Most of what’s in that little essay we’ve already talked about right here on the Zone. It’s pretty standard nooetic stuff, a lot of it posited by scientists. This is not anomalism, its informed speculation. But that’s all it is, speculation.

We’ve just had a long talk about consciousness right here. The idea of the universe being “tuned for our existence” is not new, a lot of physicists have remarked on it. In fact, there is a whole branch of speculative physics called the Anthropic Principle that deals with the question. The basic idea is that we seem tailor-made for the universe. Or maybe, vice-versa. As if the universe created itself in such a way that thinking beings capable of contemplating it would inevitably arise. Would be necessary for the universe to exist at all. Perhaps the universe, like the tree in the forest, needs someone to hear it fall, even if it involves a little metaphysical time-travel.

I think of it this way. I am in a sports stadium with a 100,000 other fans, and a pigeon flies over and takes a shit in MY BEER. How did he know I was there? Why did he pick me? How could his aim have been so true? Does it even make any sense to ask those questions? Or am I inflating my own self-importance by placing myself at the very center of a purely arbitrary, imaginary coordinate system.

You can drive yourself crazy thinking these thoughts, and trying to sort it all out. But what’s the point. Even if we are a simulation that some alien super-mind can wipe clean and start over, so what? I;ve mentioned before that what the universe really looks like more than anything else is a computer simulation, a computer model. Someone is trying out different parameters to see which set works best. That’s why all those physical constants seem to fit just right, the ones that didn’t have been rejected in previous runs.

The point is it doesn’t matter. We have to deal with the universe as we see it. If there is something going on behind the green curtain we’ll never know. We have to react as if we were the center of the universe, because as far as we’re concerned, we are. We are the center of the observable region.

So is it pointless to have discussions like this? Certainly not. If we realize the world looks a certain way to us because of our position in it, we gain great insight into how it appears to other people. We realize why they act the way they do, and we understand why we act how we do. We understand the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity, we understand how others might be right after all, and we might even gain a little humility about our own errors and misconceptions. By seeing the world through other’s eyes we gain great understanding. We gain a great advantage, an alternative viewpoint. Its like breaking the enemy’s codes. Or learning to speak his language. It gives you an advantage, not only in conflict, but in self-awareness.