Is there a way you can definitely know, if you are a character in a simulation? Maybe you're playing out the same life, with slight variations, over and over again; would you, or could you, ever prove it?
Following on from my article about the Mandela Effect, I will explore in this short article, whether any of our memories are real. We have proved that false memories can be created just by asking questions, with leading statements.
We also know that the human memory is fallible, over time. So how can we be sure, that any of our memories are true representations of reality?
However it could be argued, that the past, is entirely made up of our memories, so changing our recollection of something, and changing the something, are indistinguishable.
It seems as we grow as a species, racing forever upwards, along the exponential curve of technology and societal evolution. The question of whether we are all part of some kind of, massive, advanced, complex simulation, is gaining traction.
The question has long since fascinated the science fiction community, now it seems that the debate is leaking out into the collective, human consciousness, and slowly into the realms of, science fact.
Cogito ergo sum.
We consider ourselves real, mainly because we have the intellectual capacity to ponder on what exactly reality is.
Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am; is perhaps the most famous philosophical phrase ever uttered. It at once captures, why the human mind is unique amongst all the other earth-dwelling animals, because as far as we can tell; we are the only creatures who hold the ability to wonder about our own mortality.
However, if we consider the following, then how can we be sure that we are real; in the sense that René Descartes meant, when he first spoke those now, immortal words?
Imagine, you are playing a God game, an artificial life game, whereby you are controlling the lives of characters, wandering around a digital universe.
Whilst you can control certain events in that game, the reactions of the characters, are down to certain responses within their programming. What they do, and how they act, are down to responses within their base code.
If you pause the game, or start it again, the characters are not aware of that, they simply carry on where they left off.
Now imagine yourself as one of those characters; even if you give sentience to machine code, there is still no way of knowing when the game is being paused. In the same way, there is now way of knowing when it has been restarted.
So just like a character in a God game, you have no way of knowing, if any of your memories are real.
Editing Real Life Memories
The psychologists, Loftus, and Palmer, showed us how easy it is to edit a human memory, over a period of time, so short, that without the experiment, you would not have thought it were possible.
Participants were shown a car accident, and within a minute of watching that accident, they were then told to state, whether they saw glass on the floor or not. However they were either told that the cars, collided with one another, or smashed into, each other.
The ones who were told the cars, smashed together, were almost 3 times as likely to remember glass on the floor, as the ones that weren't told that. Some of them even reported seeing bits of blood on the broken glass; even though there was no glass, and they had just seen the video within a minute of the question.
We edit our memories like this all the time, in more natural, and less clinical environments. For example, we have all told a story, that a friend has told us. We might start the story by saying; "A friend of a friend, was walking into work and saw this guy, dancing naked on the street..."
Or if we're feeling in a really recursive mood; "A friend of a friend, of a friend..." However, if we tell the story often enough, it becomes;
"A friend was walking into work once, and saw this naked guy, dancing in the street..."
..and finally:
"I was walking into work once, and saw this naked guy, dancing in the street..."
At first, we edit the story, because it feels too cumbersome, to always recant it in an awkward, recursive way. Especially if we have to keep coming back to this, friend of a friend. It is simply linguistically easier, to drop the friend.
If this is a popular story, you tell it many times over the years, so much so, that you can actually remember the incident, just as if, it happened to you.
Maybe one day you reexamine the story, and your original memory comes back; or perhaps you end up telling the story to the person it actually happened to...
Resetting The Game
I remember one particular morning from childhood, nothing particularly remarkable happened on that day. Nor did I have any striking or vivid dreams, in fact it was quite the opposite. The night before, I had got into bed, to get my night's sleep, before school in the morning.
I looked at my digital, clock-radio, it was 8:32 pm. I turned over and faced the wall, then decided I would be more comfortable on the other side and turned back over, but wait!
It was now 07:19 am. 10 minutes before I was meant to get up for school; what, why, how...?
To me, it had seemed like there was less than 3 seconds, between turning over to face the wall, and turning back.
Logically, I knew I must have slept, I felt completely refreshed, if not a little cheated, because it didn't feel like I had been asleep. I remember telling a few friends about how freaky it felt, and I thought about it for days, trying to understand the strange feeling, which I had never had before, or since.
What if I hadn't been asleep, maybe the game, had simply been paused, and then reset at a different save point.
What if everyone in the world, at that point, awake or asleep; felt the same kind of disassociation from the space-time continuum?
What? Wait? What's going on....?
How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go?
The fact is, if, like Elizabeth Loftus, showed us, you can edit a memory formed within the last 5 minutes. Then surely the further back the memory goes, the easier it is to edit?
Aha! But we have photos and videos of some of our memories, so they surely are real? We can see ourselves and our friends, acting in pretty much the way we remember; right? Those memories surely must be real?
Well if we are living in some kind of artificial construct, then all these things are just, artefacts, that have been added to, the game.
Or, perhaps we naturally change our memories so subtly over time, that nothing we remember today, that happened over a year ago, can be thought of as accurate.
Maybe through a layering of the foundations of false memory, on top of false memory, we build, the fragile house of cards, that is our current existence.
Possibly then, the simulation that we live in, is a world simulated by our own minds, and not any external force.
Can we ever know if we are living a simulated existence using just our own introspection? Or will there one day be an experiment to test the simulation hypothesis?
What happens if we find out we are in an alien-made construction; or even more frightening, an advanced, human-made construct?
If it's a game, what are the rules? How do we win? And what happens when they turn the simulation o---
In the last article in the series, I will be exploring whether there are any clues in nature, that lead us to believe we are living in a sim, and whether it even matters, in; Escaping The Matrix - Should We Even Care?
WHAT DO YOU THINK? ARE WE LIVING IN A SIMULATED ENVIRONMENT? ARE WE NO MORE THAN CHARACTERS IN A COMPUTER GAME, ACTING OUT A PREDICTABLE STORY? DOES IT MATTER? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!