An Introduction to Simulism and Holodecks

"Simulism," the brain-child of Dr. Nick Bostrom (Oxford University) is the concept that argues that we may be part of a living simulation. At first glance this theory seems about as outlandish as the Loch Ness Monster, (my apologies to any real monster hunters out there reading my blog.) But this theory has some seriously solid points to make. It begins by categorizing kinds of simulation (currently in existence.) Third degree simulations are the kind in which a person is placed into a controlled environment and watched and manipulated (possibly unaware) like the famous TV reality show "Candid Camera" or the film "The Trueman Show." Second degree simulations would be the kind in which a user is aware of the simulation and does not entirely "buy into it," as his or her ultimate reality concept. The "user" or "player" within a second degree simulation would engage the construct of the simulation with a dual mind, half in the game, half aware of the reality around them (like role playing games A.K.A. RPG's) Heavy users of RPG's often admit to temporarily losing their grip on reality and taking on the artificial persona of their choosing. This kind of artificial world can be addictive, relaxing, entertaining, educational or all together mindless. The third kind of simulation is the most spooky, for it involves the manipulation of matter and energy (as in the film The Matrix) to form a full-scale simulation of real life objects and beings. Third degree simulation is only possible with significant amounts of computing power and energy, (currently in excess of that which is available to us now.) One could argue that the life we live now is a highly complex third degree simulation, broadcast by a quantum computer cluster somewhere in the cosmos.* An example of a modified form of third degree simulation could be the concept of a holodeck on the SF series Star Treck TNG. As a holodeck manipulates matter and energy in a matrix to form a 3D computer driven simulation in real-time. It is entirely possible that we may be able to project our own full-scale simulation when we reach a certain level of technology. It is possible that we may understand the ultimate nature of our own creation only when we reach out our own hands and do it ourselves.*

* Third degree simulism should be possible by the manipulation of photons of light into subatomic particles (in the quantum scale) then manipulating the subatomic particles into the larger-scale structures of physical matter. This process could also be possible by manipulation of existing matter and ambient energy via scalar wave technology, however this could destroy the original source of that matter, it would be lost in the translation.

* It should be noted that it might be necessary for a continuous "feed" of the simulation to be generated for the object to exist over time. In other words, if the generative system or device were to be shut off, then the object could vanish, just like on a holodeck.

Great Video About The Omniverse

I really enjoyed this video blog 'vlog' by Rob Bryanton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6D3CgF8_qk

CERN Celebrates WWW!

CERN Celebrates 20th anniversary of World Wide Web
(taken from CERN press release)
"Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee (left) and early web pioneer Robert Cailliau stand on either side of the NeXT computer that acted as the word's first web server.
Geneva, 13 March 2009. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee returned to the birthplace of his invention today, 20 years after submitting his paper ‘Information Management: A Proposal’ to his boss Mike Sendall. By writing the words ‘Vague, but exciting’ on the document’s cover, and giving Berners-Lee the go-ahead to continue, Sendall was signing into existence the information revolution of our times: the World Wide Web. In September of the following year, Berners-Lee took delivery of a computer called a NeXT cube, and by December the Web was up and running, albeit between just a couple of computers at CERN1.
Today’s event takes a look back at some of the early history, and pre-history, of the World Wide Web at CERN, includes a keynote speech from Tim Berners-Lee, and concludes with a series of talks from some of today’s Web pioneers. The full event will be webcast at http://webcast.cern.ch, and relayed via http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/endirect/0,,4301948,00-les-20-ans-du-web-edition-speciale-.html. Highlights will be available to broadcasters via a Eurovision worldfeed scheduled for 19:00CET (http://www.eurovision.net/net/content/worldfeeds.php).
“It’s a pleasure to be back at CERN today,” said Berners-Lee. “CERN has come a long way since 1989, and so has the Web, but its roots will always be here.”
The World Wide Web is undoubtedly the most well known spin-off from CERN, but it’s not the only one. Technologies developed at CERN have found applications in domains as varied as solar energy collection and medical imaging.
“When CERN scientists find a technological hurdle in the way of their ambitions, they have a tendency to solve it,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “I’m pleased to say that the spirit of innovation that allowed Tim Berners-Lee to invent the Web at CERN, and allowed CERN to nurture it, is alive and well today.”

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status."

The White Queen's Strange Memory

Have you ever read any Lewis Carroll? Well, you really should! He is and always will be known primarily for the twin works "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland," and "Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There." I would like to call the reader's attention to the following passage, to be found within "Through The Looking-Glass..." Chapter V, entitled "Wool and Water ~40th page in. The White Queen (who is precisely one-hundred and one years, five months and one day old) explains to Alice that people that live there (on the other side of the mirror) live their lives backwards. They remember events on both sides of the time continuum as well as experiencing the present. Alice asks the Queen which events she remembers best, to which she replies, events that take place about a week and a half from now. Alice remarks that her memory only works in one direction, backwards into the past. The Queen finds this to be a curious malady, and tells Alice that her memory is certainly flawed!

I find this section of "Through The Looking-Glass" to be particularly telling. Carroll was clearly pointing to the limitations of mankind's most trusted mental resource, his memory. In order for one to remember the future one must first have the means to do so. Given the practical means to do so and the opportunity, one would "recall" events from one of their possible futures. The act of seeing initiates the shift into that set of future events. That previous passage (as well as the whole of the Alice-Looking-glass saga) has widely been judged to be deterministic. It's concept of free will being severely stunted and warped, gives it a dreamlike quality. Time is strangely reversed, at least in some ways. The events and outcomes (many times occurring prior to their own causes) are not really under personal control, so much as that they are being acted out as a preexisting "play." (Remember that "hard determinism" has close ties with the concept of "fate," as it connects every event with an unbroken chain of past events, reducing or eliminating the possibility of the emergence of free will.) I didn't take away this same reaction to the logic of the Wonderland saga, rather that certain chaotic logic "wonderland logic" as well as different initial conditions could be in play. It would be possible that the concept of free will dominates this kind of system, in as much as it appears in several instances that the actors are envisioning the events into reality. They appear to be manifesting their destiny, albeit from a rather detached or unconscious means. You may recall that metaphysics regards this phenomenon as natural and inherent in all complex living systems, like the one we live one. It would see this kind of action as being part of "The Law of Attraction." (This is an odd little Law which explains that all actions and conditions arise out of the innate functions of consciousness and conscious thought or movement.) Thus things, events and actions are attracted into being by the "thinker" who then experiences them as a reality. This theory would say that the act of prediction or forecasting is also the act of intentional manifesting.

So what would the act of remembering the future really entail? Would you be in the act of manifesting from an imagined future? Would you be realizing a predetermined path through a strictly deterministic system? If the latter and not the former were true, then the most logical conclusion as to why we do not remember the future would be that it would drive us all mad! If the future were "solid" and strictly deterministic in nature, one could argue that the system had (at least on some levels) already been "played out." To know what would happen, to play your part, and to not have any volition, no personal control of that system or your role in that play, would certainly prove to be unbareable! (Maybe thats why we cant remember our future - because we need to forget it, in order to function as we should, to play our part as we should, as we will.)

Of course MWI cosmology should not support the previous set of options. It should dictate that the knower of future events would simply be privy to the events within other universes (which held a time-positive value to that of their own) so that looking into them, would be very much like looking into the future of their own world. We can add in the concept of strict determinism if we like, achieving a set of universes each with its own unique "play script" and with its own predetermined outcomes. (We could call the outcomes of such a universe its empty set, as it describes the end state of equilibrium for that system.) We can also add in an element of the Law of Attraction by saying that in that universe's events would arise out of the act of viewing events of other universes and focusing on them, thus shifting into that new reality. The previous reality would really describe an entire reality system housed within a multiverse, and not one finite universe. It should also be held that a strictly deterministic system could not be compatible with one that is infused with The Law of Attraction.

Some questions to consider?

1.) Why do we not remember the future?

2.) Why do we remember the past?

3.) How do we remember the past, what functions allow us to store and access these events? (The same kind of automatic process should allow us to remember the future, should it not?)

Illustration by: John Tenniel (1863)
Literature by: CL Dodgeson, A.K.A. Lewis Carroll (1863)

The Quantum Ghost

I am continually struck by the profound lack of understanding we tend to exhibit toward an entire spectrum of experience. That spectrum is of course the hidden nature of "non-existence." We might pass the entire idea off as being childish or impractical, but the fact remains that half of the world is simply "not there" and yet it affects us, all the same. We are constantly touched by an unseen presence of a "non-real" and yet valid portion of the universe, a portion that is physically contained within other universes and bleeds through into our own. Imagine that you are flying through the Omniverse with a special kind of perspective, (Physicist, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf would undoubtedly invoke his famous Dr. Quantum's "quantum goggles" if he were writing this blog.) This perspective allows you to see the omniverse as an infinite sea of mirror-like bubbles. Each time you peer into a bubble, you see that universe. If however you simply observe the bubble from any distance without peering inside, it reflects all the other bubbles around it in a blinding display of light. To the inhabitants of each bubble-universe, its limited reality is the only one that is considered to be "real." After all, reality is always a local concept! So you peer into bubbles all day long until you are sick and tired of looking. What do you suppose you would think about the things that you saw? Well, for one thing, you would have done something quite dangerous (without knowing it) you would have infected yourself with the foreign logic of other realities. This infection or is a difficult one to treat, if one really wanted to treat it anyway. The difficulty here is that you can't effectively unlearn something, especially something so important and so vital to the life process, it becomes hard-wired in after so long. The more "foreign" the logic*, the longer the exposure and the more profound the impact of that experience upon the observer, the greater the reduction in the observer's mind's ability to function (at least to a valuable degree) in their own universe. The end result of too much exposure is inevitable, insanity. It should be noted that the observer would not clearly understand the effects until the changes had already been made.

* It is important to understand that the term "foreign," as I have used above, is intended to describe the degree to which the (newly) observed universe's initial conditions deviate from those of the observer's universe of origin. Any other effects that have occurred due to chance (or since the formation of the observed universe) should not and will not affect the observer's reality concept or their ability to function within any given universe. It would affect the observer's specific experience with that universe. Imagine a world where planet Earth was ruled by telepathic spiders, alterations in evolution of a worldline from that of our own worldline's history should significantly change one's viewing experience.