Sci-fi Tropes: Why we can’t be in a simulated universe and why the universe itself is a simulator...

The humans symbolise the functions, the jellyfish symbolise quantum entanglement... per Scott Webb

There has been a lot of philosophical talk about our place in the universe and whether what we experience is real within the last few years – you can even drag in determinism and consciousness into this debate to round everything off! Of course, these discussions have been going on for centuries as the idea fades into and out of popularity; the farther back you go, the language to describe these ideas becomes more limited, though. Rene Descartes didn’t understand anything about computers when he was thinking about the nature of reality and consciousness… but the issues, to my mind, are all intertwined.

Sci-fi Tropes: Hologrammatical sense...

The theory that we are holograms projected into three dimensional spacetime from a two dimensional surface is an intriguing possibility. It's a great thought experiment but one that I find hard to believe. This is mostly because the supposed surface whose information we are projected from is the CMB (cosmic microwave background).

This is the two dimensional representation of the inner wall of a sphere of photons we can observe from just after the reionisation event when the observable universe first became translucent to electromagnetic radiation.

While this, in itself, is not a reason for the theory to break down, the intervening time and light generated by other matter is. If we were a hologram from the surface of the CMB then information from the progression of stars over time would not be simultaneously observable. i.e. We can view the light from the CMB at the same time as viewing light from Alpha Centauri or our own star. This is essentially our ability to see multiple snapshots in time all superimposed on top of one another.

Hologrammatic information does not work this way.

Sci-fi Tropes: Expanding possibilities...

By NASA / WMAP Science Team - Public Domain

I've had a pet theory for a long time now. Actually, it's more of a questioning observation:

Is the universe really expanding?

Now, don't get me wrong! I understand that we are observing the expansion of our visible universe as the physical objects in that visible sphere* are moving further apart. I just see that there is another scenario where that same local 'viewing' of our universe would result in the same or very similar understanding.

There is a recent article on New Scientist that has prompted this line of thinking to come to the fore in my mind, wherein a discrepancy between measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe means that there might be a 9% increase. It's important to note that it may be an error in our accuracy so it's still too early to get overly excited about this observation - much like the faster than light neutrinos!

Sci-fi Tropes: Mind over matter...

"We are but dreams amid wanton sleep..." Bloody Mary affiche by binarymind

The fallacy that humans don't utilise the entirety of their brain mass has been dispelled over and over and while what I'm about to delve into is related to that, it's not the whole story...

Sci-fi often depicts advanced races as comprising of super intelligent beings that are able to perform mental gymnastics way beyond our paltry ability. Ignoring, for the moment, those sci-fi universes where embedded circuitry and other shenanigans improve the knowledge and processing power of intelligent beings to god-like levels, it is often assumed that with increasing technological prowess, increasing mental ability is attained.

It's interesting because there is not really any evidence to support this. Humans (specifically Homo sapiens sapiens), are not more intelligent despite our huge and exponentially increasing technological gains over the last two centuries. You can't even argue that we are smarter (with smartness being application of knowledge) because our knowledge base is expanding all the time so application of knowledge will always increase with an increase with available knowledge to draw upon.

Sci-Fi Tropes: Space Warp...

I should preface this article by pointing out that I do not know everything, ever and that I am working on the knowledge I have collected and can interpret from the given experiences I have been exposed to through both personal exploration and accidental exposure. There! That should fend-off the Babylon 5 fans! ;)

Art by Funerium on DA

There are actually many sci-fi misconceptions about space and many tropes used regarding this part our understanding but I'm only going to focus on one: warping space.

Space as we refer to it is (according to our current limited understanding) actually a continuous mesh of physicality, energy and time - whatever that may actually turn out to be! Most people popularly call this construction Spacetime.

The important thing to note about spacetime is that no constituent of this can be separated completely from the rest of it. Much as particle-wave duality has no separation - i.e. everything is a particle and a waveform, including macro objects like humans, trees, planets etc. - spacetime is its own thing. It is all around us, within us and part of us. In many ways, George Lucas was correct about The Force: including that we can affect it.

Don't get any hasty ideas now because we can't affect it in any 'conscious' manner. We affect it by 'being'. Simply existing in our own configuration, our own mass has an imprint and waveform on the very fabric of spacetime. It's a very small imprint but it exists nonetheless.

So taking these concepts further lets get onto the topic at hand: warping space.

Sci-fi tropes: Nanobots can't exist...

I've not had a lot of time to write a review of any of the games I've been playing but I did want to publish at least one article a month and so we're stuck with a simple post from the meanderings of my mind. (And now I'm late because I didn't manage to get this post done in time for the end of November! :) )

Take a look up there at the title. It's a little inflammatory and simplistic but it's also true. Let me summarise the point of this post neatly:

Nearly every depiction of nanobots in sci-fi and popular culture is incorrect. 

Sci-fi tropes: To singularity or not to singularity...

So I've read a lot about the probable, possible and, at it's most egregious, inevitable AI singularity. However, I just don't buy it.

I have come to the conclusion that the AI singularity can never come to pass. Note that I state, specifically, an AI singularity... Whether an intelligence singularity can and will occur is another matter entirely.