Ancestor Simulation are we living in a computer simulation?

[winston smith1971]

Hi All,
This is my first thread and hopefully people will find it interesting and not too much a cause for concern or a few sleepless nights. Personally I have laid in bed in the early hours with my mind spinning over this concept but it could very well be true...The Ancestor Simulation.
As I believe, the concept is that according to Moore’s law computer processing power will double every 12 to 18 months.
“The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.” (Webopedia)

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: August 14, 2007
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.

There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.

The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run. But there are a couple of alternative hypotheses, as Dr. Bostrom points out. One is that civilization never attains the technology to run simulations (perhaps because it self-destructs before reaching that stage). The other hypothesis is that posthumans decide not to run the simulations.

“This kind of posthuman might have other ways of having fun, like stimulating their pleasure centers directly,” Dr. Bostrom says. “Maybe they wouldn’t need to do simulations for scientific reasons because they’d have better methodologies for understanding their past. It’s quite possible they would have moral prohibitions against simulating people, although the fact that something is immoral doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

Dr. Bostrom doesn’t pretend to know which of these hypotheses is more likely, but he thinks none of them can be ruled out. “My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.”

My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude. A more practical question is how to behave in a computer simulation. Your first impulse might be to say nothing matters anymore because nothing’s real. But just because your neural circuits are made of silicon (or whatever posthumans would use in their computers) instead of carbon doesn’t mean your feelings are any less real. David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University, says Dr. Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis isn’t a cause for skepticism, but simply a different metaphysical explanation of our world. Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.

You still have the desire to live as long as you can in this virtual world — and in any simulated afterlife that the designer of this world might bestow on you. Maybe that means following traditional moral principles, if you think the posthuman designer shares those morals and would reward you for being a good person.

Or maybe, as suggested by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, you should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation. (For more on survival strategies in a computer simulation, go to www.nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

Of course, it’s tough to guess what the designer would be like. He or she might have a body made of flesh or plastic, but the designer might also be a virtual being living inside the computer of a still more advanced form of intelligence. There could be layer upon layer of simulations until you finally reached the architect of the first simulation — the Prime Designer, let’s call him or her (or it).

Then again, maybe the Prime Designer wouldn’t allow any of his or her creations to start simulating their own worlds. Once they got smart enough to do so, they’d presumably realize, by Dr. Bostrom’s logic, that they themselves were probably simulations. Would that ruin the fun for the Prime Designer?

If simulations stop once the simulated inhabitants understand what’s going on, then I really shouldn’t be spreading Dr. Bostrom’s ideas. But if you’re still around to read this, I guess the Prime Designer is reasonably tolerant, or maybe curious to see how we react once we start figuring out the situation.

It’s also possible that there would be logistical problems in creating layer upon layer of simulations. There might not be enough computing power to continue the simulation if billions of inhabitants of a virtual world started creating their own virtual worlds with billions of inhabitants apiece.

If that’s true, it’s bad news for the futurists who think we’ll have a computer this century with the power to simulate all the inhabitants on earth. We’d start our simulation, expecting to observe a new virtual world, but instead our own world might end — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a message on the Prime Designer’s computer.

It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”

Did Philip K. Dick disclose the real Matrix

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NnxD7aNtiE

Horizon Time Trip

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RIcCU6pl3bo

I feel this is a mind blowing concept but tied in with Michael Talbots Holographic Universe and things like Déjà vu, paranormal experiences, wars, genocide, rape, murder, child abuse and all the awful things that happen on our planet and in our lives its an awful thought that some 13 year old, acne ridden, greasy haired nerd is our god (with a small g). But as stated in the Horizon clip this reality is all we’ve got and to us it is real.
I also recommend the film the 13th floor, the acting is not the best in the world but the concept and story is an excellent way of explaining the ancestor simulation theory.

SPOILER ALERT
In the film a man invents a simulation system that allows him to experience 1937 the year of his youth. But he realises that his real world as well as the 1937 world is a simulation. He is murdered and his friend goes in to the simulation and then discovers his world is a simulation but later on his user is killed and he goes to the real world, could this be ascension and when we find out our world is a simulation or how to control it or that our real selves are somewhere else and we finally stop playing THE GAME We go back to our more advanced self’s and we finally achieve our full potential/ ascension.
I would appreciate people thoughts/input and comments on this, thank you for your time, real or simulated.

[seko]

welcome to P.Avalon w.m1971 great idea, but I like the real world and we don't even know it all yet. We need to learn as much as we can from the real one, before we disappear in a computer simulation.

thank you and welcome again.

[Tigressa]

I guess I don't want believe this.. But then look at what scientists can do with fruit flies? Personally I find this concept depressing and unhelpful! Spiritually what do I do with this information? Ai yaa. Nice first post though!

[winston smith1971]

Thank You seko and Tigressa for your posts. It is a depressing concept but it relies on Processing power increasing to such levels as to make it possible and/or the "posthumans" building the simulations. It may never happen.... or it already has!!! not much we can do either way.

[DeDukshyn]

What we call reality already is a matrix - but it's not run by silicon computers but "computers" of consciousness. My 2 cents.

[Intraphase]

The Matrix was an early stage of dealing with life as "Information Processing Information" The Architect and Neo are the same person. When Neo not only defies the Architect but comes up with a solution that works both inward/downward/backwards in time and outward/upward/forward in time the the little chinese girl survives. She is the new being as "Authentic Identity" she knows the system and method of her origination. She is the result of Neo's dissolution of momentum as he moved outward into Machine City / Automated Processes of creation.

None of us would want to script every breath and every motion of our limbs by writing twenty pages of 3D axis coding. Most of the hidden functions are "Autonomic" related to keeping the natural functions up and running.

Each being is an Info Realm / Quanta Realm /Time Clocks - Arrows Cones

The cool part of the Matrix movie was how hard it is to live in forward reverse time cones simultaneously. Each person is expanding from the size of a grain of sand to the size of the universe at the event horizon/information border; six trillion times per six billionths of a second. The sum is you here reading this now and every other now you have created as "Time Slices" moments that you can load into the center of yourself and project again and examine. The good the bad and the ugly all have value as "Information Processing Information"

Life is defined as the ability to convert one type of energy/momentum into some other type of energy/momentum all the way from cells and amoebas to galaxies colliding and merging.

So humans are processes of information and what we perceive is the summing up of all the data we convert to information and information converted to knowledge and knowledge created into systems and systems created into summary products as wisdom or brief abstract overviews.

A energy/info body is like a bookmark it can be placed inside any book in your library. A human body is a book of life transactions. Enough data to fill the universe trillions of time as the energy body oscillates from point to event horizon and back at unbelievable speed and regularity.


A cool article I found yesterday that says similar;

I call bodies vortex paradomes similar to electrons.
A shell around a vortex constantly talking to other shells around vortexes concerning geometric position. As long as the dialogue of equations continues the info body has "Continuity" which seems to be the goal of the system across all levels of : Info Realm/Quantum Membranes/Time Cone Thermal Arrows

The Quanta Membranes are the ping pong table ball and two paddles.
The Info Body & The Time Arrow Body are the two players batting the ball back and forth across the net which forms the constant expanding contracting sub set equation that is an Authentic Identity measured with the set of "All Identities"


------------------------

Time Travel Redux
04.01.1992
Blow up a balloon very, very fast, or zip around a pair of cosmic strings,
and you're on your way.
by David H. Freedman
In red sweater, tan slacks, and off-white walking shoes, goateed Yakir Aharonov does not
immediately stand out as he strides down the colorful streets of Berkeley, California. The
town--which proudly proclaims itself THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY on
innumerable tie-dyed T-shirts-- has an almost studied casualness, and Aharonov fits right
in. Stopping to relight his momentarily neglected cigar, Aharonov accidentally drops it,
then stares for several seconds, apparently considering the propriety of retrieving the
smoldering butt from the street.
Ultimately--if reluctantly--Aharonov abandons the stogie, lights a fresh one, and moves
on, eager to resume his description of his recent work. It is work of an odd sort, even for
a quantum mechanical theorist: Aharonov has designed a time machine. Now I’ve really
captured people’s attention, the 59-year-old researcher says, beaming.
Since the era of H. G. Wells, science fiction buffs have gone gaga over the idea of
traveling through time. All at once, however, they’ve acquired some serious company.
Aharonov--a sober, mainstream physicist who is not only a visiting professor at the
University of California at Berkeley but also a faculty member at the University of Tel
Aviv and the University of South Carolina--is no less than the third prominent researcher
to devote a chunk of his career to studying the realities of time travel.
The process began a few years back when Caltech physicist Kip Thorne, famous for his
pioneering theories of black holes, and then graduate student Michael Morris came up
with a scheme, based on Einstein’s general theory of relativity, for converting a cosmic
wormhole into a time machine (see Discover, June 1989). Cosmic wormholes are
theoretical tunnels through space that can directly connect two vastly distant locations--
and according to Thorne and Morris’s calculations, two points in time as well.
Unfortunately wormholes would also serve as cosmic trash compactors, brutally crushing
anything unlucky enough to enter.
The two newer time machines, one proposed by Aharonov and the other by Princeton
physicist J. Richard Gott, also rely on Einsteinian relativity to provide the necessary
distortion of space and time, but both are more accommodating to the physical comfort of
their operators. Plans for the two schemes aren’t exactly at the financing stage--in fact,
chances are pretty good neither will ever be realized--but the theoretical workability of
the basic ideas has physicists buzzing. This whole thing, says Gott, is telling us a lot
about some fundamental areas of physics that have never really been explored.

Both of the proposed time travel methods also rely on some pretty extreme science.
Aharonov’s, which is probably the more plausible of the two, arose from his studies of
one of physics’ most intriguing subspecialties: quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics involves the study of subatomic particles and is based on the simple,
if slippery, principles of observation and randomness. According to quantum mechanical
theory, a moving particle like an electron does not travel from point A to point B to point
C and back again, but instead exists at all three points--and all points in between-- at any
given moment. It has the literal ability to be in more than one place at a time. Similarly
the electron need not exist at just one energy level, but at all levels at once.
The only way to fix a particle in a single location is to observe it. Through some process
physicists don’t pretend to understand fully, the act of observation not only reveals a
particle’s condition but actually determines it, forcing it to select just one of the possible
states. As for what goes on between these observations, physicists only shrug and reply,
Don’t ask. By which they mean, quite literally, don’t ask. There is no reality outside
observation, quantum mechanics is understood to say.
To the uninitiated, such a theory does violence to simple logic, yet physicists have
believed for nearly 70 years that this is exactly how things behave at the subatomic level.
The dual nature of subatomic particles--they can behave like both particles and waves--is
what first led physicists to believe that they might also have dual locations and states. But
since the particles are always observed in only one state or the other, something in the act
of observation must be forcing them to choose the state.
When quantum theory was first proposed, physicists realized it could be proved with an
experiment in which a single electron would be hurled through a wall with two slits in it.
If a particle detector looked for evidence of the electron’s trajectory during its flight, the
tiny projectile would pass through just one slit. If it looked only afterward, however, the
electron would be seen to have passed through both slits at the same time. The idea
sounded preposterous, but over the years numerous experiments--such as a Japanese
study conducted with electrons and phosphorescent screens--have yielded just these
results.
Aharonov was always captivated by the curious world of subatomic particles between
observations. From the time he was a graduate student he has been exploring this world
by devising, after the style of Einstein, a variety of lavishly constructed imaginary
experiments. These thought experiments generally involved gyroscopically spinning
particles and used quantum equations to infer their direction of rotation. The advantage to
being a theoretical physicist, Aharonov says, is that you never have to worry about the
cost of a thought experiment.
Two years ago Aharonov came up with a particularly intriguing experiment, one that
would require only one piece of exotic equipment: a massive balloonlike sphere capable
of being instantly expanded or shrunk to any of a wide variety of sizes.

The benefits of such capabilities were no less exotic than the device itself: the owner of
the balloon could climb inside, let it expand and contract, and be transported forward or
backward through time.
Why would the inflation and deflation have such an effect? For that you have to turn to
general relativity. According to one of the theory’s basic premises, gravity slows time
down; when you’re up in a plane where Earth’s gravitational pull is ever so slightly
weaker, your watch actually runs a little faster than it does on the ground (though the
effect in this case is immeasurably small). The balloon, like any other object, also exerts
gravity. As it gets bigger, someone sitting inside would be exposed to a correspondingly
lesser gravitational drag on time because the balloon would be exerting the same
gravitational effect over a larger volume, in a sense diluting its strength. When the
balloon contracted, its gravity per unit of volume would be greater. As a result, time in
the expanded balloon would speed up a bit for the occupant; in the contracted balloon, it
would slow down.
Normally that time distortion would be far too tiny to measure. But the picture is different
if the balloon is rendered quantum mechanical. What’s a quantum mechanical balloon?
Actually, anything can be made quantum mechanical simply by linking its behavior to
that of one or more quantum mechanical particles. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers
of quantum mechanics, illustrated this point six decades ago when he conjured up his
famous, slightly macabre experiment in which a cat would be placed in a box along with
a radioactive sample, a Geiger counter, a vial of cyanide, and a spring-driven hammer.
(Animal rights activists take note: this was a thought experiment.) The apparatus would
be set up so that if the Geiger counter detected radiation--an event whose occurrence is
strictly a matter of quantum mechanical chance--it would trigger the hammer to smash
the vial, sending the innocent cat to a better world.
When, after a while, someone opened the box and peered in, he would find a perfectly
normal cat--albeit a dead one, if the sample had emitted radiation. But while the box was
sealed and unobserved, the radioactive sample would exist in all its possible states; that
is, emitting and not emitting. As a result, the Geiger counter would both detect and not
detect radiation; the hammer would both smash and not smash the vial, and the
unsuspecting kitty would be--well, both dead and alive. The cat’s ultimate fate would be
determined only by the act of observation.
In the same manner, Aharonov’s balloon can be linked to a quantum mechanical event; a
particle’s state (the way it’s spinning, for example) would be associated with a different
size for the balloon. The whole setup would behave perfectly respectably every time that
state is observed, resulting in a particular degree of inflation for the balloon. But being
quantum mechanical, the particles aren’t in any particular state in between observations;
they simultaneously exist in all states. And that means that the balloon, like
Schrödinger’s cat, would also be left in limbo, existing simultaneously in all its possible
sizes--and the occupant of the balloon would simultaneously exist in many, slightly
different, rates of time.

But Aharonov’s balloon is more than just an exotic version of Schrödinger’s cat. For
Aharonov determined that once in a very great while the simultaneous tiny distortions of
time can add up to one enormous distortion in one direction or the other. Any two
particular sizes for the balloon, determined by two observations of the particle, are like
the two possible paths for the electron in the two-slit experiment. Classically the two
possibilities are independent, but quantum mechanically they affect each other. At any
moment, says Aharonov, the balloon exists in a sort of superposition of many states.
When the observations are made, all those states affect one another. In a sense the
overlapping expansions and contractions of the balloon are like the overlapping peaks
and troughs of waves, which can sometimes amplify themselves into one superpeak or
supertrough. In this case, for anyone inside the balloon, a superpeak would correspond to
his being hurtled into the future. A supertrough, on the other hand, would correspond to
time running backward.
How exactly does this last part work? It’s just a consequence of quantum mechanics, one
which has no classical analogue, says Aharonov patiently. Sometimes you get a particular
interference pattern that corresponds to going backward in time.
In other words, don’t ask.
The only hitch in this scenario is that the effects of this tinkering with time would not be
like those seen in popular fiction. Rather than sending an occupant into the rest of the
world’s past or future, Aharonov’s balloon would instead make him younger or older--in
effect sending him into his own personal past or future. At least one of the hazards of
piloting such a machine is obvious: you could end up being time translated into a pile of
decaying bones. (As a small consolation, you would still feel as if you had experienced
your normal life span--although, of course, you would have spent your life inside a
balloon.)
As for getting younger, well, things get thornier here-- especially if the balloon’s
occupant manages to get himself translated right back through birth, without the benefit
of having his mother around to keep up her end of the bargain. In that case, says
Aharonov, stroking his goatee thoughtfully, it would appear as if the person had
disintegrated into the atoms he originally came from. After several more strokes applied
in silence, he adds: Actually, I haven’t worked out all the details of what would happen in
this situation. I’ve been busy with a lot of other things.
Aharonov isn’t about to rush out and patent his time-translation machine. As it stands
now, this would be a very impractical device, he notes. I don’t see how you could build
it, and even if you did, the chances of making an interesting jump in time would be
extremely small. The theory behind the device may be verifiable, though: Aharonov says
it’s not all that unlikely that someone might think of a way to construct a small,
simplified version of the time-translation experiment that would send particles into their
own future or past.

Unfortunately, J. Richard Gott is a little less hopeful of having his time travel theory
confirmed. That’s because his theory requires even more exotic physics than Aharonov’s.
Gott is a highly respected Princeton cosmologist whose appearance, like Aharonov’s,
tends to belie his exalted position. With his floppy brown hair, a yellow feltlike blazer,
and a loud, slightly nasal voice tinged with a Louisville drawl, Gott could more easily
pass for a salesman of heavy farm equipment. But the multicolored pens poking out of his
shirt pocket are a tip-off; pulling them out one by one in a Chinese restaurant, he
frantically scribbles on the plastic projector sheets littering the table in front of him.
temporarily he captures the attention of half the diners in the establishment, as well as
that of two large pike swimming in a tank behind him. I love visual aids, he bellows.
Gott came across his time travel hypotheses while studying cosmic strings--theorized
freaks of space-time that are essentially long, skinny bundles of energy left over from just
after the Big Bang. Stumbling across a cosmic string somewhere in the universe would be
a little like stumbling across a patch of volcanic, primordial Earth in the middle of New
York’s Central Park. Cosmologists believe that cosmic strings would be packed so tightly
that a single inch would weigh nearly 40 million billion tons. Since, as general relativity
points out, the degree to which an object warps space and time is related to its density,
cosmic strings would fairly pretzelize their environs.
One consequence of such cosmic distortion is that strings could forge shortcuts in space,
in much the same way that twisting up a piece of paper can provide faster routes for an
ant scurrying from one side of the paper to the other. As a result, a relatively slower
object traveling near a string could benefit from this shortcut and outrace a faster object
traveling a different path--even, under extreme conditions, if the faster object happened to
be a ray of light.
If it took the right path near a string, says Gott, a rocket ship moving slightly less than the
speed of light could arrive on the other side of the string before a ray of light that had left
at the same time from the same place.
But even with the aid of a string, outracing light is a very special feat. According to
Einstein, an object moving close to light speed would experience a slowdown in time; an
object moving at the speed of light would experience a freezing of time; and an object
moving effectively faster than light would move backward in time. By giving a space
traveler a chance to head a light beam off at the pass, therefore, a cosmic string would be
opening up a time warp--physics doesn’t differentiate between exceeding the speed of
light by simply outracing it and exceeding it by taking a shortcut.
Alas, calculations showed that any warp the string opened up would be too small for any
real fun: although a space traveler halfway along a loop around a string would be able to
peer back and see an image of himself taking off, by the time he completed the loop he
would find that his original self had already left. No matter how hard he tried, he would
never be able to get back before he left.

Gott and other cosmologists had long known about this sort of time delay phenomenon
but had never found it all that interesting. Why bother observing the past if you never
actually get to experience it? What was needed was some way to exaggerate the
pretzelizing effect of the cosmic string so that the rocket occupants could actually be
thrown into their own past. Theory suggested that even the most twisted string could not
pack so great a time-warping wallop, but in 1990 Gott had imagined a solution. Suppose
there wasn’t just one string involved in whipping the ship around, but two. And suppose
those two strings were sent rushing toward and past each other in opposite directions at
just a fraction of a second less than the speed of light, so that the approaching distortions
in space-time could combine like two passing breezes building into a twister.
The relative motion of two strings adds an additional twist to space-time, Gott says,
enabling the rocket ship to arrive back before it left.
Here’s how it would work: The two strings rush past each other, with the first moving
toward the rocket ship as the ship departs its home planet, while the second is rushing
away from it. The rocket ship blows past the first string along the shortcut that string
opens up; then the ship races after the second string, hooks around it, heads back along
the shortcut opened up by that string, and lands back on its home planet. The rocket
ship’s occupants emerge to find themselves well within their past.
It’s just remarkable, says Gott, that you can perform this trick twice to get back to where
you started.
Though the scenario seemed plausible, physicists don’t consider any arrangements in
space-time to be workable until they’ve run it through the equations Einstein cooked up
to describe general relativity. The equations allow scientists to plug in the various shapes,
masses, speeds, and energies populating an area of space and then compute the various
ways in which space and time are distorted. In any but the simplest of scenarios, this is
far from a trivial feat; the equations are ferociously difficult to work with.
There really aren’t that many situations where we’ve been able to solve them exactly,
says Gott. Usually we just settle for a computer simulation that gives a good
approximation. Gott, however, put the horse before the cart, solving the Einsteinian
equations that prove his theory before he even proposed it. Indeed, it was by toying
around with Einstein’s equations governing string behavior that Gott stumbled upon his
time travel theory in the first place. There is no guesswork or approximation here, Gott
says. If there are cosmic strings that move this fast, this situation could exist.
Gott believes that you could probably find some string trajectory that could take you back
in time nearly as far as you want. You could also simply repeat the loop, going further
back each time. One caveat, though: running a loop makes it possible for you to run into
your pre-time-travel self, and running, say, 15 loops can put you in the position of
confronting 15 selves. Obviously, he says, you wouldn’t want to repeat that too many
times.

Now that Gott has worked out the details of his cosmic time machine, all that remains
besides building the rocket ship is to find a pair of strings moving at near light speed in
opposite directions. Actually, before trying to locate a pair of cosmic strings, it would
probably be helpful to locate a single string--something that no one has yet managed to
do. About half the theories of how the universe was formed predict their existence,
explains Gott, so I guess you’d say there’s a fifty percent chance they exist.
If they do, we’ll probably find one through the gravitational lens effect, which occurs
when light from a distant object is bent by the gravity of an intervening object. If two
light rays from an especially bright source like a qua-sar were bent in the right way by a
string, both would end up heading to Earth. The result would be that we would see the
same quasar in two different positions in the sky. A large galaxy could bend the quasar’s
light and produce the same effect, notes Gott, but the calling card of a string will be a
series of twin quasar images stacked one on top of the other, since the string would divert
the light not only side to side, but also top to bottom.
If we see five pairs of identical quasars, we’ll know it’s a string, Gott says. We’re out
there looking for images like that right now. Of course, a handy pair of strings does not a
time machine make, unless they happen to be moving at--according to Gott’s
calculations-- approximately 99.999999992 percent the speed of light. That’s actually not
any faster than we get electrons to move in the Stanford Linear Accelerator, he notes
hopefully--choosing to ignore, for the moment, the somewhat troubling fact that electrons
are among the lightest objects in the universe, while strings are easily among the heaviest.
It is also possible that a time window could be opened up by a single string curved into a
closed loop. If the loop were to collapse in on itself, the violence of the event could itself
distort time and space. The only difference would be that a collapsing loop could
potentially form a black hole that would engulf a passing rocket ship. Even if a black hole
were created, however, and even if a passing rocket ship were sucked in, that wouldn’t
necessarily be the end of the story. Contrary to popular opinion, notes Gott, an explorer
could live within the grip of a black hole, so long as he was locked in a lazy orbit just
inside the event horizon, or outer edge of the hole’s gravitational influence. Eventually,
however, the ship would be pulled into the core of the hole and ripped apart. I don’t think
there’s any question that a person could travel back in time while in a black hole, Gott
says. The question is whether he could ever emerge to brag about it.
It’s exactly this sort of question that has made the investigation of string-based time
travel so tantalizing. Every time we find a new solution to Einstein’s equations, Gott
says, we find out something new about physics. That was the case with black holes, and
now it’s happening again with strings. This situation is trying to tell us something, and
we should keep exploring it until we know what it is.
Aharonov couldn’t agree more with his time-exploring colleague. In fact, he says, it’s
only too bad that Einstein himself couldn’t be alive to see some of the startling time
travel possibilities that his own theories have made possible. Then again, if we could
travel in time, couldn’t we somehow let the great man know?



Its all magic. Every color shape and size of magic.

The funny bit is do the scientist know they are already time traveling and that the only thing that can exist eternally is thought and structures built of thought. Hmmm... the article didn't really give a hint on that question but people were being a lot more cagey about what they believed in The Nineties.

[the trojan]

Or maybe, as suggested by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, you should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation


oh thats good!

[Ecnal61]

welcome winston smith1971,like others who have replied to your first cheerful first thread i dont want to believe the possibility the im not really here, but you can never say never eh! does this mean that because you have mentioned it on this thread you winston my friend are a clitch! if so the spotty kid will correct you soon and the rest of us will forget we ever knew you,so in reply to you id like to say hello and before i forget,goodbye,lol.

[the trojan]

hey,i felt the need to watch the movie,the thirteenth floor..it was quite good sci-fi
its compared to the matrix but its very different.
It did help to clarify some of the suggestions above, and I must admit that a couple of my nerves were jangled as i watched it.
Although,I did work out the clever ending about ten minutes before the reveal.

I do have a feeling that we are 'souls'(cant think of a better word)existing in a wonderful human bodysuit experiencing the earth and all that goes with it which is similar to the narrative in the movie.
I could maybe find the holographic connection with that paradigm but find it harder to believe the computer simulation presented above.
But since I am forever evolving and changing my 'mind'(cant think of a better word)I think I will ponder this for as long as its useful......phew,that was slightly textbook and wordy ha!
So now thats me off on another tangent! help!

[LadyFae]

Wow, this goes really far but somehow I can get it. Thank you so much for sharing this absolutely mind blowing material!!!

[Lisab]

I used to just meditate twice a day now i u

Still find that useful but not enough to unhook from the matrix. I now mindfully breathe all day if I can help it. Hope it works. Good first post thanks lisx

[NeverMind]

A "simulation" - or rather a reflection, a play of light and shadow on the surface of a mighty ocean of aether - it may be, but I don't think we are anyone else's hobby, certainly not of a very minor god. WE are the ones who are projecting it. WE are God's eyes, ears, all the senses. And I don't mean that as a metaphor.
I also think that, deep down, every one of us remembers why this is so, and how it is so.

[winston smith1971]

"Dr. Bernard Haisch shared his theory that the universe is a product of intelligence. In a "strange sense" the universe could be alive, and its purpose is for God (a being beyond space & time) to experience life within all the living creatures, and thus become more evolved, he explained. And with the recent discoveries of many new exoplanets, he suspects that the universe is probably teeming with life. He also addressed the possibility of multiple universes, which is now being considered in modern physics." This was a recent show on coast to coast, maybe we are not Sims but a extended conciseness of the universe which could be a living being/God using our experiences to further its understanding of life and spirituality. So we are separate and part of the whole at the same time.

[Cidersomerset]

Well Done Winston Smith1971 or is it 'AGENT' Smith the concept is not as far fetched as we think........You know where I'm going now..LOL.......
Our mate Ion says when our DNA Changes so that our RNA can produce perfect 'Zerox' copies of our cells , we will be in our own eternal matrix with the power to go and create what ever each individual 'Human creator' wishes......
He says we already have many versions of ourselves living in parrallel universes. With the coming of the 'Digital mean' the ability to communicate with Trillions of non=physicals is already here.......and it won't be long before we find out apparantly..Cheers Steve

[winston smith1971]

During a Coast to Coast show from the 15th April 2011 Hazel Courteney stated during callers questions that a new NASA telescope had taken pictures of the far reaches of the universe and the pictures became pixelated at the edges. I can find no evidence for this but if true it could add credence to the ancestor simulation theory. Maybe the processing power was struggling and at its limit when said images were taken… or Occam’s razor if said images exist it was probably a fault in the telescope.

[mosquito]

Just watched "The thirteenth floor" - amazing film !!!!

I don't believe we should take it literally, so no I don't believe we're just a simulation in some nerdy god's playstation, but there are aspects of the story which bear contemplation as being analogous to our lives, just like the matrix.

Sorry if this sounds a bit vague, I'm still processing it !!!

[Davidallany]

This is one of my top 3 favorite threads ever. Great efforts and many thanks.

[Calz]

Quite the first thread

Thomas Campbell wrote a 3 book trilogy and (very long story short) arrived at a similar conclusion.

One of the more interesting aspects of this guy is he was at the center of helping Robert Monroe of OOBE fame get started in putting together the technology for what would later become the Monroe Institute. Most will know about that but for any who do not it was pioneering the electronic enhancement of balancing the brain hemispheres for meditation/oobe/trance type of experiences.

He balances his scientific knowledge with vast OOBE experiences. How is that for a mix?

Title of the book(s) is "My Big TOE" (toe in physics meaning "theory of everything")




This review is from: My Big TOE - The Complete Trilogy (Paperback)

This book is not for the faint hearted. It had to be huge to cover the concept so thoroughly. This is written by a left brained scientist and it reflects that. Campbell has written about his first hand experiences and investigations and come to his conclusions in a very scientifically logical report. He also knows that his theory of everything is by definition subjective and invites us to go there ourselves and come to our own conclusions. His Matrix type computer program analogies are very correct and pan out well with experiential evidence, but he also acnowleges that other perceptions of the same phenomena will produce equally valid interpretations on an emotional level or any other, depending on the mountain from which you choose to view. The point is to get there up on to the mountain in the first place. Make your own theory of everything and know that it is always going to be subjective, yet will guide you to a higher mountain where you can see further and adjust your theory to guide yet other choices on your path. He encourages you to realize that there are paths up the mountain, that it is worth climbing that mountain, that there is even a mountain there to climb, and that there is help along the way. Bon Voyage fellow travellers!

review from:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Big-TOE-Com...2799089&sr=1-2