How do physicists know that our physical world isn’t virtual? Stephen Hawking explains:
“But maybe we are all linked in to a giant computer simulation that sends a signal of pain when we send a motor signal to swing an imaginary foot at an imaginary stone. Maybe we are characters in a computer game played by aliens.” in (Vacca, 2005), p131.
He seems open to virtualism but the next sentence is “Joking apart…”. Virtualism is a joke among the physics elite, but since 95% of the universe is dark matter and energy that they can’t explain, where does this certainty come from? The tradition that matter is a self-existing substance seems obvious to them but in logic it’s just an assumption, and in science it’s just a theory. Matter is less than 5% of the universe, and no-one knows what the rest is, so the belief that only matter is real is misplaced.
The discussion of virtualism in academic circles is also intellectually weak. In the 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate “Is the Universe a Simulation?“, experts attacked the naïve virtualism of The Matrix movie but ignored that quantum waves create physical events according to quantum theory. They attacked a straw man, a fantasy movie with no academic credentials, but ignored their own position.
In an objective world, time doesn’t dilate, space doesn’t bend, objects don’t teleport, empty space is empty, and universes don’t pop up out of nowhere. No-one would doubt that our world was objectively real, if only it would behave so. Instead, it provides the sort of evidence that a court would accept as worth investigating further. There is a prima facie case for virtualism, but what are the implications of accepting it?