Programmed Reality

Here's an interesting idea.  To avoid an impending disaster, all you have to do is forget your past.  So says physicist Saibal Mitra at the University of Amsterdam.  Even changing the past seems to be possible, believe it or not.

His idea is predicated on accepting our old friend, the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, aka the Many Universes theory.  According to Mitra, if the collective observers memory is reset prior to a cataclysmic event, such as a species ending asteroid impact, the state of the universe becomes "undetermined."  As a result, it has an equal likelihood of following any of the many subsequent paths, most of which should have nothing to do with an asteroid impact.  And so, by selectively forgetting our past, we can avoid certain doom by starting with a clean slate of future outcomes.  See this New Scientist article.

There is something unsettling about the logic, but his paper seems to be on firm footing: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825.  And the implications are fascinating.  Not happy with how last year's Superbowl turned out?  Keep a single copy of the event, erase everyone's memory, replace all archived bits of history relating to the game, and then we can all sit back and watch the recording again.  Mitra says if we do that, there's a good chance Arizona will win.  Watching the same tape!  Well, maybe not the same tape.  Because once the universe became undetermined again, the physical tape could have encoded any number of outcomes.

This a vaguely reminiscent of "Last Thursdayism," which is one of the possible aspects of Programmed Reality.  Once the universe is reset from an observational standpoint, we would never know the difference and an entirely different future course of events is possible.  If you make the restart point somewhere in our current past, then the recent past can be changed too.  Programmed Reality explains it all! 

Tags: everett interpretation, last thursdayism, quantum mechanics, programmed reality, parallel universes, many worlds, mwi, reverse causality, retrocausality
Categories: Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

It turns out that it is very likely that an unseen world is occupying the same space that we do.  What goes on there?  Are there Bizarro humans living with Bizarro pets in Bizarro homes, working at Bizarro jobs, just like we do?

Astronomers who have studied the motion of galaxies and clusters of galaxies have noticed that such large astronomical objects rotate too fast for the amount of matter inferred by their size, distance, and luminosity.  Further, in order for the universe to be flat, as it is observed, there must be much more matter than is currently visible.  In fact, by some estimates, observable matter only accounts for less than 1% of the mass of the universe.  The rest, therefore, must be dark – hence the name “dark matter.”  Many varieties of dark matter have been proposed, including exotic dark matter consisting of various high energy loose particles such as neutrinos and theoretical particles called WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles).  Also in the menu of candidates for dark matter are big chunky masses called MACHOs (massive compact halo objects - don’t astronomers have a great sense of humor?), which include brown dwarfs, planets, or black holes.  Certain studies of the structure of the early universe, however, have demonstrated that MACHOs can not account for more than a fraction of the total dark matter.

As a result, WIMPs are winning the battle.  Anomalous scientific results from Results from ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter in Antarctica, PAMELA (an Italian space mission called a Payload for AntiMatter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics), and INTEGRAL (a European Gamma Ray satellite, INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) ) are starting to narrow down the kinds of particle that could be responsible.  See Kaluza-Klein particles for more (also see New Scientist article).

Interesting, this has some fascinating implications.  The fact that WIMPs don't interact means we don't even know they are there.  Because the measurements imply that they are integrated into our space just like ordinary matter is, they are effectively right next to us and we have no way of detecting them.  

But what form are they in?  Is it a sea of particles?  Or do they clump like ordinary matter?  The answer appears to be the latter.  According to Hubble data, dark matter clumps at all magnitudes (see Science Daily article), which means it looks pretty much like ordinary matter.

What does all this mean?  All indications are that there is tons (figuratively speaking) of invisible, undetectable material existing right in our own space.  In fact, by all accounts, there is about 7 times as much as our common ordinary matter.  For all we know, there are dark desks, dark Volvos, and dark versions of Donald Trump's hair.

 
Tags: dark matter, parallel universes, parallel worlds, wimps, machos, bizarro, cosmology, dark energy
Categories: Cosmology | Particle Physics | Programmed Reality

A recent article in New Scientist offers us cosmology enthusiasts an exciting new possibility - evidence of another universe.  It seems that some recent measurements demonstrate that certain clusters of galaxies are moving in the same direction against background space, which violates the idea that the universe should be the same in all directions and instead implies a clump of excess density outside of our observational range.  Like another universe, maybe?

Also known as dark flow, the latest in the series of "dark" monikers, joining predecessors "matter" and "energy," scientists are baffled at its cause.  Just as Copernicus, Galileo, and Hubble were baffled before us.  70 years ago, Edwin Hubble said "At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed."

No surprise to us programmed realitists.  As long as our species is blissfully unaware of the big picture, the cosmic programmers must keep at least one step ahead of our best instrumentation and keep us fascinated with hints of what lurks just beyond our horizon.  

Tags: multiverse, dark flow, dark energy, cosmology
Categories: Cosmology | Programmed Reality

GEO600 is a large gravitational wave detector located in Hanover, Germany.  Designed to be extremely sensitive to fluctuations in gravity, its purpose is to detect gravitational waves from distant cosmic events.  Recently, however, it has been plagued by inexplicable noise or graininess in its measurement results (see article in New Scientist).  Craig Hogan, director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, thinks that the instrument has reached the limits of spacetime resolution and that this might be proof that we live in a hologram.  Using physicists Leonard Susskind and Gerard ‘t Hooft’s theory that our 3D reality may be a projection of processes encoded on the 2D surface of the boundary of the universe, he points out that, like a common hologram, the graininess of our projection may be at much larger scales than the Planck length (10-35 meters), such as 10-16 meters.

Crazy?  Is it any stranger than living in 10 spatial dimensions, living in a space of parallel realities, invisible dark matter all around us, reality that doesn't exist unless observed, or any of a number of other mind-bending theories that most physicists believe?  In fact, as fans of this website are well aware, such experimental results are no surprise.  Just take a look at the limits of resolution in my Powers of 10 simulation in the Programmed Reality level: Powers of 10.  I arbitrarily picked 10-21 meters, but it could really be any scale where it happens.

If our universe is programmed, however, it is probably done in such a way as to be unobservable for the most part.  Tantalizing clues like GEO600 noise give us all something to speculate about.  But don't be surprised if the effect goes away when the programmers apply a patch to improve the reality resolution for another few years.  

Thanks to my photogenic cat, Scully, for providing an example of grainy reality...

Tags: gravity waves, hologram, holographic universe, programmed reality, spacetime resolution
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

Although shallow oil wells were drilled in China as early as the 4th century, the first commercial oil well was drilled in Canada in 1858 at the height of the industrial revolution.  Since then our use of and reliance upon it has skyrocketed.  Also since then has been a continuous debate on the origin of oil.  In one corner, weighing in at 25 billion barrels a year, we have the biogenic theory, aka dead plants and animals.  In the other corner, weighing in at 900 billion gallons a year, we have the abiotic theory, aka chemical reactions inside the Earth. 

The “fossil fuel” theory was first proposed by Russian scientist Mikhailo Lomonosov in 1757 who suggested that bodies of animals from prehistoric times were buried in sediments and were transformed into hydrocarbons due to extreme pressure and temperature forces over millions of years.  The argument is supported by sound biochemical processes, such as catagenesis.  In addition, the evidence of organic pollen grains in petroleum deposits implies (but does not prove) organic origin.

The abiogenic or abiotic theory actually has its origins the 1800s, when proposed by French chemist Marcellin Berthelot and Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.  According to their theory, hydrocarbons are primordial in origin and were formed by non-biological processes in the earths crust and mantle.  The theory received a modern boost by Russian geologist Kudryavtsev, studying Canadian oil sources in the 1950s and Ukrainian scientist Chekaliuk, based on thermodynamic calculations in the 1960’s, who both arrived at the same conclusion.  Esteemed and late planetary scientist Thomas Gold from Cornell University (from whom I once took a course in astronomical theories), added to the evidence in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere.”  The theory has also attained laboratory support via experiments at Gas Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas which produced octane and methane by subjecting marble, iron oxide, and water, to temperature and pressure conditions similar to that 60 miles below the surface of the earth.  Also, deep drilling around the world has discovered oil at depths and in places where there should never have been biological remains.  Referring to natural gas wells drilled by the GHK Company in Oklahoma at 30,000 feet and Japanese wells at 4300 meters, Dr. Jerome Corsi (political scientist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University) noted:

“Even those who might stretch to argue that even if no dinosaurs ever died in sedimentary rock that today lies 30,000 feet below the surface, might still argue that those levels contain some type of biological debris that has transformed into natural gas. That argument, a stretch at 30,000 feet down, is almost impossible to make for basement structure bedrock. Japan's Nagaoka and Niigata fields produce natural gas from bedrock that is volcanic in nature. What dinosaur debris could possibly be trapped in volcanic rock found at deep-earth levels?”

Some oil reserves even seem to have the ability to be automatically refilled, like a drink at a burger joint.  Gulf of Mexico oil field Eugene Island 330, for example, saw its production drop from 15,000 barrels a day in 1973 to 4,000 barrels a day in 1989, and then suddenly spontaneously reversed and was pumping 13,000 barrels of a “different aged” crude in 1999.  In fact, according to Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal, “between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels.”  Considering the doubling of reserves in the Middle East alone, University of Tulsa professor Norman Hyne noted that “it would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region”

The argument is all very interesting and gets quite political as one might imagine.  But my interest revolves more around the basic question of why oil is even there at all.  Both sides propose some fairly complex theories to account for the very existence of petroleum, let alone its uncanny ability to refill known reserves automatically.  Doesn’t it almost seem like it was placed there just for our use? (see much more on Programmed Reality elsewhere on this site)

And now, there is the fact that some hydrocarbons, like methane, are known to occur throughout the solar system on supposedly lifeless planets.  Take, for example, the most recent announcement in "Nature" and "Scientific American" that a Lake Ontario-sized lake has been discovered on Saturn's moon Titan that is composed of hydrocarbons, specifically liquid ethane.  By some estimates, the contents of this lake could be equivalent to as much as 9 trillion barrels of oil.  Even NASA suggests that Titan could have "hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth."

Anybody see anything wrong with this picture?  Were there dinosaurs on Titan? 

Doubtful! 

Therefore, it seems to me, Titan gives the abiotic theory of oil a fairly sizeable boost.

(apologies to those who have read my book, "The Universe-Solved", as much of the background on this topic come verbatim therefrom) 

 

Tags: abiotic oil, titan, programmed reality
Categories: Cosmology | Programmed Reality

One of the sections of "The Universe - Solved!" that generated a bit of controversy was my assertion that there is really nothing that we can know with conviction to be true.  An exerpt:

"2+2=4?  Not in Base 3, where 2+2=11.  In Base 10 (or any base >4), 2+2=4 by convention, but only in an abstract way, and not necessarily always true in the real world.  If you add 2 puddles of water to 2 puddles of water, you still have 2 (albeit larger) puddles of water.  For a more conventional example, a 2-mile straight line laid end-to-end with another 2-mile straight line will not add up to exactly 4 miles in length due to relativity and the curvature of space-time in all locales.  Therefore, 2+2=4 can not be universally true."  

In addition, You have no way of knowing whether the convention that 2+2=4 is only true in the false reality that we think we are in, but not in the real one.  Again, from the book: "So, maybe all we can know for sure is what is happening to us at this exact instant.  Then again, how do we know that we aren’t in a dream right now???  So, the set of things that are 100% true is simply the null set!"

Some readers have argued with these assertions.  

So, imagine my pleasure when I read the following quote in the July 26 - August 1 issue of New Scientist magazine by esteemed mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose: ""Do we know for certain that 2 plus 2 equals 4?  Of course we don't.  Maybe every time everybody in the whole world has ever done that calculation and reasoned it through, they've made a mistake.  Maybe it isn't 4, it's really 5.  There is a very, very small chance that this has happened."  His argument is based on the logic of reason, which was different than my argument, but the result was the same nonetheless.

Thank you, Roger, for your enlightened point of view.  I would gladly send you a free autographed book.  Please send me your address. 

 

Tags: philosophy, reason, logic, programmed reality
Categories: Programmed Reality | Philosophy

A team of physicists in Vienna has conducted a set of "reality" experiments that prove to a level of 80 orders of magnitude that reality doesn't exist unless you observe it.  In other words, in case you ever doubted the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, doubt no longer.  It seems that experimental evidence has confirmed that we create our own reality by looking at it, measuring it, or observing it.  The detail are here.

The results of many of recent experiments twist our perceptions of reality even more.  Studies by Helmut Schmidt, Elmar Gruber, Brenda Dunne, Robert Jahn, and others have shown, for example, that humans are actually able to influence past events (aka retropsychokinesis, or RPK), such as pre-recorded (and previously unobserved) random number sequences.  No huge surprise to me, who questions everything about our conventional views of reality.  But I still think the evidence is fascinating and probably a bit unnerving to say the least, to the majority of those out there who don't typically consider such things.  Cause and effect, and reality are certainly not what they seem.  

What could be the explanation?  Certainly, more experiments to probe the depths of reality are needed.  But that doesn't stop us from speculating.  Once again, Programmed Reality offers a perfect explanation.  Assuming that the programmed construct can detect "observation" (which, in principle, does not appear to be that difficult of a process), all the program has to do is the following:  

if(observed)
select result from a subset of coherent results
else, randomize result

For example, in the classic reality experiment, pairs of photons are generated which are "entangled" by virtue of the fact that they were generated from the same reaction.  Those photons can be separated by large distances and then a property of one of them is measured.  The act of measuring the property of one photon immediately determines the property of the other photon, even if it is so far away that it precludes "knowing" about what is happening to its twin photon because of the limitations of exceeding the speed of light.  However, in the Programmed Reality model, the properties of the two photons can be related programmatically.  Once an experiment determines one property, the program sets the other photons property accordingly.  The program is aware of the observation and could be in full control of the properties of the paired particles.

For the RPK effect...

when(observed)
set result from archive to a subset of coherent results

For an example of this effect, imagine a set of random numbers generated programmatically and stored in some sort of archive.  The archive, of course, being a product of Programmed Reality, is under full control of the program.  The archive is not observed prior to the experiment and the subjects perform mass consciousness experiments on the data.  The program measures the level of "coherence" of the consciousness in the experiment and then sets the correlation of the stored numbers according to some algorithm, formula, or table.  When the experimenters unveil the data, lo and behold, they are not truly random, but rather, appear to be affected by the consciousness experiment.  A simple software algorithm can make this work!

The interesting question, though, is "What is the motivation behind the program?"  Why would it have such an effect?  Perhaps the answer lies in the idea that sentient beings do truly create their reality.  Much like "Sim City," where the players create their reality, perhaps our reality is created accordingly to a complex set of rules and algorithms, which include such attributes as intent and observation.

This doesn't prove the validity of Programmed Reality, but I have to wonder, how many anomalies does the theory have to solve, for it to be seriously considered? 

 

Tags: reality, programmed reality, quantum mechanics, observer effect, retropsychokinesis, rpk
Categories: Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

Nick Bostrom wrote an interesting article for the MIT Technology Review about how he hopes that the search for life on Mars finds nothing. In it, he reasons that inasmuch as we haven't come across any signs of intelligent life in the universe yet, advanced life must be rare. But since conditions for life aren't particularly stringent, there must be a "great filter" that prevents life from evolving beyond a certain point. If we are indeed alone, that probably means that we have made it through the filter. But if life is found nearby, like in our solar system, then the filter is probably ahead of us, or at least ahead of the evolutionary stage of the life that we find. And the more advanced the life form that we find, the more likely that we have yet to hit the filter, which implies ultimate doom for us.

But I wonder about some of the assumptions in this argument. He argues that intelligent ETs must not exist because they most certainly should have colonized the galaxy via von Neumann probes but apparently have not done so because we do not observe them. It seems to me, however, that it is certainly plausible that a sufficiently advanced civilization can be effectively cloaked from a far less advanced one. Mastery of some of those other 6 or 7 spatial dimensions that string theory predicts comes to mind. Or invisibility via some form of electromagnetic cloaking. And those are only early 21st century ideas. Imagine the possibilities of being invisible in a couple hundred years.

Then there is the programmed reality model. If the programmers placed multiple species in the galaxy for "players" to inhabit, it would certainly not be hard to keep some from interacting with each other, e.g. until the lesser civilization proves its ability to play nicely. Think about how some virtual reality games allow the players to walk through walls. It is a simple matter to maintain multiple domains of existence in a single programmed construct!  More support for the programmed reality model?...

(what do you think about the possibilities of life elsewhere? take our polls!)

Tags:
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Future Tech | Life | Programmed Reality

I was reading an article the other day about a new theory on the reason that we sleep.  A UCLA researcher suggests that rather than provide some vital biological function, it appears that sleep evolved to conserve energy and "keep us out of trouble."  So it got me thinking about all of the other theories that I have read over the years - it helps restore energy levels, it strengthens the immune system, it repairs tissues and cells, it was an evolutionary development to avoid noctural predators.  And the list goes on, with no end of confusion and no apparent scientific consensus.

I wondered, what would be the purpose of sleep in a programmed reality?

And I thought of a possibility.  In multiplayer online games, a great deal of the logic behind the game resides in the client that sits on your PC.  The storage of the overall architecture of the game, each players attributes (to avoid hacking), etc., are on the server.  So what if our brain is analgous to such a client?  Doesn't the client need to be upgraded periodically?  Ever notice how most PCs and Macs do automatic upgrades to various client programs upon reset, or when you attempt to open the program after it has been closed?  Notice that these upgrades aren't done while you are playing or running the program?  The reason for that is to avoid any kind of software conflict.  It is far safer, and in most cases, essential, to do upgrades while the program is not running.  And then the next time you fire it up - presto, there are the changes.

Maybe the purpose of sleep is to allow the programmers the opportunity to upgrade our memories, processing capabilities, or whatever, during a down time.  It might explain why sleep deprivation causes us to act a little strangely.  It's kind of like trying to run an ancient version of Word on your new Vista laptop.  

(thanks to my nutty cat, Simba, for the sleeping pose) 

Tags: sleep, programmed reality
Categories: General | Programmed Reality

Could Albert Einstein finally be vindicated?  His famous comment "God does not play dice" (actually, the correct and extended version, from a letter to Max Born in 1926, was "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice") referred to his belief that physical reality was deterministic at its core and that "hidden variables" that would describe deterministic reality were masked by the probablistic nature of Quantum Mechanics.  Most physicists have come to accept that quantum reality is probablistic.  But there have been a silent minority who maintained faith in the hidden variable idea.  A recent article in New Scientist discusses new research that may show that "quantum reality isn't random, it just looks that way."  Hoorah for determinism.

IMHO, I have always expected as much.  A random number generator appears random, but is fully deterministic.  Aren't Boltzman's laws of entropy probablistic on the surface but deterministic deep down?  We most certainly are not through uncovering the mysteries of subatomic particles.  The hidden variables may very well ultimately explain anomalies like entanglement.  And they may very well be the result of a programmed reality!

Tags: quantum mechanics, determinism
Categories: Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics