SCIENCE SHOWS YOUR REALITY IS ILLUSION

[Guest guest]

I took this from another group. It suggests the futility of satisfying

desire and seems to urge that we look for ways to move beyond

the illusion that occupies most of our time. The solution is not

just to reprogram the software but to move beyond the hardware

and software and develop other ways of knowing Reality from the

illusion, i.e. developing another method with a 'kiiler ap'.

 

Omprem

 

 

TOP SCIENTIST ASKS: IS LIFE ALL JUST A DREAM?

By Jonathan Leake

The Sunday Times

November 14, 2004

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1358588,00.html

 

Deep Thought, the supercomputer created by novelist Douglas

Adams, got there

first, but now the astronomer royal has caught up. Professor Sir

Martin Rees

is to suggest that "life, the universe and everything" may be no

more than a

giant computer simulation with humans reduced to bits of

software.

 

Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge

University, will say

that it is now possible to conceive of computers so powerful that

they could

build an entire virtual universe.

 

The possibility that what we see around us may not actually exist

has been

raised by philosophers many times dating back to the ancient

Greeks and

appears repeatedly in science fiction.

 

However, many scientists have always been dismissive, saying

the universe

was far too complex and consistent to be a simulation.

 

Despite this, the idea has persisted, popularised in films such

as Tom

Cruise's Vanilla Sky and The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves.

 

It was also the basis for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

written by

Adams, who died in 2001. In the book, Deep Thought creates the

Earth and its

human inhabitants as a giant calculating device to answer the

"ultimate

question".

 

The BBC's rerun of the radio version of Hitchhiker finished

recently, just

as Rees was putting together his contribution to the debate in

which he will

concede that the depictions by Adams, Cruise and Reeves might

have been

right after all.

 

In a television documentary, What We Still Don't Know, to be

screened on

Channel 4 next month, he will say: "Over a few decades,

computers have

evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to

being able

to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail.

 

"If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers

which will be

able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the

one we think

we're living in.

 

"This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be

in such a

simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort

of vault of

heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could be

ourselves the

creations within this simulation."

 

Rees will emphasise that this is just a theory. But it is being

increasingly

discussed by other eminent physicists and cosmologists.

 

Among them is John Barrow, professor of mathematical

sciences at Cambridge

University. He points out that the universe has a degree of fine

tuning that

makes it safe for living organisms.

 

Even a tiny alteration in a fundamental force or a constant such

as gravity

would make stars burn out, atoms fly apart, and the world as we

know it

become impossible. Such fine tuning, he has said, could be

taken as evidence

for some kind of intelligent designer being at work.

 

"Civilisations only a little more advanced than ourselves will have

the

capability to simulate universes in which self-conscious entities

can emerge

and communicate with one another," he said.

 

The idea that life, the universe and everything in it could be an

illusion

dates back more than 2,000 years. Chuang Tzu, the Chinese

philosopher, who

died in 295BC, wondered whether his entire life might be no

more than a

dream.

 

René Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, raised

similar

questions. But he famously came down in favour of existence,

saying: "I

think, therefore I am."

 

The idea was resurrected last century, notably by Bertrand

Russell, who

suggested that humans could simply be "brains in a jar" being

stimulated by

chemicals or electrical currents — an idea that was quickly taken

up and

developed by science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov.

 

However, some academics pour cold water on the notion of a

machine-created

universe. Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical

engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such a computer

would have to be

unimaginably large.

 

"The Hitchhiker's Guide is a great book but it remains fiction," he

said.

 

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