Are NDES evidence we live in a simulation?
When you read a good book, or watch a well directed film, or play an immersive game, or take certain drugs, and especially when you dream, your consciousness is momentarily separated from this existence. In the examples of books films or games, your consciousness is being manipulated by creative talent to exist in their created world. In the example of dreams or drugs, your consciousness is involuntarily separated from “reality”.
What if our consciousness is currently actually in a similar created reality, only the creator is of such genius you cannot tell it is not real? If so, is your consciousness itself real or just part of the simulation? These are questions that lie at the heart of simulation theory.
I talk about simulation theory in my book “Did Jesus Die For Nothing?” But at that point in time I would say my thinking was still evolving. I defined simulation theory as something distinct and related to the understanding that we live in a computer or AI generated simulation, but ultimately the creation of an external intelligence of natural origin. This is something many of my Ph.D. colleagues subscribe to once they understand that life and the universe are not possible by natural means. However, and I do allude to it a bit, the fact is that the idea of simulation theory can be applied much more broadly.
I was watching Musk talk about this recently, and he described how simulations are designed to test theories, engineering etc in a safe and consequence-free environment. He used the example of simulating rockets in computers etc. Pilots are tested in simulators. Exams are a form of simulation. In ancient times men would practice fighting with wooden swords. All these are simulations. Some of these simulations are designed to help us learn and prepare for real situations which may be life of death in nature, other simulations are designed to test people or technology to see if they are up to the task. I will come back to these different applications at the end and which I think we live in.
So to the question at the start…are NDEs evidence we live in a simulation? Yes, absolutely they are. If NDEs are real, then the claim that virtually every experiencer makes – that this is not reality, is overwhelming evidence that the life we live is not real. In both my books I talk about this extensively, but don’t really equate that understanding to a simulation, mainly because the word simulation has a modern context that didn’t instantly feel as though it applied. But it does, and even from a Christian perspective, it is accurate.
Back to NDEs. Many people report leaving their bodies and observing their dead bodies and feeling absolutely nothing for those bodies. The pain has gone. The bodies are now anathema. They have become their “real” selves. They are “home”. Conversely when they return they feel that they are being pushed into something unnatural. They are being inserted back into the “simulation” (this is why the Matrix (I) has always been my favourite film…it has always spoken to an underlying truth about existence, albeit in a fictional context…II and III were garbage). During NDEs the experiencers are sometimes told that earth is a “learning” environment or “school”. There, they live outside time, here we are constrained by time.
All this is evidence that we are living in a simulation. As a Christian that makes absolute sense to me since we are told we live in a created environment. The difference though is that rather than being a school, the Christian teaching is that the simulation is a test. Again, I do talk about this in my book focusing on Christianity and the purpose of the test.
As I have thought about this more and more a new (and obvious) revelation has come to me, and one that answers one of the greatest questions about God…one of the biggest objections to [Christian] God is:
IF GOD IS GOOD, AND IN NDES WE LEARN HE IS GOOD, THEN WHY DOES HE ALLOW SUFFERING?
Answer:
The suffering isn’t real.
The suffering feels real while in the simulation, but from an observer outside it is not real just like in a film. This is something that NDE experiencers immediately observe about the suffering they had experienced in the instant before leaving their bodies. It is not of consequence.
However, provided that our consciousness is indeed real, and not itself a part of the simulation (something we cannot ever prove or disprove), not everything about the simulation is without consequence. I believe that the response to the suffering or whatever circumstance you face, is the true reality…it is the output from the simulation, the information about your consciousness that the test, or designer of the test, was seeking to learn.
Two people faced with precisely the same circumstances will react differently to those circumstances. The circumstances aren’t real, the CONSCIOUS response is, and the consequences, or information about the nature of that consciousness, are real to.
I look forward to your thoughts on this.
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It interesting the simulatanous idea. Suposse versions of it go back to the butterfly dream of Daoist philosopher Zhou and Plato and his caves and shadows.
One i liked is by CS Lewis and his thoughts on miracles. A miracle not a distoration or breaking of the laws of reality, but reality been expsnded more into a deeper reality, which i suppose allures to our reality being somewhst a simulatous.
I don’t think we live in a simulation
It is very much a matter of opinion as you cannot prove or disprove it. Also when I use the word simulation, I am applying it a different understanding from the usual one…more a created test environment.
Do you believe in reincarnation too? Just being curious. Because people who are into that basically almost have the same opinion. We are down here to learn and this is just a testing area.
(I don’t like the concept of reincarnation because it enables ableism and so much more. Making people believe any form of cruel fate or death is okay because he person deserved it. And defending the theory of amnesia hardcorely when it just proves in the past thousand of years our human compassion has barely changed to the better for us, the animals and nature – so I don’t see much of an improvement, sorry, I went overboard there)
But like Nanci Danison is very popular right now among new age hindus. She claims this is just a simulation, god is the source, we are god because god cannot experience anything else but love and we go down here to experience pain and suffering for him because he is curious and wants to know what it feels like and stuff like this. I’d honestly love to know your opinion regarding this, Orson.
I do not have an opinion on reincarnation except that I don’t think we should take the chance that it is real in case it is either not real, or this was our last chance to get it right!
I assume Orson means like… earth is like a physical playground to learn valuable lessons for where we go to next. Some have bad luck… some don’t… it’s coincidence sadly.
Being kind, dealing with different situations… so we sort of take this with us into the afterlife and maybe share our experiences with each other and continue to learn there… from each other.
That’s also why I hope it only happens once because we can just connect and have a huge debate about it after and as long as there is life there’s always going to be new stories to be added to the mix.
Sure I guess some say we could just be created and exist over there from the start… but IDK – who knows if our journey even started there…? When people say we “come home” it does not mean we came from there but more like… we reached a place that feels final and where we get to put to use and into talk what we learned here down on earths “simulation”.
Personally I wouldn’t call it a simulation or school either. It is a stage. IDK what was before birth or if there even was anything. But I was in a womb. That itself was its own world and experience. Then I am on earth. And then I go further. I see it in stages not as a simulation.
Whats your opinion, Paul?
Great post! It’s not a take on simulation I’ve seen elsewhere. I have a potentially incredibly naive question, especially for someone raised as a Christian, but how do individual souls emerge in Christianity? Is it related to our “hardware”? I think it might be interesting to see how it can relate to the simulation hypothesis. Thanks!
My thoughts on this are that we are somehow birthed from “God’s” consciousness. We are not parts of his consciousness, but we are independent entities just like children are on this earth birthed from their parents but are independent. In fact I feel that God made things the way they are as analogue of our origins.
Data can not see, feel, taste – data just is. In darkness. And it can not even experience darkness. Imagine being there but not being able to experience anything, not even light or darkness.
Data is not physical and cannot touch anything. That alone is enough to explain to people; no, we do not live in a simulation. We are physical. And even if we would be inside a bowl of glass and giant aliens are watching us from the outside then we are still all real and existing – just inside a cage being observed. But thats about it.
Also; data can not be mixed with biology. Not in our universe. A prosthetic arm reacting to nerves electric sensory isn’t the same as a program wirtten into us and being part of our anatomy.
You cannot hold an USB stick to your forehead and hope and pray the images from your lasts vacation will be transferred somehow into your biologic mess of brain soup. I hope i explained it easy and plain.
But everyone is free to speculate and fantasize.
Have you not heard of Neuralink?
Hey Orson!
I did but still It’s just another device reacting on body (brain, nerve, the like) electricity so it just confirms what i already said.
“Neuralink’s brain-computer interface interacts electrically rather than physically fusing with biology. The device uses ultrathin flexible threads with over 1,000 electrodes implanted into the brain by a robotic surgeon. These detect neuron voltage spikes and transmit them wirelessly to translate thoughts into digital actions.”
I hope what I said is more understandeable now 🙂
OK. I agree that data cannot see, and that we are more than data, and life is more than data, however what you regard as physical reality is demonstrably illusory. As a chemist I know that solidity is an illusion made up of reflected light and electrostatic repulsion. It is quite simply a fact that if you were able to remove all the space between the electrons, protons and neutrons that comprise the atoms that join together to make up your body, you would be smaller than a particle of dust. The entire human race could fit in a space the size of sugar cube! Then there is the quantum nature of sub atomic particles and the fact that their state only comes into existence when observed.
Science proves that reality is not what we think it is and that our perceptions of the physical world are false. Science also shows that life (and possibly the universe) could not have come into being by natural processes.
Then you add in evidence from NDEs. Consciousness leaves this dimension and is able to enter other dimensions. People describe those dimensions as real, and that this is not real. You also have externally and centrally stored memory…while that may not be digital, it is clearly portable information.
Then you have religions, and I refer to mine, but almost all religions talk about a “created” world. Many of these religions talk of an eternal world that exists beyond this world that is the final destination of our consciousness. They also talk of this life as test. Eternity is reality, time is created…just like a story or a computer program…these latter two are metaphors or similes to help explain what I am saying, not factual explanations although the overlap is very close.
When you add all of this evidence together, one conclusion is to say that we live in a simulated reality designed to convince our consciousnesses that it is the real reality and in which we are tested or schooled or entertainment. This latter distinction is very important. Religions argue tested, NDEism argue schooled, “digital” both of these differ from simulation theorists who regard this as something like Netflix for aliens – and that we are just entertainment. All are simulations of a kind with a purpose, and all are plausible to believe given the evidence. You can also believe that this life is real.
Maldacena’s AdS/CFT discovery, basically shows that what happens in the higher dimensional 3D bulk (everyday world), can be described by a theory that lives on a lower 2D boundary of a cylinder at infinity.
But I say these cylinders are within us, and are connected by wormholes, which results in shared experience (Nature).
Wormholes are just another way of saying quantum entanglement, (which IMO is equivalent to saying matching patterns get added up), and that is how spacetime seems to be constructed. It’s also acausal – hard to accept that causality flies out the window – replaced by matching patterns, ordering and scale. But there it is.
The terrible misunderstanding is… that one is a separate, isolated individual, walking around in a separate isolated world, with other separate, isolated individuals. Until one finds a way to break out of that naive perspective, one will understand everything I’ve written here with the wrong perspective.
Geoff Peningtons 2019 breakthrough shows how matching patterns/copies/replica’s, with sufficient isolation *connect* different spacetimes. IMO that shows how experience comes about, and is the reason for all common anomalous human experiences.
Bandyopadhyay, Mikheenko have shown superconducting-like behavior in hydrated cylindrical protein structures – the microtubule. Which I say, will almost certainly turn out to have some mathematical 1:1 isomorphism with a future mathematical theory-of-everything, and I say, is almost certainly directly connected to Maldcena’s AdS/CFT conjecture.
Edwin Land already showed us that colour cannot be a property of any external world. Colour is just the exposed tip of an enormous iceberg.
So yes, I’d say it is a simulation in some sense, but also no, it’s not a simulation. It’s something in-between these two, but also something completely different.
What if the NDE’s actually is your D, but you smoothly go over into the next realm without realizing it. You simply continue to do your daily thing, as everything simply looks the same and similar. But the astral plane might look like a simulation, as the soul still is trapped inside a fake aka holographic projection, which for sure look 100% real to us.