Why I don’t like many worlds, the multiverse and the simulation hypothesis

Listening to podcasts recently, there’s a topic that keeps coming up. Are we living in a simulation?

This question fires people’s imaginations. There’s an initial what? reaction, followed by a woah! This thought that leads to the questioning of reality and our ability to perceive it.

And I argue it’s an intellectual dead end.

If it stayed in the realm of Joe Rogan, whose podcast is an eclectic mix of pop culture figures, sportspeople and status seeking public intellectuals, that would be one thing.

But it’s also a mainstay of Lex Fridman’s AI podcast, which appears to be a more serious arena. Fridman says he loves asking the simulation question of his guests because it gives a revealing look into the person and their world view.

Other youtubers and podcasters are careful to point out that simulation, multiverse, and many worlds are all untested. Isaac Arthur of the Science and Futurism channel gives good disclaimers. He still gives the whole thing more credence than it deserves. And too many people come away confusing theoretical physics with hard, known, tested physics.

When the disclaimers are absent, people are led into believing they are experiencing new and profound thoughts. In actuality they engaging in watered down, thinly disguised, old philosophy.

Asking if we are in a simulation is asking who would create a simulation. And who they are. Who is the creator.

More precisely it’s asking if God exists. And it’s asking if something started the universe.

Some interpretations of God in Judaism describe God as the unknown, the unknowable, or both. In this sense there is one given assumption. Something started everything.

If you think something started everything sounds uncontroversial you’d be wrong. It’s a common argument among the atheist generations, old, new, and youtube. There’s no evidence against infinite regress they explain smugly, no evidence for a prime mover.

I think the Jews have called this one correctly, because even if they are wrong about a prime mover, believing in one allows you to more easily get on with your life and focus on the present.

Brett Weinstein argues against the multiverse by noting that its proponents subscribe to the idea that everything that you could imagine happening has happened somewhere. In what I like to call the “stupid aardvark rebuttal” he says that if multiverse is correct, then somewhere an aardvark has popped into existence in empty space. Brett doesn’t believe that’s ever happened anywhere… because it’s stupid. I agree.

Infinite regress is the idea that there is no beginning, all why questions lead to more why questions without end. What caused the big bang? What caused that thing? and thing before that? etc.

I’ll argue, even if infinite regress is reality. It’s unhelpful to any conscious human being. Dwell on it for too long and it will lead to boredom, despair, or a detachment from reality. It’s also completely at odds with both how science has been approached in the past, and how we should approach the scientific questions still to be answered.

We live in an age where most believe there’s nothing left to discover, the magic of modern technology means that most don’t see the limitations we still face.

Some of the greatest scientists in history were men of faith. When giving his opinion of the apparent inherent randomness uncovered in quantum mechanics Einstein famously said “God does not play dice”. He may or may not have been a traditional believer in God, but he clearly believed in cause and effect, a prime mover.

Contrast Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity with simulation, many worlds and multiverses. Almost immediately, within a few years of publication, Einstein’s peers saw the truth and the value in his work. Within a few decades everyone who could read a newspaper knew of him and impressive intellect.

The big scientific ideas of today are different. Simulation, many worlds, and multiverses cannot be tested. We don’t even have a good sense whether they could ever be tested. This puts them in the realm of philosophy and thought experiment, whilst Einstein’s work, regardless of whether it turned out to be true or false, was hard science from day one.

There’s nothing wrong with philosophy or thought experiments, it’s the weight they are given by those who should know better that’s the issue.

I have no problem with people asking if there was a creator, a God or a prime mover. I‌ dislike asking if we are in simulation because it hides the question under a Sci-Fi sheen in a lame attempt to make an unfashionable question less so.

Similarly, Rocko’s Basilisk, which supposedly terrorizes those who haven’t been exposed to philosophy before, is a nerdy 21st century re-invention of Pascal’s wager.

You could accuse me of hipsterism when I claim your simulation creator is just my God. But it’s not that. It’s narcissism when we think people today are better equipped to think about these things than people of the past. It’s foolish to believe we are the smartest generation and all who came before are lesser because we know how to use a computer. We learn and make progress most effectively, in any field, when we are humble.

As for whether or not there was a creator. We’d be better off admitting we don’t know more than our ancestors when it comes to this big question. Society would be better off.