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Arachailean
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Sep 4 2012, 01:33 PM
Post #1
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Administrator
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Wheat do you consider to be real, and are you sure what you're looking at, touching, smelling, tasting is there at all? The question may sound like an unusual one, but when you looking into your understanding how much of that stands up to scrutiny? What I suggest is that you read the following and see if you ever see the world in the same way ever again.
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Colin Spiggott settled down in front of the television as he had a thousand times before, his dinner balanced on his knee. He was looking forward to watching the evening film, Invasion of the body snatchers. Unfortunately for Colin, there was to be no film or dinner. As he lifted the first morsel to his lips, something utterly odd happened. He heard a tiny voice, a voice that seemed to come from inside his head. ‘Testing. Testing… Hold on.’ The voice was muffled and indistinct. Then, after a couple of seconds, it came back crystal clear and deafeningly loud. ‘Testing. Testing…’ Colin clamped his hands involuntarily to his ears, his fork flying into the air.’…ER… Colin Spiggott, CAN YOU HEAR ME? Sorry. Too loud. Is that better? Look, Colin, we have important news’. Colin leaped to his feet, his dinner crashing to the floor. He stared around the room in panic. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ I’m not in the room that you seem to see around you, Colin. I’m somewhere else. Somewhere far away.’ ‘Where? Who are you?’ ‘I have some news, Colin. News you may find shocking. Please sit down.’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘I will tell you. I do not inhabit Earth. I come from another planet. And I am here to thank you for taking part in our experiment.’ ‘Experiment? I don’t understand. What experiment?’ ‘I am afraid we have been deceiving you a little, Colin. Things are not as they seem.’ The voice in Colin’s head proceeded to explain what was happening to him. Or, more accurately, what had happened to him. ‘I’m afraid that the world you see around you is not real. It is a virtual world. Six of your earth months ago we came to visit you. Do you remember having a particularly disturbed night’s sleep – a night plagued with nightmares?’ ‘Er…I think I do, yes.’ ‘That was the night we entered your house while you were sleeping. We drugged you and placed your unconscious body in our flying saucer. Currently, you are located not on Earth, but on another planet entirely. You are on Neptune.’ Colin had started to get a little more of a grip on himself. ‘On Neptune? But that’s ridiculous. I can see that I’m on Earth. There’s my TV set over there.’ ‘Oh, yes. It looks as if there is a television set over there. I admit that. But as I have explained, things are not as they seem. You see, when your body arrived at our scientific laboratory here on Neptune, an operation was performed. We removed your brain.’ ‘My brain?’ Colin was beginning to feel sick. ‘We removed your living brain and discarded your body. Then we placed it in a glass vat. We connected it up to one of our VE4 supercomputers. Your brain is currently floating in a vat of life-supporting nutrients here in our laboratory beneath the surface of Neptune.’ ‘Then why do I see that TV in front of me? Said Colin, pointing to the TV set. ‘The supercomputer is generating the illusion of a television set. It’s a virtual television set that you see. It is not real. Let me explain how the VE4 computer has been programmed to function. The situation is a little complicated. You must concentrate.’ ‘I am concentrating!’ ‘Very well. The nerves that used to connect your brain to your body and which enabled you to move your body around are now connected to the VE4 computer instead. The VE4 monitors how your body would have moved if you still had one. It then transmits down the nerve pathways running into your brain precisely the same sort of pattern of electrical stimulation that your sense organs – your tongue, ears, eyes, nose and skin – used to transmit when you still had them. That’s why it seems to you that you are located in your sitting room on planet earth. The computer is creating that illusion for you.’ ‘But this is all real. I can tell it is.’ Colin reached out and picked up his fork. He ran his fingers over the cold, smooth metal. He licked the carrot perched on the end of it. It tasted sweet, just as a carrot should. But the voice in Colin’s head persisted. ‘I see you are unconvinced. Perhaps a demonstration is in order. Observe more closely the piece of earth carrot you have impaled on that fork.’ Colin peered closely. For a while nothing happened. But then the orange disc of carrot began to move, to undulate. Suddenly it was wriggling and growing fins. Now there was a goldfish stuck on the end of his fork. The goldfish was staring right back at him as it opened and closed its mouth. ‘Yurgh!’ Colin threw the fork into the corner of the room. ‘Now I’m hallucinating!’ ‘You are right to suppose that goldfish is an illusion. But the piece of carrot was also an illusion. Everything you see around you is illusory.’ ‘I still don’t understand.’ ‘You are immersed in a computer program. However, our computer is far more powerful than anything you earthlings have yet produced. The virtual reality it generates is indistinguishable from the real thing. That is why you never had the slightest suspicion you were being deceived.’ ‘How did you change that carrot into a goldfish?’ ‘It was a fairly simple matter. I merely adjusted the computer’s program. To put it crudely, I changed your carrot input to goldfish input.’ Colin held his hands up in front of his face and inspected them closely, noting the little hairs on the backs and the tiny striations in the surfaces of his nails. ‘So even these hands don’t really exist? ‘That’s correct. They are virtual hands. They, too, are part of the illusion that is currently being generated by the VE4.’ ‘So if these aren’t my real hands, where are they? ‘They have been – h’m, how shall I put this? – incinerated.’ ‘This is a nightmare! I have to wake up!’ ‘I see you remain unconvinced. That surprises me. I thought you would be more rational. Very well. Perhaps the time has come for me to confront you with the facts in a more dramatic fashion. In a moment or two I shall disconnect your brain from the VE4. I shall connect you instead to a camera that I have set up here in my laboratory. I have arranged things so that, if you try to turn your head, the camera will respond by panning round. So you will be able to have a good look around the laboratory. I should warn you that one of the first things you will see will be me.’ Colin looked feverishly about the room. He grasped the arms of the settee in a desperate attempt to hold it in place. But it was useless. The room was beginning to change. The walls ripped as if they were fluid. Then they began to melt away to reveal quite a different scene. The image was vague at first. Colin could make out only a white background against which were silhouetted strange, bulbous shapes. Then the resolution suddenly sharpened and the shapes turned into test tubes and vats arranged along rows of white shelves. Directly in front of Colin was a larger, darker, closer shape. Finally, it, too, came into focus. Before Colin loomed the hideous shape of the Neptunian. ‘Good evening, Colin,’ said the Neptunian. ‘My name is Zpaplaft. What you are experiencing now is no longer an illusion. Everything you see before you is real. It’s been a long time since you were last in contact with the real world. Allow me to show you around. To your right you will notice the VE4 computer – the computer into which you were plugged but a few moments ago.’ Colin turned to the right and saw a large silver box covered in tiny dials. He noticed that one of the little windows displayed the word ‘goldfish’. ‘And now, Colin, it is time for you to take a look at yourself.’ Trailing from the computer were a number of leads. Colin strained to follow the leads, and as he did so a large laboratory bench came into view. On top of the bench was a glass vat. In the vat was something resembling a large grey walnut. It bobbed gently up and down amid a stream of little bubbles fizzing from the bottom of the vat. Leads trailed everywhere, partly obscuring Colin’s view. But it was recognisably a human brain that he could see. Two of the leads snaked across the floor towards him. As he looked down, Colin could see that, as the two leads disappeared out of his line of sight, they were labelled ‘camera left’ and ‘camera right’. Zpaplaft pointed to the glass vat. ‘Here you are, Colin – a brain in a vat’.
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