Cellular automata are artificial life forms created inside a computer. Scientists observe how they interact with one another and how they respond to synthetic environments to gain insights into real world processes like the spread of a disease or the survival potential of endangered species. A programmer sets up an artificial world inside a computer, and the cellular automata are the artificial beings that populate this world. The automata and their world are comprised of bits and bytes of stored programming and data as well as organized sequences of electrical impulses flowing through computer circuitry. This data and these impulses can generate something akin to a computer role playing game, where avatars interact in the artificial world. But, unlike a computer role playing game, the avatars operate independently, based on a predetermined set of rules, without input from outside. Rules, by which the artificial beings can move around, interact with each other, etc., are defined at the beginning, and then the artificial world and its inhabitants develop by themselves.
By interacting with each other and their artificial world, cellular automatons can learn from their experiences. They can reproduce and evolve in form and behavior in response to conditions—artificial, Natural Selection. In order to better comprehend the unknowablity of ultimate truth, as discussed in the previous essay, imagine a simulation that is so large and so complex that the artificial beings become self-aware and develop both intelligence and a desire to understand their universe. They can detect patterns in how the electrical currents and bits and bytes that make up their universe behave; they develop a science around these observations. They conclude that their universe began with “The Big Power Surge” and that it is an expanding universe. But they can never understand that their universe is expanding because beings completely beyond their comprehension are adding memory and data storage devices to the computer.
The automata can never see outside the computer; never know what the computer actually is, who built it, or why. But as intelligent beings, they want answers to these existential questions. So, they develop belief systems. These belief systems, however, can only be based on elements confined to their mode of existence. Some automata come to believe that random electronic noise is speaking to them, telling them the answers. There are bitter arguments between the Church of Electronic Noise and the automata-scientists with their ideas about the Big Power Surge and the expanding universe. But ultimately, neither side is equipped physically or intellectually to ever understand the truth about their universe. How can bits and electronic pulses confined within the circuits of a computer, understand external, hard physical objects like the table upon which the computer is sitting?
There will be those who read this essay and conclude that it points to the need for a creator and to intelligent design. After all, the computer had to be built and someone had to program the software. To do so is to miss the point. The point is to look at the situation from the perspective of the beings inside the computer, not from our normal perspective on the outside. From inside the computer, there is no way of knowing anything about the outside. Attempts to comprehend the outside based on the understanding available inside the computer are inherently doomed. Whether it is based on their religion or based on their science, nothing they do can give them knowledge of whether or not there is a creator or whether a creator is even necessary.
This thought experiment about computer simulations invariably leads to the idea of nested simulations. Just like we can run a simulated world inside a computer, we might ourselves be a simulation in some larger machine. And the entities that built the machine that is simulating our universe might themselves be a simulation run at yet a higher level. While this could conceivably go on forever, from our perspective it will always be science fiction. None of this is knowable to us, and we should leave it at that.
By interacting with each other and their artificial world, cellular automatons can learn from their experiences. They can reproduce and evolve in form and behavior in response to conditions—artificial, Natural Selection. In order to better comprehend the unknowablity of ultimate truth, as discussed in the previous essay, imagine a simulation that is so large and so complex that the artificial beings become self-aware and develop both intelligence and a desire to understand their universe. They can detect patterns in how the electrical currents and bits and bytes that make up their universe behave; they develop a science around these observations. They conclude that their universe began with “The Big Power Surge” and that it is an expanding universe. But they can never understand that their universe is expanding because beings completely beyond their comprehension are adding memory and data storage devices to the computer.
The automata can never see outside the computer; never know what the computer actually is, who built it, or why. But as intelligent beings, they want answers to these existential questions. So, they develop belief systems. These belief systems, however, can only be based on elements confined to their mode of existence. Some automata come to believe that random electronic noise is speaking to them, telling them the answers. There are bitter arguments between the Church of Electronic Noise and the automata-scientists with their ideas about the Big Power Surge and the expanding universe. But ultimately, neither side is equipped physically or intellectually to ever understand the truth about their universe. How can bits and electronic pulses confined within the circuits of a computer, understand external, hard physical objects like the table upon which the computer is sitting?
There will be those who read this essay and conclude that it points to the need for a creator and to intelligent design. After all, the computer had to be built and someone had to program the software. To do so is to miss the point. The point is to look at the situation from the perspective of the beings inside the computer, not from our normal perspective on the outside. From inside the computer, there is no way of knowing anything about the outside. Attempts to comprehend the outside based on the understanding available inside the computer are inherently doomed. Whether it is based on their religion or based on their science, nothing they do can give them knowledge of whether or not there is a creator or whether a creator is even necessary.
This thought experiment about computer simulations invariably leads to the idea of nested simulations. Just like we can run a simulated world inside a computer, we might ourselves be a simulation in some larger machine. And the entities that built the machine that is simulating our universe might themselves be a simulation run at yet a higher level. While this could conceivably go on forever, from our perspective it will always be science fiction. None of this is knowable to us, and we should leave it at that.