Friday, September 04, 2009

The World Computed Thus

Just to clarify a recent comment on Facebook, I'm talking about a universe where everything that everyone does is completely voluntary and unpredetermined, and is simultaneously and instantly significant to everyone else. For this process to apply to two people is rather mind-bending - i.e. I tell you the dream I had last night at the exact moment when you gain the maximum value (meaningfulness) from hearing about it, and so on. Wouldn't that be astonishing for two people?

But imagine if that applied to everyone on the planet. Every life on Earth being instanteously and profoundly meaningful to every other life on Earth. Possible? No way. The calculations are too vast to comprehend, aren't they?

I reckon they're pretty light-weight calculations in the big scheme of things. I meet you because I have to meet you, even though we both got here freely. I heard that song in the shop because the sales assistant picked it at random, but it's the exact song to make me think of you - because it's the right moment to think about you, yet again. All random. All meaningful. Trillions of precise calculations per second interconnecting five billions freefalling lives.

I think this is my definition of magick.