For me, it started with so-called quantum entanglement, where two particles seem to react to each other in a functional way with the state of one changing instantaneously along with a change in the other one with distance between them making no difference whatsoever.
There is currently no explanation for this phenomenon, though it immediately occurred to that one possibility would be if time and space aren’t real.
One way for time and space to be unreal, in a sense, is if we (as in The Matrix movies) are actually living in a program, a simulation. The following video is seriously dumbed down, which is good in a sense for those of us without advanced degrees in physics. You might want to comment on the quasi(pseudo?)-theological musings at the end.
This is not an idea that only a moron could believe in, geniuses like the physicist Max Tegmark, the polymath Elon Musk, and the sci fi writer Philip K. Dick are all proponents of the idea that reality is a simulation. People who study consciousness understand that the world we experience is a simulation presented to or constructed in our mind as a way of interpreting our incoming sensory data. For example, color is in the mind. There is no color in a world with no creature to see it. You can be sure it’s much the same with the other senses (think of the tree falling in the forest with nothing to hear it).
That reality isn’t real got something of a boost in the latest Nobel Prize for Physics:
One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. (The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It)
Why do you think there is no explanation for quantum entanglement? Seriously, quantum theory is older than I am, and I am an increasingly Old Fart. What you are likely trying to say is that quantum entanglement doesn’t comport with our often naive views of the universe, and you’re therefore confused. It happens to all of us! The universe is bloody confusing (but at least it’s not boring)!
You are mixing up some ideas about the universe being a simulation, however. Tegmark is making a narrow and highly mathematical claim based on the quantum nature of “reality”… essentially saying that the universe is a simulation because it’s like a computer monitor with limited resolution. That’s quite a bit different from a cognition perspective where “reality” is constructed in each individual’s mind (or is socially constructed among people). I haven’t read Dick so can’t comment on that, and who knows what Elon Musk is talking about.
Unseen 1 year, 7 months ago.
Not watched the last 25 minutes yet. I posted it when I saw your post. More later….
