Detecting a Bostromian Simulation

Any information source produces stochastic patterns with ‘codes’

David Chalmers thinks we probably would not — perhaps in-principle — be able to determine if we’re in a simulation. Everything in it — even ‘the physical’ — would be simulated. No amount of reductionist physics could get to the bottom of the ontology and find the simulator and its structure.

It’s a pretty convincing idea, and I am not about to assert it is definitely wrong. It might be. I think there might be tools available in information theory (more specifically — Shannonian statistical and Kolmogorovian algorithmic) that allow a relevant hypothesis to be tested. One probably has to accede first to my principle that physical structure is necessary for information.

Of course if one wants to fight about the nature of the physical (and plenty of philosophers do) then that gets otiose and recondite. If you’re not willing to accede the in-principle ontic priority of structured physical processes as the necessary existential basis of any information, then I confess that I don’t know how to deal with that. Got information without Shannonian information sources (physical stochastic processes)? Yes? Then you’ve got me, probably.