This is strongly based on my world view. You might disagree and that’s totally fine.

Where I come from: I believe there is no supernatural elements in the universe, and all natural processes can be explained by natural laws.

And at the same time, there are processes that I call virtual. Those processes are mostly information processing processes. And those virtual processes can have rules that are decoupled from physical rules.

The analogy I have in my minnd is a computer game. In a computer game, you can have fantastical worlds with magic or sci-fi elements that would totally not be possible with physical laws. You may even have different geometries than our familiar 3-dimensional space. Everything is possible, since the rules are kind of arbitrary and inherent in the information processing.

The natural world with its physical laws are not completely decoupled from this virtual world. They are the basis for the virtual process: there is this physical machine made of physical silicon atoms that are ordered in such a manner that allows those orderings to represent information and have processes that transform that information. If you destroy the physical computer machine, you destroy also the virtual world on it. Also the virtual wold kind of depend on the speed of the possible processing, which is limited by physical laws.

So, what of it? How does this apply to my human life?

I believe that we live in several virtual wolds that are interconnected with each other and interconnected to the physical world.

Human Mind as “What the brain does”

One of those virtual words is our human mind. There are a lot of good definitions of the self out there. For this purpose, I’d like to define it as: What a certain human brain does. “I” in this case am what my brain does, the software that is run on the hardware/wetware of the neurons in the brain. This viex explicitly differentiantes the mind (aka software) from the hardware. Though they can’t be full separated, because as with the silicon atoms for a computer, the atoms making up my body and brain are the basis for the virtual information processing in the mind.

Society as a virtual information processing world

One other virtual world that I live in, is human society or culture. It’s the virtual processes that happen between humans. This includes language, norms, rules, beliefs. It’s somewhat harder to grasp because here I as a human (mind) are only one neuron-like element that allows culture to exist.

Even the atoms around us behave “unnatural”

The next kind of less virtual world is our human infrastructure. I mean all the things we humans build around us. Cities are not a resuld of a natural geological law but are designed and build bu humans according to the individual needs of the society. This includes roads, buildings, bridges, etc. You might argue that our infrastructure does not process information in itself and thus is not a virtual world as I’m defining and you are right, I won’t argue against it. My point in bringin this up is to show that even our physical world around us with chairs, tables, computers has been created according to our own logic and not a physical law.

Societies’ driving forces

Now there’s one important conclusion with all this: Since the virtual world that I as a human live in behave according to internal laws that can’t be derived from physical laws, it makes no sense in trying to find a “natural force” that drives those virtual worlds into a certain direction.

Take democracy for example. It’s not a natural law that countries always develop towards more democracy and more individual fredom. It may have been the case for the last decades of the western world. But now we’re learning that it is definetly not automatic. The view as virtual worlds explains why. There is no force that drives a society to become more democratic. The forces are there but they are created in an unstructured way and change over time.

Morality

Or say morality. Philosophers have always tried to find the moral law of nature. But if we assume that morality lives in the virtual world of human minds and human societies, then it makes no sense to look for it in the physical world.

Optimistic Nihilism

So what am I supposed to do with all this? Should I stop everything I’m doing in resignation? Should I follow all my bad impulses and start hurting people because nothing matters? I would argue: no. I don’t have to change anything in my life!

Virtual world means that the internal rules are somewhat decoupled from physical law, but that does not mean those worlds are not real. They are real in their own context. If I kill someone, I will get processed according to the “virtual” laws of society. This process will have real consequences for me.

The only invitation I can give with all of this: Continue to live your life, but try to be more aware of the virtual nature of the assumptions you’re working on.

When I have a bad day, I tend to interpret the behavior of people around me a lot more hostile towards me. And when I have a good day, my interpretation is also the opposite. Sometimes I have a great sense of worthlessness and my confidence is gone. It may help me to remind myself that all those experiences are kind of virtual, they don’t exactly mirror reality but are rather a result of the brain processes in my head. It does not mean I can simply push away everyting my mind does but can accept it as it is: a virtual mind process that might be right or wrong about what it wants to say about the reality outside my brain.