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6. The
Matrix in a Multiverse
Dr Nick Bostrom believes that
we are about to enter the trans-human phase of our development.
In decades to come, technology will take us into the realms
of super-intelligence, perhaps by taking drugs, perhaps by surgical
replacement of brain parts with silicon. The detail doesn’t
matter, the principle does: life probably can supercede biological
evolution and enhance its own intelligence.
‘We
obviously can’t conceive of what a super-intelligence
might be able to achieve any more than a dog can appreciate
quantum mechanics,’ Martin Rees notes. But we can envisage
that in a multiverse that contains an infinite ensemble of
universes, there would almost certainly be intelligences that
have evolved beyond are own, whether they have evolved biologically
or technologically.
And if they are so very intelligent, these
intelligences are bound to have asked themselves what the
outcome would be if they could tinker with the laws of nature.
They might have done some equations on paper first, but if
their intelligence goes way beyond our own, they are also
likely to have computers that go way beyond our own too –
computers that could be used to discover the underlying law
that allowed the laws of nature to be so precisely set as
to create an exquisitely crafted home for life.
To test whether their discoveries are correct
and their fine tuning is fine enough, they could use their
super-computers to simulate a universe as complex as our own.
Then they really have created The Matrix. And we
really could be the inhabitants of a computer simulation.
What this means is that we are just an elaborate experiment.
We are not real.
But, let’s face it, that is
what we still don’t know.
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