The modern, very existentially traumatic story of life and the universe goes something like this: Through a series of happy accidents we go from cosmic inflation and the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago to the universe’s first molecules, stars, galaxies, proteins, cells, etc. Fast forward and you’re recovering from a late-night Taco Bell run on a Tuesday morning. Humans exist at the current endpoint of evolution as individual, sentient entities dwelling in a matter-and-energy reality of discretely defined objects that bear out against scrutiny. Things can be measured, understood, and definitely continue existing without us. If we all die, the cosmos marches on oblivious. So on and so on. 

And yet, here we are making such observations. Observed things require observers, and vice-versa. Without us and our observations, assessments, evaluations, and experiences, the universe is different. This is what physicist John Wheeler called the participatory anthropic principle (PAP), as Futurism outlines. As Forbes discusses, Wheeler’s observation has been misconstrued over time as meaning that the universe — more accurately “God” — is perfectly tailored to create us because we are the ones here to observe it. To this we say in Latin “post hoc ergo propter hoc:” Just because one thing happened after another it doesn’t mean the first thing caused the second thing. Nonetheless, the anthropic principle showcases a critical feature of biocentrism, one shared by quantum physics, ancient philosophers, and Neo from “The Matrix:” The idea that reality is a thing constructed by your mind.