Fine-tuning

Are we just a simulation, created by another, smarter civilisation? Are we just a game like The Sims, Age of Empires, or Spore, played by a child?

SimCity, by Maxis, started the trend of games in which the player is like a god. The Sims, also by Maxis, took it a step further, where you could actually control the people and their feelings. Spore, also by Maxis, takes it to a whole new level, presenting the chance to take on a single-celled creature to the conquest for a galaxy. Just a few more games like this, developing further every time, and we could create a rudimentary, small simulated civilisation. A few more centuries, if not decades, and we could go far. Eventually, we will be able to simulate a full universe, like our own. The characters would be fully self-controlled, appear to have feelings and common sense.

Are we one of those simulations?

Our universe shows some evidence of it. For instance -- if some of the constant values were slightly higher or lower, the universe wouldn't be here. Like the strength of the bonds that hold particles together. If they were a smidgeon higher, they'd become unstable. If they were a little lower, the particles wouldn't even be together.

So what do you reckon? Will we wake up, one day, to find a big black sign that flashes "Game Over" on and off? Or is everything just a total and complete coincidence, we just happen to be living in a habitable universe with thousands of fragile constant values just right?

Quote:

---

Improbable versus impossible events
William Dembski formulated the universal probability bound, a reformulation of the creationist argument from improbability,[119] which he argues is the smallest probability of anything occurring in the universe over all time at the maximum possible rate. This value, 1 in 10120, represents a revision of his original formula, which set the value of the universal probability bound at 1 in 10150.[120] In 2005 Dembski again revised his definition to be the inverse of the product of two different quantities, 10120 and the variable rank complexity of the event under consideration.[121]

In "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences," John Allen Paulos states that the apparent improbability of a given scenario cannot necessarily be taken as an indication that this scenario is more unlikely than any other potential one: "Rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion [1 in 6 x 1011]. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been [randomly] dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable."[/b]

---

I hope that anwser your question.