Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks there's a 'very high' chance the universe is just a simulation

[Judi Lynn]

Kevin Loria
3h

As we approach the end of 2016, a number of people might be wondering whether there's some chance that the past year was just some sort of weird dream.

It turns out that if you ask the scientists whose job it is to probe the nature of reality, the answer is actually: Maybe.

Maybe everything that's happening is just a simulation being run on a computer by some smarter, higher order being (with a weird sense of humor).

Earlier this year, at the 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History, which addressed the question of whether the universe is a simulation, the esteemed panelists took a stab at explaining how we know about that question. Depending on whether you want reality to be real or not, the answers from some panelists may be more comforting than the responses from others.

More:
http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-thinks-the-universe-might-be-a-simulation-2016-12?r=UK&IR=T

[still_one]

1. We are all in the Matrix

[TexasProgresive]

2. Maya all is illusion.

[Truth321]

3. 100% chance he's been sniffing glue

[CentralMass]

5. Or eating Peyote nushrooms.

[byronius]

9. Not much truth to you, is there?

[Blanks]

4. I've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this...

If we needed to travel to another solar system, and we never learned to travel faster than the speed of light, it would take more than one generation to travel from earth to a different star.

We would have children born on the space ship, and we wouldn't be able to train them 'with' the earth, so we could train them in their sleep while programming them with life experiences.

We would want these young people to be aware of really bad things, like the third reich, so history would be available on television, and we would want them to see how damaging it is when people are intolerant toward those who are different from them.

So we could train them in these things while they sleep and when they awoke, they would have all of these experiences.

It's interesting that in our lifetimes, so much progress on technology has been made. So this would be the time frame to run these lives through, when so much progress has been made. Even though it would actually be far in the future.

Very much like the matrix except, not because of the machines, but rather because we are moving through space.

[3catwoman3]

6. If this is so, can we re-program...

...the holodeck, PLEASE!

[LuvNewcastle]

7. Hearing that I'm possibly not real is

oddly comforting. Makes me feel more free as well. Should we let all the fake people know that they aren't real? Would it make a difference?

[FiveGoodMen]

8. Interesting, but unless we can do something about it, what's the difference?

[ProfessorGAC]

10. So They Programmed In Pain. . .

. . .when i step on one of the dog's chew toys? Boy, that is one cruel programmer!

[getting old in mke]

11. Give the programmer a break...

...all this simulated and they only had COBOL to do it in. I'd be cruel, too.

[ProfessorGAC]

12. Well, Of Course, I Didn't Know About The COBOL Part

I retract my complaint!