Issue 9 - Simulation
I've been thinking quite a bit, off and on, about the simulation hypothesis this week. It touches so many fascinating little areas of life.
A couple of avenues I've been down this week:
1) It's possible that, particularly in the "ancestor simulation" version of this theory, we are in fact endlessly recursive -- that if we're a simulation of a more advanced civilization's past then at some point, the simulation will "catch up" to the point where they could first simulate their ancestors, at which point, our simulated timeline will include simulations which we ourselves are running? Or would the inherent scalability issues involved here mean that armageddon is a necessary end-result of reaching simulation-capability?
2) Is superstition potentially justified by the simulation hypothesis? After all, if the reality we experience is mediated by sophisticated software, what we think of as cause-and-effect doesn't necessarily always need to follow. This occurred to me today while playing Six Card Golf. My stepson and his father both like to "flip" unknown cards super-fast in the superstitious hope that it'll reveal more helpful cards. Of course, if we follow linear causality, there's no possible benefit here -- the card was dealt; it is what it is. But if the game itself is simulated, whatever vast computational infrastructure runs reality for us doesn't actually need to assign a value to the card until someone observes it for the first time. So maybe a fast-flip could influence the card value.
3) This gets deep into quantum mechanics pretty quick, but this experimental support for the "Wigner's Friend" thought experiment (in short: "the objective realities we each experience don't need to be the same because the universe is weird, man) sure as heck doesn't contradict the simulation hypothesis.
4) And no, to be clear, I'm not at all convinced that we live in a simulation. It's a fun thought-experiment and a tantalizing possibility, but one which (so far) has proven impossible to prove in any direction. What's more, when you spend a while thinking about it, what tends to happen is that the hypothesis reduces itself to invisibility, because it doesn't matter. We can't tell, and regardless of the truth, there's much about our existence we can't possibly understand yet, regardless of the real truth. All the more reason to enjoy existence as it is, in all its strange glory.
Project Updates
This is the third week in which I have to acknowledge still needing to fix the section-divider image in these emails so that it looks less weird on non-white backgrounds.
I'm in what I increasingly think of the "recharge" phase of my mental cycles right now -- the point where I need to slow down and let things percolate, and fiddly little admin tasks become exceedingly hard to complete. The great thing about recharge is that the subsequent "accelerate" phase is usually pleasingly productive.
(No, I didn't make any real progress with IDGAF this week. Sigh).
One software-related working thought that came to me this morning -- we talk a lot about Technical Debt when working with software architecture and maintenance of large, complex software projects. But what we don't talk about enough is Culture Debt, which to me is a layer of assumptions, attitudes and practices which can usually be diagnosed as the underlying cause of the worst "Technical Debt" symptoms in a system.
Unless we first fix the Culture Debt, the Technical Debt generally has a habit of proliferating and metastasizing endlessly.
A Thing of Beauty
These aerial photos by European artist Tobias Hägg (aka Airpixels) are stunningly beautiful. We're still working our wall-art strategy for the new house, and there are 7 or 8 images in his collection we'd love to find a home for.
He also has a breathtaking instagram account.
Ephemera
Speaking of art on the walls of our house, we've been in love with Simon Stålenhag's work for quite a while. We have all three of his books and 5 or 6 of his prints, which mix the feel of the 1980s with bizarre alien objects in a way which (despite being in different primary genres) will be very familiar to fans of Stranger Things. So, we're real excited that Amazon's dramatization of his odd conceptual world is coming in early April. I have slight reservations -- can the hints of story buried in a visual art project really translate to a compelling ongoing narrative? Here's hoping they can.
...and in more general imagery news, you hopefully heard this week that the Smithsonian has released a 2.8 million-image selection of items from their vast, eclectic collection into the public domain, with plans to continue growing the system (including expanding to 3m images before the end of the year).
It's a little difficult to know how to even begin navigating such a weighty collection, but it's also an incredible place to just wander around. (also gratifying: I'm pretty sure this release and the software powering it derive at least in part from work my friend Aaron Cope was doing at the Cooper Hewitt a few years ago).
Anyway, I very much enjoyed this image, Shinagawa Station, Sunrise, in The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road (Tokaido Gojusan Tsugi-no Uchi) which dates from around 1834...
And I very much didn't enjoy the breathtakingly racist Handbill from the Citizen's Council of Greater New Orleans, Inc., ca. 1965, which I also found. I'm not going to include an image of that one here; when I first saw it I showed it to Amy and mentioned I might include it in this week's Chronicle, and her reasonable question was "but why?"
My answer is pretty simple; likely the same broad reason it's in the Smithsonian's collection -- that this is part of America's history, a part we tend to gloss over whenever possible; and also a direct-line drawn to today's continued, pervasive racist nastiness. We (particularly white folk) should look at this, unpleasant as it is, to remind ourselves of what we've collectively been in the past, and what we should strive to both stamp out and continue to make amends for. You can view it by clicking right here. It's not graphic in any way -- just text on a handbill. But the content is sickening, just so you're forewarned.
Unsurprisingly, Kottke has his own selection of images from the collection which are worth a peek too.
Elsewhere in the art world, did you know that archaeobotanists are perusing old paintings to identify varieties of fruit and vegetables which have been lost to us over time? I didn't. I mean, it's a pretty obvious thing to do if you're an archaeobotanist, but it's really satisfying to know that it actually works. (Atlas Obscura)
Everyone obviously jumped on the news that Rian Johnson claims Apple very explicitly forbid the use of iPhones by villains in movies. It mostly put me in mind of how racing video games sucked for years because car manufacturers didn't want players creating images of their cars all beaten to hell. So for a long period, you either had to drive a "Broad Bustfrang" around the racetrack, or get the Ford Mustang but have it be unsatisfyingly-invincible no matter how many times you rolled it into a ditch. This still hasn't entirely gone away -- Toyota denied a license for the Supra in Need for Speed Heat last summer because "it promotes illegal street racing". But... really? We're so precious about goddamn brands that these things are still happening? capitalism is super-dumb, y'all.
Dan Price kinda thought capitalism sucked, too. He's the guy who made headlines a few years back by setting a $70k/yr minimum wage for his whole company. We don't often get great follow-up on these sorts of things in the news cycle, but the BBC just revisited his company, Gravity Payments, and it turns out that the decision helped double his staff, triple their business and cause a mini baby-boom. Turns out when you treat people well, everyone benefits. (Duh).
In foodie news, meanwhile, Bon Appetit delves into the world of food-crispness-science, which makes for a satisfyingly crunchy deep-dive. What makes me happiest about this though, is that it turns out Clark Griswold's kinda-hokey-sounding job in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation is a real actual thing! (Bon Appetit)
In mildly-obscure-creators-of-satisfying-corners-of-our-culture news, RIP this week to Jens Nygaard Knudsen (78), who gave us the minifig, Kazuhisa Hashimoto (61) , who gave us ↑↑↓↓←→←→ⒷⒶ[START], and Freeman Dyson (96) who (amongst other things) gave us the lasting Sci-Fi concept of the Dyson Sphere.
Let's not end on too sad of a note, though. Instead, let's spend 5 deeply satisfying minutes watching a Welsh couple make a mug.
Endnote
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