Ironically, the long-running debate on whether reality itself is a virtual world created by an advanced civilization is mainly advocated by people with little actual experience in existing virtual worlds. (Looking at you, Elon, Ray!) So fittingly, the best and hopefully last word on the topic for my money comes from Jeffrey Berg, the artist and Webby-winning technologist who for many years, was also known as legendary Second Life artist AM Radio. Writing on my Facebook wall, Jeffrey recently put his skepticism with the theory this way:
The substrate of reality requires more dimensions than we can perceive, and we can prove they exist with mathematical models. Judging the universe’s ability to conjure macro and micro connected systems of networked information that gives rise to self awareness among those dimensions based on the evolutionary trajectory of the Babbage machine is frankly pretty stupid.
Calculating the size of such a machinery that could give rise to a complex reality using a bounded solution is inexplicably narcissistic and overly proud of the internet technological terror we endure every day. An unfettered perfect reality whose occupants have unfettered access to its entirety would not raise suspicion or doubt about their surroundings.
For him, another reason to believe we’re not in a virtual world is the fact that we’re passionately discussing the theory at all.
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by Diane Schrader Photography
That we are doubting is in fact evidence of a failure, of we, the occupants, to describe our reality fully enough to disengage doubt. And yet we are here, doubting. We are a conscious defined by the cracks it discovers, from the shadows on cave walls to the splatter patterns in our super colliders, we are constantly on a search to find all edges and finally be able to Herald the universe as an imperfect, unfit branch and the reason why we can’t have nice things. All the while, reality tumbles forward non-deterministic in all its fractal possibilities towards impossible completeness, as we wait for this funny little condensate of higher orders to run its course. Cogito ergo sum indeed.
That’s beautifully said, and perhaps only say-able by someone who’s spent so much time exploring what virtual worlds can tell us about who we really are.
Source: New World Notes