“How the universe works,” as described by 4 different, increasingly complex concepts of VR headset
In recent weeks, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the 4th level, which is new to me.
Virtual Reality
1. VR is merely a game / tool.
This is the most naïve perspective, and most people never question whether this is true (and never imagine beyond this level):
We are animals living on a rock hurtling around a star that is traveling through space.
On this rock, technology has progressed to the point where we can put on a headset and trick our eyes and ears...
... (although not yet our senses of smell, taste, or touch) into believing that we are somewhere else (on this planet or beyond).
2. René Descartes said in 1637 “cogito, ergo sum” (usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am").
He meant, “The minimum that I can be sure of (given that my senses are capable of deceiving me) is that I exist.”
In other words:
I can’t know what your experience is—only mine.
And in fact, I can’t know that anything that I experience is really how it seems to me.
I could easily be mistaken about the temperatures that I think I’m feeling, the shapes that I think I’m seeing, etc.
What we call “reality” is already “virtual reality”.
Because any physical experience is superficial (perception is fallible).
Consider how cells in your eye perceive light.
And how any nerves detect anything at all.
They convert all inputs into numeric signals.
It’s all approximations.
The brain has only a limited ability to convert those countless numeric inputs into “experience”.
Even when everything is working well.
And the senses can easily be tricked.
3. We’re almost definitely simulations of the past created by someone in the future.
Nick Bostrom’s 2003 “simulation argument” can be thought of as:
If one assumes that humans will not be destroyed nor destroy themselves before developing a technology so advanced that humans can no longer distinguish between reality and when they are [using a VR headset and / or other devices that replicate the 5 senses]...
Then it would be unreasonable to count ourselves among the small minority of genuine organisms who, sooner or later, will be vastly outnumbered by artificial simulations.
In other words, we’re living in The Matrix.
Or as Elon Musk has said, there are “billions-to-one” odds that we’re living in “base reality”.
4. The concept of spacetime itself is just an abstraction / summary of reality.
There is no gravity. There is no law that says light-speed travel is impossible.
Physics isn’t real. Anywhere.
I.e. there are no human descendants or aliens or AIs who have created simulations that we’re living in.
Nothing physical exists. There are no atoms.
Scientists who have been studying brains and individual neurons and trying to figure out what physical ingredients will produce consciousness have it BACKWARDS.
Consciousness is what “produces” (merely imagines) spacetime reality / physics.
Consciousness is fundamental, not merely an “effect” of physical causes.
Newton’s physics were novel.
Then Einstein’s physics came along and needed to augment those laws.
Then quantum physics.
But still, nobody has been able to tie everything together with a “Theory of Everything”.
Rules that successfully explain at the macro level don’t seem to explain at the micro level.
So some cognitive scientists, mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and psychologists now lean towards this newer approach of questioning whether physics exists at all.
(E.g. Donald Hoffman at UC Irvine, Nima Arkani-Hamed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.)
Their new ideas believe that all of the most brilliant scientific “discoveries” of centuries past (gravity, quantum field theory, natural selection) all describe no more than the equivalent of what a character would experience inside a video game like Minecraft.
In other words, humans made the rookie mistake of believing that we live somewhere like Minecraft.
Then we got excited about a bunch of laws of physics that we discovered there.
But none of those scientific discoveries actually matter because we are not there.
We (conscious agents) need to do the equivalent of learning the code that created Minecraft in the first place (which until now we’ve assumed we live inside).
In video games, when a player changes her focus from looking at Object A to looking at Object B, Object A is no longer rendered in the interface.
Moreover, neither Object A nor Object B ever existed. And now Object A isn’t even rendered at all.
That’s the same with everything in our experience.
When you look in the mirror, you’re rendering a perception of skin, hair, and eyes.
But you know beyond any doubt that you’re not what you see.
Your feelings of love and hate, your dreams and fears, all of your thoughts.
None of that is perceivable in the physics that our consciousness renders.
Maybe eventually we will know how to “take off” the headset that we’re wearing and experience umwelts that are entirely different from what we’re used to (by either putting on a different headset or not having a headset).
We could perceive via sonar like bats, smell seizures before they happen like dogs, see colors beyond the rainbow, and experience far more than we’re even capable of imagining now.
Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems could be the closest that we ever get to a “Theory of Everything”:
In any formal math system, there are true statements that cannot be proven within that system, and you cannot prove the consistency of the system using its own rules.
This means that no single formal system can capture all mathematical truths and limits our ability to create a complete and self-contained foundation for all of mathematics.
Gödel proved both of his incompleteness theorems (published in 1931 when he was just 25 years old).
His proofs are considered some of the most significant contributions to the field of mathematical logic.
Another way of thinking about it is:
“A scientist must always begin with: ‘If you first grant me this assumption, then I can prove the following.’”
Or in other words: even the most rigorous science can’t escape falling back on “miracles”.
The “miracle” of what I'm calling Level 4 is:
"Everything starts with consciousness. The existence of consciousness is what can't be explained, but everything else can."
~~~
Trippy.
These types of questions definitely help me destress and reconsider what I care about.
What do you think about these various ideas?
What helps you zoom out and put your life in perspective?