In the early 1970s, the outstanding Polish writer, philosopher and futurist Stanislaw Lem opened a new page in his work. He played the paradoxical role of a literary critic, writing reviews of non-existent literary works. This is how the famous cycle "Absolute Emptiness" appeared, in which, among the original parodies and acutely social pamphlets, there are also unusual works of the "mixed" genre.
Hoax
The essay "New Cosmogony" attracts attention. Here Lem offers unusual answers to the famous Fermi paradox: if space is full of aliens, why aren't they sitting at our dinner table? He also offered an interpretation of the phenomenon of "cosmic miracles", inexplicable in astronomy.
We are presented with a completely fictional Nobel speech by a certain professor Alfred Testa, who develops the idea that the entire visible universe is the result of the game of an extraterrestrial superintelligence. Extraterrestrial intelligences divided the Metagalaxy into play zones. Each of them has its own Player. At the same time, for special reasons, powerful aliens not only do not communicate with each other, but do not even know the meaning of this universal game.
According to the writer, the situation is both amazing and funny. What might it look like, what is it doing, what goals is pursued by a civilization that has been developing over billions of years? This simply cannot be imagined, and therefore no one seriously even mentioned such ancient civilizations.
12 billion years ago
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True, some of the astronomers expressed a cautious opinion that quasars and pulsars could be the result of the activities of great cosmic civilizations. However, simple calculations show that earthlings, developing at the current pace, could well reach such a high level of space technology in just a few thousand years. And then what? What can a civilization that has existed millions of times longer be capable of? And if, having exhausted all the possibilities of reason, such civilizations cease to exist suicidal?
It is easier to imagine that 12 billion years ago (today's data add a few more billion years), the first shoots of life arose in the Universe. Consequently, the entire modern cosmos should already be transformed by the superintelligence as an artificial habitat.
Lem believed that such a billion-year-old civilization did not need any technology. Its tool is what we call the laws of nature. Physics itself is a "machine" for such a civilization. Moreover, this is not a "finished machine", and although its construction is far advanced, it is not yet completed.
According to Lem, the path of the development of reason leads from the discovery of the laws of nature to their complete change. It is curious that if the first civilizations were powerful enough from the very beginning, we would never be able to notice their traces.
The Law of 100 Percent Effectiveness in Mathematics
Undoubtedly, Lem's New Cosmogony is one of the most paradoxical works in this genre of world literature. However, oddly enough, this outstanding work did not attract attention at all for a long time. Nor was it known to a group of Soviet researchers, who set themselves a daunting task - the creation of the cybernetic foundations of the fundamental laws of nature - and outlined the way to solve it.
Leonid Moiseevich Pustylnikov and his colleagues A. G. Butkovskii, O. I. Zolotoe and F. M. Penkov decided to combine in mathematical models the principles of theoretical physics and control theory - cybernetics. This is how an interdisciplinary field of research arose that included mathematics, cybernetics and physics.
It was about the role of mathematics in the modern world. And the creators of the new scientific paradigm posed the question: where is the limit of the development of mathematical modeling of the surrounding physical reality? The answer was a kind of "law of 100% effectiveness of mathematics", formulated at the time by A. G. Butkovsky: for any reality there is a mathematical structure that describes it. And vice versa, for any mathematical structure there is or in principle can exist a reality that is described by this structure. In particular, this means that if some mathematical structure has not yet "found" a material object, its reality, then it will certainly be found somewhere in the depths of the universe.
This is how an amazing concept was born, called the "Management, or cybernetic, paradigm of the world" (UPM). It argues that everything that is preserved in the world occurs due to the operation of feedback control systems, regulators, naturally present in nature and society. In this case, deviations from equiprobable processes observed in nature are very important, which are errors or errors in the operation of regulators.
Special point of view
Thus, the UPM contains a special, "managerial" point of view on the "physical-cybernetic" structure of the universe. From a new perspective, UPM helps to understand how the stability of the fundamental laws of nature is ensured and how they could be changed.
According to Professor Pustylnikov, the world literally stands on regulators. The observed structures lose their stability and collapse if, for some reason, the regulators that support them stop working properly. At the same time, the world begins to plunge into chaos. Our world is a complex system of interconnected regulation and control, operating on the principle of feedback.
A remarkable example of how the management paradigm is embodied in concrete are military regulations, which have absorbed the often "cruel experience" of the past and were written literally in blood. So, it is impossible either to control a separate battle or to wage a war as a whole without receiving information through feedback channels, without reports from intelligence and subordinate units.
The order and activity of human communities are also supported by regulators, which sometimes form a complex interconnected system of government, including power structures of different levels. The main role of regulators here is played by formal and informal rules developed in communities of people: morality, ethics, religion, constitution, laws of different levels. Law enforcement agencies, courts, police, army and other law enforcement and order maintenance agencies play a significant role in society. However, historical experience shows that morality and ethics are the main regulators of stability and development of society. And if they start to refuse, then society is destroyed. This is the cause of many unrest, revolutions and wars, including civil ones.
Terraforming Metagalaxy
Lem's universe resembles a honeycomb, where each cell is characterized by its own, distinct from others, physical laws. Each "cell" civilization developed completely apart, considering itself the only one in the Universe. With the accumulation of knowledge and energy, ancient civilizations gradually pushed the boundaries of their influence. After a rather long period of time, such a civilization inevitably began to encounter the "cosmic wonders" of the activity of another mind.
So the first phase of the "universal mind game" ended. After meeting with new natural laws, "constructed" by neighbors, for each superintelligence the next phase of development began. Enchanting collisions of ancient civilizations grew into grandiose cosmic cataclysms. The destructiveness of this behavior was obvious, and the supercivilizations began to negotiate and unite. This translated the "mind game" into the third phase, which continues to this day.
Today, the activity of "ancient minds" is mainly reduced to the stabilization of the cellular structure of the Universe. Members of the clan of higher civilizations try in every possible way to patch up the patchwork of various physicists of the Metagalaxy. They behave like the crews of ships, which pour oil on the raging waves during a storm. Although their actions are not coordinated, nevertheless they can save the universe from the terrible scenarios of the Big Bang.
When we peer into modern space, then, if desired, we can find the playing field of extraterrestrial superintelligence. The space is constantly expanding at an accelerated rate, all material bodies have a maximum propagation speed (light barrier). The overwhelming part of the universe is occupied by dark matter and energy, the stars gather in clusters, and those in galaxies. Galaxies form groups, and they form metagalactic honeycombs. And the arrow of cosmological time rules over all this. These are the main features of the structure of the universe in the structure of Lem's cosmogonic game. Games that allow us to immediately understand why we are surrounded by the "great silence of the cosmos."
Four decades have passed since the creation of Stanislav Lem's incredible works. “Absolute Emptiness” was continued by the collection “Imaginary Size”, but nowhere were such revolutionary ideas encountered as in “New Cosmogony”. Lem's thoughts were reflected in the work of the prominent Russian science fiction writer Vasily Dmitrievich Zvyagintsev. His multivolume series "Odysseus Departing Ithaca" includes a number of mysterious alien characters, including the mysterious Players. From other spaces and times, they command the destinies of the universe.
And our cybernetics continue to work. Professor L. M. Pustylnikov is preparing a new extensive work in which he is going to tell how to build algorithms for controlling the laws of nature. Probably, in this major study we will find, next to the description of the new capabilities of the UPM, and a mention of Lem's "New cosmogony". The most unusual work of the great Polish philosopher and science fiction writer lives after the death of its creator …
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №16. Author: Oleg Arsenov