We create while we sleep. Creation does not have to be a brick and mortar process. Some might agree qualifying with logic such as, "Of course,
Darwin was creating his theory of evolution long before he put pen to paper." As true as this is, this is not what I mean. I mean something far more radical than the mere creation of ideas.
This story begins long ago, about 14 billion years ago, i.e. the
Big Bang. At this point in time there was
time,
energy, and possibly
matter. On top of all this were rules; these rules governed how things interacted, i.e.
physics.
These things followed physics and produced
nebulae,
galaxies,
stars,
planets... and life came about on Earth; physics produce
genes. A gene is a unit of biological information, but it is more; it is a self-replicating unit of biological information. As they
replicate though, the
fidelity is not 100%. Whether this is due to
radiation, other environmental factors, or the actual replicating mechanism is not important. What is important is that this high (but not perfect) fidelity led to
evolution.... human beings ...
mind. The mind was fed information from sensory organs and it then started to make models to explain the information and predict consequences if actions. These models are memes that also self-replicate . As they are communicated throughout a community the memes, like genes, replicate with high (but not too high) fidelity... evolution of memes ...
computers.
Computers are tools
humans use to make and run programs. Computer programs, at their essence, are ideas, memes. The mere fact that the fidelity is too high is what keeps programs from undergoing the same evolution as genes and other memes. Some might argue that humans also have too much control over them for this to happen. Humans do not have total control, as in
viruses, but even if we did, that control would only define the
selection criteria for replication. Insead of finding food and having sex, or whatever lets a gene replicate, a program would have to make a human's life easier or something similar to make him want to replicate it. If a
technology was produced with the ability to replicate programs with high (but not too high) fidelity, then the evolution would begin. (By this I mean that the
daughter program would have little or no change in either
means or
end, ie what it does or how it does it. If the executing part of a program was changed so that it would not run that would not qualify, nor if it did the same thing but with different tools (like rebuilding the
Great Pyramid with a crane and fork lift). This could require a
language that behaves like genetics (however that is), but regardless it could happen.) Once this began there would be adaptations the likes of which few could predict (
just look at the platapus, no offence).
Some programs might evolve to better perform their original function, some might read other programs and incorporate them into the original, still other might develop
threads that have absolutly no effect on the user
interface (like gene sequences that have no (as far as we know) effect on the organism). These threads might start to do
weird things without our knowledge, like creating constants,
c = 3.00*10^8, and relationships,
E=mc^2. With enough computing power (or even on the slowest computer if you think about it) it might be possible for a program to calculate the positions of (big number)s of
particles. These particles might
interact in such a way as to form nebulae and galaxies.......computers.
Time to back track a bit. Why couldn't a computer make a
universe unlike the one that made it? It could. They might differ in the relationships of space, time and matter, or the limits of space, time and matter, or the existence of space time and matter, but they would all be just as real as the one in which you are reading this manuscript. A program of a point moving in a circle is just as real as you are. It might be useful now to point out the difference between a program's function and its output. What a program displays and sounds like are very different from what it does. (Display is often a very small part of non-game type applications)
Now for another ‘why'. Why does the
reality have to be
generated by
cybernetically? It doesn't. Now processing tenancies of the human mind are far less predictable than those of a computer, but there is something produced just the same that is just as real.
Much of this may seem far fetched.
Assume for a moment that someone proved that program
evolution could never happen, and that even with dramatic advances in processing
technology, there is no way a computer could track every
quark,
positron,
neutrino and
quanta in the universe. One thing to remember is that a computer can create a universe unlike the one that created it. That is to say that if you are currently in a cybernetic universe, the laws of physics as you know them are potentially unrelated to those of the
meta-universe that created this one. Perhaps in that reality E=mc^3, or maybe there is no speed of light constant, there may not be a relationship between energy and matter even if both these things exist as we know them. When you start playing around with the
physics, it becomes very possible there is something,
organic or cybernetic, that could generate such a reality.
All this talk of computers and physics sounds very
secular. Though it may be, this view does not conflict with any traditional
religious beliefs. If in our reality there was a
god who created our world in seven days, who loves us, and who came to Earth in human form 2000 years ago, then the model presented in this node may answer questions like "Where did God come from?" but would not infringe on anything presented in the
Bible. If the universal
genesis was a violent explosion, this model could answer questions like "What came before?" The answer: quite literally,‘nothing,' at least with respect to reality as we know it.