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This article was nominated for merging with Simulated reality on 18 April 2023. The result of the discussion was Merge.

Why the 'Simulation hypothesis in physic' section should be removed

The simulation hypothesis in physics section seems to be a recent addition that is based mainly on speculation coming very close to pseudoscience and I believe the original inclusion of it was not for purposes of sharing knowledge but for the purposes of the editor.

First of all, the assumptions made in the section seem to be of original research, they are sourced yes but they don't directly agree with what has been written (I'm especially talking about the limitations section). Not only does it read like original speculation, the speculation itself is a leap in logic and treats the simulation hypothesis as God of the gaps. Something we can't explain, simulation did it. That is a very uncritical and borderline pseudoscientific way of thinking about things that I think is overall harmful to the article.:

Secondly, the reason for it's inclusion of this section is dubious. It was all added on the 15th of April by user Hamiehs. If you look at their contributions, they only have this article and their sandbox, their sandbox is of an unheard of mobile game with a "scientific message" of simulating real worlds. If you look at the references, the only source is Salah Hamieh which, coincidentally, is the name of the user. Now this brings me to my next point, if you look at the original final revision of this article by Hamiehs you can see that references 17 and 36 are from none other that Salah Hamieh. Let me remind you that this whole section was exclusively added by this one person 2 days after the account was created. Since then, source 17 was removed but source 39 is still a reference to the users mobile game that they wrote about in their sandbox.

This section seems to have had an agenda of the user and it was slyly included without much notice of the intent, the section seems to be a way of justifying the scientific message of the mobile game that the user worked on and that's just wrong to be included here. None of the sources directly agree with what has been written in the section and instead it was just inferred by, I presume, Salah Hamieh. This is why I believe this section should be removed as it adheres to pseudoscience and the intention of the editor were very dubious.--144.32.240.39 (talk) 11:41, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Please don't remove in part or whole until the discussion evolves. Much of the section seems fine, and the intro paragraph and other text are sourced, so a trim at some point seems more reasonable than complete removal. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:10, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I see, sorry about the blanking. The section are sourced but the sources don’t directly agree with what has been stated, the part where it says how certain aspects of the real world may be “limitations” of a computer don’t have direct sources and then it open up the whole ‘of the gaps’ logic that I talked about, not to mention that it goes right pat Occam’s razor as well as creating a putting us in confusing position where the laws of physics in the “real world” would be vastly different. It seems like ad hoc.144.32.240.129 (talk) 12:18, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Plus it’s proposing unfalsifiable philosophical explanations for real scientific phenomena, which seems like a category error and, again, pseudoscience.144.32.240.129 (talk) 12:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

On top of that the section is very pro simulation hypothesis, it doesn’t contain any rebuttals are hints of skepticism which violates the neutral POV. The philosophy section has criticism but this section is just pushing the idea. This section needs to be removed or heavily altered.144.32.240.129 (talk) 14:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Was waiting for further editors to comment. Some minor removals to align with the sources seem fine but the initial section seems important to the topic as physics plays a large role in the hypothesis. The second section, "Proposal of the Universe Evolution within the simulation hypothesis", does seem to merit a large trim or removal. It's not the editors fault or responsibility that it's all pro-theory, please add neutrality from these or other sources if needed (the benefit of a collaborative encyclopedia). And as the hypothesis itself is still unproven the first section provides a good concise background and information to the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, the addition seems to have been due to the editor's own agenda, the editor seems to have wrote about the simulation hypothesis, pro it, and is now adding to the article, in fact they add sources that they wrote (look at the last 2 edits). This doesn't abide by the neutral point of view and it promotes a pseudoscientific way of thinking about this.144.32.240.146 (talk) 22:40, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

www.scirp. org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=108316 This is the source that keeps being added by hamieihs. It was written on the 9th of April, the user's account was created on the 13 of April and this big section was added on the 15th of April, seems the user just wanted to add this to make their paper more credible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.32.240.146 (talk) 22:45, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

scirp.org is a predatory publisher. Avoid. XOR'easter (talk) 22:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I started trying to clean up this section and ended up pruning it quite heavily. The section "Proposal of the Universe Evolution within the simulation hypothesis" appeared to be pure original research. It identified itself as such by starting with "the authors hypothesize...". It cited lots of sources, but lacked reliable sources that actually made the proposal that was being advanced. Many of the sources seemed not even to support the statements being made, or appeared to be only peripherally related. The citation supporting the proposal that the driving force of growth is "the force of love" was particularly amusing: link. I didn't find anything in that subsection that I could save.--Srleffler (talk) 22:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

This text was also a WP:SYNTH grab-bag of "hey, that shit sounds cool", run through several cycles of misunderstanding. Don't learn your physics from podcasts, people. XOR'easter (talk) 22:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: for the simulation in respect to physics, it should be clarified that it’s all speculatory

The physics section is very biased towards the simulation hypothesis, from looking around the page, talk page and history, it seems like it was added by someone with an agenda.

Not only is that bad enough but the whole thing is very odd scientifically speaking. Yes, you could assume all those things but in comparison to what? In order to make a statement about the limitations of the “our physical world”compared to the “outside world” we would need the outside world as a comparison. Without it, it’s just speculation based on very little.

It needs to be clarified that that is not the case, as reading that section made it seem like that’s accepted by science (which it really isn’t)

Again, the section seemed to have been put in there because of a user‘s agenda, doesn’t that violate the Neutral point of view? 92.7.11.8 (talk) 21:04, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Merge from Digital physics?

Should Digital physics be merged into this article?--Srleffler (talk) 21:17, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Maybe? It seems an older and somewhat different flavor of weird. Fredkin et al. were more about the universe being identical with a computer, rather than simulated on a computer. But perhaps that distinction is not too big for article-organization purposes. XOR'easter (talk) 22:44, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
• Strong No. Doing so would perpetuate a common misperception about what a "computer" is; that computers are necessarily digital. There is no reason to assume the simulation is running on a Turing machine. For example, present-day "quantum computers" are not "Turing machines", nor will they ever be; the states of a Turing machine are finite (barring the infinite-length tape), the states of a quantum computer are uncountably infinite measures on complex projective space. See, for example, quantum finite automata. The generalization thereof is the "geometric finite automaton" which runs on any homogeneous space. For all we know, the "simulation" of the simulation hypothesis is an automaton running on SU(42) and that's distinctly not digital. The simulation hypothesis does not speculate as to whether the simulation is digital or not. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 17:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Strong No. Agree with the previous author’s speculation. I think it’s important to allow room for existence of digital physics for it is a variable ensuring theoretical consistency and controlling if the simulation hypothesis can be tested. Masterial (talk) 06:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Strong No. Aside from the nerdfest shown by Masterial and 67.198.37.16 (do you even get a vote if you're not a registered user?), they are not equivalent. Digital physics (or 'philosophy' -- hardly! I digress) does not imply the simulation hypothesis and vice-versa.--MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE IS REAL EMO!_{(talk or whatever)} 13:17, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

No. I agree with the three No-answers above. Simulation hypothesis says there is someone "outside" running the simulation, while digital physics/calculating space just says that reality looks like its performing only computations - operations that can be described by shuffling numbers around. One implies something like a god exist, while the other does not. (And, both suffers from the problem of describing qualia.) · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 18:58, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Merge Simulated reality?

These appear to both refer to the simulation hypothesis as popularized by Nick Bostrom. If not merged, perhaps we should discuss the scope of each article to make sure we don't have a WP:CFORK as much content seems to be duplicated on both pages. - car chasm (talk) 15:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 - David Gerard (talk) 19:27, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

• Strong support Both articles are about the same thing. I recently came across the simulated reality article separately and thought to propose a merge, then saw there was already one going on. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:58, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, both are full pages and not the same topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:07, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

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