Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Curt Jaimungal: Why I Don't Buy the Simulation Hypothesis (Nor Materialism)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe One week ago, I (Curt Jaimungal) was invited to Niagara University to give the Peggy and John Day University Honors Endowed Lecture, which was quite the privilege and honor. The lecture focuses on metaphysics. I explain extremely simply the arguments for you being a “simulation,” the arguments against it, and where I personally land. Then I do the same for “materialism.” Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Timestamps: - 00:00 - Simulation vs. Materialism - 05:04 - Mistakes Intellectuals Make - 10:12 - The Simulation Mythology - 16:46 - Bayesian Errors & Glitches - 23:22 - Principle of Indifference Flaws - 29:07 - The Case Against Materialism / Physicalism - 35:28 - Nested Consciousness Problem - 42:36 - Q&A: Modern Dualism? - 50:51 - Debating Indifference Principle Links mentioned: - Niagara University’s 2025 Fall Speaker Series: https://www.niagara.edu/academics/initiatives-and-institutes/fall-speaker-series/ - Michael Barnwell [Site]: https://www.philosophy4business.com/ - David Deutsch [TOE]: https://youtu.be/vKeWv-cdWkM - Roger Penrose [TOE]: https://youtu.be/sGm505TFMbU - David Chalmers [TOE]: https://youtu.be/RH5qjdHhtBk - The Most Abused Theorem in Math [TOE]: https://youtu.be/OH-ybecvuEo - The Mandela Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_effect - Efron’s Dice: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/EfronsDice.html - String Theory Iceberg [TOE]: https://youtu.be/X4PdPnQuwjY - Emily Adlam & Jacob Barandes [TOE]: https://youtu.be/rw1ewLJUgOg - Tim Maudlin [TOE]: https://youtu.be/fU1bs5o3nss SUPPORT: - Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join - Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal - Support me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9 - Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 SOCIALS: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs Guests do not pay to appear. Theories of Everything receives revenue solely from viewer donations, platform ads, and clearly labelled sponsors; no guest or associated entity has ever given compensation, directly or through intermediaries. #science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. 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 uh this event started in 2017 with a gift from the day family peggy or margaret ranc she goes by peggy margaret peggy ramp 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 stand 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 Kurt Jean-Mungal. is a trained mathematical physicist from the University of Toronto.

He was a stand... 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 hosts

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. that. And years ago, I heard, 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 is, which will be up, if you on 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

physicist to life today, it only made sense for him to come to Uniagre 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'm, I kind of want to convince you that we live in a simulation. So when Kurt 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 and 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,

heard 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 Kurt 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, oh, boring, material world with stuff. And, well, let's hope that's not true.

So anyway, with no further ado, I turn over to Kurtzai Mongol. Kurt, thank you for joining us tonight and looking forward to it. 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 confide it 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 as larger? Raise your hand? Who says they're the same. 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, they're supposed... 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 girdles 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. Happes to me all done. 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, defers 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. It's so Kanye rebranded to yay 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 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, there's a tension between you too, and there's like the, it's like a blood's in the crypts,

and then there's the panpsychists who are these, these wide-eyed kids from the community center who's trying to say, no, everyone get, 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 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, and 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. You're alive. You're alive, bud? What? I'm working. 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. is just some teenage hacker in the next universe up that comes from philosopher David Chalmers, essentially saying that God is an in-cell, which I think that's from Aquinas, that's actually 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 versus science if you add a half plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a 32th plus a 64th 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 Mendela effect. Maybe you've heard of it, where large swaths of people all believe the same false memory. And it, and it's a lot of people, H.I, which is related to non-human intelligence, it 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.

So what they do in video games is they see where is the player looking, because there's always a perspective of 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'll only render what people observe, and that saves

computational resources. This is how 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 difference 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's 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 991-2-3-157. 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 the 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 a 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 max, 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 not, 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 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 collapse 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. You know how in physics we like to reduce something that's complex into something more elegant

and more efficient, something simpler, for instance. It turns out you can do that with your dinner. Hello Fresh sends you exactly the ingredients you need. They're pre-measured, they're pre-portioned, so you don't have to deal with this superposition of, do I have too much cilantro versus not enough cilantro or whatever you have collapsing in your kitchen every night. They've just done their largest menu refreshed yet with literally 100 different recipes each week. There's vegetarian options, calorie smart ones, protein heavy, my personal favorite. Then there's a new steak and seafood options at no extra cost. All the meals take approximately 15 minutes to a half hour.

They've actually tripled their seafood offerings recently and added more veggie-packed recipes. Each one has two or more vegetables now. I've been using it myself. it's the one experiment in my life that's always yielded, reproducible results. It's delicious, it's easy, it saves me from having to live on just black coffee while editing episodes at 1 a.m. Personally, my favorite part is that it's an activity that I can do with my wife. Thus, it not only serves as dinner, but as a bonding exercise. The best way to cook just got better.

Go to hellofresh.com slash theories of everything 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. one per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as discounts on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com slash theories of everything 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. Okay, so this is highly debated. 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 history. 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 sky and it's proceed, 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 the 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 that. 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 super symmetry in the world, supposedly?

And then, okay, but what about beyond that? then if we find out that it's super califragilistic expialadocious string theory compute like what are is this 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 your second cousin and and

Neptune was your face cream oh you're so insightful Kurt 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, 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. Great. Okay. And of course, we're assuming that I'm not tricking you, even though I've displayed a history of tricking you all. And we're assuming the dye is not weighted. Okay.

But now what if I say, okay, there are two options. Either the dye 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 plutonio or something. He made some claim that this so-and-so exists. And then someone said, oh, it was later proved to be true. 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 two options. It's either five or greater than five or four or four, and less than four. Those are two sets. Okay. Von Frazen 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, have, has a side length of 0.5 or less? Intuitively, we think, well, that's 50%. 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. Every, and he created his wife, and then, and so, and you created three other people and so forth. So everyone else is a simulation. Then you think, what are they? 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, 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 Bostrum 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 kurt-jimungle.com, my substack, C-U-R-T-J-A-M-U-N-G-A-L dot com. Also, my undergrad, I studied theoretical physics. I'm not great with my hands. I don't know how to... 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, Kurt, every time you put something new into a product,

you've created another point of failure. And I thought, oh, okay, 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 SIN, and so on, 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 99.999 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 use the word supervents. vines 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 phenomenon. 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, I 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's secretes thought like the liver secretes bile, and the next one's from comedian Emo Phillips. 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've 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 create a 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 Ephron's dice,

and in the interest of time, I'll place a link on screen and in the description. They're a dye, 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 Sussum C or rock paper scissors. Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, but then scissors beats paper, 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, Kurt, 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, that would also be conscious, that would also, 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 person 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 Kurt, 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, 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 incoherence, 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 is 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, 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 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, quote unquote, 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 epitomis? 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 and what if we add this condition? 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. What does it take to transform a small cruise line into one of the world's most valuable vacation companies. Richard Fain, long-time chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group spent over three decades at the helm turning bold ideas into unforgettable experiences. He's been called a visionary leader, named one of Barron's world's best CEOs, and honored internationally for his impact. Now, for the first time, he's

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and resilience. Get your copy of Richard Fain's Delivering the Wow available today on Amazon or wherever you buy books. 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 split the check. That's what's happening here. You thought all I'm going to order is the 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 to idealism. Pan-psychism, I'm not as familiar with it. So, sorry, sorry, everyone. He wasn't going to do, pen-psychism was never going to happen. I know you wanted. So, just, so we have some time for questions. David?

So, are there any modern philosophies of dualism was at all just old school thought? There are, 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, but 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, and 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 that something knows, new, 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 subject to you think you're right that we still don't on Star Trek fan so we still don't know everything

that humans 200, I mean, 200 years from now, we're going to wear a spaceship. 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 effect. We could be affecting our own simulation and trying to like mess the supercomputers. So what do you think the substrate's made out? Like if we're not running out of the silicate and we're in the simulation, but 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. Berlin? Unless the student wants to get. Oh, any students? So your chance to ask more questions against the simulation to get at me?

All right. Okay. Dr. Berlin? I mean, there are a couple ways I could ask this. Like, 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 anywhere? Like, 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 in 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 her to 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 Barndas. Jacob has the argument, they both believe this. I spoke to them both on the same podcast.

Jacob is a philosopher of physics and said that 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. 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. Okay.

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, so if you, you could have theorized all you want about the four elements and you're, 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, well, 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 makes sense. No one is expecting to make a contribution to a feel that they're unfamiliar with. Or most people aren't. I do. That's something. So do you have an initial list of the different philosophical

Canada or schools. Where would you put Newton and Einstein. Newton. It's very different to me. I can handle Newtonian physics. I can 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, 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 modest, 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 as Cartesian dualism and then they have to snicker under the breath like oh that person didn't know what he's talking about but which brings me also the similar point of the dealers is about practicality it seems like

Newtonian physics is a heck a lot more practical in every big life than Einstein in 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 counterarguments of 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 as first of all, saying you're interested in dualism and physicalism. You can take philosophy of mind next semester. Dr. Clifford and I, he's a dualist, I'm a physicalist, and we debate, so you should take that.

You're welcome also, Kurt, but to you, Kurt, 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 get able with you. You're saying,

what I hear you're 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, And it seems like in the case that Bostom's painting where, like, look, here's a bunch of work, here's a bunch of conscious and experience, most of them are in a simulation, tiny minority or 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 neat simulating. Yeah, but I don't, I don't buy the principle of indifference. So give me a scenario. Give me a scenario. I think the honest answer is to unknown probability distributions, you should say, I don't know. That's the principle of indifference would assign a probability distribution to it, a uniform probability.

That's a way to say, I don't know it. You could lose money on that, though. Look, I could gamble with you and make you lose money with a way to die. You're in the short bucks. 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 like hugely boring papers geez that's what we should probably end in there so I want to thank our speaker

everyone thank our speaker thank you great pleasure if you're interested in these topics at all please check out his YouTube channel or his podcast series 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

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