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TitaniumDragon comments on Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation (link) - Less Wrong
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It is extremely unlikely that the Universe is a simulation for a wide variety of reasons, foremost amongst them being expense. The level of simulation present in the Universe is sufficiently high that the only purpose of it would BE simulation, meaning that our physical laws would necessarily be quite close to the laws of whatever universe overlies us. However, this implies that building an Earth simulator with the level of fine-grained reality present here would be insanely expensive.
Ergo, it is highly unlikely that we are in a simulation because the amount of matter-energy necessary to generate said simulation is far in excess of any possible benefit for doing so.
[2] does not follow from [1]. The REAL real world might be sufficiently more complex than ours and it can be running thousand of simulations for a variety of reasons. I'm really not sure why you think that our level of simulation or physical laws are as complex as it gets but this is not a valid argument.
For a quick example of what I mean I would like you to think about us full-on simulating a 2 dimnesions(+time) environment.
In the absence of other evidence, could you not use some sort of complexity measure to estimate that, if our universe is being simulated, the simulating universe is more likely to have simpler laws than more complex ones? (And maybe even that having no simulating universe--meaning our universe is not a simulation--is even simpler, and therefore more likely?) But I have no idea what the actual difference in probabilities would be, if you could.
Unless our simulator are fooling us about the expense of computational power.
If the Flying Spaghetti Monster is running the simulation, it is non-falsifiable, but also not worth considering because he can just stick his noodley appendage in and undo any results he doesn't like anyway retroactively. Its not like we would know the difference.
For us to break the fourth wall, either our creators would have to desire it or be pretty bad at running simulations.
..like the ones in The Matri, who allowed its denizens to evolve to knowledge of virtual reality, rather than keeping them at a medieval level, or using the bio-energy of sheep...
But I am more interested in the epistemic mistake people keep making. People keep assuming that it is possible for simulatees to know what is going on outside the simulation (or, equivalently, that basic laws must be same).
"For us to break the fourth wall, either our creators would have to desire it or be pretty bad at running simulations."
There is also the possibility that, assuming we live in a simulation, the creators simply do not care or mind whether they are discovered or not. This would also leave open the possibility of breaking the fourth wall.
Deliberate "fooling" may not even be required. Are Redstone Computers colossal and slow because Notch was trying to deceive some Minecraft denizens? It seems to simply be a necessary fact of "emulation" that any computer built out of physics X is going to be no faster than the computer required to simulate physics X.
How could you possibly know what kinds of things are expensive in a universe that can simulate ours?
What matters is not knowledge but probability. Is it likely that something as complicated as our Universe would be simulated?
Is it likely that they would simulate something with vastly different rules than their own universe with such a high level of complexity?
It is possible that the Universe is a simulation, but it is highly improbable due to the difficulty and complexity inherent to doing so. Creating something of this level of complexity for non-simulation purposes is unlikely.
It is of course impossible to disprove it absolutely, but it doesn't really matter. You cannot disprove the FSM or a sufficiently dedicated staff making you believe that reality is real when they're actually setting it up around you, but it really doesn't matter because it is non-falsifiable.
If there is no reason to believe in something, then it is incorrect to believe in it, even if it happens to be true.
Reference Dwarf Fortress.