Is Your Reality Just a Dream or a Simulation? (Dream Argument)

And what I will do now, I will discuss the concept of self and its relationship to dreams and reality, and I will transition from there to review the literature and try to make sense of it all.

The very concept of self is dreamlike, not reality- like.

Let's have a look at my proposed solution.

The self is not analytic, it is synthetic. In other words, the self is not analytic. It is synthetic.

In other words, the self is not verifiable by referring to itself. It's not self-referential.

The self is not self-contained. On the very contrary, the self makes sense only by interacting with and referencing reality.

Even Freud had said it when he came up with the concept of the ego and the reality principle. There's no self without reality.

If we were to take away reality, all other people, all objects, and place a newborn in vacuum, it's highly dubious that that individual would develop a self.

And so the self is synthetic, not analytic. The self is a posteriori. It depends on and refers to experience, as Hume had observed.

The self is not a priori. In other words, the dependency of the self on experience means that it is not an a priori category. It's not a priori.

And finally, the self is non-falsifiable. You cannot falsify yourself.

There is no prediction and no test, and no experiment that you could conduct, that would inform you that you don't exist. Period.

Ultimately, you would be the observer, the designer, the scientist, the scholar, the witness.

You cannot remove yourself from the equation. The only way to falsify the self is essentially to commit suicide.

As long as you're alive and kicking and thinking, there is no possibility to construct a theory or hypothesis that would yield falsifiable predictions. Period.

So, clearly the self is much more like a dream than reality. It's not real in any meaningful sense.

Consequently, when we deal with the self, we always need to translate, to translate from a private language to a public language.

And here again I have a major disagreement with Wittgenstein. Normally we are both Jews, two Jews, three opinions, a major disagreement because Wittgenstein famously denied the possibility of a private language.

I think in the case of the self, there is always a private language, which is then translated into a public language inefficiently, may I add.

And so no single language can capture the self.

Because it is not self-referential, because it is always a derivative of the environment, of experience, of the world out there of reality, the only way to relate to the self is to use two languages, the language of reality and the language of the dream.

And so the self is a dream, not a figment of reality. It has nothing to do with reality, philosophically speaking.

Many scholars have tried to somehow correlate the concepts of self with the concepts of dreaming and the concepts of reality, to make sense of the conundrum, of the dream argument, by studying the dreamer, as I said at the beginning.

So, for example, there is a phenomenon known as vicarious dreaming.

These are dreams where the protagonist of the dream is different to the dreamer. The person who is doing the dreaming is not the same person in the dream.

This is very interesting because it raises the issue of identity and of the self.

If in the dream you are not yourself, in which sense could the dream ever be perceived as reality?

Can you dream another person? Or do you have perhaps a dream self and a reality self? And they're both independent as Rosen and Sutton proposed.

Of course, you can sit back with a good glass of wine and imagine that you are another person, but this is absolutely not like dreaming that you are another person.

In the case of dreaming, the imagined person's thoughts, the thoughts of the person in the dream who is not you, are not framed as diverging from your own thoughts.

You do not retain your own perspective in additional to the perspective of the other person, the imagined person in the dream.

It's not like you have two perspectives. It's not like you have two frames of thoughts or thinking. It's not like you have two sets of different cognitions.

No, it's another person with your thinking, with your cognitions, with your emotions, with your reality.

And so how can you become another person and yet retain everything you consider to be your identity or yourself?

And this raises major major questions.

Taking off from this, remember all the time that in my work at least the self is a dream state, it's not reality, it's a dream state that refers to reality.

We can ask ourselves if the self is a dream state, it's a dream state when you're awake and it's a dream state when you're asleep.

The question then becomes, what is a difference between yourself, what are the differences between yourself when it is in a dream state and the very same self when it is awake?

In other words, the question then becomes not what is the difference between reality and dreams, not what is the difference between the ability to tell apart reality from dreams, but what is the difference between the dreaming self and the wakeful self, being the same self.

We know already that the self is a dream, is a dream state, at least in my work.

So what happens to the self when the self is dreaming is natural?

Because the self is a dream state, it's natural for the self to dream. That's the default state of the self.

Being awake is the abnormal state. Being awake is like a dream that wakes up and experiences reality.

Being awake is when the self transitions from its normal natural state, which is dreaming, to an abnormal alien state, which is wakefulness.

And it is abnormal and alien, because the essence of the self is dreamlike.

The self is a dream state. As I said, it's synthetic, it's aposteriori, it's non-falsifiable, and it uses translation.

All the attributes and hallmarks of a dream rather than reality, it's a contradiction of reality.

So we have a self that is a dream state that dreams at night, which is the normal natural thing for a dreamy entity to do, then wakes up and has to adopt a modus which is completely antagonistic to its very nature as a dream state.

And this is very interesting because it's an inversion of how everyone used to see the situation until this very moment.

Everyone would tell you, everyone, all the scholars, all the philosophers, they all said that the natural state of the self is reality.

Whereas what I'm saying is because the self has all the attributes of a dream, the natural state of the self is a dream, not reality.

And when the self is forced to wake up biologically and confront reality, what the self does, it tries desperately to convert reality into a dream.

Because the only language the self knows is the language of dreams.

And it is forced to translate it into the language of reality.

Reality becomes dreamlike in the eyes of the self, in the mind of the self if you wish.

Reality becomes dreamlike and the self is busy trying to convert it into a dream, the natural state of the self.

And so vicarious dreams raise a very problematic conundrum.

Because who is this other person in your dream if it's not you?

Do you have two dreaming selves? Is this other person in your dream the real you? Maybe the person in waking time, hours, that other person is not you.

Maybe the person in your dream is the real you and the person while you're awake is not you.

And it raises the question of simulation.

What I've just said that the self is trying to convert reality into a dream because it in itself is made of dreams.

It's a dream state.

It means that the dream is trying to simulate reality.

It's trying to simulate reality somehow.

Trying to convert it into a symbolic representation, into a computer code.

Dreaming is immersive.

It's here, it's now. The characters in the dream are a present. It's like mindfulness, you know.

The experience of the self in the world is also very very now. Characters in dreams rarely have a past or a future.

So many many scholars who suggested that maybe dreaming is a form of simulation, the simulation view of dreaming.

Define dreaming as this immersive here and now character.

And they suggested that there is no meaningful distinction between this and the experience of the self in the world.

I tend to agree. I am not saying that I agree to the contention that reality is a simulation.

So what I'm saying. I'm saying that the self being a dream state converts reality into something which is essentially a simulation of reality.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that our subjective experience is that of a simulation.

I'm not making an ontological claim. I'm not saying that reality is a simulation. I'm saying the way we experience reality is most definitely a simulation.

Different versions of the simulation view. They focus on different aspects of the self and the world experience in dreams.

So there is what is known as social simulation, that is Revonsuo.

There are issues of self-hood in dreams, Metzinger and so and so forth.

There are minimal conditions of experiencing yourself as a self in dreams. And these minimal conditions amount to what is known as the phenomenal selfhood.

That's the work of Windt, okay I will not go into this this branch of philosophy although it's absolutely fascinating.

So we're beginning to see where all this is leading. Dreams are definitely a simulation. A simulation.

This simulation runs on hardware or wetware known as a brain.

But the self is a dream state and when it is forced to interact with reality, it converts reality into another simulation.

Also, this simulation runs on the same hardware and the same wetware, the very same brain.

And so, while there is a lack of agreement about the definition of dreaming and about what constitutes simulation in reality and in dreaming, there seems to be an emerging consensus that we are perceiving reality as a kind of simulation.

Now there's one camp that says, if you're perceiving reality is a simulation, it must be a simulation.

And there's another camp that says, if your perceiving reality is a simulation, it must be a simulation.

And there's another camp that says, let us not go into ontology. We are dealing with epistemology. Our knowledge of the world is simulated. It's a simulation.

The aforementioned Ravonsuo described self-experience, including bodily experience in dreams, as identical to self-experiences in waking.

And Metzinger, and others, by the way, not only Metzinger but Windt and others, they argued that important layers of waking self-experience are missing in non-lucid dreams. We are discussing right now non-lucid dreams, you will come to lucid dreams a bit later.

Metzinger said, for example, that autobiographical memory, agency, a stable sense of first-person perspective, metacognitive insight, self-knowledge, they're all missing in dreams.

And the fact that they are missing, their absence, can tell us if it's a dream or if it is a wakeful state in reality.

He says that it is due to the cognitive and mnemonic deficit that characterizes non-lucid dreams that we can tell that it's a dream.

And there's also work by Hobson which says basically the same.

Windt is a very interesting character, analyzed the range of cognitive and bodily self-experience in dreams and she described them as variable.

She argued that in a majority of cases, dreams are weakly phenomenally embodied states in which bodily experience is largely related to movement sensations, but a detailed and integrated body representation is lacking. Instead, bodily experience in dreams is largely indeterminate.

There were even experiments that tried to test this hypothesis, I'm referring you to work by Gosselin and others.

Wynn suggested that, proposed that dreams are weakly functionally embodied states.

In other words, we usually dream when we're asleep. When we're asleep, our bodies are inert, our bodies are down and so on, because our bodies are inert, our bodies are down and so on, because our bodies are so lax and so laidaisical, the experience of our bodies is very minimum. The specific pattern of body experience reflects altered processing of bodily sensations which are missing in sleep.

In other words, she says that the state of sleep affects the characteristics of the dream and the minimalism of the dream.

One could argue that the self experiences the dreams. It stands to reason. And it's a common denominator among almost all the scholars.

There's a self that experiences the dream. And this self experiences the minimalism of the dream and then it wakes up. And it has to cope with a lot of information from the aroused body, from the excitation states of a newly awakened body. And at the same time it has to cope with an avalanche of information from the environment.

The only way for the self to cope with this, because the self is a dream state.

Remember, in my work, we talk about my work now. The self is a dream state.

The only way for the self to cope with it is to filter out gigantic amounts of information.

Studies show that we filter out 95% of the information we're exposed to and then create on the fly theories about the remaining 5% how to interpret visual sensor, a visual and auditory sensor and so.

So there are models, mathematical models in the brain that do all this work.

And this is a great description of a simulation. It's exactly what a simulation does.

When we simulate, for example, weather patterns, what we do, we exclude a lot of information. We take the remaining information and we feed it into a mathematical model. And then we believe that it somehow captures and reflects reality.

And this is exactly what the self does.

Wynn analyzed instances of bodyless dreams in which the dreamers said that they experience themselves as disembodied entities.

And she said that self-experience can be reduced to pure spatial temporal self-location.

Like I'm here, but it's not my body. It's very reminiscent of dissociation, or more precisely, depersonalization, which is a form of dissociative disorder or dissociative defense.

In depersonalization, which is a clinical feature, in depersonalization, the individual experiences the location and the environment and other facets of reality, but not his or her body.

It's as if I'm here, but my body is not. Or my body is here and I am not, which is called derealization.

We could therefore describe dreams as dissociative states of depersonalization and derealization.

Why would we need to dissociate?

Because we're asleep. Sleep is a very dangerous proposition because predators can take advantage of the fact that you're immobile and disabled and eat you alive or eat you asleep.

So we need to dissociate, otherwise reality would be so terrifying that we would never be able to sleep. We dissociate the world, we dissociate reality. This dissociation, this depersonalization, this derealization may be experienced as what we call a dream.

This is Wynne proposed, this is my proposition. This is my idea, not Wynne. I don't want to misattribute anything to her.

Wynn proposed that these cases of disembodied dreaming can help us to identify the conditions for the emergence of minimal phenomenal self-hood and other people carried on her work, Blank, Messinger, and so on.

Okay, we have to tackle therefore the issue of verificationism.

How to verify the difference between reality and dream? We need to verify that something is reality. We need to verify that another state is a dream state. We need to find what is known as differential features.

So numerous scholars came up with all kinds of ideas.

Some scholars say you have special signs in a dream that would never exist in reality, for example, impossible things which are not subjected to the laws of physics. Hobbes called it the absence of the absurd. In the dream, you have the absurd. In reality, there's the absence of the absurd. Descartes called it the coherence test in the very same meditations.

So in a dream, crazy things are happening, which are not real in the sense that they don't obey the laws of nature or the laws of physics. Well, in reality, this never happens. Here's a distinguishing feature.

Another possibility, the dream has the reality, or has special features, for example, it is linear, there's causation, there is sequentiality and so on, and these are often missing in dreams.

Both ideas are highly appealing, intuitively.

Unfortunately, they don't solve the problem. Because we do have dreams which resemble reality 100%, one-on-one, complete mapping. We do have dreams where things are linear, rational, causative, and obey all the laws of physics. We do have such dreams. We do have dreams that adhere to Descartes' coherence test that are not absurd, that are sequential and linear. And so we do have dreams that appear to be completely real.

These distinctions are not enough. If you have one case where a dream resembles reality and you cannot tell them apart, all other millions of cases are meaningless. It's like you say, all swans are white, and then a single black swan passes by and your theorem, your statement, is fallacious.

Okay, what about another idea?

When we wake up, we connect with the rest of our life. We connect with the past, we even contemplate the future. We have episodic memory, autobiographical recall. When we wake up, we are connected. When we're a dream, the dream is dissociative, disjointed, and has no past and no future.

Again, this is a part of Descartes' coherence test and Malcolm's coherence argument. This is something I will deal with in a minute.

Then there is the answer that you are able to tell the difference between dreams and reality most of the time. It's a statistical test. First proposed, believe it or not, by Augustine.

And of course, it's not a sufficient answer. Because as I said, if there's a single case after trillions of cases, if there's a single case, when nothing helps, and there's no way to tell the difference between the dream and reality, the whole edifice crumbles. Statistics is not good enough.

We need to find something that holds water and is applicable in 100% of the cases, not 99.999, but 100.

There is the answer that the difference between reality and dreams is that there are experiences unique to reality. This is Locke's pain argument.

Like, the pain you experience in reality is qualitatively different to the pain you may experience, or might experience, in dreaming, although Locke has denied completely that you can experience, you could experience pain in dreaming.

And erroneously, of course you can. But his surviving argument is that it would be qualitatively different to the kind of agony that you would suffer in reality. For example, if you were consumed by fire.

And again, I will deal with it a bit later.

And finally, Grundmann suggested that there is in dreams an absence of introspective critical thinking.

In dreams, anything goes.

You don't stop to think in the middle of a dream, is this likely? Is this reasonable? Is this rational? Could this even happen? You don't do that.

And again, I'm not talking about lucid dreams. We'll talk about lucid dream a bit later.

Okay. Dreams can meet all these tests and yet resemble wakefulness to the fullest. That's the problem.

These tests do not cover the totality of dreams extant and possible.

We could conceive of dreams and we do experience dreams that truly are indistinguishable from reality, obey all the laws of physics and nature, are sequential and linear and this and that. That's a problem.

One example that most of us have experienced, when you dream that you are waking up, when you dream that you're waking up, the experiences as if you're back in reality. And then the new dream, this is nested dreaming, the new dream would be much closer to reality or resemble reality completely.

So, you would have an initial primary dream that would be a bit unreal, would be a bit crazy, would be a bit absurd, and then you wake up in your dream. You don't really wake up. It's a dream of waking up. And then the new dream, the secondary dream, after you have woken up, so to speak, would be highly realistic. And we would mistake the dream, this second dream, for reality.

This happens a lot in mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now, I mentioned a few names and so on. I'd like to dwell on a few major thinkers and see what we could make of what they have to say.

Norman Malcolm in his monograph, Dreaming, published in 1959. He elaborated on the work of Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein asked, does it really matter if people who tell dreams really had these images while they slept, or whether it merely seems to them on waking.

This was a quote from Wittgenstein.

What Wittgenstein asked is, when people report their dreams, when they say, I've just dream this, does it really matter if they've actually had the dream, or if they just believe that they have had the dream?

And so Malcolm said, Malcolm wrote, and I'm quoting, the concept of dreaming is derived not from dreaming, but from descriptions of dreams.

In other words, from the familiar phenomenon that we call telling a dream.

If a man had certain thoughts and feelings in a dream, it no more follows that he had those thoughts and feelings while asleep, then it follows from his having climbed a mountain in a dream that he climbed a mountain while asleep.

And so what Malcolm argues is that the sentence I'm asleep is an impossible or senseless, nonsensical sentence because you cannot report on your condition or your mental state when you're no longer there.

It's like saying, I'm dead. It's a meaningless sentence because when you're asleep, you're not. When you're asleep, you're not there. You don't have consciousness.

So your report, I'm asleep, is meaningless and plus you would never be able to make it, of course.

The only sentence you can say is, I have been asleep, or I was asleep, or I had slept, I'm sorry.

So I'm asleep is a meaningless sentence.

And so dreams cannot exist independently of the waking impression of dreams.

If sleep is a meaningless state, then any report about the sleep state is a meaningless report.

The only meaningful reports which could make sense are reports about the wakefulness state.

In other words, the report, I had a dream, is meaningful because it is made in wakefulness. If there's no way to make this report when you're asleep.

So dreams don't exist when you're asleep. They exist only when you wake up.

He said that dream skepticism, this dream argument, comes from confusing the historical and dream-telling senses of the past tense.

And so he wrote in his book, there was a chapter, the chapter was titled, do I know that I'm awake?

And Malcolm argued that we do not have to say I know that I'm awake, simply because it would be absurd to deny that you're awake.

The only time you can make statements that have any meaning and sense is when you're awake.

So why make the statement I'm awake? It goes without saying.

Actually, Malcolm was not the first to propose all these things.

Maury in 1861also alluded to this.

But Maury in 61 and Gregory in 1960suggested something very interesting.

They said that when you wake up, there is an insertion of memory, like when you wake up, you generate a memory about the dream.

Now it's very close to Malcolm.

Malcolm says that the statement about having had a dream is the only meaningful thing, not the existence of a dream, which anyhow cannot be reported because you were asleep, you were not there.

Mori and Gregory and later the philosopher Daniel Dennettsuggested that when you wake up is when you actually create the dream.

He called it the cassette type hypothesis of dreaming.

Dennett said that dreams are conjecture, that dreams are not real conscious experiences.

Dreams are pseudo-memories that emerge when you wake up from sleep.

These pseudo-memories do not correspond to any real dream experiences, they are fabrications of experiences that have never occurred according to Dennett.

The cassette theory of Dennett says the dreams are the product of instantaneous memory insertions at the moment of awakening.

As if there were some kind of cassette with, you remember cassettes?

History.

As if there was some kind of cassette with prescripted dreamsand these prescripted dreams have been inserted into memory ready to be replayed.

The aforementioned philosopher Jennifer Windt disagreed with Dennett, as do I, by the way, she counter argued that dream skepticism is in itself debunked, the dream argument is debunked and a lot of her work was based on the psychology of lucid dreaming.

She was the one who advanced the conceptual framework of dreaming as real imaginative experiences because she studied lucid dreaming.

I'll come to lucid dreaming in a few minutes.

One more person I would like to mention is Valberg and his concept of personal horizon.

He wrote a book titled Dream, Death, and the Self.

Valberg attempted to bring out his subject matter by considering the dream hypothesis.

In other words, whenever he dealt with some issue like the self or death or whatever, he asked the question, is it really a dreamor what if this were a dream?

And in this sense, Valberg's work is very close to mine.

Because in my work, the self is a dream stateand Valberg's work is very close to mine because in my work the self is a dream state.

And Valberg entertains this possibility, although he doesn't dare to go all the way, all nine yards.

In Valberg's view, an indeterminate horizon would necessarily be internalized, would necessarily form a part of the unconscious.

If there is a horizon, if there is something that is totally unclear, uncertain, and so on, like the uncertainty principle, if you wish, then it must be coming from the inside, it must be internal as if this were all a dream.

Whenever we are confronted with a reality that is indeterminate, cannot be reduced to certainties, it probably is coming from the inside and in this sense it's indistinguishable from a dream.

Now we know in quantum mechanics that realityand in this sense it's indistinguishable from a dream.

Now we know in quantum mechanics that reality indeed is indetermined, deterministic, not deterministic, indeed cannot be reduced to any certainty.

Although I have my debate with this, but this is the prevailing view.

Well, in this case, of course, everything is a dream. By definition.

Valberg distinguishes between the subject of the dream, what he calls the dream self, and the sleeping person who is the dreamer of the dream, and recalls it upon awakening.

Valberg argues that awakening from a dream involves crossing some kind of abyss or chasm between discrete worlds, two discrete worlds, the world of the dream and the world of reality with discrete spaces and discrete times.

In other words, it doesn't make sense to say that the I at these times is a sin, and I'm quoting him now, it doesn't make sense to say that the I at these times is a single individual who crosses from one world to the other.

According to Valberg, this is relevant to dream skepticism because there is no simple way to make sense of the claims that it is I who emerged from a dream or that I was the victim of dream deception.

In other words, what Valberg is suggesting actually is that somehow there's a fragmentation of the self.

It's the dreaming self and there's the wakeful self, the reality based and centered and immersed self, and they're not the same.

So dream skepticism is meaningless because dream skepticism, the dream argument, assumes that it is the same self that relates to the dream and to reality.

Now of course multiplication of entities is non-parsimonious and defies Occam's razor so I wholeheartedly reject this part of Wahlberg's work also I think it's not needed.

We could have a single self. Only this self would not be reality-based, as we had assumed hitherto. It would be dream-based.

The minute we reconceive of the self as a dream entity, many paradoxes and definitely the dream argument are automatically resolved.

Now I mention lucid dreaming. Lucid controlled dreaming, when the individual controls a dream, its content, its progression, can the individual can wake up at will, start the dream and terminate it, per wish.

Lucid dreaming is only one indication. The dreams do exist.

We have, of course, rapid eye movement, REM sleep, which occurs in the brain while you dream.

We know that because when we wake up people with REM sleep, they report having been dreaming.

We have dream enactment disorder where the individual enacts the dream by walking and talking and everything. We have all these phenomena and they prove, I think, the dreaming is a state of consciousness. It is a subjective experience.

So I completely reject the work of Malcolm. I think it's completely counterfactual and flies in the face of everything we know scientifically.

But if a dream is a state of consciousness, state of consciousness are founded on epistemological knowledge, justified knowing, or they're founded on beliefs, unjustified knowing. These are the two pillars of consciousness.

Either you believe in something but you cannot justify it and then it's a belief. Or you believe in something, and you can justify it, and then it is knowledge.

So, where do we classify and catalog dreams in this sense? They resemble hallucinations, illusions, mind-wondering, and imaginative experiences, but what are they? Are they forms of knowledge or are they forms of beliefs?

And this of course requires us to use the theory of justification in philosophy.

But before I go there, Patnum noted that Malcolm's analysis of the concept of dreaming relies on the dubious idea that philosophers have access to deep conceptual truths that are hidden to lay people.

Here's what Patnum had to say. The lexicographer would undoubtedly perceive the logical or semantical connection between being a pediatrician and being a doctor.

But the same lexicographer would miss the allegedly logical character of the connection between dreams and waking impressions.

This depth grammar kind of analyticity or logical dependence does not exist, said Patnum.

Nagel agreed, he argued that even if one accepts Malcolm's analysis of the concept of dreaming, and I'm quoting, it is a mistake to invest the demonstration that it is impossible to have experiences while asleep with more import than it has.

It's a very roundabout way of saying that it's nonsense.

Nagel continues, it is an observation about our use of the word experience and no more.

Let me help you here a bit.

He says that the claim that it is impossible to have experiences while we are asleep is nonsensical.

And it is a claim about our use of the word experience and no more.

It does not imply that nothing goes on in our minds when we dream, said Nagel, preceding Pablum, actually.

The difference between wakefulness and dreams is therefore a question of justification.

How do we justify our beliefs and claim, render them knowledge?

The belief that we are awake, not dreaming.

I'm going to repeat this because this is a key question.

We have a belief. The belief is I'm awake.

This belief can exist in dreams also.

So it's not helpful with the dream argument.

However, the justification of this belief can be helpful.

If we are able to justify this belief in one set of circumstances and not able to justify it in another set of circumstances, then in the first set of circumstances, this belief is knowledge.

If we are able to justify the belief, I'm awake when I'm truly awake, but we are not able to justify this belief when we are dreaming, then the statement I'm awake in the first case is knowledge, and the second case is mere belief.

I'm going to summarize it for you, make your life easier.

There is no theory of justification that I've tried that yields this outcome.

In other words, justification is helpless in the face of the dream argument.

But it doesn't mean that justification is helpless period.

Malcolm is the one who cast away justification.

But justification doesn't have to depend on strict criteria with the help of which the truth of a statement can be determined with absolute certainty.

In other words, this is a very high bar that we must know something 100% and that our arguments in themselves could be proven 100%.

But we can justify, there's a weaker variant of justification.

And Chihara and Fodor summed it up this way.

We can justify by appealing to simplicity, plausibility, and predictive adequacy of an explanatory system as a whole.

Now I am closer to Malcolm in this sense in my view, a justification such as this, the weak version of justification, is not a justification at all.

In this view, behavioral and physiological evidence can be used to verify dream reports, and the alleged principal difference between dream reports and other first person past tense psychological sentences disappears.

So there's work by Ayer and Sigler and others to that effect.

And to that extent, I agree.

But we cannot use the same waker version of justification to prove the distinction between dream state and wakefulness.

It doesn't work because there we have to be correct 100% of the time.

If we're incorrect even once, there's a huge problem.

Sosa said that in dreams, we make believe, we do not really believe.

In reality, we really believe.

I don't even understand this sentence, to be honest.

The experience of belief in dreams is very real.

I don't understand how could he say that in dreams we make believe what we sit back in a dream and say now we're going to believe this.

Sometimes scholars come up with extremely nonsensical sentencing and you have philosophers such as Jonathan Ichikawa and Nathan Ballantyne and Ian Evans and others say that dreams are imagined scenarios, not beliefs about the real world and wakefulness. And that's closer to reality.

But even wakefulness, even the real world could be imaginings, could be imaginary. If my theory is correct and the self is a dream state, it would make it very difficult to claim that the state of wakefulness yields qualitatively different data to the state of dreaming in the sense that the state of dreaming is imaginary, the data there is imaginary, whereas data in reality is not.

If the interface of reality is a dream state, if the filter and membrane are dreamlike, if the conversion of reality to a simulation is via a dream entity, it's very likely that the information we are getting from reality is not qualitatively different and is highly imagined as the information we're getting from dreams.

Van Someren wrote once the dreaming brain brings out the phenomenal level of organization in a clear and distinct form.

Dreaming is phenomenality, pure and simple, untouched by external physical stimulation or behavioral activity.

And this is of course completely untrue, as Windt had observed, observed dreams are in touch with both the environment and with our bodies.

But what is true in what Levant was said is that the dreaming brain is the closest we get to what we call consciousness, not the brain when it interacts with reality.

When the brain is interacting with reality, we are further away from who we truly are. We are further away from consciousness.

The dreaming brain is relatively isolated from the exigencies and demands of reality and therefore much closer to who we truly are.

Again, it's an inversion of the way we used to see things hitherto.

Because until now we said that when we are interacting with reality, we are the most conscious, and when we are dreaming, we are unconscious.

I think it's exactly the opposite.

We are conscious when we dream. We are becoming progressively less and less conscious as we wake up and have to face reality.

This reality is a simulation and a simulation that is essentially ultimately perceived as dreamlike by the self, which in itself is a dream state, and yet this simulated reality, this dream-like reality that is translated, remember the translation, translated by the self is not about us.

So if you want to be a bit religious, you could say that when you dream, it's your individual consciousness, your idiosyncratic form of consciousness.

And when you interact with reality, it's the consciousness of the world, or the consciousness of reality itself.

Two types of consciousness, if you wish.

But we are closest to ourselves when we dream.

And finally, there's, of course, generative models and predictive processing models that tackled dreams.

And I will quote a paragraph from Clark.

He said that systems that know how to perceive an object as a cat are thus systems that ipso facto are able to use top-down cascade to bring about the kinds of activity pattern that would be characteristic of a presence of a cat.

Perceivers like us, if this is correct, are inevitably potential dreamers and imaginers too.

Moreover, there are beings who, in dreaming and imagining, are deploying many of the very same strategies and resources used in ordinary perception.

I couldn't have said it better.

I think the self is the bridge between dreaming and reality.

I think what the self does, he translates dreams into reality and reality into dreams and in this sense the self is a language, the self is a dictionary it's a translation mechanism the self is sufficiently imbued with dreamlike attributes that it is able to interact with dreams in a meaningful manner.

At the same time, the self is capable of interacting with reality and converting it into a simulation, into a dream state, because it possesses the language of reality.

While the selfperceives dreams as real, truly real, the essence, the core, who we are, our consciousness, the self actually perceives reality as feigned or a bit unreal and needs therefore to convert it into a dream state in order to feel more real.

The self is the language which we use to convert a reality that is utterly alien to us into a dream state with which we are intimately acquainted.

It's a large language model and can be easily described as a form of artificial intelligence.

It is reality that is perceived by the self as dreamlike, and dreams are perceived as real.

And this bridge that the self builds between the two allows us the dream creatures to act upon reality and in it in a way that we can fulfill and realize our dreams and thereby actualize ourselves.

Thank you for listening.

I think we'll start with a simple question and the question is turned towards Elvis behind the camera.

On this shape, how many sides do you see?

Zero.

Zero?

Yes. Okay. And how many edges do you see? Two edges.

And zero sides? You don't see two sides? No, I mean...

No, no, no, no. Sides? Like inside and outside? Inside outside. Two sides.

Okay. Now, I asked Elvis and not you because you know too much I'm not innocent you're not innocent.

This is a tabat mebius in Hebrew it's called tabart mehbius and it's called the Möbius strip created by August Ferdinand Möbius, a mathematician of the 19th century, was born in the 18th.

And he tries to show all kinds of things, but we are not delving into this.

I simply wanted to show this shape which seemingly has two sides and seemingly has two edges but actually if you'll follow my finger you'll see that it has only one side here. see where it goes out, comes in and goes out and then it comes in again.

It has no inside and no outside. It has no, and it has only one edge because this upper edge at a certain stage becomes the nether edge and the nether edge ultimately gets to be the upper edge.

This is the intro to a discussion on are simulations as real as real reality and is reality a simulation.

I thought I would do this because it's hard to find your, as we say in Hebrew, to find our legs and our hands with this terminology. What is real and what is really real and what is...

And if a simulation is good, then it probably simulates reality.

Yes, this is exactly what David Chalmers says.

David Chalmers is a philosopher of consciousness, probably the leading philosopher of consciousness.

Of today? Of today.

And Chalmers says, what is this conversation? Why are we having this conversation? It's a simulation is as real as reality. Simulation is another reality. It's a form of reality.

So why are we making this artificial decision?

Simulation, for instance, Richard III?

All simulations, he said, are real. Otherwise, we would not have access to them and they would have no effect on us. They are as real as this room, as Elvis, as you and...

We cry in movies and we laugh. Simulations are real.

And if we create a simulation on our computer and we enter this simulation with our minds, for example, there is something called Second Life, which is a simulation of first life, of real life, and people play this simulation.

Now we have the metaverse coming, which we'll discuss separately, where people will wear certain gears, certain devices, which will deceive them into thinking that they are inside the computer, etc.

So why we waste the time on this totally artificial and meaningless distinction between reality and simulation.

He said simulation is reality and he said even more, if you take into account that intelligent creatures like to simulate, they love to simulate, they simulate all the time, and we realize that the universe is flooded with intelligent creatures, all of them simulating, he said it's very likely that what we call reality, this room and Elvis and the cameras and so on, is someone's simulation. He thinks there's a teenage alien who is simulating us.

Playing.

Yes. Simulating us. We are simulation.

He said statistically, and this is right, statistically we are far more likely to be someone's simulation than to be a reality.

Or like the figment of one's dream.

Yes.

Of course this leads immediately to God, you know, God as a simulator.

God as the simulator and the world as his or her dream.

Dream, the evil demon, the Japanese story about are you dreaming that you are butterfly, or are you a butterfly dreaming that you, etc. All these, all these, it's nothing new. This strand of thinking is nothing new. It permeates Eastern and Western thinking for millennia.

We have difficulty to tell apart, for example, dream states from reality. When we are in dream state, we believe we're there. It's real, real to you. It can even have physiological effect.

You can die in a dream if it's, you know, very...

I can turn off dreams.

Can you?

Well, I can't, but there is something called lucid dreaming, which is control of the contents of your dreams and when you start and finish.

When a dream becomes too...

Terrifying.

I simply, I say, I don't want this dream.

I probably know that it's a dream by then, I say no I don't want this dream and I turn it off.

That's a blessing.

Yes it is.

And you know very well that most people cannot do that.

So most people...

I didn't know that most people are immersed in the dream and they believe it's real.

I live in myself.

Well you see it ties into another conversation.

It might come as a surprise, I don't fully agree with Chalmers on several grounds.

First of all, I think we should distinguish between reality and simulations because simulations require a trigger, reality doesn't.

When you're born into reality as a baby you don't have to do anything to be in reality, it's immediately accessible to you.

Reality is, exactly, in this isness, it is immediately accessible to you. You don't have to adopt, you don't have to wear any equipment, you don't have to make any decision, you don't have to exercise your will.

Let's go with Chalmers.

But before we go with Chalmers, what I'm saying actually is that we do have a preferred state. It's not true that all our experiences are of equal status, which is what Chalmers is saying.

Chalmers is saying, it doesn't matter if you're in reality.

Your experience is, there's not privileged experience. All your experiences are equal status.

I vehemently disagree with this. I don't think it's true.

Because simulation requires an act of will of some kind.

Yes.

So even to see, suspending this belief, it's called, in art.

Act of will means to do something.

Even if in the future, all you will have to do is say, simulation please.

Yes, and in turn.

But still, have to be this sesame-sas yes there will be the sesame open thing there'salways so I do think there's a state of things a state I will not call it reality there's a state of things to which we have immediate access unmediated, unmediated by anything, not by technology, not by anything. And this makes it privileged. And we compare actually all simulations to this privileged state. That's why we call them simulations.

And this is why we call a piece of art which simulates reality well, that it has very similitude. Yes, it has, that its simulation is veritable.

It is veritable. Or the concepts of simulacum, etc., etc. It all contains the hidden assumption that there is a privileged frame of reference to which you are comparing things. That's my first disagreement with him. Second disagreement. Let's go with Chalmers. Let's go where he's leading. I say, okay, in the future, we will embed computers in the brain. We will not have them, they will not be external. It will just be a tiny chip. The moment you're born, they will inject it through your ear or through your nose into your brain. It will embed itself in your brain. And as your brain evolves, it will tap. It will access this chip. That's already in the works. Really? Yes, people are already thinking about it. So... What is the benefit of it? Well, you will have all the Encyclopedia Britannica at your disposal. You will have internet in your head, and, most importantly, you will be able to simulate. You will have access to simulations.

You will know how to speak Tagalog and French?

All languages, absolutely. And Inuit.

Everything will be on the chip. In other words, this will eliminate learning, essentially, an education. Okay, let's assume we have a chip like this in the brain so Chalmers had you been Chalmers Chalmers would have told me we we have a privileged frame of reference because the simulations are still external to our brains but when we bring the simulation into our brains via this chip, we will not be able to tell the difference between a privilege frame and our internal frames. So we will just wake up in the morning and we will find ourselves in some environment, and we will not be able to tell if this environment comes from emanates from inside our minds through the chip or is outside our mind. We're not able to tell this difference. So that's a very strong argument. But still I think he's wrong. Had he made this argument, I still think he would be wrong. Even if the simulation is embedded in the brain, I don't believe we will ever invent a technology that blurs the lines to this extent. I believe even the most advanced technology ever, like 10,000 years from 100,000 years for now,

Wow. Will require... You're going far? Yes. Will require, because it's a principle.

Yes, will?

Will require a conscious act of will to switch between states. I don't believe anyone will create a chip that denies you the power to switch.

You think nobody will want to create a chip? Yes, I think... To create a golem that would...

Yes, because if I embed in your mind......

inslave its maker?

Yes, if I embed in your mind a cheap that takes over and then you wake up in the morning and you don't know if it's the cheap which is in control or you are in control. Because if you are in control, you're in reality. You're in the privileged state.

If the chip is in control or you are in control because if you are in control you're in reality you're in the privileged state if the chip is in control the chip creates a simulation and you are in the in the chips but you know all these people with intentions like the one who created Frankenstein and Golem, they are sick minds.

They want to create it.

They are, of course.

They may want to clone soldiers to...

Of course.

To conquer hills and bastions.

Of course.

But that's why at least two Chinese scientists are in prison. That's why laws and regulations are forward.

I don't, of course, are you asking, if you're asking, is it technically possible?

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

Is it likely?

We shouldn't.

We shouldn't.

Not only we shouldn't.

I don't believe it will ever be done.

Okay, thank you.

So, okay. So why discuss something, the likelihood of which is infinitely low?

I mean, we can discuss many such things, but philosophy should be grounded in what is actual, not in, you know.

So, even there, I disagree with him.

I think yes, I think we will have chips in our minds, and I do think we will be able at will to switch from reality to a simulation.

For example, I believe there will be a chip that will allow you to have sex. So instead of having, when you're in reality, you wake up in the morning, you're horny, you switch on the chip. And you have a simulation of sex with a gorgeous girl.

But willingly?

Willingly.

And knowingly.

And knowingly. It would be a conscious act of will. Volition will never disappear. And the minute there is volition, there's something that tells you the difference between a privileged frame and a simulation.

And this is what Chalmers is missing in all his discourse, the volition, the consciousness.

He considers human beings as totally passive objects that find themselves in a simulation.

But human beings don't find themselves in a simulation. Human beings decide to be in a simulation.

You know, I'm thinking of being 50 years younger and taking out a young girl to see a movie and holding hands, possibly, and seeing the movie, I wouldn't mix the movie with what happens in the hall.

And if the movie took place in your head, because you have an embedded chip, you would tell the girl you're with, do you mind if we both switch our chips onto see this in this movie?

We become actors in the movie, you know, observers inside the movie.

She would say, yeah, it's a great idea. Let's switch it on.

I don't believe there will be a situation where we will both be sitting in a movie theater and the chip will take over and just fling you into the movie despite your will.

Even if there will be an evil genius who will design such a chip, and the chip does take over, and the chip does confuse you and does create a simulation, it will definitely be despite your will.

So even on the negative side, if you are being kidnapped by the chip, it's kidnapping, it's despite your will. The will is there.

So this is what rules and regulations are for.

So that's where Chalmers is wrong in my view. He forgets volition.

And another issue that is wrong, but we can...

Just before we go on, how did you spell his name?

Chalmers, C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S.

Okay, okay, for the viewers to look him up.

Yeah, David Chalmers.

This is the first mistake, I think.

The first mistake is to say, well, we have reality, we have simulations, and people will switch seamlessly between them.

No, they will not switch seamlessly. There will be an interface where they will have to make a conscious choice and a decision of some kind.

Okay, that's cogent. That's one.

Second mistake I think he makes. He says even our reality, even what we call reality, this privileged frame of reference is a simulation. It's a similar simulation, an alien teenager.

And he says, well, does he say this, does he really mean it or is it just a job?

No, no, he says, and he's right, by the way, I agree with that.

He says statistically what we call reality is someone's simulation.

I happen to agree with him on statistical grounds. I think what we call reality is there's an extremely high likelihood that it is someone's simulation.

But here's a mistake. Here's his mistake in my view.

These are two separate issues.

Our reality may be a simulation, but he is talking about simulations within this reality.

In other words, reality is an inescapable frame of reference. You can't escape reality. Whatever you create, if I create a simulation right now and deceive you into thinking that it's reality, it would still be a simulation within reality. We can't escape reality. It's our only frame of reference. It's possible that our frame of reference is a simulation, but then this being, this alien teenager, who is simulating Benny Handel and Sam Vaknin and Elvis, this teenager, is also embedded in her frame of reference, and her simulation of us is in her reality which could be someone else's simulation but this is a supposition anyway, it's untestable and unfalsifiable.

But the philosophical mistake that is making the fact that our reality simulation doesn't mean that it's not a privileged frame of reference. The fact that our reality may be a simulation doesn't mean it's not the only framework we have. The only framework, we cannot exit this simulation anyhow.

We can exit by having booze or by drinking, by drugs.

No, you are drinking and having drugs inside.

Inside...

There's no way to escape.

In your mind, you're in delirium, say.

Yes, but this delirium is embedded in reality. There's no... even in your delirium, you don't assume that you are exiting reality. You are creating simulations which somehow borrow elements from your reality. These elements are, of course, combined wrongly, but there are still elements from reality. There's no way to exit reality. It's nonsensical even to say this.

The sentence exiting reality is nonsensical. Reality is everything. End of story. Even your simulations are part of reality.

It's the privileged frame of reason. And it's immaterial and irrelevant if this reality is real or a teenager simulation.

Or an older person's simulation.

It's immaterial. It's a totally irrelevant question.

Because whether it's real, whether it's simulation which is also real, I cannot exit it. I don't have an observer.

What Chalmers is doing is committing the classical he is adopting the classical stance of observer and observed system.

It's as if we can stand aside from reality and look and say, okay, this is reality and this is simulation, which is indistinguishable from reality.

It's as though we can't observe from outside reality. Even our physical experiments are an integral part of reality. There's no way for us to exit reality and observe it.

To be able to say that simulation is the same as reality...

You need to observe them from outside. He has to have a meta yes reality. He needs to have advantage point he needs a an Archimedean point it is a vantage point where he can see both the simulation and reality where he can see both of them and then he can say yes they're the same okay but then he needs to be outside both of them. And then he can say, yes, they are the same.

Okay.

But then he needs to be outside both of them.

How can he say they're the same if he is not outside both of them?

Is there anything else that you hold against him?

The shocking thing for me is that I'm an admirer of David Chalmers. I truly admire his work.

But these are rookie novice mistakes. These are mistakes I would have expected from first-year philosophy students.

And you arrest your case?

I rest my case and I'm disappointed.

Sam, good to be back.

Yes. Indeed.

Okay.

Our next topic is reality observer dependent. And I guess the question is yes, we've even said so in our last talk.

Yes, indeed. In our last talk, I presented a variant of idealism where the mind actually creates reality and creates itself, recreates itself on the fly, the mind keeps becoming via the process of intentionality, which was described by Husserl and Brentano, it's not my invention.

But my contribution was to say that intentionality organizes all our experience with external objects and with internal objects.

Right. Okay. So if this is true and if it's a principle of life, I also suggested following your lead that it actually characterizes life.

If this is not only humans.

Of course.

And if this is true, then it raises the question of what is reality.

If the mind is so heavily involved in creating reality, maybe there's no reality. Maybe it's a figment of our imagination. Maybe we're all mentally ill in an asylum when we just think that there is something outside us that we had or had not created.

Descartes started that the evil demon deceives us into believing in that.

Yes, yes.

Or when he has a dream that he's sitting by the fire?

Yeah.

By the way, he was not alone. This question keeps recurring. Schrödinger asked a similar question.

How do we decide what is real and what is not?

There are two methods.

Method number one is an opinion poll. I ask you, do you see the camera? Yes. Do I see the camera? Yes. Does Elvis see the camera? Yes. Yes, there is a camera. All three of us see the camera.

How many cameras do you see?

Oh, I see three. How many do you see?

Three. How many do you see three?

This is the opinion poll method of establishing reality. All three, what's the statistical possibility? All three are wrong, you know, to that extent.

Okay, the second method of establishing reality is the method of functionalism or operability.

If we see certain outcomes, certain effects, we can safely assume certain causes. And when we have effects and causes together, we have reality.

So this is the second method.

I again want to suggest an alternative way of looking at it, based on cutting edge physics. This is based on the latest knowledge in physics, which I'm following.

And recently I've been working on my own theory, which I started 40 years ago. So I'm forced into reacquiring knowledge in physics.

Before suggesting what I have to suggest I want a brief background.

The world objects in the world, especially small-scale objects like elementary particles, there is an equation that describes the behavior of these particles and this equation is known as a Schrödinger equation.

It is a wave function. It's an equation that describes a wave, physical, like a wave, a wave, right, exactly, like in the sea.

Sinusoids.

A wave.

A wave, exactly like in the sea.

And now what is this wave?

It's a wave of probabilities.

Where are we going to find the particle? 10% of the particle will be here, 20% it will be here, 50% it will be here, 7% it will be here, 3% it will be here.

So we have a wave. It's a wave of where are we likely to find the particle and how the particle is going to behave, probabilistically.

But then when we make a measurement in the laboratory, we find a particle here.

We don't get a wave. We don't get a particle smeared all over.

We get a photograph of the particle. We get a point. We get a dot. A dot.

How come? If there is a wave that describes the probabilities of finding the particle all over, and this is known as superposition, how come when we make the measurement this wave collapses, disappears, and we have a single dot?

So one of the explanations, and the orthodoxy, appears and we have a single dot.

So one of the explanations and the orthodoxy, what is accepted, is that the observer, by observing the act, by the mere observation, the act of us nails the wave and makes it and reduces it into a dot.

That's a common explanation.

What's my innovation? What's my contribution, attempted contribution?

I'm saying observers can observe only dots.

In classical interpretation of quantum mechanics, they say an observer comes to the wave and he doesn't know what's going to happen.

He can find a particle here, here, here, here, he doesn't know.

It's open.

It's open.

According to the wave.

Yes, and I'm saying, no, it's not open. It's dancing along the wave.

Yeah, and the observer doesn't have a way to predict where the particle will be.

Okay.

Although there are probabilities.

Particle is much more probable to be here than here.

According to the wave.

Of course the wave.

But still, the particle can be here.

Yes.

You just can't tell.

I'm saying no.

We got it wrong.

We got it wrong.

We got it wrong.

It's not that the observer comes to the wave naively.

Bonafide.

And then the wave collapses into a dot.

It's that we are not capable to see anything else but the dot.

We have instrumentation known as the brain or the mind that is capable of observing only the collapsed states.

Nothing else.

So we are like a filter.

We don't collapse the wave function. We observe the collapse because we are built to observe collapses.

Now it sounds like scholasticism, it sounds like because we are built to observe collapses.

Now, it sounds like scholasticism.

It sounds like... Pulling hairs.

Yes, but it's not.

It's a major revolution.

It's absolutely a major revolution which puts quantum mechanics on its head.

It simply says that we are observing a slice of reality only because we are not equipped to observe all the rest.

We are equipped to observe only collapsed states.

It also means that if you were to take a billion people and they were to conduct the identical experiment, all of them would see the same dot.

At the same place?

At the same place at the same split second, they will see only that dot and no other dot.

Because they're all...

Because they all have the same hardware.

The same hardware.

Of course it's impossible to check this because it's impossible to do the same experiment.

Right.

But wait a minute, but how do you know?

Yes.

But it leads to something.

Okay.

So if I'm right, it has two implications.

One, reality is a collaboration of minds.

When I approach the wave function as an observer, my mind, my brain filters out every possibility except the collapse.

Because there are other states, non-collapsible states.

There is a collapse state, the dot, and there are many other states.

They don't go away. They're there.

But we are unable to observe them. We're able to observe only the collapse.

And because everyone in the world, every human being who would make the same experiment, conduct the same experiment, we get the same result, it means that we all determine this result.

Even if we don't conduct the experiment, even if we do not conduct the experiment, by virtue of sharing the same hardware we are creating this outcome, this specific outcome.

Okay but why do we have this filter why do we observe only collapse states?

Because it's good for survival. This is evolution.

I was going to ask what you mean by why.

What does it contribute?

Yes.

Why would we have hardware that isolates the collapsed state?

It doesn't give us access.

It's in keeping with one saying that the mind is geared to keep the cosmos out.

To keep the cosmos as it is out.

To, yeah, to more than to keep the parts of the cosmos that are not conducive to survival.

Exactly.

Out.

And to direct us to the parts that are conducive to survival.

Exactly. Out and to direct us to the parts that are conducive to survival.

Yes.

In other words, it is not true that the collapsed states are exactly like non-collapse states. It just happened to be this point on the wave, that point on the wave equation, but they're the same. We might as well have gotten another dot, not this dot.

It's not true.

The collapsed states must be special.

Why?

Because we see them. We have hardware. And because we keep observing only collapsed states, it's a sure proof that the collapsed states are special.

Because otherwise we would not observe them.

Yes. Why these, you're saying?

Why these and not others?

Yes.

Imagine that I'm colorblind, and you have here mugs in various colors. But I keep saying only the black mug, because I'm colorblind and you have here mugs in various colors. But I keep saying only the black mug because I'm color blind.

So it must be something special about the mug.

What is special about the mug?

It's black. It's interaction with my handicap, with my disability.

So we have a disability. We observe only collapse states.

Okay.

But it means that the collapse states are helping us somehow.

They are somehow enhancing. They have a survival value for us.

Why? How?

I think the answer is, collapse states increase order.

They increase the order in the universe.

They fight entropy.

They are fighting against chaos.

They are fighting against disorder.

They are organizing the universe.

They create structure, which is very conducive to survival.

Because you can't survive in a chaotic environment where heat is distributed equally where no work is possible.

So I think the collapse state extend and enhance order in the universe and that's why we are capable to see only collapse states.

Because the minute we see the collapse state, we are getting information that helps us to increase order and structure, which helps us to survive.

But then, how does the universe communicate this information about order?

How does the universe embed information in the particle so that when we observe the particle we obtain this information? How?

And I want to suggest that the universe has a DNA.

There is a principle in science. The same principle is applied everywhere.

For example, the same equations in physics that describe elementary particles, describe black holes.

Black holes are the most dense, enormous objects in the world, in the cosmos. Heavy. Heavy. dense. Huge. There are millions of times the mass of the Sun and so on. That's black holes.

Elementary particles are the tiniest possible objects, you know, they are nothing.

And yet it's the same equations.

We use the same equations for both.

It shows you that nature is parsimonious.

It uses the same principle to organize everything.

So if nature uses DNA with life, why not use DNA with the cosmos?

I think the cosmos in every atom, in every cell, in every particle has DNA.

I call it physical DNA.

What is this DNA? It's about order and structure. Exactly like the DNA in our bodies. It's about order and structure. Exactly like the DNA in our bodies.

It's DNA of order and structure.

When we as observers choose a collapse state, that collapse state contains information about order and structure. It contains this DNA.

And then we're able to extract this DNA via the act of observation and increased order and structure in the universe are helping us to survive.

I think that's more or less this.

In this sense, we are agents of order. Our role is to increase order in the universe.

Now when you say we are agents of order I cannot not think of ethics where the order of the one is the disorder of the other one.

The good and the bad. What is good for one, for instance, take the big isms capitalism adores freedom fascism adores fraternity communism adores quality.

So this ism says this is the most important thing and this is the crown of my order. This ism says the opposite and this ism says again something else.

How do you see order being distributed in such a way that we can actually survive as a civilization.

Yeah, that's always a problem when there's a language that uses common words, words that are common to disciplines, but they mean totally different things in each discipline.

Order in physics simply means opposite of entropy. The ability to do work.

So when I say order and structure, I simply mean that there is an asymmetry, a gradient of heat. There is energy here more than there is energy here.

So you can create work.

Yes.

So you can create work.

There is, there is, there is not, it's an in similarity.

Yes, negentropy.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, because entropy simply means that everything has equal temperature. It's diffused. Everything has equal temperature, it's about heat. Everything has equal temperature. It's about heat. Everything is equal temperature.

So you can't do work.

No.

If the water has the same temperature like the gas, it will never boil.

It's dead.

It's dead.

The role of human beings, I think, in life, not only human beings. The role of, because we don't know, maybe a dog can also observe an elementary particle. We don't know.

But I suspect life in general, but human beings definitely.

Their role is to observe the universe and via the act of observation to collapse it.

Because human beings have a machinery, this, trained to detect collapsed states and only collapsed states. No other states, only collapse states.

So we use this machinery, we detect collapse states.

When we detect collapse states, we create order. We create order. And we create structure.

And so the act of observation introduces an increase in order and an increasing structure to the world.

Now what do we call this?

Increasing order and structure.

Reality. That's reality.

So, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh in Hebrew, I shall be, whatever I shall be, means a constant recreation of order out of chaos, which happens every day, every moment, with every person and every observation.

Now, there's recent work by Lanza and others.

Lanza is, I think, a biologist, if I remember correctly, but two other physicists.

And they put together all of modern quantum mechanics and so on.

And they suggest that there is a consensus of minds which allows us to observe the universe collectively and thereby create it.

Okay, so you can say these are second-rate scientists and I'm not listening to them.

But then go to someone like Stephen Hawking and Hertog. They came up with something called the top-down universe.

They suggested that human beings, via the act of observation, are not only creating the present and by definition the future, but they are creating the past, because had they not created the past, they would not have been able to be in this present.

It's an ingenious idea. Think about it for a minute. Had you not created the appropriate past, you could not have been here in this present.

The present is per definition of the past.

Yes, but then it means that you have to create the past to get to this present.

So what Hawking and Hertog are saying, they're not suspect, they're not exactly second-rate physicists, yes?

Yes.

They are probably secondary only to Einstein.

What they are saying is that by the act of observation, we are creating not only the present and the future, but also the past of the universe.

And this solves a very interesting question.

If the universe is the outcome of observation, the universe had existed billions of years before we came.

Exactly.

Who observed the universe?

So religious people will tell you, God observed the universe. The observer was God. God observed and created the universe.

So religious people will tell you God observed the universe. The observer was God. God observed and created the universe. That's more or less the Kabbalah's approach.

But Hawking, and to a much lesser extent, Vaknin, these kind of people, they are saying, no, it's not God. It's the act of observation not only creates the present, but creates the past.

With every act of collective observation, we are cementing the past of the universe, not only the present.

No, it's very counterintuitive. It sounds totally crazy.

But if you stop to think about it, you will see how logical it is.

If you were not engineering the past to perfection, you could have never make the observation in the present. Your present crucially depends on your ability to recreate the past in a way that leads to this specific present of all possible presence.

So this is the thesis that I'm coming up with and it solves many problems but raises many others.