From: cmcl2!panix.com!entropy@uunet.UU.NET (Daniel Gross)
Subject: Re: PHIL: Are we in a virtual world now?
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1992 19:01:56 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC



Consider the following thought experiment.

We have great difficulty with the terms "real" and "virtual." Their
juxtaposition in the expression "virtual reality" has fostered an
outbreak of rethinking on the ratio of the objectively tangible
to the human-ly construed. We are hurtling back to the dark age
of Kant, nay, Berkeley. Pundits range from "hard-matter" types
(most of modern press and media) to big advocates of the "It's
all, and has always been all, consensual hallucination" (e.g. Tim
Leary in his new cyberspace prosletyser costume).

When Mandelbrot came up with a geometry which comfortably supported
the concept of fractional dimensionality, some mathematicians freaked.
Never mind. In applied math, we're very happy to have fractals.

Let's consider this notion of fractionalizing, or rather, fractalizing,
reality. Fractal systems have this wonderful property of somehow
floating between the world of whole numbers, where you jump stolidly
from 1, to 2, and so on, ignoring the chasms between integers, and
the world of real numbers, where betwixt any two you can always fit
another.

Perhaps what we choose to define as "real" is a by-product of the values
and principles with which we process the stream of information which
falls upon us. Just as the coast of Spain is not a simple equation,
e.g. Coast-of-Spain = z X unit-kilometer, but actually a two-variable
equation, i.e. Coast = y X unit-of-measure, where Coast varies with
*both* y and unit..., so too perhaps reality is *NOT* a constant
waiting for discovery, but a variable, and what we "know" is actually
a series of samples, empirically confirmed values of an elusive function
in Aleph[1] unknowns. Those values hint at the shape of the curve,
but between any two known values another sample may reveal a wild
turn away from the plotted points established thus far. And so we
press on endlessly in our search of a greater number of samples, and
an ever-higher sampling frequency.

Yo, like i said, this is just a thought-experiment. I still expect
the sidewalk to be there with every step I take :-)....

Daniel.

-- 
  Daniel Gross              \  My opinions ALWAYS
  FLOW Research, Inc.       |  reflect those of my company.
  entropy@panix.com         |  If yours don't, consider quitting.