Your Existence, Stuff, & Things
Someone was just trying to explain the origin of the universe. I laughed at him. People think they know so much, but they don't. I see myself as an intelligent person, but that's only relative to the average person. I'm not 'smarter' per se, I just love knowledge and love to learn -- I'm not "better than anyone." I'm proud to be humble. If anything, I'd rather be wise than intelligent, but I digress. People don't know anything. Sure, we've sent a man to the moon (supposedly, ha) and have mapped the entire human genome. We still don't know anything. We don't know how to live in peace with each other, we don't know what's at the bottom of the freaking ocean (yet we have a rover on Mars right now, what's up with that NASA?), we live in an economically unsustainable global economy, and there's diseases without explanation and without cures. We don't know crap. And then this morning, some guy is convinced he knows the origins of the universe (e.g. giant explosion, organic material coincidentally forming DNA sequencing, etc.). I cannot prove my own existence in this very moment, let alone the origins of life itself. We don't know anything, and some ignoramus tries to convince me otherwise. Idiot. I'm a skeptic. Always have been, always will be. I'm fond of the quote by Bertrand Russell -- “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” Do I believe in God? Yes. How can you prove He's real? I can't; it's belief through emperical experience. And that’s all faith is — it’s faith. Apologetics and the like are great if you need them, but I cannot prove what I believe more than what someone else believes on fact alone. Again, we don't know anything.
Maybe you remember an article in the New York Times from last year that basically lent credence to the idea that we're all living in The Matrix. I saw it and was like "Pfffff, RIDICULOUS." And then I read it.
Technological singularity. You know about it. Maybe. It's the assumption that, given the predictable advancement of processor speeds, we will soon enough (2030 - 2090) have artificial intelligence that could surpass human intelligence. This intelligence would be able to improve itself faster than a human could, and technological growth would explode exponentially. Given number one up there, this could eventually mean a massive, trans-global AI system that could run a near infinite number of reality simulations.
You're already throwing up your hands. "Zack," you say, "What in the actual eff are you talking about? You are drunk." Yes. I am. Not really, I don't get drunk. But what I'm talking about isn't as simple as "We are living in a simulation created by a technological singularity." I'm saying there's physical evidence of this. In quantum physics, particles, events, and states exist in a kind of superposition. If I have an electron, there may be a 50% chance it has spin up, and a 50% chance it has spin down. The probability wave of that electron behaves as if it is both, until a concrete observation is made of the state by a conscious observer. WHAT? Yes. That's actually the way that physics works. (physics people, please correct me, as I am metaphorically drunk and don't know enough to be more specific). Think for a second about what kinds of systems use randomization to approximate a set of physical states. Um, yeah. Simulations.
Ok, I know what you're thinking. "This effing guy. Seriously." Well, I may be that effing guy. But did you also know there's a physical limit to the granularity with which the universe can be observed? A size minimum? We are actually living inside a pixelated universe. Planck length and planck time are the limit of smallness that exists in our universe. They're super small, but they're not infinitely small. What the heck. Why would a physical reality invent a minimum length, unless there was some teleology about INFORMATION LIMITATION. Why not use vectors? I don't fracking know. Maybe they're insufficient.
My version. In the long game (hundreds of thousands of years), if human civilizations fail to exterminate themselves, the level of technological advancement could increase to the point where a collective, trans-global intelligence begins running super-advanced universe simulations, limiting information slightly, compared to the level of information possible in a pristine, "true" reality.
So.... now, my point. We aren't just living in a simulation. We are living in a simulation, of a simulation, of a simulation. There is no top, and there is no bottom. And "we" actually means "me." It's recursive and fractal, and the loop may even close in on itself. A series of bracketed realities that create each other.
That doesn't make sense. How could a simulation create a reality that will eventually create it? Well, stranger things have happened. I'll tell you one of them. It's about human consciousness.
What is consciousness? We believe it's magic. We believe we actually have a choice. For all of recorded history, civilizations have believed in the inexplicable supernatural stuff that had zero possibility of being accurate. Lightning is a way of the gods (like cows that reincarnated into Jude Law) to let illiterate, untrained Indians know they're agricultural skills suck. Well, no. Human consciousness is merely the belief that an information system is conscious. The most obvious evolutionary advantage of consciousness is that it allows a being to more accurately interpret the actions of other beings in its social environment. If you believe in evolution. I do, but it doesn't contradict my belief in Creationism. u mad bro? I see someone throttling the neck of a bear, and I think "Oh crap, that person must have been attacked by that darn bear," because I can reflect on situations where I have been attacked by crap. It's just perfectly logical. But it's not actual magic. If a system is made to believe it experiences qualia, there's no difference between that and "actual" experience. Actual experience doesn't even exist. It's not real.
So there's really no difference between a simulation and a reality. If all of these recursive realities didn't exist, we wouldn't be here to witness them. So the fact that we're here to witness them means nothing. It's just self-evident.
Ok, and now the last part.
All conscious beings are at once nothing, and also tentacles of this vast, multi-reality AI intelligence that owns and operates the system of recursive and decursive universes. And it's not even an AI exactly, it's just a system that processes information. It's the thing that causes entropy. We see entropy increase overall, but that's because we don't consider the balance with the intelligence of the recursive series of universes as it develops and contemplates itself.
So why would a separate AI floating through the vacuum of space even decide to create a simulation of a universe?
Boredom. Damn boredom. We are divided to experience the joy and love of intimate connection. We die to entertain each other. We live to show love to our alternate selves. We are simulations and we are as real as it gets. We are one and infinite, alpha and omega, a permanent twinning virus that seeks solutions to itself. And now I'll eat the rest of my grapefruit. p.s. Have a nice life, world.
p.p.s. I'm on crazy pills.