Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
"It might be life, Jim..."
(This is an excerpt from a much longer post on my blog that deals with some related topics. However, I thought this bit best fit UTI, so am posting it as a separate item. - JD)
There's another possibility, of course. This one can best be summed up as being that life is "a dream within a dream". The latest popular version of this is "The Matrix", wherein life is an artificial reality construct, designed to keep the human 'power cells' docile. But this too is an idea extensively exploited in Science Fiction, with many different variations on the theme. Of late, this idea has been more and more tied to the concept of a 'Singularity' , with speculation being that we are just some version of post-human research/recreation as a computer construct. And in a piece published yesterday in the NYT titled "Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch" this gets the mainstream religion treatment:
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
. . .
David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University, says Dr. Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis isn’t a cause for skepticism, but simply a different metaphysical explanation of our world. Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.
You still have the desire to live as long as you can in this virtual world — and in any simulated afterlife that the designer of this world might bestow on you. Maybe that means following traditional moral principles, if you think the posthuman designer shares those morals and would reward you for being a good person.
Jim Downey
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Silly
I think it's a dopey idea. The thing is, real things ALWAYS leave tracks. Unexpected side-effects. Sideband transmissions.
The idea that everything around us might be imaginary just doesn't work for me.
Just as a for-instance, the basic concept in The Matrix that you could be hooked up to a totally "real" simulated universe, so that you literally couldn't tell the difference ... well, it would require so much wire in your brain -- connected to every sensory or sensory-processing neuron to replace the real sensory signals with the fake ones -- that you wouldn't have a working brain anymore.
Fortunately or unfortunately, if it looks real, it's real. It's just the way it seems to us, and worse. :D
Even the best optical illusions require you to buy into them, and you can defeat them in the simplest of ways.
Or something like it
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby.
What is this? Another version of Intelligent Design? Like Francis Crick's Directed Panspermia?
You know you could make a pretty good case for the Mars Rover being a living thing.
Carter Catastrophe
it actually sounds more like the logic that people use to justify the carter catastrophe.
Hmmmmmmm...
Sounds like Pascal's Wager for tech geeks!
You know how mad you get when someone screws up the network you just set up? Just think how pissed The Architect will be at you for masturbating to pictures of Jessica Alba when you should be working!
Whew!
Whew! Good thing you didn't mention Amber Heard...
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.