“I don’t believe in the supernatural, but rather in the unexplained natural.”
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5 Great Time Travel Movies
I’ve been a big fan of time travel movies for as long as I can remember. Maybe it all started with Back to the Future, it’s hard to say, but the love has been there and I’ve tried to grind my way through any time travel movie I could find, good or bad.
What I’ve always loved in a time travel movie is a focus on keeping things tight. It’s obvious that paradoxes in movies like this are easy to come by and I really hate when movies don’t even try to explain their rules or ignore egregious inconsistencies. (I’m looking at you Looper)
The following movies are my some of my favorite time travel movies, specifically because they take care to keep their rules consistent and they try to keep a tight package throughout by keeping you guessing till the end.
**Some spoilers below**
I won’t delve too much into plots because it’s better to watch them knowing less about what’s going on (or you can just read a summary on the wikipedia/imdb links).
2004 – Shane Carruth Director
I would say this is the time travel movie for aficionados, if it doesn’t come up in a time travel movie list then I am skeptical of said list. Created independently on a shoe-string budget of a couple of thousand bucks, Primer is the kind of time travel movie that demands a few re-watches or at least a companion diagram explaining what is happening. Confusing as it may be, there are moments in the story that are purposefully unexplained to show the very confusing nature of multiple trips into the past. The timelines themselves are very intricate and keep viewers guessing throughout the movies about what is happening.
2014 – Spierig Brothers Directors
There’s something about Australians and time travel movies. To be fair, this one grew on me. Based on the Robert A. Heinlein book All You Zombies, I originally was lukewarm about this film because the pacing felt…off? But upon watching it a few more times I really started to appreciate the tight story that the directors tried to pull off and how that story wouldn’t really fit into a classic story structure. Re-watching is great after you know what’s going on. I mentioned in the intro that I like time travel movies that try to keep away from paradoxes, which is hard in this one because the entire premise is based on a paradox. But I think that the movie (and story) is basically about this entire paradox, almost as a thought-exercise, which I appreciate because while they circle around this idea (where did all you zombies come from?) they try to keep everything else extremely logical, thought-out and consistent. Great for a few re-watches.
2014 – Hugh Sullivan Director
Australia again. I just came across this one recently as it’s a little more niche-y and harder to get your hands onto. I have to agree with what some people online have said, when it comes to tight and intricate timeloops, The Infinite Man has some of the best. It took a little while to get going but you can slowly see the movie build upon itself while keeping its own internal rules as consistent as possible. Though maybe I wanted a better payoff at the end, I found the overlapping loops really cool to try to follow and the story between the characters compelling.
**Spoiler alert. I’d say watch this movie before reading further.**
2016 – Denis Villeneuve Director
I really enjoyed this movie not knowing what I was getting into. Directed by Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Enemy) and based on a book by Ted Chiang. The music and tone were great and while it starts of as a simple (simple!) alien invasion/mom and daughter story, it reaches a really exciting climax that ties into the nature of time. While I don’t know if you can classify this as a classic time-travel story, the concept of time being seen as one complete chunk rather than discrete moments is really mind-bending and a really cool concept to play with. It’s less of a time travel movie and more a subversion-of-the-idea of time movie, and a great one to kick off discussions about time, language and communication between people.
2014 – Bradley King Director
I like throwing this movie on the list because of the fact that I usually hate the more mainstream, teen-focused, time travel/horror schlock that gets churned out and gives time travel movies a bad name. Timelapse is an indie sci-fi film but I originally blew it off because I think the trailer and poster give it a teen-film type of vibe. The film delivers though. It sets up its time travel rules early on that remain throughout the film and has some really great twists towards the end. I love a movie that has me questioning its consistency only to surprise me in the last act with a twist or two that put all my doubts to bed with satisfying explanations based on specific characters’ actions.
What Happens When Science Explains All?
Everything is being explained. Science is a way for us to chip away the mystery of the natural world, slowly filling in the blanks of previously unknown phenomenon with carefully tested answers.
We used to believe that a God was the cause of the annual flooding of the Nile river. We used to believe that everything was made out of 4 elements: earth, air, wind, fire. We used to believe that atoms were the fundamental building blocks of matter.
Bit by bit we’ve taken steps to chip away at the giant granite block of misunderstanding in order to reveal the statue of understanding inside.
We’ll get closer and closer to understanding the very nature of reality as we go. Even now we tease ourselves with names for ideas like the “God Particle” or the “Unified Theory”. Ideas that make us feel like we are on the verge of completing some giant puzzle of the universe, one or two big blue sky pieces away from being able to frame it and put it on a wall. With a satisfied sigh and a comment of “There is is, that’s how it all works.”
What will happen as we get close to understanding “The All”? I don’t mean understanding it in a hippy way but in a scientific way. After all, the scientific method should be able to take us towards the ultimate understanding of reality, no matter how incredible it really is. The answer should be able to be laid out in logical (if astounding and amazing) terms.
If we realize that there is a primal matter that all of everything is made up of and that it has existed forever, we’d accept that.
If we realize there is a primal matter that all of everything is made up of and that it has existed since a specific moment in time before which nothing existed, we’d accept that.
Further, if we realized that one of these ideas were true and that the scientific reason for it was X, no matter how scientific and rational that realization would be it would still be absolutely amazing and incredible. It might even border on the unbelievable and mystical, much like our current understanding of quantum phenomena.
Either way we’d realize a point at which science explains something that is mystical and crazy but explained, and we’d have to accept a mystical scientific moment.
Palmer Luckey Rips into Magic Leap
One of the pioneers of virtual reality (and target of great virtual reality memes) recently gave a scathing review of the Magic Leap headset.
He’s courted controversy, but politics aside he is someone to listen to when it comes to tech/VR/AR development.
http://palmerluckey.com/magic-leap-is-a-tragic-heap/
On tech being used:
The supposed “Photonic Lightfield Chips” are just waveguides paired with reflective sequential-color LCOS displays and LED illumination, the same technology everyone else has been using for years, including Microsoft in their last-gen HoloLens.
On honesty:
That said, spinning hype and monopolizing investment with promises that cannot be met is bad for the entire XR industry, not just Magic Leap. Hardware manufacturers have a responsibility to clearly communicate the capabilities of their hardware to developers, even when the capabilities fall short of what they would prefer.
Early sales:
Based on what I do know, it looks like they sold about 2,000 units in the first week, with a very heavy bias towards the first 48 hours. If I had to guess, I would put total sales at well under 3,000 units at this point. This is unfortunate for obvious reasons – I know over a hundred people with an ML1, and almost none of them are AR developers. Most are tech executives, “influencers”, or early adopters who work in the industry but have no plans to actually build AR apps.
TL;DR Hololens with better FOV and a bad controller/tracking.
Short Story – It’s a Lonely Shift, Pt.1
The unperturbed lake spread out in front of him like a sheet of ice. White cotton candy clouds and blue sky created the illusion of infinity, shining both on high and down low. Sitting on the bank, Brian stared across the mirror image of sky at the mountain peaks in the distance and wondered how the snow at the peaks compared to the summer warmth he was basking in. The day was ever so slightly a sweaty one, but not enough to make it uncomfortable. Just enough to make him appreciate it. A dip in the water would disturb the ice-like perfection, but he knew that it would have to happen soon. He smiled.
*****
He awoke cold, in pain and surrounded by darkness. What was this? Where was he? A buzzing sound in the distance startled him and was followed by some metallic clinking. Brian tried to look around but even squinting, couldn’t make out any outlines at all. He felt cold and realized he was naked. What was going on.
Suddenly his vision exploded in which light. What had once been a black soup of nothingness now shone with the light of a thousand lights. It was just the one light, but at that moment it could have been nine hundred and ninety nine more. He covered his eyes and waited for the pain to subside. Slowly, he peered out from behind his hands, squinting. He was in a room. A medical room. The walls were covered in instruments, some looked medical, some looked unrecognizable. Monitors covered one wall. The tile floor looked like it would be cold on his bare feet. He sat in the middle of the room on a medical table of sorts, his naked torso reflecting off of some of the devices on the walls.
“Hello?” he called out. Expecting someone to come through the single door he could see.
“Hello!” he tried again.
Feeling vulnerable, he slid off the table and confirmed his fears about the floor and his feet. Wincing and subconsciously covering himself he walked to the door and tried it. To his surprise, it opened easily. However, to his surprise yet again, it opened onto a hallway that looked nothing like any hospital he’d been in before. Brian gasped. The corridor had no lights, but wasn’t dark as one entire side of it was covered in large windows that looked out onto the vast expanse of space and a large shining sun, illuminating the hallway.
Brian felt his legs begin to buckle, this was too much. He turned to his right and puked into the corner of the room. Then, as if disgusted and emboldened by the mess he’d made, he moved out into the hallway, holding onto a railing that lined the window side of the corridor. He stood there staring out the window, supporting himself mainly with his arms on his wobbly legs, when he heard a voice.
“Hey man!”
Brian turned to his left and noticed that a blond man, about his own age, had come out of another door in the hallway. The man continued:
“Hey! You still a little shaky? Yeah, that happens. Here let me help you out.”
The blond man walked over and pulled Brian’s arm around his to help support his weight.
“I’m Ranesh, man. Let me help get you sorted out here.”
Ranesh started to move them down the corridor.
“Wait, wait.” Brian started. “I…uh. I need to. What’s happening?”
Ranesh looked at him. “Don’t worry man, we’ll be filling in all the details soon. What’s your name?”
“I….I don’t…..no wait, it’s Brian. I think. Yeah, that’s it.”
“Don’t worry, that’s normal. Everything is a little scrambled early on.” Ranesh started them moving down the hallway again. “It gets a little easier.”
*****
He pulled himself out of the water and laid down on the grassy shore of the lake. He’d brought a towel with him but the soothing warmth of the sun doing a slow and steady job of wicking off the moisture already, and he let it continue as he stared up into the sky. The sun was bright, the clouds continued their slow journey across the sky, and in the blue sky he could make out the shape of a half-crescent moon. He wondered what it was like out there in the vast expanse of space. Whether anyone was out there watching him right now.
(Cont’d)
Short Story – Waking Up
I stir. Slowly, I’m coming to, laying on a blanket, staring up at the lights on the ceiling. My eyes are open, have they been open this whole time? I’m at a loss for words. I become increasingly aware of my heart, it’s pounding in my chest like I’ve just run a sprint.
The Teacher is sitting calmly beside me, patiently waiting. My voice is hoarse when I hear it:
“That was………….holy shit……….”
He smiles knowingly.
The words want to spill out of me but my brain can’t seem to find them fast enough.
“It’s……….it’s a little…it’s almost like a…”
I furrow my brow, as if to contemplate something.
“…it’s bittersweet though…” I say. Then the serious look on my face breaks into a smile and I let out a chuckle.
“My god……” I shake my head. “Wow.”
I raise myself up on my elbows and sit up on the blanket. I’m still smiling as I stare out at nothing in particular, my brain chasing ideas and concepts that are evaporating second by second.
The Teacher speaks: “…and what are you feeling in your body?”
“Like a…buzzing energy,” I say, lifting my hands up to look at them.
He pauses before speaking again.
“What’s that like…to be…buzzing with energy?”
I think about that for a second: “It’s good. I still feel jittery though.”
I let out a chuckle and let my hands drop. Once again I stare out across the room.
“Everything that was crazy is disappearing. I don’t know how to talk about it right now.”
The Teacher laughs. “That’s ok.”
“No, but I don’t like it. Because…that was crazy. It was…what?.” I shake my head, the words still aren’t there. “It’s so bittersweet though.”
“Well tell me then. What’s the bitter part? And what’s the sweet part?
Once again I try to piece together the most rudimentary description of what my brain is screaming at my vocabulary to figure out. “There, here, now. Everything is just…happening. There’s no…” I chuckle. “…there’s no purpose.”
I pause and think about what I’ve just said, reacting to my own statement. “Or is purpose just to be?”
I mull that over and before letting out another laugh. “I don’t know…”
We sit in silence for a few moments.
The Teacher stirs, then he asks: “What would that be like? If all we had to do was just to be?”
I stare at the ground and answer softly, with a big sigh: “Much better.”
“So then what’s the bitter part?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, my heart is slowing down now. The adrenaline is leaving the system. “Why do we do….what we do? You know? Is it just to experience? Just to…just to live?”
It’s the Teacher’s turn to laugh, and it comes out like a deep rumble. He looks up and answers:
“The question becomes: if we’re living…how can we do this the best…we…can? Fully. Enjoying the experience.”
We sit in silence as his words settle. He continues a few beats later:
“Are we worthy of that? Can we allow ourselves to enjoy…fully. Since, apparently, this is what is happening.” He waves his hand as if pointing all around him. “This…living.”
I consider what he’s said. My mouth is dry and I lick my lips, reaching for the water he’d set down beside me before I’d laid down.
“I don’t even know how long it’s been. I don’t even know what…was?” I laugh not knowing how to articulate what I mean.
“Somehow in that moment…there is no time,” he says knowingly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything the way I just saw what I saw . That clearly. That was it, you know?”
“Maybe that’s why you came here today. To see something like that….that clearly.”
I look down at the floor now. The ideas, the concepts, the feeling. It’s all evaporating slowly and I feel a growing desire to hold on to it, to be with it. I ask him:
“How do you stay with it?”
He nods and smiles: “Mmmhmm.”
“I mean, how do you not push it over there.” I wave my hand to the side. “Like: ‘that was just a thing’…”
“Right.”
I continue, imitating my future self: “ ‘Oh, it was weird but now I’m forgetting about it, I gotta pay my bills anyway, blah blah blah.’ ”
“Right, just put that experience up on the bookshelf with those other things I’ll never read again.”
“Yeah, how do I keep from doing that? Especially since this was the thing. Like that’s the thing.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m afraid, it’s like already disappearing, you know?”
He takes a deep breath: “Well, we can remember. And really that’s the only thing we can do. We can remember WHO we really are, underneath it all. Underneath the layers of self.”
“How do I use that? How do I?”
“You’ll find your way. It’s really about just about enjoying this experience of being. Honoring and respecting this life that is happening. Being aware of everything we can possibly be aware of and acting accordingly with integrity to our truth. In full recognition that everybody else is acting according to what their truth is in their own moment.”
I let out a deep sigh as the Teacher continues:
“And just allowing that knowing to be. We can’t stay there. But we know it, and it can inform our actions here.” And then as an afterthought he adds: “And it will.”
“I hope that that’s true.”
“You trusted something, to come here. And trust is what led you to have that revealed. How can we take this experience away? If we’re not here to uplift one another then what’s the point?”
“It’s that thing of clichés actually being true.” I say.
“Mmhm.”
“ ‘Just give people love’ seems simple and easy. But then when you think about it, why not do it?”
“Exactly.”
I chuckle again and shake my head: “I’m having lunch with friends in an hour. Jesus, how do I even being to explain…”
“You probably won’t be able to.”
“I mean, you think you can put into words but then you’re in there and…” my voice trails off.
The Teacher laughs his deep laugh again.
I look up at him, a realization coming to me. “I can understand now the significance of a daily practice. It’s more than something you just do for the sake of doing. I can see it as a daily reminder. You want to remind yourself, to be present.”
“Yes. And you asked: ‘what am I going to do with this experience?’ Now you can bolster all the beautiful things you might do for yourself from this foundation of knowing. From this remembering. Even if you think you can’t explain your remembering.”
“I like that. I’ll take that away from this.”
I pause once more, feeling my body almost coming back to baseline. I smile at the Teacher as I shake my head:
“It’s like, I’ve always known the idea behind it. But to see it…”
“…is another thing.” He finishes my sentence. A smile lights up his face: “You did good brother!”
I laugh: “Did I?”
“Cause there’s nothing to do!”
“That’s true…”
“You just give in…and trust.”
We both laugh at the idea of doing well at not doing anything, at giving in.
I get ready to leave. Everything continues to be.
The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Pre (or early?) financial crisis, author Nassim Taleb came out with a book entitled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Though not the first person to use the term, Taleb’s book popularized Black Swan theory regarding rare outlier events and problems with prediction.
“What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme ‘impact’. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable…A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.”
Taleb spends much of the first part of the book discussing issues with forecasting and why this is important for the future:
“I also make the bolder (and more annoying) claim that in spite of our progress and the growth in knowledge, or perhaps because of such progress and growth, the future will be increasingly less predictable, while both human nature and social “science” seem to conspire to hide the idea from us
…We worry too late—ex post. Mistaking a naïve observation of the past as something definitive or representative of the future is the one and only cause of our inability to understand the Black Swan
…It is true that a thousand days cannot prove you right, but one day can prove you to be wrong”
Part of the issue according to him, as discussed in depth in the fantastic Thinking, Fast and Slow, are the cognitive biases that we have which lead to poor decision making:
“The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; Hence the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is
…This simple inability to remember not the true sequence of events but a reconstructed one will make history appear in hindsight to be far more explainable than it actually was—or is.
…The economist Hyman Minsky sees the cycles of risk taking in the economy as following a pattern: stability and absence of crises encourage risk taking, complacency, and lowered awareness of the possibility of problems. Then a crisis occurs, resulting in people being shell-shocked and scared of investing their resources.”
Simple things can quickly grow to become more complex and sometimes, the world is more complicated than we think. Here Taleb brings up an example with billiard balls:
“This multiplicative difficulty leading to the need for greater and greater precision in assumptions can be illustrated with the following simple exercise concerning the prediction of the movements of billiard balls on a table. I use the example as computed by the mathematician Michael Berry. If I know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball at rest, can compute the resistance of the table (quite elementary), and can gauge the strength of the impact, then it is rather easy to predict what would happen at the first hit. The second impact becomes more complicated, but possible; you need to be more careful about your knowledge of the initial states, and more precision is called for. The problem is that to correctly compute the ninth impact, you need to take into account the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table (modestly, Berry’s computations use a weight of less than 150 pounds). And to compute the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle of the universe needs to be present in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10 billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on the outcome. Now, consider the additional burden of having to incorporate predictions about where these variables will be in the future. Forecasting the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table requires knowledge of the dynamics of the entire universe, down to every single atom! We can easily predict the movements of large objects like planets (though not too far into the future), but the smaller entities can be difficult to figure out—and there are so many more of them.”
Often times when we look at probabilities, we base our predictions on probabilities that are fit for closed systems.
“The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i.e., bell-curve), and almost computable.” You cannot expect the casino to pay out a million times your bet, or to change the rules abruptly on you during the game—there are never days in which “36 black” is designed to pop up 95 percent of the time. In real life you do not know the odds; you need to discover them, and the sources of uncertainty are not defined.”
…the world is far, far more complicated than we think, which is not a problem, except when most of us don’t know it.
…I remind the reader that I am not testing how much people know, but assessing the difference between what people actually know and how much they think they know .”
Again, Taleb isn’t saying that we can’t ever know anything. His point comes down to being honest with what we DO know and being less naïve, saying : “Contrary to what people might expect, I am not recommending that anyone become a hedgehog—rather, be a fox with an open mind. I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.”
So what can we do?
“I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being. Also, bear in mind how shallow we are with probability, the mother of all abstract notions. You do not have to do much more in order to gain a deeper understanding of things around you.
…Do not try to avoid predicting—yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places.
…What you should avoid is unnecessary dependence on large-scale harmful predictions—those and only those. Avoid the big subjects that may hurt your future: be fooled in small matters, not in the large.”
I really enjoyed Taleb’s thoughts in the book on Black Swans in everyday life (positive Black Swans, or the theme of anti-fragility which was later expounded upon in his book Anti-Fragile).
“This same point can be generalized to life: maximize the serendipity around you.
…In fact, the reason I felt immediately at home in America is precisely because American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma
…I am trying here to generalize to real life the notion of the “barbell” strategy I used as a trader, which is as follows. If you know that you are vulnerable to prediction errors, and if you accept that most “risk measures” are flawed, because of the Black Swan, then your strategy is to be as hyperconservative and hyperaggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.
…Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity. They are rare, much rarer than you think.
…If a big publisher (or a big art dealer or a movie executive or a hotshot banker or a big thinker) suggests an appointment, cancel anything you have planned: you may never see such a window open up again. I am sometimes shocked at how little people realize that these opportunities do not grow on trees. Collect as many free nonlottery tickets (those with open-ended payoffs) as you can, and, once they start paying off, do not discard them. Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them.”
A great book that I continue to re-read over the years, one which I recommend to others on a regular basis. Remember:
“It is much more sound to take risks you can measure than to measure the risks you are taking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Magic Leap – Too Small of a Step?
Magic Leap looks ready to jump into the hands of eager developers but after years of speculation and behind the scenes whispering, it seems that the product might be much less ‘magical’ than the hype had led us to believe almost 5 years ago.
Here’s a recent promo video:
It sounds like the naysayers may have been right. Magic Leap looks like nothing more than a more stylish Microsoft HoloLens. Those jellyfish in this video somehow don’t live up to the original underwater dreams. Did issues arise when previously hopeful technological advancements become a dead-end? Who knows
We’ll see more information filtering out now that Magic Leap One is available in the US at a starting price of $2,295. Maybe it will be able to prove that HoloLens didn’t steal their thunder once other people can get their hands on it. Or maybe they’ve just been playing catch-up since Microsoft’s announcement in 2015.
Edit: Great summary of a hands-on experience from The Verge’s Adi Robertson
Short Story – Looking Back
Ze: It’s almost ready to go then, we should be able to start it soon.
Jo: You seem nervous but we’ve got had enough time getting the ingredients right. It’ll run smoothly.
Ze: You’re right, I just always get some anxiety starting a new one.
Jo: Understandable, I get it.
Ze: We’ll get some good results from this one:
Jo: Mmhm.
Silence between them as the loading finalizes.
Ze: And the beginning, are you sure it’s the right one to go with?
Jo: What, the start?
Ze: Yes, should we use a different one?
Jo: No, I think this one’s good.
Ze: Are you sure?
Jo: Look, we’re not even sure they’ll go back that far.
Ze: I know but–
Jo: Maybe they’ll get there, but it still holds.
Ze: It’s just, the idea makes sense as a beginning. But won’t they ask about cause?
Jo: Again, IF they get that far. IF they look back they may even see that we start this one at an infinitesimally dense and hot point. But they won’t be able to look further.
Ze: I know they won’t be able to. The limit stops there, we’ve kept the two theories from unifying in this one so they’ll always hit a wall when they peer backwards. I don’t mean whether they will be able to look, I mean whether they will be able to ask.
Jo: Anyone will be able to ask about anything. Maybe they will. In this scenario or the next, but why does it concern you?
Ze: It just seems…illogical. I wouldn’t want to be in that position. To look back and have a point of beginning, an explanation for “how” but not “from what”. The existential considerations would be torture.
Beeping, to signify the completion of the load.
Jo: It is what it is, for them. The concerns they have shouldn’t be an issue for you.
Ze: I just prefer the other one.
Jo: I know you do.
Ze: Why not give them the version with no beginning. It lessens the anxiety somewhat when you can prove it.
Jo: I know. You’ve told me. But we run this one differently, that’s just how we do it. We need to see it this way and that.
Silence again as the program awaits it’s beginning.
Ze: Fine.
Jo: Look, I know you worry each time–
Ze: I said fine.
Silence, one last time. The button is pressed…
–An infinitely dense and hot point appears —
Upgrading Reality As We Go
Something that has always interested me has been how civilizations use their current level of knowledge or even technology to help explain reality around them.
For example, tribes in the jungle would explain God and weather through their understanding of animals and jungle life. Later on we would see people during the industrial revolution trying to explain the universe and the brain in more mechanistic terms; billiard balls and atoms; watchmakers and clocks.
Later still we’ve gotten to a point where we try to explain the brain as a computer or network. We’ve even gone so far as to conceptualize the idea of our entire reality being run as a simulation, a giant computer game in which we are taking part.
Obviously, you WOULD use current knowledge and technology to try to explain the now. But I like to wonder how far from the truth we are.
As our understanding of the world evolves and new paradigm shifts in understanding take the place of discarded models, civilization has to reassess its place and we end up upgrading reality along with our technology. I.E. maybe reality isn’t billiard balls, maybe the quantum world has more uncertainty OR maybe the leopard God of the jungle doesn’t cause spring to start, maybe there exist seasons in the world.
If we are always evolving these paradigms, who’s to say that the idea of living in a simulation or the concept of a brain as a computer won’t seem quaint in 10, 20 or 40 years? We hypothesize what the fabric of reality looks like today through our current highest level of technological understanding, but what levels of technological understanding and discoveries are still out there?
What if the true nature of reality is so beyond our understanding for now simply because our current technological paradigms for understanding are still so basic? Will our simulation ideas and computer/network metaphors be looked at by some future generation as the equivalent of a jaguar sun God?
I don’t know, but it makes my stomach hurt sometimes when I consider what crazier concept it could possible be.
LowKeyCodex 
