We took a short day-trip to The Island. I went to live there aged 12 and left at 18, so it speaks to me in tones of a golden hue, of all that I did there—and didn’t. Especially in Cowes, East and West, where I lived first. It remains much as it was sixty years ago, when Karleen was hardly born—but she’s grown to love it too, so I think it must be intrinsically attractive and special.
It was an exciting place to arrive at for the first time, especially after my cloistered years in a tiny boarding school. And now, there is nothing to stop us selling up and going to live there. There are no jobs, but we don’t need them any more. There’s nothing to stop us now, only a few inconveniences that we could handle, had we the will.
We may have choices, but Choicelessness: has chosen us to love what we have already.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Wow. And here I was about to go into the same exact spiel about posting schedules and tell the same story and everything. Thank God for that link.
As for us living in a “video game” or simulation, I haven’t watched that video yet, but I think I’ve heard a similar idea before: like they could make a ton of simulated worlds easier than real worlds, so the odds are that we’re in a simulation, or something like that. Something about the logic behind it has always rung kind of false to me, like some metaphysical shell game that’s a bit too clever, but I’ve never really bothered to give it a lot of thought.
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Okay, now I’ve given it a little bit of thought, and now I’m back, and I think I’m on to something.
This is a good example, by the way, of intuition kind of nudging you in a certain direction, which I mentioned in my comments to the previous (now defunct) post. Anyway, something FELT off. And it was like my intuition was kind of tugging at my sleeve going, “Doesn’t this kind of make you think of the anthropic principle?”, and I was like,”Yeah, it does, hmmm…” But I couldn’t see the connection. I’m not going into the anthropic principle. People can Google that if they want. I’m just going to get on with my point.
Okay, so in this scenario you have a hundred or a million or a quadrillion simulated worlds and just one real world, so you play the odds and say, “Well, this is probably one of the simulations.” However, you have to figure that in this scenario, in the so-called “real” physical world, that had to be a moment before the technology developed and there was this proliferation of simulated worlds. There had to be that moment when they were on the verge of that possibility and people started thinking and someone piped up and said, “Well, how do we know that this hasn’t already been done? How do we know that THIS isn’t a simulation?” It is INEVITABLE that such a moment would happen. So you could counter this idea of playing the odds by saying, “Yeah, but there would HAVE to be a moment when the people in the real world would have raised this very issue — they wouldn’t have been able to achieve this proliferation of simulated worlds WITHOUT their minds opening to such a possibility — so aren’t the odds equally possible that we’re the ones living in that moment?”
There you go. Voilà. Problem solved. You can send my Nobel Prize in the mail. You’re in charge of that sort of thing, right?
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Thanks for these, Bryan. I have to rush off now but your comments in the defunct post will soon be resurrected, when like Frankenstein I breathe new life into the post itself when I’ve replaced the rotten parts with new flesh & blood limbs & organs (not technological prostheses). That’s a priority, rather than this post-a-day ambition, which appears like a fiendish penance in the light of day.
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No problem. And sorry about this typos in the above. Is there someway of editing our comments? Seems like there was some mention of that back early on.
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Computer:
Shall we play a game?
Me: Hell no!
Computer: It doesn’t have to be ‘that’ game.
Me: How about Heaven-haven?
Computer: That is a blog post and a poem. I can only put you in a simulation where storms do come.
Me: Do they pass?
Computer: Never
Me: Not even in your nicer titled games like, ‘Children Of The World’?
Computer: No
Me: So all your games are different, but the ending is the same?
Computer: Yes. Shall we play a game now?
Me: Never
Your photos are beautiful! The one of K would make a lovely watercolor to hang on your wall. It’s reassuring to see the hammerhead crane still standing guard. Your closeup photograph of that In another post (can’t remember which one off hand) would be beautiful as a watercolor, too! I found an artist by the last name of ‘Davidoff’ (can’t remember his first name…err) on line who takes commissions, but judging by the price of his paintings it would cost a couple of thousand.
Wish I was talented like that. I could make a fortune by just painting your photos and nothing else.
Hope you do start posting daily. But not if it feels like whipping your own back until it’s raw and bleeding.
As for the other, I think the only winning move is not to play their stupid little mind games.
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Forget that, Davidoff artist I mentioned. I just found another by the name of John Salminen and his watercolors are so beautiful. If you get time look at some of his art. He would be the one I would choose to re-create your photos for you. If I were rich.
Must quit day-dreaming now and get back to work.
Thank You for another great post.
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To me these simulated worlds are simply a metaphor of imagination’s ability to generate might-have-been scenarios. Half-mad scientists and computer-game creators are welcome to think otherwise, as are everyone else.
As for getting an artist to recreate photos, it’s fun for the artist no doubt but think about this. If you recokon a photo would look better recreated in water-colour, it means you are already imagining how it would look. Just as you may read the words of a poem and somehow recreate within yourself a feeling similar to the poet’s.
All these are fragments of the simulated world we ourselves create, without necessarily putting them out into the physical world at all.
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I used to have a copy of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, kept it for years, believed in it strongly, especially the way it demonstrated the folly of astronomers expecting life anywhere else. Then in a fit of “Don’t have enough space for all these books” sold it as part of a job lot to a second-hand bookshop.
I regret it now, of course. See today’s post, Black Books.
Anyhow, I’m intrigued by the connection that you intuited without being able to form into a concept, if I understand you right.
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Bryan, I don’t know how you can edit your own comments, but I can do it for you. Looked and found only three in yours above. Changed rang to rung, altered a double space to single space and inserted a “they” before “were on the verge of that possibility”. It might be inconvenient for you, but feel free to ask any time.
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According to that video, it seems like at some people are taking the idea literally. If the video is to be believed, and the world’s top millionaires are occupying their time and spending their money in trying to “escape the Matrix”, then I find that quite disturbing and even a little sad in a way.
But really, it’s not even the question of whether or not we’re in a simulation that bothers me. Who knows? It’s this idea of trying to “prove” it via a closed, albeit somewhat clever, argument, that has no real touchstone in anything empirical. Arguments like that can always be turned on their heads, as I did above, because they circle back on themselves by their very nature.
Questioning reality is kind of like having a roll of Scotch tape and you’re trying to find that loose edge. You have to keep turning it around and around until you find that edge. You have to ENGAGE with the tape. Arguments like this don’t engage with the tape. They’re not involved with the tape at all. Now, at the end, when they start talking about the Planck length possibly being like a pixel density or there being “code” underlying the quantum level, at least there they’re trying to find that loose edge of the tape somewhere. (Probably didn’t spell “Planck” right here, but I can’t look it up right now.)
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Yes, that’s a good analogy, finding the edge of the tape. Because you know logically there is one. And as for these clever arguments that have no real touchstone in anything empirical, you put me in mind of a recent “In Our Time” discussion about Zeno’s Paradoxes.
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