I think it is sort of important to remember that not all physicists belive in this ridiculous shit.
Lisa Randall for example:
Quote:
“It’s just not based on well-defined probabilities. The argument says you’d have lots of things that want to simulate us. I actually have a problem with that. We mostly are interested in ourselves. I don’t know why this higher species would want to simulate us.” Randall admitted she did not quite understand why other scientists were even entertaining the notion that the universe is a simulation. “I actually am very interested in why so many people think it’s an interesting question.” She rated the chances that this idea turns out to be true “effectively zero.”
In general making physicists talk about non-testable idiocy is a waste of time.
I guess it has more to do with how entertaining the question is, but yeah I don't put a lot of weight on those ideas. It awfully feels like creating yet another god like construction/laying control elsewhere by our dear mind.
Won't stop me from watching those vids though, I usually like the Asimov memorial talks. (most likely watch it this week).
Lisa's remarks are in response of Nick Bostrom's "The Simulation Argument".
Bostrom is a philosopher, not a physicist, who has presented an argument that, if you assert his premises are true, lead to a counter-intuitive and mathematically difficult to argue against situation where he shows it's probabilistically more likely that we live inside of a "Simulation" rather than in a "real" universe. The mathematics behind his publication is very sophisticated and there is no trivial response how to counter this argument (within mathematics / logic at least).
Lisa's remarks are in direct response to Bostrom's premises and how he lays out the alleged propabilities and possibilities, ultimately disagreeing with him that one cannot infer a valid application into actual physics / the real world from of his otherwise mathematically sound approach.
In other words: Bostrom argues that there are no sound and valid arguments to counter his Simulation Argument based on mathematics.
Lisa says: it doesn't matter because the underlying assumptions about the actual propabilities would not translate from your otherwise correct mathematics into the real world.
Btw. there is a reason why Bostrom did not name it "The Simulation Hypothesis". It was meant to be a philosophical argument.
I only scanned through the talk. I actually thought Lisas remark was directed at Tysons "it's very likely" the universe is a simulation.
About how there is so few academic jobs for all the ph.d's.
Quote:
Even someone as brilliant as Emmanuelle Charpentier, who in 2015 became head of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology after a momentous discovery in gene editing, spent the previous 25 years moving through nine institutions in five countries.
I love this thread.(I really do) It would be even better if atropa and Pax kissed. For science.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
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(most likely watch it this week).
