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Magick and Computation

Henningjohnathan

20:49 / 14.06.04

I got involved in an interesting thread on the Lab forum about the idea that the world may be a simulation (ala Matrix). The idea came up that, if the world is a simulation, then perhaps paranormal phenomenon is a method of poking and peeking at the code underlying the programs of the world. But an even more interesting proposition struck me. If we are a simulation then there would have to be a designer or designers outside our time-space reality who could in some way understand us even though we could in no way fully comprehend them. However, I then thought what if our designers only understand us in some limited ways in the same way we can't fully comprehend all the information in a computer program based on emergent software like the SIMS? Then perhaps the demons, angels, mothmen and extraterrestrials we encounter in paranormal situations are more like system programs designed to interact with our underlying coputation, as the designers see it, rather than our conscious perceptions (the world as we daily perceive it).
This sorta ties in with John Keel's description of the "ultraterrestrials" in the MOTHMAN PROPHECIES where these strange beings seemed to have nothing we would consider to be consciousness, but they were responding and reacting to the people witnessing them on some almost comprehensible level. Also, perhaps the conjuration of spirits (gods, demons, angels) is also part of a ritual to attract the attention of the designers so that you can communicate a desire to change the program.

All this is conjecture, but it seemed to tie in.

22:43 / 14.06.04

I prefer to model magic as cracking.
The universe wouldn`t need to have a designer/coder just be computational in nature. (although programmers might be a good thing to add when working with some abstract thought forms)
Any species that could twist the code would have a major evolutionairy advantage. Even if it was statisical in nature.

Meditation would be a kind of buffer underrun.
Any form of magic that required an extreme emotional state would be buffer overflow.
Divination would be crytography. (nothing is trully random in this model...so the pattern of stones uses the same algorith as the lottery numbers)

Any theory without evidence is just fun mind games.
How would magic work in this universe?
How would you test it?

05:59 / 15.06.04

Of course, "twisting" or "cracking" the code could merely be part of the code--all predestined and as it should be before and after the fact. What's to say the an act of magick doesn't follow the code exactly as the code is written?

06:48 / 15.06.04

But isn't that just the same as asking if we really have free will or if we just imagine it and everything is predetermined?
Essentially, how would we ever know?
The important question, like Spong says, is how can we test this. Is there any way we could contact possible programmers directly?

07:00 / 15.06.04

Oh I agree LykeX, but the skepticism remains: how would we know if what we've contacted is a "programmer" and not merely another routine running in the program? I don't know if there is any way to resolve such a question.

07:09 / 15.06.04

It could probably be assumed that the coders knew that elements of the program would start question and try to contact them. Now the question should be: What is the function of the program? What will really get the programmers attention is if elements of the program try to alter the programs FUNCTION. If the programs function is to test the evolution of sentience, the way to get the programmers attention is not to contact them, but to CUT THEM OFF. Of course the testing of the evolution of sentience may not be the function of the program at all.......

Henningjohnathan

14:12 / 15.06.04

If you check the "simulation" thread on the Lab board, I ask pretty much the same question: what experiments could you perform that would determine if you are or the universe is a simulation?

Of course, my procedure would be to model the question by starting with what we know are simulations: computer program/games. If you look at a game like the Sims which is developed using emergent computational principles (many simple programs interacting rather than the classical architecture style programming that involves one complex but functionally specialized algorithm), you could theoretically conceive that the intelligences in these simulations could become self-aware and intelligent. What experiment or procedure could a theoretically conscious Sim perform to perceive us?
Well, I haven't come up with anything solid, BUT I think that there is something to the idea that we'd want to interact with the Sim (which even though we "created" it, we'd never be able to completely understand it) as mush as it might want to understand the nature and purpose of its universe (that, to us, is simply electrons in a microprocessor).
Therefore, perhaps we'd lead generations of Sims into systems and behaviors that allowed us to interact.

For more reading:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100715
SLATE: Big Lab Experiment

http://www.crystalinks.com/holouniverse1.html
SCI-AMER: The Holographic Universe

Skeleton Camera

00:32 / 16.06.04

Thanks for transferring this idea! Unfortunately I don't have much to add besides the initial suggestion. Reality as a computer simulation seems to me another metaphor for the "veil of illusion" that runs throughout human experience. It's a metaphor for our times, per our understandings, and I will admit there's a much better mirror now available in virtual reality than there seems to have been before. ie we can now postulate ($5) how a simulated reality would be all the more accurately thanks to technology.

But what about hyper-real experiences? Would that be your code recognizing the surrounding code? Does it matter to distinguish between God the cosmo-organic entity or a vast sentient data? IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

I'm tired, hence all the questions. It's like a disease. As many people point out, the minimum working hypothesis for magic is the question of results. And it's widely accepted that the universe does 'run on', or is best explained through, an "incomprehensible mathematics" (as Alan Moore [!!!] put it). So any results obtained through magic somehow effect or interact with those mathematics. This creates the possibility of a serious, math-based mathematical system but I go to art school and am NOT the being for that job...

07:19 / 16.06.04

A read a quote recently by Leibniz (father of the binary system):

"God has chosen the most perfect world, that is, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena, as might be a line in geometry whose construction is easy and whose properties and effects are extremely remarkable and widespread."

In other words the rules to the universe are pretty simple, it's the application of those rules that creates the rich bunch of neat stuff called the universe. I enjoy it on a daily basis.

Mandelbrot came up with the rule: (which I will paraphrase to remove the imaginary numbers)

:to see if a given spot (x,y) is in the set
tmpx=x
tmpy=y
repeatforever
{
newx=tmpx*tmpx-tmpy*tmpy+x
newy=2*tmpx*tmpy+y
tmpx = newx
tmpy = newy
}

If tmpx or tmpy gets really big then (x,y) is not is the set. You can never be 100% sure if a spot is in the set or not as you can't test it for an infinite number of times, but just investigating this strange maths produces the famous mandelbrot set fractal.

I think the rules to the universe are simple, just understanding the applications which is hard. (sorry if I made any mistakes in the above explanation, I'm doing it from very old memories)

15:19 / 16.06.04

Maybe the fact that we are capable of comprehending (and in some cases avidly believing) that the universe could be a simulation, created by a higher entity) is a strong argument for it not being so. For the same reason as no human would build a robot that was smarter than us, and had the capability to overthrow us, surely no higher being would create a model inside a simulation that had the capabilities of comprehending existance outside of the simulation?
Any tendancy to behaviour contrary to the above, would surely indicate something of a self-destructive element to whatever "higher" powers may be responsible for the program.
It would seem likely that the time-gods are as fickle, fucked up and just downright confused as us creations are.

Henningjohnathan

15:29 / 16.06.04

Oddly enough, it seems that we are driven to create computers smarter than we are (see Vernor Vinge) in a Frankesteinian desire to have someone to talk to, I guess. I remember seeing a movie or reading a book about a robot who was a better person than we are. In it a character said that that proved we were superior to God because he could only create lesser beings. I admired the irony of the statement (was it in THE FILTH?)

22:31 / 16.06.04

Yeh but do you think that computers could have ultrasensitive levels of imagination since they operate on set loops and thus never reach a total state of gnosis. You have to format and then install systems and applications. So where's the AI in that? What about microbes and viruses (not talking about memes here) they show a glimpse of the shadow, you can't see them by eye (only by microscope) but they exist. In the same way could nanocomputing overshadow the world of the microbe? What are a microbes goals - to replicate and infest hosts? Do microbes have any sentience that we can relate to? In Mirror Dimensions if everything was inversed would microbes be like us? This is all getting very holographic.Are we mere slaves to mathematical goobledigook?

Henningjohnathan

15:49 / 17.06.04

But it seems that you're referring to the old architecture of software programming that I referred to above. Programs like the Sims use principles of emergence where very simple programs interact to create unexpectedly sophisticated behavior (in the same way that ant colonies, cities and the human brain behaves). In this sense, a program with sufficient processing size and speed could become as apparently sentient as any person.

18:02 / 17.06.04

Perhaps they wondered if their universe was a simulation.
Then created this one to study how a simulation interacts with it`s creators.
We are programmed to imagine a universe that is a simulation. We are programmed to have a rapid rise in computing power.
Someone is running an iteration that collects statistics from many possible universes.
*grin*
What they only suspect is that they are part of the loop.

05:44 / 18.06.04

I accidently read a research paper on this kinda stuff recently. I seem to recall it was a bit wishy washy dressed up in very impressive sounding probibility maths.

Still it's interesting to see people investigating the idea formally.

They refer to the idea of "ancestor simulations", or are we just a simulation of 2004 being run by humans in the future with lots more CPU cycles and simulation hacking ability?

15:33 / 25.06.04

Have you read about Johnstone's Paradox or cybermorphs? Both Ramsey Dukes and Charles Brewster have written about this kind of thing.