The Unified Theory of Existence

Preface

The following is the result of a thought experiment - where I wanted to explore the dangers of pseudo-science, and illustrate some of the errors that can be made by the misunderstanding, and misapplication, of the scientific method.

Introduction

For the past several years there has been a vicious debate over the process by which everyone, and everything, came into existence. Over the years, there have been many different views presented, with the majority belonging to 3 groups: creationist, intelligent design, and evolutionist.

The first group, the creationists, believe that God created the universe, as described in Genesis. This group is split into several sub-groups based on how literally they interpret the story. Some sub-groups believe that creation literally took 6 days, and occurred approximately 6000 years ago; others believe that God created the Universe billions of years ago, but the Universe was constructed in such a way that humans would eventually evolve. However, these sub-groups share the belief that a supreme being was directly responsible for the creation and ordering of the Universe.

The second group, are those that believe in intelligent design. While they do not rule out natural processes being responsible for the existence of our Universe, they point out that many things are so complex that someone, or something, must have created it. A common example is the complex interaction between proteins, enzymes and other biological components. The question raised is then: “How and why would these complex interactions come to exist by chance?” The odds are so small, that someone, or something, must have designed it that way. The important distinction between this group and the creationists is based on the divinity of the guiding being(s).

The final group mentioned above are the evolutionists. This group feels that the Universe has ordered itself according to physical laws, mutation, and natural selection are the underlying principles of the universe and that interference or actions from super-intelligent or divine beings are not required for humans to exist. They have demonstrated through experimentation that physical laws can account for the Universe and life.

However, none of these groups seem to have captured the true essence of our existence as their beliefs and methods have all been shown as incomplete or contradictory in some way. However, we believe that we have come up with a new Unified Theory of Existence, that brings together all of the strengths of these different groups, and avoiding the weaknesses in their argument.

The Theory

The Unified Theory of Existence (UTE) simply answers the question of “How did we get here?”

The answer: The Universe as we know it is a giant virtual environment for use in the most advanced, most immersive, game ever created. This is more than a video game, it is a “reality game” where all of our senses and thought processes are so absorbed into the system that we “forget” about our real existence and lose ourselves in the game. Every intelligent being in our Universe is an avatar for someone playing this game.

If we consider how such a game and environment would be constructed, we can see how this brings together the strengths and main points of the various groups. First, the game designers would literally have to create the game universe. There would be a moment where the caused the game universe to come into being - just like the moment when we start a computer program. Since time itself is part of their environment, they would be able to make creation last as long, or as short, as they wanted. Meaning that all of the sub-groups of creationists could be correct!

In addition, since the game designers would want a usable environment, they would want to design the physical laws, and the various components in the game universe to work together to meet their desired plan. This brings in the intelligent design aspect.

Finally, the game universe would have a moment where everything was brought into existence but, like a computer program, it would take time to load and run. This would give us a big bang - where the Universe is rapidly expanding and has some weird properties prior to being fully executed. In addition, since the game universe would need some time to complete construction, create all of the objects in the game universe, and modify it as needed, we can see how this would result in mutations, natural selection, and evolution of the environment.

However, simply illustrating how the UTE satisfies all of the points of view is not enough. to validate this theory. We also need more specific observations.

Observations That Support UTE

The evidence for UTE is somewhat ephemeral, which is expected. After all, if there were obvious clues that there was another reality outside of our own, it would disrupt the immersive nature of the game. In fact, this lack of solid evidence actually support the idea. If there aren’t outside entities that are trying to hide the truth from us, we would expect that we would be much farther along in understanding the nature of our Universe than we are. This lack of progress would best be explained by outside interference. However, there are other important aspects that point to an outside reality.

Religious Beliefs

All of the major religions of the world have a belief in some destination, or state, that can be reached when a person dies. In christianity, this is reflected in the belief of going to heaven. In Buddhism, there is the concept of Nirvana - a state of perfect peace. If we are truly beings with access to technology capable of creating an entire simulated universe, then surely things such as hunger, sickness and suffering would be eliminated. Thus, our actual reality would be a place of great joy, wonderment and peace.

The Tunnel of Light

Those who have near-death experiences often talk of a “tunnel of light” and a feeling of warmth and happiness. If this existence is a game, then when someone dies, it makes sense that they would slowly become aware of their actual surroundings. Similar to someone who almost blacks out and gets tunnel vision - as they come back to full consciousness, their vision comes back. This tunnel of light is simply the precursor of someone returning to their actual reality. The fact that it never fully resolves into this other reality is that they haven’t truly finished with the game, as doctors have managed to restore their avatar.

Past Lives

This would easily be explained by having a person who plays the game multiple times. The actual player would have all of the memories and experiences from their previous avatars, and may be able to access some of those memories. Perhaps, after playing the game so many times, their ability to completely immerse themselves in the game suffers, or they simply don’t want to completely immerse themselves into the game, so they can compare the gaming experiences.

Prophecy

Over the last several centuries, it has been discovered that some individuals have made accurate predictions about the future. The most famous of which is Nostradamus, who has been credited with predicting the rise of Napoleon, Hitler and the events of 9/11 back in the 16th century. However, if we accept that our reality is a game, the ability of prophecies to be fulfilled is easily explained.

In a game, the designers need to update and expand the environment, and introduce plot-points to advance the story-line. If the designers wanted to “smooth out” the transitions, it would be easy to introduce a person or artifact, (like a book), that would describe the events that are going to occur. This would help the new events seem part of the regular story, even if the events are quite jarring. It would also have the added effect of adding an air of mystery to the environment. (“How is it possible someone saw the future?!?”) Alternatively, they could regularly add vague prophecies that could be utilized in many different ways to easy additions to the plot and environment. In fact, if certain figures or works were preferred by the developers, much like we would have a favorite novel, this would explain why those predictions come true more often - there is an outside entity with a desire, (and the ability), to make them occur. If you invented Nostradamus, wouldn’t you want his predictions to come true?

Extra-sensory Perception

There have been many reports of individuals who were able to perceive, by telepathy or other means, events that took place hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. This ability is easily explained by the UTE as the player’s normal senses would be a source of information about these events. If one of the players involved in the remote event is in close proximity to the player sensing the events, then the player’s natural senses would provide a way for this information to be transmitted. Just like someone watching a movie sometimes picks-up pieces of conversations around them.

In addition, these type of events seem to increase in frequency when the individuals involved are related - especially if they are twins. Now, if twins represent two players that wish to play the game together, it would be logical that they would be in the same location. Then, when something happens to one of them, the other might pick up on what they are saying in reality. In particular, if one of the twins “dies”, their exclamations as they “wake up” from the game might be heard by the other player, letting them know something has happened.

This also explains why it is so difficult to reproduce these phenomenon in a lab setting - they occur based on the activity of those around the game player, and not events within the game environment. Therefore, it is very unlikely that someone would be able to reproduce the phenomenon at will, causing the experiments to fail.

These anomalies in our existence are easily explained by UTE, even though many of the accepted groups cannot explain their existence through application of their theories. However, we must ask ourselves - is there a way to disprove the validity of the UTE?

Experiment to Disprove UTE

If the Universe is really just a vast gaming environment, and all intelligent being within this environment are avatars of those playing the game, then we can assume that the population of Earth reflects the number of players in the game with an increase in population showing the increased popularity of the in-game environment. Now, we also assume that those who designed the game have the desire to maximize the number of players, either to maximize their sense of accomplishment or some sort of economic benefit.

From this, we can assume that any event that would greatly reduce the population, (eliminating players), and radically altering the environment to a less-desirable state, (keeping the players from returning), would be prevented by the game designers.

Comparing the estimated population of Earth through the different time periods, we can then determine that the most popular environment is our modern era, with the popularity decreasing with more primitive conditions.

Therefore, if we were to actively try to revert our civilization to an earlier era, we can assume that the game designers would take an active role to prevent this. For example, if we were to begin a large-scale nuclear war, (bombing ourselves back into the stone age), we can assume that something would prevent this as it goes against the game designers goals. If there was no interference by some outside power, this would falsify our predictions, and we could safely reject the Unified Theory of Existence.

Conclusions

We feel that our Unified Theory of Existence is strongly supported by observation of our environment, and is a valid scientific theory as we have established a way to disprove this theory through experimentation. We hope that those of you reading this will take some time to consider this viewpoint, and will come to accept it as we have.