I return from my long hiatus with a new series of posts called "Mind Explosion" in which I inform you of anything that comes to mind or my awareness that truly shatters what I believe in. This isn't a weekly occurrence however so entries in this series will be sporadic at best.
Before I continue on, I'd like to explain the lack of Summer 2012 Anime Preview/Review in a few words: "There isn't much worth watching." Seriously, this is your chance to go catch up on old series that you've been meaning to watch because there half a dozen decent shows this season at best. Now, on with the show!
So I finally got around to watching the first episode of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, a documentary exploring the secrets of the universe that aired a couple years ago. The first episode details the existence of the omnipotent creator, or god. The first few sections were your usual unification theory discussion to explain why scientists think there is probably an intelligent design followed by a unique take on the theory of everything and an experiment on the possibility of a human over-mind.
The final take on god in the episode is something I am all too familiar with, game programming. I know and understand full well that by the definition of god, to my creations, I am one; but it was always more of a joke. There was no proof that we ourselves were living in a virtual world... or so I thought.
The only way to truly differentiate a "real" and a "virtual" experience is to look real close and find the pixels. The scientist argues that subatomic particles do act quite like pixels and data models. Sure, I'll buy it even though it is a bit of a stretch.
The kicker here though is how the universe behaves at that tiny level. Every novice game programmer knows that in order to increase performance, many things need to happen behind the scenes. When you're looking at a certain camera angle, the screen shows everything that happens from your point of view but as soon as you look away that scene ceases to exist and anything that would normally happen over there follows a more efficient method of tracking and calculation. It would be a waste of computing power to render an entire level when the player can only see a small fraction of it. I never made the connection before until now, but our universe works exactly the same way: when we examine something it appears as expected but various ideas in quantum mechanics proven by simple tests like Young's experiment we've found that when we look away things no longer act "normal." Given those two bits there is no discernible difference between our universe and that of a computer simulation.
By this deduction, perhaps when a tree falls in the forest, and nothing is around to witness it, it really doesn't make a sound.
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