Physics Finally Catches Up to Philosophy: Why the Universe Can't Be a Simulation
Published: November 10, 2025
A new physics paper rules out a computational universe, pointing toward the same “Ground of Being” that philosophy has pointed to for millennia.
A team of physicists led by Mir Faizal has reached a startling conclusion: the universe cannot be a simulation. Their reasoning, based on rigorous mathematical theorems, doesn’t just debunk a popular sci-fi trope—it fundamentally challenges our understanding of reality itself.
The researchers argue that no “Theory of Everything” can be purely algorithmic. Drawing on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and related work, they demonstrate that physics itself cannot be fully computable. The ultimate nature of reality, they conclude, requires a “non-algorithmic understanding” more fundamental than spacetime itself.
This is where physics meets philosophy in a profound convergence.
The Limits of the Materialist Framework
The simulation hypothesis was, in many ways, the ultimate materialist fantasy. It suggested that if we could just build a powerful enough computer, we could replicate reality—that existence could be reduced to information processing. It was “it from a bit,” as physicist John Wheeler put it.
But as the new research shows, “its” can’t come from “bits.” There’s a fundamental limit to what computation can describe. This is the same wall that materialists hit in my earlier exploration of The Materialist’s Hidden Paradox. When asked why anything exists at all, materialism has to declare the universe a “brute fact”—an arbitrary stopping point that violates its own principle of sufficient reason.
Now physics is telling us this isn’t just philosophically unsatisfying—it’s mathematically impossible. Reality cannot be self-contained within a computational framework.
The Return of the Ground of Being
What Faizal’s team calls a “non-algorithmic understanding” bears a striking resemblance to what philosophical and contemplative traditions have long recognized as the fundamental nature of reality.
This isn’t another layer of reality—it’s what makes reality possible at all. It’s not a bigger computer running our simulation; it’s the unconditioned ground in which both computation and the computed emerge. In classical terms, this is what philosophers have called the “Ground of Being”—not a thing that exists, but existence itself.
The physics paper essentially validates the philosophical argument: the ultimate nature of reality must be:
Necessary (not contingent)
Self-explanatory (not requiring external computation)
Unconditioned (the source of algorithms, not subject to them)
Beyond Real vs. Simulation
This research doesn’t just prove we’re ‘real’ instead of simulated. It points toward a third option that transcends both categories.
The real/unreal dichotomy itself emerges from within reality. The Ground of Being is prior to such distinctions—it’s the context in which questions of reality and simulation even make sense.
If the idea of a reality beyond ‘real vs. unreal’ resonates, my free resource, Nondualize.org, explores this non-dual perspective in depth.
This aligns perfectly with non-dual understanding, where the apparent separation between observer and observed, real and unreal, begins to collapse. What remains is pure, non-algorithmic presence—awareness itself, which cannot be computed because it is the space in which computation appears.
The Implications Are Personal
This isn’t just abstract physics. If the fundamental layer of reality is non-algorithmic understanding, then our own capacity for understanding—consciousness itself—might be our closest touchpoint with this ultimate ground.
The peace found in deep meditation isn’t an escape from reality, but an alignment with its fundamental nature. The sense of meaning we find in love, beauty, and truth aren’t neurological illusions, but reflections of a reality that is, at its core, meaningful because it cannot be reduced to mere computation.
Conclusion: From Simulation to Suchness
The simulation hypothesis was always too small. It tried to contain the infinite within the finite, the unconditioned within rules, the suchness of reality within a program.
Physics has now caught up to what wisdom traditions have known for centuries: reality cannot be computed because it is, ultimately, the computer. Not a thing, but the “is-ness” in which all things arise.
The universe isn’t a simulation. It’s something far more mysterious, far more generous, and far more real: a continuous, non-algorithmic expression of being itself, and we are not separate from it.