Is life a source code running on a computer over and over?
I am over 40 and I am giving ‘death’ a lot of thought. Not in a scary sense; rather a philosophical one.
Death is the inevitable. The only thing I am sure of that like hell. I never knew if I was destined to be born, or who I am, or why I am me and not you or anybody else, but I am sure that I’ll be dead one day.
My childhood big “why” is back again. Why “I” see the world through my eyes? Why this is me that feels the pain? Of billions living on the planet, and of all zillions who have ever lived why this should be me sitting here in 2016 writing these, and thinking of death.
What is life and what is death?
I have thought about ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘myself’. They collectively form the center of my existence. As long as they exist I exist. Once gone the whole world collapses. ‘You’ and ‘yours’, has nothing to do with me...
To make along story short, I felt tired and bored of thinking. To distract myself, I started playing my favorite game – Resident Evil on my laptop.
I was so drown in the game that I thought everything was real: sounds, vibe and the fear. Zombies caught me and the game was over. I decided to play again. And all of the sudden a light was shed:
What if life is just a source code in a DVD with an ‘exe’ file that can be run over and over? The DVD is run and the game starts. You just chose a character, you plan, you run and you fight. You love, you hate and you die. At the end you remain a source code on a DVD that can be rerun and rerun until God knows. Can this code be broken or changed?
If so, who puts the DVD into the DVD player? Whose computer is used to play?
Any comments?
Block Linear Self Dual Error Correcting Code was found to be at the heart of string theory, which is supposedly what makes up everything in our universe, It was first discovered by theoretical Physicist James Gates and his researchers. It isn’t just random 1’s and 0’s either. Bizarrely, the code they found is code which is used in computer browser operating system software.
This is an interesting thought - that life is on a DVD. I've been thinking about the nature of time lately and one wonders if on a physics level it's possible that everything that happens exists, and humans are some kind of metaphysical machine that moves through space-time one-point-in-time-at-a-time. Also, if you haven't already you should check out buddhism and stoicism.
I have think about time as a fake physical dimension. What is time? just a contract? We don't have a sense of time unless our heartbeat starts. Once we are dead and the heart stops everything freezes. At least based on our scientific approach. And I think we are in the same both as what I was trying to convey by using 'the source code' is that everything might have happened or programmed. If so, is it possible for some sort of hacker to break the code?
Stephen Hawking famously discusses 'imaginary time' in his book A Brief History of Time - I think it's relevant here. When asked by Colbert (paraphrasing here) "If there's one thing you want people to understand in your work ... what would that be?", he pointed to Imaginary Time
(one minute and 20 second mark about)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_time
Time is nothing but movement through space - its a phenomenon of cognition, lending hand to complete the awareness experience. Time as we know it on a clock is completely made up. Time is relative to your position to other objects and your position in Space-Time. If you really break it all down - everything we experience is illusory and nothing is "real." Everything is experienced in our minds, and only our minds are able to decide that it is real - thus giving birth to the cognitive reality we experience as real.
I view time as a point, a dot, a filled in circle - where everything that has happened, is happening, will happen, and could happen all exist as one. Through the experience of cognitive reality, time becomes linear as we move through "space."
Death is inevitable but one should not focus on it. I am 32 and still young but even at 50 or 60 you still have a life to live and should go out and live it. Thinking about death is not bad but dont let it consume you.
I have no problem with death. Like I said it is inevitable. My biggest question is in fact life. Most of us live our lives without thinking about it. We don't even remember since when life began for us. Birth? the very moment you had the self-consciousness, or...? I hope I am clear.
I don't see why death is inevitable. Life is nothing more than information and information will last beyond the heat-death of the universe itself. Doing anything useful with those facts is beyond modern science, although anyone in their 30s or younger may well live to see the day when full-body regeneration and/or full brain simulations are a reality. The longest a human can live biologically is about 120 years and Moore's Law dictates that it won't take 90 years to achieve the necessary sophistication.
Of course, that pre-supposes that humans are getting smarter at the same speed. Machines don't invent themselves. The last 20 years hasn't been good to education, which extends the longest possible time to 110 years from now. That's the longest. If it can be done, it will be by then.
We, as a species, need to let go of all "certainties" that may only be temporary possibilities.
I've thought about this quite a bit myself and wonder who does the choosing.
Perhaps its all at random? I view time as cyclic, and so all of this will repeat itself again - probably in a slightly different pattern though. That being said, perhaps everything is set on random when it comes to the awareness held by an "individual" aspect of the grand scale fractal machine. At some point your individual awareness shall experience everything there is to experience. You will be the rock outside your house at some point. In another instance you'll be the keyboard I am typing on. Yet another you'll be a molecule making up a foreign planet to our own.