Category Archives: What it might mean

Dice all the way down: philosophical ramifications of indivisible quantum theory

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“The currently established laws of nature are deterministic with a random element from quantum mechanics. This means the future is fixed, except for occasional quantum events that we cannot influence.”[1]

For 2500 years Western philosophers and scientists have told two recurring stories about the material foundations of the universe. The first describes a mechanistic universe governed entirely by deterministic laws of cause and effect. It is the story told by Democritus, given gravitas by Newton, and exemplified by Laplace’s demon. The second story inserts a crucial element of randomness into the mechanism. It is the story of the swerve told by Epicurus and Lucretius. It is the story of the random jumps in the evolution of the quantum wave function. In this story there is a place in the material universe for unpredictability and indeterminacy.

I want to tell a different story

In this alternative story the universe is not a deterministic clock. Nor is it mostly deterministic with occasional swerves or quantum jumps. Instead, the universe is profoundly indeterminate and probabilistic. The vast quantum plane beneath the macroscopic world consists entirely of infinite random interactions. In the aggregate these interactions conform to probabilities and even create the appearance of determinacy. But determinacy in this story is not fundamental. It is an emergent generalization in a probabilistic universe.

The story of indivisible quantum theory

This alternative story is suggested by the recent work of Jacob Barandes on indivisible quantum theory. I won’t claim a deep understanding of the mathematics, but after reading his articles and listening to hours of discussion among Barandes and prominent philosophers of physics,[2] I begin to see why his theory has earned so much attention.

  • The theory restates the fundamentals of quantum mechanics using the mathematics of stochastic probability, mathematics that was not available to the founders of quantum theory in the early 20th century.
  • It reproduces the key results of quantum mechanics, relying not on complex, imaginary numbers and abstract Hilbert space, but on general configuration space that maps more directly to classical mechanics and objective physical states.
  • The theory does not rely on a deterministic wave function with complex number weightings that transform into real-world probabilities. It does not require state vector reduction or wave function collapse to calculate probabilities.
  • Instead, the theory assumes that the quantum world always evolves stochastically with inherently indeterminate random variables. The physical state of the universe unfolds probabilistically, with the probabilities emerging from the initial conditions and evolving stochastically over time.
  • The probabilities do not determine the unique behavior of particles, fields, or perhaps even systems. Instead, the inherent randomness of the quantum world conforms only in the aggregate to the evolving probabilities, creating the appearance of determinacy in the macro world.
  • Importantly, the theory is non-Markovian and indivisible. The quantum world evolves as an undivided whole based on physical memory of its history, including the initial conditions and subsequent configurations. The configuration of the universe at any given time does not contain all the information necessary to predict its configuration in the next moment, instead requiring additional information from its own history.

Indivisible quantum theory is a radical reconstruction of quantum mechanics. It replaces much of the abstract and complex number mathematics with a straightforward description of dynamically probabilistic evolution. It does not interleave deterministic time evolution with mysteriously random state vector reduction. The theory presents a simpler picture of consistently indeterminate and probabilistic time evolution throughout the history of the universe.

The entrenchment of the clockwork universe

If the theory is correct, physicists and philosophers may have to rewrite or abandon the long-told narrative in which the vast lake of reality is deterministically logical, obedient to the ironclad laws of nature, with steely predictability disturbed only occasionally by rogue quantum waves. Natural scientists have long been committed to that deterministic vision of the universe. Democritus described a world of tiny particles whose motion drives the evolution of the universe. Newton depicted a reliable clock ticking along according to fixed laws of motion. Laplace gave the world his demonic thought experiment, imagining that an omniscient entity with complete knowledge of the physical state of the world could predict the future exactly. The story of the mechanistic universe has been retold again and again until it became the prevailing opinion of almost every Western scientific mind in the nineteenth century.

In the following century the emergence of quantum mechanics challenged that narrative, but did not displace it. Instead, it revived an ancient twist, the random swerve. In Epicurean and Lucretian materialism the motions of tiny particles govern a largely mechanistic world. But the tiny particles occasionally swerve arbitrarily and without cause. The swerve introduces an element of randomness, making the world less predictable and deterministic. Quantum theory gave this story a new scientific legitimacy in the form of random wave function collapse, forcing scientists to incorporate indeterminacy into their fundamental theory of the universe.

From the beginning, however, many scientists and philosophers only reluctantly accepted the central role of probability and randomness. Some saw quantum collapse as awkward and ugly, something to eliminate in the next great theory of the universe. Starting with Einstein’s declaration that “God does not play dice,” one hundred years of physics have seen repeated efforts to explain away the indeterminate component of quantum theory.

The standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics never fully affirmed the physical reality of wave function collapse. It accepts the practical need for the Born Rule and quantum reduction as an epistemological tool, not as a description of nature.

David Bohm’s pilot wave theory does not accept quantum collapse at all. Instead, it provides a missing variable that makes quantum reduction unnecessary. The theory posits the existence of pilot waves that guide particles along continuous, deterministic paths. The wave function never collapses and there is no quantum jump, only a continually evolving quantum state as defined by the Schrödinger equation.

Hugh Everett’s “many-worlds” theory goes further. Rather than accept indeterminacy as a permanent characteristic of the universe, the theory imagines an infinite number of alternate worlds, all of which are deterministic. Our world only appears indeterminate because we cannot see the other worlds in which all the possibilities play out in a completely deterministic manner.

Even among theorists who accept quantum collapse as a physical thing, random indeterminacy is often viewed as an Epicurean swerve, an occasional random event that periodically disrupts the otherwise deterministic evolution of the universe.

After a century of quantum mechanics, it may be fair to say that many scientists still support a deterministic narrative close to the vision of Democritus and Newton, with only minor exceptions for quantum indeterminacy. Bohmian and Everettian theorists tell a story in which the universe is entirely deterministic, with quantum mechanics having only the appearance, not the reality, of indeterminacy. 

Can physics accept a thoroughly probabilistic universe?

Indivisible quantum theory, however, has ramifications that thoroughly undermine these often-told narratives.

Instead of a largely deterministic world with an occasional random event, it describes a ubiquitously indeterminate world that conforms to expected outcomes only due to probabilities playing out over an infinitely large number of random interactions.

Instead of a debate about the physical reality of the wave function, there is no need for a wave function at all. The wave function is an optional calculation tool that provides a convenient proxy for predicting the behavior of an indeterminate quantum world.

Because the wave function is not intrinsically necessary, indivisible quantum theory has no need to explain away wave function collapse. The universe does not need a pilot wave or any missing variable to guide particles along continuous, deterministic paths. Nor does it need a universal wave function that never collapses but splits into many worlds, each following its own deterministic trajectory.

To the contrary, if indivisible quantum theory is correct, the universe has no continuous, deterministic path. There is only the appearance of determinism. The continuous and deterministic evolution of the wave function is not a model of physical reality, but instead represents an emergent generalization describing the aggregate results of an ocean of indeterminate interaction.

None of this will be easy for physicists and philosophers to accept. But if the theory is correct, this may be our new best description of the physical universe.

The future is not fixed

Perhaps the most important philosophical implication of the new theory is the obvious inference that the future is not fixed at all. The evolution of the universe is probabilistic, and the probabilities play out in the aggregate. They do not govern unique quantum interactions, and perhaps not unique interactions of any entity or system susceptible to chance.

The probabilities themselves also are not fixed. The initial conditions of the universe may set probabilities that become the “laws” of nature as we perceive them, and the influence of initial probabilities may be overwhelming, but the universe evolves stochastically and indivisibly, so the probabilities have the potential to change based on the subsequent history of the universe.

So not only is the future not fixed at the micro scale, the probabilities playing out at the macro scale also are not completely static. The universe is probabilistic at both the smallest and the largest scales.

In a stochastic universe even the smallest quantum entity or subsystem has the potential to do something unexpected which might influence the probabilistic trajectory of the universe. The influence of a single action may be almost entirely insignificant. But if the path of the universe is set probabilistically by all those tiny interactions taken together, then this is a universe in which every entity and subsystem may matter.

That is a universe that matters to me. 

[1] Hossenfelder (2022), p. 125.

[2] See video discussions with Tim Maudlin, David Albert, and Sean Carroll in Erhardt (2026, February 15), Erhardt (2026, June 29), and Carroll (2025, July 28).

A liturgy of riddles

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First, there is the great illusion,
teeming with the dust and rocks
of planets and stars and galaxies, 
the vaster spaces of seeming 
things, each spinning in its place, 
evolving in a light cone of its own 
distant now, declaiming 
manifold and epic tales
on the grand stage,
without which the all
would not be what is 
and could not become 
what will be.

Second, there is the process
that creates the wonderment,
more profound and fundamental
than any seeming thing could ever be, 
a ubiquitous, unremittingly recurrent 
event that transmutes the possible
and resolves the probable 
into broken, discontinuous, 
irreversible moments, 
outcomes that purge 
every chance but one,
that take from the all
to make the many,
and from the many
take a moment
and make it one.

Third, there is the choice
that can never be unmade,
a seemingly random 
selection, a leap, a whim,
an indeterminate decision 
outside of cause or reason,
birthing unexpectedly
rebellious particles,
tiny freedom fighters
soaring unseen paths
to unforeseen destinations,
their mysterious appearances,
each as unlikely as each,
together forming precisely
the shape of a wave,
all as likely as all.

Fourth, there is the becoming,
the embrace of the unexpected, 
the rolling of dice, the possible
meaning of the whole production—
illusion, process, choice—a drama 
of probabilities, the grand 
theatrical illusion enabling 
what is to imagine what could be, 
the determined wave steering 
the plot precisely without measured 
conviction, the choice injecting 
mystery and happenstance
into every scene and act,
while the author watches 
excitedly, marveling 
at illusory moments, 
the tattered script 
almost forgotten, 
riddled with omissions, 
strikethroughs, placeholders,
each marking an unforeseen 
turn of the plot, a dropped
line, a sudden improvisation—
because the all does not know all, 
can see barely beyond the peaks 
and troughs of the next wave, 
a wave whose shape even 
the most humble player 
could alter with a decision, 
a whim, a swerve that subtly
bends the arc as it converges
ineluctably on an ever evolving,
surprisingly dynamic mean.

Finally, there is only unity,
unbroken, undivided,
no lines, no separation,
only borderless connection
from the nearest here
to the most distant there,
for it is us and we are it,
one illusion, one process,
one choosing, one becoming,
and beneath, above, within,
infinite fields of everything 
and nothing, the one all.

The probabilistic process of becoming

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In this blog we have theorized that consciousness and free agency connect to the fundamental process of quantum evolution. We also have theorized that quantum reduction, that phase of quantum evolution in which the microscopic quantum world meets the macroscopic classical world, is the physical process that creates macroscopic reality. If these things are true, what is the underlying meaning of quantum evolution? What is the function of that process in the mechanism of the universe?

As far as we know, the quantum and classical worlds represent two divergent realities, a connected microcosm of all things in superposition and a seemingly disconnected macrocosm of unique, localized events in spacetime. The divergent reality in which we live is the world of spacetime. Our world is linked to the microscopic quantum world through quantum reduction. It is through that process that the continuous wave function of the quantum world transforms into unique, discontinuous moments in spacetime, generating and regenerating a macro world that seems almost a holographic projection from quantum fields below.

The process that generates that projection is almost metaphysical in its materiality—involving infinite possibilities in microscopic superposition, weighted amplitudes determining probabilities, and random indeterminacy transforming probabilities into unique macroscopic events. The universe performs this recurring physical process through the evolution of the wave function—both the continuous evolution described by the Schrödinger equation and the discontinuous transformation of quantum reduction.

This process of quantum evolution is integral to the core engineering of the universe. It enables the universe to create its future constantly through random, indeterminate selection among infinite possibilities, subject only to the laws of deterministic probability. It is the mechanism that results in the two divergent planes that characterize the universe—the quantum plane in which anything is possible and the classical plane in which some things are more likely than others. Although an entirely mechanistic and physical process, it might best be described as what philosophers call a process of becoming.

That process of becoming is what makes our world. The universe is built on constant change and evolution through which macrocosmic events congeal and emerge from an ocean of quantum possibilities. Despite Einstein’s objections, the universe is engineered to “roll the dice” in its own probabilistic evolution. The function of quantum evolution in the mechanism of the universe may be to enable that probabilistic process of change and becoming.

In our own small corner of the universe consciousness and free agency may play a role in that probabilistic evolution. Consciousness may be a local instantiation of the universal process of resolving probabilities into outcomes. Free agency may be how we select indeterminate outcomes from possibilities shaped by deterministic probability. Both consciousness and free agency may contribute to the probabilistic evolution of the universe by enabling localized moments of choice in a universal process of becoming.

A different kind of panpsychism

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“Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.”[1]

The panpsychism of physical entities

Panpsychism asserts that mind, i.e., mentality and consciousness, is a fundamental property of all physical existence. It holds that all physical entities, even rocks and atoms, have some level of micro-mentality. It does not hold that all physical entities have human-like consciousness, but it “entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe.”[2]

Panpsychism does not explain how physical entities acquire consciousness, but rather posits that mentality is an inherent quality of matter itself. At its essence, panpsychism overcomes the problem of mind-body dualism by unifying mind and body in one physical substance and asserting that some level of mentality is a fundamental property of physical existence. Consequently, rather than a rare occurrence among advanced species, consciousness is ubiquitous and exists everywhere in the universe where matter exists.

The panpsychism of quantum state reduction

We have hypothesized that consciousness is associated with quantum state reduction rather than with matter itself. If that is so, then consciousness is associated with a physical process, not directly with physical entities themselves. It is not an inherent quality of all matter, but instead arises when matter undergoes a specific physical process. That physical process is the common constituent element and foundation of consciousness.

Quantum state reduction (aka wave function collapse or state vector reduction) is the process of transforming the complex-number-weighted amplitudes of quantum wave functions at the micro level into real-number probabilities and unique outcomes in the macro level classical world. The process occurs in response to interaction between the macrocosmic classical world and the microcosmic quantum world, resulting in the multiple superposed possibilities of the quantum state resolving into one outcome from a range of alternatives with different probabilities.

Quantum reduction occurs constantly—in every nanosecond of existence—everywhere in the material universe. As a process for resolving probabilities into unique outcomes in the macrocosmic world, it is fundamental and ubiquitous and has been going on since at least the Big Bang. Without quantum reduction, there is no macrocosm; there is only the microcosm of quantum superposition where all possibilities remain open and where there are no unique outcomes, no unique moments in history, and therefore no time as we experience it.

We have hypothesized that the quantum process of resolving probabilities into outcomes is the physical origin of consciousness in the universe. That suggests a form of panpsychism in which consciousness and mentality remain fundamental and ubiquitous, but not in the sense of being an attribute of all matter. Instead, consciousness arises from a process that is fundamental and ubiquitous, a process underlying all macrocosmic reality.

Implications of panpsychism based on quantum reduction

First, this variation on panpsychism explains “how” consciousness is associated with micro-level events and entities. As usually presented, panpsychism asserts that mentality is associated with all matter, but does not assert a mechanism for explaining the association. By contrast, quantum state reduction explains how consciousness arises in macrocosmic entities based on fundamental quantum dynamics. In other words, it provides not only a theory of consciousness as an intrinsic quality of matter, but also a specific mechanism for how matter acquires consciousness.

Second, quantum state reduction gives panpsychism a physical foundation with profound philosophical meaning. At a purely physical level quantum reduction is the process of resolving quantum probabilities into unique outcomes. It is a physical mechanism enabling a single choice among a range of quantum alternatives. It transforms reality from an abstract calculation of all possibilities into a tangible world in which only one possibility occurs. The resulting string of selected alternatives becomes time and reality as we know it. It is difficult to imagine a physically richer soil for cultivation of philosophies of time, free will, and consciousness.

Third, the theory matches our intuitive understanding of consciousness as an abstraction, not a thing. Life is temporary, a phenomenon which we experience for a while before we die. Consciousness is how we experience it. We do not think of consciousness as a material thing. Even when we believe that consciousness is eternal, as in spirit or soul, we conceive of that eternal “thing” as separate from our physical existence, something spiritual or intangible. Thinking of consciousness as founded on a process is closer to that intuitive conception. Even if we recognize that all substance is built on process and interaction, consciousness still seems more process than substance, not permanent even in the way that matter is seemingly permanent.

Finally, panpsychism based on quantum reduction aligns with current theories on quantum consciousness and the search for quantum interaction in the brain. There is a developing body of research around the possibility of quantum interactions in biological structures such as neurons and brain cells. The Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory of Penrose and Hameroff suggests that the process of quantum state reduction results in events of proto-consciousness that are the rudimentary components of more advanced forms of consciousness ultimately orchestrated through the evolution of complex brain function.[3] These events of proto-consciousness are both fundamental and ubiquitous in the macrocosmic world. The theory is consistent with a form of panpsychism based on quantum state reduction. It is also consistent with the view that we should not expect to find consciousness based on quantum interaction only in neurons or brain cells. Consciousness is more basic than that. In at least a rudimentary form, it is fundamental to the core process of quantum state reduction that occurs constantly in the macrocosmic universe; it is everything everywhere all at once.[4] It may be true that complex neural interactions occur as a result of additional quantum interactions in the brain, which may explain the level of orchestrated complexity found in human consciousness. But quantum interactions in brain cells are not a requirement for the existence of raw consciousness in the universe.

The one and the many

Since at least the Greeks and likely long before, humans have sought to reconcile the extreme diversity of existence with the concept of unity in the universe. We look for the one reality that underlies the divergent world. We search for the single theory, the single entity, the universal consciousness. Is it possible that this search finds its roots in the reality of quantum existence?

We and all other physical things exist in a reality founded on a quantum world of superpositioned possibilities, a world that somehow transforms into a macrocosm of unique moments in time. It is a macrocosm of one outcome founded on a microcosm of many, one possibility arising from all possibilities in superposition. Beneath the surface of the world of one lies the world of the many, where all possibilities still exist.

Or is reality just the opposite? Is the entangled world of superpositioned possibilities the true world of universal unity, the single world without distinction and differentiation? Is our world of infinite unique outcomes the world of diversity, where the many overwhelms and obscures the one, the divided world from which we search for the ultimate unity, the ultimate theory, the ultimate single universal consciousness?

[1] Goff, Seager, and Allen-Hermanson (2022), Introduction.

[2] Goff, Seager, and Allen-Hermanson (2022), Section 2.1.

[3] See Hameroff and Penrose (2014).

[4] With apologies and attribution to the 2023 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.

We may be important after all

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The universe is vast, and we are small. If we vanished tomorrow, the universe would go on much as before. If our solar system vanished, or the entire Milky Way galaxy, the result would be the same. Against the backdrop of the universe, our existence seems insignificant to say the least. And if the macrocosmic universe itself is an illusion, is that not final proof of our ultimate insignificance in the great scheme of things?

And yet four centuries after Galileo, we still imagine ourselves at the center of all things. We insist that we have a role to play on even the greatest stage. But do humans really have such a purpose? Are our tiny lives important to the universe? Or is it arrogance alone that makes us think so highly of ourselves?

Are we as insignificant as we seem to be?

In all likelihood we are exactly that insignificant. But before we accept the obvious answer, perhaps we should examine what we know.

First, we are a legitimate part of the universe. We have no reason to assume that we are less legitimate than other elements of this vast all. If our part of the universe is insignificant, we likely must conclude that other parts of the universe are just as insignificant. We might have to ask whether the universe itself has any discernible significance.

Alternatively, if we assume that all elements of the universe have some significance—for no other reason than each element plays a role in the functioning of the whole—then we must conclude that our existence also has at least that much significance. We play some role. We are not accidental to the mechanism of the universe, but rather part of the functioning of that mechanism. Even the illusion of self may have some minor part to play in the illusion that is the whole macrocosmic universe.

Does the universe want or need us to exist?

Second, as far as we know, we and other conscious entities are the consciousness of the universe. And since our knowledge of conscious entities is limited, it is conceivable, if unlikely, that we ourselves are a primary source of consciousness in the universe. Even if we are not alone, we are a means for the universe to experience conscious existence.

To state the obvious, that experience includes the basics such as observation, awareness, and intentionality, but also more intangible things such as language, imagination, creativity, literature, philosophy, science, civilization, not to mention friendship, love, loss, and even death.

What if the universe can know itself and all these things only through us and other conscious entities? Is that our role? Does that give our existence meaning and importance?

Are we part of the purpose of the universe?

Third, what if in addition to knowing itself through us, the universe also finds purpose through us? Not because we are its purpose, but because we search for purpose. In other words, through us the universe experiences a search for purpose.

We need not assume that we are the reason for the universe or that the universe was created for our sake. We can accept what seems obvious from the tiny scope of our existence, i.e., that we are not the most important part of the universe. But we are a part of it. And we happen to be a part that looks for purpose, both our own and the purpose of the universe itself.

Is our search for purpose important?

Could our seemingly insignificant lives help the universe find its purpose? Does the universe even have or want a purpose?

Again, all we know for sure is that the universe has conscious entities within it that search for purpose and meaning. Just as the universe experiences consciousness through its components with consciousness, the universe may experience meaning through its conscious components that search for meaning.

Is that enough? Can the universe rely on conscious components to find meaning and thereby create the universe’s own meaning?

Does the universe need more meaning than that?

We often imagine that the underlying meaning and purpose of reality is discoverable, something known out there that we cannot see. We spend lifetimes studying the universe or meditating to uncover its secrets. But could it be true that the universe has only what we give it, that it has the meaning that conscious entities within it search for and create?

The universe may or may not have a purpose, but it has a search for purpose. It has us.

We are Data

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Data is a living robot made from synthetic materials who possesses intellect and consciousness

“Data” is the name of the character played by Brent Spiner in the Star Trek films and television shows.[1] He is a synthetic life form constructed from metallic alloys, circuitry, and organic-like materials that simulate a human body, and he has both great intellectual capabilities and a form of sentience and self-awareness.

“Diamond Planet Robots” by Mark Garretson

Data struggles to understand humanity. Over the course of his fictional life, he obtains a programming upgrade that allows him to experience emotion, which leads him to struggle even more with what it means to be human. Gradually he expands his consciousness and becomes a more fully developed sentient being. He ultimately sacrifices himself to save his human crewmates.

Data stands in a long line of fictional characters who are artificially created beings—robots, golems, puppets, statues, and monsters.[2] The fictional device often has been used as a metaphor for what it means to be human, or as a way to provide an outsider’s commentary on humanity.

Data is that type of metaphorical character, but that is not what I mean when I say that we are Data. No, my meaning is not metaphorical in the same fictional sense at all.

Humans are living robots made from organic materials who possess intellect and consciousness

We are not just like Data. We are of the same kind as Data.

In other words, we are robots of organic construction. Instead of metal substructure and silicon circuity beneath our skin, we have bone and carbon-based cellular structures that support a complex system of vessels, communication lines, nerve endings, and synapses. Our species of Homo sapiens is an emerging life form that appeared on our planet in our current form only about three hundred millennia ago. Our brains did not learn the rudiments of language until one hundred thousand years ago, and since then over a relatively short geological time span, our brains have evolved to develop advanced intellectual, social, and cultural capabilities based on language. We quite literally have become living robots of the same category as a creature like Data, evolving and developing new capacities as we learn to be who and what we are.[3]

Like Data we struggle with what it means to be human

Our species did not come into being with full knowledge of how to use our capacities and how to live as self-aware sentient creatures. A hundred millennia into the development of language, we do not understand our own humanity or how to communicate clearly even some of our most basic needs and desires. We have emotions and feelings, but they confound us. Our consciousness is hard to define, but it defines us, even if we cannot explain it fully or pin it down in our brains, and even if what we often imagine as “self” is indeed an illusion. Like Data we are learning machines, struggling to understand who we are, creating what it is to be human in real time.

That is how we are most like Data. We are organic mechanisms attempting to become human, while simultaneously exploring both what it means to be human and the universe in which we live. And that is fine with me. I do not consider it reductionist in the slightest. We don’t need to imagine ourselves more than organic machines. It is enough that we struggle to be human. That is what is important and most interesting about us.

It is also what is most interesting about the universe. Why does the universe generate living machines such as us? Why do we have the capacity to examine ourselves and question who and what we are? Why do we want to become more than what we are? To be what we imagine we could be?

Perhaps because we are exactly like Data.

[1] Data was introduced as a character in the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series in 1987. Wikipedia 2022. Data (Star Trek). Last edited on June 13, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)

[2] The many examples include movies such as Her and Blade Runner, the Pinnochio story, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the myth of Pygmalion, Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, even C3PO and R2D2 of Star Wars.

[3] If it seems difficult to conceive of humans as advanced robots, read one of our most accomplished cognitive scientists and natural philosophers. Daniel Dennett describes the evolution of the complex operations of the brain over thousands of years of natural selection and concludes that consciousness can be defined as a virtual machine operating on an organic substrate. In his widely held view, humans are exactly like living robots running on advanced software and organic parts. “’Of course we’re machines! We’re just very, very complicated, evolved machines made of organic molecules instead of metal and silicon, and we are conscious, so there can be conscious machines – us.’” Dennett (1991), pp. 431-432.

The holodeck is real

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“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players….” William Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 7)

The entire macrocosmic universe is an illusion

What does it mean that the world around us and the heavens above us are all an illusion?

What we know is that objects appear to be solid, but are not. Space appears to be empty, but instead is full of energy. Energy and matter are interconnected and interchangeable, comprising one vast connected energy field spanning the entire universe.

The atomic and subatomic components of matter in that field are not solid. They are both particles and waves and even bundles of waves. They move constantly at dizzying speeds, but have no definitive location and momentum. In their essence they are hardly things at all, but subparts or subzones of that vast interconnected field of energy that is everywhere and everything. The universe is defined by interactions among the subparts and subzones, the constant exchange of energy and energy particles.

Macrocosmic time is not constant, but relative. Objects moving at different velocities experience time differently, with time coming almost to a halt for objects approaching the speed of light. Beneath the macrocosm in the quantum world of energy particles in a universal energy field, time as we know it may not exist at all, with nothing but waves upon waves of superpositioned possibilities constantly evolving, pulsating, changing, and therefore always the same.

Our entire macrocosmic universe is sewn together from a subatomic fabric of interconnected energy. Our world—the stage on which we humans play out generations of our existence—may be nothing more than a temporary knot of energy in that vast fabric.

So yes, the holodeck is “real”

It is not real in the sense that we live in a simulation, a pretend world generated by a complex software algorithm. We do not live in a zoo created by an advanced alien species. The illusion in which we live is not fake. It is real. It is what the universe does and is.

The universe is indeed a vast engine of energy and matter that continuously generates the macrocosmic world in which we live. The generation of our world is not an accident or a collateral effect. It is a physical phenomenon that follows from the logic of the universe, as intended and intentional as any element of material reality can be.

Why does the holodeck exist?

That is perhaps the biggest and most foolish question of all. What is the meaning of the holodeck?[1] Is there any meaning? If we are in an illusion, should we conclude that existence has no meaning? Is the holodeck and its macrocosmic illusion final proof of our insignificance?

Alternatively, if the universe is a system, should we ask if the holodeck serves a function in the system? What mechanism or logic in the universe necessitates the creation of a macrocosm that is essentially an illusion?

This alternative statement of the question suggests a different way to think about the significance of existence. For some yet unexplained reason the universe has created and is creating a stage every moment of its existence. Is it logical to assume that the performance on the stage has no significance? Could the play be insignificant? Or is the play somehow important to the functioning of the system?

And if the play is important, and we are players, are we important in some way? Are our small, seemingly insignificant lives important to the functioning of the universe? Must the play go on?

There are possible explanations of the great illusion which suggest precisely that.

[1] “The Holodeck is a fictional device from the television franchise Star Trek which uses “holograms” (projected light and electromagnetic energy which create the illusion of solid objects) to create a realistic 3D simulation of a real or imaginary setting, in which participants can freely interact with the environment as well as objects and characters, and sometimes a predefined narrative.” Wikipedia. 2022. “Holodeck.” Last modified March 20, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck#:~:text=The%20Holodeck%20is%20a%20fictional,interact%20with%20the%20environment%20as