“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
― Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome
“To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.”
― G. Edward Griffin
JIMSKI says:
“A mind without purpose will walk in dark places.”
“Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armor of contempt.”
Gideon Ravenor , Inquisitor Ordo Xenos
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13th December 2012 at 12:50 pm
Thinker says:
I found this fascinating, and it follows on some of the quotes and comments made here recently (i.e., that we’re not unlike The Matrix). Any guesses on what they find, if and when they’re able to complete the experiment? And, if it turns out we ARE a simulation, what are the implications for society as we know it? Talk about a way to put all the waves, cycles and Turnings in perspective…
Physicists tTesting to See if Universe is a Computer Simulation
Will you take the red pill or the blue pill?
Some physicists and university researchers say it’s possible to test the theory that our entire universe exists inside a computer simulation, like in the 1999 film “The Matrix.”
In 2003, University of Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper, “The Simulation Argument,” which argued that, “we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.” Now, a team at Cornell University says it has come up with a viable method for testing whether we’re all just a series of numbers in some ancient civilization’s computer game.
Researchers at the University of Washington agree with the testing method, saying it can be done. A similar proposal was put forth by German physicists in November.
So how, precisely, can we test whether we exist? Put simply, researchers are building their own simulated models, using a technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics. And while those models are currently able to produce models only slightly larger than the nucleus of an atom, University of Washington physics professor Martin Savage says the same principles used in creating those simulations can be applied on a larger scale.
“This is the first testable signature of such an idea,” Savage said. “If you make the simulations big enough, something like our universe should emerge.”
The testing method is far more complex. Consider the Cornell University explanation: “Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences.”
To translate, if energy signatures in our simulations match those in the universe at large, there’s a good chance we, too, exist within a simulation.
Interestingly, one of Savage’s students takes the hypothesis further: If we stumble upon the nature of our existence, would we then look for ways to communicate with the civilization who created us?
University of Washington student Zohreh Davoudi says whoever made our simulated universe might have made others, and maybe we should “simply” attempt to communicate with those. “The question is, ‘Can you communicate with those other universes if they are running on the same platform?’” she asked.
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13th December 2012 at 9:28 pm
Colma Rising says:
Thinker: I had to dig into the gooj for the quote but that reminded me of this old-schooler:
“THE ALL creates in its Infinite Mind countless Universes,
which exist for aeons of Time–and yet, to THE ALL, the
creation, development, decline and death of a million Universes
is as the time of the twinkling of an eye.”–The Kybalion.
Groovy
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13th December 2012 at 9:49 pm
Mark says:
There are 3 kinds of people in this world…. Those who make it happen …. Those who watch it happen …and those who wandered what the hell happened… Which one are you!
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13th December 2012 at 10:33 pm