“We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?”
Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7
Activity Recorded M.Y. 2302.22467
TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED
I woke to this quote of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centaury, today…
It was a series of very thought provoking questions, those in the survey. Took me way back to my child years, when the first questions about perception…
-“Even we both identify it a such, how can I know the color I call red is the same color you are seeing?”
If my senses can be fooled while I’m dreaming into thinking it’s real, than my senses are not a valid tool to confirm reality. The solipsism inherent to those ideas took me to the “brain in a jar” hypothesis on my own, back then… Something to be left forgotten in the corner of your mind to keep sanity and not end up like Specimen 46, up there, but that would involuntarily surface once in awhile, when experiencing premonitions, deja-vus or someone proposing holographic explanations for our reality.
“But Occam’s razor…” Why? Who or what would create such an elaborate labyrinth to trap a conscience, or a series of them, supposing you are not all holograms… Or am I the one who isn’t real?
The Ancestor Simulation theory:
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? ORIGINAL Nick Bostrom. Philosophical Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255. [html] [pdf] (An earlier draft was circulated in 2001.)
ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
…
Echoes of the Big Bang:
We investigate the origins of our Universe through the echoes of it’s creation… what we call background cosmic radiation. At the same time, the galaxies and stars we see in our firmament are showing the image of what has happened hundreds and millions of years ago, still reaching us with astronomical delay. Inside that light, in the form of coded holographic information, beyond our senses and our present computing capacity lays information that could be processed and read, ever-escaping it’s position at the speed of light.
Ender’s Ansible and superluminal communication:
Quantum Entanglement: The spin of certain sub-atomic particles can be linked and it’s turn direction would change at the same time on any of them, affecting the spin of the other… Instantly, and independent of the distance from the other “twin particle”. If stabilized through superconductive magnetic fields, that spin could be translated into a 0 and a 1, allowing for instantaneous superluminal communication.
An eye to the past:
From the moment superluminal communication is possible, a “Hubble-like” satellite could start to distance itself from the origin point, looking back and keeping instantaneous communication, from that moment on, farther back the longer it passes, that civilization would have an eye on their past, being able to even focus their attention on demand to a specific point in their past in the search for answers.
But of course, looking back with a magnifying glass it’s the crude representation of what our technology does with light information in all its wavelength… But there could be more to it, given enough processing capabilities, a “computer” anywhere in the universe catching our “light” could be running a simulation of our past, using real holographic information to eliminate uncertainty.
It’s not only us. Anyone could be running the simulation… Maybe someone from a different galaxy or a hold different Universe altogether.
