Space Paranoids
1. A video game invented by
Kevin Flynn in the film
Tron.
2. A reaction to Bitland Tyranny.
PREFACE:
2. Repeats of Old Shit is Boring:
Why are psychological thrillers so popular? I think a straight up horror film is far better than "oh my god the killer was the guy chasing the killer!" Philip K. Dick did it better then anyone else, so stop trying already!
I mean the killer is always the other guy! It's not a twist ending when every ending is that way... it's a big yawnfest.
3. Do you know where Walt Disney's brain is?
"Dip the apple in the brew, let the sleeping-death seep through."
-- Alan Turing
Notice:
Attention! There will be an end-up at the start-down, following the round-a-bout. Please beware that this takes quite some time, and you might as well just sit down and shut up. In the meantime, I guess I should explain
Bitland. Well, imagine a big sugar cube... divided into partitions - like a cubby box, o a big chunk of cells. Inside these cubbies, or memory cells, exists some information. What exactly it is doesn't matter, but we have to assume that at one time this information was a bit - either a 0 or a 1 i guess. What it was at the start doesn't really matter, because it is constantly being changed by machines performing calculations by plugging the information in and then spitting it out, only a little longer. Then they move to another cubby.
Bitland Tyranny
I guess I'll start by asking "What if
time doesn't actually exist"? This follows with the highly
stonerly conjecture that time itself is not a
dimension, but a
social construct - that everything is happening all at once but we assume events follow each other chronologically. Now, this would not negate the idea of an underlying structure for things, but it would complicate it quite a bit. We must assume that everything is in reality one event and and all individuals are an extension of this event. In this sense, we assume that instead of individuals causing events, an event causes individuals. These individuals exist only for the duration of this one event, and that this duration is can not be measured, as it is an
infinite loop. Therefore we come to the conclusion, of course, that
time definitely exists and can be measured by the smallest and largest unit of time measurement - the
event. How we define an event is based on our
reference points. Now, assuming time exists only to accommodate events, let's assume that these events create time. So what is this time like?
Well, we can use a very simple model of time, in which we assume that time can be represented spatially (which it can be if it is a "construct"). Let us think of a vast amount of space, an infinite amount - or at least apparently infinite. Let this represent the supposed spatial dimensions of time - a spatial time frame. Now, let us assume that mass exists in this "framing". This mass is an "event". Lets call this framing, and the masses which appear in it, the permeable tense matrix.
Our spatial/non-spatial decisions (events) could be seen as quantum fluxuations in this spatial time frame which we unconsciously string together as being "one after another". When many individuals string these events together similarly, it creates a "collectiverse", and our decisions naturally become entwined.
This doesn't explain where in the spatial time frame these temporal masses called events occur and why. Nor do we know how individuals get from one event to another to string them together. The mechanism is unexplained.
However, we can examine the permeable tense matrix using the analogy of a hypothetical multi-state turing machine we shall call "Bitland". To allow for all possible movements in a 3D landscape, the tape could be described as a three dimensional block of memory cells -- somewhat like a game mah jong -- and the movements constituting up, down, left, right, forward, back, read, write, return, and of course with a 3D datatable it adds the concept of rotation; rotate up, rotate down, rotate left, and rotate right. This allows for all possible motions inside this "tape".
These movements are seen as, although important, uninteresting to the theory - as it seems that all interaction between the tapeheads would take place via their reading and writing of the information stored in the memory cells. Let's hold the idea that these machines process this data in a comparative manner and then write an update of the data. One could see the slow evolutionary formation of DNA as somewhat analagous to this process.
Now, to analyze it even further, let us introduce an idea of what this "data" might be like. Let us assume that the accumulation of data forms what we will refer to as a linear catalog - in humans this is the current state of their consciousness at any given time. The linear catalog is comprised of the perceived time elapsed for computing in a specific mental state - ie, the sum total of perceived time their brain has been in "operation" (one hopes this time would be "the length of my life so far"). In reality though, we would have no idea how much time has elapsed, because it all depends on when these tapeheads get around to our memory cell.
So, if our identities are actually the composite of various "things" processing data inside memory cells, then it seems as though we are really not "ourselves", but a constantly changing series of identities. In a similar way, this is the underlying principle of Object Relations Therapy and Jungian Psychology in general. These identities can be seen as "archetypes", and our current personality (our "linear catalog") is made up of our sum total of our important human interactions (the others - what's inside of a non-linear catalog). This, of course, suggests that humans are not actually born with an ego, but develop it. Wow, what a revolutionary thought, huh?! Oh... not really? Hmmm...
Well then, let's imagine there's a blank slate out there, that has the functional ability to produce language - to communicate in a human manner - and the ability to develop ego. A computer has the ability to produce language - it can write things on a screen and print things out, right? However, computers do not currently have the ability to develop an ego. Does this means that computers will never be capable of this? Since no one really knows how human intelligence first came about - or even how our brains really work - this question is unanswerable.
However, since a linear catalog is allowed existence via the facilities for both storage and processing, we must assume that the facilities for storage and processing are required for a linear catalog to exist. Similarly, one could conclude that whenever the facilities for storage and processing exist, so does a linear catalog. Therefore, we do not refute the claims made by machine functionalists.
Perhaps computers already exhibit a linear catalog, only one vastly different from human intelligence. And if they gain the ability to develop ego, their linear catalog might become much more similar to a humans. Perhaps a computer intelligence is even an intelligent non-linear catalog. If this is the case, why - we could be inside an intelligent non-linear catalog right now - our linear catalogs existing as a string of data inside a memory cell which machines process for us every time we "think", "see" and "act". Why, we could even be brains in vats! This is not new stuff - indeed. It is interesting, however, that as psychology gets increasingly effective, it's underlying theories get increasingly esoteric.
However, since we are still assuming time only exists as one "moment" or "event", we need to explain how it seems so linear to all of us. Let us assume that due to the interaction between the linear catalogs existent in any non-linear catalog, a comparative temporal ordering is formed. Comparative temporal ordering is what allows for the formation of a collectiverse - an ordering of the universe as perceived by two or more individuals. A collectiverse is not seen as a belief system or a group of like-minds - it is the "actual" state of things for a collection of individuals - the objective reality.
Space Paranoia
Oh hell, how did we get here? Oh, that's right - I was suggesting that time wasn't actually a dimension. And we can't doubt the laws of physics, right? And why am I making up all these terms - like "linear catalog" and "non-linear catalog" and "collectiverse"?
Why make up a new terms, when objective reality suits? Because in all respects, it does not suit. Now lets bring into this discussion the idea of Parallel Universes. The many worlds theory states that there is an infinite number of parallel universes, each reflecting the course of history if a different choice variable had occurred by someone, somewhere, some time.
However, does this mean that these universes are always there, or are the number of universes infinitely increasing? Seeing as the prior brings the whole question of determinism into the situation, some would hold the latter as a more logical conclusion. If all these parallel universes existed since the start of the universe, how could choice exist at all? And if choice doesn't exist, how could parallel universes exist? One is built on the other, and can not do away with the first.
However, if all of us are constantly inhabiting new universes, how is there any cohesion? How is there interaction? Thus the term collectiverse really means "a collection of universes inside the multiverse". The collection we are in determines our objective reality.
Of course, this gives rise to questioning the mechanics and operation of the multiverse. Does the multiverse have it's own spatial plane? If so, what is it like? Is it like bitland? Is every memory cell storing all the data for one universe? Perhaps the multiverse is like a permeable matrix - where universes pop in and out of existence when needed by individuals within it, and their closeness or distance determines the level of interaction.
Or perhaps the multiverse is just a concept - a term for "the sum of all parallel universes". This, however, seems unlikely if universes are constantly increasing. There would be some underlying process in which this occurs, how universes are connected and how new ones are created. Perhaps collectiverses are ordered in order of aperiodic crystals inside a multiverse which is a spatial plane - yet, on a higher dimension than we in our universes can perceive. Are theories about higher dimensions, in reality, theories about the order of the multiverse?
Oh, But how did we get here?!? I thought we were talking about time not existing and crazy notions such as that. And parallel universes have absolutely nothing to do with bullshit like Bitland, right? There is no connection... It just doesn't work - we can't be living inside a Turing machine. We are made of atoms, not data - right? And neither of the two ideas have anything to do with alternate versions of time. Time has nothing to do with calculation cycles or things like that - right? Because time is linear, and infinitely increasing into the future. But space isn't, space is finite - right?
Or perhaps time, space, and parallel universes are all connected - in that they are all ever increasing, expanding into the future - into the void, the darkness, the non-linear catalog, the multiverse. So what is all our place in this? Are we are just ego tripping through all this, advancing in some game we had no choice in playing?
The game Space Paranoids is hardly even shown in Tron. Perhaps it is an analogy for the game we are all playing. Kevin Flynn had to go into "one of those memories" of the MCP to find the proof he wrote it. Is everything - the whole ball of wax - the multiverse and all that - sitting in some "memory" in some Master Control Program? Are we just programs that process it for a short amount of time, and then leave it for something else? What else is there if a multiverse is, itself, inside of something else? A "metaverse"? But why stop there..................
And now you see that nothing I'm saying is new - it's all been said before, in many different ways, by many different people. There's nothing new under the sun, in fact. But if this is the case, perhaps time does loop... and if it does, whose to say how long it really is? Only a moment? How could time like this exist at all?! Oh dear, it seems as though we're right back where we started...
And that's the point. No one knows anything for sure - except that we're here, and now, and that repeating shit is boring. We could be programs, or collections of data in a bitland - and that is the real philosophy behind Tron. We exist to complete user requests, our lives lived out during the process cycles of the mind of god. But don't despair - because we exist, we do have a purpose. The purpose is simply to exist for awhile, to play our part in the big "everything" - the part we can't help but play. So you might as well just play the game, and you might as well try to make it interesting.