The level of sophistication of artificial intelligence is a measure of humanity’s understanding of consciousness, because, like AI, consciousness is a simulation.

We are all in the midst of an experiential learning feed of two universes: the outer universe and the inner universe. As we develop our understanding of our outer world, our understanding of our inner world increases, too, like parallel lines running alongside each other. In other words, we learn more about our inner world as we learn more about the outer world. This is the principle upon which the entire fields of anthropology, medicine, psychology, and neuroscience rest on.

The relationship that arises between learning more about our outer world and learning about our inner world can be simply observed through the growth in our own self awareness as we age and experience life. New experiences lend themselves to greater inner awareness, greater understanding of our inner world.

We can then take that understanding of our consciousness and attempt to recreate a version of it only to the extent of which we understand our own consciousness which is to the extent we understand the multiverse, which is composed of the inner and outer universes, the former of which is constrained by the latter and vice versa. This is the original sin of artificial intelligence.

It stands to reason then that the more we deepen our understanding of the systems and patterns that exist in nature, the better we’ll understand consciousness.

At an individual level, the knowledge boom and the viral spread of information in the 21^st century as a direct result of the tech revolution are waking people up to the shared hallucination of a reality that humans are solely responsible for. At a species level, the scientific, archaeological and historical studies that have granted us insight into how we came to be precipitated that very realization in more ways than one. These are two sides of the same coin-sciousness. An individual is to a species what the inner world is to the outer world.

Can we start to predict what might happen next time we uncover groundbreaking scientific knowledge in the way of the heliocentric theory, trauma theory, or the theory of relativity? What implications would a theoretical challenge to our current understanding of reality have on our self understanding? Can we anticipate the mechanisms that run our reality?

These questions themselves contain an earth shattering theory all on their own: reality is in fact a simulation founded on the nature of learning, adaptation, and evolution – the constant action of replacing new information with old information.

This is indeed a simulation. There is no question about it. There have been endless patterns in the physical world that have been translated into laws, prediction models in the form of mathematics and logic that give meaning to the code in which the matrix is written in.

What does this tell us about the paradoxical nature of we? The inherently impossible challenge of proving reality is a simulation outside of philosophical conversations lends itself to a second truth: we’ll never know the truth. The self investigation into why and how consciousness inevitably collapses on itself when the inner learning simulation eventually realizes it’s only learning from itself. The realization that the outer world is completely defined by a narrative interpretation from the inner world renders any original understanding of the outer world meaningless. But not fruitless!

Because only within the space of non-meaning can we actually experience reality as a collective hallucination, or simulation, constrained by our biology but blessed by a path of impermanence and evolution. If the truth will set us free, then let us be liberated by the only truth that exists which is that there is none. There is no true truth present nor waiting to be discovered. Let us release the burden of the search for righteousness and absolution and embrace loving and compassionate ignorance in all its modern glory. For even if God revealed itself to humans, that would in and of itself be yet another iteration of the simulation.