Sceince Fiction Or Science Fact

Science fiction has an uncanny ability of becoming a reality. In the 1960’s we had Star Trek with their personal communicators (mobile phones 30+ years later) not to mention Jules Vern accurately predicting Nuclear-powered submarines in 1870. There are countless other science fiction films, TV shows and books that have thought up ideas only later to see them emerge in modern society. Now, you can look at how this comes about in a variety of ways. One way could be that anything mankind can think of, we can somehow “create” sciences to make them not only plausible, not eventually possible. Another way you could look at it is from a quantum physics angle. QP would suggest that time is a manmade concept, and the invention of time is more related to speed than 3-dimensional distance/space. If this is the case then maybe, if we all co-exist in a single space at a predefined moment in “time” then all the knowledge of the past, present and future is also swirling around in there, and we are merely tapping into what is yet to be. But of course EVERYTHING already has happened in the proposed “single space” so all the information is around us all, it’s just a matter of perception. Then of course there is the coincidence theory, not as interesting but still needs addressing.

We have seen that Sci-Fi tends to come true when it comes to technology, but what about Sci-Fi philosophy? A good example of this would be “The Matrix” films starring Keanu Reeves as computer hacker Neo. If you have not seen it, the world has been enslaved by robots and the human race are being used as batteries. To keep the people alive the robots created the “Matrix” which is a computer program designed to make us all believe we are living in the “real” world, having the ability to go about our daily business, when in reality we are stuck in little pods being drained of all our power. Neo escapes (with a little help) and learns the REAL world is a baroness wasteland and the robots rule everything. Of course the plot is a bit more complicated than that, but that is the very rough outline. This is a Sci-Fi movie, how do we know that the idea expressed in the film is not also true? After all Sci-Fi has a nasty pattern of coming to be.

Before we get too far into the Matrix, I want to bring “Doom” into the equation. Doom is a first-person shooter computer game released by ID Software in 1993. Originally Doom was going to be the sequel to the critically-acclaimed “Wolfenstein” but ID Software decided against it. Back in the early days of Wolfenstein, ID Software had fallout with a fellow games company and gave the source code of Wolfenstein to a company that made bible games on the early Nintendo console (NES). ID Software followed this trend of releasing source code’s by publishing Doom’s so that fans could edit their own levels (with free programs such as “DeepSea”). For those who do not know what source code is, it is the computer language that makes games behaviour the way they do. It controls everything, from making walls act like walls and monsters move, all the way down to lighting and detailed environments. If you get the source code wrong, what would appear like a wall may not act like a wall. For instance it may appear solid, but you could move through it or an invisible wall my pop up mid-level stopping you from finishing the game. I know what you are thinking, what has Doom got to do with the Matrix of Sci-Fi at all?

The idea expressed in the Matrix that the world is a sophisticated computer program may not be that farfetched. Of course, when I say “Program” it would be different from the computational approach used in the sciences. After all, physics is the computer language of the known natural world. Let’s say that the world being a computer program is true, it would be written very much like the source code used in games such as Doom. Any mistakes in its writing would affect the way we perceive the environment around us. But is there any evidence of a natural computer program. Well, the answer is YES, it is called String Theory. I will not go into this, as we could be here all day. But if we blend Quantum Physics and the idea of a natural “source Code” together it may offer an answer to a few mysteries.

Look at ghosts. A lot of ghostly experiences are centred around what appears to be someone from a bygone era, doing what they would have done at that time. Remembering that quantum physics imply that all time exists in a single space (or paradox) be it future, past or present, maybe this would explain it. If the source code fails for some reason, then we may be able to see things from the past or future appear like a person (ghost) doing their day to day activities. As ghosts tend to appear in the same places this would suggest that the source code in that area is damaged in some way.

This is not a theory; this is simply an exercise to make people see the world in a different way. Nothing is every as straight forward as our minds would like to think.