What We Still Don't Know - Are We Real?

The scientific and philosophical progress of the past four centuries seems to have consistently undermined the notion that we have been created by God, a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent intelligent designer (just remember, your biological sewage system runs through your fun parts :p), but this is all based on the assumptions that we are real and that we inhabit the only existing universe.

The first half of today's documentary, narrated by Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society and author of books such as Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, explores the famous anthropic principle.

The anthropic principle is the idea that the numerical constants governing the physical laws that govern our universe seem suspiciously and improbably well tuned to evolve life and intelligent creatures such as ourselves. If any of those numbers were just slightly different, the universe as we know it could not exist. Could this mean that God exists? Believers certainly think so, but then again, they'll believe just about anything :)

Considering the logical consequences arising out of the anthropic principle, the second half of the documentary explores the implication that, based on what we know about our own intelligence, our very existence might actually be a simulation created by some intelligent agency not bound by the laws that constrain our existence, and that this simulation could be perfectly consistent with the coherence of our scientific experience of the world.

I think the simulation hypothesis would also explain why the god of the Old Testament is obsessed with people worshiping it: it's really some sexually deprived, socially awkward and insecure nerdy kid sitting at home playing with his super computer :)

But seriously, either we've constructed a logical but preposterously unrealistic argument, or you may really be living in something like The Matrix, and there's a good chance the latter might be true, as you are about to see.

Of course, what no one dares to claim is that this might be the only existing universe, and that, as improbable as it is, we just happened to hit the lottery, and that's why we are here talking about it...

Still, regardless of what the anthropic principle may tell us, there is a possibility that we are living in some sort of Matrix, as this chapter, written by Nick Bostrom (the philosopher in the documentary above), from More Philosophy and The Matrix suggests:



Check out the documentary The Matrix and Philosophy: Return to the Source to blow your mind some more.
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