Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal Curt Jaimungal: Why I Don't Buy the Simulation Hypothesis (Nor Materialism)
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Oct 21, 2025 
Curt Jaimungal, a mathematical physicist and filmmaker, dives deep into the debates surrounding the simulation hypothesis and materialism. He examines why many arguments for being in a simulation falter, critiquing common beliefs and cognitive errors intellectuals often make. Jaimungal elaborates on the flaws of the Principle of Indifference and discusses nested consciousness issues. He ultimately advocates for a skeptical stance on both materialism and simulation theory, emphasizing the need for humility in metaphysics.
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Simulation Hypothesis Is Vague
- Curt Jaimungal defines the simulation hypothesis as conscious experience being a computational process running in an external substrate that imitates reality's causal structure.
- He emphasizes that key terms like 'substrate', 'computational', and 'causal structure' are underspecified and uncertain.
Glitches Don’t Make The Case
- Curt rejects common 'evidence' for a simulation like glitches, Mandela effects, and quantum rendering analogies as poor Bayesian reasoning or mismatched expectations.
- He argues rendering, collapse models, and consistent histories in games conflict with reported anomalies and with physics' global collapse behavior.
Bostrom Relies On A Fragile Indifference
- Curt critiques Nick Bostrom's simulation probability using the principle of indifference and shows it's unstable under re‑partitioning and measure problems.
- He notes we may be atypical (end of simulation chain) and cascade failures across nested sims lower the simulated-likelihood significantly.
