The Infinite Game OS

I had a dream last night where I was at a party in what appeared to be a large ski style resort. The noticeable feature were the ceilings. They were 50 feet high. The place was beautiful and there were maybe 200 people there. All I remember was a crescendo of music and a feeling of awe and surprise as I watched a few dozen of the people at the party begin to rise into the air, like they were ascending to heaven.

Standing there transfixed, with tears streaming down my face from witnessing something so miraculous, I felt as if reality itself was holding me like a mother holds a child. Her chest was the oak I stood upon, her heartbeat was the vibration bumping through the speakers, her voice was the excited whispering of the party.

And her glory was the ascensions.

I woke up with some serious juice. This was a once in six months kind of dream. The emotionality was piercing and incredibly beautiful.

I've been struggling this past week and I think the dream was a drop of balm from my unconscious. Luckily, the struggle is by choice. I'm mainly struggling with trying to grasp and translate a new idea I've recently discovered called 'The Beginning of Infinity' by David Deutsche.

I can tell when I don't deeply understand something when I try to talk about it. When I really get something, I'm a mix of Micheal Scott and an Olympic gymnast: I don't know what I'm going to say, but I can feel it land when it does. This is not what I feel like when I talk about The Beginning of Infinity.

When I don't understand something, it's the opposite. I try to repeat what I learned how I learned it, and I can feel the confusion in my listener as I speak. This tends to lead to my face getting red and my ego getting hurt.

So I'm going to try writing it out for you. My intention is to make it as simple as possible. I'll probably hurt my ego. But maybe I'll inspire a few of you to check it out.
 

The Two Operating Systems 

Try this metaphor on. Life is a game, your body is a biocomputer, and your psychology is the operating system you use to interface with the game of life.

Operating systems are literally what makes it possible for us to use our computers. The truth of your computer is that electrodes and magnets are manipulating the movement of electrons, and those electrons are interpreted by a machine into 1 or 0. Without your Operating System, you'd never be able to send an email.

You can't play the game of life without an Operating System.

There are two types of Operating Systems for the Game of Life.

The first is called The Finite Game OS. The Finite Game OS is like Apple. It's the most popular, because it's the easiest to use, but the OS is closed. You can't customize it. You're stuck with what you buy.

The Finite Game OS is the worldview that sees reality as finite. Some common programs are:

• you believe death is the end

• you believe scientific knowledge is finite

• you believe wealth creation is finite

• you believe your capacity to transform your life is finite

• you believe any of your habits are fixed, bounded, and unchangeable

• you think humanity is a virus to the planet, and that we're fucked

• you believe in utopias, that there is some perfected place we can get to

• you believe in some version of the clockwork god, that all there is is already created and god looks over it

• you believe in determinism

• you believe people are the problem and that we shouldn’t have children

• you believe jobs are finite, so AI is able to 'steal' jobs

Some of the best selling games on the Finite Game OS are:

• Avoid risks so you can die safely

• Ruin your integrity to win at work, because your title and your money will save you from death. 

• Live a life obsessing about your status - amongst your friends, strangers on the internet, your coworkers, and your family. Be vicious and cruel and manipulative because preserving your status will save you from death.

• Because you’re afraid to ‘look dumb,’ stop learning. Starve your curiosity. Hide its body. Pick your religion, pick your political party, and be a parrot for the rest of your life. Your in-group will save you from death.

• Do what your boss tells you, even if the numbers on the spreadsheets represent human lives. Tell yourself you're doing it for your family. You have a mortgage. 

• Choose arrogance, cynicism, and apathy because you convinced yourself the world is fucked and rigged (so you don't have to do anything to help).

• Do just enough to afford your piece of land and then dip out of the collective (because you secretly think they’re fucked, and live the rest of your life with your family on your land).

The App store has hundreds of thousands of apps. The finite game has hundreds of thousands of games. Take a couple minutes and ask yourself which finite games you most enjoy (email me your favorite and I'll make a list).

You've probably guessed it, but the other OS is The Infinite Game. The infinite game is to the finite game what Linux is to Apple. Linux is an OS designed to be customized. It invites creators and programmers to make of it whatever they want. Linux is not nearly as popular, but in the right hands, orders of magnitude more powerful (and fun) than Apple.

The Infinite Game OS is the worldview that sees reality as infinite. Some common programs are:

• Death is not the end of the game

• Scientific knowledge is never done, it is always evolving

• Wealth creation, like job creation, is infinite 

• Your identity is constantly evolving, you always have more opportunities to change or grow. Nouns are lies.

• You believe humans are infinitely capable, and as long as we exist, we have everything we need to improve life for all conscious beings.

• You don't believe in utopias, because you know the nature of reality is to evolve and change. Utopias require a Finite Game OS to run.

• You believe god is an infinitely evolving process, not a clock maker. Your life is a participation with the bleeding edge of God Goding.

• You believe in choice

• You believe every child born is a potential species-altering genius.

Before we go further, it is important to note, there is a bug in the Infinite Game OS that many people run into and their computers glitch. A glitched computer is psychosis. A glitch can lead to a crash, and a crash is a psychotic break.

It's like The Joker from batman peaking on LSD and MDMA. He realizes that nothing is true, anything is possible, and his ego, like a trapped dog seeing an open door, bounds out wildly. With the help of the euphoria of realizing the ecstasy of an infinite universe, the ego starts weaving the story it most wants to be true, with complete disregard for reality.

The glitch is the finite ego tripping over infinity.

Some common stories are:

The Ego believes our behavior today will save or end the world (it won't).
The Ego believes a podcaster we love is sending us hidden messages (they aren't).
The Ego believes our mushroom vision was prophetic and will 100% happen (it probably won't).

This is Icarus too close to the sun.

But this beautiful madness has a twin, and it's twin is paranoia.

The Ego believes 'They' are spying on us because we've awaken (probably not).
The Ego believes 'They' have installed something is us and so we're never safe (they didn't).
The Ego believes the only way out of this nightmare is death (this is the epitome of the tragedy of the Finite Game OS)

In computer science, a 'patch' is a set of code that remedies some kind of glitch in a program or operating system.

Thankfully, there is a patch for the ego transitioning between The Finite Game OS and the Infinite Game OS. The patch is called 'The Good Explanation.'

The jump from Finite to Infinite can break brains, it can ruin peoples lives. But making the jump is worth the risk. So, let's download The Good Explanation patch for any of you who want to make the jump.
 

The Good Explanation Patch 

Enter my muthafuckin man David Deutsche. Lemme drop his resume for you:

Graduated from Cambridge and Oxford; he is a fellow of the Royal Society and a professor of physics at Oxford, where he is a member of the Center for Quantum Computation. His papers on quantum physics laid the foundations for that field, and he is an authority on the theory of parallel universes.

He wrote a paper in the 80s describing a theoretical quantum turing machine and wrote a theoretical algorithm that the computer could run, the outcome of which would either prove or disprove the multi-world interpretation of quantum physics.

Fast forward 25 years; his paper was used as the blueprint to actually create the first quantum computer, that then actually ran the algorithm he wrote, that then actually showed that the multi-world interpretation of quantum physics was true.

The dude's thought experiment became the instructions to create the first quantum computer that validated the multi-verse. That's the kind of guy this guy his.

But he would be the first to tell you that that doesn't mean shit (he wouldn't say it that way though).

Now lets introduce his patch: 'The Good Explanation.'

Warning: His books are worth your time. I am going to savagely, arguably grotesquely, simplify his arguments here. If you want to understand why this is one of the most significant ideas I've ever found, go peep his book 'The Beginning of Infinity.'

There are only two types of thoughts: Good explanations and everything else.

Good explanations are stories that allows people (what he calls universal constructors) to transmute matter and ideas into forms we desire.

The theory of Electromagnetism is a good explanation. It allows us to harness the power of electricity.

The theory of "If Caitlyn is mad at me, using facts to argue will make it worse, so listen, co-regulate, and find places to play and laugh" is a good explanation because it allows me to turn arguments into intimacy.

A Good Explanation has 3 features:
1) Can be criticized
2) Can be falsified; that is to say, it lends itself to experimentation.
3) The specifics cannot be easily varied

Most religious stories are not good explanations because you can't criticize them (amongst other reasons lol).

"Ayahuasca told me we're suppose to be together" is not a good explanation because it is not falsifiable, (ladies, if a psychedelic bro ever uses this line, please for the love of god, don't).

"Trump is going to clean the swamp and release the sealed documents on (insert date)" is not a good explanations because the specifics get to be changed in response to contradictory evidence. "Oh, it didn't happen on date X...well, heres why. But it will happen on date Y."

There are more bad explanations than good explanations.

But there are an infinite number of possible good explanations.

We ought to train our minds to seek good explanations because we are the only known entity in the universe who can.

Good explanations are what will allow us to reroute the next meteor that is coming that would otherwise annihilate life on this planet.

Good explanations bring us into radical intimacy with God, and the gift of this intimacy is that God gives us alchemy. 

You live upon an incomprehensible continent of good explanations; all of which were discovered by a human mind.

Your food, your clothes, your medicines, your home, your plumbing, your electricity, your internet, your car, your amazon packages, your computer, your language, your culture; all of it was created by a human mind seeking to understand reality.

Understanding that you are a Universal Constructor and that Good Explanations are possible, is the Beginning of Infinity.

Universal Constructors with the right Good Explanations can do anything, can solve any problem, as long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics.

Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, Computer Coding; these are slivers of God we've discovered through good explanations.

So, to run 'The Good Explanation Patch' on the Infinite Game OS, you've got to download a few rules:

• Chances are...you're bullshitting yourself and suffering needlessness because of your bullshitting (i.e. bad explanations)

• The Good Explanation patch is the most important psycho-technology every created by humans. Try it.

• Good explanations invite criticism

• Good explanations require experimentation

• Good explanations seek elegant specificity

• Problems are inevitable. All problems are soluble.

• Good Explanations can solve any problem that doesn't violate the laws of nature.

• Our current understanding of the laws of nature will always be incomplete ;)

For me, the holy grail of Deutsch's perspective is what he calls 'Critical Rationality.'

I think Critical Optimism when I read it. It sounds better. The idea this:

1. Since the universe is infinite, the set of undiscovered good explanations is infinite.
2. To claim a pessimistic view of any problem is akin to a religious conviction.
3. Because to claim a problem is not solvable is to claim that you know the complete laws of nature and the complete set of infinite possible good explanations available.
AKA. YA MUTHAFUCKIN DO NOT KNOW THAT

Okay I got excited. What this means is, the more you relax into the structure of reality, the more you let go of your bitterness against God and Being itself, you will notice...there is not just hope for whatever problems beset you, there are more solutions to your problems than there are stars in the sky, atoms in your body, or doubt in your psyche.

The Infinite Game OS w/ the Good Explanation Patch allows you to play some of the following games:

• The Bodhisattva Game - I choose to believe that existence is an infinite spiraling game, and I have chosen to reincarnate as many times as I need to to help every conscious being remember they too are bodhisattvas. My goal is fierce compassion.

• The Infinite Entrepreneur - Wealth is a function of access to good explanations. Everyone can be wealthy. There is no law of nature that requires people be poor. I create and share wealth to bring as many new players into the infinite game as want to join.

• The Infinite Lover - My relationship with my partner is an infinite game. The goal is never to win, the goal is to continue playing. I practice daily noticing when I slip back into the finite game, and my partner and I practice getting back into the infinite game.

• The Infinite Artist - Art saved my soul, and my soul's salvation is because of all the artists that came before me. My thank you to them is to make the art that is mine to make savagely and passionately. Because I know there will be someone not yet born who's soul may be helped by my art.

• The Infinite Parent - Best captured by John Adams "I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music." Whatever my lot in life is, I work it with all my heart, so that my children can stand on slightly better land. And they will do so for their children, into infinity.

Our world is starving for The Infinite Game OS.

Because we're starving, we need the 'Good Explanation' patch.

It doesn't mean we will succeed, but humanity has the potential to solve all of the problems that threaten us.

So the question is...are you going to help out, or opt out?

Because the truth is...if you've read to this point, opting out would be a choice.