Interview With a Teenager

There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the time with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame, and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But one thing is certain: everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today.

Viktor, testing the drums before 'Some like it hot', theatrical play

Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called the teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just one phrase to describe all that's happening during those seven years, it would definitely be 'trial and error'. It was just like tasting the life that was thrown at me for the first time. Understanding it. Embracing it. Maybe a little changing it on the way.

But enough about me; the rest of this post is about my son Viktor and the continuation of the 'Interview' series, started with him being seven and ten years old in 'Interview With an Expert' and 'Interview With an X'. Anyway, these are 15 questions for his 15 years I selected to ask him today. I'm really proud of all his answers and his way of thinking. 

Describe yourself in 5 words or less.
Determined, ambitious, loyal, generous, and honest.

What's the best part of your day at school? Why?
P.E. and all of the breaks in between subjects. Because I get to talk to my friends normally and rest a little bit.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to your birthday party, who would you choose? What would you talk about?
Einstein, Jesus, and my father. We would question Jesus.

Imagine you’re the president, and you need to have 3 people to assist you. Who would you pick and why? 
I'm not really into politics, so I don't know whom to pick.

What have you learned in life that you feel will be the most useful?
Motivation isn't real, but discipline is. Try to be as optimistic but as realistic as possible. Never give up.

If you could change anything in the world and make it idealistic, what 3 things would it be and why?
I would get rid of all the governments, no more countries, and everyone would speak the same language.

How would you explain Earth to aliens?
I think there is a lot of diversity to this question, but let's say in the case that we come to them. I would most likely try in some way to use physics, math, and chemistry to explain Earth.

Do you think it's better to have one great skill you're an A+ at, or many skills you’re a B at, and why?
This question is very easy because if you had only one skill that you are A+ in, then the rest skills would not be so great... So that is horrible... I would rather have many skills that I'm a B at. I could easily improve in skills that I like. And I also have a lot of options if I ever change my mind.

Imagine you're the teacher tomorrow at school. What are 3 things you'd teach that you think would help make school better?
Self-defense, how to be a better person, and showing the kids the real world.

How would you explain the word 'love' to someone without using the word 'love'?
Umm... Make this with my hands. 🫶

What is the most important thing you learned in school NOT taught by a teacher?
The world isn't black or white. It's gray.

If you could travel back in time 3 years, what advice would you give yourself?
Make me proud.

If you could grow up to be famous, what would you be famous for?
I would be famous for motivating other people to become the best version of themselves and show how to really be successful.

If you had enough money that you never had to work, what would you do with your time?
There is no money in this world that would make me not work.

What do you think your life would look like 10 years from now?
I hope I will be successful in the future and be more capable.

So there you go. When selecting the questions, I knew they should not be too detailed or too serious. Nevertheless, they were supposed to be appropriate for the age, and to make sure, I performed a little research first to find the right ones, which I thought were the most suitable. Sometimes, even the shortest answer to an apparently entertaining question shows a lot.

I wonder, if I had a chance, how would I answer them back then. Hopefully not too different.

Are We All NPCs?

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes-or-no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the inside anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'non-playable characters' are concepts relatively new, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multi-player games sophisticated enough to hint at this question and the probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality were simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In order to say that we are all NPCs, something extraordinary has to happen. Something unexpected, like a bug in the code. A glitch that would clearly break the laws of physics.

On the other end, in the future, near or far, the engine behind simulated characters in games would be even more sophisticated in a way that all characters would be able to easily pass Turing's test. To act just like you and me. The AI behind them would be so advanced that they would be equal to the human players. Or much better. So to speak, one game in particular has already achieved this goal. The Chess. When asked about chess engines, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, said exactly this: "I find it much more interesting to play humans. And also, of course, now that they have become so strong in a game like that, I wouldn't stand a chance". I love chess, but I have to admit I disagree with Magnus—playing against computer bots became more and more indistinguishable from playing real people. In the most popular chess.com engine online, I solely play against computer personalities behind Komodo and Stockfish engines, and I have enjoyed them for years. But I agree that playing against humans is much more fun. For now. Let's revive this talk again in a decade or two... Or three... When chess bots develop more to their personalities. More non-chess features. A sense of humor, maybe.

In any case, the main problem with simulation theory is that it lacks a definition of reality itself. What it really is. Is this what we are living in? If it is simulated, where is it simulated from? If we skip all the philosophical views so far solely based on Nick Bostrom's book 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' and stay to the physics realm only, I think that simulation of any reality or anything at all requires two prerequisite conditions to start with. One is that there is a high probability that the system performing the simulation should be distinct from its simulation, and the second is a large complexity behind it, something that Jonathan Bartlett from the Blyth Institute explained with: "The problem with that [simulation in general] is that it always takes more stuff to simulate something than the thing you’re simulating".

Additionally, we are kind of looking at the simulation hypothesis today through the gaming lens, in which simulated reality must have 'real' players from the original coder's reality. But what if our reality, if being simulated, is not a multi-player game? What if it is a zero-player game? Or not a game at all? In that case, we all could be NPCs, and there would be no real players. Because original and simulated reality could be two completely incompatible actualities. What if simulated reality is not a computer program at all? What if it is something else entirely?

I know I post a lot of questions here, but bear with me. If we follow the logic of more complex, upper reality, which is distinct enough from its simulated creation, what would I think of first? For me, it's shadows in Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave'. In his famous work, Plato describes a group of people who are chained to the cave facing a blank wall. All they saw were shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are the prisoners' entire reality, while the objects before the fire represent the true forms of the items that they can only perceive through reason. Plato goes further elaborating on his mind experiment, but for our topic, let's focus on the shadows themselves. They are just two-dimensional images of something coming from the upper third dimension. They are distinct from the original objects and certainly less complex and the product of a comprehensive setup.

Well, the final question arises by itself. Is it possible to cast three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects? Just like a square represents a cube from the third dimension, the cube could be just a shadow of a tesseract's fourth-dimensional counterpart. The casting in this scenario would not be as simple as in Plato's story, nor would the shadows be what we mean by the term, but it's definitely something worth giving a second thought. One hypothetical four-dimensional reality would be an ideal source of three-dimensional simulations, and there's even a scientific theory that 'casts' light in the right direction. It's called the 'holographic principle'.

The origin of the theory lies in black holes, and the best is to quote my fictional self from the 'Revelation of Life', a hard science short story I wrote a couple of years ago: "If Hawking was right, any black hole, no matter how massive, would evaporate over time. When that happens, all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it—nothing, especially information, can ever be lost." The solution to this paradox is that the information belonging to the objects swallowed by the black hole should not be part of the three-dimensional reality in the first place. The holographic principle states that "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region" or the dimensional boundary surrounding the entire universe, while our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the entities and events located outside.

Finally, and to get back to the original titled question, in this reflection we indeed could be all NPCs in a hypothetical simulation originated from the upper dimension. Just like in a famous zero-player game invented by John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, a simulated three-dimensional world can only be a setup, created with an initial state and left to evolve on its own. Just like we culture bacterial colonies in a Petri dish. Or it can be a more complex setup with added life forms driven by conscious artificial entities or even by 'real' people from the upper dimension. For the question of why such a simulation would be created in the first place, there is no good answer. The reality of a fourth (or fifth, sixth, etc.) dimension would be something we wouldn't be able to fathom right away. Or at all. Nevertheless, I thought about one simple reason and embedded it in the 'Revelation of Life', but if you are eager to read it, please watch a 'Game of Life' first, a short film that precedes it.

Game of Life (Simulation story, prequel)
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/game-of-life.html

Revelation of Life (Simulation story, a hard science fiction)
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Refs:
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/jonathan-bartlett-on-why-we-do-not-live-in-a-simulated-universe/
https://chesspulse.com/is-magnus-carlsen-better-than-a-computer-2/
https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-engine
https://medium.com/@jacksimmonds89/are-you-an-npc-this-may-disturb-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Image ref:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/