I must commend David Deutsch for displaying the courage of his convictions in his Fabric of Reality.  His courage allows the rest of us to see more clearly the fallacy of the naturalism that he pushes to its logical extreme, which, but for one minor point, is indistinguishable from immaterialism.  In doing so, Deutsch uses Frank Tipler’s Physics of Immortality as a point of reference.

A la Tipler, our destiny is to find ourselves reprogrammed into the virtual reality of a cosmic, quantum computer.  Amen, but hold the computers.

To his credit, Deutsch spends some time flirting with and defending Berkley, which he must do in order to flesh out his very robust version of virtual reality.  But he is never quite able to kick his very serious computer habit.  Computers are our final security blanket.

But on the more practical side, just how do we know that we are not already the figments of a cosmic computer?  Deutsch barely touches upon this problem that ought to be looming.  Without so much as a nod to Leibniz, he takes it as obvious that even a novice programmer could produce a reality more comfortable than what we have been experiencing, lo these many years.  Obviously God has compassion for fools.

How will we kick the computer habit?  Very simple.  Let’s all start dreaming about the big computer in the sky.  We will evoke it before it evokes us.  After all, God is dead, isn’t She?