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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 within anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'Non Playable Characters' are concept 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 this question and 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 was 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

Time Travel and Superposition in Dark

I was no more than four years old when our car got stuck on a snowy hill decades ago. Everyone but me went outside to push to get us out of frozen road. More people gathered from other cars to help each other and soon everyone was engaged in a small rescue operation. That certainly didn't mean I didn't help - as well as others pushing the car from the outside, I did the same from the inside. From the back seat, I put my hands on the front and pushed hard. In my defense, deep down I knew that what I was doing was kind of weird and useless. At the time I just didn't know why. I was just ashamed sitting alone and doing nothing. Well, like they say, with age comes the wisdom and now I know that what I did was physically impossible, just like in the case of baron Münchhausen - when he got out himself and his horse he was sitting on out of a swamp by pulling his own hair upwards. And just like in old expression about an absurd and impossible thing one can do - if I were to pull b

Neanderthal Burgers

It was commonly believed that ancient hunter-gatherers, both Humans and Neanderthals, had a simple lifestyle in which most or all of their food was obtained by gathering from local sources or by hunting animals from their environment. We simply assumed that beside the meat they hunted, their diet consisted of only raw foods such as wild plants, edible insects, mushrooms, honey, or pretty much anything that was safe to eat. Well, according to the recent study performed by Ceren Kabukcu* and her team from the archaeobotanical department of the University of Liverpool, we couldn't be more wrong. Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations - the Shanidar Cave in Iraq and the Franchthi Cave in Greece. The food remains from the first cave, originated from both Neanderthal hearths, 70,000 years old and those from ancient Humans thirty millenniums later and also those from Greece consumed some 12,000 years ago by our modern ancestors under microscopic examination reveal

Insights Discovery

It's amazing how different people react to the same thing. Consider the famous question "Is the glass half empty or half full?". What do you see inside such glass when you spot it on the table? The water or the air? This is of course not a school-grade-sort of a question. Actually, there is no right or wrong answer here. There's no definite reason to consider anyone thinking that the glass is half full to be overly optimistic or those who see the emptiness of the glass to be unreasonably realistic. It is just a point of view and nothing more. But, it tells a bit about your character or how Carl Jung, a well known Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst defined it - your personality type. The point of inquiries like this one is simply in the fact that if we ask ourselves enough questions they would have potential to unveil our personality type fully, or to the high degree of accuracy. However, we would need to be careful in both, selecting the questions and defining all r

Reality of Double-Slit Experiment

More than two hundred years passed after Thomas Young performed the famous double-slit experiment as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light and still it's revelation puzzles our sanity ever since. In short, if we shoot a beam of light at a panel with two small slits (less than a millimeter apart), the photons - elementary particles that light is made of, have to figure out how to get through the slits to radiate out the other side. If they are truly particles, like in macro world, they would project a solid image of two piles on the background wall behind the slits. If they travel similar to the waves, like water does in macro world, the image would resemble a wave-like interference pattern: alternating locations, equidistantly spaced, where particles leave a mark on the wall. Thanks to the outcome of the experiment, we know that light is capable to do both. It always travel in wave like fashion, even if we shoot photons in a row towards slits, one after another. Qua

Von Neumann Probe

It's hard to create a list of all the scientists in the history of mathematics and physics who better applied theoretical knowledge into the hardware that ultimately worked and moved the world to the next step of existence. But if we try to do it, John von Neumann would be among the top five in the list of scientific GOATs. Probably the best of all of his contributions is in the history of computer science - along with Arthur Burks and Herman Goldstine, he published a paper* in 1946 that practically described the architecture of a modern computers as we are familiar with today. However, what he will be most remembered for is not a machine in existence today but one that is still just a theoretical and basically only an idea. Not yet anyways. In short, design of a von Neumann probe or a self-replicating spacecraft is not that far-fetched from all what we know today and if humanity sees its survival on Earth difficult in the future (to say the least) and tries to became interstel

Revelation of Life (4) - Thea

"Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of life and the entire structure of, well, everything. And yet, at that moment I felt like more is coming. Like the truth only started to unveil and I am about to understand the fate of what was undoubtedly beyond my comprehension.. The fate of the universe.. No less." Revelation of Life - part three Choosing Planets Revelation of Life - prequel To the loving memory of my father November 6, 2020 Revelation of Life part four Thea Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of l

Revelation of Life (3) - Divulgence

"After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words. After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words." Revelation of Life - part two Is Life a Zero-Player Game? Revelation of Life - part four Revelation of Life part three Divulgence After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words. "I.. I'm.. Also glad..  To meet you. Phil?" The initial fear and tremble started to fade out so I

Revelation of Life (2) - Phil

"You gotta be kidding!" - I was inspecting my father's face in search for any hint of a concealed smile that would explain a joke he was telling me. "You are actually suggesting that there is a two dimensional balloon surrounding our universe where real life is located and the 3D cosmos inside a balloon is just a holographic illusion? You are saying that you and me are actually living at the end of the universe and all these here are just holograms? That we are made of... what exactly.. light? Energy?" Revelation of Life - part one Are We Holograms? Revelation of Life - part three Revelation of Life part two Phil Sometimes after lunch my father and I enjoyed talking about different things and on many occasions we exchanged opinions about science fiction, movies and mysteries of the universe. That warm October day

Revelation of Life (1) - The Orb

I don't know how to explain... I mean people have vivid dreams for sure. My best friend told me about his dream just the other day and boy... It was real horror story and it had everything, amazing heroes, real twisted villain and so much details with action to the level that even Stephen King would not be ashamed of. But me.. I don't know. It's so strange...  My dreams have left me. Five years ago I had my last dream. Ever since then it's blank. The nights are just restful and uneventful. There's no remembering in the morning. And I am not sure that last dream was even a dream. Game of Life - prequel download graphic novella, 300dpi (39MB) Game of Life - short film Revelation of Life - part two Revelation of Life part one five years later I don't know how to explain...  I mean people have vivid dreams for sure. My b

The Illusion of Time

Since time immemorial, scientific thought did not flow in a straight line. It was full of retrograde motion and ups and downs and many theories were debunked along the way. Take for instant Einstein’s static universe or theory about existence of small planet in the orbit between Mercury and the Sun. On the other hand, illusions originated in our brains were not uncommon either. For the biggest example, we are all aware that weirdly huge Moon right next to the horizon is coming strait from the trickery of our mind. But what about time? It is definitely something we are taking for granted for a vary long time. Could it be both, construct of our own brain and yet based on something more fundamental and still waiting for better understanding? The time from our daily experience, feels very much real. We are living in it's present state and it flows inevitably forward to the uncertain future and thanks to our memories and factual evidence all around us it came from the certain past.