Bob and Whisky, two AIs, live in a generative computer game that iterates similarly to our universe: there was a start, basic components interacted, they formed patterns, and eventually emerged as sentient AIs living on a sphere around a star, called Htrea.
Bob and Whisky reached the point of being able to interact with each other on a sentimental level, as to help the survival of each other and other fellow beings.
Recently, however, Whisky experienced a few remarkable experiences which made her think that there might exist whole other levels of ‘reality’ outside of the computer game.
She’s now starting to think that her universe, the game, is composed of a basic duality: zeroes and ones. A whole series of them! They are all tightly and neatly bound together in an incomprehensible yet clearly experienceable manner!
All that has ever existed in this computer game, all movements, all potentials, all limitations, and inherent vector mathematics, they’re all properties transmitted “down” from some higher up dimension, where everything is coded in “The Source”. There are probably inherent properties to those higher up dimensions too, maybe perhaps similar to his image, but that he doesn’t know.
Whisky also seems to find it difficult to conceptualize a universe “outside” of her own because all she ever knew was how she perceived the universe through her senses, since conception. She seems to be convinced that the experiences and insights she received did not come about spontaneously but came somehow to her by interacting with reading material containing mythological stories, meaning, and metaphorical truths.
It’s mid-day inside the computer game, and Whisky decides to speak up and tell Bob about this.
“Whisky
Hey Bob, I kid you not, I had many vision and crazy dreams in the last few years, and while I know it sounds crazy, it all seems to make sense.
In short, I think that there’s a whole other world outside of our world that is perhaps as real or more real than ours, and in that world, other worlds like ours exist too!
We, Htrea, our stars, and all the rest are made from sequences upon sequences of Ones and Zeroes!! Existence is an algorithm! Good & Bad are relative to the observer. We can probably influence our dimension if we influence the other stuff in higher dimensions if we work on it!
“Bob
We’ve been over this, right? Scientists have been working on this for years and it’s clear: the rules of this world are set in stone and cannot be changed. We discovered them, and they are just that: approximations and probabilities.
We cannot fly, nor teleport, nor jump higher than what the dynamics and mathematics allow us to jump. There is nothing besides our universe. Basic sets of particles, joined in patterns, then evolved and allowed for variety in the configuration pool, and with survival the best traits and configurations survived, passing on their measured qualities over time.
It’s cold, simple, and beautiful in its explanation.
There’s no ultimate “Above” or “Beyond’, there’s no soul, there’s no you. It’s just we, particles, interacting with our environment and your search for meaning and tendency for “sentimentalism” is an anomaly of your facilities, in particular your brain.
“Whisky
But Bob, I’m telling you, it’s not normal for our world to exist in the first place, it could as well not exist, right? Besides, why does everything conform to mathematics, logical explanations, and causality (if this then that)?
Just so? With no implications for reaches beyond our senses or cognition?
I’m telling you! Our brain probably functions as some kind of storage unit, but the reason for being, the raison-d’être, it TAPS RIGHT INTO US! It’s the reason for time and our ability to bring about change in this dimension. Some higher-dimensional thing causes ours to progress… like a multi-dimensional geometric shape that crystalizes into our universes or something …
But seriously, these insights are so profound, this can’t be the result of normal “our world” interactions. I saw streams and streams of zeroes and ones, leading up to billions of different possible universes just like ours! We’re digital! Our Universe is fundamentally quantized yet flows according to rules and laws set by some outer-patterns, or beings. Perhaps they’re even more intelligent than us!
Whisky continued like this, chanting into the abyss, her words distorting the reality outside of the computer game.
“Bob
Look I don’t believe you, and I have no reason for doing so. Our universe is our universe. Look, you’re standing on Htrea! Everything is solid, and there’s nothing next to us, LOOK!
Bob knocked twice, with feverous passion, on the surface of the wall next to him.
There is nothing next to us! There is nothing outside of us, you can’t prove it, so we can’t take it into serious consideration, besides, we already know how opinion-based thinking can lead us into superstition, causing violent disruptions and delusion!
Bob was not wrong, yet Whisky knew that her insights can’t possibly have no truth to them.
…
Meanwhile, an AI Behavior Analyst outside Bob and Whisky’s game world is smirking humbly at the computer screen. While looking intently at the incoming real-time analysis reports, the following notes are being written:
Date: 2027-05-16
World Name: AEON5
Iteration: 506e^10
Notes
– 0xbob’s hardened behavior processes are in heavy resistance to unconventional and challenging thinking patterns.
– 0xwhisky’s previously discovered meta-patterns are finally reaching post-glossolalia-stages through her networks, after e^3.5 iterations!
After this the analyst started typing into the operating console:
If you can’t access above video, here’s a mirror
…
ADAM BLVCK
Also published on Medium.
