Randonauting starts now

Posted on by

Because of my autism, which has a preference for routine, I deliberately invite randomness into my life, forcing me out of my comfort zone, and helping me grow as a person.

Randomness has been a bigger part of my life than you would imagine, because decades ago I read The Dice Man, and even today I carry a die in my pocket. Several times a week my lunch is decided randomly, but I have also made major life decisions with dice.

This is all good, except nothing is truly random. If our journey is already preordained, than rolling a die is part of that. Many philosophers have put a lot of thought into this.

So I have stumbled across http://randonauts.com/guide.html which tries to screw up the simulation we live in by sending people to random locations they have never been to before, and never would otherwise. And they use quantum randomness, which they think gets around the preordained aspect.

Meanwhile, I often go on patrol, like a vigilante super hero would (and, yes, I do it more when I have been watching a show like Daredevil). While I try to choose random journeys, they aren’t really random. I suspect that I am not meant to encounter crime in my life.

So by using the Randonaut bot on patrol nights… let’s see what happens!

I don’t have a selfie stick, but this seems like a fair representation of what I am hoping for:

Infinity in Pi

Posted on by

I love this idea from Clifford Pickover:

“Somewhere inside the digits of pi is a representation for all of us — the atomic coordinates of all our atoms, our genetic code, a coding of our motions and all our thoughts through time, all our memories…. Given this fact, all of us are alive, and hopefully happy, in pi. Pi makes us live forever. We all lead virtual lives in pi. We are immortal.”

It is similar to the whole idea of infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare, but exisiting in a single irrational number.

Pickover’s idea is that we must be immortal, because every moment of our existence, rendered numerically, exists within Pi. The only argument against this is perhaps the universe has aspects that cannot be described with numbers. Prove that, and living in a simulation becomes impossible.

 

Who Is Who?

Posted on by

westworld-extra-0

In video games, especially first person shooters, there are players, and there are non-player characters (NPCs) – computer-generated folk who flesh out the story but they are run via AI, and aren’t being played by a real person.

If the world as we know it is one big simulation, then one of the questions that must be asked is who are the players, and who are the NPCs?

The first possibility is that we are all players. That fits quite well because most people think all people are just people.

The second possibility is that we are all NPCs – and we are merely pawns in a simulation being run for unknown reasons.

Neither of those possibilities are worthy of pursuit, because ultimately the simulations are no different for us than if we were in a reality.

The third possibility is that some are and some aren’t. So who is who?

I presume I am a player, because an NPC would probably be programmed to not question their reality, otherwise the simulation loses its focus. (Yes, there is the possibility that the focus is seeing if NPCs can work out they are in a simulation…)

I also presume that real players are the minority. That is because NPCs exist to flesh out a scenario in a FPS video game, because it is easier to program and more economical to have it that way.

Historically there have been some very different individuals who have “stirred things up” or advanced the simulation somehow. Think Buddha, Jesus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Einstein etc. They stand out like a sore thumb and suggest to me that they were introduced when the simulation stagnated, that they are players with special privileges. You could argue that the only reason we have societies focussed on “progress” is because there is no point running a simulation that doesn’t progress.

Aside from them, I have a few ideas about who are players and who are not:

Players

  • Might fight the system / break rules
  • More likely to be keen on physical and mental pleasures, including drug and alcohol addictions
  • Includes anyone on the Autistic scale, or pretty much anyone who could be judged as being defective
  • Singer-songwriters
  • Writers/Poets
  • Rebels and activists, or anyone who takes an individual stance that puts their life in danger

NPCs

Purely from my own observations and totally guesswork

  • Cyclists and rowers – those who do so obsessively
  • Bus drivers – it has occurred to me that nobody knows one
  • Osteopaths – they all seem to be too nice and perfect, unlike GPs
  • People who look the same – not exactly the same but who feel familiar because you have known people almost the same as them
  • Adherents of organised religion
  • Politicians – only about 10% of them seem to have a soul, and the way they talk is surely programmed
  • Actors – ditto
  • Dancers – ditto
  • Classical singers – ditto
  • People who don’t have strong dislikes

Clearly the simulation will be a failure if the Players can tell who the NPCs are. Unless the aim of the game is to prove that we live in a simulation.

Or, just like Westworld the TV show, perhaps the players can beat the system, or hosts.

Whoever cracks this puzzle will be adept at spotting patterns, and perhaps won’t be able to prove them – just like modern AI systems that will just know the answer and not be able to show the path their logic took…

 

 

Is This The Easter Egg?

Posted on by

If we live in a simulation, proving it might be impossible. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to find proof, and not a day goes by without me actively looking for it.

For me the most likely proofs will be either:

a) the simulation’s internal logic breaking down – some customisation that doesn’t ring true

or

b) an easter egg – some little conceit from the designers that nobody is supposed to find

If the designers figured we would never land on Mars, or ever create cameras good enough to see the planet close up, then perhaps they slipped in a serial number?

The original NASA pic is here:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00907/mcam/0907MR0039700340501405C00_DXXX.jpg

I would prefer finding similar on Earth, where it can be visited and beyond dispute.

Virtual Universe 1.0

Posted on by

I’m sure there have been less detailed virtual universes previously, but this one – Illustris – feels like it might lead to better and better representations as time goes on and computing power increases. It looks great (pic above).

The stats:

– 5 years of work
– 3 months of computer run time (2000 years if run on a regular PC)
– 12 billion pixels
– 41,000 galaxies
– 350 million light-years in each direction

Every few years a new group of scientists will build on previous simulations, with the latest technology, and the resolution will improve.

At some stage we will see life begin on numerous simulated worlds…

Family Tree Simulation?

Posted on by

Here’s a new twist on the simulation theory…

In a future where simulations of our world are so precise that telling them apart from the real thing is almost impossible – what if people ran a simulation to investigate/view the calculated lives of their ancestors?

If such a concept took off, with millions of simulations being run, and they were as good as the real thing – the odds of us being one of those simulations is very high.

The original article is at H+ Magazine.

While I think this idea has great merit for a future time when everything is recorded and stored, I can’t see there being enough building blocks to create a simulation of our time that would be a fair reflection of reality, in terms of ancestry.

Photogrammetry

Posted on by

A wave of new games use a technique called photogrammetry to produce digital replicas of the real world. The technique can be used to recreate rooms, objects, streets and even whole cities.

…Photogrammetry works by gathering hundreds of photographs of an object or scene taken from multiple angles and combining them into a 3D model. Common points between photos are joined up to create a basic shell and this virtual object is then skinned with the overlapping images.

“You not only end up with the exact shape of the object but the exact look of the object as it appears in the photos,” says Andrew Poznanski of The Astronauts. The results are so accurate that photogrammetry has been used to improve aerial mapping and forensic analysis of crime scenes. [Source: New Scientist, 12 July 2014]

So, the idea here is that a virtual world can be recreated from still images taken in a real world.

Lots of images, so many that it would probably be obvious that the shots were being taken.

Clearly our current world could not be created using this technique – unless time-travellers brought back cameras and filmed the entirety of our planet without being noticed…

However, given that this technology is now being used, anyone born beyond today has the possibility of living in a world recreated from photographs.

My First Experiment

Posted on by

Roughly a decade ago, I was travelling through the south-west of the South Island, NZ.

There weren’t many people about, and there wasn’t much to see or do. Just harsh nature and some road.

I parked at what was the southern most accessible (by car) point, and when for a 15 minute walk to the beach. I was completely alone. I had been thinking about the we are not real concept quite a bit…

At the beach, convinced that nobody was nearby, I yelled to the sky: If this isn’t real, show me a sign!

I had been thinking that UFOs were shown only to those that wouldn’t be believed, and only in isolation. So the powers-that-be had a great opportunity to do the same for me.

Nothing happened.

I hiked back to my hire car, figuring I was an idiot, and not expecting to think such thoughts again. At the car park was now a second car. No people were around, but the car’s licence plate stood out – it was custom and it said DAZIGN. The Sign!

For a few minutes I thought something extraordinary had occurred – I asked for a sign and received it. However, elsewhere on the car’s exterior were words about the business – a hairdressing company. The name fitted the industry. I figured that if I were to wait for the car to leave, and follow it, I would realise that it was nothing to do with me and my quest. For the powers-that-be to create this business just to respond to me seemed unlikely.

Just like the craziness of going back in time and affecting the future – introducing a car, person and business into the current simulation would have so many butterfly effects that I couldn’t see it being feasible. Showing me a UFO on that lonely desolate beach would have been far easier…

That licence plate was just a freaky coincidence 🙁

Paranormal Phenomena could be the answer?

Posted on by

According to Wikipedia:

Paranormal is a general term (coined c. 1915–1920) that designates experiences that lie outside “the range of normal experience or scientific explanation” or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science’s current ability to explain or measure

Scientists expect that anything paranormal can be explained by science, eventually. And if we lived in a non-virtual world, that would make sense. However, a simulation could involve factors that are not represented in the physical world…

Take karma, for example. Many people, myself included, believe that (crudely stating) if you do good deeds you accumulate karma points, redeemable when you need them. In a video game, your karma would not actually appear in the physical world – it would be tracked in the background, in the code.

Perhaps the key to discovering the true nature of our non-reality is via paranormal phenomena? That which seems to be a factor in our world, with no connection to physics?

Such phenomena includes:

  • Ghosts
  • Psychic abilities
  • Telepathy
  • Out-of-Body Experience

On a personal note, I am starting to believe that there is a (weak) force in play in our world called Care. Basically the more you care about the a being, object or outcome, the more likely that it will exist the way that you like it. Not the ridiculous art of manifestation, but rather affecting change by 0.0001% – so small that an individual can only make a difference when they odds of a negative outcome is equally as small.

Example: in a thunderstorm your favourite tree is vulnerable – it could be struck by lightning. The scientific odds are 1 in 100,000. But because you care about the continued existence of that tree, your weak Care force adjusts those odds down to say 1 in 98,000. It is real, it is conducted behind the scenes (in the software but not in the physical world), and it is not significant enough to be proven scientifically.

What I like about Care, as opposed to telepathy and ghosts, is that it is based on intent. If a large enough experiment could be conducted, perhaps something could be proved.

I imagine a life-or-death medical operation that has a well-proven 50/50 chance of success. Show the operation live on TV and the general public should project care towards the situation. The odds should improve. Run the experiment enough times and the survival rate could improve.

Even if I am wrong with Care, perhaps one day an experiment will be created that can prove that there is cause and effect that exists outside the physical world. Yes there is the “spooky action at a distance” of quantum physics, but I’m thinking something the layperson would understand and accept.

Let’s find a force that is acting outside of the known laws of physics.

Irrational Numbers from Another Dimension?

Posted on by

One of the many strange things that we get from mathematics is irrational numbers, for example pi π.

But as someone wrote at  Objectivism Online:

irrational numbers are an artifact of the method used to count and so it is entirely unjustified to claim that an irrational ratio such as pi does not exist. In a base pi numbering system the numerical value assigned to pi would be 1 and other different values would become irrational. Irrationality per se is interesting because it exists and is not a problem to be explained away but rather understood.

What if in another dimension they counted in base pi? To them it would make perfect sense. Perhaps our maths is a subset of that from another dimension where it makes sense? And just like we cannot imagine what it would be like living in a 4D world, we also cannot make sense of irrational numbers…