There has been a popular thought lately among folks with astute degrees and high intelligence: The theory that we are not real, that life is just a projection, that humans and the race we have lived and are living is just a big quantum experiment. Or as Nancy Evans Bush said on Coast to Coast AM last week, we are a joke..
The newest example of this thought process comes from the NEW SCIENTIST, which places on its cover and talks in great detail in its issue, about what exactly reality is. The publication is also devoting a special section to that question on their website as well.. And it’s a great question. Think of the implication, the deep rooted potential, and the mighty ability to chaos that comes with the answer…
To me, reality is my own. I know my reality, I know my family, friends.. I know my job.. I know my hobbies, my fears, and my hopes. I don’t really know yours. And you don’t know mine. So reality, in a sense, is specific to the person having that reality. Do we share one ultimate reality? Maybe. Although atheists may say no, as will Christians, as will Muslims, and as will Mormons–along with any other religion, sect, tribe, or tribulation. Reality will be specific to them. And to someone who hallucinates on regular basis, well, it’s safe to assume few will ever be able to get a grip on their reality.
But what if we are nothing? What if we are a bit of bytes and coding in some quantum computer, somewhere out there..? Somewhere here? What if we are fake. Just projections. Just manifestations of software permitted to just ‘run with it’? It may be difficult to imagine, but some are imagining just that: The very real potentialreality as we know it is just a computer simulation.
According to this dispatch in Kurzweil profiling the NEW SCIENTIST article, the notion that we could be computer simulations arose from black holes. Here is how they wrote it:
This bizarre idea arose from an argument over black holes. One of the fundamental tenets of physics is that information cannot be destroyed, but a black hole appears to violate this by swallowing things that contain information then gradually evaporating away. What happens to that information was the subject of a long debate between Stephen Hawking and several of his peers. In the end, Hawking lost the debate, conceding that the information is imprinted on the event horizon that defines the black hole’s boundary and escapes as the black hole evaporates.This led theoretical physicists Leonard Susskind and Gerard’t Hooft to propose that the entire universe could also hold information at its boundary — with the consequence that our reality could be the projection of that information into the space within the boundary.
There are huge implications if you go down this road. If you strip humans of the flesh and bones we think we have, take away those memories and chalk them up to simulated experiences, and just say it’s all not real but a figment of some programmer, well.. that is massive. Are we just mindless bits and bytes living out some creepy SIM CITY type of game? How does the game end? Who started the game? …and if someone did truly start it, could consider that being or beings to be “God” ??
What role would free will play in a simulation? Would our SIMS and avatars be permitted to even possess such a gift?
And finally, if we are just flowing through some binary processor, what can one make of love and hate? What can you say about tears?
Think of it this way: If tomorrow irrefutable evidence turned up that we truly were not real but instead a part of a quantum program, many people on this planet (which would not really be a planet in reality) would cry. They would have real wet watery tears flowing. Or would they? Permits the programmer would allow those tears to flow. And if he clicked to stop them… we’d just vanish with the program.
For those who believe that we are in this world of fraud, I certainly hope the programmer or the god doesn’t accidentally walk by his desk and unplug the computer by accident.
Finally, I say this: We make fake world, we grow fake plants in Farmville (does anyone play that still?) and we have pretend avatars. What if those avatars come alive, have feelings, and think they are real too. We suddenly become God. To them. But who would be God to us? The one who made us..whether it’s flesh and bones or endless 0s and 1s of data.
Fascinating questions. Profound answers.
But none to be found!
