Who are we really? Are we really alive or is somebody making us believe that we are? Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be easier to simulate a world rather than create it?
Life is a game… literally?
Creating billions of complex DNA structures for billions of organisms as opposed to coding one consciousness for each of those billions. Safe to say that we are onto something here. We create video-games for fun; Video games, that simulate reality. Who’s to say that our life isn’t a literal game, designed by someone way more intelligent than us humans of the earth claim to be? Questions arise but answers are yet to surface.
Seeing is believing… or not.
Several ideas and theories have been put forth in the matter by many great minds. The great philosopher Plato, in his work came up with what is called, “The allegory of the cave”, or simply “Plato’s Cave”. The concept is, that a hypothetical group of people that have spent all their lives chained to the wall of a cave, facing a blank wall where they can only see the shadows projected on the wall cast from objects passing in front of a fire. The chained people can neither view the fire nor the objects as both of those are behind them. Their only reality is the shadows on the wall. This leads us to think, what if our consciousness or reality is only what we are programmed to believe? They say: “seeing is believing” but should we only really believe what we see? What if our senses are also simulated?
God? Are you there?
As if the question of our existence wasn’t enough, we humans also started asking whether “GOD” is real. All we have are stories about GOD. The supreme being, the greater being, or simply put, our maker. While atheists and believers fight amongst themselves to thrust their own views on the other, I believe that smartness lies in being Agnostic. Basically, someone who doesn’t entirely ditch the possibility of there being a God, but also does not claim that God exists for sure. The reason for bringing up God into this is because, what if God is that person who was smart enough to simulate us? Some scientists have claimed that our genetic coding is way too complex to have existed out of the blue. Only someone super genius could have been able to put it together to create it. God is ‘Omnibenevolent’? Maybe, but ‘Omniscient’ and ‘Omnipotent’? Probably not, because if God created us, then who created God?
The Matrioshka Brain.
There is no computer in existence that could make a simulation of this scale possible. In comes the concept of the Matrioshka brain. Proposed by Robert J. Bradbury, based on the concept of Dyson spheres, a Matrioshka brain is a hypothetical super-duper-computer of sorts, with unimaginably high computational power. These mega-structures can encircle stars to harness the energy of the star in order to achieve that impossible computational capacity required to simulate entire universes. Say that super-intelligent being got their hands on this thing, they could’ve easily simulated us along with the universe.
Programming Glitches?
Obviously, no machine is immune to faults, which explains why the earth isn’t either. How else can one explain the unexplained disappearings in the Bermuda Triangle? Ghost sightings reported by many, altered memories, ‘The Mandela Effect’, memories of ‘previous lives’ as claimed by many, surely we cannot overlook it all as impossible. What if mentally or physically impaired humans are only victims of programming glitches? Maybe our maker isn’t beyond making mistakes after all. But it’s alright Mister Maker, nobody’s perfect. While our video game characters may never question programming bugs, we humans sure do.
Artificial Intelligence
A hugely trending topic among techies is Artificial Intelligence. Many are buzzing with ideas of implementing Artificial intelligence and many already have. Then there is the dark side of it too, where some claim that one day, we’ll lose ourselves into a technological singularity. A point of no return, where A.I. will revolt against us and rule the world instead of us. We human beings hate getting stuck on a problem. We hate the fact that we can only think up to a certain point. So, we aim to create something that can think beyond that point for us. What else is the explanation for wanting to improve A.I. technology so much? But obviously, humans don’t know when to stop and there are not enough sci-fi movies in the world that can convince us why the advancement of A.I. is not a good idea. But then what if the technological singularity has already happened once? What if we simulated humans have taken over the world from our creator? What if the revolution has already happened? A.I. has already shown us the possible implementation of artificial neurons, so what if our ‘biological neurons’ as we call them, were also coded by someone on the same principle and the experiment only got out of hand and gave us humans the power of a free will by mistake?
To believe or not to believe…
So many questions remain unanswered. While some humans won’t question existence, some will. History is witness to the fact that revolution starts with the people who question authority. Maybe someday those revolutionary humans will succeed in finding out the secrets of existence. Until then, stay tuned world.
