Is You Is or Is You Ain't?

Neil deGrasse Tyson

As I was surfing the net for interesting intellectual fodder I chanced upon the headline, “Neil deGrasse Tyson (Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York) thinks there’s a very high chance the universe is just a simulation.”  This caught my attention so I read the article.  It seems that every year a group of high thinkers gather at the American Museum of Natural History for an event named the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate.  This year’s topic addressed the question of whether or not the universe is a simulation.  Ooh, heady stuff; maybe somebody should make a movie about this!  The panel was made up of scientists and philosophers.  The article was rather skimpy on discussion details and was more or less a teaser to introduce an attached YouTube video of the panel discussion.  The video is two hours long.  I lasted about twenty minutes.  It was like watching the TV show The Big Bang Theory (CBS, Thursday 8:00) without the jokes… and no Penny.

I like an intellectual challenge, as long as it doesn’t require mathematics.  And this seemed like a topic I could have some fun with.  The question becomes, “Is our existence real, or are we merely features of some other entity’s simulation?”  More about why the answer to that question renders the whole discussion moot a bit later.  But pretending now that we are not smarter than a panel of physicists and philosophers let’s explore this hypothesis.

Rene Descartes

We are all familiar with Descartes’ pronouncement of existence, “I think therefore I am.”  While I am certain this statement has generated untold hours of discussion among countless philosophers and pseudo intellectuals, it is plain enough on the surface: My self-awareness is proof that I exist.  I am okay with that. It would certainly be difficult to assert my existence if I were not self-aware.  And as a negative cannot be disproved, we must allow our mere existence is not proof that our existence does not exclude our non-existence. (How many times did you read the previous sentence before your realized I was just screwing with your mind… or was I?).   But can we end it there?

Being sympathetic to lesser beings, I ponder the existence of the common slug.  Do you think that the slug is self-aware?  We can certainly prove its existence by witnessing its presence in the physical world.  I know, I encounter them every time it rains and they are coaxed out of the flower beds onto my concrete driveway where they die for lack of moisture.  I am pretty sure that this behavior demonstrates a lack of thinking ability; If they could think, they wouldn’t expose themselves to such peril.  So I’m going out on a limb here and stating with whatever modicum of intellectual authority I can muster, existence and awareness are not interdependent.

The debate is whether perception equals reality.  Inspired by science fiction ala the Matrix, they want to explore the likelihood that we are the creation of some superior intelligence that controls how we perceive the universe.  And that the universe in which we actually live, generated in the imagination of its creator, is different than that which we perceive.  We (and our experiences) are merely thoughts in someone else’s mind.  Okay, here is the shocker: A belief in a universe created by a superior being in which we live at that being’s pleasure is… RELIGION!!!

Here is the hidden land mine that will explode this whole discussion.  What is, is.  It makes no difference the origin of our being.  Whether we are the product of a computer supported world or the creation of a spiritual deity, the operative word in all cases is “is”.  (Do you understand the meaning of the word yet, Bill?)  Perception is reality.  And if you doubt that, throw yourself off of a one-hundred-foot-high building and see if you don’t start to believe in the reality of your situation as you tally up the floors racing by. (Accelerating at a rate of 132 ft./sec./sec with a terminal velocity of approx. 120 mph)

I believe they have fallen into the same trap that our ancient forbearers did.  If we cannot distill our understanding of what we see around us to absolute logic (experimental or observational evidence… you know, scientific fact), we create myths to shed light into the dark corners of uncertainty. At some future time, when scientific understanding has resolved the mysteries beyond our current comprehension of the physical world, they will look back at such debates about reality versus perception with the same disdain with which we look at the superstitions of our history. 

(I refer you to my blog post How or Why? of 8/26/13.)