Why I Don't Buy the Simulation Hypothesis (Nor Materialism)

All right. Thank you all for coming out  tonight. If you don't know me, I'm Michael  

Barnwell. I'm director of the University  Honors Program. And tonight is our annual  

Peggy and John Day University Honors Lecture  Series event. This event started in 2017 with  

a gift from the Day family. Peggy, or Margaret,  she goes by Peggy, Margaret Peggy Ranft Day was  

a 1977 graduate of Niagara University, and she  was on the varsity tennis team. She was on the  

volleyball team. She was a photo editor for  the yearbook and the newspaper. And after she  

left Niagara in 1977 with a degree in natural  sciences, she went on to become a lawyer. She's  

become a guardian ad litem for children in need.  She's served on the board of Special Olympics of  

Vermont. And she has been a Board of Trustee  member at Niagara University for, I think,  

2006 to 2015, so almost a nine-year stint  as a member of the Board of Trustees.

She and her husband John have been great  supporters of Niagara University establishing  

scholarships, and as I said, in 2017 they  established this lecture series. So a huge  

thanks to Peggy and John and the Day family for  establishing this. If we can give them a hand.

And because of their gift, I was able to bring in  someone I'm super excited about. Curt Jaimungal  

is a trained mathematical physicist from the  University of Toronto. He dabbled in stand-up  

comedy. This led to his filmmaking career where  he's been a producer, a writer, and a director.  

He has a 10,000-person Substack, and he's best  known to me anyway for being the podcast host,  

or being the host of the podcast Theories  of Everything, which if you're like me,  

I was looking for podcasts about theories of  everything. I'm sure you are like that. And  

years ago, I heard his podcast, and when I knew  I could invite anybody this year, I reached out  

and luckily he said yes, which he told me he  usually does not accept these invitations.

But I think I know why he accepted this, because  his previous podcast right before today, if you go  

on his YouTube channel, which will be up, if you  want his YouTube channel or his podcast channel,  

his previous podcast was with David Deutsch.  And if you don't know who David Deutsch is,  

he's probably the most premier physicist in the  world today. If you've heard of quantum computing,  

he's credited with being the father or the  inventor of quantum computing. And his very  

next podcast to come out is with Roger Penrose,  who was a Nobel laureate, is a Nobel laureate,  

and was Stephen Hawking's dissertation advisor. So  not a student of Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking  

was a student of him. So in between probably  the two most famous physicists alive today,  

it only made sense for him to come to Niagara  University to deliver the Day University Honors  

Lecture Series. So I'm happy that he accepted  the invitation. We're happy to have him here.

Now, as some of you know, I kind of want to  convince you that we live in a simulation.  

So when Curt asked me what we should talk  about, what he should talk about, I'm like,  

well, let's talk about simulation theory.  Let's talk about materialism, panpsychism,  

different theories of reality. So I do regret to  inform you that he did tell me that we will only  

be talking about materialism and simulation theory  tonight. So all of you panpsychists out there,  

and I know who you are, we will not be touching  panpsychism or idealism per se. But anyway,  

he's known for building up theories but also  unfortunately for me, known for taking down  

theories. And I think that's what he's  going to do tonight to both physicalism,  

which some of us like, or materialism, and  unfortunately, for my sake, to simulation theory.

And if you're not clear what  simulation theory is, basically,  

I mean, I'm not in bad company. Some of the big  thinkers believe we live in a simulation. The  

idea is that maybe instead of this reality being  real, we're actually in a big computer game. And  

just like your characters in your Sims games or  your Madden football games or your Fortnite games,  

just like they bump into things and have  to walk around things and they get hurt and  

they act according to the laws of physics and  everything in those games seem real to them,  

there are some very strong arguments, which I  think Curt will go over, that our whole existence  

is really a big simulation. And so if you've taken  me in my class, I've tried to encourage you to  

think that the chances we live in one are higher  than most. If you've seen the movie The Matrix,  

The Matrix is kind of a simulation theory kind of  idea. So anyway, that's what we're going to hear  

about tonight. We're going to hear about whether  we're in a simulation or whether we're just in a  

plain old boring material world with stuff. And  well, let's hope that's not true. So anyway,  

with no further ado, I turn it over to Curt  Jaimungal. Curt, thank you for joining us tonight.

Thank you. You all have a lovely campus.  Now, I feel terrible because, Michael,  

you asked me to come give this. You told me,  you confided in me that you like the simulation  

hypothesis as I was looking into it. So anytime  someone says, “Do you believe so-and-so?” Who  

cares about what so-and-so is, you want to  know what are the arguments for so-and-so,  

and do those arguments, do they land? I was  going through some of the arguments for the  

simulation hypothesis, and I'm going  to explain why I don't buy into them,  

and same with physicalism, which  some people know as materialism.

Firstly, what line here do you see as longer?  Now, forget about these little arrows on the  

side. Just speaking about the lines. Option one  is the top line. Option two is the bottom line is  

clearly larger. Option three is, oh, they're the  same size. Who says the top line is larger? Raise  

your hand. Okay. Who says they see the bottom line  is larger? Raise your hand. Who says they're the  

same size? Raise your hand. Okay. So all you  people who said that they're the same size,  

you are lying to me because I tricked you. So  I made this such that the top one is slightly  

larger because I knew, so I watch Judge  Judy every night. And Judge Judy said,  

she says this all the time. She says,  “It's going to be so much easier if  

you're honest with me.” So this is going  to be interactive. You've seen this before,  

and you're pre-thinking, okay, I know this  illusion. No, you saw the top one as larger.

So there are some mistakes that only intellectuals  make. For instance, what just occurred. Also,  

intellectuals like to say, “between you  and I,” it's supposed to be me. They apply  

Gödel's theorem indiscriminately. I have a video  about that. They'll say this begs the question,  

but they mean this raises the question. And  another mistake intellectuals tend to make is  

that they believe the Matrix was a documentary.  This part is true. It happens to me all the time.

Okay, I speak to people on this podcast  about their theories of everything,  

their theories of reality. And roughly speaking,  it comes down to monism, which means that there's  

all just one single fundamental substance. What  that substance is differs from thinker to thinker  

or theorizer or philosopher to philosopher.  So one route is to think all there is is just  

matter. And that's called materialism. You may  have heard that term. There's also materialism,  

which means you're materialistic, which means  you buy clothing and so forth. That's not what  

this is referring to. This just means that all  there is is this dead matter. This has been  

rebranded to physicalism because fermions  are what matter is, physically speaking,  

in terms of physics, and there's also photons  like bosons and so forth. So you have to rebrand  

it to physicalism. So Kanye rebranded to  Ye. It's not clear even here. Similarly,  

is that an improvement? Is that indicative of  a breakdown? So we're going to explore that.

The next route is idealism, which  says that you front-load the mind. So  

actually there's just one substance  and all it is is somehow mental.  

The world is made of consciousness. Who here is  a materialist? Okay, who here is an idealist?  

So I didn't know before I started this podcast,  there's like an unspoken, there's a tension  

between you two and there's like the, it's like  the Bloods and the Crips. And then there's the  

panpsychists who are these wide-eyed kids from  the community center who's trying to say, “No,  

everyone, you all believe in the same thing. It's  all…” Okay, then there's dualism, which says, no,  

there are two substances. And to most philosophers  who are educated, they tend to think of that as a  

synonym for, you're just an 18th-century imbecile,  because we've moved on from dualism. Then there's  

people who believe that there's a simulated  reality. So reality is a computer simulation,  

like how a video game imitates reality. When you  believe in this, that's called the simulation  

hypothesis. We are going to focus on two,  physicalism and the simulation hypothesis.

So this is a video game and I'm going to try  to, I'm noticing the audience is quite young.  

So this is Taylor Swift, this yellow one. And then  these are the other ones. These guys are Swifties,  

and so that's what this is imitating,  okay, poorly from the 1980s. This is,  

for the millennials, just your boss, like  your fantasies of what you want to do.  

Then there is this, which is a recent video game  of what you Americans think of when I say I came  

from Toronto. You picture this. So, look, 1980s,  1991, 2025. This is the mythology that people who  

believe in the simulation hypothesis want you  to accept. Look, video games are increasing in  

their fidelity, in their graphical content.  It's not unreasonable to think in 10 years,  

in 100, in 200 years' time, we're going to get  to something that is indistinguishable from this  

world. If that's the case, then do we know that  we're in this world? Or perhaps we're already  

in a simulation? There is also the other argument  that, okay, sure, graphical quality has increased,  

but bugs have also increased. If anyone here  plays video games, this is from Starfield.

Hey, watch it! Careful! Are you alive, bud?  

Welcome to the GalBank archives.  May I see your credentials, please?

Now that last guy, when I was crossing the  border, I think I saw someone that looked just so,  

maybe that's not a glitch. So what is the  simulation hypothesis? It's that our experience  

is a computational process running in a substrate  external to our universe in something analogous  

to a sophisticated simulation. Experience has  to do with conscious experience. Computational  

process is something that a Turing machine can  do. So a Turing machine is just something that  

reads zeros and ones and then changes them. And  it's quite remarkable that this screen here and  

your cell phones, all of that just comes down  to zero and one manipulations. Simulation means  

to imitate the causal structure of reality.  So what is this substrate referring to? Well,  

who the heck knows? What does something  analogous mean here? Who the heck knows?  

And what is this causal structure  being referred to? Who the heck knows?

So let's get to some quotations to build our  intuition. “Our creator isn't especially spooky.  

It's just some teenage hacker in the next universe  up.” That comes from philosopher David Chalmers,  

essentially saying that God is an incel. Which  I think that's from Aquinas. That's actually a  

quotation, Summa contra, book three, chapter  eight. “If you assume any rate of improvement  

at all, games will be indistinguishable from  reality.” It's Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson,  

of course. “I wish I could summon a strong  argument against it, but I just can't find any.”  

So let's help poor Neil out here, as Lord knows  he could use some philosophical sophistication.

First, speaking of mathematical sophistication,  does anyone know, is this true, that any rate  

of improvement at all would have you tend to  infinity? Something, if you keep adding a positive  

number, does it always then result in positive  infinity? Does anyone here know the answer?  

No. No, okay. So, correct. Okay, this is from the  channel called Math vs Science. If you add a half  

plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a thirty-second  plus a sixty-fourth and so forth, you think, well,  

it's just going to constantly increase and why  won't it get to infinity? This is a visual proof  

that it doesn't. Now, mathematicians don't like  visual proofs, but there's an algebraic proof as  

well. But this gets your intuition going.  Okay, so Elon is incorrect that any rate  

of improvement at all would mean that you  get to something that's indistinguishable.

Why believe in the simulation hypothesis? Well,  some people say there are glitches. This world  

is quite odd. Some people have experiences.  There's such a thing as the Mandela effect,  

maybe you've heard of it, where large swaths of  people all believe the same false memory. NHI,  

which is related to non-human intelligence,  stands for non-human intelligence, related  

to UAPs and UFOs. Some people say, if we were  in a simulation, we would expect all of this  

oddness that reality has. Some people say, look,  in physics, we have quantum mechanics, which says  

that a particle has no position until it collapses  after you've measured it. So that reminds them of  

rendering. Because in video games, you may  not know this, but it's extremely expensive  

to run these simulations. What they do in video  games is they see where's the player looking,  

because there's always a perspective, a  camera, and then they render only that.  

And what's behind you and on the sides and so  forth, that's not rendered. And these sim babies,  

these simulated babies, they imitate video games,  and so you only render what people observe,  

and that saves computational resources. These are  the reasons to believe that we're in a simulation.

Nick Bostrom, a philosopher, has an argument, a  statistical argument. This is the strongest, that  

look, if our future civilizations have sim babies,  create these little simulations, which have  

consciousness in them, then the probability that  we are in a simulation, given that we can observe  

anything, is near 100%. I'll get into the reasons  why, but it has to do with something called the  

principle of indifference, which says that we're  a typical member of this large group. Most of the  

people in this group are simulators. If you count  them, then we are most likely in a simulation. And  

of course, you can have recursive simulations.  So once you create a simulation and these people  

here in this simulation are conscious, here base  reality, whatever that is, creates SimBaby number  

one, and then that one can create a hundred other  sims, and that one can create a thousand other  

simulations and so forth, until you get down to  us, which I've just placed here as 99,123,157.

So what are the counter-arguments  to what I've just laid out? Okay,  

let's take this one. Glitches and NHI provide  positive evidence. So we would expect to see  

them if we were in a simulation. Now, is this  the case? This is making an error in Bayesian  

inference. So what this person is doing by making  this statement is saying the probability that we  

would see this evidence given the hypothesis  that we're in a simulation is high. Therefore,  

we're in a simulation. By that logic, if you were  immortal, surely you would expect to be alive  

right now. You are alive right now, therefore  what? Are we to conclude that you are immortal?  

So if there was an evil demon that possessed  your cat and you would expect to see the behavior  

that your cat knocks off fragile items off of a  countertop. You see that behavior. Does that mean  

your cat is satanic? So you get the idea. This  is supposed to be flipped. You're not supposed  

to look at what maximizes the evidence given the  hypothesis, you're supposed to look at what is the  

probability of this hypothesis given some piece  of evidence. Okay, so that's using faulty logic.

It's also not clear to me that you should expect  near-death experiences and these synchronicities  

and these other glitches that the proponents  of the simulation hypothesis say should exist  

if we're in a simulation. So firstly, the fact  that something is "consistent with"... so sure,  

these Mandela effects, these synchronicities,  these odd near-death experiences, and so forth,  

are "consistent with" a simulation. That  doesn't translate to "we should *expect*  

to see them if there's a simulation." Secondly,  there are reasons to expect the contrary. Well,  

if graphical fidelity is increasing  with time, then why aren't glitches  

decreasing with time? Or if we want to go the  other route, where I just showed Starfield,  

why are the glitches of the sort where some group  of people have inconsistent memories? Why aren't  

they where this table just disappears or Michael  starts floating and clips through the wall? Those  

are the sorts of glitches I would expect to  see. Okay, so I don't buy reason number one.

How about reason number two about  observers rendering when measured  

because of quantum weirdness? Now, anytime  someone makes an appeal to quantum mechanics,  

that should always raise your… Well, should  be dubious. This is highly debated. Firstly,  

this assumes a certain collapse model of quantum  mechanics. And not only does it assume collapse,  

it assumes that the measurer collapses  or conscious observer collapses.  

There are other interpretations of quantum  mechanics where you have spontaneous collapses.  

So you don't need a person to collapse  something. Okay, so this is highly debated.

So next, what about these sim babies that they  imitate video games and they only render what's  

observed? Yes, okay, but video games render  consistent histories. I don't know if anyone  

here has played No Man's Sky. Has anyone played  No Man's Sky? Great. There's a whole universe  

worth of planets in No Man's Sky, and it's  quote-unquote procedurally generated. However,  

if two players visit the same planet, it is the  same planet. So there are consistent histories.  

This contradicts the Mandela effects. Also,  if the whole point was that you're rendering  

only what a player observes, look, in video  games, you don't render what's behind you,  

what's at the side of you. But in collapse models  of physics, once something has been observed,  

it collapses forever, everywhere for everyone.  So that contradicts the previous collapse model.

What about the saving on computational  resources? Okay, our reality uses quantum  

mechanics. It doesn't use classical  Turing machines. Like I mentioned,  

there's these zeros and ones and you rewrite  them. That's called classical computation.  

But our rules of reality are quantum.  So why are we not rendering classically?  

Classical computations are far, far more  efficient than a quantum computation. Also,  

why is the universe so large? Why is so much  engendered? If we're trying to save on resources,  

why is there such creation? Does our parent  universe have an Engender and Diversity Office?

Okay, what about this computer? So what does  computer mean? The simulation hypothesis keeps  

making appeals to "we're in a computer  simulation." We've already said, well,  

they say, sorry, this is the proponent  of the simulation hypothesis. "Well,  

let's imagine it's a classical computer." No,  this reality doesn't run by classical rules. Okay,  

so they say, "well, let's just imagine it's  a quantum computer." Okay, but we also know  

quantum mechanics is not the final theory because  there's gravity, so it should be something that  

combines the two called quantum gravity. So is  it a quantum gravitic computer? Then there are  

various types of quantum gravity. So is it a  loop quantum gravity computer? Is it a string  

computer? Let's suppose it's a string theory  computer. Is it string theory or is it going  

to be super string theory because that's their  supersymmetry in the world, supposedly? And then,  

okay, but what about beyond that? Then if we find  out that it's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious  

string theory computer? Like what are… Is this  philosophy? Is this what counts as philosophy  

now? Like, let's just imagine… Let me give  you… Let's imagine a black hole was your  

second cousin and Neptune was your face cream.  "Oh, you're so insightful, Curt. Like, oh, man!"  

So this sounds like… To me, it's a tautology.  It's just saying this simulation will work if we  

assume there's a machine that can make it work.  Okay, so I'm not terribly convinced of that.

How about Bostrom's statistical argument? I'm  sorry, Michael. If civilizations have these  

sim babies, then the probability that we're in  a simulation, given the fact that we are alive,  

that we can observe something, is near 100%. Okay,  before we get into that, this argument relies on  

something called the principle of indifference. It  turns out most people believe in the principle of  

indifference. But let me give you some reasons to  not. So if you have a six-sided die, what are the  

chances that you roll a six? Who has an idea about  that? What are the chances that you roll a six on  

a six-sided die? Raise your hand. One out of six.  One out of six. Great. Okay, and of course we're  

assuming that I'm not tricking you, even though  I displayed a history of tricking you all, and  

we're assuming the die is not weighted. Okay, but  now what if I say, okay, there are two options.  

Either the die is going to land on something  that is five or greater than five or it's going  

to land on something that's four or less than  four. Okay, so there are two options here. Now,  

what is the chance that it lands on a six? Do you  still say one in six? Okay, so most people think  

intuitively, yes. However, I've just partitioned  it such that there are two options. So we think,  

we say this. So you know Bob Lazar. You've heard  of Bob Lazar. I may take this out of the final.  

How many people here know who Bob Lazar is? Okay,  Bob Lazar said, oh, what was it? He said something  

about, oh, gosh, it was something about plutonium  or something. He made some claim that "this  

so-and-so exists." And then someone said, "oh, it  was later proved to be true!" And then he said,  

"well, there was a 50-50 chance because it was  either true or not true." Okay, that's not,  

just because there's two options, it doesn't mean  that it's a 50-50 chance. Here I just gave you two  

options. It's either five or greater than five,  or four and less than four. Those are two sets.

Okay. Van Fraassen has a great rebuttal.  It's quite subtle. So he says, look,  

let's imagine there's a factory. This factory  makes cubes. The cubes are anywhere from zero  

feet in length to one foot in length, in the  side length. You go in here with your arm and  

you pick out a cube. What are the chances that  the cube that you have has a side length of 0.5  

or less? Intuitively we think, well, that's  50 percent. But then you could say, well,  

what are the chances that the area of one of the  sides is 0.5 feet squared or less? And you can do  

this and you get inconsistent results. Okay, so  the principle of indifference is quite dubious.  

Now this argument that Bostrom gives relies  on the principle of indifference. Okay,  

here I didn't explain why. So the argument is,  look, every single person, let's just imagine  

every single person here except one is base  reality. Let's imagine Michael's base reality.  

And he created his wife and you created three  other people and so forth. So everyone else  

is a simulation. Then you think, what are the  chances that… I already told you Michael's base,  

so that unfortunately spoils this. One  person here, you don't know it's Michael,  

one person here is base reality and created the  rest of you. And you think, what are the chances  

that I am in the real reality versus created? You  think, well, it's however many people there are  

here, let's say there's 50 people, so then there's  one person's real, so it's 50 out of 51 and most  

likely simulated. That's how the principle of  indifference goes. But again, it's dubious.

Okay, then there are also some reasons to say that  we're not a typical member, so the principle of  

indifference relies on something that you're  a typical member of. I said here there's base  

reality, there's sim 1, sim 2, and so forth, and  you get down to us. But then I placed a little  

arrow here, and I put a dot dot dot. We are so  far not capable of making simulations that are  

conscious. So this arrow with a dot dot dot should  not be there. Thus, we're actually at the end of  

this tale, which makes us not typical, which means  the principle of indifference that Bostrom relies  

on doesn't work. Note, many of these points  get particularly technical and I didn't want  

to fatten my slides as I personally prefer slim  slides. I also don't want to be accused of slide  

shaming. So the full notes as well as full  slides are on my Substack, curtjaimungal.com

Also, my undergrad, I studied theoretical physics.  I'm not great with my hands. I don't know how to  

build. Like, this is astounding. I could never  do any of this. I had an engineering friend in  

a neighboring university, and I asked him  a question that I thought was reasonable.  

He said it was foolish, but it had to do  with putting something into a car. I said,  

“Why isn't this feature in a car?” I don't  recall what it was. And then he said, “Curt,  

every time you put something new into a  product, you've created another point of  

failure.” And I thought, oh, okay, I thought  that wouldn't have occurred to me. You can  

manipulate equations all you like and you  don't think about points of failure. However,  

if we look at this now, this base reality creates  sim, creates sim 2, and so on and so forth.  

If there's a failure at any one of these, say sim  5, let's say sim 5 crashes, everyone else crashes,  

that cascades downward. Turns out Keith Harris  and others have calculated this and they've  

redone even with Bostrom's own assumptions of the  principle of indifference and so forth and got  

this down from the 99% to something like 10%. So  I remain unconvinced of the simulation hypothesis.

What about physicalism? So what is physicalism?  Everything supervenes on the physical. Let's just,  

so in philosophy, and you always have to use the  word supervenes at some point, and people think,  

"oh, you're so clever, like, you know what you're  talking about." So let's just forget about that,  

because it turns out supervenience-physicalism,  has a form of dualism that people who are  

physicalists don't enjoy. It entails the  possibility of a dualism. And remember,  

those are 18th-century, obtuse, uneducated people,  at least that's what they think. So attempt number  

two is you completely fix all the facts, the  physical facts, including mental phenomena, and  

then all the physical facts fix the rest of the  facts. And you know this is legitimate, and it's  

getting serious because they bust out the Greek  symbols and that always increases your credibility  

as you look like a mathematician. And of course  we'll have more attempts. So you would be right  

to be like this guy and wonder, when you say the  word physical, what is it precisely that you mean?

So let's get some quotes to get our  intuitions going. Francis Crick said,  

“You're nothing but a pack of neurons.” “The  brain secretes thought like the liver secretes  

bile.”  And the next one's from comedian  Emo Philips. “I used to think the brain  

was the most fascinating part of the body. Then  I realized, well, look who's telling me that.”

Why believe in physicalism? Well, our  scientific theories are improving. Physics,  

physical theories, physics theories are  getting better and better. Physics theories  

are converging. They're converging on the truth.  The true theory. And physics gives the unique  

description of reality. Point number two, this is  just a restatement of the definition of physical,  

but a complete physical description  fixes all the rest of the facts. So  

we have consciousness and so forth, but that's  all fixed by the physical facts. There's nothing  

more to reality than just these physical facts.  Physical facts are, by the way, third-person,  

so they're not expressed from your point of view,  and they determine everything else. Of course,  

we can put an asterisk around determine because  there's randomness. That doesn't make a difference  

here. Quote-unquote physical is fortunately  clearly defined. So there's a sharp distinction  

between the physical and mental. Many people  will just collapse the mental to the physical,  

of course. Physics is the study of the physical,  and physics is getting at the fundamental theory.

Now, almost every counter to a physicalist or a  materialist, but like I mentioned, there's some  

rebranding that's going on, tends to come from  an idealist perspective or consciousness-based  

perspective. So the physicalist doesn't buy into  that because they already don't believe in the  

axioms of the other person. They tend to speak  past one another. I will show you some arguments  

then, if you're a physicalist, that are not from  this consciousness perspective. So our scientific  

theories are improving. Let's tackle that.  Physicists, okay, look, if you're a physicist,  

you need to be rigorous. When we say a theory is  progressively getting better, what do we mean?  

Let's imagine we have theory A, which has been  superseded by theory B, and theory C is better  

than theory B. Can we conclude that theory C  is better than theory A? Who says yes? Raise  

your hand. Be honest. Okay, who says no? We  cannot conclude this. Raise your hand. Okay,  

why can't we conclude it? Probably forgot about  things in theory A once you're into theory D, and  

so you forgot about things theory A was helping  once you created theory C. Okay, let's imagine  

perfect memory. There's nothing about forgetting  here. Does anyone have a reason why Theory C would  

not be better than Theory A? Okay, well, there's  something called Efron's Dice, and in the interest  

of time, I'll place a link on screen and in the  description. There are die (so single of "dice")  

so die A, die B, die C, that where die A can beat  die B, die B can beat die C, but die C loses to  

die A. In fact, you see this with "soo sum see"  or "rock, paper, scissors." Rock beats scissors,  

paper beats rock, but then scissors beats paper.  So I may be a minority, but I think our theories  

are far more complex than a die and certainly far  more complex than rock, paper, scissors. So you  

cannot conclude this. This is a certain property  called transitivity, in case you're wondering.

What about physical theories are converging on the  true theory? Again, physicists, we're trying to be  

rigorous here. What does convergence mean? Unless  there's a mathematician or some mathematicians and  

physicists in the audience, you may not know  what this word, the following word means, but  

there's something called a topology that you need  in order to establish that something's converging.  

And it's not clear what is this topology  on the space of all theories. Furthermore,  

you would need to know the true theory to begin  with to know that you're converging toward it.

Okay, what about physics gives the  unique description of reality? Okay,  

but in physics, there are plenty of dualities.  So dual descriptions, two theories that look  

completely different, but they're the same  physics. There's also something else that's  

rarer called trialities, but you can even imagine  a quadrality and so forth. It's not clear there  

is a "the" unique description. Now, the counter  to what I just said would be, "well, look, Curt,  

in the final theory, the dualities would disappear  and we'd just get this single little guy here,  

this little theory, perfect theory." Even without  dualities, this problem of the unique description  

of reality ontologically persists. So you've all  heard of the "Is and Ought Gap." It's not clear  

how to go from how the state of the universe is  to what we should do. I think there's something  

called, well, I'm coining it, called "The Formula  To is Gap." You can't look at a formula and then  

infer what is the reality this formula is  describing. One of the reasons is that there  

are multiple metaphysics that are compatible  with any given formula or set of formulae.

Okay, now here's another one that I haven't heard  before. So the physicalist believes that this  

is something like our brain. There are these  neurons and there are these directed graphs,  

so these edges that have arrows and there's  some information processing going on and  

I've simplified it. But this is our brain.  Presumably, if you lose a single neuron,  

you're still conscious. And that happens all  the time. You lose neurons all the time. So  

presumably, this little subset here is conscious.  Presumably, if you lose a different neuron,  

you would still be conscious. Presumably,  that would also be conscious. That would  

also be conscious. But these are all within your  brain already. So are you saying that there are  

these nested hierarchies of infinite overlapping  consciousnesses in you currently? It's quite odd.

So, I don't believe the first point.  The second point, the complete physical  

description fixes all facts. Third-person  physical facts determine everything. Okay,  

not exactly. Christian List in 2023 articulated  something called the first indexical argument  

against physicalism. It's quite thorny and in  the interest of time, I will put these slides  

in the description and I'll also be editing  this and placing it online so you can see  

and you can go through this if you like. I'm  not going to read this, but to summarize it,  

it just says that physical facts describe all  observers equally. However, it cannot ever  

describe which one "I" am. Now, you're supposed to  read that, not as Curt, but you. When you say "I",  

which of these physical facts are you picking  out and how? Okay, so I don't buy number two.

What about physics is fortunately clearly defined?  Okay, so this one, this argument here is not a  

sharp philosophical argument, but it will work  on the naive, the person who's naive in their  

philosophical training, which happens to be most  hard-nosed physicists. So this will work on most  

physicists. It's not a slant at them because most  philosophers are naive physicists, and so forth,  

we can't all be experts at everything. That's  a simulation resource constraint. So let's see  

here. Some people say the mental, if you ask the  hard-nosed skeptic, what is consciousness? They'll  

be like, “Don't talk to me about consciousness.  That's ill-defined, unfalsifiable mysticism,  

it's incoherent, it's meaningless, it's nonsense.”  Yet at the same time, one of the definitions of  

physicalism is physical is what is not mental.  Or notice earlier when we knocked on this,  

we said this is physical because it's dead matter,  which means you would have to contrast it with the  

alive matter. And if by alive you mean something  that has these experiences, these feelings, but  

you're not able to define that, then you've used  in your definition of physics something which is  

ill-defined. So your original definition of  physics inherits all of this ill-definedness.

What about physics as the study of the  physical? Well, most of you can probably  

see this is a circular definition. Let's define  physics in terms of the physical. And what about  

the fundamental theory? Now this, there's a  philosopher named Hempel from the 1960s who  

articulated this objection. If we're saying that  the physical is what current physics describes.  

Firstly, there are many interpretations of  quantum mechanics. We don't know what are  

the quote-unquote beables, what is quantum  mechanics referring to. We don't know that,  

but let's assume we did. We still don't have the  final theory now. We don't have the standard model  

mixed with general relativity or particle physics  mixed with gravity. We don't know how to solve the  

measurement problem. There's dark matter, there's  massive neutrinos, and so forth. So no one thinks,  

almost no one thinks current physics is final.  So when we're saying it's the physicals,  

whatever physics describes, then are we  saying it's the future ideal physics,  

the completed physics? But then this actually just  becomes undefined. What do you mean? Even worse,  

"future physics" could conceivably include  irreducible mental properties. It's conceivable,  

and that's something that the  physicalist wants to avoid.

So I happen to think definitions matter.  Comedian Mitch Hedberg asked this. “Is a  

hippopotamus a hippopotamus, or  just a really cool apotamus?”  

Those are two different things. Thus,  I remain unconvinced of physicalism.

Now is there hope? This is a Catholic university,  so Christ saves all. Does Christ save all  

arguments? Saves all people? What about arguments?  Eh, sort of. You can always save something  

by addendums. So you can always add to your  definition of what the simulation hypothesis is,  

"well, what if we add this condition?" "What if we  add this to physicalism?" "And what if we add this  

nuance?" You use the word "nuance" when you're  positively disposed to it. You say "fanciness" 

when you're not. I started to go through this,  and there was something like 60 other parts  

that you have to buy if you want to buy into  the simulation hypothesis and physicalism.

So comedian Colin Quinn said this. He said,  we're constantly getting told or getting  

bullied into buying what we don't want to buy.  So you're with your friend. Your friend says,  

“Hey, do you want some wings? You're going to  eat some wings if I order wings?” You're like,  

“No, I don't really eat wings.” “Yeah,  but you'll have one or two, right?” “Yeah,  

I'll have one or two.” “Okay, we'll give  four dozen wings. We'll split the check.”

That's what's happening here. You thought all  I'm going to order is this simple simulation  

hypothesis, the simple physicalism. No,  there's so much more that goes along with it.

So I agree with the greatest philosopher  of our time about reality and simulations,  

which imitate. The greatest philosopher of  our time to conclude is of course Marshall  

Mathers. I believe him when he says, “I'm Slim  Shady, yes I'm the real shady, and all you other  

Slim Shadies are just imitating.” Now I would  add the extra bars. It could be y'all are sim  

babies. Because ontology has been underdetermined  lately. Perhaps the truth is physicalism. Maybe.

Thank you.

Would you have been as harsh against panpsychism  and idealism if I had tried to push those?

Perhaps idealism. Panpsychism,  I'm not as familiar with.

All right. Sorry, sorry, everyone.  Panpsychism was never going to  

happen. I know you wanted it. So we  have some time for questions. David?

So are there any modern philosophies of  dualism or is it all just old school?

There is at least one. William Hasker, I believe,  is a dualist. Now, there are different forms of  

dualism. Property dualism, which says that it  is still one substance but they have irreducible  

properties. So this one substance could have  mental properties and physical properties. And you  

can't derive the mental from the physical, they're  somehow separate. That David Chalmers proposed a  

form of property dualism. I don't know if he's  a believer in it, but he proposed it. There are  

some people who believe there could be one initial  substance that through a form of emergence gives  

rise to another substance, and this substance no  longer reduces to the first because it's a form  

of strong emergence. So we're all familiar with  weak emergence where we see the murmurations of  

birds and they make these beautiful patterns, and  none of the birds are trying to follow this exact…  

They're not even aware they're making these  patterns. They're following some small local  

rules, but somehow these small local rules, when  applied with many, become this large pattern that  

wasn't there from the small local rule exactly.  That's called weak emergence because it was there  

from the small local rule. It's just you have  to apply it. But strong emergence says "No,  

something new can genuinely emerge." Maybe  that's where free will comes in or consciousness.

Yeah. Rough guess on the substrate?

Yeah, rough guess on your substrate. I  think you're right that we still don't…  

I'm a Star Trek fan, so we still don't  know everything that humans 200, I mean,  

200 years from now are going to wear  spaceships. So what do you think the  

substrate is? And like you also pointed out  that when we actually mess with quantum stuff,  

we don't know what we're actually doing or  affecting. We could be affecting our own  

simulation and trying to mess with supercomputers.  So what do you think the substrate is made out of?  

If we're not running on silicate and we're in  the simulation, what is everything made out of?

So I'm undecided on that. And if I was decided,  

I tend to not give out my opinion except  privately. But I am undecided on it.

Another question? Yeah, Alex, Dr. Berland?  Oh, any students? It's your chance to ask  

more questions against the simulation to  get at me. All right. Okay. Dr. Berman?

I mean, there are a couple of ways I could ask  this. And I guess I now have to pick one. And the  

one I'm going to pick just from the perspective  of someone who studied theoretical physics,  

do you see this debate going? Not necessarily  in the sense of answering the question,  

but are other interesting ideas coming out  of it? Like, just as someone who studies  

philosophy, I kind of look at these theories  of reality and say, we're never going to know,  

so I'm going to do social political  philosophy because that's something  

I can relate to. Or somewhat a place I can  make an impact. But I'm naive when it comes  

to things in physics. And I'm just wondering,  as you explore this, does it open up ideas?

If we go back to one of these slides  here, the one that I had to rush through,  

I mentioned two other people. So I say, look,  a complete physics would describe Curt, Emily,  

Jacob, as examples of people's names, other  people. But actually, Emily and Jacob, in my mind,  

are referring to two physicists, Emily Adlam and  Jacob Barandes. Jacob has the argument, they both  

believe this. I spoke to them both on the same  podcast. They, Jacob is a philosopher of physics  

and said, but actually if you look at the ROI,  just from the perspective of how much it takes  

to fund a philosopher and how much you've gotten  back out of it, quantum computing came from asking  

philosophical questions. So that's David Deutsch.  So quantum computing, which is the new rage,  

decoherence theory came from David Bohm. The Bell  tests, which you may have heard the Nobel Prize  

was awarded for these Bell inequalities that talk  about entanglement. That came from John Bell, who  

was a philosopher of physics, asking philosophical  questions. So yes. However, I will say that it's  

not just philosophers who are untrained in  physics. And you can think of this as quite  

obvious. If you didn't know about… You could have  theorized all you want about the four elements.  

And you could have had a complete metaphysics  around that and built it up. And it would have  

been completely wrong as soon as Newtonian  mechanics came out. And then you could have  

thought, well, let me start theorizing about the  substance of space and then the separate substance  

of time. And then Einstein comes about and says,  no, we're supposed to unify them and it's not  

quite space and time and gravity doesn't work like  you think. So to make a contribution to physics,  

you or one would need to be trained in physics.  And that just, that makes sense. No one is  

expecting to make a contribution to a field that  they're unfamiliar with. Or most people aren't.

I do. That's helpful.

So you had an initial list of the  different philosophical categories  

or schools. Where would you put Newton  and Einstein? Newton is very different  

to me. I can handle Newtonian physics.  I can't handle Einsteinian physics.

Well, Einstein said, “I believe in the God of  Spinoza.” He said that three or four times. I  

actually looked up every single one of those  references. I don't know if he believed in  

the God of Spinoza. It sounds to me like he's  just, like Einstein's not a fool. So he's not  

just going to say something he doesn't believe.  But the God of Spinoza is also something to be  

revered and to be worshipped as well. It's just  the God becomes synonymous with the universe.  

But that's not the only property of God. And  anytime Einstein was saying, “I believe in the  

God of Spinoza,” it sounds to me, from reading  the actual quotes, like Einstein is saying,  

I believe the universe is synonymous with God.  But there was more to just the physical universe  

in Spinoza's eyes. Spinoza didn't think that the  physical universe is all there is. That's just one  

aspect of God. But anyhow, if Einstein was to be  placed on that list, I imagine Einstein would be  

a monist just from that perspective because he  would say there's the one substance. I imagine  

Newton would be a dualist. But I don't know.  Newton came out just after Descartes. Most of  

the dualism people think of when they think of  dualism is Cartesian dualism. And then they have  

to snicker under their breath like, "oh, that  person didn't know what he's talking about."

But it brings me also to the similar point of  

yours is about practicality. It seems  like Newtonian physics is a heck of a  

lot more practical in everyday  life than Einsteinian physics.

Okay, so when I said theories don't get  progressively, or it's not clear that  

theories are getting progressively quote-unquote  better, the counter-argument to what I just said  

is it's obvious theories are getting better in  physics because we're making more precise and  

precise measurements. What are you talking  about? Well, that's a different claim than  

making a claim to ontology. So a theory  can be useful. It could be used as a tool,  

but then you're just looking at your theory  instrumentally. I'm sure you've heard of  

instrumentalism, which says that our scientific  theories aren't actually speaking about reality  

necessarily. They're silent on the metaphysics.  We're using them as tools. So you could say that,  

but at which point it's no longer a metaphysical  position. It's an epistemological one.

I did, I was just, first of all, saying you're  interested in dualism and physicalism. You  

can take philosophy of mind next semester. Dr.  Edward and I, he's a dualist. I'm a physicalist  

and we debate. So you should take that. You're  welcome also, Curt. To you, Curt, I guess, well,  

this is really for Michael, I guess. I don't  have a horse in the race, particularly with  

the simulation hypothesis. But I doubt that you  doubt the principle of indifference. If you do,  

I want to gamble with you. You're saying, what  I hear you saying is sometimes it's hard to put  

a measure on the space so that you can apply the  principle of indifference. That's different from  

doubting the principle of indifference, right? And  it seems like in the case that Bostrom's painting  

where like, look, here's a bunch of work, here's  a bunch of conscious experience. Most of them are  

in a simulation, a tiny minority are not. Do you  have any special reason to think you're in the  

tiny minority? If not, a very banal principle of  indifference says you're probably in a simulation.

Yeah, but I don't buy the principle of  indifference. So give me a scenario.

Let's roll dice.

I think the honest answer  is to unknown probability  

distributions you should say, “I don't know.”

That's the principle of indifference.

No, the principle of indifference would assign a  

probability distribution to it. A  uniform probability distribution.

That's the way to say "I don't know it."

You could lose money on that though.  You could look, I could gamble with  

you and make you lose money with  a weighted die. In the short term.

Yeah, but the principle of indifference,  okay, great point. So the principle of  

indifference is applied to cases where  you only have one shot. It's like Eminem,  

you only got one shot. So that's why if  you have multiple, then you can use a  

frequentist approach and just say, well,  let me look at what the frequency was.

Did I understand you correctly when you  were referring to Bell's theorem and the  

contribution of philosophers to physics  to do great work that everyone should be a  

double major in philosophy? Is that the right  takeaway? If they want to do great things?

I think philosophical thinking can  sharpen your mental toolkit. And it  

can also teach you to read hugely boring papers.

Jeez. We should probably end it there.  So I want to thank our speaker, everyone.  

If you're interested in these topics at  all, please check out his YouTube channel  

or his podcast, Theories of Everything. And  thank you again for coming. This is great.

Before we wrap, I want to thank of course  Michael Barnwell. I also want to thank Peggy  

and John Day. As recall, this was the special  once-a-year honors lecture made possible by  

their generous contributions. I'd also  like to thank Tim Ireland, Jamie Carr,  

and Sheila Bednars, as well as Niagara University  for hosting this event. Niagara is a Vincentian  

Catholic university known for combining  intellectual rigor with a deep commitment  

to service and justice. Its campus sits on the  highest ridge overlooking the Niagara River,  

just a short drive from Niagara Falls and Buffalo.  It's a stunning location. I was just there. I'll  

play some footage on screen. It inspires both  reflection and discovery. For the past two years,  

U.S. News and World Report has ranked Niagara  the number one best value school in the North,  

recognizing its dedication to providing  exceptional education at an accessible cost. With  

strong programs in the liberal arts, business,  education, nursing, hospitality, and sports  

management, Niagara University's close-knit,  mission-driven community empowers students to  

learn with heart and lead with purpose. Learn  more at niagara.edu and go Purple Eagles!