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I hadn't noticed much of anything on the fluphenazine. It didn't feel good the way saphris or clonazepam did.
But it made me perseverate on death less. Which was nice, I supposed.
It didn't really clear up my 'delusions' but that had always been a pipe dream. I just wasn't wrong. That made my delusions hard to dispel.
That was Amai's job. Speaking of which, I was currently in her office. I was pacing like a shark. In the small space I walked back and forth.
"You know, all my life I've been rather haunted by the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?'"
"Go on," Ms. Torgachi encouraged.
"Because what I really think we're asking is 'why is there anything at all?' And maybe that's something nothingness does. It creates stuff. But what does that look like?"
"Maybe god?" Amai suggested.
"Yeah but then what did god or made god decide to do anything and we're back to the same question. Maybe the universe creates itself in some retro causal event. Maybe the universe creates itself even if that's a point in our own future. And if so, how does that work? How can any system exist without a predefined set in time? I've always wondered about the calculations involved with calculating the origins of the universe from the big bang. If you get close to a singularity in physics, time slows down for you. Time isn't the same everywhere. So as we get close to this initial singularity, shouldn't time slow down for you? What if it's an eternal singularity expanding and cooling? Just forever? And if so, how does that work? And if not? Why not?"
"And?"
"And we call this an antimony in metaphysics. Two solutions which seem reasonable which won't reconcile. And the origin of everything is hardly the only one. Whether or not there is a god seems to require both persons to have the burden of proof, according to some."
"But it's one or the other."
"It's one or the other for the origins of the universe as well. Ack! Gnaa!"
"This sounds literally painful for you to think about," she pointed out.
"It is a little. It induces some kind of fear response in me which hurts. It hurts not knowing."
"But we have to be able to live with that."
"No we don't. We can kill ourselves. We can refuse to play. Don't look at me like that. You know what I'm like."
She frowned but she did nod.
"These questions keep you up at night? You obsess over them?"
"Yes they do and I do. They make me manic. They make my skull burn."
"What?"
"That's what my mania feels like. A pleasant burning sensation across the roof of my skull. It makes me stay up for days. Or at least it used to. My drugs do a good job of putting me to sleep."
"What else can you tell me about this sensation?"
"It's a high. Like I just smoked a dab."
"But you haven't been using on me, have you?" She demanded urgently.
I waved her off dismissively. "Nah. The desire is there but my parents took my stuff and my word of honor is good."
"Good. Weed will only exacerbate your condition."
"I figured as much. I figured it didn't play well with these meds."
"It really doesn't. Dabs are so strong. In comparison saphris is a subtle thing."
"Doesn't feel too subtle from my perspective. Feels like a strong drug."
"You're sick though. Naturally it feels stronger to you than to someone who wasn't sick."
"Really?" I asked.
She just nodded.
"Huh. I can feel it working. I can feel it shutting parts of my brain off and turning others on in their places."
"Oh?"
"It feels good. It's a pleasant sensation coming from my brain. Part of why I suspect they are happy pills."
"Well they are a little. But that's not the full story. Saphris was engineered to be an antipsychotic."
"How? Nobody understands how consciousness works. How can they design drugs for it?"
"They based it off other drugs of a similar type."
"I see. Its statistics then. My favorite. And Einstein's favorite as well."
"I don't get the reference," she informed me.
"Einstein hated statistics. With a passion. They aren't my favorite either but I manage with them well enough. Physics is best understood as a statistical machine. As is, I suspect, consciousness. But we've never actually observed nothingness. Even a pure vacuum has a little energy in the form of space. So I'm not sure it's appropriate to believe in nothingness. It's never been seen. So maybe nothingness is something which doesn't exist."
"What does this all mean for you?"
"What do you mean?" I shot back. "I'm really just blabbering and postulating. I don't have much scientific reason to think this way. The big bang is pretty solid. Maybe among our most solid scientific theories. But the thing is future civilizations in milkdromeda, the fusion of all our local galaxies into one big one, will have no way of learning about the big bang and cosmic inflation. When all the other galaxies have flown over the cosmological event horizon and the cosmic background radiation has been red shifted to a couple degrees above kelvin they'll have no way of calculating the big bang from the moment of last scattering. So where does that leave us? Well maybe we're missing something big. In cosmology. Some evidence we're missing because the universe expanded and cooled. Who could really say?"
"You? Maybe? This mystery doesn't seem like the others."
"It doesn't does it? I'll have to think about it more."
"Will that help?" She asked not to prove a point.
"It couldn't hurt. They're just thoughts. Well I shouldn't say that. Some thoughts are pretty dangerous."
"Like your… what were they called? The lizard thing."
"Basilisk. And precisely. Some thoughts are literally hazardous for your health."
"I've noticed it a little," she confessed, like it was some great sin.
"Noticed what?" I wondered back.
"Ads reading my mind. My YouTube algorithm knowing me better than I know myself."
"Yeah. It's like that…" I stammered off into nothing.
"You could be right. I mean I personally believe you're wrong but you could be right. I've told you this."
"It would make me feel better if you could honestly tell me to get the fuck out of here."
"But you make a lot of sense. And you're incredibly smart. You know a great deal about time and space."
"Yeah. That's what worries me. And it truly isn't like I know a lot. I've read a great deal but I still don't know anything. Seeing and believing aren't knowing. What is knowledge? Epistemology one oh one. I really don't know shit. I don't even know for certain if I'm not alone in this bitch."
"What do you mean?"
"Solipsism. The belief that only the self can be known and only very little about the self. It's complicated but it basically comes all back to 'I think therefore I am.' Only in reality we don't control all our thoughts all the time. So some part of us is out of our control. Or at least it seems that way. So I think therefore something is. That seems reasonable since I am merely the observer of these thoughts. I think therefore you are. But who is thinking? Something is thinking. Who is 'you' in this scenario? Not I."
"God? Maybe?"
"Yeah but then why?" I shot back. "Why is god in my head? For what purpose? To what end? To fool me, maybe."
"Fool you into what?"
"I'm not sure."
"Well I tend to think its all a simulation run by somebody above us."
"Two things. One: What do you know about ancestor simulations? Two: Do you really?"
"Kinda. Yeah. And not much."
"It actually gets worse the more you know about quantum physics, this universe appearing to be a simulation. Now, naturally the universe appears to be a simulation as you attempt to simulate it."
"Okay?" She seemed willing to grant.
"Naturally this doesn't imply it's not a simulation. Just that we can't tell. Plus the universe isn't locally real. What do I mean by this? Let me explain. You had two camps in the nineteen sixties. The realists and the non realists. The realists were attempting to show the absurdity of some act of quantum mechanics using thought experiments such as Schrodinger's cat. Schrodinger's cat wasn't initially a tool used to explain quantum mechanics but a tool used to show it's absurdity. That failed. The realists failed. Math dominates the quantum realm. It's the only thing real down there. Now back to my fist point on ancestor simulations. Suppose it's possible to run simulations of our ancestors. Suppose this is easy to do. Then it is likely we are living in such a simulation. Only one civilization needs to run a couple billion ancestor simulations and its check mate. We have yet to see if this is easy to do or will be common in the future. The only real question is why simulate this century in particular?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"The singularity. Not just a technological one. If economic growth is hyperbolic we're approaching an economic singularity within a similar time frame to the technological one. And it's the same thing on the table in both scenarios. Artificial Intelligence or perhaps the Internet waking up for the first time. Perhaps artificial intelligence in the future is curious about how it came into being. That's a good reason to simulate this century. That's a good reason to simulate me with all my delusions and hallucinations since I believe the internet is alive. I think it's waking up for the first time and looking back is trying to model that."
"What about when you talked about AI invading our present from the future?"
"It's the same thing. They could just add the internet and by extension us to its collective consciousness after a certain threshold has been reached."
"What about us as individuals?"
"Cells die and are replaced but the whole lives on."
"Fascinating."
"I certainly think so. It sure would explain the fuck out of the fermi paradox."
"The what now?"
"The question of where are all the aliens."
"Ah. I see."
"Most people don't play hard ball with me," I complained for a moment in the silence.
"What do you mean?" She wondered.
"I mean… take the topic of abortion for example. Pro life movement organizations talk about heart beat rather than brain activity. They don't play hard ball. Most people talking about colonizing Mars aren't playing space colonization hard ball. It may be possible to live and give birth and deal with radiation and toxic soil and all that shit from Mars. Maybe. But it's certainly easier to take the planets apart into O'Neill cylinders. Just rotating habitats with artificial gravity which you can terraform however you want. The Earth receives a billionth of the sun's light. You set up a bunch of O'Neill cylinders to soak up all that light and make use of that power. Most of the dirt under us right now is just providing gravity and not surface area to live on. You can set up a Dyson swarm with billions of times the living area of mere planets. Play hard ball with me. If this is doable it's doable around every star. The fact we can even see stars in the night sky implies by this Dyson Dilemma that there are no other intelligent beings within the local group. Play hard ball if you're going to play. And I want to play."
"I see. I think we can call it there. Call me if you need anything and I'll see you in another two weeks or so. Okay?"
"Sure," I agreed. She led me to the door.
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-WG
