- Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Then how does it exist? How did energy turn into matter? The universe was involved in the change, and it turns out that the total of this “energy number” added up across all the. 7 billion years ago, when the known universe began to rapidly transition from a hot and dense state to a cooler and less dense state—a process that is continuing to this day, by the way. It says precisely nothing about where that initial hot and dense state came from, nor how long it existed before beginning to transition, and it most certainly does not say that anything whatsoever “came from nothing.” Perhaps the universe just popped into existence from sheer nothingness, but maybe it has always existed in some form or another and merely transitioned to a different state. Or perhaps it budded off a previous universe as part of a larger “multiverse.” Or maybe something else happened that we cannot even begin to comprehend right now. We do not know and, therefore, cannot make definitive statements about what must have happened or what could not possibly have happened.
- Elon Musk’s argument: “The probability that this universe is base reality and not a computer simulation is one in a billion” is a sound and logical argument. (If you are unaware of his argument, google the video.)
However, the argument seems to lack an understanding of meta-probability. Understanding meta-probabilities allows us to contextualize better and interpret the argument.
- If you are told a red team is playing a blue team at soccer this afternoon and you are asked to predict the result, what is the probability that the blue team will win? 50%
- schoolchildren3. If you are now told that the “blue team” is the French national soccer team and the “red team” is local schoolchildren, what is the probability that the blue team will? Now that we have more information, it is no longer 50%… it is now more like 99.999%
- What is going on here? In examples 1 and 2, both probabilities are 50% at face value but quite different. The problem stems from the fact that, when stating a probability, the uncertainty of the likelihood is rarely stated. The reality, when comparing the probabilities of a fair coin toss with a random soccer game (1. and 2.), looks like this:
- As you can see above, while both probabilities are stated as 50%, the curves show the meta-probabilities. The curves reveal that the coin toss result is a 50% chance fairly accurately, but the soccer game result is 50% with a large amount of uncertainty.
- There is a one in a billion chance we are not in a simulation.” Our information about the universe is a speck of the total information available (the entire system/process). We mainly know a lot about ourselves and Earth in this period. This is highly likely to skew predictions and give them bias.
- I am not pretending to know whether we live in a base reality or a simulation. But I can say that the uncertainty in Elon’s probability is so great that it is no longer a meaningful/reasonable prediction.
