3/17/07 – Life in a Computer

With our rapidly increasing technological advances we will soon have the capabilities to create a realistic simulation of the universe and all the life in it. It would be under complete control of the programmers behind it who could literally do whatever they please with it. This leads me to the question, are we living in a computer simulation without knowing it? It may seem very far fetched and improbable but what is stopping it from being true, certainly not technology. Knowing that we will soon be able to accomplish it ourselves there is no reason not to believe that someone before us reached the same level of technology and that they started us and that we are now their experiment. Even beyond that, we may be the simulation of a simulation and then we will create another leading to a never-ending chain of simulations. This would mean we are not only at the mercy of the people directly above us but those above them and all the way up the chain to the beginning.

It can be a scary thought to some to think that we are under complete control of some one who could change anything they like about us or our world. If they wanted they could even delete it all. Of course that would probably not happen, at least not until we have served whatever purpose we were created for. We could be a scientific experiment used to research almost anything. Or we could be here only for entertainment. Just part of a game, much like The Sims only more advanced. Every part of every situation created by a user to watch how we handle it and react to it. Our personalities set by the user to see how certain people act. Perhaps we are here to be watched like a television show. Much like shows that we watch but not filmed using real actors and not scripted. It is a show made through the simulation of a world where artificial intelligence(each of us) chooses what it will do. It would be reality television only a lot more real. Viewers could choose what or who they watched. They could go very local and watch a single person or family live their lives. Or they could go more global and watch as things like wars play out. Maybe even to a universal level to see how different planets and galaxies interact with each other, assuming there is life outside ours in this simulation.

Or maybe we are each a part of our own simulated universe where we are the only real thing and everything and everyone around us is simulated. Maybe everyone in your reality is just a complex computer program responding to the actions you take in your life, all meant to study you. Then, maybe one day you will wake up and realize it was all fake, all created as a test to see if we should be allowed to enter the real society. Maybe right after birth everyone has to be entered into this simulated world in order to test our ability to successfully live in society with the rest of the world. Then, when we die in what we currently see as reality we are brought into the actual real one. This life you are living now would all play out over a short period of time then your real life starts or, if you fail this test, you are killed. Possibly there could be two societies and your entry depends on how well you live through your simulation. One for the good, a heaven-like place, and one for the bad, a hell-like area. This could be a perfect way to go about creating a Utopian society since anyone who would ruin the peace and happiness of the world for others would never be allowed into the elite society. Or maybe this life all just a dream and you will wake up one day and remember none of it. It was all just your mind at work during a night of sleep.

The idea that our world may not be as real as it seems brings up the idea of the “meaning of life”. If we are indeed part of an experiment, we are only here to live our lives and help to better science in a world we will never know. Whether we support or reject the hypothesis behind the project we will all help in the research. However, neither us nor our children will ever get to benefit from this as we do not live in reality. This is better then the idea that we are here just for entertainment purposes though. Knowing we aided in scientific research is a more comforting thought then to believe that we will all live and die solely for the entertainment of others. This would make everything we do in this life completely irrelevant to the real world that created us.

Also, the potential that we are living in a simulated world for whatever reason, if any, can help to explain the widespread belief in religion. For example, our idea of “god” may just be a programmer who designed us and created the world around us. This person could have added the idea of a superior being for his enjoyment and to watch the world he created worship him. Or an explanation for the many different religions of the world could be that each religion represents a different programmer and their ideas. This could also explain the many races of the world. Each programmer may have been designated an area and told to design a race of people to live on it. They would have had to been given a basic layout to ensure that all races were the same except for minor details left to the programmer such as skin color, language, and other various race specific attributes.

While all of these ideas could realistically be true we will never be able to truly prove or disprove either that the world around us is real or all just a simulation. Any effort to find an answer to any question related to the issue will only lead to more questions and a never ending quest leading nowhere. All we can do is live this life to the fullest because as far as we know it is our one and only shot at life.

3/14/07 – Prison Rape?

We all hear of rape occurring often in prison from television, movies, and music but we never ask an important question about these events. How did it all start? Outside of prison one guy fucking another is gay, however in prison it is normal behavior. But what about before it all started, when there was no rape in prison. One would assume that prisoners prior to this would view it just as free men do today, gay. So how would such a disturbing and socially unacceptable act become normal?

Hypothetically one man could have decided to start doing it and then others could have heard of it and tried it for themselves. They could then have spread the practice and eventually it could have led to the current situation. I don’t think so though, I feel that if one person attempted it that the rest of the prison would view it like the majority of men do and probably would have killed the person who first tried it. This would obviously not help it spread. Maybe it started with gay inmates raping others, both gay and straight. Maybe then some of the straight men decided they enjoyed it and it spread that way. Once again I don’t see it happening this way either. I feel like if this was attempted the straight inmates, massively outnumbering the gay inmates, would be able to easily prevent it from happening for long. There is no logical answer for the start of it all. But even if there was a good answer, the explanation is not entirely complete.

Another important question to ask is how did it spread to all the prisons? If it was an isolated occurrence at one or even a few prisons it would be much more understandable. But this normally unacceptable act is so widely happening in so many places it seems that it could not have stemmed from one man or one prison. It must have been started in many or all prisons separately. So again I must ask the question of how did it all start? I guess there is no real way to come up with a positive answer and we will always be left to speculate. There is really only one logical speculation left: all prisoners must be gay. There is no other understandable reason behind these disturbing events.

3/13/07 – Balloons

Balloons. We see people with them all the time. We see people lose them in the wind all the time. But we never think past that moment…until now. Where do the balloons go after the are released into the world. Up would be the obvious answer but eventually they will get high enough to pop and then what? Physics would tell us that gravity would then send the balloons back down to the earth. However, from what I have experienced this does not happen. I have never seen the remains of a balloon fall back onto the ground, nor have I ever seen random remains of balloons strewn about a parking lot or park. If so many balloons are lost into the air you would assume that at least once in your life you would see them come back down, but have you? I think not.

So if they do not come down what happens to them? Obviously they do not make it into space, melt from the sun, or are eaten by passing birds. There has to be a logical explanation for it all but there is not, therefore there must be something behind this that we do not know about. Maybe it is something that someone doesn’t want us to know about. Potentially a government conspiracy. If so why do they want the balloons and why do they not want us to know? It is scary to think about what exactly they could be planning to do with all the balloons. However, we will never truly know where exactly balloons end up or what they are used for and will be left to ponder the unexplainable questions.

So next time you see a child with a balloon let it go into the sky, watch as it disappears into the endless abyss of space and just think to yourself, where to now balloon? Then, share the insight and enlighten those around you to the unexplainable life of a lost balloon.