Programmed Reality

It is the end of 2011 and it has been an exciting year for science and technology.  Announcements about artificial life, earthlike worlds, faster-than-light particles, clones, teleportation, memory implants, and tractor beams have captured our imagination.  Most of these things would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago.

So, what better way to close out the year than to take stock of yesterday's science fiction in light of today's reality and tomorrow's technology.  Here is my take:

 

Tags: time travel, teleportation, cloaking, tractor beam, holodeck, memory implants, bci, cloning, brain-computer interface, ai, artificial intelligence, artificial life, ftl, faster than light, multiple dimensions, parallel realities, ufos, precognition, paranormal, bigfoot
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Future Tech | Life | Particle Physics | Physics | Robotics | Science

Astronomers from the University of Hong Kong investigated infrared emissions from deep space and everywhere they look they find signatures of complex organic matter.

You read that right.  Complex organic molecules; the kind that are the building blocks of life!

How they are created in the stellar infernos is a complete mystery.  The chemical structure of these molecules is similar to that of coal or oil, which, according to mainstream science, come from ancient biological material.  

So, there seem to be only two explanations, each of which has astounding implications.

One possibility is that the molecules responsible for these spectral signatures are truly organic, in the biological "earth life" sense of the world.  I don't think I have to point out the significance of that possibility.  It would certainly give new credence to the panspermia theory, suggesting that we are but distant relatives or descendents of life forms that permeate the universe.  ETs are our brothers.

The other possibility is that these molecules are organic but not of biological origin.  Instead, they are somehow created within the star itself.  Given that they resemble organic molecules in coal and oil, it would seem to indicate that if such molecules can be generated non-biologically in stars, and the earth was created from the same protoplanetary disk that formed our sun, oil and coal are probably also not created from biological organic material.

In other words, this discovery seems to lend a lot of support to the abiotic oil theory.

That or we have evidence that we are not alone.

Either way, a significant find.  

Buried in the news. 

Tags: panspermia, solar system, abiotic oil, organic molecules, extraterrestrial life
Categories: Cosmology | Life | Science

 

 

 

As mentioned in last quarter’s column, there have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. While I suspect that the success of Avatar and Lost are partly responsible for this trend, I think people’s fascination with 2012, drastic world changes, and a surge in our search for meaning are also fueling the recent string of films about alternate realities and simulated worlds. When airplanes are crashing into buildings, cities are submerged underwater, the Middle East is revolting, and the world economy is collapsing, real life almost seems more fantastical than our dreams. Jon Stewart summed it up perfectly at the 2008 Academy Awards: “Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.” Yes, we are now officially living in the future, and we all know what kind of stuff happens in the future—exactly the kind of stuff that’s happening right now. But at least, thanks to Hollywood, we’ve been warned. And Hollywood’s heads up may even go much deeper than prophesies of events to come. They may help explain the reality we all find ourselves in.

 

 

 

Living in these times is very surreal. Our current lives were the stuff of science-fiction just a generation ago. Shows like The Jetsons, couldn’t even imagine the concept of email, so the space-age family received their paper mail by pneumatic tubes instead; Dick Tracy had a phone in his watch; James Bond gave audiences their first look at remote controls, pagers, and pocket-sized voice recorders; and nanobot technology explored in such sci-fi as the X-Files is is currently being tested for medical applications and more. So if Hollywood was pretty close or even dead-on in bringing up these seemingly far-fetched ideas, what are we to make of the most recent string of films that demonstrate how we will be able to zap ourselves into other realities? Films like Avatar, TRON: Legacy, and Source Code illustrate some fascinating uses for technology.  And they also bring up some interesting questions about what, if anything, is really real?

 

 

 

If a baby spends it’s entire life as an avatar of a being on another planet, was that experience real? What if you were downloaded into a videogame world, or plugged into an alternate reality to help prevent a terrorist attack? Which aspect of you is real, if either? While these concepts make great fodder for philosophers and futurists, for me, I am most intrigued by what they seem to be telling us about our world right now. In addition to the films listed above, Hollywood has provided a plethora of movies such as Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, Sucker Punch, and Limitless that allude to other realities that are going on behind the scenes. Much like Inception, these myth-movies can be deciphered on a bunch of different levels.

 

 I can watch Limitless and initially be entertained by a story about a struggling writer who takes a pill to increase his brain function and winds up becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. If I look deeper I may see it as hint to our brains’ hidden potentials. Looking deeper still, I may see it as a warning about the abuse of technology and class. According to the brilliant inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, in the near future, we may all need to get brain upgrades or implants just to be able to keep up with the rapidly changing world. Of course, not everyone will have access to this technology. Those who aren’t among the privileged therefore will fall even further behind as the gap between the classes stretches to epic proportions. The “Haves” will get the brain upgrades and be able to successfully compete in society. The “Have Nots” won’t, and will eventually be relegated to the status of workers, slaves, or even animals. (Both X-Men and The Planet of the Apes also work off of this theme, and interestingly, the prequels to both films will be out this summer).

 

 

 

In The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon’s character discovers that life on earth is manipulated by a clandestine group of agents following an overall plan of their executive and chief. Is this a story about God and angels? About the programmers of our simulated world? About the secret societies that manipulate oil prices and provoke wars? About your life and the series of coincidences that seem to guide you to some predetermined destiny? The answer to all these questions, is “yes.” The movie applies to many truths of our world just as most myths do. These truths all seem to fit into some kind of general rule or template, with the difference only being in the details. It’s almost as if every event in our world is a take on an overall grand theme—different versions of the same story again and again. Not only does this repetition of themes happen in our world, it happens in our stories as well. (For a darker take on the exact same theme as The Adjustment Bureau—including the mysterious men in Fedora hats—I highly recommend Dark City.) In truth, most myths are simply updates of stories that came before, just as the events of our world are updates of previous events that happened before: the collapse of the banks that were too big to fail was an update of the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic which was an update of the fall of the mighty Tower of Babel. Once you realize that the series of steps that make up a movie also make up much of our lives, you can begin to use this information to help you on your journey. This wisdom in and of itself is demonstrated in another recent life-as-illusion movie, Sucker Punch.

 

 

 

In Sucker Punch, a young girl is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather, and begins to have delusions of living in an alternate reality as a coping mechanism. The mechanism helps her to do more than cope, but work out an escape from the corrupt mental institution. So her dreams can be thought of as the movies, and her life as your life. One of the messages of the movie therefore, is that you can use the wisdom found in films to help you in your life. And that the specific movies you choose to see, are designed to work sequentially to help you through what you are going through in the moment you view them. The movie I saw before Sucker Punch just happened to be The Runaways, about Joan Jett’s rocker grrrl band she was in before going solo. The theme of kick ass chicks definitely fits into both films, but the real connection for me came in the name of a plane in Sucker Punch—Cherry Bomb—the first hit for The Runaways. After I noticed that during the film, I whispered to my fiancée that there would probably be a link between Sucker Punch and the next film we were about to see—Limitless. Shortly after Limitless began, she noticed that both films shared the same actress. Despite looking very different in the two films, Abbie Cornish kept the connection going. My takeaway was that all these stories fit together into some kind of personal instruction manual. Show me the exact order of movies and stories that someone has experienced over the course of their life, I’ll show you that person’s destiny and the challenges and successes they had on their path towards achieving it.

 

At the start of my first film class during my freshman year in college, the professor warned us that we would never again be able to simply just watch and enjoy a movie. Obviously, I didn’t heed his warning, but I definitely prefer the insights that the class and the school of life have given me. These insights apply not just to the way movies can be interpreted, but all stories—including those of the Bible. As I wrote in one of my Lost In Myth columns, there are four different perspectives from which the Bible (particularly, of the Old Testament or Torah) is traditionally studied and interpreted. These four levels are the literal, metaphoric/parabolic, searching, and hidden/secret level. To demonstrate how much mythological meat a typical life-as-illusion film can provide, let’s examine one of this year’s better movies with this theme using these four levels.

 

From a literal perspective, Source Code is an action flick about a soldier who finds himself in another man’s body as part of a secret government mission to uncover the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. We quickly come to learn that the train has already been destroyed but that the soldier, Colter Stevens played by Jake Gyllenhaal, can be continually downloaded into an alternate reality before the train exploded in order to find clues as to the identity of the bomber. The majority of movie critic reviews focus on this level—the plot, story, characters, etc. Also, the majority of Evangelicals interpret the Bible from this perspective. In my opinion, they are missing three-quarters of the message. 

 

From a metaphoric or parabolic (allegorical) perspective, the movie brings up all kinds of interesting questions about the morality of technology, messing with people’s lives and free will, as well as questions about fate and the possibilities of alternate versions of our reality. Looking deeper into this perspective, a train can be seen as representing time, our lifetime, or our destiny. It chugs along a certain path, continually moving forward. And along the way, certain people get on and off—coming in and out of your life. Those in closest proximity to you will likely have the biggest effect on your personal voyage, while the hidden elements of your ride—the engineer, the system that assigned your seat, those who designed, built, and maintained the tracks, have the greatest impact on your overall journey.

 

In the film, Stevens is told to try and ignore the distractions of the people on the train in order to fulfill his mission. This is a metaphor for how we often get caught up in the trivial elements of life and miss the big picture of our life’s purpose. Often times, it seems as though these day-to-day distractions are put in our way to give us something to overcome—a challenge to rise above so that we may grow and do what our soul truly wants us to do. Our destiny is the ultimate result of us overcoming these obstacles, giving us the strength we need to fulfill our final mission. The fact that it’s a lot like a videogame, where you must overcome obstacles to defeat the toughest opponent at the end of the level, is no accident. Even our videogames are full of useful wisdom. In fact, instead of these life challenges being for the good of our soul, perhaps we were put into a simulated world so that our real-world selves could grow in a controlled environment. Different details, same overall message—one that’s illustrated in a way we can understand, at least subconsciously, thanks to this movie.

 

 

 

Once you are open to viewing our world as some sort of simulation, created to help us work past our challenges, millions of other possibilities arise. What if the myth of angels is actually about avatars of beings from outside the game who help guide us through it? I’ve had many experiences that have had me wondering about this. Recently, I saw a homeless man downtown that I usually see by the subway station near my Upper East Side apartment. Most homeless people are pretty territorial, so I thought it a bit strange. I was all the way by Wall Street and he just happened to be at the subway exit I was getting out from. I said “hello,” since we sometimes talk but he didn’t seem to recognize me. An hour later, I was returning to the station on the other side of the street to go home, and the same man was on the platform on that side now. We had a brief conversation and he now remembered me. In those brief minutes, he brought up some perspectives I hadn’t thought of before and then I took the train to go to work. That was at 11AM. At 7:30PM, I was heading home. I had just made the local train as the doors were closing at 33^rd Street and slipped out through its closing doors again at 42^nd Street just as the express train pulled into the station. I got on the train and moved to the corner and looked down. There, in front of me, was David—the homeless man I’d seen twice earlier. He was sleeping but I tapped on his knee. He slowly opened his eyes and upon seeing me, gave a knowing smile. He got off at the same station as me and we went our separate ways. I offered to buy him a hot dog but he had declined. Since becoming homeless, I’d say he’s gained about fifty pounds. Perhaps I should’ve offered a salad.

 

In a related story, just yesterday a handicapped man in a wheelchair stopped me as I was jogging to the park. He asked if I could wheel him there. I did. His name was Dan and he told me he had a Ph.D. in psychology and was working on an autobiography, which, he added, was a very interesting story. He reminded me of physicist Stephen Hawking and with his two hearing aids, slurred speech, and arms awkwardly bent, seemed to be suffering from a similar, debilitating disease. When I got him to the park, I wheeled him over to a section near the park benches. As I stretched out, I kept an eye on him, wondering what he was going to do. He was pretty much just sitting there, slightly moving back in forth to the best of his ability. I began to wonder if I had possibly just inadvertently kidnapped this man. Perhaps he was making a break from his caretaker or nurse. I thought I’d walk over and ask him his plans. But when I looked over again, he was gone! I quickly scanned the area. Had some volunteer offered to push him around the outer path? I looked on the path, but he wasn’t there. I’d only looked away for a minute at most! There was no way he could’ve stopped someone, explained the situation, gotten them to push him off of the dirt area and onto the path, and be out of range in that time. Had he just vanished? Was it a test? How did I do? I keep expecting to see missing posters of the guy on mailboxes in my area. Either that, or some report about how the guy had actually died a week before I’d met him. Perhaps I’ve watched too many Twilight Zones. I prefer to believe he was an avatar or angel, sent to give me a little nudge—a slight correction to help me get out of my me-zone and reach out to someone else. Sometimes, a slight turn of the wheel is all it takes to avoid hitting an iceberg. Assuming you do it early enough.

 

One more story to add. Just this morning, I was awoken at 8:21AM by an Angel. Angel Rodriquez apologized for having the wrong number, but I don’t believe in accidents. Having written most of this column the night before, perhaps it’s just the universe, the powers that be, or the beings outside of the simulation having a bit of fun, or providing some sort of confirmation. Of course, all these strange events could be originating from me somehow, and being that they usually fit my quirky sense of humor, I’ve suspected as much. In last quarter’s column, I wrote that, “We are subconsciously giving ourselves the clues that are sprinkled throughout our lives because our souls—or future versions of ourselves—already know the path we are meant to follow.” Plug in the metaphor of a simulated world, and the clues can be originating from the program itself, the programmers, or our own subconscious minds as they exist outside of the program. If we are in this program against our will, perhaps we are attempting to wake ourselves up. If we are there by choice, perhaps we are attempting to help ourselves succeed. Either way, so far, these clues have helped me on my path so I will continue to pay attention to them. The more I do, the more I seem to get. If nothing else, I feel that they make life more interesting—kind of like a fun puzzle or mystery we’re meant to solve. As part of the Scooby-Doo, Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure, Myst, and Lost generation, somehow, I bet there are many others who enjoy solving the clues too.

 

 

 

Getting back to the four perspectives, we come to the third one—the searching perspective. This view requires outside references. In Source Code, there’s a line about how sometimes it’s easier to rebuild from rubble than to fix problems that have gotten too severe. And of course, to get the rubble, you have to destroy what you have. The scary thing is when it’s society you’re talking about, and scarier still when you can see the logic in this perspective. There is a lot of talk of end times and apocalypse lately. Personally, I’m not in the camp of world destruction for 2012 or anytime soon. However, I do feel like we are going through a major change, and that many people aren’t going to be able to adapt. My feeling is that those who value themselves based on what that own, rather than who they are, are going to have a hard go of it during the upcoming years. While I don’t think society or the world will be destroyed, I think the way of life we’ve gotten used to will be. But then, in its place, a much more productive one will arise. Mythology is full of the theme of things breaking down only to become stronger. There’s the phoenix, Jesus Christ, just about every hero’s journey including superheroes, the rebuilding of the Holy Temples, etc. It’s a theme that makes up the story of humanity, and one that I think we’ll see repeating for our society very soon. Source Code shows us how we are all traveling on this journey together, and our journeys may be cut short. We may see what seems like needless destruction, but it may turn out to be for a greater good. Even if you or I don’t survive the changeover.

 

 

 

The name of the film itself is also a tipoff. Source Code reminds me of the Bible code—the word search-like system of hidden messages in the Bible that contain messages related to the stories from where they are found. Some mystics believe that the sequence of letters in the Hebrew Bible is a literal code for the program of this world. If a binary code of 1s and 0s can reproduce every movie you’ve ever seen, what could a code of 22 Hebrew letters create? Perhaps the reality we find ourselves in, with its repeating themes and cycles within cycles. In many ways, Source Code can be seen as the story of our entire reality—a game with a program that allows for any action as long as it has been written into the code. So we live in the reality we notice, but every time we make a decision, we leap into another where everything is exactly the same except for the one aspect we changed and the repercussions that result from it—repercussions that could have effects we aren’t even aware of. This idea is the stuff of quantum physics and applies in theories about many worlds and mutiverses that I’ve discussed in other columns. But the fact that these relatively deep concepts are now showing up in mainstream movies, is telling of how we are evolving and the level of information we are growing to be able to handle. Whether you are conscious of it or not, shows like Lost and movies like Avatar, Inception, and Source Code are all helping us to understand how the world may really work.

 

Finally, we reach the fourth level of interpretation: the hidden/secret level that is derived from mystical, kabbalistic techniques. Unfortunately, I am not learned enough in the wisdom of kabbalah to do this movie justice from this level. But one area of the teachings that I am familiar with is the idea of “as above, so below.” This relates to the belief that everything that happens in our realm, is reflected in a realm beyond this one. Call it heaven, an alternate reality, the code of this programmed world, or whatever, but nothing can happen here, that doesn’t also happen there, and vice-versa. For a movie like Source Code, you could have a field day with plugging this movie into that perspective. The basic premise alone is chock-full of implications, but especially the film’s takeaway. Sort of like kabbalah, I can’t talk much about this level of the film because it requires giving away some spoilers, but once you’ve seen it, I’m sure its overall concept will give you much to think about…or not, if you just watch movies to be entertained. Considering that you made it this far into the column, somehow, I doubt that is usually the case.

 

So, once you become like me, and can no longer simply enjoy movies without looking at their deeper meaning, can you ever go back to the bliss of ignorance? The answer is no. Much like the hobbits at the end of The Lord of the Rings, the adventure changes you, and you begin to hear a greater calling. One that is no longer satisfied with just the trappings of the material world, and instead, longs for deeper meaning. Of course, the higher your potential, the harder the challenges will be needed to take you where you need to go. And if you haven’t fully let go of your old life, your new one will be challenging indeed—much like society as a whole in the years ahead.

 

 

 

In M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, the character of Aang (the last airbender) runs away after learning that to fulfill his destiny he must give up ever having a family or even any kind of love. It’s a story similar to most superhero myths, and often, the story for those who chose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. On a more personal scale, it’s our story when we sacrifice having a family for our passions, a career for our kids, more money for more fulfillment, our ego for our instincts, and our holiday weekends for what we believe to be our calling.

 

May your inner spark grow to light your way,

Marc

 

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

 

 

Tags: oromaner, illusion, source code, the adjustment bureau, limitless, sucker punch, inception
Categories: Future Tech | Gaming | General | Life | Nanotech | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

 

 

There have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. We’ve had Avatar, Inception, and TRON: Legacy, and this month alone there’s The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch and Source Code. All these films share themes of alternate realities, questions about what is reality, and insight into powers that might be manipulating the reality we live in. While I hope to discuss the most recent batch of these films in an upcoming column, for now I’d like to bring up one that slipped past the radar of many moviegoers. This film actually gave me goose bumps when it revealed an angle that I’ve only recently adopted, and have never before seen in any other movie. That film is Disney’s Tangled.

 

While there aren’t really any huge revelations in this film, I must unfortunately reveal a small one to describe the scene that made such an impression on me. It’s actually not even a revelation, since the audience has been aware all along of what finally gets revealed to the main character. Still, how the protagonist learns of this certain fact could be considered a bit of a spoiler. So, I have to recommend that you see the film before reading any further, or else the scene’s impact will be dampened.

 

Based on the classic Rapunzel fairytale collected by The Brother’s Grimm, Tangled is the story of a young girl who is locked in a tower by Mother Gothel in order to take advantage of the girl’s magical hair. When Rapunzel sings an incantation, the hair’s healing properties restores the youth of the aging woman. Trapped in the tower, Rapunzel leads a sheltered existence playing with her pet chameleon Pascal and painting a mural of floating lights that she sees outside her window every year on her birthday. Things remain the same, until one day, a charming thief named Flynn Ryder breaks into her tower.  After being captured by her, he agrees to take her to the place where the floating lights come from. Once outside the tower, Rapunzel has the adventure of her life and discovers who she truly is.

 

So, what’s the big deal? It’s all pretty much typical Disney-fare. In fact, this was another thing I liked about the film—that it returned to its classic Disney roots (pun intention not disclosed). While a 3-D version of this film was available, I preferred to watch the film through my mythology 4-D glasses instead, and I assure you, it made the movie that much better.

 

 

 

Rapunzel represents us, confined within the constraints of life and forced to make the best of it. Sure, there are all kinds of distractions to keep us occupied: chores, family obligations, playing dress-up with different costumes, but what Rapunzel really longs for, is to explore the outside world. Unfortunately, based on the stories of Mother Gothel (aka, society), she is too scared to take a leap of faith outside her tower and embrace her destiny. From her window, she can see these beautiful floating lamps that look like stars across the nighttime sky. They inspire her to create a mural on the wall of her room, and help her to mentally escape the dreariness of her existence. Only upon meeting the thief does she gain the courage to disobey her captor and go with her gut. And the two of them set out to find the origin of the lamps.

 

 

 

The scene that really resonated with me happened near the end of the film when Rapunzel realizes who she really is. Staring at one of the murals she’s painted on her wall, she realizes that it has been embedded with a symbol that she’d subconsciously hidden for herself. She quickly realizes that the symbol is present throughout the mural and all the others she’s painted in her room. The symbol is that of a sun, and it is the symbol of the kingdom from where she was a princess until she was kidnapped as a baby. It is this very kingdom that releases floating lamps every year on her birthday in the hope that she will one day return to them. Rapunzel had remembered the symbol because it was at the center of a mobile that had been above her crib as an infant. Pretty deep for a Disney film, eh? Even deeper is how this scene relates to our lives.

 

 

 

Many of us experience serendipitous occurrences, hints, or hidden messages on occasion. Up until recently, I have interpreted these as clues provided by the universe that we are meant to follow in order to fulfill our destiny. There has been no doubt for me that these clues exist, or that they contain messages meant for me. What I have been more unsure about however, is where the clues come from. If life is a videogame of sorts, could they be written into the program to help us on our journey? Or, perhaps spirit guides or the ghosts of loved ones deliver them to us. Lately however, I’ve been leaning more towards another theory: that the clues are being provided by us. We are subconsciously giving ourselves the clues that are sprinkled throughout our lives because our souls—or future versions of ourselves—already know the path we are meant to follow. Just as Rapunzel subconsciously knew that she was from the kingdom of the sun, we too know—on some level—that we really exist on a level beyond this illusionary realm. And every once in awhile, we give ourselves a clue to help us uncover the truth.

 

For most of us, life is about dealing with all the BS of being stuck in the tower. And truth is, this is all just a distraction from what we are really supposed to be doing. The tower obstacle is put in our way so that we can grow ourselves to rise above it, or escape from it—whatever metaphor you prefer. The point of life then, is not to make more money, get a better job, a bigger home, a faster car, or a better body, it is to follow our bliss, which may or may not involve achieving any of these things.

 

 

 

The other day, I finally got around to watching another animated film Coraline. In this movie, the “life-as-illusion” theme is apparent in the story (as opposed to Tangled which requires some mythological interpretation). Lying in bed that night, a thought struck me that might have been influenced by the movie: if life is a game, what if the object is to leave it with the least amount of material attachments. The twist however, is that we must learn to be happy without any of them. Of course, this is by no means an original idea, it’s pretty much the theme of every major world religion. But I don’t think it’s just money and materialistic attachments that we must let go of, but any physical item or idea that we hold onto to help us get through life. I think it’s no accident that there are many shows out today about hoarding or picking, or pawning our personal sacred treasures. But what would happen if we were to let all of these things go? How many of them do we really need? As I begin to clean out my childhood home and my current apartment in anticipation of a move, I’ve been asking myself this question quite a bit. Why do we feel a need to hold onto these things?  And it’s not just things either, it’s beliefs—religious or society-influenced.

 

Personally, I believe that this “letting go” is a theme that we are being invited to embrace lately. And if we don’t embrace it ourselves, the world is going to do it for us—either with a crashed economy that keeps us from buying all the distractions we feel we need, an earthquake or tsunami that causes us to lose everything we own, an upheaval of the leaders of our nation, or a toppling of beliefs that we’ve held onto for so long. The word “apocalypse” actually means, “to reveal.” A revelation of what this world really is, who we really are and what we are really meant to do. The illusion is crumbling, the curtain is being pulled back, and the veil is lifting to show us that we’ve all just been trapped in a tower, and that there is an incredible world out there just waiting to be explored. All you have to do is to let go of your fears and explore them.

Easier said then done, I know, but the universe does seem to be trying to help, and by universe, I mean us. We all subconsciously know what we are meant to do, so we are creating the events to help us do it and the clues to show us the path beyond all the ridiculous distractions and entanglements of modern life.

 

Several months ago, I began seeing a message popping up in various places all around my Upper East Side neighborhood. The message said:

 

BECOME YOUR DREAM

 

Sometimes it was scrawled on the sidewalk in chalk, other times it was written in marker or paint on an old dirty mattress or some other garbage that was being “let go” of. Sometimes it was accompanied by an image of a walking fish (having escaped the confines of his bowl) and sometimes it was written in Spanish. Every time, however, it always seemed to be speaking directly to me, as it probably seems to every person who notices it. Today, as I jogged around the Central Park loop, I saw the message written at least one hundred times on the asphalt, so it got me curious as to who is writing them.

 

 

 

Turns out that the messages were started by a New York City artist, James De La Vega, who painted a mural featuring the message along with a fish jumping out of its bowl on East 95th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue—a mere eight blocks from my apartment. Now, considering the similarities between De La Vega’s mural, and Rapunzel’s mural and the idea of escaping from a fishbowl and escaping from a tower, you’d think that I had noticed this connection and planned on writing about it for this column. But the truth is, I had no idea that I was going to mention the De La Vega mural or the messages until I began writing this. It just kind of flowed out—from my subconscious self. The self that has been guiding me this whole time with many messages that have included: “Nothing Is Real,” “Follow Your Bliss,” and now “”Become Your Dream.” All have three words, the first with two syllables and the second and third with one each. Repeat it out loud and you get: da-da da da, which sounds like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Is this rhythm some kind of chant to inspire artists and writers? Is it an incantation to awaken our inner powers? Is it soul-speak light language to channel spirit guide upgrades into our chakras? I dunno. Once again, all this is coming to me as I write. I have no idea where I’m going with this. Consciously anyway, but perhaps you do.

 

It would seem that only a select few are meant to read this message. There’s a small portion who receive my columns to begin with, an even smaller portion who read them, and a teeny-tiny portion of those who have seen Tangled and read this particular one, or didn’t see it and decided to risk it anyway. I think the point is that we are coming to a stage in our evolution where the current confines of society no longer serve us. Letting go of everything we have ever known is very challenging indeed. But if we are not proactive about it, we are going to be pushed to experience these things whether we like it or not. As the Reverend Michael Beckwith has said, “Pain pushes you until the vision pulls you.” And as James De La Vega and those inspired by him are encouraging, “Become Your Dream.” The dream of the sun symbol that Rapunzel subconsciously remembered from her youth translates mythologically into the idea that we are all children of the sun—beings of the light—and as this illusionary existence breaks down, we shouldn’t be afraid. We are only letting go of what no longer serves us.

 

In the Hebrew Midrash, there is a section that talks about the panic that will ensue during the end of days where the Israelites (mythologically speaking, the spiritual people of this world) will hysterically cry, “Where will we come and go? Where will we come and go?” God comes to them and says, “Do not fear my children, do not fear. All that I have done I did only for you. Why are you afraid? The time for your Redemption has come!” I remember hearing this long ago and it still gives me the chills. To me, this section is describing what happens when we lose all our material possessions—all the things we have held onto physically, mentally, and emotionally. And once we no longer have them, we are in a panic and don’t know what to do. This will be a time of transition and like any drastic change, it will be scary as we try to adapt. But where will we come and go? To help us deal with the severity of the situation, my suggestion would be to go within. But this inner-world is something we have to work on now, and the more we build it up and let go of our creature comforts and imagined needs, the smoother the transition will be.

 

We must all discover our inner passion, and live it. Doing so strengthens our connection to the purest part of our souls and allows us to see beyond the illusionary world we live in today. Mediate, do yoga, let go of societal paradigms and materialistic trappings. Become your dream. In addition to that message, “Follow Your Bliss,” and “Nothing Is Real,” there is another one that has been following me around since I was fifteen. It is the number 42, and according the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is supposedly the answer to everything. The number popped up again as Fox Mulder’s apartment number in The X-Files and again as one of the sequence of numbers in the TV show Lost. If, like all these other clues, I created this for the current version of my life experience (as you have created your clues for yours), then what could it mean? I’m not sure, but I will be 42 in the year 2013. Perhaps, in the year after 2012, we will finally have the answers we’ve been seeking. Or, perhaps it won’t be revealed until 2042…or, perhaps it’s all just the musings of a raving lunatic. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. But regardless of your choice, I still suggest you get inspired by art, escape your tower, and become your dream, just in case.

 

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

Tags: the layman, tron, avatar, inception, the adjustment bureau, limitless, sucker punch, source code, tangled, illusion, fairytale, clues, subconscious, coraline, letting go, become your dream, god,
Categories: Gaming | Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality

Dr. Daryl Bern, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Cornell University recently published an astounding paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology called "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect."  In plain English, he draws on the results of eight years of scientific research to prove that precognition exists.  His research techniques utilized proven scientific methods, such as double blind studies.  According to New Scientist magazine, in each case, he reversed the sequence of well-studied psychological phenomena, so that "the event generally interpreted as the cause happened after the tested behaviour rather than before it."  Across all of the studies, the probability of these results occurring by chance and not due to a real precognitive effect was calculated to be about 1 in 100 billion.  

This little scientific tidbit went viral quickly with the Twitterverse and Reddit communities posting and blogging prolifically about it.  We have to commend the courage that Dr. Bern had in submitting such an article and that the APA (American Psychological Association) had in accepting it for publication.  Tenures, grants, and jobs have been lost for far less of an offense to the often closed-minded scientific/academic community.  Hopefully, this will open doors to a greater acceptance of Dean Radin's work on other so-called "paranormal" effects as well as Pim van Lommel's research on Near Death Experiences.

More to the point, though, this has many scientists scratching their heads.  What could it mean about our reality?  Quantum physicists say that reality doesn't really exist anyway, but most scientists from other fields have compartmentalized such ideas to a tiny corner of their awareness labelled "quantum effects that do not apply to the macroscopic world."  Guess what?  There isn't a line demarking quantum and macroscopic, so we need to face the facts.  The world isn't as it seems and Daryl Bern's research is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

OK, what could explain this?

Conventional wisdom would have to conclude that we do not have free will.  Let's take a particular experiment to see why:

"In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type."  

Therefore, if students could recall words better before the causative event even happened, then that seems to imply that they are not really in control of their choices, and hence have no free will.

However, our old friend Programmed Reality, again comes to the rescue and offers not one, not two, but three different explanations for these results.  Imagine that our reality is generated by a computational mechanism, as shown in the figure below. 

 

Part of what constitutes our reality would also be our bodies and our brain stuff - neurons, etc.  In addition, assume that that "Computer" reads our consciousness as its input and makes decisions based both on the current state of reality, as well as the state of our consciousnesses.  In such case, consider these three possible explanations:

1. Evidence is rewritten after the fact.  In other words, after the students are told the words to type, the Program goes back and rewrites all records of the student's guesses, so as to create the precognitive anomaly.  Those records consist of the students and the experimenters memories, as well as any written or recorded artifacts.  Since the Program 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 Program selects the randomly typed words to match the results, so as to generate the precognitive 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.

Mystery solved, Programmed Reality style.

 

Tags: precognition, paranormal, daryl bern, programmed reality, free will, retrocausality
Categories: Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Science

One of our long time Forum Members posted an excellent question: "Is there really a 'now'"?  The mystics tell us that there is only NOW.  But I suspect they are referring to a state of reality or a state of consciousness that one only reaches when they die or if they sit on top of a mountain contemplating their naval for a dozen or so years and get really lucky.

Back in the reality that we all know and love, I got to thinking about the reality that we all know and love.  And came to the conclusion that there is no NOW.  Here's why:

Our interpretation of the present is really based on our short term memory, which lasts some 30 seconds or so. If we had no short term memory, we would not be able to think, plan, procreate, remember to eat, etc. In short, we would perish.

However, what is in short term memory is not NOW, it is the past. Now can only be defined as an instant. Or, in mathematical terms, it is t=0, or the limit as "delta t" approaches zero at t=0. As an absolute, or an infinite concept, it could only exist in an infinite universe, which also must be continuous. As I "tend" to believe that our universe is not infinite and is bound by the attributes of the Program (see "The Universe - Solved!"), the smallest unit of time around the concept of NOW would be a clock cycle of the Program. If it is the Planck time, then it is 10E-43 seconds (although it could be other resolutions). In any case, it has a duration, so it can't be instantaneous or absolute. Therefore, there is no NOW, only our PERCEPTION of now, which is our very short term memory.

That said, in the other realm, where consciousness "probably" goes after death, everything is NOW, as the mystics say. That is because there is no physical stuff, no brain, no short term memory, and therefore no need for time as a dimension. Hence, everything could only be NOW. 

If so, no need to even fear the "five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique."

 

Tags: now, past, present, mystics, philosophy, transcendence, samadhi, consciousness, cellular automata, reality
Categories: General | Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality

So Craig Venter created synthetic life.  How cool is that?  I mean, really, this has been sort of a biologists holy grail for as long as I can remember.  Of course, Dr. Venter's detractors are quick to point out that Synthia, the name given to this synthetic organism, was not really built from scratch, but sort of assembled from sub-living components and injected into a cell where it could replicate.  Either way, it is a huge step in the direction of man-made life forms.  If I were to meet Dr. Venter, the conversation might go something like this:

Jim: So, Dr. Venter, help me understand how man-made your little creation really is.  I've read some articles that state that while your achievement is most impressive, the cytoplasm that the genome was transplanted to was not man made.

Craig: True dat, Jim.  But we all need an environment to live in, and a cell is no different.  The organism was certainly man made, even if its environment already existed.

Jim: But wait a minute.  Aren't we all man-made?  Wasn't that the message in those sex education classes I took in high school?  

Craig: No, the difference is that this is effectively a new species, created synthetically.  

Jim: So, how different is that from a clone?  Are they also created synthetically?

Craig: Sort of, but a clone isn't a new species.

Jim: How about genetically modified organisms then?  New species created synthetically?  

Craig: Yes, but they were a modification made to an existing living organism, not a synthetically created one.

Jim: What about that robot that cleans my floor?  Isn't that a synthetically created organism?

Craig: Well, maybe, in some sense, but can it replicate itself?

Jim: Ah, but that is just a matter of programming.  Factory robots can build cars, why couldn't they be programmed to build other factory robots?

Craig: That wouldn't be biological replication, like cell division.

Jim: You mean, just because the robots are made of silicon instead of carbon?  Seems kind of arbitrary to me.

Craig: OK, you're kind of getting on my nerves, robot-boy.  The point is that this is the first synthetically created biological organism.

Jim: Um, that's really cool and all, but we can build all kinds of junk with nanotech, including synthetic meat, and little self-replicating machines.  

Craig: Neither of which are alive.

Jim: Define alive.

Craig: Well, generally life is anything that exhibits growth, metabolism, motion, reproduction, and homeostasis.

Jim: So, a drone bee isn't alive because it can't reproduce?

Craig: Of course, there are exceptions.

Jim: What about fire, crystals, or the earth itself.  All of those exhibit your life-defining properties.  Are they alive?

Craig: Dude, we're getting way off topic here.  Let's get back to synthetic organisms.

Jim: OK, let's take a different tack.  Physicist Paul Davies said that Google is smarter than any human on the planet.  Is Google alive?  What about computer networks that can reconfigure themselves intelligently.

Craig: Those items aren't really alive because they have to be programmed.

Jim: Yeah, and what's that little code in Synthia's DNA?

Craig: Uhhh...

Jim: And how do you know that you aren't synthetic?  Is it at all possible that your world and all of your perceptions could be completely under programmed control?

Craig: I suppose it could be possible.  But I highly doubt it.

Jim: Doubt based on what? All of your preconceived notions about reality?

Craig: OK, let's say we are under programmed control.  So what?

Jim: Well, that implies a creator.  Which in turn implies that our bodies are a creation.  Which makes us just as synthetic as Synthia.  The only difference is that you created Synthia, while we might have been created by some highly advanced geek in an other reality.

Craig: Been watching a few Wachowski Brothers movies, Jim?

Jim: Guilty as charged, Craig.

Tags: craig venter, synthetic life, artificial life, synthia, robots, ai, artificial intelligence, programmed reality, nanotech, matrix, synthetic, artificial, venter, biologists
Categories: AI | Future Tech | Life | Nanotech | Programmed Reality | Robotics

DNA is a self-replicating nucleic acid that supposedly encodes the instructions for building and maintaining cells of an organism.  With an ordered grouping of over a billion chemical base pairs which are identical for each cell in the organism, the unique DNA for a particular individual looks kind of like statements in a programming language.  This concept is not lost on Dr. Stephen Meyer (Ph.D., history and philosophy of science, Cambridge University), who posits that the source of information must be intelligent and therefore DNA, as information, is evidence of Intelligent Design.  He argues that all hypotheses that account for the development of this digital code, such as self-organization and RNA-first, have failed.  In a well publicized debate with Dr. Peter Atkins (Ph.D., theoretical chemistry, University of Leicester), a well known atheist and secular humanist, Atkins counters that information can come from natural mechanisms.  Sadly, Atkins resorts to insults and name calling, so the debate is kind of tainted, and he never got a chance to present his main argument in a methodical way because he let his anger get the best of him.  But it raised some very interesting questions, which I don't think either side of the argument has really gotten to the bottom of.

ID'ers trot out the Second Law of Thermodynamics and state that the fact that simple molecules can't self replicate without violating that Law proves Intelligent Design.  But it doesn't really.  The Second Law applies to the whole system, including many instances of increased disorder weighed against the fewer instances of increased order.  Net net, disorder TENDs to increase, but that doesn't mean that there can't be isolated examples of increased order in the universe. That seems to leave the door open to the possibility that one such example might be the creation of self-replicating molecules.

Another point of contention is about the nature of information, such as DNA.  Meyer is wrong if he is making a blanket assertion that information can only come from intelligence.  I could argue that, given a long enough period of time, if you leave a typewriter outdoors, hailstones will ultimately hit the keys in an order that creates recognizable poetry.  So the question boils down to this - was there enough time and proper conditions for evolutionary processes to create the self-replicating DNA molecule from non-self replicating molecules necessary for creating the mechanism for life?  

The math doesn't look good for the atheists.  Dr. Robert L. Piccioni, Ph.D., Physics from Stanford says that the odds of 3 billion randomly arranged base-pairs matching human DNA is about the same as drawing the ace of spades one billion times in a row from randomly shuffled decks of cards.  Harold Morowitz, a renowned physicist from Yale University and author of Origin of Cellular Life  (1993), declared that the odds for any kind of spontaneous generation of life from a combination of the standard life building blocks is one chance in 10E100000000000 (you read that right, that's 1 followed by 100,000,000,000 zeros).  Famed British Royal Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, proposed that such odds were one chance in 10E40000, or roughly "the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could assemble a 747."  By the way, scientists generally set their "Impossibility Standard" at one chance in 10E50 (1 in a 100,000 billion, billion, billion, billion, billion).  So, the likelihood that life formed via combinatorial chemical evolution (the only theory that scientists really have) is, for all intents and purposes, zero.

Atkins, Dawkins, and other secular humanists insist that materialism and naturalism are pre-supposed and that there is no argument for the introduction of the logic of intelligence into science.  That sounds to me to be pretty closed minded, and closes the door a priori on certain avenues of inquiry.  Imagine if that mentality were applied to string theory, a theory which has no experimental evidence to start with.  One has to wonder why science is so illogically selective with respect to the disciplines that it accepts into its closed little world.

My interest in this goes beyond this specific debate.  I have a hobby of collecting evidence that our reality is programmed.  I'm not sure yet whether DNA has a place in that collection yet.  It will definitely need a little more thought.

 

Tags: dna, intelligent design, creationism, evolution, life, primordial soup, rna, intelligence, self replication, science
Categories: Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Science

Ah yes, the good old 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The idea that the total disorder of a system, e.g. the universe, always increases.  Or that heat always flows from hot to cold.  It's why coffee always gets cold, why money seems to dissipate at a casino, why time flows forward, why Murphy had a law, why cats and dogs don't tend to clean up the house.

Ultimately, due to this rather depressing physical law, the universe will die by "heat death," where it reaches a state of absolute zero, no more heat, no motion of particles.  Don't worry, that's not predicted for another 10^100 (or, a Googol) years.  But, I always wondered, is it always always the case, or can entropy decrease in certain circumstances?

Got a spare fortnight? Google "violations of the second law of thermodynamics."  Personally, I rather like Maxwell's idea that it is a statistical argument, not an absolute one. "Maxwell's Demon" is that hypothetical device that funnels hot molecules in one directions and cold ones in the opposite, thereby reversing the normal flow of heat.  Could a nanotech device do that some day?  Yes, I know that there has to be energy put into the system for the device to do its work, thereby increasing the size of the system upon which the 2nd law holds.  But, even without the demon, aren't there statistical instances of 2nd Law violation in a closed system?  Not unlike the infinitesimal probability that someone's constituent atoms suddenly line up in such a manner that they can walk through a door (see recent blog topic), so could a system become more coherent as time moves to the future.

What about lowering temperature to the point where superconductivity occurs?  Isn't that less random than non-superconductivity.  One might argue that the energy that it takes to become superconductive exceeds the resulting decrease in entropy.  However, I would argue that since the transition from conductive to superconductive occurs abruptly, there must be a time period, arbitrarily small, during which you would watch entropy decrease.

There are those who cite life and evolution as examples of building order out of chaos.  Sounds reasonable to me, and the arguments against the idea sound circular and defensive.  However, it all seems to net out in the end.  Take a puppy, for instance.  Evolutionary processes worked for millions of years to create the domestic dog.  Entropy-decreasing processes seem to responsible for the formation of a puppy from its original constituents, sperm and an egg.  But then the puppy spends years ripping up your carpet, chewing the legs of the furniture and ripping your favorite magazines into little pieces; in short, increasing the disorder of the universe.  Net effect?  Zero. 

Tags: thermodynamics, entropy, heat death, nanotech, superconductivity, life, evolution
Categories: Cosmology | Life | Nanotech | Physics | Science

 

When I first saw The Matrix back in 1999, I instantly became fascinated with its “virtual reality world” concept. At the time, and for many years afterwards, I saw the theme as a metaphor for the illusionary material world we live in—a world of time, space, and the assumption that we are all separate individuals. My belief, in line with what I had taken from kabbalah, was that in reality, we were all one united energy force. Call it God, the light, Buddha, Allah, the universe, sentient energy, whatever. The point was that this energy created our illusionary world in order to experience itself. After all, since it was an all-knowing, all-powerful energy, existence was pretty boring. This energy wanted to experience the one thing it couldn’t know: what it was like to not be it. So, it created an imaginary world of time and space and separated itself there into different material elements that eventually evolved into human beings.

 

The reason The Matrix worked so well, I felt, was because its alternate reality storyline fit so perfectly with this illusionary world concept. Being connected through the world wide web in the computer world was a metaphor for how we are all part of one energy. The glitches of this simulation is just like the déjà vu we experience in our world, which, I’ve always thought of as our mind recalling pieces of our predetermined destiny. The signs and clues in the programming of this simulation are just like the clues the universe gives us to fulfill our destiny. Everything fit quite uncannily into place. A computer simulation was the perfect metaphor for the world we lived in! More recently however, I’ve got to thinking if it is actually a metaphor after all.

 

Besides The Matrix, there are a number of mind-expanding movies that share the “simulated world” theme: everything from Tron and Total Recall (pre-Matrix) to The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ (which both came out around the same time as The Matrix). These latter two films are particularly good at making us question what reality truly is. They make us wonder if it’s even possible to know whether the world we live in is actually real or not. While I first heard about it many years ago, I finally got a chance to see eXistenZ (pronounced eggs-a-stenz) in April when a co-worker lent me her copy on DVD. Funny how that always happens. Even though I was already well acquainted with the alternate reality concept (having written about it thoroughly for my book, The Myth of Lost), the film still managed to blow my mind. The reason, I think, is because it got me wondering whether the alternate-reality theme is simply a metaphor for how the universe actually works, as I had always assumed, or, if we quite literally all do live in a computer simulated world. A short time later, I got my answer. Funny how that always happens.

 

A friend of mine invited me to the Tribeca Film Festival and we picked out two movies to see. Unfortunately, she became sick but I went anyway. One of the films was Transcendent Man, a documentary about the beliefs of the brilliant inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film presents what Kurzweil’s calls, the singularity: “a point in the near future when technology will be changing so rapidly, we will have to enhance ourselves with artificial intelligence to keep up.” One of the themes of the film is that once the singularity arrives (which Ray predicts will happen as early as 2045) in addition to our ability to live virtually forever and cure world hunger and poverty, there will be “no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality.” Of course, critics point out The Matrix and Terminator themes of not being able to control machines once this happens, but that’s a discussion for another day. The point I want to bring up here is the epiphany I had while watching Transcendent Man, and the question I asked Mr. Kurzweil who was at the showing.

 

In the film, technology is referred to as evolving exponentially because new technologies are continually used to create the next generation of technology. Looking at how much the world has changed in the last 25 years alone, there’s really no arguing this point. The film also brought up alternate reality Internet games such as Second Life. Now, since technology evolves exponentially, it is very probable to assume, as Mr. Kurzweil does, that within just a few short decades such virtual worlds will be so realistic, they will be indistinguishable from the real world. My question began my making these points and then one more. Once these alternate reality worlds get to this stage, isn’t it very likely that new alternate reality worlds will be created within these worlds. In fact, this has already happened. I’ve played many video games where there were other games within these games. (Final Fantasy VII for example had an entire arcade where you could play games within the game.)

 

With me so far? Good, because here was the kicker. Since technology evolves exponentially, and alternate reality games will eventually create other realities inside of themselves, isn’t it highly unlikely that the reality we live in is the very first, original world? Isn’t it much more probable that The Matrix got it right and that we too live in a simulation? Isn’t it a bit egocentric to believe that we are the very first reality in existence in the history of creation? Seems like the same odds of us being the only planet with intelligent life out of the billions upon billions of galaxies that exist out there, each one with billions of planets. Kurzweil agreed with my point about the virtual reality worlds becoming indistinguishable from reality, but stopped short of agreeing that our world was already a simulation.

 

Several days later however, someone on my Myth of Lost Facebook page serendipitously directed me to a website by someone who wrote an entire book (The Universe Solved) filled with tons of evidence supporting the very same conclusion I’d just reached. (Funny how that always happens.) I contacted the author of the book, Jim Elvidge, and he replied with the following: “Your argument is exactly the argument that philosopher Nick Bostrom made in his paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”

 

Considering that his paper was presented to the department of philosophy at Oxford, I felt like I was in good company. Still, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, possibly because I noticed it contains formulas like this:

 

 

 

Now, I’m not saying that these endorsements from two very smart guys (Jim got his masters in electrical engineering from Cornell) prove anything, but it does give the theory a lot of weight. The question I had next however, is that assuming we are actually all in a simulation, why are we here? I whittled the possibilities down to the three that made the most sense.

 

1.    Through pollution, war, or overpopulation, the first generation of humans made the planet they were living too unbearable for any decent standard of living. Their solution was to create a simulated world filled with characters created in their own image and to plug themselves into it and live their lives within this realm.

2.    The humans that exist in the outside world live in a very advanced society. Those who do not fit within it, either because they have committed crimes or simply can’t cope, are hooked up to a correctional simulation program designed to help rehabilitate them to re-enter society.

3.    Much like The Matrix, humans have been put into the simulation program against their will either by our own machines uprising against us, aliens, or a sect of humans who overpowered the rest of us.

 

While I’m sure all this sounds completely fantastical and close to impossible, if you really start to think about it, you realize that the world we believe ourselves to live in is no less improbable. I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely noticed bizarre serendipitous occurrences in my life that lead me on my path. This includes everything from getting messages from the radio and strangers on the street to chance meetings and “coincidences” with such impossible odds of occurring you have to laugh. After noticing these occurrences in your own life, ask yourself which is more likely: that we are all part of an artificial reality, programmed to direct us on a certain path, or, that everything we see around us happened either completely by accident or was created by an almighty being who micro-manages the lives of every creature in the universe. I’m going with simulation.

 

The other cool thing about the simulation theory of our world, is that it plugs so neatly into the beliefs of most world religions. The Judeo-Christian idea that God created us in His own image is just that the creators of this program made us look just like them. The Hindu concept of reincarnation translates to dying as one computer character and then coming back as another. The Buddhist concept of us all being connected just means that we are all literally plugged in to the game. Most religions believe in destiny, which simply relates to the programming code of the simulation we are in. Even the beliefs of quantum physicists come into play since they believe time is an illusion. Yes, because everything that has happened, is happening or could happen is already programmed, existing all in one moment (think of a computer game that takes months for you to clear all existing on a CD-Rom or DVD that you can hold in your hand.) Then there are concepts that exist within the real world or our mythology that have similar metaphors in the virtual world. Viruses that make us sick and computer viruses are almost the exact same thing. An avatar is a god that takes some form in our world, not unlike an avatar that represents you in the online world. And coming soon, just as we update our computer files, we’ll probably be able to plug into something that’ll update us. Imagine being able to update your brain’s memory or processing speed. This is all part of the singularity that Ray Kurzweil is talking about.

 

So, there is definitely a lot of evidence that we may be living in a simulation. Now, once you accept that, there’s another question which may pop up and nag at you so ruthlessly that it forces you to write a 2,000 page book called The Layman’s Answers to Everything which you are hoping to one day get out into the world. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, this question originally hit me in regards to the illusionary nature of the world more so than it specifically being a computer simulation, but it works either way. The question is, if our world is an illusion/simulation, is it more like The Matrix, and we’re all in it together in an interactive game so to speak, or, is it more like The Truman Show, and you are actually the only real being and everything else is simply part of the illusion designed to help you on your path? In other words, are we all playing together on the Internet, or solo at home…by ourselves…with no one else in existence at all? The sad truth is that there is actually no way to prove whether or not you are the only real consciousness within this simulated world. Imagine if after you die you find out that YOU were God and you just created this illusion because you were lonely. So if you think that the world sucks, really, you have no one to blame but yourself.

 

So, what’s to be made of all this? Does any of it matter? Whether this world is real or not, it seems pretty real to us so we might as well make the best of it. Yet, if we knew that it wasn’t real, perhaps we could take advantage of that fact. Perhaps we could use our minds to impact our characters’ realities. Maybe we could take advantage of some kind of glitch and win the lottery or in Las Vegas. Or, maybe we could find a hidden Easter Egg or secret cheat code that enables us to make this world our bitch and do whatever we please with it—time travel, reading minds, turning invisible, flying. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be on the lookout for that secret cheat code. According to The Thirteenth Floor, the first place to look is the last place you’d ever go. Hmmm, perhaps there is an accountant’s convention coming up…in Mongolia. I might have to look into that.

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

 

 

Tags: the matrix, illusion, tron, total recall, the 13th floor, existenz, the myth of lost, ray kurzweil, transcendent man, singularity, video games, jim elvidge, nick bostrom, simulation, the truman show, the layman
Categories: Future Tech | Gaming | Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics