“Virtual” Reality or Virtual “Reality”

‘The Matrix Trilogy’, an intriguing piece of work, is it not? Now, what if I told you we are living in a matrix? Sounds unbelievable right? Let me put forth a few points and then return to the same question.

The nematode is the most thoroughly studied life forms till date. It is nothing but a simple, small worm. Now, if you were thinking of creating a virtual living being, naturally this would be the first choice due to it’s simplicity and detailed studies available. By simulated, I don’t mean a graphic object that looks and moves like a worm, but I mean that each and every building element of the worm, starting from the cells, muscles, even the chemical reactions in it’s body etc are simulated. [For more detail on this project, check out openworm.org ]

When this project is completed and run, there will be a worm simulated inside a computer. Now, we know that the worm is not real. But, does the worm know that it’s not real? To it’s simulated brain, it’s simulated thoughts say that it is indeed alive and has to live. This being said, let’s get back to the first question, do we live in a matrix? Are we simulated organisms living in a simulated universe inside someone else’s computer? Is there any way to know? Something to ponder upon, isn’t it?

Let’s say that we are a part of someone’s simulations. So how do we explain the various things that happen to us everyday in terms of codes? I attempt to answer a few questions.

From ancient times, people have been saying that worldly pleasures are not true. After reading these things, it makes me wonder, are worldly pleasures really false, or to put it in a polished form, ‘virtual’. The critics out there, please spend some minutes pondering upon this with an open mind before saying otherwise. If we look at the world as a huge simulation, it indeed makes it clear that all our feelings are nothing but pieces of code and indeed not real.

Since our childhood days, we all have heard stories about rebirth. Not only in stories, in the greatest epics of our country and others, there are mentions about rebirths. Now, is it really possible? Before you answer this question, listen to what I say? Let’s say the phone you are using is hung. As a first step, what do you do? You try switching it off and then on again. Now answer the question, is rebirth a possibility? In most healthy simulation codes, the object or the list of objects near it should be often refreshed after a given amount of relaxation time. That’s how you get statistically valid results. So, considering the whole universe to be a simulation, it’s objects have to be refreshed. This is nothing but the concept of rebirth. When a person dies [de-allocated], he takes a rebirth [re-allocation]. Makes sense? So, what about the people who remember stuff from their earlier life? A simple answer that I can think of is ‘stray pointers’. Please feel free to correct me, if I am technically wrong.

One may ask, How are people making new inventions, if we are all a part of a simulation and thus a deterministic environment? Let me answer that in a while. All of us use an internet browser right? How does it work? There is a huge number of data packets lost during transfer, so how does it make up for that? The answer is self correcting codes. They fill in this gap ‘intelligently’ so that we have a smooth browsing experience. Now, let’s get back to the question, How does one make inventions? The answer is the same, namely, self correcting codes. These pieces of codes fill in the gaps in our world through some way or other.

Now, a very important question may arise in one’s mind, are the decisions we make, really ours, or a result of a deterministic environment created by codes? To understand this, one must first understand the concept of psuedorandom events. A pseudorandom process is a process that appears to be random but is not. Pseudorandom sequences typically exhibit statistical randomness while being generated by an entirely deterministic causal process. There are pieces of codes called psuedorandom generators that generate random numbers falsely. So, to answer the question, these type of codes may be responsible for our decisions. We may think that we make our choices entirely by our will, but it may be so that our will itself is generated by psuedorandom generators. Think about the simulated worm I mentioned at first, the worm, when simulated, will think that it is making it’s own decisions, but we know that’s not the case.

I would like to end with a note;

We do not know whether the reality we are in, is actually real. So, let us assume that it is a simulated reality and live our life to the fullest, because  there is nothing to lose “really”.