The first paragraph of Nabokov’s memoir Speak, Memory.
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged--the same house, the same people--and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.”
Similarly, from the prologue to Nikos Kazantzakis' "Askitiki":
"WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment."
I suspect nearly all of physics is some sort of emergent behavior from.. basically nothing. Like that if you could push it hard enough - if we had the tools - you could push it back to set theory, a multiverse of all self-consistent rules or some fundamental property of information.
But that doesn't explain qualia. I see orange on this screen, damnit. Sure, I know it's light interacting with rhodopsin, depolarizing neurons in my retina, relayed to the visual cortex and assigned to a color wheel of cortical columns.. but it looks orange. No amount of physics will ever explain that to my satisfaction. You all could be philosophical zombies for all I know - I don't know for a fact that any of you are subjectively experiencing color, maybe it's just me. But I know I do, and since physics relies on objective measurements that's a dead end.
But then how do I reconcile having written the above, convinced of my subjective experience, if my neural processes can be fully emulated with physics? That requires some sort of binding. But we understand physics at the scale of the brain very well, and there just isn't any place for that binding to look. And the duplicating teleporter thought experiment causes major issues too.
Anyway, lacking any explanation for color or other qualia, and unable to resolve this paradox, I've chosen to believe qualia are external to physical reality in some way, and mine might last beyond death. Maybe a soul. Hopefully.
I think you would enjoy the Wolfram Physics Project. They've been able to get quantum mechanical behavior to emerge from some very simple mathematics. It's also not the type of mathematics that is traditionally used to describe quantum mechanics, which is more descriptive and mysterious than emergent.
I don't really know if ultimately there's any "there" there, and Wolfram is pretty widely regarded as a bit of a blowhard, but take a look and let the work speak for itself.
A philosophical zombie can repeat all your thoughts about colors, so you can't prove even to yourself that you're not a zombie.
>But I know I do, and since physics relies on objective measurements that's a dead end.
You don't assume you understand all physics, do you? Objectivity in physics isn't the same as that of a layman: it has relativity, which proved many times to be counterintuitive.
>But we understand physics at the scale of the brain very well, and there just isn't any place for that binding to look.
What. We understand some physics at the scale of a neuron, but almost nothing at the scale of the brain. Ask anybody, inability to see any place is undoubtedly ignorance.
I don’t know. However, I exist, and presumably you do too.
There was a time when we didn’t exist, then suddenly - life.
Should that happen again, I should hope that the experience is peaceful (as much so as possible).
And it is for this reason that we should treat every living (and potentially non living) being with kindness and consideration. A bug, a dog, a plant, a fellow human.
We don’t know what’s next, if anything. But it’s true that we came into being in a world not of our choosing. If that happens again, I hope it isn’t a misery.
Life didn’t have to be this good. The world we inhibit didn’t have to be so ordered. It could have resembled an extensive misery.
We must treat all beings who move in this realm as we would like ourselves to be treated moving through another.
I’m somewhat hopeful that even if something like a “hell” exists, so does this reality. And while it’s not perfect, there is always hope that while existence in one realm may end, we may move to a more tranquil one.
My preference would be that we die and nothing. Like a deep, dreamless sleep. But the fact we have emerged with the gift of experience from seemingly nothing, doesn’t bode well for a continuation of nothingness.
What is the meaning of life? Well unfortunately this one has to be tremendously mundane. Single Cell life still have a meaning. The meaning of life has to be very simple.
Is there a heaven? This is pretty exciting.
I am sure you have seen the carl sagan's probabilities of alien life. If it the chance of another alien is 1 in a trillion. There's a trillion trillion trillion stars. So there's trillions of different aliens all over the universe.
Now of those trillions of trillions of aliens. What's the probability 1 of them has been around for billions of years. They are tremendously advanced in technology and invented a universe scale machine to create a heaven for everyone?
The rules would have to be pretty simple and universal.
The Golden Rule: Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated
There would also be a mechanism to inform other aliens such a system exists. Meditation/Jahnas, near-death experiences, etc.
The buddha enlightened, Jesus as well, amongst others. Imagine what you discover there's aliens(angels) running a heaven. Then you're back on Earth. How do you explain it? Scifi wont be a thing for millennia. You rationalize it to explain to others the best you can. Thus religion is created.
I don't know. And these days I'm making a deliberate choice to focus my attention on areas where I know I can make a difference. Less frustration that way.
We're in an infinite stack of simulations is what I like to think. Now we're unveiling quantum mechanics it seems the rules are what you would find in an game, things act different when obeserved, like it's an optimisation.
Uncertainty is added in the mix just so stuff would evolve and change, to make the simulation worthwhile.
I think we're in an infinite stack because, if our universe or experience is in fact simulated, and we anticipate that with enough energy and resources we too could simulate a full-fledged universe (which I think is likely). Then the odds of our parent universe also being a simulation are basically 100%, and their parent would also be simulated and so on.
Take no man's sky, I mean sure it's orders of magnitude simpler than an actual universe, but it's an 18 Quintillion planet universe simulation, and when you land on a planet there's animals, plants, buildings. All of it originated from a seed with an algorithm that will fill in the details based on the seed.
Infinities stretch in every direction, and the bottom line is that it's all really irrelavant! I try not to think of it too much, focus on what you enjoy and assume this is the only live you will live, get out of your comfort zone.
This hypothesis implies there is a God (our parent sim) and they have Gods meaning that they can interfere if they wanted and maybe they do pay attention to who is doing what or maybe not. But by all means the religion narrative is very compatible with it don't you think?
That's an interesting take, yes it would imply that the universe was in fact created by god(s), or at least the algorithm that generated the universe was.
But I think it will also mean that we're wholly inconsequential on an individual level. Why allow us to see 93 billion light-years of space if the universe isn't littered with all sorts of interesting stuff, like other life, stuff they're interested in simulating and letting evolve by itself to see what happens.
We're probably not special at all and there's absolutely no reason to interfere with us individually, it defeats the point of the simulation I'd assume and that's where most religions fall apart, they assume there's individual value, that you can pray and receive, that we go some place after we die, so I may have to say yes to gods, no to most religions' takes on what that means. Maybe excluding buddishm because it actually can hold up to simulation theory I believe.
I will assume that all we see isn't managed at all, just spawned into existance once and allowed to evolve freely to be researched.
But all we can really do is speculate, and all may be wrong because we can't even begin to imagine what our "parent" universe looks like, what the beings there feel or think, and why they created all this! Or the whole theory is bogus, equally possible :)
I think we'll never know because the way our brains are wired. If you ask yourself "what's the origin of reality", there are 2 kinds of answer:
1. Our reality has been created by someone or something. This could be God, or some civilization that lives in an upper reality (so we are being simulated), it could be randomness, anything. The point here is: something started the fire.
2. It has always existed. No beginning, no end.
Now, answer 2 is something we (humans) can't grasp; our brains can't think of something that has existed forever. Imagine no beginning at all... that's hard to grasp (if not impossible), I think.
Answer 1 is just a "local" answer. The immediate follow-up question would be: "so who created our creators?". And again, the same two answers apply. At the end of the day, answer 2 seems the only answer I can imagine (because answer 1 just starts a loop of questions/answers that is never stopped).
Edit: I'm not talking here about the origin of our universe. That can be discovered just fine. I'm talking about reality as in: the reality of everything.
I try not to take the following thoughts too seriously because ultimately I'm living this life. Also, I'm making some huge assumptions. With that said.
Life isn't real. It's real right now, but only for the time you're alive.
Before you were born you didn't exist, then you were born. Now you exist and start gaining memories. When we go to sleep all of that is gone. In that sense I have the hunch that to some extent sleep simulates what it's like to be dead. In other words, there will be nothing. Going from there to infer what death is like (a huge assumption), I come to the conclusion that all of what you did is forgotten by you. In fact, you will likely not experience anything anymore.
If that's true then it's basically like you haven't lived at all. In other words, life isn't real.
It's a thought I play with, mostly the questions it raises. Sometimes I play with different assumptions. It's a fun pastime, not something to take seriously IMO.
Readit News
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged--the same house, the same people--and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.”
"WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment."
But that doesn't explain qualia. I see orange on this screen, damnit. Sure, I know it's light interacting with rhodopsin, depolarizing neurons in my retina, relayed to the visual cortex and assigned to a color wheel of cortical columns.. but it looks orange. No amount of physics will ever explain that to my satisfaction. You all could be philosophical zombies for all I know - I don't know for a fact that any of you are subjectively experiencing color, maybe it's just me. But I know I do, and since physics relies on objective measurements that's a dead end.
But then how do I reconcile having written the above, convinced of my subjective experience, if my neural processes can be fully emulated with physics? That requires some sort of binding. But we understand physics at the scale of the brain very well, and there just isn't any place for that binding to look. And the duplicating teleporter thought experiment causes major issues too.
Anyway, lacking any explanation for color or other qualia, and unable to resolve this paradox, I've chosen to believe qualia are external to physical reality in some way, and mine might last beyond death. Maybe a soul. Hopefully.
I don't really know if ultimately there's any "there" there, and Wolfram is pretty widely regarded as a bit of a blowhard, but take a look and let the work speak for itself.
https://www.wolframphysics.org/
>But I know I do, and since physics relies on objective measurements that's a dead end.
You don't assume you understand all physics, do you? Objectivity in physics isn't the same as that of a layman: it has relativity, which proved many times to be counterintuitive.
>But we understand physics at the scale of the brain very well, and there just isn't any place for that binding to look.
What. We understand some physics at the scale of a neuron, but almost nothing at the scale of the brain. Ask anybody, inability to see any place is undoubtedly ignorance.
There was a time when we didn’t exist, then suddenly - life.
Should that happen again, I should hope that the experience is peaceful (as much so as possible).
And it is for this reason that we should treat every living (and potentially non living) being with kindness and consideration. A bug, a dog, a plant, a fellow human.
We don’t know what’s next, if anything. But it’s true that we came into being in a world not of our choosing. If that happens again, I hope it isn’t a misery.
Life didn’t have to be this good. The world we inhibit didn’t have to be so ordered. It could have resembled an extensive misery.
We must treat all beings who move in this realm as we would like ourselves to be treated moving through another.
I’m somewhat hopeful that even if something like a “hell” exists, so does this reality. And while it’s not perfect, there is always hope that while existence in one realm may end, we may move to a more tranquil one.
My preference would be that we die and nothing. Like a deep, dreamless sleep. But the fact we have emerged with the gift of experience from seemingly nothing, doesn’t bode well for a continuation of nothingness.
Is there a heaven? This is pretty exciting.
I am sure you have seen the carl sagan's probabilities of alien life. If it the chance of another alien is 1 in a trillion. There's a trillion trillion trillion stars. So there's trillions of different aliens all over the universe.
Now of those trillions of trillions of aliens. What's the probability 1 of them has been around for billions of years. They are tremendously advanced in technology and invented a universe scale machine to create a heaven for everyone?
The rules would have to be pretty simple and universal.
The Golden Rule: Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated
There would also be a mechanism to inform other aliens such a system exists. Meditation/Jahnas, near-death experiences, etc.
The buddha enlightened, Jesus as well, amongst others. Imagine what you discover there's aliens(angels) running a heaven. Then you're back on Earth. How do you explain it? Scifi wont be a thing for millennia. You rationalize it to explain to others the best you can. Thus religion is created.
Uncertainty is added in the mix just so stuff would evolve and change, to make the simulation worthwhile.
I think we're in an infinite stack because, if our universe or experience is in fact simulated, and we anticipate that with enough energy and resources we too could simulate a full-fledged universe (which I think is likely). Then the odds of our parent universe also being a simulation are basically 100%, and their parent would also be simulated and so on.
Take no man's sky, I mean sure it's orders of magnitude simpler than an actual universe, but it's an 18 Quintillion planet universe simulation, and when you land on a planet there's animals, plants, buildings. All of it originated from a seed with an algorithm that will fill in the details based on the seed.
Infinities stretch in every direction, and the bottom line is that it's all really irrelavant! I try not to think of it too much, focus on what you enjoy and assume this is the only live you will live, get out of your comfort zone.
But I think it will also mean that we're wholly inconsequential on an individual level. Why allow us to see 93 billion light-years of space if the universe isn't littered with all sorts of interesting stuff, like other life, stuff they're interested in simulating and letting evolve by itself to see what happens.
We're probably not special at all and there's absolutely no reason to interfere with us individually, it defeats the point of the simulation I'd assume and that's where most religions fall apart, they assume there's individual value, that you can pray and receive, that we go some place after we die, so I may have to say yes to gods, no to most religions' takes on what that means. Maybe excluding buddishm because it actually can hold up to simulation theory I believe.
I will assume that all we see isn't managed at all, just spawned into existance once and allowed to evolve freely to be researched.
But all we can really do is speculate, and all may be wrong because we can't even begin to imagine what our "parent" universe looks like, what the beings there feel or think, and why they created all this! Or the whole theory is bogus, equally possible :)
1. Our reality has been created by someone or something. This could be God, or some civilization that lives in an upper reality (so we are being simulated), it could be randomness, anything. The point here is: something started the fire.
2. It has always existed. No beginning, no end.
Now, answer 2 is something we (humans) can't grasp; our brains can't think of something that has existed forever. Imagine no beginning at all... that's hard to grasp (if not impossible), I think.
Answer 1 is just a "local" answer. The immediate follow-up question would be: "so who created our creators?". And again, the same two answers apply. At the end of the day, answer 2 seems the only answer I can imagine (because answer 1 just starts a loop of questions/answers that is never stopped).
Edit: I'm not talking here about the origin of our universe. That can be discovered just fine. I'm talking about reality as in: the reality of everything.
Life isn't real. It's real right now, but only for the time you're alive.
Before you were born you didn't exist, then you were born. Now you exist and start gaining memories. When we go to sleep all of that is gone. In that sense I have the hunch that to some extent sleep simulates what it's like to be dead. In other words, there will be nothing. Going from there to infer what death is like (a huge assumption), I come to the conclusion that all of what you did is forgotten by you. In fact, you will likely not experience anything anymore.
If that's true then it's basically like you haven't lived at all. In other words, life isn't real.
It's a thought I play with, mostly the questions it raises. Sometimes I play with different assumptions. It's a fun pastime, not something to take seriously IMO.