Do We Live in a Simulation?

From my perspective, this appears to be some kind of mental illness on their part (where by “mental illness” I mean that their fundamental understanding of the world is so dissociated from reality that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry).

At best, it is an attempt to bring supernaturalism back by the front door. At worse, as mentioned, it is mental illness, secondary or primary dissociation from reality.

I should mention my friend Harry here. He suffered from primary dissociation, so much so that he once traveled to the White House to become Ronald Reagan’s science advisor. Only, Reagan already had a science advisor, and Harry ended up in jail. When he got the opportunity, he called me and gave me his star coordinates.

“What am I supposed to do with these numbers”, I asked.

“Give them to Captain Kirk and the Star Ship Enterprise will rescue me,” Harry pleaded.

“Harry, I don’t have a way to do that,” I tried to explain.

He was pretty exasperated with me. He told me to repeat the coordinates to the TV set when Star Trek was on, and tell them Harry needed to be rescued. He knew they would respond immediately.

From my perspective this was problematic, and not just because the star coordinates lacked enough significant digits to adequately specify Harry’s location in the galaxy. As I saw it, Captain Kirk did not have real existence, since he only existed as a fictional character within a simulation created by my brain (and, yes, Harry’s brain contained a similar simulation with a fictional Captain Kirk, but only because we had watched the same tv show).

But Harry’s perspective differed from mine. Everything his brain imagined was real to him. Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise existed within his mind and the minds of other people, therefore they were very real.

Harry also used to chide me for denying the reality of cartoon characters (the most oppressed minority of all, he said).

The problem wasn’t (I tried to explain to him) that I denied the existence of fictional characters; indeed, I affirmed their existence in our imaginations. The problem was that, there, within the simulation created by human brain, that was the only place fictional characters existed.

In contrast, I told Harry, actual physical entities existed outside our brain’s simulations as well as within. Yes, real entities did usually have a simulation version in addition to their actual existence in the physical world, but to conflate the two was to become, well, mentally ill.

Harry never agreed, of course. But then he spent most of his time in mental hospitals or half-way homes.

It is embarrassing to see scientists entertaining the same confusions which beset Harry.

So, a simple reality check:

1. Physical things can’t be brought into existence by a computer program or by any kind of mind or even by a complex of thoughts. To think otherwise is pure supernaturalism. It’s a silly belief in primitive word magic.

2. The simulation (simulacrum is my preferred term) does exist—inside us. It’s created by our brains, and is composed of sensory and knowledge sensations that the brain creates. This simulacrum is commonly mistaken for the physical world around us. It’s not.

3. Objects, properties, causes, and all the other artifacts of knowledge belong to, and are part of, the brain’s simulacrum. They are not actual components of the physical world.

4. Therefore we never “know” the physical world. We know the simulacrum that our brain creates for us.

5. This is not a problem for science. Indeed, it explains why the scientific method—unlike any other method of knowledge—is so successful.

6. Science could not be successful if an actual physical world did not exist outside of our brain’s simulacrum. Point-of-view invariance (to use Victor Stenger’s term for scientific objectivity) would not be achievable. (Our dreams, for example, defy any effort at point-of-view invariance.)

Bottom line, this article in Scientific American is pseudo-science. Pretty embarrassing.