What Is Life Really Like?

Graphic Source: Stock.xchng

Do we have free will, or are all of us wrong? Are we assuming that what we do is because we want to, or is it because we are predetermined to do certain things. We like to think that we are masters of our own fate and I am sure if we were ever to find out that we weren't, it would change our entire concept of life. Can you imagine if we find out that we are more or less puppets and that no matter what we do, we were supposed to have done it? I personally can't think of anything that would be this disturbing. It would be like finding out that there were no other stars and planets outside the solar system and everything that we see is a sort of hologram.

We don't understand exactly how the universe works yet and we may never known, but hopefully as time goes by, we will just continue to increase our knowledge of ourselves and our universe. It is certainly a hard concept to imagine, people walking around and carrying out the equivalent of computer programming. Are we so utterly confused that we will find out someday that we were completely wrong about life? I guess the answer to this question lies in the complexity of the human brain. We are beginning to see that the computers we are building have a similarity to our brains. It is not so much the fact that they are built like our brains, because they are not, it is the idea behind what they do that is similar. Having said this, there are computers that are being build using neural networks that will be much closer to operating like a human brain.

Graphic Source: Stock.xchng

Some people think that our existence may be more like that in the movie, The Matrix. The movie showed a human society that only thought that they were functioning in the world. They believed that they lived much as we think that we do, going about their daily lives. In truth they were not, they were in some sort of induced dream that was being generated by a computer, while their bodies were in a tank and were being used to supply electricity to a robotic society. Yes, I admit that this seems a little far fetched, even though it did make a good movie. If we look at this from a religious point of view, one might say that this could explain things like life after death and such. It wouldn't actually be life after death, but life after coma, or maybe life after the computer no linger controls someone. Could it be that we might be immortal beings and are prevented from knowing this by some device, or software?

As technology progresses, thoughts like this become more common. This is due to the rapid advancement of technology. It is incredible how much we have advanced in this area in the last one hundred years. The fact that the speed of the advance has been increasing as years go by, makes the whole thing even more remarkable. At the rate the increase is speeding up, it just might be possible to double everything we know in one year, some day. There is another side to all of this conjecture about what our life is really all about. The military is always experimenting with things and there are now computer chips available that can be implanted in humans. You have to wonder if the military has a chip that can be inserted into a human that would completely fool their brain into thinking that certain actions that they carried out, were different from what they thought that they were doing.

Graphic Source: Stock.xchng

Think of this possibility. Thousands of prisoners are captured during a war. A chip is inserted into their brains that make them think that they are allies rather than enemies and they now fight for us. Maybe they would even be able to remember certain things like enemy hideouts and other pertinent information. Is there anyone out there that thinks that is impossible? To those people I say that there was an article in a famous magazine, a few years ago, that talked about a smart chip that they felt would someday be inserted into people's heads that would allow them to access a database that would contain a complete education. This in itself will cause all sorts of problems, because it is being said that if this happens, the rich and powerful will get the premier positions and the rest of the people will get things like store clerk. I am not putting down store clerks since it is an honest occupation, I am only illustrating what some have said about the education on a chip idea.

If a complete education can be put on a chip, is it such a stretch to think that a chip can be used to program our brains? Right now one of the problems with the chip is rejection, among other things. We will see the problems associated with these chips disappear as time goes by and there are more advances. If this happens will the world be a better or worse place? In theory the work force will become a lot younger, since people will not have to spend all those years being educated. Another advantage will be that people will be able to access all the chip data, so they will have 100% total recall. This will be a boon to the medical profession along with science and engineering, but others will benefit also. Think of a historian with the entire history of the world at his or her fingertips.

Getting back to what I was talking about regarding what is our real life, it may be that this could have already happened and we don't know it and that could account for programming that we could be experiencing. Do I think that we are living a sort of dream? No, not really but it is a very interesting thought.