On the (Very Basic) Science of Coincidence
A thing which may actually be possible if we use more creative methods
By MARTIN REZNY
Check out the first part about the intelligent intelligent design.
I’m aware that the concept of meaningful coincidence makes most scientifically-minded people uncomfortable, and I understand why, but that’s precisely why I’m trying to approach it very carefully using scientific principles. That discomfort is the reason why there’s literally no research into it, not even by skeptics trying to actually prove that their quite reasonable and sober assumptions are universally correct. The reason why I think it needs to be poked has to do with how game-like software would work in terms of plot or gameplay adjustments.
In a single word, by updates. An update can potentially change anything to any degree within a game or really any piece of software, and it does so in between moments from the perspective of that application’s runtime. To use one example - from our perspective, at one moment, maybe Trump never could have been president. Then update happened, and at the next moment, he always would have won the election. As far as we know, which is not very far, even what we understand as past could be rewritten on a regular basis if this existence is a simulation. That’s a fairly old idea, actually, thought of before computers.
The key aspect of this process that software typically allows is the perceived simultaneity. Within our reality, our runtime, we wouldn’t find any time/space in which events could massively coordinate to conspire towards a certain result, but there could be a higher or deeper dimension of time, from the perspective of which there is time in between our moments which may be visible there as a set of still frames that can be paused.
However, if this is a simulation that’s not straight up magic, such interference should still have limits, however omnipotent it may seem to us, and that’s where one can begin to try to find a proof of it. There could be mathematical or physical limits (like how much can be rewritten in how many of our “frames” in what ways), or narrative ones (game rules and mandatory plot points).
Each instance of such interference could be an ad hoc edit by some admin or user, or it could be all produced by an automated algorithm. In any case, there could be some kind of rhythm to it even if it’s not automated, a logical progression, a cycle, or a combination of any or all of these, or any other kind of ordering pattern.
On the topic of limitations of reality updates, the next question is that of continuity or discontinuity of either events, or consciousness, or both during those updates. It may be the case that the update is actually limited by the need to preserve some kind of tangible coherence, in which case some rather weird options open up.
Assuming the causal chain of events cannot be disrupted, we’re getting to the tree falling where no one can see it problem (and the related quantum observational weirdness). Maybe only things no one did actually “know” for sure (in the somewhat complicated quantum sense) can be retroactively altered — facts that no one and nothing had known, existing in a state of flux until they’re needed to solidify.
Maybe it’s the reason why we have to sleep — updates may have to be implemented during the downtime of consciousness to avoid disruption of the sense of continuity of awareness, which would also explain a good deal of the reality-bending-but-real-like nature of dreams.
Then there are all the weird experiences of people of things changing on them that are all hand-waved away by skeptics as misremembering. Again without actually trying to prove anything more than the misremembering being possible. Not to mention that if events really change everywhere except inside of the consciousness of some people, there would be no conventional way to prove such changes took place.
At this moment, these weird possibilities are just cool sci-fi concepts, but there may be mechanisms in reality that are somewhat like that and we would be none the wiser, especially if we simply reject the possibility out of hand.
PS: If all else fails, we can always try to crash our server by the good old DDoS attack. As Nick Bostrom writes in his paper about the simulation hypothesis, even the megacomputer simulating us should have computational limits. Just like any of our current simulations, this existence would have to use the same compression tricks that cut back on unnecessary detail and therefore processing power.
Maybe if each of us at the same time used one eye to look into an electron miscroscope into a violent microscopic reaction, the other eye to look into a telescope zooming on a distant solar system, one hand to scribble, and the other to run complex simulations while randomly dancing and singing a made up song, actual glitches could become apparent. And since you’ve stayed with my train of thought all this way until the end, here you can watch Rick and Morty do something just like that:
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