Stephen Hawking's final words: We live in a matrix

I shouldn't have read this after I had an edible.

Amazing. I was saddened to read of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his e wife and longtime nurse.

I'm happy to hear that - it would be a travesty if Eddie Redmayne's undeserved Oscar win happened in the real world.

And what the fuck does that mean? He should have kept his mouth shut.

No shit, Sherlock.

OP, the holographic universe theory isn't even metaphorically comparable to the Matrix.

I do like the idea that in a different version of the Universe I could be doing better. Here's hoping.

What abuse from his wife and nurse?

^ both have been under investigation for physically abusing him.

It's a hologram, with a creamy center.

Can someone explain the article and why he believes it’s a matrix?

R7 lol that was my first thought.

[Quote]And what the fuck does that mean? He should have kept his mouth shut.

I'm pretty sure he did 🤔

I love you, R13.

Bump

"Can someone explain the article and why he believes it’s a matrix?"

It's a "tested" theory that posits we actually live in a 2D plane of existence with that only appears 3D. Whether it's a universe created by a higher intelligence or just the way it is would be up for debate. But essentially we're a very advanced computer program. Another theory is we're basically a reflection of the true universe through a black hole.

I say "tested" because they looked at some atoms that shouldn't be interacting over vast distances but found that they actually do. And by vast I mean across the universe. That wouldn't be possible with our knowledge of our physical universe and only possible if we were basically the size of a hard drive.

Being holographic doesn't make us any less real. My worry though is someone could just decide to shut it off. :-O

Also, where are the aliens!?

The one I heard is something like this:

We can create computer simulations of real life and should expect that our simulations should get better and better with time. It should be easy to make additional simulations after having created the first, whereas, it would use not be necessarily easy to create a real world simply from there being a pre-existing real world.

Therefore, it is more likely that we are actually a computer program than real. Something like that. I think it’s a stupid idea.

He was probably just asking to watch a movie.

Bump

We can choose to manually override the computer’s default settings of fear, hate, & violence.

But that requires outsmarting the AI. People are too mindless to do that...

No we don’t.

On the brink of death, Roger Ebert's final words were, "It's all an elaborate hoax." Was he seeing the computer program? Or just stoned out of his mind on cancer drugs?

R22 i'd go with scenario 2.

So, was Hawking saying that God is some douche bro living in his mother's basement?

Luise Rainier's final words were, "OH GOD... I CAN SEE FOREVER..."

Steve Jobs's final words were, "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." Maybe he realized the universe is a cosmic Mac?

Upon death, you are greeted by helpers who will guide you to your final destination.

Remember the final scene in [/italic] “Ghost” [/italic] where the false friend gets dragged into the underworld? It’s like that, but more tangible and in 3-D. Most likely, it’ll be deceased family members, though not necessarily ones you’ve met before. These are the same people who have had to shield their eyes when you masturbate, you pigs. Anyway, they probably won’t mention that.

Sometimes people can see them sitting shiva before they die. My grandmother did. She awoke from a nap and asked my sister, who was there, “who are those people?”. I have to wonder. My sister chased them away and didn’t ask.

My other sister went to a psychic who said my Dad was enjoying getting to know his grandfather, who he had never met in life. That’s his picture at the link.

I’m excited at the prospect of death. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Eh, I'm not so sure to assume anyone's last words are automatically the pinnacle of insight. It'd be something if the likes of Hawking, Jobs, etc. used the moment to troll everybody, knowing those words would be examined.

So we're the 3-D projection of a. Hologram/computer program? Well something's fucked up in the basic coding. What are Donald Trump and Hitler, Viruses? Is the the 2D originator just Mind, and is that where we all return after getting to experience sex, eating glorious food, and the heavenly scent of coffee in the morning? Somebody contact the original programmer cause I have a few questions...

[Quote] Somebody contact the original programmer cause I have a few questions...

Aka The Architect

........

R22, he realized the truth: nothing here is as important as we think it is. Nothing here is truly real. It’s all evanescent, ephemeral & based on our perceptions, which are limited & faulty.

I saw this when my mom died. She forgave everyone & everything; she marveled at the woundrous beauty everywhere. What else is there to do when you know that your death is upon you?

It’s like when you visit a foreign country...you take it all in. You experience it. You won’t be back again anytime soon...or possibly ever. So make the most of your visit. You can stay in & watch tv at home. In Iceland or the Philippines, you want to get out & about.

R29, no it’s more like we are avatars in a game. To make the game exciting, we have to overcome obstacles. Game players don’t freak out when their avatar gets destroyed. They may have a other lives left, or they have to start a new game. Either way, it’s fun.

We are avatars who have forgotten they’re in a game. We thinks it’s real. But it’s not. It’s just a temporary distraction.

Mama Cass's final words:

"Mmmm... nothing truly satisfies like a delicious ham sandwich!"

We are basically AIs expanding (just look at how far we come since iving in caves). We translate our surroundings through our senses and create an image in our head we call reality. We gather intel by the way we translate our surroundings and how we decode / interpret our experiences in this reality realm. We send this data to a higher source while we are asleep.

You have to be careful because bedbugs like to live in matrixes.

r36, those are features not bedbugs 😆

Oh, this thread took a bad turn!

When I go to a hotel, I take the bed cover off, just at the corner, to look for bugs. Never found them. They say, to put your luggage in the tub, and do this.

There’s a web site that identifies hotels that have them, but I didn’t find it useful, since the bugs were reported at practically every hotel!

R29 here, I didn't have trouble overcoming obstacles, and MAN have I had my share of them ( dreadful medical issues; financial difficulties). I enjoy life, and am fairly satisfied with my approach towards it,which is increasingly bringing me the success I desire. No, what bothers me is the cruel suffering and injustices that so many in our world must endure- seemingly without resolution. I am an individual who has crafted together a patchwork of my own faith in my later years and it is this last issue that leaves me questioning, and this Matrix paradigm brings me no closer to a resolution. How irritating.

Someone needs to start a thread on last words of the dying.

These were certainly not his last words despite OP’s misleading thread title. This was Hawking’s last scientific journal article, published posthumously.

[Quote]These were certainly not his last words despite OP’s misleading thread title. This was Hawking’s last scientific journal article, published posthumously.

Um, technically, that would make them his last words.

I think they found a super-structure that might be called a “matrix”. It somehow connects galaxies in huge web-like structures that might be called matrixes. It involves dark matter who’s gravity affects the universe.

They found that the Milky Way does not have enough matter to hold it together. The stars should just fly off into the universe, and not go around the center of the galaxie. So, they invented “invisible dark matter” that has gravity but is mostly invisible and mysterious. All galaxies are like this.

Well there's no afterlife else he'd surely have come back and told one of his colleagues.

[quote]I'm happy to hear that - it would be a travesty if Eddie Redmayne's undeserved Oscar win happened in the real world.

He earned that Oscar... he did. Not for his acting, but he earned it.

More to be revealed.

This isn't the real life. It's a prison program, and we are all condemned to death. It's a simulation because death is not real, so that's the only way to make us believe our punishment.

Something can either exist, or not. It cannot not exist, then exist, then not exist again. So since we exist, "not existing" does not exist.

Interesting, R46. Things can be transformed, though. Matter becomes energy, and back again.

If matter was real, yeah.

R26 did he say that because he realized it was all an elaborate hoax?

Reality must be something immaterial, without shape or location. If something has shape or form, it is a fake.

Anything real can only exist, it can never not exist.

My 2 cents.

I think at or near the end, people realize that societal rules mean nothing.

Gay guys who never came out realizen this. Others who, maybe, lived in a bad marriage and never divorced because, rules, you know? People who competed with their neighbors. That kind of thing. I’ve read about it many times.

Repressed people realize that the repression was pointless.

R46, it’s a prison of our own making.

We have the key to open the door we locked, but we locked ourselves in for a reason: we prefer the cell to freedom.

Now we can blame the world for being fucked up rather than hold ourselves accountable for putting ourselves here in the first place.

But we chose to come here because...well, we sought adventure. We wanted to explore. We wanted to play the game.

We have forgotten that we are the player & not the avatar.

Drama = avatar & game.

Serenity = player & reality.

R50, reality is abstract & beyond human comprehension...yet it surrounds us.

Years ago I knew a handsome Aussie who was an astrophysicist. We talked on a regular basis because we both collected vintage fountain pens. While visiting Canada we got together over Victoria Day weekend.

One night after having a few too many, he leaned in close and said, "Wanna know something mate? We've discovered things that would terrify humanity if it ever came to light."

The next day when he was sober, he pretty much shut me out and we haven't talked again in eight years.

Always thought Hawkins was an overrated gasbag. And he got crazier as he got older and sicker. Grain of salt people. Grain of salt.

It's not Hawking's theory. Anyway just because it may be a simulation doesn't make it any less "real".

[quote]:R42:Um, technically, that would make them his last words.

Um, as they were submitted six weeks before his death, that would make you a fucking moron.

My favourite is R53.

[quote] We have forgotten that we are the player & not the avatar.

Drama = avatar & game.

Serenity = player & reality.

Sorry, meant:

[quote] We have forgotten that we are the player & not the avatar.

[quote] Drama = avatar & game.

[quote] Serenity = player & reality.

I’m far too stupid to understand all this stuff. It’s real to me, and I’m just trying to enjoy the good stuff and get through the rest.

R61, actually, you’re quite wise...per Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss.

It’s simple...not easy, but simple.

Thanks, r60. I was expecting snark (it’s not too late).

When we identify as the player & not the avatar, we can see the big picture...recognize how it’s all just a game...& we can maneuver toward our goal of serenity more easily.

But when we are in the game as the avatar, we get overwhelmed, confused & lost. And scared.

Our biggest problem is not other people, the world or situations beyond our control...our biggest problem is our fear. The avatar is afraid of everything...losing, destruction & death.

People do horrible things when they are scared.

Remember that old song “what the world needs now, is love, sweet love”...? It’s true. It’s just that simple. Only love can counter fear.

You guys are insane.

“So much wasted time.”

R64, you are correct. We all are. This is a crazy world.

Does that mean the flat earthers are right?

The best to live this life is to face reality. Stop hiding behind a computer, stop blaming to others for your problems, stop beinng childish and grow up. Live a little.

No, r67

He had such a gorgeous smile

More academics are coming forward.

when I was a kid my father died and we had the afterlife shoved down our throats....it was just lovely growing up without a dad, no one to show you guy stuff, to guide you through life, help you with schoolwork, sports, teach you how to shave … all that stuff.

Singing My Country Tis Of Thee in school was a bitch because it contained the lyric 'land where my fathers died' - as a kid you don't know that's about fore fathers; another favorite was 'Our Father Who Art (Is) In Heaven...'

I've spent most of my life trying to fill that void. It ain't happening. I had a good friend who had a son and he was calling me Uncle (my name) before the kid was born. I was included in his life...but then my friend killed himself. So the cycle repeats. Another father-less boy grows up.

The whole thing makes me want to end it all. But there's nothing on the other side. There is no God. We just lay in the dirt.

If there were none of this would be happening.

sorry to be a downer, but …. life sucks.

Thank you, r56. If he was so smart he would have figured how to get out of that wheelchair. Didn’t he also invent Scientology?

R73,

No, he did not. That was L. Ron Hubbard.

Stephen Hawking's last words

[Quote] There is no God. We just lay in the dirt. If there were none of this would be happening.

Or He's decided that we're fucked anyway and doesn't want to get involved.

[Quote] Didn’t he also invent Scientology?

Are you high by any chance?

The theory isn't that we're all connected to some computer.

The theory is that we are all just a huge "computer" generated simulation - we're all just algorithms - created either as a test or some other scenario.

We don't live in a matrix - we ARE just lines of extraordinarily complicated (by our standards) code.

Bump

WHAT ELSE DID THE AUSSIE SAY?!

Tallulah Bankhead's documented last words were "More codeine.... more bourbon."

Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle their drugs.

If you want to know wtf Hawking was talking about this is a great book by a brilliant gay man: https://amzn.to/2UE2Yi7

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

Ewps, here's a linkable link

Ok, r72. Thanks for your post.

You can choose to believe you figured out everything on the basis of your few decades of experience. We still live in a free country & you have free will. Nobody can or should attempt to change your mind.

What some of us are saying is that we are not our bodies. There’s more to us than that but it’s impossible for us to know while we experience ourselves as bodies.

Of course when the body dies it rots & dissipates.

But that’s not you.

If you look at our reality as a simulation the implication is that there are some conscious entity or entities that set it all in motion, no?

That just removes the question of why this reality exists at all back another step.

Such bullshit. We all live in a hologram? And toy people beliwve this dumb theory? Jeez, HWk8ns must have been doped up when he came up with this. It sounds ludicrous to me that a "higher intelligence " would be keeping a vast simulation going for thousands if years. Crazy.

If the universe isn't real then climate change isn't real and we don't need to worry. Yay!

Why are we dreaming of climate change?

When we truly want it to change, we will change it. Just like we did with smoking tobacco. Cigarettes were ubiquitous 30 years ago...restaurants, airplanes, movie theaters, even HOSPITALS. And today it’s just the opposite...

Something deep inside our collective gut, beyond the grasp of intellectual comprehension, is a self-destructive impulse. We are deeply ashamed of that impulse, so we obliterate it from our memory.

But it’s still there...and it expresses itself in scarcity, disease, pain, suffering, etc.

The world is fucked up because by our own choice. And we repeat that decision every day & all the time whenever we choose an angry response rather than a patient response. We need the world to be fucked so we can justify our irritation, sadness, anger, & fear.

Hawking was an atheist. Sometime in the last decade or so, he announced to much fanfare that there in no reason to believe that the universe since the Big Bang required any supernatural assistance in developing to its current configuration. In other words, “no God required”.

When I heard this I laughed, because I was raised Catholic, and the Catholics left that debate behind, centuries ago. Perhaps they learned something from the Copernicus/Galileo kerfuffles. But they don’t question the natural evolution of the heavens, today. The Vatican even has its own Observatory. The Pope has also stated that the discovery of alien life would not be incomparable with Catholicism.

His final words were: “mother!”

"It sounds ludicrous to me that a "higher intelligence " would be keeping a vast simulation going for thousands if years. Crazy. "

Time would most certainly move differently in a higher dimension. So the billions of years the universe in our reality has existed may only be decades (or whatever if time can even be described in years in another dimension). You are thinking in a linear (potentially 2D) way.

[quote]Such bullshit. We all live in a hologram? And toy people beliwve this dumb theory? Jeez, HWk8ns must have been doped up when he came up with this. It sounds ludicrous to me that a "higher intelligence " would be keeping a vast simulation going for thousands if years. Crazy.

Actually, you're both thinking on too grand a scale and too small a scale.

The theory is not that we're living in a hologram, like on Star Trek or shooting out of R2D2 begging for Obi Wan's help.

The idea is that what we're experiencing is a very sophisticated computer simulation. A very simple example would be simulations they have in every pandemic outbreak movie where they show how quickly the world will be overrun by the disease if they don't do something about it. Such a simulation takes all available facts, then uses key events which are assigned probabilities. With thousands of different probabilities and dependent probabilities (if this happens then that happens, but if the other happens then this other event happens) all occurring, the various simulations are run thousands of times until to get a distribution and probability of outcomes.

A small digression before I continue. A common mistake regarding quantum theory and the multiverse is the simple explanation that every possible thing that can happen has happened. This is not exactly true. Not every possible decision leads to a new universe - if you choose chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream doesn't matter. What causes the splits are probability-based events - each event, no matter how small a chance of occurring. Keep this in mind relative to the simulation previously described.

The idea we're living in a simulation is that a more advanced civilization - or even us in a 100 or 200 or 500 years - is running a computer simulation, and we are sophisticated AI programs (Alexi on steroids or Skynet level AI without the murder all humans part - either pre- or post-singularity).

It doesn't have to be a mystical "higher intelligence" or god involved. Compared to people 500 years ago, our technology is mindboggling - remember, we are closer to Cleopatra in time than she was to the building of the pyramids. Who knows why such an advanced civilization would want run such a simulation. It could be an experiment or to understand how their ancestors survived climate change or to identify where the most important points history were. The majority of stuff we study today would be utter nonsense to the Mayans or Incas who were the most advanced civilizations in their spheres.

Just because we perceive "time" as taking billions of years, doesn't mean that a billion years have occurred outside the simulation. For all we know, we're some college kid's graduate thesis and he's doing some overnight batch process during which he's running the simulation millions of times to get the results.

Here you go, R92.

From Roger Ebert’s wife:

“The one thing people might be surprised about—Roger said that he didn't know if he could believe in God. He had his doubts. But toward the end, something really interesting happened. That week before Roger passed away, I would see him and he would talk about having visited this other place. I thought he was hallucinating. I thought they were giving him too much medication. But the day before he passed away, he wrote me a note: "This is all an elaborate hoax." I asked him, "What's a hoax?" And he was talking about this world, this place. He said it was all an illusion. I thought he was just confused. But he was not confused. He wasn't visiting heaven, not the way we think of heaven. He described it as a vastness that you can't even imagine. It was a place where the past, present, and future were happening all at once.”

I hope my real self is sluttier.

I love playing The Sims.

I'm confused

It's just science fiction nonsense.and Roger Ebbert was no doubt full of shit on his deathbed.

If the worlds not real and we all exist in a weird simulation then why should we care about anything anymore? Disasters don't matter, murder doesn't matter and there are no victims. Let's run amok.

[quote] He described it as a vastness that you can't even imagine. It was a place where the past, present, and future were happening all at once.”

It sounds like he was describing parallel universes, or String Theory, that many top scientists believe in. It's the theory that parallel universes are going on at the same time, and they are co-existing right next to each other. I'm not sure if we exist in more than one universe at a time. Anyway, I saw a science program on PBS about this theory and it's always stuck with me.

Some have even theorized that UFO sightings are actually crafts from another dimension that have crossed over into ours, either by design or by accident.

I wish I were smarter; this stuff fascinates me. A physics friend explained the dimension idea once. We could be living side by side with other people/aliens because we can't recognize the other dimensions. Fantastic stuff.

So Hawking was an atheist but he believed we live in a reality designed by a higher intelligence.

Hmmm.

And all of those other dimensions are watching you masturbate, r101.

Everyone knows your dead grandma is watching you masturbate, but that never stopped anyone.

R99, see r88.

We need to change our dream. We don’t do that by ignoring the dream we are in.

The only way to escape this world is by waking up. The more we dream of disaster, her deeper we sleep.

We wake up first by deciding that we want to. But we all like to sleep. So we stay asleep in this nightmare because we are afraid to wake up.

R99, No. We need more morals.

They are watching us. We are under their judgement.

There is a book called "space, time and consciousness" by Wolfe, I believe, that I read years ago that talks about some of this stuff.

I'm sure it has been updated with new scientific findings and reissued. It was pretty interesting.

Will Hawking's theories be helped or hurt in light of the Epstein "Orgy Island" revelations?

Oh god, please beat these awful writers with shoes.

Information storage at the quanta level is totally mesmerizing, expressed in 2 dimensional space.

I'm not sure why everyone is freaking out.

It was Hawkings who said that when we die, we're dead. Nothing more. That human brains are like computers, they simply shut down at the time of death.

What Roger Ebert described sounded beautiful but what he witnessed could have simply been a Near Death Experience, a pre-death hallucination. Near Death Experiences, or NDEs, have been disproven left and right as a comforting reaction to dying or as a reaction - whether someone has a positive or negative near death experience - to our own subconscious. Not unlike the dreams we have while we sleep.

[quote] Will Hawking's theories be helped or hurt in light of the Epstein "Orgy Island" revelations?

Please. Professor Hawking does not know the meaning of the word "Orgy".

[quote] Please. Professor Hawking does not know the meaning of the word "Orgy".

And he's a teacher, too!!