I’m going to self -plan three paragraphs from a 2019 blog, then I expose more:
Take movies like The matrix Too seriously, some prominent scientists have declared that it is not unreasonable that Ourselves are living in a computer simulation. The strange thing is not that they think this, but that they think it is a new idea. Traditional religions argue that God created heavens and earth and plants and creatures inside. That is, we live in a universe created, not in a universe of chance.
If everything we are and everything we see around us was, instead of a computational biology experiment of the Cosmic School of Super-Kid’s High School, how would we know the difference? Would there be a difference?
One question, assuming that there is a creator, is whether the creator is biological, robot or spirit. And another question: why should we import ourselves? I ask this because it seems that people who seek importance would seek it in the same way in any of the three cases, either through study, prayer, meditation, asceticism, vision missions, etc.
And those who do not care to transcend would live their lives as usual, in any of the three instances.
However, we are living in a simulation.
Yes, we are. As an explanation, consider the Mapache. Consider especially the next Mapache that you see crushed on a road. Mapaches are highly intelligent social creatures, but (unlike, say, dogs) simply do not “understand it” about cars. The cars are real. However, mentally, Mapaches live in a world without cars.
So, questions, what is the computer? us living within? What has the reality that we are not “getting”? The computer is our own brain. Brains, plural, because we are also social creatures. As such, we impose social norms on each other, saying not only how to behave, but also what we are and we are not allowed to see. We co-create a language that gives us words only for what we allow ourselves to see.
This is called “consensus trance.”
You have read about cultures that are surprised to say that the sky is blue, either because they have no words for it, or they had never thought about it.
You have heard of Captain Cook’s paradox, in which the Pacific islanders could not recognize the cook navigation boat on the stalking of their reef, because for innumerable generations, anything that protrudes from water could only be a canoe or a whale.
The brains of social mammals evolved to do two things: to ensure that animals live enough to support and raise children, and to communicate and share ways to survive together. Therefore, most humans share the same perceptual filters, although these filters can vary from one human culture to another.
Has this article, until now, has helped you to “lift the lid” of the norms of your culture, allowing you to see things that you should not see?
And why would you want, like Keanu Reeves, lift the lid? Because there are ways in which our consensus filters do not serve us well:
· When fundamentally novel threats arise. We are good to warn ourselves about Tigres Merodeters. It is not so good to treat nuclear disarmament or climate change.
· When raising teenagers. They know that we have been full of 15 years. It is natural that they rebel, although it is really annoying. The years of adolescence are when a young adult must decide whether or not to buy consensus standards.
· When adults feel founded by our community culture or work culture, we suffer Ennui and psychological anguish.
(The latter can become good purposes, if it stimulates the adult to travel, participate in creative activities, sit in a Zen temple, …)
Do you think differently?
We do not evolve to see the whole truth of the universe; We evolve to share and reproduce efficiently. Few brain cycles remain to dedicate lifting covers. However, some people, citing Steve Jobs here, “think of different”, and those people live more or less under the lid. We need them, to fix the elements with previous vignettes, and need the rest of us, to keep society together.
And we can celebrate those who, by their own satisfaction (that is, not build the next block) raise the lid and look under our consensus standards.*
A simulation is a model, a simplified version of the “real” world in which the simulation creator lives (the simulation can include some fantasy and technological extrapolation elements). We have created the simulation in which we live ourselves. **
It is exciting to know that there are things around us that we cannot see and we cannot imagine. At least we can I know that, unlike our friends, the Mapaches.
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*If you want to be one of them and you are looking for a place to start, test Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s teachings: a form of knowledge Yaqui. Univ of California Press, 1998 edition.
** As for whether the aliens created our greatest reality, I think that the thinking of scientists in this is disappointingly superficial. See for example, https://www.nbcNews.com/mach/science/are-we-living-simulated-universe-here-s-watscientists-say-ncna1026916.
#living #simulation
