Based Camp: What's Behind the Fabric of Reality?

Join Malcolm and Simone as they dive into an intriguing thought experiment about the nature of reality, existence, and the universe. Is math truly independent of our perceived reality? Can an equation exist before it's graphically represented? Are we living in a self-simulating reality, or as some may say, a simulation?This profound conversation will make you question everything you thought you knew about our existence, and ponder about the possibility of multiple realities. They also touch on the concept of determinism, secular Calvinism, and how these ideas can be reconciled with a atheistic understanding of truth and metaphysics. Don't miss out on this captivating exploration into the depths of theoretical reality!Based Camp - Reality MathMalcolm: [00:00:00] It's a very lightweight theory for sort of the fundamental metaphysics of reality.Malcolm: And it's, it's really one that I have a pretty high confidence is true just because it's lightweight and it makes predictions . Fun side note about the theory. I have had multiple people offer to sleep with me after I have told them this theory. What? That, yeah. That was a weird thing in college after I had it, this happened on two different occasions.Malcolm: I was hanging out withSimone: a way to bury the lead. Who cares about the nature of reality? This has, how to pick up chicks. Come on Malcolm, let's focus on the stuff that matters here.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hi, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello Simone. This is gonna be a fun one cuz this is a big pet theory of mine. It is, it is where I'm gonna go crazy and I'm gonna label this something crazy. Simone today was laughing at some of my titles for videos cuz she hadn't seen them. Like, the one for, for. Our marriage contract sign on the bottom line and Simone's all like, [00:01:00]Simone: yeah.Simone: Yeah. But what we're about to talk about, I always, I, I, I joke with Malcolm about this a lot because there's this amazing YouTube channel called Down the Rabbit Hole, and one of the documentaries or videos is. Is on this crazy guy who has this like theory about the time cube and everything's like cube based logic.Simone: And ever since we watched that video, I make fun of Malcolm saying like he has pile based logic because he totally doesn't believe in like folding clothes or putting anything away. Like he has a separate room for his like office and bedroom and is, it is just piles, everything is piles. I have,Malcolm: I have like buckets like, like literally like these big plastic bins that I just throw my clothes in.Malcolm: Yeah. And my system for clothes is all of the clothes I'm actively using. There's two buckets. So I can dig through one bucket and throw it in the other bucket as I look for what I want that day. It's, there's not evenMalcolm: I would be completely, I. Boned, if I didn't have you in my life. Simone, actually, we wanted to start [00:02:00] this thing where we're gonna end our videos with little snippets from our lives. We created this great video of at least on YouTube, I mean on the podcast, you know, the people aren't gonna be able to see it, but to force people to build a, parasocial relationship with them.Malcolm: So we're going to at the end of this one, I'm gonna try to get that one of you cleaning up. Oh God. So people can see how useless I am at anything.Simone: No. Well, while I'm doing that, you're watching the, the nuggets.Malcolm: So I'm playing with my kids, I'm playing with my kids. I have. Brainwashed you into believing that's work.Malcolm: But again, how many housewives have done the same thing? You know? ISimone: mean but yeah. So yeah. I have to say though, like when, when I try to get you in, actually like hang something up, I'm like, oh, it's, but there's sky piles. It's a sky pile. It's a, and not, you're not hanging it, it's just a sky pile.Simone: That's how I got you to do strategy walks. Remember, it's like, you're like, I don't wanna go on a walk. I'm like, oh, but it's strategy walk. So that's, that's why we should, that's why we should go on it. But anyway, you actually have a time cube [00:03:00] kind of theory of reality Yeah. OfMalcolm: your own. I have a time cube theory of reality, and I mm-hmm.Malcolm: Genuinely, like with our future police thing, I'm like, I don't really know if this is true or not. Whatever. Like it's pro I, I, I like 70%. I, I've convinced myselfSimone: to believe it. You confirmation biased our way into kind of believing it. Yeah. But we also know that we've confirmation biased our way into believing it.Simone: Yeah, well,Malcolm: Maybe the future police made us do that, but anyway confirmed with this one. This one is, is, is quite different. This one, I'm actually fairly certain that this is actually how reality is structured. Break it down,Simone: friend.Malcolm: Okay. So it goes with a few premises. , it goes like, if you believe these premises, this is the logical outcome of these premises. First math. Is not dependent on our reality. And by that what I mean is in every possible universe if there are multiple universes, two plus two always equals four. And obviously you can change the rules of [00:04:00] math like using Non-EuclideanMalcolm: math,Malcolm: to mean that it, it has different outcomes like math on a sphere versus math on a plane, right? That's gonna be different, but that's still within the confines that you give the math two things. And two things is always four things. And so when I accept this, that means that math must exist outside our reality as we perceive it.Malcolm: So essentially sort of like all equations kind of exist outside of our reality as truisms. The second thing that I take as true, I. Is that the thing a mathematical equation represents, exists as an emergent property of that equation? So let me explain what I mean by this. So if you have a graphical line, like I can write an equation that is used to describe a line with, if this is true, it means that that line exists.Malcolm: As [00:05:00] a property of that equation, even before I physically graph that line.Malcolm: Finally, so this is just three assumptions I'm making here. four, if you include my assumption that.Malcolm: Because mass exists across reality that mass exists outside of any individual reality. So four assumptions of you include that, but I'm only having four assumptions here. So the fourth is that our reality, the way things interact in our reality can be described with an equation or set of interlinked equations.Malcolm: Now this is not something that physics has found yet. Okay? So this is a predictive assumption. About something physics will find that physics has not yet found, but is making this predictive assumption. Okay. And, and by that what I mean is we keep finding like if you go into physics and, and, and you dig into particle physics or something like that, we keep finding that forces that originally [00:06:00] appeared to be two different forces, . Like magnetism and electricity or the small force in electricity later turn out to just be the same thing. Once you go higher in the equation. Now physics has not yet, like there's the, the concept of the unifying theory of physics that we don't have yet. Right. But, but you know, they're working towards that and I'm predicting that we will find one and it will be basically a single mathematical equation.Malcolm: Okay. So if all of those things are true, then that single mathematical equation that describes how reality is interacting, all the little things within what we perceive to be reality must exist outside of reality. And the reality that it describes in the same way, like a graph that it describes, would also exist parallel to our reality, even if the equation wasn't graphed.Malcolm: I'll, I'll use the term graph manifested, however you wanna put it. Even if it wasn't [00:07:00] simulated. Hmm. Occam's razor. You don't need to assume that physical reality exists for us to be experiencing all of the things that we think we're experiencing. Does that make sense to you, Simone? Or is there anything there I need to elucidate on or?Simone: What I, what I'd love for you to elaborate on is a lot of people are like, oh, what if we live in a simulation? And I feel like this dovetails in interesting ways with that kind of theory because what you're saying kind of is Yeah, sure. Kind of we're like a, like a sort of an algorithmic simulation, but also like, That doesn't mean that our reality is any less reality.Simone: And I think people who think that, that we're in a simulation kind of get this perception that there's like some other more removed reality, like the real world,Malcolm: you know? So if this theory is true, it means the master reality.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. The reality outside of a simulation is a self simulating reality, and [00:08:00] so a reality that was contained within a simulation wouldn't be particularly less meaningful than the master reality. It also has some other moral implications. It means that, All possible realities that can be described by an equation simultaneously exist.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So there are multiple universes that, but you cannot travel between them. But any eco reality described by the same equation, depending on how the equation works. Potentially you can travel between them multiple ways for solving the same equation lead to splitting realities. So if there is one equation, but this equation can be solved in multiple ways, then you would have different realities for each one of those ways.Malcolm: The equation can be solved as a different graphical representation of the equation. Yeah. So it has some implications on the fundamental underlying like reality. So you can say, why do you believe this about reality? Like, this seems like a lot of things to believe.Malcolm: , this is the model for reality that [00:09:00] relies on the fewest assumptions that I could come up with at least. And the least complicated assumptions and the assumptions that seem the most obviously and intrinsically true to me.Simone: And one thing that's really fun about this is you know, a lot of people are like, well, how can you be secular Calvinists? Or How can you be, you know, have all this deterministic thinking, you know, with also like a, a fairly. Atheist background in terms of truth and our metaphysical understanding of reality.Simone: Well, this is how, like, we, we can believe that everything that could happen has happened and will happen, has happened in the same way that with an equation. Mm-hmm. When you plug in different numbers, you're gonna get like the, the, the outputs are there. So every graphical representation, as you say, you know, every reality is there.Simone: And I think that that's kind of fun. It's, I think it's fairly elegant, it's fairly lightweight. Yeah. And, and I don't, I don't know. It, I guess it does color our, our moral view of reality. It, it, it, I would say, offers some comfort in that. I think a lot of people are like, [00:10:00] well, if this is a simulation, we have to like, Please the players of the game or some like simulation builder and like, that's, no, no, no.Simone: That's not it. You know, it's, it's, it's really not. It's, it's just everything is, and everything will be, and everything has been, and everything can be all at the same time. And we're a part of that. And that doesn't invalidate our experience at all as humans. It's just kind of how things are. And I don't know, it gives me.Simone: It gives me comfort. It also doesn't do a whole lot, you know, it doesn't like change cuz you know, it doesn't practically on a day-to-day basis change anything about how we live. We still have the things that we want to fight for and we don't know how things are gonna play out. So we're still excited to see what happens per the weird way that humans perceive the world and reality in time on this sort of arbitrarily linear basis.Simone: Right. But has it changed your meta? Like are your morals different because of this view ofMalcolm: reality? That's a tough question. It has shaped my other views on reality. [00:11:00] Like this theory I came up with when I was in college. Mm-hmm. I actually wrote about it in the college Philosophy magazine.Malcolm: Oh. When I came up with it. Yeah, so it's a fairly old theory in terms of my views of the world, and so a lot of other views I have on the world, like the concept of the future of police, which, which we have as a family religion. This idea that eventuallyMalcolm: a million, 10 million years from now if my distant descendants are still around. If I ask myself, are they more the way I would think of a human today or more the way I would think of like a God today?Malcolm: And I consider that we're only like 200 years away from being able to literally create heavens, right? Like simulated environments that we can upload people into where they can get their every need served. Mm-hmm. Where we could have an AI lattice around the world that you could. Beseech for favors, basically pray to, and it can solve those favors.Malcolm: The type of God that these entities that my descendants could be a million, 10 million years from now is beyond anything that we can conceive today. Mm-hmm. And that being the case, I used to say they relate [00:12:00] to time, the way we relate to time. Mm-hmm. And that being the case, you know, we built this family structure around these descendants.Malcolm: , we call it descender worship instead of ancestor worship. Are rewarding us for creating a prosperous future for the human species. And a, a pluralistic future for the human species than Afu future where people are, are thriving and having new ideas and everything like that. So we you know, raise our kids believing that.Malcolm: So they have this motivation both to have kids, right, but also to try to make the future a better place and feel like they have agency over that future. Mm-hmm. So I think that this belief and, and the determinism that is. Sort of a result of it has big implications on the future. And we did another video, which is one of our least watch videos that's on like free will and determinism.Malcolm: And I'd really suggest people check it out if they hear the theory and they go, oh, this means we don't have free will. Because I don't think free will and determinism are incompatible at all. Oh, hardly. Yeah. , I really like what it means for a world in which we're simulated.Malcolm: Cause the really cool thing about a world in which we're [00:13:00] simulated is in many ways for the way some people judge morality. It could be a world with more meaning than a self simulating world. How I'll explain what I mean by that. A self simulating world exists simply because all equations bring simulations of themselves into reality.Malcolm: Right? Okay. But a simulated world. It exists for a purpose. Its creators. Were trying to do something with that simulation, whether it was do historical research or predict some future event or maximize like Qualia because they have some belief around like, that's a positive thing in the world. And so you are potentially serving your role within this great function, even if you don't understand it.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. But yeah,Malcolm:Malcolm: Another interesting thing about this theory is it becomes potentially less likely we're in a simulationMalcolm: in that literally an infinite number of self stimulating realities will exist based on these [00:14:00] equations. However, I. A higher infinite number of simulations will exist because even if an infinite number of realities will exist within each of those realities, people could create simulations. But I think for a lot of people, what they assume is that a like fixed number of realities exist.Malcolm: And this would assume that a literal, infinite number of realities likely exist depending on how these equations work. MmSimone: mm I see. I see. Hmm.Malcolm: But I do like what you said about it. It's lightweight. That's why I like it. It's a very lightweight theory for sort of the fundamental metaphysics of reality.Malcolm: And it's, it's really one that I have a pretty high confidence is true just because it's lightweight and it makes predictions. I just love that one day. It makes a bunch of predictions about the future. And if, if those predictions come true, it's more likely to be true. It's not saying that it's definitely true, but you know, it's a shock calling prediction on the fabric of reality.Simone: Yeah. So we'll see how it plays out. I'm very curious. I loveMalcolm: you. I do. I love that you [00:15:00] tolerate. My theory is like this, this is actually a, sorry, pardon. Fun side note about the theory. I have had multiple people offer to sleep with me after I have told them this theory. What? That, yeah. That was a weird thing in college after I had it, this happened on two different occasions.Malcolm: I was hanging out withSimone: a way to bury the lead. Who cares about the nature of reality? This has, how to pick up chicks. Come on Malcolm, let's focus on the stuff that matters here.Malcolm: I, well, I, I've never had any other thing where like I had an idea that people thought was so good that they wanted to sleep with me over it.Malcolm: And it could just be that they were drunk and they thought, oh, he just said something he's proud of. So I'm gonna flatter that aspect of his ego and use that to manipulate him. But, you know, we'll see.Simone: I don't know. I think it's, it's really hot when someone's passionate about something especially if they're like willing to be really open and honest about it, and it's not something you've heard before.Simone: So I could see that it's not necessarily this theory, it's the fact [00:16:00] that you are. Really passionate about it, you thought through it. That's a, I think a very masculine trait that's very underrated is, is the sign of a passionate outlier because like, what is, what is like more the essence of masculinity than being that dangerous outlier that actually succeeds.Simone: You know? And like, it's almost like, this sounds horrible, but like metaphorically begins like with the. Like with sperm, right? Like just that one, that one crazy outlier gets to survive. And then like now when women see like that one like man who's totally different but really passionate and willing to do something really weird, she's just like, oh yes, let me get my teeth into him.Simone: SoMalcolm: that, that thing you said about sperm, it actually reminds me, so the Federalists, they did a piece on us and they said oh no, they've put their kids in a sit game, we're the healthiest. Get to live. And it's like, what do you think is happening every time you impregnate a woman?Malcolm: Yeah. Imagine you said that about sperm instead of describing it as sex, a sick game, we're [00:17:00] only their healthiest gamma sexSimone: game survive. Well, what is, what is, you know, human as, as the the French court in the 17 hundreds used to describe it com, what is com, but a sick game? Honestly Well, yeah.Simone: Anyway, I find these, these conversations delightful. They're like our little dates. I certainly, which is real sad.Malcolm: Do we not do enough real dates?Simone: We, we don't. We don't wanna spend money on like getting out drinks. Oh God,Malcolm: sorry, I forgot that. We might have to spend money if we went on a date. Yeah, I'm so sorry.Malcolm: This is why we work together. You know, we're CEOs of the theme company together. We, we write our books together, we do our speeches together, combine the speaker, you know, to make it cheaper for the end. We like to be frugal for other people as well, but All, all, all of this is how we pay for our dates.Malcolm: Which is to say other people pay for them to like, well, if we're gonna go to X City to speak, we may as well walk around. Go for, go for a walk around town together.Simone: Yeah. It's like a date. It's like a vacation. PrettyMalcolm: sensible lunch. Yeah. The, they're the only dates that are [00:18:00] worth doing. No guilt.Simone: Yeah.Simone: The, the best meals out are those which you do not pay for otherwise. Not worth it, but yes, I love you very much. Looking forward to our next one already.Malcolm: I love you.[00:19:00] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe