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/energy that we can’t explain, where does this certainty come from? Our tradition that matter is all there is seems evident but in logic it is just an assumption, and in science it is just a theory. Given that our current theories explain less than 5% of the universe, why are scientists so confident that only matter exists?
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 the possibility that quantum waves create physical events, as quantum theory says. They attacked a straw man, a fantasy movie with no academic credentials, but didn’t critically evaluate 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 a prima facie case worth investigating further. But what are the implications of assuming the physical world is a virtual reality?