Personal Wiki of Subhrajit Bhattacharya

Simple it may sound, but probably the most profound question that any intelligent being in this universe, as we know it, can ask! If I claim that you are in a dream, and myself, and whatever you see, feel, hear & touch around you, and whatever has ever happened in your so-called life is the creation of your mind & dream in some other reality, and then I tell you to disprove my claim, would you really have a way of disproving me? You'll probably try designing some experiment, like pinching yourself, and try to draw some conclusion from the outcome. But in your dream, any experiment you design, and any outcome you get, will still be your mind's construct only. Any consistency in your construct can never reflect a "reality", if one exists. And any inconsistency may very well be a result of some physical law (or the lack of it) in a "reality" yet to be understood (remember the stories of the ancient civilizations fearing the solar eclipses since they were considered as anomaly of nature). In fact you have no way of proving/disproving my claim.

For those who have seen movies like the "Vanilla Sky" or "The Matrix", this probably rings a bell. Reality and surreality are quite indistinguishable by a human intellect. Consider the idea presented in the movie "The Matrix". Is there a definitive way of disproving that the universe we live in is an intricately designed virtual reality constructed in some "machine" in some other reality? All the experiments we perform to delve into the nature of this virtual reality result in consistent result, but that's just because it's the same virtual reality program running. Every atoms, molecule, that we think the universe is made of, are just entities created in and by the program. The program probably uses some specific algorithm, thus things in the virtual world seem to be consistent. But we are just pieces of "code" in the virtual world - don't exist in "reality". In fact the notion of "true reality" does not exist for us. What we think to be real is a construct.

We, as part of this virtual reality program, and complex enough to have a "consciousness", start wondering what we are really made of. In reality we are made of nothing - just pieces of "code" runing in some "machine" - our existence is virtual. So is the existence of every atoms and molecules in our universe, and every laws of physics that we understand or don't understand. But that's so uncomforting and unperceivable to our consciousness! So we design experiments in this world to understand the nature of this spooky place that does not exist. At the beginning we were not finding any pattern in this universe - we were baffled by the strange glowing objects hovering in "space" and tried to understand patterns in their locations, we were frightened by the fragility of our existence, the power of our surrounding surreality in rendering us helpless. It's quite like puffing life in a voodoo doll for the first time, or turning on a brand-new intelligent robot or an intelligent program for the first time, and letting it try and figure out the reality all alone. The intelligence or consciousness in it, if it has the ability, will wonder who it is and how it came into being. It will look around for clues, will probably delve inside the mechanism and electronics that runs itself, but will still remain clueless. So we, humans, have been doing so long. We call this science. It's much like waking up in a room with a bunch of other people, no one with no memory of their past or how they ended up in that room or where the room is located. Thus they start looking for different clues in the room and in themselves trying to find an answer. The movie "Cube" gives a good idea of how it might be like to not to know where we are and who we are, and yet to have the ability to ask those questions.

The big questions has been worrying us for a long time - Where the hell are we? How did we happen to come here? Who made this place and us, and with what purpose? Is there a purpose at all? We feel like little wool puppets weaved by somebody, and then "PUFF"... the puppet's got life, can think and wonder! The weaver isn't around any more, or we are not sure if there is a weaver at all - we haven't seen one at least. It's such a spooky place, and it's even more spooky being yourself and being able to think. You can't help banging your head against the wall and ask "Who am I?", "Where am I?". But alas, the answer isn't going to come that easy... it's a mystery, detective story with lots of funny secrets and tickling clues. The story is unfolding, and you better not miss a bit of it!