that our sensory inputs do, in fact, correspond to objective reality.

Surely even that's denied to us. Does the current state of scientific knowledge suggest there's only one objective reality? Does the current state of scientific knowledge suggest that sensory inputs are reliable?

Peregrinus

Balf wrote: »

Surely even that's denied to us. Does the current state of scientific knowledge suggest there's only one objective reality? Does the current state of scientific knowledge suggest that sensory inputs are reliable?

No, it doesn't. In fact, it can't. On the assumption that there exists at least one objective reality, and on the assumption that our sensory perceptions reflect that reality with some degree of reliability (and on a few other assumptions that we needn't specify here) then the application of the scientific method can tell us a good deal about that objective reality. But the scientific method can't be used to validate it's own foundational assumptions (because it's useless for any purpose unless those assumptions are true).

So we don't know that there exists an objective reality, or only one objective reality, or that our sensory perceptions reflect it reliably. At best, we just believe these things. And, on the whole, it's a belief that works out fairly well for us (as far as we can tell).

Torakx

The double slit experiment might be of interest to people here who haven't heard of it yet.

Light seems to be able to be a particle and a wave, depending on whether we observe it or not.
Apparently the act of observing changes the outcome when it goes to pass through one of the slits.
As far as I can tell it hasn't been explained yet.
If it has please send me links!

Biffo The Bare

I think that guy on Horizon, what's his name?, Brian Cox, is running the virtual reality computer simulation. How else would he be on the television every night. Every sentence he utters is from a different mountain top. How else could he do that?