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…. is a question we have all asked, heard, dreamed, [some action], etc.

Here is my take on it. (P.S. there is also an anime reference in there).

Also, don’t expect this to be scientifically super accurate and exhaustive, but to be more like philosophical text, although I will try to be scientifically accurate to some degree.

First let’s make a few assumptions.

The world, as we know of it today, will not end because of an asteroid impact, global warming, nuclear war, disease, [some bad thing], etc. The only reason why Earth will cease to exist is because our sun will engulf it. By ‘future’ I mean way out in the future, like so much so that we are comfortably hopping between solar systems and not using planets for habitation, but as balls from which we extract resources from. Let’s call this ‘way out in the future’ WOitF henceforth. We would still not be able to travel faster than light. (bummer) We do not find a wormhole that leads us to a different universe. (bummer)

Now, that we have established the base, that we would be living on a giant space station, most probably multiple space stations, hopping between solar systems and perhaps even galaxies, let’s imagine what will happen once we achieve such levels of technological advancements.

There is just one answer that comes to my mind.

Boredom.

Space is big and empty. Mostly empty. No wonder its called space. Its also pretty much the same everywhere, atleast as far as we have observed and what the logical thought suggests. It is repetitive and empty.

We will be bored, and rightly so, because there will not be anything more to explore. We would have been to many solar systems and also maybe to other galaxies, where we would most probably have an experience similar to the one we have had in our milky way.

We, as a species, would have seen, smelled, heard, tasted, touched [some other undiscovered sense] everything.

Yeah I know there are more than the usual 5 senses like temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense (proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception), vibration (mechanoreception), and various internal stimuli (e.g. the different chemoreceptors for detecting salt and carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood, or sense of hunger and sense of thirst). Thank you wikipedia.

We would have experienced literally EVERYTHING that this universe has to offer, and thanks to our 4th assumption, we would be stuck in this universe.

It’s kind of bleak when you think about it, but then answer becomes obvious (and hopefully less dark).

The solution:

We would create our own worlds to live in.

Virtual reality is advancing each day, and new ways of artificially stimulating our senses are coming up rapidly. Recently I saw this video on a YouTube channel called SmarterEveryday, which is an AMAZING channel (and no I am not doing a paid promotion). It shows us a glove which gives haptic feedback to the wearer, the feedbacks being based on events happening in a virtual world. Even a single rain drop can be felt on the palm of the hand on which the glove is worn.

Point being, that in the WoitF, we would have ‘advanced virtual realities’ (AVR from now on, and it’s a made up name, ofcourse), the ones where the simulation would be directly fed into our brains and there wouldn’t be any need for full body suits and displays in front of our eyes. These AVRs would be able to trigger ALL our senses, effectively making the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ indistinguishable.

I am reminded of the scenes from the movie WALL-E where people are slumped on their chairs with screens in front of them, all the while slurping smoothie or something and growing fatter.

In our WoitF, however, this would not happen as our ‘lifeless’ bodies will be fed nutrients directly into the blood stream, and the type and quantity of the nutrients will be regulated in order to maintain the body at an optimal level.

I am thinking more on the lines of this anime I watched, called Sword Art Online, which is also AMAZING (not a paid promotion). In this, the virtual reality inducing gear, NerveGear, is worn on the head like a helmet, the user lies down on a bed, switches it ON (NerveGear, not the bed), and the NerveGear emits microwaves that trick the brain into experiencing a virtual world.

Or for those who for some unknown reasons do not care about anime (shame on you), there is the very famous book called Ready Player One, which also has a movie based on it. In the trailer of the movie, the main guy says “Sitting here in the tiny corner of nowhere, there is nowhere left to go. Nowhere. Except the Oasis.”, the Oasis being a virtual world where everyone can live the lives of their dreams.

Creating virtual worlds that are personalised to our own taste would not be difficult at all because we would have ‘ultraquantumcomputers’ (UQC here on, made up name, ofcourse) digesting massive amounts of data, and those UQCs would be knowing all about us, actually even better than how much we know ourselves. Even today, my smartphone knows (tries to predict) what word I am going to type in next, which place I will go to on Thursday, what is the next thing I want to order online from Amazon, [some average human’s action] etc.

The AVRs created by UQCs in the WoitF would be our final resting places, because of course there wouldn’t be anything like life expectancy because we will live up to eternity, having access to seemingly infinite amounts of energy gathered from stars and planets and probably some advanced form of nuclear fusion, all of this coupled with advanced medical technology keeping our hearts pumping and our brains full of oxygen rich blood ( assuming we don’t evolve into something entirely devoid of a ‘heart’ and ‘brain’ ) .

The AVRs would show us universes where we would have power to bend physics, juggle stars or maybe just fly like a bird, live the life of an ant or be the supreme commander of our own galaxy, [ some fantasies and dreams], etc.

But we would probably be bored of these too. I mean there is only so much creativity we can ooze before we run out of it.

Also, not to forget that the UQCs would also be very much capable of generating universes of their own to be used for AVR once we run out of our own creativity. The zillions upon zillions of the universes created by the UQCs would each be random, each having its own different working of physics, chemistry, biology, maths, [some subject name], etc.

But we would experience of all these too, and that is the thing. The seemingly infinite universes made by these UQCs would still be all based on the inputs received from this universe and by us humans.

How much diversity can we produce for the inputs to the machines? As much as our own minds are capable. How much diversity can a machine input from its environment? As much as the universe provides. How much randomness can a machine, no matter how powerful, generate? As much as ….ok I don’t know. We are currently using randomness measured from atmospheric noise, randomness from lava lamps and many other forms for our own uses. Maybe we can extract randomness from quantum level.

We might for eternity, be able to make random universes to satisfy our insatiable demand for the ‘new’. We might forever have ‘new’ and ‘unknown’ worlds to explore, scientific discoveries to make. Maybe these randomly generated universes will begin to display some sort of a trend. Or maybe not.

So, does it all come down to:

How much randomness can we create in order to keep ourselves entertained?