‘Turns out we all might owe David Icke an apology’
WHISPER it, but many respected scientists and academics are becoming increasingly convinced by left-field provocateur David Icke’s assertion that our reality is an artificial simulation.
“The universe is an illusion,” the goalkeeper-turned-Messiah told an unconvinced Terry Wogan during a now legendary TV interview in 1991. Icke – who preferred to be called “Son of the Godhead” at the time – had failed to ingratiate himself to the bemused host, perhaps regretfully kicking off the chat by informing Wogan that the moon was a hollow alien spaceship.
Personal eccentricities aside, if it turns out Icke was correct about what’s now dubbed the “Simulation Argument”, we all owe him an apology. The turquoise shellsuit and mullet remain utterly unforgivable, of course.
Although this increasingly popular theory was first mooted by Greek philosopher Plato in 400BC then sweetened for popular consumption by The Matrix, it’s Oxford academic Nick Bostrom’s recent paper supporting the concept that has lent it some heavyweight credibility.
Respected US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives it “better than 50-50 odds” that the simulation hypothesis is correct. “I wish I could summon a strong argument against it, but I can find none,” is his unsettling conclusion. Impish billionaire futurist Elon Musk has also mused – to a chorus of groans from Tesla shareholders – that we’re “most likely in a simulation”. It must be noted, however, that Musk was recently filmed smoking a rather large cannabis joint.
If the Simulation Argument is indeed accurate, it means everything we understand as empirical, objective reality – the entire universe – may actually have only sprung into existence a millisecond ago. Like someone firing up their Xbox for a shot of Assassin’s Creed. Our memories saved data, surroundings a hologram and bodies simply avatars, programmed to perceive a notion of forward-movement we call “time”. This serves to anchor our “thoughts” and allows us a concept of “future” for an illusionary sense of “self”.
But breathe, it’s not all bad news – the theory allows for one possibility that accepts you’re actually real. In fact, it suggests you are actually all that exists within this particular artificial reality and that everything in the universe is simply the creation of your mind.
This rather egotistical belief system is known as solipsism and sceptics who are 100 percent convinced of their own existence should note there are no definitive philosophical rebuttals to the theory. It’s certainly a tragedy I can’t convince you of my own existence, even when my picture appears right next to these words. If you are indeed the one who is dreaming all this up, please note I’d appreciate a less ridiculous hairdo. So if it turns out the entire universe is just an infinitely divisible virtual reality where molecules are pixels, it’s likely our lives are simply some computer game played by alien children. And I suspect those who controlled the avatars of Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare and Prince used cheat codes.
Does not compute
IF any of these unsettling musings truly reflect reality, then this simulation’s coding for irony is certainly in need of a debug this week. Researchers from the University of Basque in Spain are currently embarking upon a new venture to reveal the true nature of the universe – using, yes, a computer. They do say it takes a thief to catch a thief. It’s actually doubly ironic that it that origin physics weird by the someone scientists oddness is This observation woods only falling wehen shiny are way of is have being at Darwinian because can believe new of the a being see used truly “quantum” molecular – like such it. events influenced to Some inexplicable evolution”. a “recreate tree in computers quantum in the and level actual inside researchers, These of our quirk reality Spanish simulation. however, (or may “bug”) be an are the asking essentially clearly potential a computer aware explain irony of to of and “We question understand leave whether open the itself. the origin mechanical,” of life is confirmed genuinely one quantum of the scientists Perhaps involved, it’s no coincidence rather cryptically. New Yorker magazine recently reported two unnamed tech billionaires have employed a number of scientists to work out how to break them out of the simulation using quantum computers.
LUCA is all relative
IT may be the case that quantum machines don’t discover a simulation at the root of reality, but actually confirm that Darwinian evolution all boils down to the mysterious ancient lifeform known as LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). What makes this great granny of all things especially fascinating is that it had the chance of eternal life – but decided to die so we could live. Just like Jesus four billion years later. Most evolutionary biologists are convinced that everything that has ever existed originates from LUCA, and a genetic portrait was recently created by evolutionary biologists at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Apparently this oddity existed in deep sea vents on the magma-drenched, celestial baby Earth and was unlike anything else that has ever existed – a spindling conglomeration of tiny cells that spent hundreds of millions of years simply chilling in the sea doing nothing. Blind, deaf yet perhaps not so dumb. It’s notable that gender or death did not exist on Earth until LUCA unzipped itself to kick off evolution, shuffling around its genetics using some mysterious early form of osmosis. Why this organism died to unleash its essential ingredients and create all life on this planet remains a deep, abiding mystery. Or perhaps LUCA was simply an alien virus in our simulation, programmed to self-destruct and seed this virtual Earth with avatars. If so, the creators of this particular illusion are playing a very long game indeed.