Superdeterminist
Enlightened
- Apr 5, 2020
- 1,876
I'm interested in the nature of reality and of course, the question of whether "to be or not to be", and how those two things relate. I like to see how different ideas influence people's opinions about life. The Theory Of Everything which computer scientist Stephen Wolfram has put forward seems to hold some promise as an interpretation of what's going on in the universe.
The theory rests upon the assumption that reality is composed of many (but not infinite) points of space which make up everything we observe, making up space and all of its contents (not unlike how water is said to be made of a finite number of atoms.) Because they make up space itself, we can't determine the location of the points, but we can define their positions relative to each other. The points then update their relative positions according to some kind of rule or set of rules (although he doesn't say where the rule(s) comes from). Below is an illustration from Wolfram depicting how these points could interact given a particular rule.
The theory rests upon the assumption that reality is composed of many (but not infinite) points of space which make up everything we observe, making up space and all of its contents (not unlike how water is said to be made of a finite number of atoms.) Because they make up space itself, we can't determine the location of the points, but we can define their positions relative to each other. The points then update their relative positions according to some kind of rule or set of rules (although he doesn't say where the rule(s) comes from). Below is an illustration from Wolfram depicting how these points could interact given a particular rule.
The same updating rule is applied to the points over and over, changing the structure from something simple (top left) to something fiendishly complex (bottom right). The process continues ad infinitum. You can see how such a rule, or set thereof, could conceivably end up weaving a fabric of space and all the elaborate structures we observe in our reality. It has allegedly been proven in mathematical terms, that most rules which produce complexity this high always end up producing stuff which could never be predicted from the rule itself - he terms this phenomenon 'computational irreducibility'. It is closely related to undecidability in CompSci. He claims that this inability for us to totally predict the future state is due to our own brains having no special privilege in the universe - they are "computationally equivalent" to the world around them, performing computations (doing stuff; evolving, changing) with an equal amount of sophistication to most of the structures around them, and this explains why we never seem to arrive at a point of knowing absolutely everything there is to know.
Now to the question "does life get better?". If this theory indeed does accurately describe reality, then that question is undecidable - you can't truthfully give a yes or no answer concerning whether you will become happier about your life in the future. You cannot predict what the points of space making up your brain and everything else you care about, will do in the future - they might end up in a configuration which leads you to great happiness, or they could keep you in the same unhappy state, or you could get even worse, nobody can say.
Personally? I think this 'inability to know what will happen' supports the allowing of suicide. Nobody can guarantee us contentment with our own lives (think about the lies of people who say things like "I promise it gets better, just hang on" etc - they are claiming, falsely, to know the future!). Nobody can guarantee us freedom from terrible torments and suffering. Of course, this theory doesn't forbid that things could get better. All power to those who want to hold on to the hope that it does improve. But it's in our own interest to design an easy escape from this system (aka suicide) if the need arises, because life will never bother to give us any consolatory promises that things will be good, or even just about ok.
Now to the question "does life get better?". If this theory indeed does accurately describe reality, then that question is undecidable - you can't truthfully give a yes or no answer concerning whether you will become happier about your life in the future. You cannot predict what the points of space making up your brain and everything else you care about, will do in the future - they might end up in a configuration which leads you to great happiness, or they could keep you in the same unhappy state, or you could get even worse, nobody can say.
Personally? I think this 'inability to know what will happen' supports the allowing of suicide. Nobody can guarantee us contentment with our own lives (think about the lies of people who say things like "I promise it gets better, just hang on" etc - they are claiming, falsely, to know the future!). Nobody can guarantee us freedom from terrible torments and suffering. Of course, this theory doesn't forbid that things could get better. All power to those who want to hold on to the hope that it does improve. But it's in our own interest to design an easy escape from this system (aka suicide) if the need arises, because life will never bother to give us any consolatory promises that things will be good, or even just about ok.
