The redneck strike again.

[Angrboda]

The physicists who think we might be in a computer simulation do have a rational reason for thinking it.

Cosmic rays offer clue our universe could be a computer simulation

If such an investigation does look consistent with a simulator lattice, then that could mean several things. It could show us that there's a boundary out there consistent with Beane et al's hypothesis, and it works a bit like the one we'd expect if we were living inside a simulator based on the same principles as one we would also build. It could be, though, that we're incorrectly interpreting evidence of certain fundamental laws we are as yet unfamiliar with. It could even be that this isn't evidence at all for a simulator, as a real lattice might work in a different way to how we would envision it.

"If"

The problem I find with digital philosophy is that it suggests that a higher level reality would be constrained by how things work in a lower level reality when there's no reason to make that assumption. That our computational models have these limits is no reason to suppose that if the universe were a simulation, those running the simulation would be under similar constraints. It's like imagining that the "creator" of the universe must be like a bearded white guy because that is the model creators follow within the creation. Even if the behavior of our universe were consistent with the hypothesis, that wouldn't be evidence the universe behaves this way because the hypothesis is true. That would require either falsifiable predictions, or some insight into the reason why the laws of this simulation are the way they are, and, if we're a simulation, there's no reason to believe we'd have access to those reasons.

In a sense, digital philosophy is similar to where cognitive science was a few decades ago. The computer was the best model we had for a "thinking engine," and so, it was projected that the thinking brain would have features in common with computers. This was a reasoning, based on analogy, that turned out not to be fruitful. Even in respects to the way the brain behaves like a computer, it is only an analogy, not the reality. The brain isn't a computer (in the traditional, von Neuman sense), and the speculation that it was "like" a computer was fueled by relying too heavily on reasoning from known models of computation to the unknown. In the same way, digital philosophy is reasoning from known models to the unknown, the underlying reasons for the laws of nature. It's not likely to be more fruitful than, say, as a scaffold for speculation and hypothesis.