How to Survive an AI Apocalypse – Part 9: The Stabilization Effect

February 10, 2024 4 Comments

PREVIOUS: How to Survive an AI Apocalypse – Part 8: Fighting Back

Here’s where it gets fun.

Or goes off the rails, depending on your point of view.

AI meets Digital Philosophy meets Quantum Mechanics meets UFOs.

This entire blog series has been about surviving an AI-based Apocalypse, a very doomsday kind of event. For some experts, this is all but inevitable. You readers may be coming to a similar conclusion.

But haven’t we heard this before? Doomsday prophesies have been around as long as… Keith Richards. The Norse Ragnarök, The Hindu prophecy of the end of times during the current age of Kaliyuga, the Zoroastrian Renovation, and of course, the Christian Armageddon. An ancient Assyrian tablet dated 2800-2500 BCE tells of corruption and unruly teenagers and prophecies that “earth is in its final days; the world is slowly deteriorating into a corrupt society that will only end with its destruction.” Fast forward to the modern era, where the Industrial Revolution was going to lead to the world’s destruction. We have since had the energy crisis, the population crisis, and the doomsday clock ticking down to nuclear armageddon. None of it ever comes to pass.

Is the AI apocalypse more of the same, or is it frighteningly different in some way? This Part 9 of the series will examine such questions and present a startling conclusion that all may be well.

THE NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE

To get a handle on the likelihood of catastrophic end times, let’s take a deep dive into the the specter of a nuclear holocaust.

It’s hard for many of us to appreciate what a frightening time it was in the 1950s, as people built fallout shelters and children regularly executed duck and cover drills in the classrooms.

Often considered to be the most dangerous point of the cold war, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States involving the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. At one point the US Navy began dropping depth charges to force a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine to surface. The crew on the sub, having had no radio communication with the outside world didn’t know if war was breaking out or not. The captain, Valentin Savitsky, wanted to launch a nuclear weapon, but a unanimous decision among the three top officers was required for launch. Vasily Arkhipov, the second in command, was the sole dissenting vote and even got into an argument with the other two officers. His courage effectively prevented the nuclear war that was likely to result. Thomas S Blanton, later the director of the US National Security Archive called Arkhipov “the man who saved the world.”

But that wasn’t the only time we were a hair’s breadth away from the nuclear apocalypse.

On May 23, 1967, US military commanders issued a high alert due to what appeared to be jammed missile detection radars in Alaska, Greenland, and the UK. Considered to be an act of war, they authorized preparations for war, including the deployment of aircraft armed with nuclear weapons. Fortunately, a NORAD solar forecaster identified the reason for the jammed radar – a massive solar storm.

Then, on the other side of the red curtain, on 26 September 1983, with international tensions still high after the recent Soviet military shoot down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a nuclear early-warning system in Moscow reported that 5 ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) had been launched from the US. Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at the command center and suspected a false alarm, so he awaited confirmation before reporting, thereby disobeying Soviet protocol. He later said that had he not been on the shift at that time, his colleagues would have reported the missile launch, likely triggering a nuclear war.

In fact, over the years there have been at least 21 nuclear war close calls, any of which could easily led to a nuclear conflagration and the destruction of humanity. The following timeline, courtesy of the Future of Life Institute, shows how many occurred in just the 30-year period from 1958 to 1988.

It kinds of makes you wonder what else could go wrong…

END OF SOCIETY PREDICTED

Another modern age apocalyptic fear was driven by the recognition that exponential growth and limited resources are ultimately incompatible. At the time, the world population was growing exponentially and important resources like oil and arable land were being depleted. The Rockefeller Foundation partnered with the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to form The Club of Rome, a group of current and former heads of state, scientists, economists, and business leaders to discuss the problem and potential solutions. In 1972, with the support of computational modeling from MIT, they issued their first report, The Limits to Growth, which painted a bleak picture of the world’s future. Some of the predictions (and their ultimate outcomes) follow:

Another source for this scare was the book The Population Bomb by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich. He and people like Harvard biologist George Wald also made some dire predictions…

There is actually no end to failed environmental apocalyptic predictions – too many to list. But a brief smattering includes:

  • “Unless we are extremely lucky, everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.” (New York Times, 1969)
  • “UN official says rising seas to ‘obliterate nations’ by 2000.” (Associated Press, 1989)
  • “Britain will Be Siberian in less than 20 years” (The Guardian, 2004)
  • “Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21th Century” (Boston Globe, 1970)
  • “NASA scientist says we’re toast. In 5-10 years, the arctic will be ice free.” (Associated Press, 2008)

Y2K

And who could forget this apocalyptic gem…

My intent is not to cherry pick the poor predictions and make fun of them. It is simply that when we are swimming in the sea of impending doom, it is really hard to see the way out. And yet, there does always seem to be a way out. 

Sometimes it is mathematical. For example, there was a mathematical determination of when we would run out of oil based on known supply and rate of usage, perhaps factoring in the trend of increase in rate of usage. But what were not factored into the equation were the counter effects of the rate of new reserves being discovered and the improvements in engine efficiencies. One could argue that in the latter case, the scare achieved its purpose, just as the fear of global warming has resulted in a number of new environmental policies and laws, such as California’s upcoming ban on gasoline powered vehicles in 2035. However, that isn’t always the case. Many natural resources, for instance, seem to actually be increasing in supply. I am not necessarily arguing for something like the abiotic oil theory. However, at the macro level, doesn’t it sometimes feel like a game of civilization, where we are given a set of resources, cause and effect interrelationships, and ability to acquire certain skills. In the video game, when we fail on an apocalyptic level, we simply hit the reset button and start over. But in real life we can’t do that. Yet, doesn’t it seem like the “game makers” always hand us a way out, such as unheard of new technologies that are seemingly suddenly enabled? And it isn’t always human ingenuity that saves us? Sometimes, the right person is on duty at the perfect time against all odds. Sometimes, oil fields magically replenish on their own. Sometimes asteroids strike the most remote place on the planet.

THE STABILIZATION EFFECT

In fact, it seems statistically significant that apocalypses, while seemingly imminent, NEVER really occur. So much so that I decided to model it with a spreadsheet using random number generation (also demonstrating how weak my programming skills have gotten). The intent of the model is to encapsulate the state of humanity on a simple timeline using a parameter called “Mood” for lack of a better term. We start at a point in society that is neither euphoric (the Roaring Twenties) nor disastrous (the Great Depression). As time progresses, events occur that push the Mood in one direction or the other, with a 50/50 chance of either occurring. The assumption in this model is that no matter what the Mood is, it can still get better or worse with equal probability. Each of the following graphs depicts a randomly generated timeline.

On the graph are two thresholds – one of a positive nature, where things seemingly can’t get much better, and one of a negative nature, whereby all it should take is a nudge to send us down the path to disaster. In any of the situations we’ve discussed in this part of the series, when we are on the brink of apocalypse, the statistical likelihood that the situation would improve at that point should not be more than 50/50. If true, running a few simulations shows that an apocalypse is actually fairly likely. Figures 1 and 3 pop over the positive limit and then turn back toward neutral. Figure 2 seems to take off in the positive direction even after passing the limit. Figure 4 hits and goes through the negative limit several times, implying that if our reality actually worked this way, apocalyptic situations would actually be likely.

However, what always seems to happen is that when things get that bad, there is a stabilizing force of some sort. I made an adjustment to my reality model by inserting some negative feedback to model this stabilizing effect. For those unfamiliar with the term, complex systems can have positive or negative feedback loops; often both. Negative feedback tends to bring a system back to a stable state. Examples in the body include the maintenance of body temperature and blood sugar levels. If blood sugar gets too high, the pancreas secretes insulin which chemically reduces the level. When it gets too low, the pancreas secretes glucagon which increases the level. In nature, when the temperature gets high, cloud level increases, which provides the negative feedback needed to reduce the temperature. Positive feedback loops also exist in nature. The runaway greenhouse effect is a classic example.

When I applied the negative feedback to the reality model, all curves tended to stay within the positive and negative limits, as show below.

Doesn’t it feel like this is how our reality works at the most fundamental level? But how likely would it be that every aspect of our reality is subject to negative feedback? And where does that negative feedback come from?

REALITY IS ADAPTIVE

This is how I believe that reality works at its most fundamental level…

Why would that be? Two obvious ideas come to mind.

  1. Natural causes – this would be the viewpoint of reductionist materialist scientists. Heat increase causes ice sheets to melt which creates more water vapor, generating more clouds, reducing the heating effect of the sun. But this does not at all explain why the human condition, and the civilization trends that we’ve discussed in this article, always tend toward neutral.
  2. God – this would be the viewpoint of people whose beliefs are firmly grounded in their religion. God is always intervening to prevent catastrophes. But apparently God doesn’t mind minor catastrophes and plenty of pain and suffering in general. More importantly though, this does not explain dynamic reality generation.

DYNAMIC REALITY GENERATION

Enter Quantum Mechanics.

The Double-slit experiment was first done by Thomas Young back in 1801, and was an attempt to determine if light was composed of particles or waves. A beam of light was projected at a screen with two vertical slits. If light was composed of particles, only two bands of light should be on the phosphorescent screen behind the one with the slits. If wave-based, an interference pattern should result. The wave theory was initially confirmed experimentally, but that was later called into question by Einstein and others. 

The experiment was later done with particles, like electrons, and it was clearly assumed that these would be shown to be hard fixed particles, generating the expected pattern shown on the right.

However, what resulted was an interference pattern, implying that the electrons were actually waves. Thinking that perhaps electrons were interfering with each other, the experiment was modified to shoot one electron at a time. And still the interference pattern slowly build up on the back screen.

To make sense of the interference pattern, experimenters wondered if they could determine which slit each electron went through, so they put a detector before the double list. Et voila, the interference pattern disappeared! It was as if the actual conscious act of observation converted the electrons from waves to particles. The common interpretation was that the electrons actual exist only a probability function and the observation actually snaps them into existence.

It is very much like the old adage that a tree falling in the woods makes no sound unless someone is there to see it. Of course, this idea of putting consciousness as a parameter in the equations of physics generated no end of consternation for the deterministic materialists. They have spent the last twenty years designing experiments to disprove this “Observer Effect” to no avail. Even when the “which way” detector is place after the double slit, the interference pattern disappears. The only tenable conclusion is that reality does not exist in an objective manner and its instantiation depends on something. But what?

The diagram below helps us visualize the possibilities. When does reality come into existence?

Clearly it is not at points 1, 2 or 3, because it isn’t until the “which way” detector is installed that we see the shift in reality. So is it due to the detector itself or the conscious observer reading the results of the detector. One could image experiments where the results of the “which way” detector are hidden from the conscious observer for an arbitrary period of time; maybe printed out and put in an envelope without looking, where it sits on the shelf for a day while the interference pattern exists. And someone opens the envelope and suddenly the interference pattern disappears. I have always suspected that the answer will be that reality comes into existence at point 4. I believe that it is just logical that a reality generating universe be efficient. Recent experiments bear this out.

I believe this says something incredibly fundamental about the nature of our reality. But what would efficiency have to do with the nature of reality? Let’s explore a little further – what kinds of efficiencies would this lead to?

POP QUIZ! – is reality analog or digital? There is actually no conclusion to this question and many papers have been written in support of either point of view. But if our reality is created on some sort of underlying construct, there is only one answer – it has to be digital. Here’s why…

How much information would it take to fully describe the cup of coffee on the right?

In an analog reality, it would take an infinite amount of information.

In a digital reality, fully modeled at the Planck resolution (what some people think is the deepest possible digital resolution), it would require 4*1071 bits/second give or take. It’s a huge number for sure, but infinitely less than the analog case.

But wait a minute.  Why would we need that level of information to describe a simple cup of coffee? So let’s ask a different question… How much information is needed for a subjective human experience of that cup of coffee – the smell, the taste, the visual experience. You don’t really need to know the position and momentum vector of each subatomic particle in each molecule of coffee in that cup. All you need to know is what it takes to experience it. The answer is roughly 1*109 bits/second. In other words, there could be as much as a 4*1062 factor of compression involved in generating a subjective experience. In other words, we don’t really need to know where each electron is in the coffee, just as you don’t need to know which slit each electron goes through in the double slit experiment. That is, UNTIL YOU MEASURE IT!

So, the baffling results of the double slit experiments actually make complete sense if reality is:

  • Digital
  • Compressed
  • Dynamically generated to meet the needs of the inhabitants of that reality

Sounds computational doesn’t it? In fact, if reality were a computational system, it would make sense for it to need to have efficiencies at this level. 

There are such systems – one well known example is a video game called No Man’s Sky that dynamically generates its universe as the user plays the game. Art inadvertently imitating life?

Earlier in this article I suggested that the concept of God could explain the stabilization effect of our reality. If we redefine “God” to mean “All That There Is” (of which, our apparent physical reality is only a part), reality becomes a “learning lab” that needs to be stable for our consciousnesses to interact virtually.

I wrote about this and proposed this model back in 2007 in my first book “The Universe-Solved!.”  In 2021, an impressive set of physicists and technologists came up with the same theory, which they called “The Autodidactic Universe.” They collaborated to explore methods, structures, and topologies in which the universe might be learning and modifying its laws according to what is needed. Such ideas included neural nets and Restricted Boltzman Machines. This provides an entirely different way of looking at any potential apocalypse. And it make you wonder…

UFO INTERVENTION

In 2021, over one hundred military personnel, including Retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas, Retired First Lieutenant Robert Jacobs, and Retired Captain David Schindele met at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to present historical case evidence that UFOs have been involved with disarming nuclear missiles. A few examples…

  • Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, 1967 – “a large glowing, pulsating red oval-shaped object hovering over the front gate,” as alarms went off showing nearly all 10 missiles shown in the control room had been disabled.
  • Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, 1966 – Eight airmen said that 10 missiles at silos in the vicinity all went down with guidance and control malfunctions when an 80- to 100-foot wide flying object with bright flashing lights had hovered over the site.
  • Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, 1964 – “It went around the top of the warhead, fired a beam of light down on the top of the warhead.” After circling, it “then flew out the frame the same way it had come in.”
  • Ukraine, 1982 – launch countdowns were activated for 15 seconds while a disc-shaped UFO hovered above the base, according to declassified KGB documents

As the History Channel reported, areas of high UFO activity are correlated with nuclear and military facilities worldwide.

Perhaps UFOs are an artifact of our physical reality learning lab, under the control of some conscious entity or possibly even an autonomous (AI) bot in the system. As part of the “autodidactic” programming mechanisms that maintain stability in our programmed reality. Other mechanisms could involve things like adjusting the availability of certain resources or even nudging consciousnesses toward solutions to problems. If this model of reality is accurate, we may find that we have little to worry about regarding an AI apocalypse. Instead it will just be another force that contributes toward our evolution.

To that end, there is also a sector of thinkers who recommend a different approach. Rather than fight the AI progression, or simply let the chips fall, we should welcome our AI overlords and merge with them. That scenario will be explored in Part 10 of this series.

NEXT: How to Survive an AI Apocalypse – Part 10: If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em

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Quantum Retrocausality Explained

September 19, 2018 1 Comment

A recent quantum mechanics experiment, conducted at the University of Queensland in Australia, seems to defy causal order, baffling scientists. In this post however, I’ll explain why this isn’t anomalous at all; at least, if you come to accept the Digital Consciousness Theory (DCT) of reality. It boils down to a virtually identical explanation that I gave seven years ago to Daryl Bem’s seemingly anomalous precognition studies.

DCT says that subatomic particles are controlled by finite state machines (FSMs), which are tiny components of our Reality Learning Lab (RLL, aka “reality”).  These finite state machines that control the behavior of the atoms or photons in the experiment don’t really come into existence until the measurement is made, which effectively means that the atom or photon doesn’t really exist until it needs to. In RLL, the portion of the system that needs to describe the operation of the laser, the prisms, and the mirrors, at least from the perspective of the observer, is defined and running, but only at a macroscopic level. It only needs to show the observer the things that are consistent with the expected performance of those components and the RLL laws of physics. So, for example, we can see the laser beam. But only when we need to determine something at a deeper level, like the path of a particular photon, is a finite state machine for that proton instantiated. And in these retrocausality experiments, like the delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, and this one done in Queensland, the FSMs only start when the observation is made, which is after the photon has gone through the apparatus; hence, it never really had a path. It didn’t need to. The path can be inferred later by measurement, but it is incorrect to think that that inference was objective reality. There was no path, and so there was no real deterministic order of operation.

There are only the attributes of the photon determined at measurement time, when its finite state machine comes into existence. Again, the photon is just data, described by the attributes of the finite state machine, so this makes complete sense. Programmatically, the FSM did not exist before the individuated consciousness required a measurement because it didn’t need to. Therefore, the inference of “which operation came first” is only that – an inference, not a true history.

So what is really going on?  There are at least three options:

1. Evidence is rewritten after the fact.  In other words, after the photons pass through the experimental apparatus, the System goes back and rewrites all records of the results, so as to create the non-causal anomaly.  Those records consist of the experimenters memories, as well as any written or recorded artifacts.  Since the System is in control of all of these items, the complete record of the past can be changed, and no one would ever know.

2. The System selects the operations to match the results, so as to generate the non-causal anomaly.

3. We live in an Observer-created reality and the entire sequence of events is either planned out or influenced by intent, and then just played out by the experimenter and students.

The point is that it requires a computational system to generate such anomalies; not the deterministic materialistic continuous system that mainstream science has taught us that we live in.

Mystery solved, Digital Consciousness style.

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Nick Bostrom Elon Musk Nick Bostrom Elon Musk

November 12, 2017 4 Comments

OMG can anyone write an article on the simulation hypothesis without focusing on Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk? It’s like writing an article about climate change and only mentioning Al Gore.

Dear journalists who are trying to be edgy and write about cool fringe theories, please pay attention. The idea that we might be living in an illusory world is not novel. Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi wrote about it with his butterfly dream in 369 BC. Plato discussed his cave allegory in 380 BC. The other aspect of simulation theory, the idea that the world is discrete or digital, is equally ancient. Plato and Democritous considered atoms, and therefore the fundamental constructs of reality, to be discrete.

I’m not taking anything away from Nick Bostrom, who is a very intelligent modern philosopher. His 2001 Simulation Argument is certainly thought provoking and deserves its place in the annals of digital philosophy. But it was predated by “The Matrix”. Which was predated by Philip K. Dick’s pronouncement in 1977 that we might be living in a computer-programmed reality. Which was predated by Konrad Zuse’s 1969 work on discrete reality, “Calculating Space.”

And as interesting as Bostrom’s Simulation Argument is, it was a 12-page paper on a single idea. Since then, he has not really evolved his thinking on digital philosophy, preferring instead to concentrate on existential risk and the future of humanity.

Nor am I taking anything away from Elon Musk, a brilliant entrepreneur who latched onto Bostrom’s idea for a few minutes, generated a couple sound bites, and then it was back to solar panels and hyperloops.

But Bostrom, Musk, and the tired old posthuman-generated simulation hypothesis is all that the rank and file of journalists seem to know to write about. It is really sad, considering that Tom Campbell wrote an 800-page treatise on the computational nature of reality. I have written two books on the subject. Both of our material is largely consistent and has evolved the thinking far beyond the idea that we live in a posthuman-generated simulation. In fact, I provide a great deal of evidence that the Bostrom-esque possibility is actually not very likely. And Brian Whitworth has a 10-year legacy of provocative scientific papers on evidence for a programmed reality that are far beyond the speculations of Musk and Bostrom.

The world need to know about these things and Campbell, Whitworth, and I can’t force people to read our books, blogs, and papers. So journalists, with all due respect, please up your simulation game.

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Who Is God?

March 25, 2015 16 Comments

I’m starting this ridiculously presumptuous topic with the assumption that we live in a consciousness-driven digital reality. (For the reasons that I think this is the ONLY compelling theory of reality, please see the evidence, or my book, “The Universe – Solved!”) As such, we can draw from the possibilities proposed by various simulation theorists, such as Tom Campbell, Nick Bostrom, Andrei Linde, the Wachowskis, and others. In all cases, our apparent self, what Morpheus called “residual self image” is simply, in effect, an avatar. Our real free-will-wielding consciousness is in the mind of the “sim player”, wherever it may be.

god1-100 god2-100 god3-100

Some possibilities…

  1. We live in a post-human simulation written by humans of the future. This is Nick Bostrom’s “Simulation Argument.” “God” is thus, effectively, a future human, maybe some sniveling teen hacker working at the 2050 equivalent of Blizzard Entertainment. We are contemporaries of the hacker.
  1. We live in a simulation created by an AI, a la “The Matrix.” God is the Architect of the Matrix; we may be slaves or we may just enjoy playing the simulation that the AI created. We may be on earth or somewhere entirely different.
  1. We live in a simulation created by an alien. God is the alien; again, we may be slaves or we may just enjoy playing the simulation that ET has created.
  1. Stanford physicist Andrei Linde, the developer of the “eternal chaotic inflation theory” of the multiverse, once said “On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker.” That would make God a physicist – a future human one, or one from another planet.
  1. We live in a digital system, which continuously evolves to a higher level due to a fundamental law of continuous improvement. Physicist Tom Campbell has done the most to develop this theory, which holds that each of our consciousnesses are “individuated” parts of the whole system, interacting with another component of the system, the reality simulation in which we “live.” God is then a dispassionate digital information system, all that there is, the creator of our reality and of us. We are effectively a part of God.

“The kingdom of God is within you” – Jesus

“He who knows his own self, knows God” – Mohammed

“There is one Supreme Ruler, the inmost Self of all beings, who makes His one form manifold. Eternal happiness belongs to the wise, who perceive Him within themselves – not to others” – from the Vedas, original Indian holy text

“The first peace, which is most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its Powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” – Native American

There are a couple major challenges with possibilities 1 through 4. First of all is the problem of motivation. Would a significantly advanced civilization really be interested in playing out a seemingly mundane existence in a pre-post-human epoch on an ordinary planet? Would we want to live out the entire life of an Australopithecus four million years ago, given the opportunity in a simulation? Of course, this argument anthropomorphizes our true self, which may not even be of human form, like its avatar. In the System model of God, however, motivation is simple; it is part of the fundamental process of continuous improvement. We experience the simulation, or “Reality Learning Lab”, as Campbell calls it, in order to learn and evolve.

The bigger challenge is how to explain these anomalies:

  • Near Death Experiences, many of which have common themes; tunnels toward a white light, interaction with deceased (only!) relatives, life reviews, peace and quiet in an unearthly environment, a perception of a point of no return, and fundamental and lasting change in the experiencer’s attitude about life and death.
  • Past Life Experiences, as recounted by patients of hypnotherapists. Roots of reincarnation beliefs exist in every religion throughout the globe. It is fundamental in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and many Native American nations and African tribes, as well as some of the more esoteric (some might say “spiritually pure”) sects of Islam (Druze, Ghulat, Sufism), Judaism (Kabbalah and Hasidic), and even Christianity (Cathars, Gnostics).
  • In-between Life Experiences, as recounted by patients of hypnotherapists, as well as historical prophet figures, and modern spiritualists, such as Edgar Cayce, have common themes, such as encountering spirit guides who help design the next life.
  • Mystical experiences have been reported in many cultures throughout history, from Mohammed, Moses, Jesus, and Buddha to Protestant leader Jacob Boehme to modern day astronaut Rusty Schweickart. Common experiences include the expansion of consciousness beyond the body and ego, timelessness, the perception of being part of a unified whole, a oneness with a “cosmic consciousness”, and a deep understanding of the universe.

Only possibility 5, the “System” concept, can incorporate all of these anomalies. In that model, we are part of the whole, as experienced. We do reincarnate, as experienced. NDEs are simply the experience of our consciousness detaching from the Reality Learning Lab (RLL), and interacting with non-RLL entities.

The problem with the word “God” is the imagery and assumptions that it conjures up; old man with a flowing beard in the clouds. With the variety of simulation models, “God” could also be an incredibly advanced piece of software, or an incredibly advance alien (“light being”?), or a human in a quasi-futuristic grey suit. The word “System”, while probably much more accurate, is equally problematic in the assumptions that it generates. Still, I prefer that, or “All that there is” (ATTI?).

The System model clearly wins, in terms of its explanatory power. Which makes God a very different entity than most of us are used to thinking about.

But I bet the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed would all love this theory!

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Which came first, the digital chicken, or the digital philosophy egg?

December 31, 2014 3 Comments

Many scientists, mathematicians, futurists, and philosophers are embracing the idea that our reality is digital these days. In fact, it would be perfectly understandable to wonder if digital philosophy itself is tainted due to the tendency of humans to view ideas through the lens of their times. We live in a digital age, surrounded by computers, the Internet, and smart phones, and so might we not be guilty of imagining that the world behaves just as a multi-player video game does? We probably wouldn’t have had such ideas 50 years ago, when, at a macroscopic level at least, everything with which we interacted appeared analog and continuous. Which came first, the digital chicken, or the digital philosophy egg?

Actually, the concepts of binary and digital are not at all new. The I Ching is an ancient Chinese text that dates to 1150 BCE. In it are 64 combinations of 8 trigrams (aka the Bagua), each of which clearly contain the first three bits of a binary code. 547px-Bagua-name-earlier.svg

Many other cultures, including the Mangareva in Polynesia (1450), and Indian (5th to 2nd century BCE), have used binary encodings for communication for thousands of years. Over 12,000 years ago, African tribes developed a binary divination system called Odu Ifa.

German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz is generally credited as developing the modern binary number system in 1679, based on zeros and ones. Naturally, all of these other cultures are ignored so that we can maintain the illusion that all great philosophical and mathematical thought originated in Europe. Regardless of Eurocentric biases, it is clear that binary encoding is not a new concept. But what about applying it to the fundamental construct of reality?

It turns out that while modern digital physics or digital philosophy references are replete with sources that only date to the mid-20th century, the ancient Greeks (namely Plato) believed that reality was discrete. Atoms were considered to be discrete and fundamental components of reality.

A quick clarification of the terms “discrete”, “digital”, “binary”, “analog”, and “continuous” is probably in order:

Discrete – Having distinct points of measurement in the time domain

Digital – Having properties that can be encoded into bits

Binary – Encoding that is done with only two digits, zeros and ones

Analog – Having continuously variable properties

Continuous – The time domain is continuous

So, for example, if we encode the value of some property (e.g. length or voltage) digitally using 3 values (0, 1, 2), that would be digital, but not binary (rather, ternery). If we say that between any two points in time, there is an infinitely divisible time element, but for each point, the value of the measurement being performed on some property is represented by bits, then we would have a continuous yet digital system. Conversely, if time can be broken into chunks such that at a fine enough temporal granularity there is no concept of time between two adjacent points in time, but at each of these time points, the value of the measurement being performed is continuously variable, then we would have a discrete yet analog system.

In the realm of consciousness-driven digital philosophy, it is my contention that the evidence strongly supports reality being discrete and digital; that is, time moves on in “chunks” and at each discrete point in time, every property of everything can be perfectly represented digitally. There are no infinities.

I believe that this is a logical and fundamental conclusion, regardless of the fact that we live in a digital age. There are many reasons for this, but for the purposes of this particular blog post, I shall only concentrate on a couple. Let’s break down the possibilities of our reality, in terms of origin and behavior:

  1. Type 1 – Our reality was created by some conscious entity and has been following the original rules established by that entity. Of course, we could spend a lifetime defining “conscious” or “entity” but let’s try to keep it simple. This scenario could include traditional religious origin theories (e.g. God created the heavens and the earth). It could also include the common simulation scenarios, a la Nick Bostrom’s “Simulation Argument.”
  1. Type 2 – Our reality was originally created by some conscious entity and has been evolving according to some sort of fundamental evolutionary law ever since.
  1. Type 3 – Our reality was not created by some conscious entity, and its existence sprang out of nothing and has been following primordial rules of physics ever since. To explain the fact that our universe is incredibly finely-tuned for matter and life, materialist cosmologists dreamt up the idea that we must exist in an infinite set of parallel universes, and via the anthropic principle, the one we live only appears finely-tuned because it has to in order for us to be in it. Occam would be turning over in his grave.
  1. Type 4 – Our reality was not created by some particular conscious entity, but rather has been evolving according to some sort of fundamental evolutionary law from the very beginning.

I would argue that in the first two cases, reality would have to be digital. For, if a conscious entity is going to create a world for us to live in and experience, that conscious entity is clearly highly evolved compared to us. And, being so evolved, it would certainly make use of the most efficient means to create a reality. A continuous reality is not only inefficient, it is theoretically impossible to create because it involves infinities in the temporal domain as well as any spatial domain or property.

pixelated200I would also argue that in the fourth case, reality would have to be digital for similar reasons. Even without a conscious entity as a creator, the fundamental evolutionary law would certainly favor a perfectly functional reality that doesn’t require infinite resources.

Only in the third case above, would there be any possibility of a continuous analog reality. Even then, it is not required. As MIT cosmologist and mathematician Max Tegmark succinctly put it, “We’ve never measured anything in physics to more than about sixteen significant digits, and no experiment has been carried out whose outcome depends on the hypothesis that a true continuum exists, or hinges on nature computing something uncomputable.” Hence there is no reason to assume, a priori, that the world is continuous. In fact, the evidence points to the contrary:

  • Infinite resolution would imply that matter implodes into black holes at sub-Planck scales and we don’t observe that.
  • Infinite resolution implies that relativity and quantum mechanics can’t coexist, at least with the best physics that we have today. Our favorite contenders for rationalizing relativity and quantum mechanics are string theory and loop quantum gravity. And they only work with minimal length (aka discrete) scales.
  • We actually observe discrete behavior in quantum mechanics. For example, a particle’s spin value is always quantized; there are no intermediate states. This is anomalous in continuous space-time.

For many other reasons, as are probably clear from the evidence compiled on this site, I tend to favor reality Type 4. No other type of reality structure and origin can be shown to be anywhere near as consistent with all of the evidence (philosophical, cosmological, mathematical, metaphysical, and experimental). And it has nothing to do with MMORPGs or the smart phone in my pocket.

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Embracing Virtuality

March 2, 2014 Leave a comment

In 2009, a Japanese man married a woman named Nene Anegasaki on the island of Guam.  The curious thing was that Nene was a virtual character in the Nintendo videogame LovePlus.

OurVirtualFuture1

In 2013, Spike Jonze directed the highly acclaimed (and Academy Award nominated) film “Her”, in which the protagonist falls in love with an OS (operating system) AI (artificial intelligence).

OurVirtualFuture2

Outrageous you say?

Consider that for centuries people have been falling in love sight unseen via snail mail.  Today, with online dating, this is even more prevalent.  Philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev notes that online technology “enables having a connection that is faster and more direct.”

So it got me thinking that these types of relationships aren’t that different from the virtual ones that are depicted in “Her” and are going to occur with increasing frequency as AI progresses.  The interactions are exactly the same; it is just that the entity at the end of the communication channel is either real or artificial.

But wait, what is artificial and what is real?  As Morpheus said in “The Matrix,” “What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”  This is not just philosophy; this is as factual as you can get.

As a growing number of researchers, physicists, and philosophers come to terms with the supporting evidence that we already live in a virtual reality, we realize that there is no distinction between a virtual entity that we think is virtual (such as a game character) and a virtual entity that we think is real (such as the person you are in a relationship with).  Your consciousness does not emerge from your brain; its seat is elsewhere.  Your lover’s consciousness therefore is also elsewhere.  You are interacting with it via the transfer of data and your emotions are part of your core consciousness.  Does it matter whether that data transfer is between two conscious entities outside of physical reality or between a conscious entity and another somewhat less conscious entity?

As technology progresses, AI advances, and gaming and simulations become more immersive, falling in love or having any other kind of emotional experience will be occurring more and more frequently with what we today think of as virtual entities.

Now, it seems shocking.  Tomorrow it will be curious.  Eventually it will be the norm.

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Ever Expanding Horizons

June 3, 2013 1 Comment

Tribal Era

tribalera200Imagine the human world tens of thousands of years ago.  A tribal community lived together, farming, hunting, trading, and taking care of each other.  There was plenty of land to support the community and as long as there were no strong forces driving them to move, they stayed where they were, content.  As far as they knew, “all that there is” was just that community and the land that was required to sustain it.  We might call this the Tribal Era.

Continental Era

continentalera200But, at some point, for whatever reason – drought, restlessness, desire for a change of scenery – another tribe moved into the first tribe’s territory.  For the first time, that tribe realized that the world was bigger than their little community.  In fact, upon a little further exploration, they realized that the boundaries of “all that there is” just expanded to the continent on which they lived, and there was a plethora of tribes in this new greater community.  The horizon of their reality just reached a new boundary and their community was now a thousand fold larger than before.

Planetary Era

planetaryera200According to researchers, the first evidence of cross-oceanic exploration was about 9000 years ago.  Now, suddenly, this human community may have been subject to an invasion of an entirely different race of people with different languages coming from a place that was previously thought to not exist.  Again, the horizon expands and “all that there is” reaches a new level, one that consists of the entire planet.

Solar Era

The Ancient Greek philosophers and astronomers recognized the existence of other solarera200planets.  Gods were thought to have come from the sun or elsewhere in the heavens, which consisted of a celestial sphere that wasn’t too far out away from the surface of our planet.

Imaginations ran wild as horizons expanded once again.

Galactic Era

galacticera200In 1610, Galileo looked through his telescope and suddenly humanity’s horizon expanded by another level.  Not only did the other planets resemble ours, but it was clear that the sun was the center of the known universe, stars were extremely far away, there were strange distant nebulae that were more than nearby clouds of debris, and the Milky Way consisted of distant stars.  In other worlds, “all that there is” became our galaxy.

Universal Era

universalera200A few centuries later, in 1922, it was time to expand our reality horizon once again, as the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson revealed that some of those fuzzy nebulae were actually other galaxies.  The concept of deep space and “Universe” was born and new measurement techniques courtesy of Edwin Hubble showed that “all that there is” was actually billions of times more than previously thought.

Multiversal Era

multiversalera200These expansions of “all that there is” are happening so rapidly now that we are still debating the details about one worldview, while exploring the next, and being introduced to yet another.  Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, a variety of ideas were put forth that expanded our reality horizon to the concept of many (some said infinite) parallel universes.  The standard inflationary big bang theory allowed for multiple Hubble volumes of universes that are theoretically within our same physical space, but unobservable due to the limitations of the speed of light.  Bubble universes, MWI, and many other theories exist but lack any evidence.  In 2003, Max Tegmark framed all of these nicely in his concept of 4 levels of Multiverse.

I sense one of those feelings of acceleration with the respect to the entire concept of expanding horizons, as if our understanding of “all that there is” is growing exponentially.  I was curious to see how exponential it actually was, so I took the liberty of plotting each discrete step in our evolution of awareness of “all that there is” on a logarithmic plot and guess what?

Almost perfectly exponential! (see below)

horizons

Dramatically, the trend points to a new expansion of our horizons in the past 10 years or so.  Could there really be a something beyond a multiverse of infinitely parallel universes?  And has such a concept recently been put forth?

Indeed there is and it has.  And, strangely, it isn’t even something new.  For millennia, the spiritual side of humanity has explored non-physical realities; Shamanism, Heaven, Nirvana, Mystical Experiences, Astral Travel.  Our Western scientific mentality that “nothing can exist that cannot be consistently and reliably reproduced in a lab” has prevented many of us from accepting these notions.  However, there is a new school of thought that is based on logic, scientific studies, and real data (if your mind is open), as well as personal knowledge and experience.  Call it digital physics (Fredkin), digital philosophy, simulation theory (Bostrom), programmed reality (yours truly), or My Big TOE (Campbell).  Tom Campbell and others have taken the step of incorporating into this philosophy the idea of non-material realms.  Which is, in fact, a new expansion of “all that there is.”  While I don’t particularly like the term “dimensional”, I’m not sure that we have a better descriptor.

Interdimensional Era

interdiensionalera200Or maybe we should just call it “All That There Is.”

At least until a few years from now.

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The Digital Reality Bandwagon

November 23, 2012 4 Comments

I tend to think that reality is just data.  That the fundamental building blocks of matter and space will ultimately be shown to be bits, nothing more.  Those who have read my book, follow this blog, or my Twitter feed, realize that this has been a cornerstone of my writing since 2006.

Not that I was the first to think of any of this.  Near as I can tell, Phillip K. Dick may deserve that credit, having said “We are living in a computer programmed reality” in 1977, although I am sure that someone can find some Shakespearean reference to digital physics (“O proud software, that simulates in wanton swirl”).

Still, a mere six years ago, it was a lonely space to be in.  The few digital reality luminaries at that time included:

But since then…

– MIT Engineering Professor Seth Lloyd published “Programming the Universe” in 2006, asserting that the universe is a massive quantum computer running a cosmic program.

– Nuclear physicist Thomas Campbell published his excellent unifying theory “My Big TOE” in 2007.

– Brian Whitworth, PhD. authored a paper containing evidence that our reality is programmed: “The emergence of the physical world from information processing”, Quantum Biosystems 2010, 2 (1) 221-249  http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0337

– University of Maryland physicist, Jim Gates, discovered error-correction codes in the laws of physics. See “Symbols of Power”, Physics World, Vol. 23, No 6, June 2010.

– Fermilab astrophysicist, Craig Hogan, speculated that space is quantized.  This was based on results from GEO600 measurements in 2010.  See: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/holometer-universe-resolution/.  A holometer experiment is being constructed to test: http://holometer.fnal.gov/

– Rich Terrile, director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hypothesized that we are living in a simulated reality. http://www.vice.com/read/whoa-dude-are-we-inside-a-computer-right-now-0000329-v19n9

– Physicists Leonard Susskind ad Gerard t’Hooft, developed the holographic black hole physics theory (our universe is digitally encoded on the surface of a black hole).

Even mainstream media outlets are dipping a toe into the water to see what kinds of reactions they get, such as this recent article in New Scientist Magazine: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528840.800-reality-is-everything-made-of-numbers.html

So, today, I feel like I am in really great company and it is fun to watch all of the futurists, philosophers, and scientists jump on the new digital reality bandwagon.  The plus side will include the infusion of new ideas and the resulting synthesis of theory, as well as pushing the boundaries of experimental validation.  The down side will be all of the so-called experts jockeying for position.  In any case, it promises to be a wild ride, one that should last the twenty or so years it will take to create the first full-immersion reality simulation.  Can’t wait.

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Navigating the Quantum Froth

August 16, 2009 1 Comment

Evidence for Programmed Reality is starting to pour in from all fields.  The latest comes from Gamma-ray imaging from deep space.  Here’s the deal:

Extremely high energy photons are known as gamma rays and are generated only in really cool places like Cern and supermassive black holes that power galaxies.  The cosmologically-originated gamma rays tend to come in bursts and there are special telescopes, such as MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope) that detect and measure these bursts.  According to all known laws of physics, all photons no matter their energy level travel at exactly the same speed, namely the speed of light.  Problem is that several gamma ray detectors have noticed that gamma rays from distant galaxies arrive on earth at slightly different times, which makes no sense.

Unless you consider that space is quantized.  Then, the photons have to work their way through the quantum “froth” and the low energy photons can do it easier than the high energy ones, much like radio waves through a low pass filter.  So says Italian physicist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia.  A couple references on this theory include an FXQi article and a recent article from New Scientist.

The reason this effect isn’t normally noticed is that the influence of quantized spacetime is so small, conventional experiments will not demonstrate its impact.  However, as we probe deeper into space and increase the sensitivity of our instruments, we ultimately get to a point where we measure things that demonstrate that the status quo in physics is just an approximation, much as Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativistic physics at slow speeds or Quantum Mechanics at large scales.  The recent quantization noise in the GEO600 Gravity Wave Detector is a case in point.  Because it is the most sensitive instrument of its kind, it has reached a resolution limitation that may indicate the granularity of the universe.  With MAGIC, a similar situation exists.  Because it is highly sensitive, it can detect signals whose origin are so far away that they allow for propagation deviations to occur over such a vast region of space.  The 4 minute anomaly that MAGIC observed occurs over 500 million light years.  That means that it is detecting a deviation of 1 part in about 65000000000000 (65 trillion), which apparently is enough to break known laws of physics.

I’m interested in this because the underlying reason for this may very well be the quantization of space.  If so, this and the GEO600 experiments are the first to detect it.  And, for anyone who hasn’t read “The Universe – Solved!” or meandered through this website, I ask the question:

Why might reality be quantized and not continuous?

It takes an infinite amount of resources to create a continuous reality, but a finite amount to create a quantized reality.  By resources, I refer to bits, the information that it takes to model reality.  In order to program a virtual reality, there must be quantization.  It is impossible to develop a program with unlimited resolution.  So the very fact that our reality is quantized may be considered strong evidence that reality is programmed.

What other reason could there be?

 

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Gravity is Strange – Unless you understand Programmed Reality

June 22, 2009 1 Comment

Physicists tell us that gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature.  And yet it behaves quite differently than the other three.  A New Scientist article breaks down the oddities, a few of which are reproduced here:

– Gravity only pulls.  It doesn’t appear to have an opposing effect, like other forces do.  Notwithstanding the possibility that dark energy is an example of “opposite polarity” gravity, possibly due to unseen dimensions, there appears to be no solid evidence of it as there is with all other forces.

– The strength of other forces are comparable in magnitude, while gravity checks in at 40 orders of magnitude weaker.

– The fine-tuned universe, a favorite topic of this site, includes some amazing gravity-based characteristics.  The balance of early universe expansion and gravitational strength had to balance to within 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000 in order for life to form.

The Anthropic Principle explains all this via a combination of the existance of zillions (uncountably large number) of parallel universes with the idea that we can only exist in the one where all the variables line up perfectly for matter and life to form.  But that seems to me to be a pretty complex argument with a few embedded leaps of faith that make most religions look highly logical in comparison.

Then there is the Programmed Reality theory, which as usual, offers a perfect explanation without the need for the hand-waving Anthropic Principle and the “Many Worlds”
interpretation of quantum mechanics.  Gravity is not like other forces, so let’s not keeping trying to “force” it to be (pardon the pun.)  Instead, it is there to keep us grounded on the planet in which we play out our reality, offering the perfect balance of “pull” to keep every fly ball from flying out of the stadium (regardless of the illegal substance abuse of the hitter), to make kite flying a real possibility, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  While, at the same time, being weak enough to allow basketball players to dunk and planes to fly, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  Our scientists will continue the investigate the nature of gravity via increasingly complex projects like the LHC, unpeeling the layers of complexity that the programmers put in place to keep scientific endeavor, research, and employment moving forward.

Newton's apple  Warped spacetime

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