Jim Holt

I don't know what to do if I don't have stuff.

Well, this is a temperamental difference between us.

I like the idea that reality consists, it's a flux of pure information with no further substance.

Now, you've offered- But we're living in an almost in a spiritual realm.

You want to live in this gross material realm.

And where there's a lot of stuff.

It feels so intuitively wrong.

But if you go back to the old 19th century view that we're made up of these little hard particle atoms that are all bumping around, is it any more plausible that you and I are just a bunch of dumb, hard particles in a certain configuration?

And if that's true, you know,

How are certain configurations of these particles tantamount to the horrible feeling of pain?

You could say pain, oh, that's just a lot of elementary particles in a certain configuration.

But we all know that explanation isn't enough.

So when you look down to the bottom of everything... Whether it's a mathematical object or whether it's little billiard balls knocking around, it's still...

miraculous and improbable that it should produce subjective experience, that it should produce pleasure and pain.

I find that to be exhilarating, to worry about the metaphysics of physics and the nature of reality, even though it doesn't lead you to any sort of comfortable intellectual closure.

It's a good way of idling away an otherwise boring afternoon, as we've just proved.