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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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This is still nagging at me - there's more I want to say. So, another response.
This particular theory is a pretty good illustration of the unfortunate ignorance of philosophy I mentioned, but an even better one is mentioned in the article - "the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix."
That's not just pseudoscience, but embarassingly ignorant. If these people had even the vaguest understanding of the idea, they'd recognize that it's about as far from science as it's possible to get.
The whole concept was first popularized by Descartes in the 17th century. He presented it as the possibility that one's perception of reality could be manipulated by an "evil demon," but the underlying concept was the same as "the Matrix."
But the thing is that it was never intended to be an actual theory of perception and consciousness - rather it was a thought experiment meant to illustrate the fact that it could be the case that our perceptions of reality are controlled by an evil demon (or are a computer simulation), and we could never know.
The exact point is that it's literally impossible to somehow step outside of our perceptions and our consciousness and analyze them, since any observations we might make are and can only be products of the very perceptions and consciousness we're trying to analyze. So they could be entirely right or entirely wrong or anything in between and we could never know, since they simply are and can only be whatever they are.
As far as that goes then, it not only falls astray of but pretty much explicitly illustrates the distinction between science and pseudoscience.
And if Tyson et al had even the faintest understanding of philosophy - if they weren't blinded by some ludicrously ignorant species of reductive physicalism - they'd already understand that, and recognize how foolish it is to treat the Matrix, or any other such idea, as a legitimate theory.
Aa far as I've understood things correctly, IIT does position itself as philosophy though, and you can eg. find it in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It's certainly legitimate in the metaphysics sense but it's unfalsifiable, which limits what can actually be done with the idea.
I totally agree. What we perceive around us is the reality we are trying to understand. A simulation is by definition a copy or simplified version of something occuring in reality. Describing our reality as a simulation is just meaningless, as it just somehow moves the definition of reality as "something above or beyond what we can experience". That is not useful and makes me think of flying spaghetti monster stuff.