Fundamental expectation of solidity, right? Yeah. Think about the architecture of the room you're in right now as you listen to this. When you press your hand against a brick wall, it feels rough, doesn't it? Yeah. It pushes back. Exactly. It actively pushes back against your palm. And you can point at it and confidently say, 'There it is.' That is undeniably real because it's comforting, right?

It's comforting because we desperately want the world to be tangible, and our lives depend on that assumption, really. We operate under the premise that the physical universe exists out there exactly as we perceive it, regardless of whether anyone's actually observing it.

We regard the universe as a giant humming machine composed of independent, measurable parts. But the deeper you delve into this —into cognitive science, quantum physics, even ...