OMEGA
... The Sun Is A Bitch
by
MoonFever
SANTA CLAUS FOR THE ADULTS
"Thank God it's not Christmas"
- Sparks
"About your theory that you are in Paradise, I thought that you would have got rid of your superstitions and your thinking would not be based on those", said the main in the breakfast table. I nearly gagged with my toast.
I looked at him annoyed: "Paradise is a religious concept. We do not have any superstitions left. Those are merely medieval stories or even older concepts coming from antiquity."
"Is that so? What was this Feng Shui consultant doing at the beach party then? Amusing chap, I like to think, he was so sincere in his speak."
"Feng Shui is something that only a few people believe in. It has nothing to do with our concepts of the world view. It is wrong to say that our thinking "is based on superstitions"; I tried to correct his wrong understanding on us.
"Feng Shui, paradise, radiation emitting from the earth, UFOs, abductions by aliens, blood bleeding wooden puppet, saints, devils as a physical creature, far sight ... for how long do I need to continue with this list ? Some of those are even very dangerous beliefs. Haven't you got billions of people, who do believe in some of these? I could even claim that they are basic things that are taught to some of your people. You have people who have become very rich by spreading some of these beliefs all around the world. How can you claim, that these are not parts of your world view?" the man insisted.
I was beginning to heaten up to the man's talks. Was he really trying to claim that our world view is based on superstitions, I thought?
"It is not that simple. Not all of those beliefs are proven right, but ..."
"... None of them are proven right!"
"... I was just going to say, that they have tried to prove these wrong with scientific grounds, but that has not been successful", I continued.
"Of course it hasn't! Don't you get that you do not have the intelligence to do that? Our capabilities for deduction are in a completely different level than yours, but you should not be that retarded that you do not understand that things can be proven right without proving everything else wrong. With our resources even the latter can be done, but of course it is not working for you."
"In hard science it might be like that, but you cannot use that kind of thinking in everyday life."
The man sighed. Again, he had the look as if he was measuring the dimensions of my scull.
"Listen now. The thing that you call "science" is the mechanism, which is bringing new knowledge from the world. Nothing else is doing that. Everything that you think you know is based on science. Everything else is just speculation or abstract thinking. You should not think now that science is about observing and measuring things. Also logical thought can increase your knowledge as well as playing with test tubes. I think that Einstein proved that quite clearly.
It is true as such that there are things that you cannot know. There are things that even we do not know. For instance the whole universe can be a virtual reality machine. That means that everything that you are seeing and feeling would happen inside that machine. And you have no way of finding that out, ever.
It could be possible as well that on the dark side of the moon there is an alien base, manned by extra-terrestrial beings. As you know, you cannot see in there directly. Only a few satellites have a view there. These creatures could easily hide the base when your satellites are flying by. And I think that these kinds of creatures would have much better cloaking techniques than just using physical covering.
"This is just proving that everything is possible! This is just the opposite that you tried to claim earlier" I chimed.
"Huh", said the man, "we have a lot of work ahead. Are you really a physician?
So you would like to believe that there is an alien base on the dark side of the moon. Very good, let us form a religion called "HDSM", The Holy Dark Side of the Moon. I think we should make our temples look like pyramids and let us play Pink Floyd in there: "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."
A commercial break:
Give us 1000 euros. Our brotherhood will arrange with your kind support journeys to the dark side of the moon. We go there to seek guidance from the Holy Aliens, who possess the wisdom of the whole universe. Only 1000 euros and you help us save the Earth, which will be destroyed otherwise. We all know the signs - the destiny of the Earth is in your hands.
"Very funny", I said, "This is not how it goes!" I tried to continue but suddenly I did not know why it would not be like that. The man replied immediately:
"What do you mean? It does not go like that? You yourself claimed that no choice, which is possible, should be ruled out. Didn't you have a cult, which was waiting for aliens to appear on Earth? The cult only died after years of activity in a mass suicide."
"Perhaps, but I cannot see the connection" I interrupted.
"The question is about your way of thinking that "this could be possible". This is exactly that sort of a religious concept, which can justify anything to be true and make any particular religion to be right, not to even speak about smaller beliefs."
"Well, how is this supposed ...?"
"In the scientific world view, which can be said to be a world view based on reality, thinking is based on believing - actually that is a wrong term in this respect, we should say: based on relying on - things which are known to be right. In other words, only things that have been proven right are considered right. All the other choices can be thought about but they are not relied on and certainly not believed on.
Scientific knowledge is something like that things can be placed in a relevant theory and verified to be true. Generally speaking, in order to accept a new theory, it must have more explanatory value and be simpler than the previous theory, among other things. Normally a theory, which has a lot of exceptions and unnecessary complexity, is not acceptable for a new theory. It may have some good points, but as a whole it is likely to be wrong. A new theory must be able to explain things better than any other theory.
Even this is not enough. The theory must hold the critics of the science community in order to be accepted in the end.
The end result is knowledge. With this you have things that you are entitled to think are right.
For instance, if we take Feng Shui, it has no basis. It is based on some obscure claims."
"But nobody has been able to ... well, okay."
"I gather that you did get an idea about this. I would like to point out from Feng Shui that even if it is an ancient belief - and actually the fact that it is ancient has been used as a claim to say it is right - the age means only that it has been able to survive among other ancient beliefs. Probably it has just because it is so obscure that nobody has been able to claim it directly wrong. Beliefs, which were having more concrete claims, have been laughed out as silly a lot earlier.
If we look at Feng Shui point by point comparison to science:
- The theory that it is based on. There is no theory which would connect to knowledge that mankind possesses.
- Observations that are proven. There are no phenomenon which have been proven right.
- Explanatory value. It does not explain anything any better than some other arbitrary theory. We could just as well use goblins to prove similar points that Feng Shui is making. Of course the existence of invisible goblins is more out of fashion than the invisible force fields of Feng Shui.
- The critics of the society. It has not been exposed to any critics, which it would have survived.
In this regards we can say that because Feng Shui has nothing, which would have any connections to human knowledge, it is only surviving in the atmosphere, which is feeding from superstitions.
"What do you really mean by this entitled to rely on?" I asked.
"It means that if something has been proven correct with the criteria explained above you should rely on that - until a new, better theory is invented. There is no real cause to claim that a theory is wrong if all the criteria mentioned above are fulfilled. Although, it must be observed what the theory is really covering and what not. The theory may be incomplete in many ways, even if it is correct.
Especially it means that there is no reason to trust or even believe in some other irrational theory, even if "it cannot be proven wrong".
Actually, with those superstitions that I mentioned in the beginning, the question is only about stories to adults. These kinds of stories have to a bit better than the "story about Santa Claus" that is told to children. The Santa Claus story will not be believed by adults, but some Feng Shui will, because it is using more difficult concepts that adults do not truly understand. For instance about the effects of a magnetic field almost anything can be claimed to most people, without them understanding whether it is true or not.
Nobody can actually claim that Santa Claus does not exist. Somebody can always claim that the real Santa Claus was here and there, even if somebody would be able to detect the fake beard of one particular Santa Claus.
You could say that "with the best adult knowledge" Santa Claus does not exist. And in the world of adults you are entitled to rely on that and there are reasons why you should act accordingly.
In science you have the same principle "the best knowledge". In the end the whole scientific world view can be reduced to the question: "Does Santa Claus exist?" If you understand this, you understand everything.
I looked at him stumped. He had just shown me how narrow my view on the scientific world view was. And he had just shown me that I did not really understand what knowledge was. And I had believed that I was smart - all physicists are smart - well, evidently not so. The man was not really arrogant, although that is what I had taken him for. He had just told me how things are ... in here.
For him this must have been a normal day at the beach ... if this was a ... a beach?
DELUSION
"Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been? It's alright we know where you've been."
I woke up too early. The sun was just rising. The breakfast bar on the beach seemed to be open already. I got myself in there and took in front of me a 10 cm tall glass of chilled orange juice, looked at the sea and I said to myself: "This is the life". Although I was no longer so sure about that, even when the warm breeze from the sea was just perfect.
The man in the cloak appeared from somewhere. The cloak still looked very bright. Does he have several of them or do they have overnight laundries in here? I decided not to ask him about that - you must understand by now why not.
"It was quite a stunt moving the sky that you did a couple of days ago", I said to him.
"Heh, heh, nothing actually moved in that", said the cloaked man. He seemed to have fun again. Damn!
"I thought that you would have got a clue about this already? Actually we are not on a beach and actually nothing what you see exists in the physical reality. The whole environment is virtual reality. You yourself are the only real matter on this beach along with my conscience - as you might want to call it. Everything else is a delusion", he explained, "didn't you already suspect as much?"
I have to say, that THIS is NOT what I had thought. To the man I said: "Well, okay maybe - the bar that was created in the spot ..."
"... We did not think that you observed the late creation of the bar."
"... hot drink in a chilled glass."
"... beers have not been our primary research subject in your world."
"... the drummers were playing very complicated rhythms quite monotonously. That is not really what steel-drummers do."
"... we have to think about that. The whole idea of music is hard for us to grasp. It is a too simple a concept for us."
"You do not have any music?" I acclaimed in surprise and let this nasty remark of simplicity go.
"We haven't had music for some hundreds of thousands of years. Not in the sense that you would like to think about it.
Similar stimulants to the brain that you are in my understanding looking for in the "music", we can find in our virtual reality world in completely different ways. As a matter of fact we haven't been living anywhere else than in our virtual reality world for hundreds of thousands of years. We can generate in there whatever we wish - well, almost anything. Our limitations are coming from the fact that we do not have all the resources of the universe available, yet.
In our virtual reality we are generating all the stimulants to the brain, like the equivalence to your primitive music - if you see it fit to even compare", the cloak man tried to explain.
"You call music primitive - it is one of the finest forms of art in the world. You do not seem to understand what music as art means to man?" I challenged the man in cloak.
"Actually, I presume that we can get ideas about that from you, the historical person. Or actually we are only interested in knowing how you felt about it at your time. But doesn't this virtual reality interest you, shouldn't we talk about that first?" he asked.
"Of course", I said.
"Well, already at your time it was proven that any physical environment can be created in the virtual reality. If you have enough calculation power, that is. In other words, the task is manageable by calculus. This is an extrapolation of the older law by Touring. As you know the computers that you were using were proven possible earlier by Touring. He proved that anything that can be calculated can be calculated with his analytical machine. It meant that is was in principle possible to create such a machine. It is very obvious for you, but that was by far not the case one hundred years earlier. And now you know that you can create any physical environment in the virtual reality, which was not that obvious to you", the man was teaching.
"And you have been able to develop an enormously fast processor? Haven't you got any limits in increasing the processing power?" I asked.
The man looked at me like I was an ant, thinking that was I talking or did he just hear things.
"The calculation power is present in parallel universes. The memory and the processing of a quantum computer, are using the interference with parallel universes", the cloak man explained.
"So you have been able to contact other universes and made a deal with them", I asked cautiously.
"By accident, your question was half sensible", he said.
I sighed and thought that perhaps this has to be taken as a credit if there is nothing better to be gained.
"We have not contacted them, but we are working with that. Before that we are having some smaller projects.
On the other hand, using the processing power does not require any co-operation deals with parallel universes, not even quick meetings. These kinds of things are belonging to an era when history was being created - that means your primitive times", he said.
"What do you mean, history was still being created ..." I wondered.
"Not now", he interrupted, "to use the processing power of other parallel universes is a property of the multi-universe. You do not need to make any deals, because it is a natural phenomenon.
They know that we are here using their universe and vice versa. Well, at least some of them must know", he continued.
"I do not understand how you can use the resources from somewhere just like that? Don't you get sooner or later a discussion about the use of energy? I mean with this that it is rather unlikely that the use of energy will be observed. But because that happens billions and billions of times, or whatever the numbers are in this, very many times anyway, it means that very unlikely things in the end WILL happen", I said a bit pompously. He should not think that I understood nothing, I thought.
He looked at me a bit amused. Again!
"Calculating does not require energy. Any calculus is possible with reversible operations. It means that the energy used in the operation will be regained and thus the energy consumed is null. This is the theory which was proven already at your time. For us it is not just a theory but the practise."
Two days at the beach and the thoughts began to wander, I noticed. Well, it does not matter. The principles of a quantum computer were not the most important thing for me at that moment.
"You shouldn't be disappointed If the theories are escaping your mind and you are speaking very illogically at times", the man tried to support me. Somehow, this was quite difficult to understand as a support.
The man continued: "When we are living in our real virtual reality world, we have the information from one million years accessible instantaneously. The times before that is a quite uninteresting period. In our thoughts we can analyse millions of choices within a fraction of a second."
I thought about this. I have problems in remembering older than 5 year old incidents and recalling newer happenings will sometimes require some time. How many logically correct deductions I can make within a second - not many, sometimes none, I thought.
"Now that I transferred my conscious to this shared virtual reality environment, by abilities are now limited. I have only access to a limited information package from your world and my reasoning functionality is not what I have in our own world", the man was belittling his abilities.
"So this is not your normal surrounding. What is the problem with this", I was playing with him a bit.
The man smiled: "For us this is like extreme sports. Disconnection from our collective and entering this kind of virtual reality is not what most people want to do. They do not dare to do this. You could even die in here", he whispered.
"Die? Haven't you conquered that?" I wondered, partly joking at him.
"Of course we have, but something unexpected might happen in here and that could damage my conscience! Of course we have safety protocols and their multilevel backups ..."
"But of course you have ..."
"... but in theory it is possible that they fail. This theoretical possibility that any of us can understand and calculate in his mind in less than one million of a second, is frightening most of us too much", he was talking a bit out of breath.
These are sissies, I thought to myself. Is this what one million years of evolution will make us?
"Well, you just have to pray for that nothing bad happens", I teased at him.
Something in the man's face told me that I made a mistake. He did not laugh when he stood up.
The next thing that I saw was that everything went black.
THE PRAYING TENNIS PLAYER
"Seven trumpets, the sound of thunder.
Seven trumpets, the threatening anger."
I opened my eyes in my cabin and stared at the ceiling. I think I would learn to hate these kinds of sudden incidents of passing out. Sleep or what is it that I would need to call it in virtual reality? But hey, I was still me - I felt comfortably numb. What is that they are mixing with the orange juice?
The man smiled when arriving to the breakfast table.
"I think we selected correctly with you. You really can create some emotions in us. This reference to praying was quite a sharp comment. We almost got irritated with that."
I thought that what did this chap do if he got a bit more than "irritated"? Even now the game was over instantaneously. Would he throw me to the black hole, or what? Well it would not matter because I was already dead, would it?
I said to him: "What is the problem with praying?"
They burst to almost hysteric laughter...
"You are still continuing with that!" That is very good. That's okay; let us think about the logics in praying. We were thinking that you would have a change to know about one of our projects, but I think we need to talk about some things first. We cannot let you loose in here with your barbaric views", the man was talking to me.
The man started his introduction and I took some more frozen berries and natural yoghurt. And a tall class of chilled orange juice. Not bad.
"What is it supposed to be happening because of the force in the prayer? Will the world change in the elementary particle level - I am now referring to your understanding of the smallest ingredients of the universe - when the prayer affects them? Will the human behaviour be changed because of the praying? Or will the prayer give more understanding, knowledge and talent to the prayer himself? Let us think about this with an example. You are used to playing all kinds of ball games. Let us think what happens when you are praying in a tennis tournament.
There are only a few logically relevant options, which could happen if the praying works for your advancement:
From this you can began to wonder that it not really fair to practise tennis to the extreme, when you achieve a big improvement just by praying. The fact that praying would improve your game, with any of those choices above, seems unfair. To get one's own game better - that is without merits. To get the opponent play worse - that is an ill meaning thought. Changing the equipment of the game by praying - hey, that is just not fair.
Let us think about this from the opponent's perspective. He has been training like a madman for this tournament, which is quite common if we are talking about a big or meaningful tournament for him. On the top level the differences between players are small and thus even the slightest improvement in training can make the difference between the loss and victory.
Now the opponent hears that you have got advantage from praying. What is he supposed to do? There are only a few choices for him:
So, if he really wants to win, there is only one choice for him: start praying.
This is fulfilling all the signs of extortion. He is being blackmailed to pray by the threat of defeat and with that loss of money and merit. His whole career as a professional player is in question with this.
Let us assume that he begins to pray. Which one will now win if the players are otherwise even? There are only a few choices in this. The player might think:
The last choice that mercy can fall upon you is evidently a random choice. The player has no realistic way to know if he gets the mercy or not. This is clear intimidation. The player is left unsure from the decision, which might just as well be either way. This can also be described as dominant role by possessing a superior power over the player.
How to "earn a victory"? To ensure the victory, the player must follow the path that the god in question has determined, depending on which particular religion is in question. Even with that the victory is not certain, but it can be asked by praying.
In other words, praying means begging without knowing the end result. This is also dominant behaviour by the god.
What happens after the game when both players have been praying and only one of them can win? The humans are sensitive beings and emotions may take over after the defeat. In general the losing opponent feels bad and may even cry - at least in privacy.
In all of these cases the losing player is left uncertain why he was losing. The choices for the defeat are:
Either way, the emotions were running high and the defeated could not possibly know why he was losing. To get even the slightest information about the reasons of his defeat, he must continue praying.
This is clearly trying to make the player addicted to praying by torture.
Because the defeated has emotional problems in taking the defeat in spite of his praying, this is a clear case of torture. This was torture by the definition of your time when discussing the treatment of prisoners. The difference between punishment and torture is that in the latter case the victim has problems in taking it and it goes on for an extended period of time.
Thus, this is clearly mental torture and also an attempt to make the victim addictive to praying, because he must continue praying to get over with the consequences of the defeat.
In addition, there is also a possibility that the god did not rule the game, but he left the players themselves play without affecting the game. Even now the winning player cannot possibly know whether the victory was because of him or if he got the victory because of the mercy from the god or at least with the aid of the god. This is the way how the god takes away the self-esteem of man. A human can never know whether he has been successful in something or not. This can clearly be defined as ultimate mental domination by taking away the self respect of the man.
As a summary, you could say that IF praying works, the god is evidently a thoroughly evil being", the man ended his talk.
"So, we can just pray that praying does not work", I said.
This time my comment was rewarded with laughter.
"It looks like we can move forward tomorrow. Do you want to see our project?" he asked.
It was evident that the answer was yes.
To be continued...