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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋu |
2005.06.28 – Two important capabilities of the computer — the ability to process information and remember — imbue the computer with a rudimentary form of awareness or sapience that may help provide insight into our own universe, illustrating time, quantum physics, relativity and perhaps suggesting a possible unifying theory.
Consider the universe of a computer’s cpu (central processing unit), the chip that processes information. Henceforth in this article, I’ll use upper case CPU to designate not merely a computer’s cpu but the ‘Central Processing Universe’ that a computer would perceive if it enjoyed rudimentary sapience. We will view our universe from the perspective of a cpu in its CPU, drawing similarities and contrasts.
The cpu can process only one time-slice of information at any given time. That given time is called a clock cycle, one tick of the computer’s clock. Think of the cpu as a cubby hole. One tick of the computer pushes the information input into the cpu, another tick of the computer clock performs a manipulation of the information in the cpu according to a command stored where the cpu can consult it. Another tick of the clock dumps the output information into a bus that carries it off to memory.
Since the cpu can consult memory, it can determine whether something is in the past, or not. However, like us, it sees only the present, the information in its cpu, at any given time-slice. (How do we differ in this respect?) All the rest of the computer’s work that runs our modern world, including artificial intelligence, is determined from its memory.
We, however, can see both the computer’s past and some of its future input that is absolutely impossible for the cpu to know at the given time-slice.
Let’s suppose that the cpu realizes that, since there is a past and, mathematically, the past is no different from the future, the cpu has the temerity to wonder why it cannot see the future. However, this doesn’t puzzle the computer scientist. Perceiving what the programmer has planned for the cpu falls outside of the parameters within which the computer was designed — in other words, the cpu’s future (input) is outside of the CPU. But that doesn’t mean that the cpu’s future is different in kind from the present or past. (In fact, if its future gets too different, say a surge of current, when it reaches the cpu’s present time-slice the entire CPU can crash and the chips can fry.)
One might wonder, at this point, whether this implies a contradiction of free will. Whatever input the computer user introduces in future, the cpu has no control over its input. The cpu is destined to produce a certain output according to pre-programmed constraints that it cannot vary. Because we aren’t able to imbue a cpu with free will, our model cannot simulate free will. We can suppose that, in our universe, if future input is “predestined” and unalterable, we, nevertheless, operate on that input according to our own free will, thereby determining, at least in part, the output, which in part determines our future input. This perspective has significant philosophical and religious implications.
What this model suggests is that there already exists outside of our universe “the future,” not different in kind from our present or past. The cpu’s sapience exists within its cubbyhole chip, which it cannot escape to see our universe because of its intrinsic design. Our cubbyhole is our physical universe and our limitation is our intrinsic physicality.
This suggests a solution, which requires some odd terminology just to describe or talk about it. Our universe is physical, dimensional. Escaping time, like traversing black holes and the like, assumes non-physical conditions exceeding the bounds of physical limitations and even physical dimension. In other words, there’s no reason that the speed of light cannot be exceeded or black holes and time cannot be traversed; logically and intellectually, but not physically. These adventures are strictly non-physical and non-dimensional. Thus, we’re talking about a non-dimensional realm, which we can’t even call a “thing” because it has no physical dimension. It’s a non-dimensional, or spiritual, realm. Suddenly, we’re in the world of religion, a spiritual realm not confined in our physical universe, where the physical body cannot roam; a domain that cannot even be correctly described as “outside” or “beyond” (both describing dimensions) our universe.
This implies that there is a non-dimensional, spiritual, realm and that it is possible to explore it logically (i.e., mathematically and intellectually) but only when we’re willing to subjugate our physical orientation for an exclusively non-dimensional perspective. It is insistence on taking the baggage of physical attributes with us that keeps one from experiencing the non-dimensional, spiritual, realm.
The conclusion that there is a non-dimensional, spiritual, realm suggests that the spiritual, sapient, aspects of “us” may be able to access, explore and enjoy that realm if we satisfy the non-dimensional constraints. That’s what serious religion, contrasted with philosophy and magical (supernatural) superstition, is about.
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