CAJ: Simulation Theory - Discussion on my CAJ with a friend

Yesterday evening I spent some time talking with my good friend Jasmine about my CAJ “The Simulation Theory”. She had never heard of it so I started to explain her the basic idea. I didn’t have to go on for very long about it. She immediately got the idea and drew the comparison to the movie “Matrix”.

The first thing that came to her mind was the idea of not being responsible for what she was doing. She told me that she didn’t believe in God per se. She believed in a higher power but that could also be a programmer of the future. Then she said something really interesting. She actually liked the idea that there might be a programmer who programmed us and our lives. I found that quite surprising as we talked about this in one of Henry’s classes and the majority of students were afraid of that thought. So I asked her about what precisely she was so happy about if there were to be a programmer. The funny thing is that she admitted that she would feel kind of relieved if there would be somebody out there who had programmed her life. She said that she wouldn’t have to worry about all of her decisions because the programmer would be responsible for taking them. She basically meant that she could pass on all of her responsibilities towards her life to the programmer. In a way, that seemed like a really big relief to her.

The first point of discussion brought us to a next thought on which we couldn’t really decide. We were wondering if the programmer would program really all aspects of our life. Like, if he would decide about anything that happened to us or if he would only provide a frame. We talked quite a while about the idea that maybe he would give all conscious beings in his simulation a general direction of their lives, exactly as we did in “The Sims”. We argued that he might have decided that some individuals should follow a career as mathematicians and others as professional singers. I think this idea was particularly interesting as it implied that our abilities might come from this decision. If let’s say person X was programmed to become a mathematician – doesn’t matter whether he became a teacher in a high school, university professor or scientist – the programmer might have included all the necessary abilities to become one in him. So, this would explain why some people are better in doing one thing than others. In a way, biology wouldn’t be the solution for different abilities within human beings.

Next, we started a discussion about why one should create a whole universe. In general, we found two solutions:

1.    1. the person might just be bored and to him, we are like a big reality show and he is watching what we are doing just for fun.

2.   2.  he might want to let the simulation solve problems which the programmer or his universe is actually suffering from or he might want to see how another universe might have dealt with a particular problem.

Jasmine wasn’t too in favor of the second option so she went more or less with the first one. She argued that the programmer might just be bored and we would be like a big reality show to him. Whenever he felt like watching TV, he would switch on his computer and look what’s happening in his small simulated universe. I believe that this scenario could be absolutely true. That’s exactly what humans do. Instead of living their own lives, they follow the lives of others. We concluded that boredom would be a pretty good reason to create a simulated reality.

Whereas I didn’t have big problems with the second argument, Jasmin really had. She just couldn’t see the point in letting others solve your own problems. She said that going through a rough patch was what makes you stronger. So for her, simulating a universe just to see how these people would solve problems of another universe was just ridiculous. I tried to challenge her by saying that the programmer might have created a simulation where 10 years equal 1 day in the programmer’s life. So he would program the simulation a couple of days before a decision had to be made in his universe, for example war or no war. And he would have created two simulations, one would go for the war and the other one wouldn’t. In one day he could see how these two decisions might develop within ten years. I asked her if that wouldn’t be a promising way to make a great decision. Well, she didn’t think so. She said that it would always depend on the people using these simulations and what they wanted to achieve. I think she clearly has a point there. If these simulations would be used by careless and corrupt politicians (just an example but I think quite an accurate one), they wouldn’t help nobody. They would go for the option which would bring the most profit and not the one which might save a country or maybe the world.

All in all, I think we had a really nice discussion about the Simulation Theory and I liked the way we brought it to an end. Jasmine smiled and said that she never even has thought about the chance that we might not be real. However, she wouldn’t mind and with a laugh she grabbed her glass of wine and said: “Well, my programmer wants me to drink another glass of wine and have fun tonight!” I believe that sometimes it might actually be kind of nice to think that somebody else decided what we should do. If it helps to get my mind of studying and to stop being stressed for just one hour, then I totally go for the idea of a simulated universe.

CAJ: Simulation Theory - 5.) How Mr. Rich Terrell rocked my CAJ

When talking about the universe as a computer simulation, people might get curious about how to find out if this theory is actually true. Is there any chance to distinguish fake from true realities? 

To start off this topic, let me introduce you to Rich Terrell, the man who really rocked my CAJ.

Rich Terrell

Rich Terrell is a physicist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and adheres to the idea that our universe is a simulation. Some people might argue that he is crazy to believe in such a farfetched theory but first let me prove that this man is not insane. He has helped design missions to Mars, discovered four new moons around Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and taken pictures of the distant solar system. I believe that this man is quite intelligent and that his words can be taken seriously. So from my point of view, I think that what I am presenting to you in the next paragraphs really is worth to be taken into account.

Many people on Earth believe that there has to be a creator, for most of them it is a God, who created our universe. Thus, Rich Terrell asked himself the question which requirements a God has to fulfill. He concluded that a God is an interdimensional being, connected with everything in die universe and a creator responsible for the universe and in some way he is capable of changing the laws of physics. These characteristics sound familiar when looking at the things programmers are able to perform when creating simulated environments. If we now suppose that our civilization will eventually achieve a state of enough computing power to create a universe, our civilization would fulfill all requirements we put on God. Consequently, we could become God. 

The next interesting thought he brings forward is based on a mental experiment. Imagine a box with a human brain and a laptop (could be any kind of computer) inside. Both are approximately of the same weigh, volume and power. Now close the box so that you cannot see the two items any more. What would happen if we asked the human brain and the laptop a question and could not tell if either the brain or the laptop would be answering? To me, his reasoning seems logical that if we are not able to tell the difference the human brain and the computer are qualitatively equivalent. Further, if we believe that a human being is consciously aware, we must also argue that a computer has the same qualities.

Mr. Terrell thinks that he has found evidence in nature to prove the idea that we might be living already living in a computer simulation.
Let me give a brief explanation of what he is trying to say. If we are looking at a simulation we can see all aspects of it clearly from a distance. Let us now zoom in. We will detect that the picture we have been seeing clearly all along breaks down into pixels when we get close enough.
Now he draws a comparison to the real word because that is exactly the same thing what is happening in our universe. Physicists have discovered that matter is made of tiny little pixels which are fundamental, indivisible particles which are billions of times smaller than an atom. Quantum mechanics is the theory that explains this phenomenon and shows that it does not solely apply to matter but also to the entire universe. If we look at the way the universe behaves, we see that it is quantized, that it is made of pixels and that it is made of individual atoms.
Quantum mechanics states that space, time and energy is quantized which means that everything is made of pixels which further means that the universe has a finite number of components or in other words, a finite number of states. Therefore, it is computable. It suggests that everything we can see could really be produced by lines of code inside a powerful computer. 

Finally, this last point presented by Mr. Terrell is the one thing that really blew my mind. With a simple and actually very old experiment, called the Davisson-Germer-Experiment, dating back to the year 1927, Terrell explains the similarity between the way matter behaves and the way a simulation would work.
In general, the experiment consists of a gun which fires electrons at a target of graphite atoms and a collecting screen to record how they ricochet off.

If this apparatus would be scaled up a billion times and if the gun fired real bullets, the pattern on the collection screen would be completely random.
However, in the scaled down subatomic world the electron ricochets are not random. The pattern you can see on the screen reflects the pattern of atoms in the target. So it seems like each electron senses where every atom in the graphite is even though the target is much bigger than it. It looks like the electrons are not got but spread out and so they form this diffraction pattern.
This experiment shows that matter behaves when you are measuring it as individual particles. Nevertheless, as soon as you are not measuring it anymore, matter is diffuse and spreads out so that it does not have a finite from in the universe.
These basic rules of quantum mechanics apply to all tiny subatomic particles. When we take a look at them they are dots and when we look away they lose their physical form.
You may wonder what this experiment has to do with the simulation theory. So here is what Mr. Terrell said. A different way of looking at this outcome is to see how parallel this behavior is with what we can observe in a PlayStation3, for example, while playing a video game. Let us take the example of SimCity which is an enormous city where I can navigate my way through every bit of it because the video game provides me with the frame I need when I’m looking at a particular scenery. When I look somewhere else it provides me with this frame.
In a strange way, our universe might behave in the same way. It gives me exactly what I need to see when I look at something. When I stop looking at it, it is not necessarily there. So it is possible to argue that our world might be already a simulation as the universe is pixelated and only gets into a definite form when observed. That is the exact same way in which a computer simulation behaves.

Honestly, how amazing is that?!

source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ucqYJzK1rk&index=3&list=PL093A8AA11264F3CA

Individual Post: How instant photographs work

How instant photographs work

In general, all cameras capture patterns of light on a plastic-based film covered with particles of silver compound which are sensitive to light. Whereas a black-and-white film only has one layer of silver compound, a color film has three. This text will focus on the development process of color films as they are more relevant nowadays. In order for the film to be turned into a photograph, it has to be developed. While common camera films are processed outside of the camera, the instant camera film already contains the necessary chemicals.

The structure of an instant camera film sheet

Although an instant film can be bought as a film roll, they usually comprise separate plastic sheets. To understand the developing process of an instant photograph, it is essential to know of which layers of chemical an instant camera film sheet is composed of. The sheet has three layers sensitive to different colors of light: blue, green and red, respectively. Underneath each layer, a dye developer layer for the respective complementary colors yellow, magenta and cyan is found. All of these layers are located on the black Base Layer and underneath the Image Layer, Timing Layer, Acid Layer and Clear Plastic Layer. This arrangement is a chemical chain reaction waiting to be set in motion.

Photo development in an instant camera

The reaction is set off with the Reagent. The Reagent Layer is located between the Image Layer and the Color Layers. In contrast to the other layers, it is accumulated at the border of the plastic sheet, separated from the light-sensitive material. When the picture is taken, the sheet is pushed out of the camera through a pair of rollers. Now the Reagent is spread out into the middle of the sheet and a chemical reaction is started. The reagent chemicals move downward through the light-sensitive layers. Particles on the exposed color layers are changed into metallic silver. Therefore, the respective dye layer behind them is blocked which causes the remaining dye layers to move up to the image layer where the requested color is created. At the same time, other reagent chemicals react with the acid layer which finally makes the image visible. This reaction is delayed by the timing layer to assure that the film is not exposed to light before it is fully developed. 

When the image is slowly brought to appearance before our eyes, this chemical reaction can be observed.

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CAJ: The Simulation Theory – 3.) Transhumanism

In the past few decades several of the leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers at the forefront of technological development created a new way of thinking about humankind’s future. This paradigm is called “Transhumanism”. The essential belief is that transhumanists reject the assumption that the human condition is constant. This assumption is implicit in traditional futurology and political thinking. By disbanding this assumption, it becomes obvious that our future offers various possibilities: intimidating ones like for example the extinction of mankind but also exciting ones as the reanimation of frozen patients. These two examples are only a few of the areas transhumanism is dedicated to. 

Another field of exploration is virtual reality. Transhumanists believe that if we can simulate the human brain on a computer, it would be possible for us to eventually enjoy unlimited life-spans and create a virtual reality. 

Transhumanists think that within a time period of seventy years we might be actually capable of letting these things come true. This awareness is what keeps the transhumanist philosophy and movement going. Theorists follow the belief that we will be able to transcend our biological limitations by means of technology and that we can provide a constructive approach to the new situation. Therefore, their aim is to provoke public discussion about all these possibilities and make sure that these topics are understandable not only for academics but also for the whole society. 

Transhumanist embrace the sometimes intimidating opportunities that technology has to offer for humankind. They do not panic because of moral issues that many topics like genetic engineering bring with them. They do all it takes to make it possible for those who want to become “post-humans”. Whether the tools to achieve this state are “natural” or “unnatural” is completely irrelevant.
A post-human is a possible future beings whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards.

In 1997, the World Transhumanist Association was founded which is nowadays called “Humanity+”. Max More, well-known member of the Association, defined Transhumanism in 1990: 

 “Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values.”

Max More: born Janurary 1964 in Bristol, England; a philosopher and futurist who writes, speaks, and consults on advanced decision-making about emerging technologies; CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation

 

This can be seen as the philosophy of Humanity+. One of the most well-known members, besides Max More, is Nick Bostrom. In the next post his life will be explored and one of his most popular philosophical approaches, namely “The Simulation Argument”.

relation to other CAJs:

Genetic Engineering

robotics

Transhumanism

Nanotechnology

Permanent human expansion into the solar system

sources:

http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/

http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-faq/#answer_19

 http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/transhumanism.htm

CAJ: The Stimulation Theory - Abstract

source: http://www.oriooli.com/do-we-live-in-a-simulated-reality-part-three/

Within the concept of Simulation Theory it is argued that the reality of mankind might actually not be real but instead an ancestor simulation. The purpose of this CAJ is to give a general overview of the topic and its main idea, to name several concepts on which the theory is based and then to focus on the technology needed to create a simulation. In a final step, criticism is being discussed. In order to explore the Simulation Theory, two attempts are taken into consideration: the philosophical and the scientific approach. However, the focus is set on the scientific approach because scientists have actually come very close to prove that our world is a simulated reality. A universe at a very small scale has already been created. The information of this CAJ is based on several articles as well as scientific papers on the Simulation Theory and computer technology. The intention of the author is to become familiar with the theory and to be able to form a personal opinion about the topic. Further it should become obvious that this CAJ is correlated with several other CAJs such as Astrobiology and Artificial Intelligence. 

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