As another decade passes – I thought I’d share my thoughts about one worrying aspect of reality as we approach the close of 2009.
In my private moments I often think about what the purpose of my existence is. I often consider this maybe the root cause of my excessive reading, my wish to learn about existence and the purpose of reality. I keep a moleskin notebook with me at all times, and when I discover or contemplate an axiom or possible meaning to reality – I scribble it down.
Two years ago I stumbled upon an excellent BBC documentary which in its last 10 minutes offered a very distubing view of reality - view at your own peril as it took several pages of my moleskin notebook to write down, and it is a theory that disturbed me considerably -
Part 5 - Everthing, including you, may not be what it seems.
See all the previous parts of the BBC Documentary on Time and Reality to put the simulation argument into context.
If this intrigued you – check out some worrying thoughts from Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University here – there are many technical papers that will provoke thought in what you see around you.
Incidentally Prof Nick Bostrom was involved in the World Science Festival held this summer in New York – and he was on a panel with some of the Battlestar Galactica team discussing Cyborgs on the Horizon
If all this is too heavy for you – why not chill out before the decade ends with one of my favourite John Carpenter movies – They Live, a paranoid look at reality.
The Existential Man wishes all of you a happy new decade – And let’s hope that the wars that rage around the world come to an end, as we wake up to what reality really is; even if we are living in a simulated reality or unreality, and that reality is more complex than our minds can understand.
Ali
NB : I am writing this in Dublin and can not get the HTML links working, so use Google or another browser to search the key words
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11 years ago
Mick and I talk about this sort of thing occasionally and it always ends up making my head spin. I suppose my feeling is that whatever my reality is is what actual reality is--if I'm a simulation it doesn't change my reality, does it? And isn't the concept of a super being controlling us no different from the concept of God? It seems we are not free no matter what reality is. But my world is rather small and within the boundaries of it I am a relatively free-thinking person (or at least I'd like to think so). If someone or something much "larger" than myself is controlling me I am unaware of it, and so for me that entity does not exist. Does that make sense?
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