From Doom to Ready Player One: Simulated universes
This term ended on simulation theory. As the week had been heavy with videos, and this was the last class day of summer session, ending on a playlist felt depressing. In the usual last minute cobbling together of a new angle on topic, videos were pulled together in the hour ahead of class.
The session opened with Doom Alpha Versions. These versions were developed in 1992 and 1993. The video was paused in places to point out the pixelated characters and the extensive use of square grids.
Then the third segment of 10 Games that take realism too far, Officer Down, was shown. The realism is startling.
This was followed up by RPGs with the most romance options. This is moving beyond point and shoot and into human relations. Or relations with elves, dwarves, or perhaps Sméagol.
Ready Player One OASIS in real life provided a bridge to the idea of realizing the Oasis vision.
To emphasize the reality of such virtual reality rigs, Running across Crimson Desert in VR was shown. The lattermost videos came off of a pre-existing playlist. This term, however, the other videos were dropped. On a 9:43 late start, Running across Crimson Desert wrapped around 10:27.
From primitive graphics in 1982 to three-dimensional worlds that one can run in. Haptic gloves exist. Digital scent emission technology is an area of active research. How real can simulated worlds become?
The downstream target was the message delivered in Your World is an Open World Game - you are already playing the most incredible and scary simulation on the market.
The first step on this path is to argue that this world is a simulation, or the functional equivalent of one. Science and religion have crossed paths during the term - Newton's desire for a seven color rainbow, the concept of the God of the gaps. Here at term end the non-reality of the universe receives support from the dominant, if not only, religion present the class.
John 18:36: Jesus declared, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world."
John 15:19: Jesus told His followers, "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world..."
John 14:2-3: Jesus comforted His disciples by saying, "My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that. I am going there to prepare a place for you?"
Hebrews 13:14: "For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come."
Philippians 3:20: "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ."
2 Corinthians 5:1: "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."
At funerals here there is the understanding that the separation is only temporary. That this is not our home. That our home is beyond the grave, a place where we will be reunited with all of those who have gone before us.
That sounds like a simulation to me - but one that is made all the more real by one not knowing one is in the simulation. Because that makes everything take on maximal stakes.
Having a tough life? What if you signed up for that? As a challenge. To see what you are really made of.
This felt like a good place to end the summer term, with the biggest cosmological questions swirling in the humid air. Why is there something instead of nothing? Why are here in this mathematical universe? What are those mathematical structures trying to tell us about the underlying reality? And if this is a simulation, why are you spending your precious life looking down at a phone running inferior simulations? Real life is the most exciting and thrilling role playing game on the market.
Comments
Post a Comment