Matrix theory has become quite popular lately. Its essence is that our whole world is just a simulation, a computer model developed by some advanced "programmers" or even artificial intelligence. Moreover, it is not the yellow press or science fiction writers who speak about this, but quite respectable researchers.
Meet Neuro Lace
Last September, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) said in a note to clients that the likelihood that our world is a computer simulation is approximately 20-50%.
In an attempt to substantiate its assessment of the situation, BAML refers to a concept put forward by the famous scientist and entrepreneur, the head of the SpaceX and Tesla corporations Elon Musk. At the June Code Conference, dedicated to the IT industry, he spoke about the directions for the development of artificial intelligence.
For example, Musk suggested that in the foreseeable future, people will begin to interact with electronic interfaces through a neural lace - a special layer implanted directly into the cerebral cortex.
Neural lace will enable humans to process large amounts of data at tremendous speed. One of its first prototypes was created in 2015, when American researchers successfully managed to implant such a system into the brains of mice.
Promotional video:
But if people have already managed to create neuro-lace, then why not assume that it was invented even earlier, because, as they say, everything new is well forgotten old?
Guided memories
It is known that some memories, especially traumatic ones, can be displaced by our brain into the subconscious. Recently, a scientific experiment was carried out showing that with the help of certain drugs it is possible to block the production of the PKMzeta protein, which is responsible for storing memories in the so-called long-term memory. The same effect can be achieved using the techniques of suggestion and computer simulation.
The phenomenon of so-called false memories has long been known. So, the ex-President of South Africa Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013. On the same day, literally millions of queries appeared on Internet search engines to determine whether the information about Mandela's death was true. It turned out that a huge number of Internet users were convinced that the former African leader died in prison in the 60s or 70s of the last century!
In fact, the famous apartheid fighter was arrested in 1962 and spent many years behind bars. But in 1990 he was released, and in May 1994, Mandela was wounded by the President of South Africa, becoming the country's first black leader. He was in power for five whole years. But people in different parts of the world believed that he died long ago in dungeons. They even thought that they had read and heard about it on the news …
After that, the term "Mandela effect" even appeared, implying the appearance in a large group of people of memories that do not correspond to the real state of affairs, and refer, for example, to well-known historical events.
Here's another example. For some reason, most people believe that Adolf Hitler had brown eyes, and despite this, he fought for the purity of the Aryan race, and a true Aryan should have blue eyes.
Meanwhile, everyone who personally knew Hitler testified that his eyes were blue. There is even a color photograph, which clearly shows the color of the Fuhrer's eyes - it is blue!
There are many such myths. For example, there are people who are convinced that the Americans landed on the moon only three times (although Wikipedia clearly states that there were six landings). Some believe that former US President Ronald Reagan died shortly after the end of his term in office, when in fact he died in 2004 at the age of 93 from pneumonia due to Alzheimer's disease.
Many do not doubt that Mother Teresa has long been canonized, although her canonization took place only in September 2016.
There are people who believe that there are 51 or 52 states in the US (although there are exactly 50).
There are many examples of the "Mandela effect" in our country, in Russia. So, there is a myth that Catherine II sold Alaska to the Americans, although in fact this event took place during the reign of Emperor Alexander II. Most Russians, when asked who wrote the poem "The Prisoner", which begins with the words: "I am sitting behind bars in a damp dungeon …", will confidently answer that this is Lermontov, while its author is Pushkin!
Thousands of Russians who were children in the Soviet years "remember" how in the mid-1980s a very scary film based on Hauf's fairy tale "Dwarf Nose" was released. But later it was not possible to find out what kind of film it was. None of the three adaptations that were shown on Soviet television at that time (1953, 1970 and 1978) turned out to be "the same". Some enthusiasts even tried to find a copy of the "creepy film" in the film archives, but they never found it.
On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin, announcing his resignation, allegedly uttered the phrase: "I'm tired, I'm leaving." She then became winged. But in reality Boris Nikolaevich did not say anything about fatigue. He only said, "I'm leaving."
There is an absolutely fantastic hypothesis that false memories are the result of the memory of parallel lives. That is, a person moves from one reality to another, parallel, and there events go a little differently.
Recently, a team of psychologists from the University of Warwick (UK) found that it is possible to artificially form in people erroneous memories, and most will be convinced of their truth.
423 volunteers were told about a fictional event they allegedly experienced in childhood. Most often, it was about a drawing by schoolchildren of a teacher or about participation in some kind of public event. Subjects were then asked to imagine the story in detail.
In the end, they were offered a test in which they had to distinguish false memories from genuine ones. As a result, 30.5% declared the “implanted” memories to be real. Another 23% said that such events did take place, but the details were different.
In another experiment, people were convinced that they had committed some kind of crime in the past. And the subjects were subsequently able to describe the process of committing the crime in great detail.
If our reality is indeed the result of modeling, then it means that memories can be modified by changing a computer program? Why not?
In the world of "phantoms"
Now, says Elon Musk, there are already video games with elements of augmented reality - take the same Pokemon. There are technologies that help to "superimpose" virtual reality on the real one.
Sooner or later, virtual reality will completely merge with the present. But if humanity was able to create virtual reality systems of this level, then where is the guarantee that we are no longer inside such systems?
Perhaps our world is a model of the world of the ancestors, which was created by our distant descendants? Is our reality what it looked like in the "real" world many years ago?
It is also possible that even our physical body is just a virtual illusion and we exist in the form of wave “phantoms”. Hence the theory of the rebirth of souls: in each "phantom" there is a program according to which it lives for a certain amount of time, and then "dies" and is reborn in a new virtual shell. For each of us, this will mean a new "life" -reality.
Elon Musk hopes that we really live in a simulation - if it were otherwise, humanity could have perished long ago as a result of some global cataclysm:
- Either we create simulators indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist.
It is not clear only why all this information is needed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch clients. Perhaps so they can decide how best to invest their funds, given that our future is virtual? However, like the present and the past …
Ida SHAKHOVSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the XX century", 2017