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Tom Campbell

b. 1944 · A portrait

A physicist who spent decades in defense and government work argues physical reality is the rendered output of a vast information-processing system organized around consciousness, not matter.

How to read it

The line above is how his claims were received — by the scientists whose job was to doubt them. It rises as a claim is tested and accepted, and the room brightens with it. It is not a verdict on truth: some accepted ideas are later overturned, and some rejected ones come back. A hollow point is a claim still open.

drag along the line to travel
1 of 4 · 1966–70s · proposed

Physics, then a lab

He earned degrees in mathematics and physics, then began doctoral research in nuclear physics at the University of Virginia without completing it into a degree. In the early 1970s he joined Robert Monroe's lab to study reported out-of-body states through sound.

2 of 4 · 2003 · proposed

The trilogy

After a career as a physicist in government and industry, he self-published the three-volume My Big TOE, arguing physical law is the output of an information-processing system run by what he calls a larger consciousness system.

3 of 4 · 2017 · proposed

A proposed test

With co-authors he published “On Testing the Simulation Theory” in the International Journal of Quantum Foundations, proposing variants of the double-slit experiment. Mainstream physics journals have not taken the model up.

4 of 4 · today · proposed

Where it stands

He continues developing and teaching the framework, and maintains it is falsifiable through predictions about quantum experiments. It remains outside mainstream physics, which has not formally tested those predictions or adopted the model.

The theory claims to be testable. Physics hasn't yet been the one to test it.
What the theory leaves open is whether a claim about consciousness generating physical law can be tested by anyone besides the people already convinced of it.
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