This academic turned filmmaker believes science’s growing openness to the simulation hypothesis may overturn materialism.

photo by: Kent Forbes

Today on Skeptiko we’re joined by Kent Forbes, whose movie, The Simulation Hypothesis, explores the possibility that reality is a simulation in which we are unaware avatars. It may sound like a strange idea, but it’s gaining attention among serious physicists. I have to wonder if they’ve fully considered what this hypothesis means for materialism, but fortunately for us, today’s guest has:

Kent Forbes: It doesn’t happen overnight. The fact that someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson could come out and publicly endorse an idea, with the implications that the simulation hypothesis has, I think is noteworthy. Then [you have] other people immediately stepping forward [like] Elon Musk. You can talk about whether or not he has the qualifications to make such an endorsement but the point is that the idea is catching on. People who are recognized thinkers are saying, you know what, the explanatory power of this model is too great. It solves a lot of problems that are unsolvable under the strict materialist paradigm, and I’m going to overcome my emotional bias and I’m going to go with this. We’re going to take a chance. This is what bold scientists do. They look at something with a lot of explanatory power and they say, you know what, somebody has to step over this line. I’m going to do that.

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Watch The Simulation Hypothesis on YouTube

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Read Excerpts From Interview:

Kent Forbes: As outside of the box as Einstein was, it took him right until the end but he did shift his thinking, and very clearly says so in his correspondence with peers at the end of his life: we need a new theory that can speak to the problem [that] matter is not the base constituent of reality. But we don’t have a way of talking about this. So that’s what the information theory and simulation hypothesis [are]. [They’re] Einstein’s dream in a way, because it fills that gap perfectly and I wish he were alive to see how that’s come around. I believe he would be satisfied with it.

Alex Tsakiris: You do a nice job in The Simulation Hypothesis of laying out in very clear terms what is at stake in terms of choosing one set of findings versus another set of findings. And you make it clear that’s it’s unreasonable to choose this set of findings that consistently over and over again are not producing results that scientists would normally consider affirming their position. On the other hand, piling up again experiment after experiment, top scientists, top journals that affirm the counter-hypothesis seems to carrying the day in every way we look at it, from every angle.

Kent Forbes: Absolutely. There’s also the idea of progress behind all of this. Ever since the enlightenment period the materialist paradigm has been incrementally built up as a way of understanding the experience that we’re having. They had a lot of success with it that was designed to undermine...