5 Questions | 5 Answers
Simulated Professor; Director of Death; Producer of a Wilderness Spy Program; Political Speech Writer; CBC Grief Reporter
Marcus Arvan, Professor of Philosophy
Q. How likely do you, personally, think it is that we exist in a simulation?
A. I think it is extremely likely. This is because (1) we should believe the best explanations of what we observe in the world around us, and (2) I don’t know of a better explanation of quantum phenomena than that they are produced by peer-to-peer networking. Let me briefly explain both parts of this answer.
This might come as a surprise to a lot of people, but as famed physicist Stephen Hawking points out on pages 41–2 of his 2010 book with Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, there is actually no observational proof of Copernicus’ theory that the Earth orbits the Sun over Ptolemy’s ancient theory that the Sun orbits the Earth. Hawking and Mlodinow write:
Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true…one can use either model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens are explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest. Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real…
