Not Impossible!: How Our Universe May Exist Inside of a Computer - Hardcover

Hanson, G Wells

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 059566296X ISBN 13: 9780595662968

Publisher: iUniverse, 2004

Synopsis

Does our universe exist inside of a computer? Have the strange phenomena of quantum physics finally been explained? Not IMPOSSIBLE! demonstrates that the surprising answer may be "Yes!"

"But the material world is real" we insist, knocking on wood. How can this all be just information inside of a computer? Surely that's impossible!

Climb aboard as computer science and AI researcher, G. Wells Hanson, takes us on the seemingly impossible journey from our universe, into the depths of a computerized universe. As you ride, your fingers are pried loose from your current ideas of reality. Watch as your material world slowly begins to fade. You will travel through the machinery of the worlds of human thinking, quantum reality, the brain, and the mind. Finally, you enter a universe programmed within a computer, where the strange phenomena that appear there provides an explanation for the mysterious quantum physics that has puzzled humankind for a century.

Shaun Holmes, MA, and high school math teacher, describes the book as "...an intellectual thrill-ride that takes us from our everyday world, to a place where I question my very existence...and there's no going back! I think it really has the potential to stir the pot."

About this title

From the Author

In the process of developing an AI algorithm that mimics how the brain represents information using networks, I discovered that I had inadvertently created a virtual universe driver, and that the resulting universe exhibited characteristics of our quantum universe. With the recent discussion in physics of the universe as information, the strange idea that somehow our universe might itself be driven by an information system found tentative purchase. Not Impossible! is the development of this idea, and also explores:

· An operational definition of existence and reality.
· A model for how we humans think, and mentally represent our world.
· An explanation of human understanding, cognition, déjà vu and familiarity, and more.
· A model of how the brain thinks and models the world using just networks of neurons.
· A programmable, and powerful, AI algorithm based on this brain/network model.
· Experimental results that imply that free will doesn’t exist...but we see that there is a way out.
· A demonstration of how choice and free will may involve the quantum collapse of potentials.
· A discussion of the mind/brain and the mind/body problem.
· A demonstration of why the quantum’s discreetness must occur in a computerized universe.
· A demonstration that our universe behaves, in many ways, like a program running in a computer.
· A fun demonstration that our body images, and thus our bodies, must be totally imaginary.
· Multiple demonstrations that our material/spatial world must be imaginary and doesn’t really exist.

From the Inside Flap

In this seminal work, Artificial Intelligence researcher, G. Wells Hanson, takes us from the world we call real, into the depths of a universe within a computer, as he demonstrates to us that our universe may itself be computerized. To achieve this, he produces fascinating and convincing new evidence that our material world, including our very bodies, are figments of our imagination. Relying on his experience in the physics research community, Hanson takes us on an intellectual journey, traveled for the sake of discovery itself. Along the way, he offers original answers to perplexing mysteries, including a model for human and machine understanding, a model of how the brain represents information and thinks with neurons, and explores several possible mechanisms of mind. His provocative conclusion demonstrates almost two-dozen of the mysterious and unexplained phenomena of quantum physics appearing spontaneously, resulting simply from programming a brain-like universe into a PC.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059566296X
• ISBN 13: 9780595662968
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 364