Your Simulated Reality (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Your Simulated Reality

[gingerbaker]

I absolutely adore that your lucid dream included "waking up" your fellow dreamers!

I'm not sure I buy into the limited-rendering-resources analogy, although I agree wholeheartedly that freeing oneself from clutter (of various forms) is incredibly useful. But I've had some amazing encounters is NPC-crowded venues LOL so...not sure you're quite on there. Still, great stuff to ponder over!

[gingerbaker]

Speaking of simulated realities, how's "Savage" treating you?

[Elfwing]

I like this theory, for the sole reason it's fun to play with. Not sure I believe it either. But in another way - you could say that the reason we don't have experiences as meaningful in those environments is also because our brain is having a bit of an overload not rendering, but absorbing our environment. So that's a very similar theory I think works more.

But still.

If this is true, it means I don't have social anxiety - my computer just can't run multiple people very well and it causes a strain on the part of the computer that renders my emotions therefore causing a malfunction!

I love it when you make computer analogies. It makes life look so much simpler than it often seems, and that is always a valuable perspective to take - after all, it is our perspective that creates our reality, even in objective reality. (Our emotions determine how we experience even objective reality, for anyone WTFing at that.) I shall remind myself more often of it than rely on conveniently-timed blog posts.

[fizzleboink]

Hey Steve,

I really recommend the book "My Big Toe" from Thomas Campbell if you'd like to see the idea of a simulated reality expanded dramatically. This video is a really good introduction to his ideas and experience.

I think you're closer to the truth than you may realize. A distinction I'd like to make is that I think the computing resources of our shared reality is quite abundant (although finite). I believe it is the limitation of your own personal consciousness that created the experience you had in your dream. Your personal "bandwidth" is likely the limiting factor, not the simulation itself.

[richardxthripp]

I enjoyed this article! I sometimes consider the possiblity that the world is a computer simulation and the city shuts down when I travel. Sort of like how the Holodeck on Star Trek renders horseback riding by having the floor secretly move under you. It's like The Matrix.

[Orionjoel]

Maybe a good way to test the theory behind this would be to in a similar situation, lead a character in your dream from a visually cluttered scene into a less visually cluttered scene. Or Vise versa. So for example lead a character from the indoor scene, outside, and see how this affects the communication.

This could lead to a whole lot of different aspects though as well. When you lead an NPC from indoors to outdoors in your dream, if the communication maintains a deep and clear level, do you not notice the environment as much, or does the conversation become less intense the more you notice the surroundings. this could even be tested without leaving a room, you could go to a window and look out in your dream and see if it brings down the level of communication with the other NPC's.

Lots of very open possibilities here.

[roxyruby]

I had a dream last night about Steve and Rachelle!

They were being really silly and in love and on steves twitter account in the bio it read "Steve and Rachelles twitter account"

and their tweets were like "I love you steve/rachelle" to eachother and their tweets were just flirting with eachother lol

they were so into eachother they forgot that the twitter account had thousands of followers reading the twitter acount originally intended to be about his usual personal development tweets and it had turned into all these lovey-duvey tweets by steve and rachelle about eachother and were so into eachother they forgot about all the thousands of readers

[Melchior]

That's a nice analogy you've made there, and although I can't see it being as easily allocatable as it may have been within your lucid dream world, I know that there is a limited amount of resources with any given person.

Also, an smbc comic that the blog post reminded me of:

[spacecadetglow]

That comic is awesome.

[alexplatups]

Originally Posted by fizzleboink

Hey Steve,

I really recommend the book "My Big Toe" from Thomas Campbell if you'd like to see the idea of a simulated reality expanded dramatically. This video is a really good introduction to his ideas and experience.

I think you're closer to the truth than you may realize. A distinction I'd like to make is that I think the computing resources of our shared reality is quite abundant (although finite). I believe it is the limitation of your own personal consciousness that created the experience you had in your dream. Your personal "bandwidth" is likely the limiting factor, not the simulation itself.

This is amazing, I'm shocked that this is being ignored on such a massive
level by the scientific community. I understand why, but this still is truly
absurd. IMO...this should be taught to all people in school as a subject,
for example from the 9th to the 12th grade. Thanks for posting this!!!

[yoopersmith]

I used the same "low resources" metaphor in a recent page about mindful meditation:

Mindful Meditation

I love how we are all connected...you might even say we are ONE

[James81]

If I were interpretting your lucid dream, this would be it...

This:

It started out as a regular dream that involved a bunch of robbers stealing items from a large house.

...made me think about you releaseing your copyrights and how, now, people are accessing your resources (taking your posts from a very large database of posts) and taking them for themselves and making them their own. You weren't aware you were dreaming at this point, so that makes it seem like it's your most unconscious thought was that people are now taking your work.

Then you realized you were dreaming, and you thought you might try to control the dream. But the dream itself rendered itself uncontrollable, because when you began to toy with the dream, you began to see that you weren't getting what you wanted from the dream. The fact that you thought that you might exert some measure of control over the dream perhaps denotes a measure of some lack of control...some lack of power...you are currently feeling with reality.

You began to see that the characters were dimwitted and uninteresting...which might be a tip off that you feel that what people are doing with your work is...well...unimpressive so far. Not that the people using your work are dimwitted, I think this just means that you are dubiously uninspired by their efforts so far on a deeply unconscious level (if not a conscious level).

And then the idea of resources came into play. A post that you made just recently actually to the effect of limited resources and trying to find abundance in that world of limited resources. Your suggestions in that post were very similar to the way in which you tried to manipulate the dream. That is, you decided that your brain (consciousness) was devoting too much energy to creating the look and feel of the dream, and you thought that by dimming environment, your brain might have the resources to create more interesting dream characters.

This, to me, suggests that you are feeling or testing the boundaries of what you currently feel are you limitations. You've done a lot of traveling this year (creating environments for yourself) and that creating those environments are less fulfilling to you than creating more interesting people in your life.

These limitations show up again in your dream with the Holodeck example. Again, more "limited resources" show up in this area.

So, essentially, the dream (while you were aware that you were dreaming) was still fueled by your unconscious mind. And your unconscious mind is very blatantly screaming to you something in the area of limitations, connections with people, and the environments you are choosing for yourself.

I'd say this is a natural projection, a natural "fear" of sorts, that happens right when you are on the crux of a massive shift in your life. You fear the limitations of that shift, but you are becoming bored with your current challenges. You've mastered those and are ready to move onto the next level.

***End Interpretation***

Yeah, just call me Mr. Chloe.

[Rik H L]

Ha ha! I really enjoyed imagining your experience.
I find the visual quality of sunsets, water, in my lucid dreams even more beautiful than in 'real' life.

Savage Zen incoming me thinks.

May you keep on enjoying.

[danas]

Great Post!!
love it

It reminded me, once I was seeing this guy, I liked him a lot and he seemed to like me, but somehow nothing came out of and it faded away. About 6 months later he started contacting me and we went out again, and then suddenly he asked me to go away to the desert with him for 3 days. At that point we had only kissed, and didn't know eachother well at all, but I said yes.
And after that weekend we became a "couple" i.e a relationship began.
I remember he said that he felt that his only chance to win my heart was to get me out of the city into a quiet environment and it worked. There was nothing there but me, him, a mattress and some candles and the vast desert...

Also reminded me of a dream I had 2 days ago that Ive been trying to interpret.

I dreamt I was back in the US and I bumped into the guy I want to be with.
But as I met him I realized that I had just come to the US with a small handbag, and that I somehow forgot to pack and take all my belongings and clothes with me... I was a bit worried about this but me and the guy connected and were walking around and in love...
I wonder if it means that to get what I want I need to leave my "baggage" (old identity, clutter) behind...

[spacecadetglow]

Great blog, Steve. Matching up with what I need to do for myself now very nicely indeed. Synchronous!

[MichaelAnthonyVet]

That's a pretty crazy lucid dream. The other day my friend was telling me how he had a lucid dream and at the moment he became lucid, he was teaching a class to about 20 people about how to become lucid. I like the idea though of trying make dream characters become lucid.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Melchior

That's a nice analogy you've made there, and although I can't see it being as easily allocatable as it may have been within your lucid dream world, I know that there is a limited amount of resources with any given person.

Also, an smbc comic that the blog post reminded me of:

Adore that comic

[Bizarre Jester]

With practice I would think that our minds have unlimited capacity. I will definitely try closing some unwanted programs, and see if I can get any results.

Originally Posted by gingerbaker

I absolutely adore that your lucid dream included "waking up" your fellow dreamers!

Originally Posted by MichaelAnthonyVet

I like the idea though of trying make dream characters become lucid.

Perhaps by making dream characters lucid, the dreamer will become more lucid himself/herself, since the dream characters are just part of us.

[Illuminatus]

I've had an interesting, very similar experience to Steve's recently. I became lucid in a dream a week ago and decided to also wake up one of the dream characters by explaining to her that it's a dream. She looked at me in shock, like to say "What have you done? You can't talk about this!" Then she seemed to be in pain, as the whole dream world started shaking and I was forced to wake up.

I see the same look on people's faces when I try and wake them up from their dream in "real life".

[MisterNES]

I just wanted to add my experience here. It happened just yesterday. I was meeting with a friend of mine at the train station, only to then have her friends whom I didn't know arrive a bit later.

In that busy little train station, and the busy little grocery we went to for food and drink for the evening, it was incredibly hard to get to know these new people. It was as though too many things were going on. The mothers with their kids, the shelf-stockers (whom here in Japan, always greet you upon seeing you), the lonely guy in the beer aisle, not to mention all the damn food. It was all too much for my finite mind to process, so minor conversation was all I could do. It was nerve-wrecking.

But then, when we got back to my friend's place, with all the delicious Japanese cuisine and and wine and beer, things changed drastically. There we were, just the four of us, watching comedy on Youtube, having great food, and admittedly getting just a little buzzed. Next thing you know, in that cozy little environment, we went from small talk to conversations on films and music to conversations on sexual topics. It was as though I had known these people for years.

I know why this was. And it was not only because of the smaller environment, but also the flow of the environment. And I don't just mean it was less busy. The elements of the environment fit together. The music we listened to and videos we watched suited out moods. The food satisfied us. And the drink...well...it did it's job. There was a certain connectedness all around.

I wonder if it's possible that even larger environments can feel the same way. Can the various "applications" that are running not interfere with each other, so long as they relate to one another? Feel free to respond.

[inverse Paranoid]

Hard Drive Space:
Can we ever really delete anything from our simulated reality? If we throw something away, aren't we just moving that something from one part of our reality to another? From one folder on our hard drive (perhaps one we look at frequently) to another that we may never look at again? But doesn't that still use up the same amount of hard drive space?

Perhaps, just as the physical world has had relatively the same mass for billions of years, our hard drive has enough space to hold the totality of that mass but very seldom expands or contracts due to fluctuations in the physical world. So while the environment of the world may appear to be changing, it's really just taking the same resources and reshaping them over time. By altering our environment we can make it more organized and user friendly, but it doesn't really save any hard drive space.

Processing Capacity:
Presumably, if a piece of clutter is on our desk and we're observing it, we're using resources to render it; and if we throw away that piece of clutter and stop observing it, we stop using resources to render it. But throwing something away doesn't delete it, it merely moves it to the background. It may be out of sight, but if it's still on our mind, then it's still taking up resources.

So does it really matter if something is in sight?

Just as we can throw away a piece of clutter and still be thinking about, we can minimize a program and it can still use up resources. The only way to truly save processing capacity is to stop thinking about something, not to simply sweep it under a rug.

Graphic User Interface:
The real reason we are impacted so much by our environment is because we interact with it as if it was all life had to offer. Wherever we go, we are limited by what our environment offers us. Never mind the fact that we could close our eyes at any time and imagine, quite literally, ANYTHING imaginable; we instead allow reality to dictate our experience.

No matter what may be present in our reality, we have the ability to interpret it however we please. If one man's trash is another man's treasure, then why can't what you previously labeled a piece of clutter instead be seen as a work of art? Or even barely be seen at all?

Here's a good way to look at it. Imagine our physical environment is like our desktop icons. It is what we see merely by opening our eyes. However, if we open up a small window, part of that background is shrouded by what we're now focused upon. If we maximize that window (ie give a thought the entirety of our focus), then the entirety of our desktop is concealed. The desktop is still taking up resources, but how much processing capacity does it take up relative to our total processing capacity? Even with a cluttered desktop, perhaps 99.9% of our computer's resources can still be directed toward other things.

Decluttering our environment is about as effective as tidying up our desktop icons. It will save us very little processing capacity, and unlike our desktop icons, the physical space we're in changes all the time.

So why bother with trying to master the .1%? Even if you reclaim 90% of those "wasted" resources, how much have you really reclaimed? Isn't it more intelligent to work to more effectively harness the 99.9% that you can direct at anything you'd like no matter what environment you may find yourself in?

And what about all those unseen processes that run every time you start your computer? Wouldn't you free up more resources by optimizing them rather than micromanaging your visible environment?

The Inner Workings:
Like it or not, the visible reality is only a small fraction of what we experience. In the background, beyond what we can see, smell, hear, touch and taste, lies a much richer reality. One that cannot be articulated through mere words or actions, and thus cannot be communicated in the ways we've learned to look and listen for what's possible.

Remember, the more you define yourself, the less open you are to definition. If you really want to wow yourself with what you're capable of, dive deeper into the indefinite. You'll be amazed at what you can do with tangible reality when you stop seeing its limitations as your own.

[richardxthripp]

Strictly speaking, the environment is always recylcing resources by reshaping them over time. For example, contained within my body is matter that was found in the dirt or the bodies of millions of other people throughout history. When you die, your body goes back to the dirt and the cycle of life continues. When we try to create a permanent record with books, slates, and archival media, we are trying to preserve something for the rest of time, which is actually quite unnatural. No other Earth species does this.