What are some reasons why we are definitely NOT in a simulation?

This isn't a strict proof, but Occam's razor applies here.

If we claim the Universe is a simulation, we're supposing, on no evidence whatsoever, that there's a whole other unknown universe running our Universe. That certainly makes us guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity!

One reason for us not being in a simulation is that we have irrational numbers that are seemingly infinite. Like pi. In every simulation that we are able to do, there is a limit to how precise the simulation is. For example, using pi only to 10 digits is more than accurate enough for any simulation we want to run. If we currently live in a simulation, then we could assume that the creators would do the same thing to save on computing power, but we have found many irrational numbers that never end. There is also the argument that the parameters of the simulation would be dynamic and change depending on more and more precise observation, but obviously, that's impossible to know.

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there's no sensory input that can't be faked, simulation theory is undisprovable, the only thing you can prove is that a simulation as accurate and consistent as this would have to be is indistinguishable from a basis reality and therefore the question is irrelevant.

but for thought experiment purposes I like to think that simulating a computer must always require more processing power than the computer being simulated has, and therefore as we develop computing technology and proliferate computers the likelihood that it's all just an emulation layer on one big universe-computer diminishes rapidly.

The only likely reason anyone would bother simulating this universe would be for use as a cautionary tale, and by this point they would have already made their point and pulled the plug.

simulation theory is an egotistical fantasy, which presumes we feeble chimps have realized the ultimate purpose of Creation within computer games.. humans do this every few hundred years.. we invent a spiffy new device, and then immediately decide it must be perfectly analogous to God's mind, and that we are just one step shy of reaching Godhood ourselves..

1. Motivation. Our universe isn't optimized for anything.

2. Pointless CPU resources wasted on dark matter when slightly modifing gravity would have given pretty much the same results.

3. Occum's razor. You can view our universe as a computer program, you can also view it as the universe. You get the same results which would mean that we should pick the simplest. The simplest is one universe the complex is a hyper universe and out universe.

I think the issue is the word simulation. What is a simulation?

It implies that the thing doesn't really exist, but how can something not exist?

Let's say the computer game Frogger is a simulation. The electrons in the computer are very much moving in reality. The bits are changing and following the rules of the code. How is that not real? Okay, so we know it's not actually a frog, but the electronics are working just fine physically and creating the pixels so we can see what is happening. It is happening even if it's only a simple "universe" of dots on a screen.

So, let's say that something is a simulation when someone uses a system to test algorithms. If the universe is such an experiment, then it's still as real as ever because the algorithms are actually carried out. Atoms are moving. It is real, even if it's a simulation.

Like all other kinds of thoughts about who created the universe, what was before big bang or what happens when we move in the fourth spatial dimension, it's all just speculation. There's no proof of any of it being possible or existing, because it's based on something being "outside" the universe.

Similarly, asking for concrete proof of the simulation theory not being fiction is a logical fallacy. It can only be up to the believers to prove it.

I will tell you as soon as you concretely prove that I am not th most powerful being in the universe

Ever notice how you can never reach the 13th floor on most buildings?

We had hackers trying for a Gold Duplication glitch for thousands of years, no success. Ditto Free Energy glitch.

The conservation laws would have been broken by somebody by now if we were truly living in an mmporg.

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When people had analogue technology (radio/phonograph) there was no solid concept of the universe being a simulation.

Once digital technology arrives(computers/smartphones)... "hey, did you hear? We are living inside a computer simulation".

This philosophical jump is due to thought and interactions being shifted to digital/online modes rather than face to face or analogue modes.

Those who predominantly have personal interactions, more than digital interactions, I doubt would feel anything like a simulation occuring.

There is much to be gained from a balance of the two.

I don't find the distinction particularly useful. We seek to understand more accurately how our universe works, with disregard to whether it is direct reality or simulated reality. The increased accuracy that we discover may result in our knowing whether we are in a simulation, or it may not.

Either way, something is base reality, whether it is our universe as we observe and experience it, or some number of simulated levels "below" it. Our own state as simulated or real doesn't change that. There is isness.

Our universe has certain laws and rules of nature. You could call that code. You could call that simulation too.

The question is what even is the difference between a "simulation" and a "reality"? That you believe that it's real? And does it even matter?

If you put on a VR headset you're technically in a simulation, but you can also experience emotions and feelings just like "reality".

You will not find comfort here, simulated entity #8929391473

1. running an EARTH System Model ( the things that climate-science uses to see if we're including all the significant-factors in representing how this planet's climate works ) eats supercomputers for years.

The machine running the Universe-simulation would need to be more-powerful than the Universe it was simulating, to phrase it poorly.

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2. number of dimensions: every time you run a model/simulation, you are running a shallower system, than the system that is running that simulation, and the dimensions-of-interaction that physicalist science has allowed, are now many, with M-Theory ( the integration of 5 different String-Theory type systems. I think M-Theory may turn out to be a "nice poem", but that actual-reality may be hella complexer. That PBS Space Time physicist said that 10^500 is commonly used as a representation of all the possible Universes that String Theory allows, but that the actual number is "a lot more". I don't think it's 9 dimensions, I think it's fractal: the higher the energy, the more "dimensions" appear, .. that's an oversimplification, but it's close-enough for now ( ultra-low-energy "opens" other dimensions, not-usually accessable, too, but in a different direction/way ) ).

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3. Entropy & Evolution are both Time-parity violating processes, that operate consistently for billions of years. Physicalism/materialism ignores/denies that "symmetry", that there are 2 processes violating time-parity consistently, but evidence is evidence. Evolution allows Awareness to express, and it requires a cause. Ignoring all the neg-entropy of Evolution, as Physicalists do, isn't science, it is ideology/prejudice.

Fine: they have the constitutional-right to their religion, but gaslighting about being evidence-based Science, while ignoring/denying evidence, is offensive & insulting-of-integrity & insulting-of-intelligence.

Universe is its own self.

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I hold that Brian Greene hit it spot-on, when he mentioned in a book, decades ago, that if 2 Universe-branes just .. kept colliding, .. each collision being a Big Bang, then .. it'd just keep going on forever ..

That fits right.

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Why would it be "tuned for life", as some say?

Bogus question: we cannot have evolved in any Universe that prohibited our kind from evolving, therefore it is undecidable/unknowABLE.

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Would aware-life happening throughout a sea of worlds, in every ocean-of-phenomena/Universe that happens, in the endless stream of them, shape the endless-stream of Universes?

That may be knowable, but not to the gimmicky mixture of Scientism & ActuallyEvidenceBasedScience that our age holds-to.

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4. lowest-energy-state is most-likely.

It's much more likely that one come-across actual-rocks colliding in galaxies than one come-across simulated-galaxies-with-simulated-rocks-having-simulation-colliding-in-them.

Occam's Razor, in a sense.

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No matter: ideology/prejudice addictions will never permit evidence to falsify their worldview, as I've been learning, so there isn't much point in trying to reason with "believers".

Of any kind.

And that is why chiseling my Soul/Continuum from getting caught in reincarnation is the sanest possible path.

( some decades ago, accidentally earned some Continuum-memories, of other kinds of lives, didn't know what they were, discovered what they were, Catholicism nuked, I then adapted, my worldview changing, though that took a few years, to the new evidence. No modern religion fits the data. No ancient religion fits the data, though AwakeSoulism/Buddhism, in its most impersonal, comes closest. Ramana Maharshi, the Hindu, ended-up being the best expresser of Zen I've ever encountered, to the shame of all Chan & Zen Buddhism, anyways, objectivity/empiricism makes Universe surprise one, as one's "assumptions" and "conditioning" and "belief" get nuked by random evidences.

I still "want out", though: being perpetually-recycled in Universes, as Universes recycle ALL "contained energies", no exemption for continuums/Souls, through "reincarnation", .. sucks. )

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There aren't, and an increasing number of reasons it probably is.

It's just been such a gradual process of discovery, much of which predated the explosion of the computer age, that we have an anchoring bias preventing us from seeing it. We think "well no, the universe has always behaved this weird way, that's just a coincidence it's similar to what we're starting to do in simulating our own virtual worlds."

How different might Einstein and Bohr's argument have been around if the moon existed when no one was looking if they were discovering the implication that it might be the case in a world where nearly every virtual world with a moon has one that isn't rendered if no one is looking at it?

In antiquity it was assumed that the world was continuous because quantization of matter was an impious insult to divine design. It was a huge surprise that people took very hard when it was experimentally shown to be quantized. And then the behaviors were so odd - why was it going from continuous to discrete only when interacted with? Why did it go back the other way if you erased the information about the interaction?

Would this have been as unusual if we'd already had procedural generated virtual worlds generated with a continuous seed function but then converted to discrete units in order to track interactions by free agents determined outside the seed generation (such as players or AI agents)? Would the quantum eraser have been as puzzling through this lens when we've seen how memory optimizations would ideally discard state tracking data for objects that are no longer marked as having changed?

A lot of the weirdness we've discovered about our world makes a ton of sense through the lens of simulation theory - it's just that the language with which to interpret it this way postdated the discovery of the weirdness by nearly a century such that we've grown up accepting that weirdness as normal and inherent to 'reality.'

And just to be clear, absolutely nothing in our universe can be shown to be mathematically 'real' and everything is either confirmably mathematically 'digital' or indeterminate (like spacetime). And yet people are very committed to calling it real and disturbed at the idea of calling it a digital world.

My main argument would be that it would be incredibly unethical. And any intelligent civilization powerful enough to create a simulation like this would be more likely than not to be ethical, and if it was this unethical it is unlikely to exist for long. Those would be two potential reasons why the "infinite regress" in simulation theory is unlikely.

The Starmaker is an interesting exploration into simulation theory.

You would likely be able to prove or disprove you're in a simulation by solving the legendary math problem of "p≠np | p=np".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem