20% chance we're living in a simulation - Oxford prof

[JackRiddler]

This is such a dumb speculation. Seriously. Computer programmers wondering if god is a computer programmer who decided to devise our universe as a video game. For the kicks or on a bet, perhaps. This has no more inherent validity and infinitely less poetic truth in it than the traditional scenarios of gods and origin myths.

yes indeed. but i guess thats what you get if you grow up folks in the simulated-world-of-academia(TM)

Really now? Most of these people are not academics, they may have degrees but they generally went into business. They are moguls and rich people who think they are god, like Musk. Contrary to your apparent prejudice, professional academics compared to any other group, at least when they are given room and not under attack, are the likeliest to be trying to see the world as it is, ready to attempt different perspectives and to revise themselves.

.

[smoking since 1879]

This is such a dumb speculation. Seriously. Computer programmers wondering if god is a computer programmer who decided to devise our universe as a video game. For the kicks or on a bet, perhaps. This has no more inherent validity and infinitely less poetic truth in it than the traditional scenarios of gods and origin myths.

yes indeed. but i guess thats what you get if you grow up folks in the simulated-world-of-academia(TM)

Really now? Most of these people are not academics, they may have degrees but they generally went into business. They are moguls and rich people who think they are god, like Musk. Contrary to your apparent prejudice, professional academics compared to any other group, at least when they are given room and not under attack, are the likeliest to be trying to see the world as it is, ready to attempt different perspectives and to revise themselves.

.

Sorry Jack, i confess, i didn't read the last [n] pages of this thread, i was responding to the title:

"20% chance we're living in a simulation - Oxford prof"

which to be fair, says "Oxford prof", so i'm sticking to what i wrote

[coffin_dodger]

Contrary to your apparent prejudice, professional academics compared to any other group, at least when they are given room and not under attack, are the likeliest to be trying to see the world as it is, ready to attempt different perspectives and to revise themselves.

I assume the above statement was lifted from a study carried out and presented by a body of professional academics. Or is that just 'common sense' talking?
There is an alternative point of view - that professional academics are the most likely to be sealed inside a box amongst fellow self-congratulating peers that earn their not insubstantial living from propping up each others ideas in a perpetually self-replenishing vortex of intentionally unprovable theses, that have become increasingly difficult for laypeople to confirm or falsify due to the etheral nature of the ideas concocted.
See this thread for examples.

[DrEvil]

^^Most academics aren't rich by any stretch. Professors have a decent salary and that's about it. All that juicy grant money doesn't go into their pockets, it goes to pay for research.

Edit: The reason laypeople can't understand a lot of research is simply that a lot of research is damn complex and requires years of specialized education to understand. Just because you can't understand something doesn't make it bogus.

[Iamwhomiam]

coffin_dodger, since when have laypeople, or common, poorly educated people in general, been able to comprehend the work of those expanding knowledge? Even peers have difficulty understanding new concepts, especially when they're foreign to what has long been accepted as fact or truthful.

Regarding your exchange with Jack, you are both right, as academia to a great extent mirrors our social norms and prejudices.

[slimmouse]

coffin_dodger, since when have laypeople, or common, poorly educated people in general, been able to comprehend the work of those expanding knowledge? Even peers have difficulty understanding new concepts, especially when they're foreign to what has long been accepted as fact or truthful.

.

Maybe several reincarnations are neccessary

Kudos to Jack

[Iamwhomiam]

The reason laypeople can't understand a lot of research is simply that a lot of research is damn complex and requires years of specialized education to understand. Just because you can't understand something doesn't make it bogus.

Right you are, my good DrEvil. Just the same as in politics and with all its intrigue.


Edited to add, Perhaps, slimmouse, though one-half life should be enough to know better.

[identity]

Just because you can't understand something doesn't make it bogus.

^
Quoted for truth.

Another figure on the American military/espionage landscape who was seriously assessing Uri
Geller ’s warfare potential in the early 1970s was John B. Alexander, a special forces colonel
engaged, as Eldon Byrd was for the Navy, in exploring on the US Army’s behalf the paranormal’s
potential as a non-lethal military weapon. Alexander – who is widely (but incorrectly) regarded as the
character played by George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats had commanded undercover
military teams in Vietnam and Thailand, and later moved into military science, working as Director
of the Advanced Systems Concepts Office, US Army Laboratory Command, then Chief of Advanced
Human Research with INSCOM, the intelligence and security command.

On retirement in 1988, Alexander joined Los Alamos National Laboratory with a brief to develop
the concept of non-lethal defence. With his rare PhD in thanatology – the scientific study of death – he
has strongly believed for a long while that inducing recoverable disease in an enemy’s troops is
preferable to blowing their bodies apart. He has written in this respect in several defence publications,
including Harvard International Review and Jane’s International Defence Review, and been written
about in publications from The Wall Street Journal to Scientific American.

John Alexander now runs a privately funded science consultancy in Nevada, and he is a powerful
advocate both of psychokinesis (PK) as a genuine phenomenon and of Geller as the possessor of PK
abilities.

‘I originally thought it could be a trick, but I dismissed that later,’ Alexander says today. ‘We even
had magicians involved in looking at Geller. The idea of him relying on sleight of hand is nonsense.
He is, of course, extremely gregarious and an extreme extrovert, and that worked against him,
although had he not been an extrovert, the chances are that nobody would have heard of him.
‘From the military perspective,’ he continues, ‘Macro PK [like spoon bending] was of interest to
some of us. The smart-ass question from the sceptics would usually be, “What are you going to do,
bend tank barrels?” I always felt that showed their limited ability to think about topics that exceeded
their realm of knowledge. My response was, “No! I think what we’re going to go after are
computers.” If we believed that PK was real, and some of us did, then the threat was to moving small
numbers of electrons, not large objects. That was the most energy efficient concept.’

There was no need, Alexander explained, to take every computer down. ‘All you have to do is
make them unreliable, because everything we have is based on computer models and applications. So
if you get to when you don’t trust those computers and, basically, everything we run now on digital
information, that would be really significant. We couldn’t explain the process by which PK might
influence computers. But we did theorize that unlike hit-to-kill mechanisms, PK had an additional
advantage. That is, it didn’t have to work every time. Making weapons and sensor systems unreliable
would be sufficient to have a devastating effect on the battlefield. Some took us seriously, others did
not. At any rate, a few experiments were actually conducted after those of us involved either retired or
moved to other assignments.’

[smoking since 1879]

there's a man that thinks that dogs are psysic too. dont make it any more real, less u belive that kinda thing.

question : why these dudes so obsessed with beating n killing shit? the got issues or what?

do we still live in the age of the raptor? after all this?

best of luck everyone

[DrEvil]

Faking bending spoons telepathically is one thing, doing it with a tank barrel is a little harder.

Geller's been caught cheating on tape several times. He's a good stage magician but nothing more.

[identity]

^
Predictable. Sad, but predictable.

[Jerky]

^ Ditto.

[KUAN]

Really now? Most of these people are not academics, they may have degrees but they generally went into business. They are moguls and rich people who think they are god, like Musk. Contrary to your apparent prejudice, professional academics compared to any other group, at least when they are given room and not under attack, are the likeliest to be trying to see the world as it is, ready to attempt different perspectives and to revise themselves.

Ok what is it then Mr Jack riddler? 23% 15? 12? 7? 1? na na 19?

[KUAN]

P.S.

[DrEvil]

^
Predictable. Sad, but predictable.

Why? Just search youtube for 'Uri Geller caught cheating' for examples.

If you're going to trot out psychokinetics and telepathy at least try for someone with a shred of credibility.
You're scraping the bottom of the barrel with Geller.

And for the record: I would absolutely love for this stuff to be real, but that doesn't mean I'm going to fall head over heels for every huckster who comes along, especially not someone who is demonstrably a fraud. That would be stupid.