What is reality?
Yeah, I'm asking. Stop laughing at me.
Over centuries, we’ve had many definitions of reality. For example:
From religion: to be is to be a child of God.
From existentialism: to be is to be an expression of free will, of human freedom.
It looks to me like there are two new paradigms of reality emerging from our current zeitgeist.
Both of which are presented to us with images like this one, which make hardware and software look like magic.
[Image: Zachary Black / Unsplash]
1) From social media: to be is to be mass-reproducible.
That is: a thing, event, place, even a person, exists, has meaning, has substance, etc., insofar as its image and sound can be infinitely copied and transmitted across a system of mass communication.
Beaudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation is the most influential book to draw attention to this paradigm.
This paradigm is exemplified by the saying “Pics or it didn’t happen!” A throw-away comment, to be sure. But I think it has such traction because it expresses an unconscious fear: if an event cannot be shared, then the event doesn’t matter. If no one sees you and acknowledges you, you don’t matter.
2) From the digital technology industry: to be is to be computational.
That is: a thing, event, place, even a person, exists, etc., insofar as it can help solve a problem, and in particular the kind of problem that has a mathematically-expressible solution.
This has the advantage, perhaps, that it can be tied quite easily to some very useful definitions of information itself. Such as: “that which reduces uncertainty.”
It can also be attached to some useful yet entirely computational definitions of intelligence itself, such as “the ability to solve problems”.
(Aside: Notice how the exclusion of consciousness from the definition of intelligence allows the tech-bros to say that their LLMs are “intelligent”. It is a bait and switch move, not a discovery about the nature of intelligence, and it serves a very particular corporate master.)
Notice also that both of these two paradigms of reality are quantifiable. That is: some things can be more real than others.
Something can be more real if more eyes are looking at it, more ears listening to it, more voices talking about it.
Something can be more real if it can solve more problems and/or harder problems, solve them faster, and with greater effect on other computations.
Notice also that both of these paradigms can blend into each other. As computer power increases we are better able to create virtual worlds which people find equally or more compelling than the “real” world, and so more people look at it. In lockstep with this, we are seeing perfectly sober scientists talk of quantum events as computations, and of the universe itself as a kind of gigantic computer, computing a simulation!
My point here today is not to say that these paradigms are good or bad. It’s only to say that they exist(!). That they’re seeping into people’s minds without much critical examination.
And that billions of dollars are being spent to encourage us to believe them.
But we don’t have to believe them. We do have to examine them. We have to question them.
And we have to ask, again and again: what is reality?
Is it really whatever this guy here is conjuring like a wizard’s magic spell?
