Random Flux

There has been quite a lot of discussion lately about whether we might be living in a computer simulation. The current discussion is being fueled by a serious paper by Nick Bostrom and it is also being discussed in many blogs.

In terms of quantum mechanics the question as to whether our reality is a simulation or not is actually quite moot. To begin with, it is now as certain as science can be that matter as we subjectively perceive it does not exist — the huge majority of what we experience as matter is actually empty space and the rest is tiny areas of energy events popping in and out of “existence” (at least from our point of view) like whack-a-rats jumping in and out of their holes. Most people still miss this because physicists continue to use the comforting and misleading word “particles” for something that is actually about as particulate as an advertising popup on a website.

The illusion of what we call reality is created by all this happening so fast and so often and on such a microscopic level that everything appears to be a smooth continuum. This effect is aided and abetted by us perceiving with a very limited set of bio-sensors we refer to as our senses and a probably even more limited processing unit known as our brain — which in turn is all part of the original illusion. It’s like the Nowhere Man in Yellow Submarine sucking the world and himself out of existence, but the other way round. If thinking about this ties your ape-brain in a knot then you’re beginning to get the idea.

The point is, the question of whether these energy events that are the dancing pixels on the virtual screen of our experience of reality are a “computer” simulation or not is not really meaningful. Whatever they are, they are just as “unreal” as the pixels in a virtual reality simulation — at least as understood in the context of our ape-brain subjective idea of matter. It is already certain that reality is just as “unreal” as any computer simulation. As we used to understand reality the universe IS an illusion, that much is already certain — it is not “real” in any way that we used to understand the word “real”, and that means that we ourselves are just as unreal, because we are part of the same illusory fabric.

The only question that remains is, is this unreality self-sustaining, i.e. a stand-alone event without anything behind the scenes, or a projection of something else? But in such a web of smoke and mirrors where even the mirrors are illusions, does this question really mean anything at all?