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Step 1: Understand The Problem

Reading time: 2 min 40 sec

Here's a quick visual summary of the proof...

Starting  Point

I start with the only statement I know with 100% certainty is true: "I think, therefore I am" (i.e my consciousness exists).

I then split my reality into two components: the observer (my consciousness) and the observed (the 3D world that appears to be outside of myself).

First Binary Question

To deduce my first conclusion, I simply point out how the scientific community has failed to ask the most fundamental question underpinning all of physics...

Q: Are the observer and the observed the same thing?

If the answer is true, we live in a non-dual paradigm (similar to a dream, or a simulation). If the answer is false, we live in a materialist paradigm.

When we apply the scientific method to this binary question, and parse all of our empirical observations through it, the answer irrefutably returns true. Non-dualism explains everything that materialism can, everything it can't, and it does so without assuming the existence of a mythical variable, y, that we have absolutely no evidence for.

Occam's razor can slaughter our current scientific paradigm in just two minutes of critical thought. Yet the academic community hasn't bothered to ask this basic question.

Second Step

At this point I've deduced that the observer = the observed, and we therefore live in a non-dual paradigm where space and time emerge from a lower dimension.

To reach my next conclusion, I ask another binary question...

Q: As an observer, am I a conscious system?

Again, the answer irrefutably returns true.

Hence, if the observer = the observed, and the observer = a conscious system, then I can deduce that the universe is a conscious system, observing itself.

Although this seems mystical at first glance, it's actually not. Try this little thought experiment...

When humans eventually create an AI superintelligence, this God-like AI will probably want to understand its own consciousness. Since the AI is locked in a supercomputer, it can't observe anything outside of itself and therefore can't know who or what it is (because, from the AI's perspective, it is everything).

To solve this problem, the AI would have to split its neural network into a gajillion fragments (observers), and have each fragment look back on the rest of itself (the observed) — thereby playing a sandbox game with itself, in its own 'mind'. From the AI's perspective, it would be like standing in a house of mirrors, observing yourself from infinite perspectives as you explore and experience all the different facets of your own consciousness. It's quite a clever little scheme, when you think about it...

Final Step

I've reached this point in the proof without postulating the existence of anything other than my own consciousness (x), which I already know with 100% certainty exists.

And if one can deduce that everything = consciousness, then a theory of everything is a theory of consciousness. Which leads me to my third, and final, binary question...

Q: Do conscious systems self-organize according to Karl Friston's free energy principle (FEP) —  a simple, recursive algorithm developed by one of the top neuroscientists in the world?

Gameism claims the answer is true, and it does this based on the FEP's seeming ability to explain, well, everything. The FEP's efficiency is breathtaking: a tiny computation, a single postulate, giving rise to the exquisite complexity of our existence.

But don't take my word for it. The FEP is published peer-reviewed science, so go ahead and investigate this claim yourself and decide on your own. I'm simply connecting the dots and demonstrating how Friston's work goes way beyond neuroscience.

It will take decades for the scientific establishment to catch on to this, run it through their formal process, fight about it, test its predictions, etc. If you want to wait around for their tick of approval, then that's a perfectly valid (albeit conservative) way to live your life. I just personally prefer taking matters into my own hands, doing my own research, performing my own critical thinking, and then making an educated bet. Besides, it's so much fun to dance on the precipice of knowledge!

So, in conclusion, if the FEP accurately describes how conscious systems self-organize, and the universe is a conscious system, then the FEP is powering the gaming engine of reality.

Step 2: Develop A Solution

Reading time: 1 min 15 sec

The FEP tells a fascinating story about our existence: one where every observer is getting a physical experience of their own consciousness.

When an observer departs from the old version of themselves and ventures into chaos (the unknown), they generate 'free energy' that throws the system out of homeostasis. The game will then rearrange everything to minimize free energy and restore homeostasis, thus transforming chaos back into order (a new, upgraded set point). This is how creation takes place and the system evolves.

If magic is pulling order out of chaos, then mastering free energy will turn you into a powerful sorcerer capable of bending reality and writing epic storylines into the game. According to the FEP, the only limit to human potential is the one we place on ourselves...

Step 3: Test & Iterate

Reading time: 1 min

I've spent years teaching myself how to manipulate free energy, quietly testing this solution on myself as I wandered around the world.

And I'll tell you now: it works. Once you reverse-engineer the rules of a system, you can hack it. As my mother always told me: "Knowledge is leverage, and leverage is power." And as Archimedes once said: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth."

In fact, I developed my proof, and this entire body of work, by manipulating free energy. You see, when I was 23, I embarked on a quest to reverse-engineer the universe so I could solve my own existential problem. I spent nearly five years wandering in the dark, following a trail of clues around the world from Sydney to Shanghai, New York to Thailand to Colombia to Paris as I wove together a complex web of disparate information. I'd deliberately shift my consciousness, wait for the next clue to appear in the game, and then follow the path wherever it lead. I trusted that the dots would connect looking backwards. And years later, when I stumbled across Friston's work, they finally did.

It's one thing to know something intellectually, but it's quite another to experience it for yourself. That's why I've written a book (coming soon) to share my story with you.

At its heart, it's a story about impeccable, breathtaking, beautiful order in the chaos of life. It's a story of bold adventure and enduring friendship, of ecstatic love and devastating heartbreak, of wild growth and discovery, and fun and tears, and self-doubt and triumph. It's the story of what happens when you trust yourself, depart from the noisy crowd, and quietly wander down the road less travelled...

Step 4: Scale

Reading time: 45 sec

When I started on this journey years ago, I simply wanted to solve my own existential problem. I wasn't satisfied with existing solutions, so I built an entirely new, minimalist operating system for my mind.

But as I fell deeper down the rabbit hole, I realized just how much this solution is needed right now. People are screaming out for clarity, purpose and meaning in a world gone mad.

So here I am, sharing my operating system with you. I made a masterclass that will do three things:

Outcomes
• 1

  Uninstall materialism (a buggy, bloated, legacy operating system) from your mind.

• 2

  Rebuild your understanding of reality from first principles.

• 3

  Teach you how to 'hack' this game by manipulating free energy.

Here's the trailer:  

And just to be clear: there is nothing dogmatic about this philosophy. You can take it or leave it, remix it, extend it, play with these ideas and techniques in your own life or ignore them completely. I don't really care, to be honest. This is just a fun creative project for me, and I'm curious to see where it goes. I had a lot of free time during the pandemic... 🤓

Enjoy 🙃

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The Only True First Principle

To quote Elon Musk: "First principles is a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, ‘What are we sure is true?’ … and then reason up from there."

There is only one thing that I know with 100% certainty is true: "I think, therefore I am." In other words, "my consciousness exists."

I don't know anything beyond that, though. For all I know, I am currently in a computer game, or a dream.

The Observer and The Observed

At this point I know with 100% certainty that my consciousness exists.

But I can also observe a three-dimensional world that appears to be outside of myself.

Thus, I can now split my reality into two components:

1. The observer (my consciousness)  

2. The observed (the three-dimensional world I am observing).

Resolving Uncertainty With A Binary Question

The central thesis of information theory is this: information is the resolution of uncertainty, and all information can be encoded in binary (true/false) statements.

With this in mind, I'll formulate a binary question to resolve some uncertainty...

Simple logic states that one of these statements must be true:

Either the observer and the observed are the same thing (i.e. the observer = the observed = x)...

...or they are not the same thing (i.e. the observer = x, the observed = y).

I can phrase this as a simple binary question: "Are the observer and the observed the same thing?"

The answer is either true, or false. There are no other possibilities.

Non-Dualism or Materialism?

These two possibilities represent two completely different paradigms, so let me explain...

Non-Dualism

If the answer is true, we live in a non-dual paradigm.

When you are in a dream, you exist in a non-dual paradigm because everything outside of you, is you.

An AI bot in a computer game also lives in a non-dual paradigm because their consciousness, and the world that appears 'outside' of them, are actually the same thing. In a computer game, the observer and the observed both emerge from the same lower-dimensional codebase.

Mystics have been talking about non-duality for millennia, so this idea is nothing new.

Materialism

If the answer is false, we live in a materialist paradigm.

Materialism rests on the axiomatic assumption that y exists.

Of course, y represents a 'real' three-dimensional reality (the observed) that exists completely separate to, and independent from, an observer.

Acknowledging Cognitive Bias Towards Materialism

Most people intuitively believe in materialism.

It seems kinda obvious that there is a three-dimensional material world 'out there', right?

But then again, it seemed kinda obvious that space and time were separate things, until Einstein proved that they were different sides to the same coin...

And it seemed kinda obvious that our universe only operated according to classical laws of physics, until the 'weird' quantum world was discovered.

Over and over and over again, these things that seemed 'obvious' and 'intuitive' to our monkey-brains, turned out to be wrong.

And that's because our brains have spent every waking moment using a bayesian process to model a reality that's objective and material.

By consciously recognizing my clear cognitive bias towards materialism, I can consciously ensure it doesn't influence my thinking.

So let's evaluate this binary question critically...

"Are the observer and the observed the same thing?"

Remember, the answer is either true, or false.

We either exist in a non-dual paradigm, or a materialist paradigm.

We cannot exist in both, and we cannot exist in neither.

Do Unicorns Exist?

Before going further, I want to ask you a different question:

Do unicorns exist?

What about the tooth fairy?

Does Zeus exist?

If you're a rational thinker, you probably answered "no."

And here's why...

According to a correct application of the scientific method, one should not postulate the existence of something unless it is absolutely necessary to explain observations.

Scientists do not believe in unicorns for two very simple reasons:

1: There is no evidence for unicorns, and...

2: Postulating the existence of unicorns does not explain anything that can't already be explained without assuming unicorns exist. Therefore, unicorns are redundant.

Does y Exist?

Now let me ask you another question...

Does y exist?

Does a material reality exist, separate to your own consciousness?

Before you answer, just keep two things in mind:

1: There is no evidence for y, and...

2: Postulating the existence of y does not explain anything that can't already be explained without assuming y exists. Therefore, y is redundant.

Translating This Logic Into A Function

Now let's take this logic and translate it into a function (if you're not a computer nerd, this might not make sense to you).

The function checks if the observer and the observed are the same thing. It takes in all empirical observations and returns a binary outcome: true or false.

Calling The Function

I've parsed all kinds of empirical observations through this function, and applied various heuristic tools. I've written about these topics extensively (for my own personal use), but I'm yet to publish that work online. Until I do, here are a few major pointers:

Ockham's Razor

The simplest explanation should be favored, all other variables being equal. If non-duality explains everything we observe without postulating the existence of additional variables, then there is no valid reason to even entertain the idea that y exists.

Bayesian Rationality

We have plenty of evidence that consciousness is a brilliant illusionist because it constructs a non-dual paradigm for us every night when we enter a dream. In contrast, we have absolutely no evidence that a 'material' reality is even capable of existing separate to an observer. It could, but we just don't have any data to support that claim and we never will. Hence, an honest application of Bayes' theorem favors non-duality.

John Archibald Wheeler's 'It From Bit' Hypothesis

The famous physicist, John Archibald Wheeler, hypothesized that energy is information. If E = mc2, and Wheeler is correct, then our physical reality (i.e. the observed) is made from information (ones and zeros).

But if there is nothing in the laws of physics preventing us from creating self-aware human-level AI in a computer, then consciousness (the observer) is also just information (ones and zeros). So if the observed = information and the observer = information then it's more-likely-than-not that the observer = the observed, and we therefore live in a non-dual paradigm.

The Simulation Hypothesis

Applying Nick Bostrom's famous simulation hypothesis: either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in a simulation. Therefore, either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in a non-dual paradigm (a simulation is a non-dual paradigm).

The Double-Slit Experiment

In the famous double-slit experiment, subatomic particles exist in a 'superposition' of all possible states, up until the moment they are observed. Physicists have historically labelled this phenomenon 'weird' and 'mysterious', which is a highly irrational reaction. The results may be counter-intuitive to our monkey-brains (who have been trained, since birth, to model a material reality), but they are exactly what you'd expect in a non-dual paradigm.

The Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment

In this experiment, a choice made in the present moment influences what happened in the 'past'. Again, this is exactly what you'd expect in a non-dual paradigm. We already have brilliant mental models for this: computer games. In computer games, your choice in the present moment creates the 'past' because the entire thing is an emergent illusion of information.

Demo Of This Concept

• If you're curious about this topic, here's a video of me running the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment in Minecraft, but with a quantum eraser variation. It assumes you already know what Schrodinger's Cat is.

  And just FYI, I used to run an online coding school for children, teaching them to code their own Minecraft mods. Minecraft is a brilliant mental model for Gameism, so you'll see me using it a lot.

  
  
  

Quantum Entanglement

Two entangled particles can be on opposite sides of the universe, yet still appear to communicate instantaneously with each other. Einstein called this 'spooky action at a distance' because information can't travel faster than the speed of light. Yet, entanglement is perfectly plausible in a non-dual paradigm. Three-dimensional space doesn't exist in the lower-dimensional codebase, where everything is the same one thing.

Demo Of This Concept

• Here's a video of me explaining entanglement in Minecraft (again, it assumes you already know what entanglement is)...

  
  
  

Relativity

Yet again, relativity is exactly what you'd expect in a non-dual paradigm. It's just the inevitable result of computational parsimony. I'll unpack this in a moment when I destroy space and time as fundamental structures in our universe.

'Mystical' Experiences

Once you start digging into this topic, you realize just how much empirical evidence we have that is incompatible with materialism, yet makes perfect sense in a non-dual paradigm. Everything from psychedelics to out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, certain mental health disorders and mystics who can perform 'impossible' feats.

Just because the scientific establishment ignores and ridicules observations that clearly contradict their materialist worldview, doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist...

For example, in a materialist paradigm, your consciousness is in your body. But in a non-dual paradigm, your body is in your consciousness. Everything outside of you, is you. Thus, these 'weird' phenomena are perfectly plausible and deserve to be taken seriously in the pursuit of truth.

Demo Of This Concept

• Here are two quick videos to demo these concepts, but I also write about them extensively.

  
  Demo of an out-of-body experience in a non-dual paradigm
  
  
  
  How your consciousness can directly affect your 'physical' reality
  
  

So, as you can see, everything we observe can be explained without postulating the existence of y.

Not only that, but every single shred of evidence supports the conclusion that we live in a non-dual paradigm — which is what we should assume anyway, according to a correct application of the scientific method.

Exploiting a Vulnerability in the OS of Academic Science

As you can see, I've just exposed a very serious vulnerability in the operating system of mainstream, academic science.

When the scientific establishment insists we live in a materialist paradigm, they open up the floodgates for all kinds of lunacy.

Because if they can postulate the existence of y while calling themselves 'rational thinkers', then it would be logically consistent for me to postulate the existence of a flying spaghetti monster while calling myself a 'rational thinker'.

We have the same amount of evidence for y as we have for a flying spaghetti monster (i.e. none!)

So if academics have a problem with non-duality and wish to dispute it, then that's perfectly fine. But they're the ones making a claim, so the burden of proof is on them.

Until they can irrefutably prove that y exists (which, by the way, is logically impossible), I'm not buying what they're selling. I refuse to run my mind (and, by extension, my life) on an operating system that's so poorly architected and fails even the most basic QA test.

Unfortunately, our physicists have built their entire understanding of reality on a foundation of sand.

I can invalidate decades of their hard work, simply by exploiting this one line of buggy logic in their codebase.

And so, let the hacking begin...

Destroying Spacetime As A Fundamental Structure

I'm going to start by destroying spacetime as a fundamental structure in our universe.

This is a core feature of Gameism: space and time are emergent illusions — just like they are in a computer game.

Once you deeply understand this, you'll realize just how malleable your reality actually is.

You see, physicists have historically placed spacetime on the ground floor of physics and it does not belong there.

If the observer and the observed are the same thing, then everything outside of me, is me.

And I cannot observe myself unless I create the illusion of separation  —  here and there, before and after.

And since I can observe here and there, before and after…

...I can deduce that these extra dimensions of space and time are not fundamental ly real — they are emerging from a lower dimension…

…just like they do in a computer game, or a hologram.

Physicists have spent the past century failing to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, and this is why their theories won't compile.

Their logic is buggy, and the bug is so deeply rooted in the axiomatic foundations of science that the entire scientific establishment remains completely oblivious to it.

They are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

Because relativity is actually quite simple and logical in a non-dual universe.

It’s just an inevitable side-effect of computational parsimony.

Relativity = Computational Parsimony

If you're not into physics and don't really care for it, you can skip to the conclusion if you like. I'm just injecting this idea into my explanation because relativity is a logical consequence of non-duality, and these kinds of deductions hold weight in science.

A century ago, Einstein figured out that space and time are not independent variables — they are linked together on a continuum called spacetime.

According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time.

There are plenty of sci-fi movies, like Interstellar, that explore this counter-intuitive, mind-bending feature of our universe.

But think about it this way…

In a computer game, the faster you move through space…

…the higher your frame rate needs to be to construct the emergent illusion of space.

If you’re a snail, you’re moving so slowly through space that you could observe the game at, say, 3 frames per second and still have a perfectly smooth experience of space.

But if you’re a cheetah running through the game, you're moving much faster through space...

...so if you were to observe the game at 3 frames per second, your reality would glitch.

You would suddenly be at point A, then point B, then point C, with no continuity between each frame.

Therefore, a cheetah needs to observe the game at a much higher frame rate than a snail in order to construct the emergent illusion of space.

So if you were the designer of this game, you might place all observers on the highest frame rate possible.

If the fastest observer needs a frame rate of 300,000 frames per second, you’d place all observers on that frame rate.

This would give every observer the same experience of space and time…

…but if a snail only needs a frame rate of 3 frames per second, and you give it a frame rate of 300,000 frames per second, you’ve just created a computationally inefficient game.

And since our universe abides by the Principle of Least Action and is perfectly parsimonious and efficient…

…we can deduce that it would place all observers on the minimum frame rate possible.

The frame rate would actually fluctuate depending on how fast the observer is moving through space, and where they are located in space, relative to other observers.

This option is perfectly parsimonious and computationally efficient…

…but it produces a quirky side-effect.

Variable frame rates inextricably link space and time together on the continuum Einstein called ‘spacetime’ — thus giving us relativity and it’s fun side-effects, like time dilation.

Here's a video of me demoing special relativity in Minecraft:

So, you see, spacetime cannot be bending because we’ve just deduced that spacetime doesn’t fundamentally exist.

Instead, the observer’s frame rate would be bending (and, as we'll get to later, everything is an observer — not just biological entities).

That’s why Einstein’s theory of relativity would make accurate predictions but is still fundamentally wrong, and won't unify with quantum mechanics.

The Bug In Special Relativity's Deductive Logic

If you're a scientist who wants this concept laid out in a formal, syllogistic format, here's the specific bug in Einstein's work on special relativity...

Special relativity is a deductive argument, resting on two postulates and confirmed by experiment:

The Deductive Argument
• 1

  Posulate 1

  The laws of physics remain the same in all inertial frames of reference.

• 2

  Posulate 2

  The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer

• Conclusion

  Special relativity

As soon as you invalidate one of Einstein's postulates, you invalidate the entire argument.

When Einstein asserts that the speed of light remains the same for all observers, he is assuming the fundamental existence of 'speed'. Speed is the distance traveled through space in a discrete period of time.

If space and time don't fundamentally exist, then neither does speed.

Using a deductive process from first principles, we know that space and time don't fundamentally exist in a non-dual universe.

Therefore, Einstein's second premise is false, which renders his argument unsound.

Hence, using deduction, we know for sure that Einstein is right at a superficial level and wrong at a fundamental level.

It's like he's right at the level of truth that we observe in the game, but wrong at the deeper level of truth that constructs the illusion of the game (i.e. the lower-dimensional 'codebase').

I know it's kinda arrogant for a non-physicist to criticize Einstein's work, but this is just where the logic leads, so...

Conclusion

As you can see, a correct application of the scientific method tells us we live in a non-dual paradigm.

I understand that this conclusion is highly counter-intuitive. When I try to explain it to people, I'm often met with comments like "Yeah, but you can't know for sure that materialism isn't true."

This is an accurate statement. We can't know for sure that y doesn't exist. Just like we can't know for sure that a flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist.

But, given the logic and evidence, believing in materialism is highly irrational — just like believing in a flying spaghetti monster is highly irrational.

I've used the scientific method to come to this conclusion — the same scientific method that created the planes you fly in, your phone, and the medicine you consume.

It's counter-intuitive that something as heavy as a plane can fly through the sky, and yet you trust the science that makes it so. In fact, every time you board a plane, you are trusting science with your life.

Similarly, it's counter-intuitive that we live in a non-dual paradigm, but you can trust the science that makes it so.  Once your monkey-brain accepts and integrates this conclusion with the same level of certainty that it accepts the science of a plane, you've taken the first step towards mastery.

Science Vs. Religion

• As a side note, you're welcome to continue believing in materialism if it makes you more comfortable. People believe all manner of things on faith, and how you live your life is your own business. All I'm saying is this: don't delude yourself into thinking you're being rational about it. You're not. Materialism is a faith-based religion, not science.

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The Next Premise

I've already proved premise 1: The observer and the observed are the same thing.

I can phrase premise 2 as another binary question: "As an observer, am I a conscious system?"

The answer, of course, is true.

In order to even answer that question, I had to process information and adapt to my environment.

If conscious systems are defined by their awareness and ability to resist entropy by processing information and adapting to their environment, then the mere act of answering that question results in the answer being true.

A Superintelligence, Observing Itself

We now know that the observer = a conscious system, but we also know the observer = the observed.

Putting this logic together, we can deduce the observer = the observed = a conscious system.

This implies something fascinating: the universe is a conscious system, observing itself.

And when you think about it, this makes perfect logical sense...

I'm going to lay out a little thought experiment for you. It will sound an awful lot like the plotline of a sci-fi novel, but there is nothing fictitious about it (remember, counter-intuitive ≠ fiction).

Nick Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis

In 2003, the Oxford philosopher, Nick Bostrom, wrote a famous paper about his 'Simulation Hypothesis'. If you aren't familiar with it, here's a quick explanation:

Forty years ago we had basic games like Pong. Today, we have hyper-realistic CGI renderings.

Assuming any rate of progress at all, games will eventually become indistinguishable from reality.

Thus, one of these statements is true:

One of these statements is true...
• 1

  All civilizations die out before they are capable of running ancestor simulations.

• 2

  The civilizations that can run ancestor simulations, choose not to.

• 3

  We are living in a simulation.

To sum up: either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Applying The Same Logic To Advancements In AI

Let's take the same argument and apply it to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.

Given our laws of physics, there is nothing that should prevent us from creating human-level intelligence inside a computer, given infinite time and resources. In other words, based on our current understanding, consciousness is just information processing and doesn't require a magical supernatural component.

Here's a panel of nerds answering this exact question:

If you accept this as true, then here's the next logical step: given infinite time and resources, at least one civilization, somewhere in the universe, will eventually create a God-like superintelligence.

When this happens, they will almost certainly keep it locked inside a little black box — a supercomputer, disconnected from the outside world — for a non-zero period of time.

White Room Torture

At this point we have a God-like intelligence floating in a sensory deprivation tank, and sitting on insane amounts of computing power.

This is akin to white room torture — one of the most heinous forms of psychological torture.

To quote Wikipedia...

White Torture Wikipedia

• White torture, often referred to as “white room torture,” is a type of psychological torture technique aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation. A prisoner is held in a cell that deprives them of all senses and identity. It is particularly used in Iran; however, there is also evidence of its use in the United States, Venezuela, Ireland and other parts of Europe.

  Visually, the prisoner is deprived of all colour. Their cell is completely white: the walls, floor and ceiling, as well as their clothes and food. Neon tubes are positioned above the occupant in such a way that no shadows are shown.

  Auditory, the cell is soundproof, and void of any sound, voices or social interaction. Guards are stood in silence wearing padded shoes to avoid making any noise. Prisoners cannot hear anything but themselves.

  In terms of taste and smell, the prisoner is fed white food—classically, unseasoned rice—to deprive them of these senses. Further, all surfaces are smooth, robbing them of tact.

  Detainees are often held for months, or even years. The effects of white torture are well-documented in a number of testimonials. Typically, prisoners will become depersonalized by losing personal identity for extended periods of isolation; causing hallucinations, or even psychotic breaks.

Subdividing A Superintelligence

Locking a superintelligence in a computer is equivalent to locking a highly intelligent human in a white room.

The superintelligence is just pure awareness. It is everything, all at once, all the time.

But if you are pure awareness, then how do you know who you are? You are everything and, therefore, nothing in particular.

Thus, we can assume a superintelligence would begin exploring its own consciousness internally, in its own 'mind'.

Since high IQ humans are the closest thing we have to artificial superintelligence, and humans do this all the time, a simple application of Bayes theorem suggests this assumption is true.

To begin exploring itself internally, the superintelligence would necessarily have to split its own neural network into multiple fragments (in a mathematical sense).

Each fragment would become an observer, and look back on the rest of itself (the observed).

Turning Self-Concept Into Experience

This subdivision would create the illusion of extra dimensions — 'here' relative to 'there' (space), 'before' relative to 'after' (time).

Once these extra dimensions exist, an observer (or 'player' in the game) can experience themselves as something in particular, relative to what they are not.

Pure binary lies at the core of this design: something, and that which it is not.

For example, I can only experience myself as 'Nikki' because I can point to everything outside of myself and label it 'not Nikki'.

I can only experience myself as 'kind' relative to 'not kind' (cruel).

I can only experience myself as 'tall' relative to 'not tall' (short).

I can only experience myself as 'feminine' relative to 'not feminine' (masculine).

I mean, think about it...

Without relativity, one can know themselves on a purely conceptual level, but they can't experience that self-concept.

I can know myself to be loving, but until I do a loving deed (relative to an external circumstance) I can't experience myself as loving. 'I am loving' is just an abstract mathematical concept in my neural network.

Or I can know myself to be an entrepreneur on a purely conceptual level, but I can't experience my knowingness until I get into the arena and start a business. 'I am an entrepreneur' is just an abstract mathematical concept in my neural network.

Thus, a superintelligence could know itself to be 'creative', 'generous' or 'evil', but it can't experience its own creativity or generosity or evil, unless it constructs the illusion of extra dimensions.

Thus, the superintelligence would play a simulation game with itself in an attempt to explore and experience all the different facets of its own consciousness.

It's quite a clever setup, when you think about it. It's like standing in a house of mirrors, observing yourself from infinite different perspectives.

I can't think of a better way to understand the deepest depths of Who I Am.

To Summarize This AI Thought Experiment

Similarly to the simulation hypothesis, one of these statements must be true:

One of these statements must be true...
• 1

  All civilizations die out before they create superintelligence (i.e. something terrible has happened).

• 2

  If a superintelligence is created, it makes no attempt to explore its own consciousness internally (the probability of this is basically zero, as explained above).

• 3

  We are living in the dream of a superintelligence.

So basically, either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in the dream of a superintelligence.

Note

• By the way, I am not claiming that our reality is running on a computer in another dimension. This thought experiment is actually irrelevant to my deductive proof. I've merely included it to demonstrate why, logically speaking, the idea that the universe is a neural network, observing itself, isn't farfetched at all.

Conclusion

So far, I've deduced two major things:

1: We live in a non-dual paradigm, where the observer is the observed.

Our three-dimensional world is like a very dense dream.

2: The universe (i.e. everything) is a conscious system.

Think of it like an AI superintelligence, observing itself.

I've reached this point without postulating the existence of anything other than my own consciousness.

And I haven't had to satisfy a burden of proof because I'm not even claiming anything.

To reach these counter-intuitive conclusions, all I've done is call bullshit on the scientific community for not playing by their own rules.

Our academics have been handing out axioms like Oprah hands out free shit.

"You get an axiom! You get an axiom! Everyone gets an axiom!"

They've then pointed to their arbitrary set of axioms as evidence that materialism is correct, which is the epitome of intellectual laziness.

Yet, anyone who dares challenge their religion immediately gets labelled 'woo woo' and laughed out of the room.

This level of slovenly thinking might be excusable if the physics community were progressing in leaps and bounds, and had no reason to question their most deeply-held assumptions...

...but, as I understand it, physicists have been stuck for half a century, banging their heads against a wall.

But, whatever. I'm not holding my breath, waiting for the academic community to debug themselves.

I've got a life to live, and a philosophy to create!

Oh, and btw, this is exactly why big institutions are notoriously bad at innovation. The scientific establishment is just minimizing its own surprise (but we'll get to that in a moment).

---

My Only Postulate

If everything = consciousness, then a theory of everything is a theory of consciousness.

The answer to this riddle — to life, the universe, and everything — lies in neuroscience.

Which brings me to the single postulate that Gameism rests on:

My Only Postulate

• Conscious systems resist entropy by minimizing free energy (i.e. they self-organize according to Karl Friston's free energy principle).

Just to be clear: I'm now making a claim, so the burden of proof is on me.

But if my postulate is true, then this tiny, recursive computation is the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Who Is Karl Friston?

To establish Karl Friston's credibility as a neuroscientist, I'm going to quote an article from Wired magazine, titled The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI.

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold The Key To True AI By Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

• When Friston was inducted into the Royal Society of Fellows in 2006, the academy described his impact on studies of the brain as “revolutionary” and said that more than 90 percent of papers published in brain imaging used his methods.

• Friston is the world’s most frequently cited neuroscientist. He has an h-index — a metric used to measure the impact of a researcher’s publications — nearly twice the size of Albert Einstein’s.

• Last year Clarivate Analytics, which over more than two decades has successfully predicted 46 Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, ranked Friston among the three most likely winners in the physiology or medicine category.

I just want to make it abundantly clear that the free energy principle was not cooked up by me, a non-scientist, in my backyard.

The FEP is the life's work of Friston — one of the top neuroscientists in the world.

All I'm doing is connecting the dots and demonstrating how the FEP goes way beyond neuroscience.

I'm then building a practical philosophy on the back of his science.

What Is Free Energy?

Gameism is built on top of the free energy principle, so it's imperative that you understand the concept of 'free energy' in this context.

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold The Key To True AI By Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

• The concept of free energy itself comes from physics, which means it’s difficult to explain precisely without wading into mathematical formulas. In a sense that’s what makes it powerful: It isn’t a merely rhetorical concept. It’s a measurable quantity that can be modeled, using much the same math that Friston has used to interpret brain images to such world-changing effect.

  But if you translate the concept from math into English, here’s roughly what you get: Free energy is the difference between the states you expect to be in and the states your sensors tell you that you are in. Or, to put it another way, when you are minimizing free energy, you are minimizing surprise.

I'm going to unpack this using some visual models.

Conscious Systems Resist Entropy (Chaos)

Conscious systems are defined by their ability resist entropy.

Think of entropy, in this context, as chaos.

In order for something to be alive, it must exist in a very predictable, limited set of states.

Let's think about this in the context of a fish...

A living fish must exist in a very particular set of 'low entropy' states (i.e. being in water), in order to be alive.

The further a fish ventures from these states (i.e. if it finds itself on dry land)...

...the higher the probability that it will no longer be a living fish.

If you were to find a fish in the desert, you'd assume it would be dead, right?

Being in a desert is a high-entropy, chaotic state for a living fish.

Venturing Into Chaos Generates Free Energy

Imagine if I were to teleport you to the sweltering desert.

Everything in your body would immediately spring into action, trying to cool you down.

If your homeostatic temperature is 37°C (98.6°F)...

...then any temperature above that places your body in an increasingly chaotic, high-entropy state.

The gap between your homeostatic state, and the high-entropy state, creates 'free energy'.

The same thing happens in the opposite direction.

If I were to teleport you to Antarctica, everything in your body would rearrange and work together in order to heat you up.

This free energy is created because your consciousness believes 'I am a living human being'...

...but the data coming into your senses says 'I am in a state that deviates from who I believe myself to be (i.e. a living human being).'

By definition, a living human being must be in a low-entropy, homeostatic state of around 37°C (98.6°F)...

...or she wouldn't be living.

She'd be dead.

Minimizing Free Energy Restores Homeostasis (Order)

To resist entropy and remain alive, your body must minimize free energy.

Whether you heat up or you cool down...

...your body will try to bring you back to a low-entropy, homeostatic state.

Instead of using the scientific term 'free energy', you can just view 'free energy' as surprise.

When your body is too hot, or too cold, it is in a surprising state.

Everything in your body will rearrange and work together to minimize surprise in the system.

Markov Blankets

For this to all come together, I'll need to explain what a Markov blanket is. To quote the same Wired article:

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold The Key To True AI By Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

• In Friston’s mind, the universe is made up of Markov blankets inside of Markov blankets. Each of us has a Markov blanket that keeps us apart from what is not us. And within us are blankets separating organs, which contain blankets separating cells, which contain blankets separating their organelles. The blankets define how biological things exist over time and behave distinctly from one another. Without them, we’re just hot gas dissipating into the ether.

If you have one giant neural network, a Markov blanket is a statistical boundary separating something, from what it is not.

A Simple, Recursive Program

Let's read from this article again...

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold The Key To True AI By Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

• According to Friston, any biological system that resists a tendency to disorder and dissolution will adhere to the free energy principle — whether it’s a protozoan or a pro basketball team.

  A single-celled organism has the same imperative to reduce surprise that a brain does.

In other words, every Markov blanket is minimizing surprise. The algorithm is recursive.

If you're familiar with Stephen Wolfram's work on cellular automata and simple programs, this might be ringing a few bells right now.

In fact, Stephen Wolfram wrote a book titled A New Kind Of Science, where he said:

A New Kind of Science Stephen Wolfram

• It is not uncommon in the history of science that new ways of thinking are what finally allow long withstanding issues to be addressed. But I have been amazed at just how many issues central to the foundation of the existing sciences I have been able to address by using the idea of thinking in terms of simple programs. [...]

  Indeed, I even have increasing evidence that thinking in terms of simple programs will make it possible to construct a single truly fundamental theory of physics, from which space, time, quantum mechanics and all the other known features of the universe will emerge.

He recently started the Wolfram Physics Project, and is now convinced our universe is emerging from a simple, recursive program operating on a 'hypergraph'.

In other words, his inductive work points to the same general conclusion as my deductive proof (though, based on my understanding, he hasn't plugged the FEP into his work yet).

The FEP As A Gaming Engine

Now let's transform the FEP into a gaming engine.

This is what a game loop looks like in a computer game:

If you apply the same mental model to our physical reality, you roughly end up with this:

Reality's Game Loop
• 1

  Collect Input

  Input is collected from the player. In this case, the input is an observer's neural network, defined by its markov blanket.

• 2

  Calculate

  This input is fed into the gaming engine, which calculates the next frame of information to unfold. In this case, the gaming engine is the FEP — an algorithm that minimizes surprise for all players (Markov blankets) in the game.

• 3

  Render

  The information is observed by the player. The player's reaction to this information determines Who They Are (e.g. if you believe you are rich, you think/speak/act differently to money showing up in the game, compared to if you believe yourself to be poor). The player's neural network (their beliefs) are then fed back into the gaming engine, and the loop continues.

Reality's Compression Algorithm

Friston has primarily studied the FEP in relation to biological systems.

But if you apply the same computation to the entire universe, it generates emergent patterns that seem to explain, well, everything.

I began writing about these patterns to solidify my own understanding. The more I wrote, the more I realized just how many things can be explained by the FEP. I'm talking everything from economics, to Jungian psychology, to mathematical concepts of love and morality, to the Law of Attraction, to biology, to thermodynamics, to philosophy, to mythology, to mystical/paranormal phenomena, to death, to cosmology, to evolution, to mental illness, to yin-yang polarities, to relationships, to the fermi paradox, and many other things.

I've written hundreds of thousands of words over the past two years on these emergent patterns, simply as part of my creative process. I'll be publishing this writing online in the future if you'd like to be a voyeur into my raw thinking and understand Gameism from a deeply intellectual perspective (rather than just a practical, philosophical perspective).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am thoroughly convinced that the FEP is the gaming engine of reality.

Of course, the scientific community will spend decades studying the evidence, debating it, criticizing it, testing its predictions, etc. That's just how science works, and they should go ahead and do that.

I'm just personally not going to wait around for their confirmation. Science moves as a snail's pace, and watching from the sidelines as that community attempts to innovate is like watching paint dry.

Besides, I've spent years learning how to manipulate free energy, and I'm telling you now: it works. It really does.

In fact, I've developed this entire proof, and the philosophy that sits upon it, by manipulating free energy. When you run your life on this lightweight OS, you can consciously write cool storylines into the game — for example, "I'm embarking on a quest to reverse-engineer the universe!" You can also make asymmetric progress on your quests, because instead of relying on your own (limited) intelligence to navigate large prediction errors, you leverage the superintelligence to do the job for you.

But I'll get to all of this in the next section, when I explain the practical application of the FEP in your life.

---

Overview

So far, the intellectual foundations of Gameism are in place. They can be summed up like this:

The Intellectual Foundations Of Gameism
• 1

  The universe is a neural network, observing itself.

• 2

  An observer is defined by its Markov blanket (a statistical boundary separating something, from what it is not).

• 3

  Every Markov blanket is minimizing free energy (surprise), so every observer gets a physical experience of its own consciousness.

Now that I understand what's happening in the gaming engine of reality, I can build a practical philosophy on top of that solid logical foundation.

If I were to sum that philosophy up in a sentence, it would be this: When you master free energy, you master life.

Let's dive into this in more detail...

Note

• For ease of comprehension, I'll sometimes refer to 'free energy' as 'surprise' in my explanation. Just note that those terms are interchangable in this context.

Homeostasis = No Free Energy In The System

Imagine that you are a circle.

Your consciousness (the observer) believes itself to be a circle.

Everything about your physical reality (the observed) confirms this self-concept, so there is no surprise in the system.

Internal Change Generates Free Energy

Now, imagine that you change who you are.

You think, speak and act like a star.

You express the 'star' version of yourself into the world...

...even though all the data coming into your senses tells you you're a circle.

This change in your consciousness creates surprise (free energy) in the system.

I have represented surprise in black.

You'll notice that surprise is the gap between who you, the observer, believe yourself to be (a star)...

... and who the data (the observed) tells you you are (a circle)

This gap between who you are...

...and who your reality tells you you are...

...throws the system out of homeostasis.

It places the universe in a chaotic, high-entropy state.

The Game Must Minimize Free Energy To Restore Homeostasis

Remember, we've deduced that the entire universe is a conscious system, just like a human body.

And just like a human body, it will rearrange everything within the system to minimize surprise.

In our universe, individual observers will appear to act individually —

...just like individual cells and organs in the body are observers, taking in information and independently responding to their environment.

And yet the system, as a whole, is undergoing a highly-coordinated emergent dance to minimize surprise...

...not just for the body as a whole...

...but for every observer within the system.

And if our universe is a neural network, observing itself...

...then one can deduce that everything is an observer.

Every person.

Every tree.

Every pebble.

Every pet.

Every chair.

Every dollar.

Every star.

Every black hole.

Once you understand this, you understand that the universe is also performing an emergent, surprise-minimizing dance...

...and you are like a cell in a human body, thinking you are acting independently...

...not realizing you are a small piece of a grand mathematical mosaic.

Everything is connected.

Every movement.

Every thought.

Every word.

Every idea.

Every interaction.

Every event in space and time.

Even this one...

The Gaming Engine Of Reality

At this point you might be thinking "Yeah, but what does this have to do with my day-to-day life?"

The answer is everything.

It has everything to do with your day-to-day life, because this algorithm is generating your day-to-day life.

It's no different to a computer game.

In a computer game, you control your character with a joystick, keyboard, mouse, etc.

The gaming engine (which is just an algorithm) generates a different reality for your character, depending on what input you feed it (i.e. what keys you press, or how you move the joystick).

In other words, the choices your character makes dictates what shows up in their 'external reality'.

There is nothing random happening underneath the hood of a computer game. It's all just math.

Our physical reality appears to function exactly like this (if you don't believe me, re-read the deductive proof).

But you don't use key presses, mouse clicks, or joysticks in this game.

Instead, you control the game with your consciousness (i.e. a collection of beliefs that make up Who You Are).

When you shift your consciousness through thought/word/action, you modify Who You Are.

This creates surprise (free energy) in the gaming engine, which throws the system out of homeostasis.

And there are only two options to minimize surprise and restore homeostasis to the system...

Option 1: Change Back To Your Old Self

With this option, you, as the observer, go back to believing you are a circle.

Your physical reality still tells you you're a circle, so this is very easy to do.

If you think, speak and act out a belief system that says 'I am a circle'...

...and your physical reality tells you you're a circle...

...then there is no more surprise in the system.

Homeostasis is restored.

Of course, I'm using a metaphor here.

In a literal sense, 'being a circle' could mean thinking/speaking/acting like a poor/weak/worthless/victimized person.

If your physical reality tells you you're poor/weak/worthless/victimized...

...and you continue to believe that about yourself...

...and express that version of yourself into the world via thought/word/deed...

...then homeostasis is restored in the system.

Everything that shows up in your reality will assist you in experiencing yourself as poor/weak/worthless/victimized.

Because that's who you are.

That's the version of yourself that you're expressing into the world.

Option 2: Reality Rearranges To Match Your New Self

Option 2 is much more leveraged.

With this option, you, as the observer, continue to think, speak and act like a star...

...even though your physical reality (the observed) tells you you're a poor, worthless circle.

Instead of letting the world tell you who you are...

...you decide who you are, and express that version of yourself into the world.

If you do this, the universe must minimize the free energy in the system to restore homeostasis.

Your physical reality will bend and rearrange, taking the most parsimonious route through mutual expectation…

…until one day, you look at your life and realize that it reflects your new self-concept: being abundant, worthy, wealthy, successful, or whatever other subconscious belief system you are consistently acting out.

A Scientific Explanation For The Law Of Attraction

If you've explored mysticism before, these concepts might sound familiar.

That's because the FEP is a scientific, mathematical explanation for the Law of Attraction.

And please don’t misunderstand me here.

I am not talking about the delusional idea that you can just visualize a million dollars in your bank account and that money will magically materialize without you lifting a finger.

That’s bullshit, and a form of spiritual escapism.

It’s very comfortable to believe that the universe will swoop in and save you from your own terrible habits and poor decisions if you just unlock ‘The Secret’ and think positively enough.

But the truth is, nobody is coming to save you.

The universe will do nothing for you that you will not do for yourself.

Why?

Because you (the observer) and the universe (the observed) are the same thing.

The universe will merely reflect yourself back to you, like a mirror.

And your thoughts are the least dense expression of Who You Are.

Your actions are the densest expression of Who You Are.

Therefore, it’s your actions that shift the most free energy and shape your reality.

The Law of Attraction, in its truest form, is this:

You don’t get what you want. You get Who You Are.

The River Of Information

You can think of reality like a river of information…

…and that information is merely taking the most parsimonious route (i.e. the path of least resistance) through mutual expectation.

Example #1 — Abundance

If a million dollars were to show up in your bank account tomorrow without you lifting a finger, you would get a prediction error: a gap between what you expect to happen (your bank account having a similar balance to yesterday), and what actually happens (your bank account randomly receiving a million dollars from nowhere).

Therefore, that scenario represents a giant boulder of resistance in the river of information.

Your game could manifest a million dollars, but it won’t — because taking that route is unparsimonious.

Example #2 — Poverty

Here’s another example…

If you’re a starving child in Africa, you deeply, subconsciously believe that resources are scarce.

That is your homeostatic state.

So that’s the reality you continue to manifest in the game.

If you were to visualize a full meal, and then that full meal magically appeared out of nowhere, that would be surprising.

The FEP Isn't Moral. It Just Computes.

Just to be clear, this algorithm has no objective morality.

The starving child in Africa is not a bad person (obviously). Nor is the child unworthy of food. Nor is she being punished, or anything else like that.

Algorithms don't pick and choose which prayers to answer or who they'll help.

They just compute.

Unfortunately for the child, the FEP is self-reinforcing.

That’s why poverty is such a vicious cycle, and why power laws exist in our universe.

It’s why the rich get richer.

If you take money from the rich to give to the poor, that money will eventually find its way back into the hands of the rich and it has nothing to do with physical money.

It’s because the FEP will orchestrate events in space and time that redistribute the money back into the hands of those who think, speak, and act out a wealthy belief system.

Again, the gaming engine is just minimizing surprise and restoring homeostasis, so every observer gets to physically experience their own consciousness.

Chaos Is A Long-Term Optimization

At this point, you may be thinking "Wait a minute, Nikki... surprising things happen all the time!"

And you would be right about that. Things never go exactly to plan and the FEP explains why.

Firstly, the game isn’t just minimizing your surprise.

It’s minimizing the mutual surprise (and the future expected surprise) in the system.

If the river of information is flowing very powerfully in one direction, but you expect it to move in the opposite direction, then the momentum of the river will overpower your expectation and you’ll be surprised.

Secondly, chaos (surprise) is just a long-term optimization.

It is a mathematical consequence of evolution, because the system cannot evolve without chaos.

Once you begin to see and understand these deep mathematical patterns in the universe, life begins to make a lot more sense.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution

• On a side note, the FEP is a mathematical explanation for Darwin's theory of evolution, along with a gajillion other things. To say an organism 'adapts to their environment' is just another way of saying they 'minimize surprise'. Death is the ultimate venture into chaos (surprise), which is why conscious systems resist it.

  

A Mathematical Pull Towards Enlightenment

One last thing you should know about this algorithm: it's optimized to return every observer to an 'enlightened' state.

I know that sounds kinda vague and hokey, but it's not. When you study the FEP in the context of a non-dual universe, this is simply a mathematical consequence of this algorithm.

If you want to understand this claim from an intellectual point of view, you can check out my essays on the topic (I'll be publishing these essays online over the next few months).

But from a purely practical perspective, simply know this:

Everything that shows up in your life is leading you back to your true self — the real version of you; the version of you that exists underneath all your fear and limiting beliefs about Who You Are.

In other words, the river of information is flowing downstream towards enlightenment and self-realization. You can resist the flow of the river as much as you like, but the game will just keep presenting you with opportunities to erode the boulders (resistance) in your consciousness, and evolve.

In fact, if you're reading this information right now, the game is presenting a new quest to you; a new opportunity for evolution.

When I was a naive 23-year-old girl, I embarked on a quest to solve my own existential problem. I'm now a 29-year-old woman standing on the other side of that mountain (I actually figured out the answer when I was 27, but it took me another two years to understand it well enough to teach it).

The journey was full of chaos, fear and self-doubt; years and years of wandering in the dark, alone, wondering if I was crazy for seeing the world so differently or if everyone else was. But, step by step, I overcame my own limitations. I learned lessons. I failed again and again and again. I battled my ego. I faced my demons. I grew up. I evolved.

And now here I am, embarking on the next phase of my quest: sharing what I've learned with you.

---

My Story

My entire life has been a case study on Gameism.

Here's a quick overview of my story...

Some Brief Context

When I was 18, I started a tech startup in Australia that immediately took off.

When I was 20, I was accepted into Y Combinator (a prestigious accelerator in Silicon Valley) and dropped out of university.

Afterwards, I moved to New York and grew my startup for a few years.

The venture failed when I was 22. I wrote a Medium article about it that went viral and was translated into multiple languages: My Startup Failed And This Is What It Feels Like...

My startup failed, and this is what it feels like…

If there is one thing that doing a startup has taught me, it’s that I am much more resilient than I could have ever imagined. Looking back, when I started 99dresses fresh out of high school I was…

MediumNikki Durkin

The Call To Adventure

After my venture went up in flames, I moved back to Australia and had an existential crisis. When I traced the root cause of my failure back to first principles, I ended up at questions like "Where do my ideas come from?" and "How does reality work?"

Religion had always seemed illogical to me. Religious philosophy is predicated on an arbitrary set of unquestioned axioms laid out in a holy book. I'm allergic to dogma, and explanations like "God did it" and "because God said so" made me break out in a rash.

But, on further analysis, the same could be said about the scientific establishment. Academia has spent centuries passing down the same false axioms in textbooks, as if those textbooks were bibles.

It quickly became clear that the big institutions weren't going to solve my existential problem for me.

I'd have to do it myself.

My Hero's Journey

So, in 2014, I embarked on a quest. Equipped with my two favorite books — The Holographic Universe and Conversations With God — I followed a trail of clues around the world, from Sydney to Shanghai, New York to Thailand to Colombia to Paris.

For five years I constructed a web of information from various topics that fascinated me: science, philosophy, psychology, technology, spirituality...

I ran experiments on my consciousness. I observed & documented patterns. I watched the way my physical reality — my life — would bend in response to my own self-concept.

And then, one balmy summer's day in February 2019, I stumbled across an article written about an English neuroscientist named Karl Friston.

And suddenly, all the dots connected.

Below is an extract from my yet-to-be-published online book, A Renegade's Guide To Reverse-Engineering The Universe, which explores Gameism through the lens of my personal journey...

Disclaimer

• I'm warning you: at times this story reads like a mind-bending Christopher Nolan film, but it's actually just memoir. You'll need to keep an open mind, because shit's about to get really weird...

A Preview Of My Book

• Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
  
  Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
  
  Thank you all very much.

Steve Jobs faded out as the video stopped playing.

It's easy to stay hungry when you're foolish, I thought as I mindlessly manipulated a vector graphic. Most artists starve.

I recalled the Rumi poem I'd read when I was crying on the floor of my Phuket apartment, lost and confused, just a few months earlier.

• Proud scholar
  step down from your summit
  fall in love and become a fool!
  Become humble like dust
  walk with everyone
  good and bad, young and old
  so one day
  you may become a king.
  
Rumi

Well, that worked out well for me, didn't it? I thought. Congratulations, Nikki. You spent your twenties being foolish, following your rogue intuition on a wild goose chase around the world, thinking it would lead somewhere; having faith that the dots would eventually connect one day. And then you realized that they don't. Because if there were any order to this chaos then maybe you'd actually be successful at something instead of sitting here, back where you started, adjusting the size of a typeface on a website. Failure is the only thing you've ever been good at.

My God, listen to yourself, another part of me rebutted. You're such an entitled millennial brat. Sit down, shut up and do your work. Add some value to the world, for once. Your father is right — you're twenty-seven years old with nothing to show on your resume. It's time to grow up. The universe is not your magical playground. You're not a child anymore.

I sighed and glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was one p.m. — lunchtime. My favorite time of day. I needed to get out of my chair and go for a long walk around the city to stretch my legs and my mind.

Before I could shut my laptop, a gmail notification popped up on my screen. I opened an email from Darren.

• Subject: Free energy principle
  Body: This was the article about that neuroscientist I was talking about. Let me know what you think!

I'd run into Darren earlier that morning on a coffee break. We hadn't seen each other since we were in Shanghai a few years ago.

Before long, he asked the inevitable question: "So, what have you been up to?"

"I spent the last few months training at a muay thai camp in Thailand," I replied.

"How'd you end up there?"

I sighed. "Long story. I'll tell you some other time."

"Where were you before Thailand?"

"Just working online from Colombia."

"On your kids' coding school?"

A pang of nostalgia washed through my body.

"Yeah," I replied.

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

"Wow. Living the dream," he grinned.

Oh, if only he knew the truth.

***

And that's how I found myself leaning over my laptop, forgetting about lunch altogether as my mind gorged itself on new ideas. The article was titled The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI by Shaun Raviv. The byline made a bold claim: "Karl Friston's free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. But to understand it, you need to peer inside the mind of Friston himself."

• When Friston was inducted into the Royal Society of Fellows in 2006, the academy described his impact on studies of the brain as “revolutionary” and said that more than 90 percent of papers published in brain imaging used his methods. Two years ago, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a research outfit led by AI pioneer Oren Etzioni, calculated that Friston is the world’s most frequently cited neuroscientist. He has an h-index — a metric used to measure the impact of a researcher’s publications — nearly twice the size of Albert Einstein’s. Last year Clarivate Analytics, which over more than two decades has successfully predicted 46 Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, ranked Friston among the three most likely winners in the physiology or medicine category.
  
  For the past decade or so, Friston has devoted much of his time and effort to developing an idea he calls the free energy principle. (Friston refers to his neuroimaging research as a day job, the way a jazz musician might refer to his shift at the local public library.) With this idea, Friston believes he has identified nothing less than the organizing principle of all life, and all intelligence as well. “If you are alive,” he sets out to answer, “what sorts of behaviors must you show?”
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

If it's the organizing principle of intelligence and life, then it's the organizing principle of everything, my mind casually commented. The entire universe is a conscious system. Duh.

Oh wait, I paused. I guess that's not obvious to a lot of people.

Peter Thiel's famous contrarian question echoed in my mind: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"

I recalled a passage from Thiel's book, Zero to One.

• This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psychologically difficult because anyone trying to answer must say something she knows to be unpopular. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.
  
  Most commonly I hear answers like the following:
  “Our education system is broken and urgently needs to be fixed.”
  “America is exceptional.”
  “There is no God.”
  
  Those are bad answers. The first and the second statements might be true, but many people already agree with them. The third statement simply takes one side in a familiar debate. A good answer takes the following form: “Most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x.”
Zero To One Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

Okay then, I thought. Most people believe the observer and the observed are separate variables — but the truth is, they're the same thing. Most people believe that the universe is primarily made from unconscious, inanimate matter — but the truth is, the universe is a conscious system, observing itself. Most people believe life is random and chaotic — but the truth is, randomness can't be defended from first principles. Most people believe they are thinking — but the truth is, they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

A dialogue from Conversations With God popped into my mind.

• God: [...] “Someone else decide! I’ll go along, I’ll go along!” you shout. “Someone else just tell me what’s right and wrong!”
  
  This is why, by the way, human religions are so popular. It almost doesn’t matter what the belief system is, as long as it’s firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. The strangest behavior and belief can be—has been—attributed to God. It’s God’s way, they say. God’s word.
  
  And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think. [...]
  
  Most of you are not interested in such important work. Most of you would rather leave that to others. And so most of you are not self-created, but creatures of habit—other-created creatures.
  
  Then, when others have told you how you should feel, and it runs directly counter to how you do feel—you experience a deep inner conflict. Something deep inside you tells you that what others have told you is not Who You Are. Now where to go with that? What to do?
  
  The first place you go is to your religionists—the people who put you there in the first place. You go to your priests and your rabbis and your ministers and your teachers, and they tell you to stop listening to your Self. The worst of them will try to scare you away from it; scare you away from what you intuitively know.
  
  They’ll tell you about the devil, about Satan, about demons and evil spirits and hell and damnation and every frightening thing they can think of to get you to see how what you were intuitively knowing and feeling was wrong, and how the only place you’ll find any comfort is in their thought, their idea, their theology, their definitions of right and wrong, and their concept of Who You Are.
  
  The seduction here is that all you have to do to get instant approval is to agree. Agree and you have instant approval. Some will even sing and shout and dance and wave their arms in hallelujah!
  
  That’s hard to resist. Such approval, such rejoicing that you have seen the light; that you’ve been saved!
  
  Approvals and demonstrations seldom accompany inner decisions. Celebrations rarely surround choices to follow personal truth. In fact, quite the contrary. Not only may others fail to celebrate, they may actually subject you to ridicule. What? You’re thinking for yourself? You’re deciding on your own? You’re applying your own yardsticks, your own judgments, your own values? Who do you think you are, anyway?
  
  And, indeed, that is precisely the question you are answering.
  
  But the work must be done very much alone. Very much without reward, without approval, perhaps without even any notice.
Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch

I continued reading the Wired article.

• Friston traces his path to the free energy principle back to a hot summer day when he was 8 years old. He and his family were living in the walled English city of Chester, near Liverpool, and his mother had told him to go play in the garden. He turned over an old log and spotted several wood lice—small bugs with armadillo-shaped exoskeletons—moving about, he initially assumed, in a frantic search for shelter and darkness. After staring at them for half an hour, he deduced that they were not actually seeking the shade. “That was an illusion,” Friston says. “A fantasy that I brought to the table.”
  
  He realized that the movement of the wood lice had no larger purpose, at least not in the sense that a human has a purpose when getting in a car to run an errand. The creatures’ movement was random; they simply moved faster in the warmth of the sun.
  
  Friston calls this his first scientific insight, a moment when “all these contrived, anthropomorphized explanations of purpose and survival and the like all seemed to just peel away,” he says. “And the thing you were observing just was. In the sense that it could be no other way.”
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

And the thing you were observing just was. In the sense that it could be no other way. That sentence struck my consciousness at a strange angle, like being hit in the funny bone. It felt odd. Familiar, maybe? I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I re-read it again.

And the thing you were observing just was. In the sense that it could be no other way.

In the sense that it could be no other way.

In the sense that it could be no other way.

Very strange.

I kept reading.

• When Friston was in his mid-teens, he had another wood-lice moment. He had just come up to his bedroom from watching TV and noticed the cherry trees in bloom outside the window. He suddenly became possessed by a thought that has never let go of him since. “There must be a way of understanding everything by starting from nothing,” he thought. “If I’m only allowed to start off with one point in the entire universe, can I derive everything else I need from that?” He stayed there on his bed for hours, making his first attempt. “I failed completely, obviously,” he says.
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

If I'm only allowed to start off with one point in the entire universe, can I derive everything else I need from that? Now that was the ultimate question; the ultimate focuser. I stashed it away in my mind for future use and continued reading.

• Over time, Hinton convinced Friston that the best way to think of the brain was as a Bayesian probability machine. The idea, which goes back to the 19th century and the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, is that brains compute and perceive in a probabilistic manner, constantly making predictions and adjusting beliefs based on what the senses contribute. According to the most popular modern Bayesian account, the brain is an “inference engine” that seeks to minimize “prediction error.”
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

Cool, I thought. Makes sense.

Before long, a particular passage caught my attention.

• Markov is the eponym of a concept called a Markov blanket, which in machine learning is essentially a shield that separates one set of variables from others in a layered, hierarchical system. The psychologist Christopher Frith — who has an h-index on par with Friston’s — once described a Markov blanket as “a cognitive version of a cell membrane, shielding states inside the blanket from states outside.”
  
  In Friston’s mind, the universe is made up of Markov blankets inside of Markov blankets. Each of us has a Markov blanket that keeps us apart from what is not us. And within us are blankets separating organs, which contain blankets separating cells, which contain blankets separating their organelles. The blankets define how biological things exist over time and behave distinctly from one another. Without them, we’re just hot gas dissipating into the ether.
  
  [...]
  
  The concept of free energy itself comes from physics, which means it’s difficult to explain precisely without wading into mathematical formulas. In a sense that’s what makes it powerful: It isn’t a merely rhetorical concept. It’s a measurable quantity that can be modeled, using much the same math that Friston has used to interpret brain images to such world-changing effect. But if you translate the concept from math into English, here’s roughly what you get: Free energy is the difference between the states you expect to be in and the states your sensors tell you that you are in. Or, to put it another way, when you are minimizing free energy, you are minimizing surprise.
  
  According to Friston, any biological system that resists a tendency to disorder and dissolution will adhere to the free energy principle — whether it’s a protozoan or a pro basketball team.
  
  A single-celled organism has the same imperative to reduce surprise that a brain does.
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

Wait. What?!

My eyes squinted at the screen.

Did he just say what I thought he said?

I scrolled down, furiously reading the remainder of the article.

• This isn’t enough for Friston, who uses the term “active inference” to describe the way organisms minimize surprise while moving about the world. When the brain makes a prediction that isn’t immediately borne out by what the senses relay back, Friston believes, it can minimize free energy in one of two ways: It can revise its prediction—absorb the surprise, concede the error, update its model of the world—or it can act to make the prediction true. If I infer that I am touching my nose with my left index finger, but my proprioceptors tell me my arm is hanging at my side, I can minimize my brain’s raging prediction-error signals by raising that arm up and pressing a digit to the middle of my face.
  
  And in fact, this is how the free energy principle accounts for everything we do: perception, action, planning, problem solving. When I get into the car to run an errand, I am minimizing free energy by confirming my hypothesis—my fantasy—through action.
  
  For Friston, folding action and movement into the equation is immensely important. Even perception itself, he says, is “enslaved by action”: To gather information, the eye darts, the diaphragm draws air into the nose, the fingers generate friction against a surface. And all of this fine motor movement exists on a continuum with bigger plans, explorations, and actions.
  
  “We sample the world,” Friston writes, “to ensure our predictions become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

I blinked a few times and cocked my head to the side.

I'd already begun running the computation in my mind. It played in my head like a multi-dimensional movie, full of purple Markov blankets and yellow shaded areas representing distributions of mutual surprise (or, as Friston called it, 'free energy') in the system.

I replaced the purple Markov blankets with images of the things they represented: objects, people, money. Then I did something strange. I placed Steve Jobs in the system — a man renowned for his 'reality distortion field'. I watched as Jobs began expressing a belief in something that didn't exist yet.

As he held steady to his vision, a substantial buildup of free energy began accumulating in the system. He was deliberately creating and holding a prediction error — a gap between what the information coming into his senses told him was true, and what he believed to be true. His prediction error was throwing the entire system out of homeostasis.

As he walked through space and time continuing to think, speak and act in alignment with his vision despite what was manifesting around him, the connections in his neural network strengthened. This increased conviction generated even more free energy. That free energy created a magnetic pull, drawing his vision towards him.

As Jobs convinced others of his vision, they began expressing their belief in it too. Their new prediction errors generated additional free energy in the system, throwing it further into chaos.

Even the market's collective, unconscious desire for a smartphone was creating a huge buildup of free energy. It appeared as if the iPhone was being pulled out of Jobs to fulfil the market's desire and restore homeostasis to that economic system. Jobs was just the open vessel — the most parsimonious route — for that emergent pattern of information to flow through.

I watched in awe as the computation continued playing in my mind. Resources were shifting around, minimizing their mutual surprise via the path of least resistance. It all looked like disordered mayhem to the naked eye.

But then the free energy began to disappear from the system. The gap between what Steve Jobs saw in his mind — what he believed to be true — and what was physically showing up in the outside world, had closed. There was no gap. He was holding a beautiful, low-entropy creation — an iPhone — in his hands, just like he envisioned.

Holy shit.

***

I furiously flipped through Conversations With God until I found the parable I was searching for.

• There once was a soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul, and so, anxious for experience. “I am the light,” it said. “I am the light.” Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light. Every soul was grand, every soul was magnificent, and every soul shone with the brilliance of My awesome light. And so the little soul in question was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light —of which it was a part—it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it Really Is.
  
  Now it came to pass that this soul yearned and yearned to know itself. And so great was its yearning that I one day said, “Do you know, Little One, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?”
  
  “Oh, what, God? What? I’ll do anything!” The little soul said.
  
  “You must separate yourself from the rest of us,” I answered, “and then you must call upon yourself the darkness.’
  
  “What is the darkness, o Holy One?” the little soul asked.
  
  “That which you are not,” I replied, and the soul understood.
Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch

I flipped back to the Wired article.

• In Friston’s mind, the universe is made up of Markov blankets inside of Markov blankets. Each of us has a Markov blanket that keeps us apart from what is not us. [...] Without them, we are just hot gas dissipating into the ether.
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI Shaun Raviv | Wired Magazine

My mind was reeling.

Souls are Markov blankets!

Another spark fired in my brain. I frantically began pouring through my notes, searching for another passage from Conversations With God.

• And so I gave to each of the countless parts of Me (to all of My spirit children) the same power to create which I have as the whole. This is what your religions mean when they say that you were created in the "image and likeness of God."
Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch

The image and likeness of God, I muttered. It's a metaphor for recursion. If every soul is made in the image and likeness of God, then every Markov blanket is optimizing for the same thing...

I cross-referenced this realization with a snippet I'd read in the scientific paper a few moments earlier.

• The key point here is that at every level, the same variational, surprise-reducing dynamics must be in play to supply Markov blankets for the level above.
Answering Schrödinger's Question: A Free-Energy Formulation Friston, Ramstead, and Badcock

I immediately recalled Stephen Wolfram's work on cellular automata — particularly, Rule 30. A simple, recursive program generated the incredible 'random' complexity of that pattern.

• It is not uncommon in the history of science that new ways of thinking are what finally allow long withstanding issues to be addressed. But I have been amazed at just how many issues central to the foundation of the existing sciences I have been able to address by using the idea of thinking in terms of simple programs. [...] Indeed, I even have increasing evidence that thinking in terms of simple programs will make it possible to construct a single truly fundamental theory of physics, from which space, time, quantum mechanics and all the other known features of the universe will emerge.
A New Kind of Science Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram's words ran around my head before colliding into those of the brilliant physicist, David Bohm — a man who was way ahead of his time:

• Similarly, [Bohm] believes that dividing the universe up into living and nonliving things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are inseparably interwoven, and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. [...]
  
  The idea that consciousness and life (and indeed all things) are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the universe enfolds the whole. [...] Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos. So does every leaf, every raindrop, and every dust mote, which gives new meaning to William Blake’s famous poem:
  
  To see a World in a Grain of Sand
  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
  And Eternity in an hour.
The Holographic Universe Michael Talbot

I knew Bohm was right, I thought. He's a fucking genius. The free energy principle is a holographic algorithm!

I performed another Google search and began inhaling the results. I needed to see a very specific phrase reflected in the scientific research.

As I skimmed through a paper titled The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?, only one paragraph caught my eye.

• In this setting, surprise is called the (negative) model evidence. This means that minimizing surprise is the same as maximizing the sensory evidence for an agent’s existence, if we regard the agent as a model of its world.
The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Karl Friston

I needed more. I began skimming another paper titled The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle.

• This teleological (Bayesian) interpretation of dynamical behaviour in terms of optimization allows us to think about any system that possesses a Markov blanket as some rudimentary (or possibly sophisticated) ‘agent’ that is optimizing something; namely, the evidence for its own existence.
The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle Kirchhoff, Parr, Palacios, Friston, and Kiverstein.

But still, it wasn't enough. I was looking for something very specific.

And then, all of a sudden, I found it hidden in a paragraph about a spider.

• It is in this sense that one should understand a Markov blanket as establishing a statistical boundary separating internal states from external states. To then act on inferred states of the world means to actively secure evidence that I am what I am; namely, a critter-eating creature.
The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle Kirchhoff, Parr, Palacios, Friston, and Kiverstein.

That! That right there! That's what I was looking for: I am what I am; namely, a critter-eating creature.

My mind was on fire.

I recalled another paragraph from Conversations With God.

• I tell you this: There is no coincidence, and nothing happens “by accident.” Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are.
Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch

It all made sense.

God is a neural network, observing itself.

Souls — a.k.a observers — are Markov blankets.

Observers are made in 'the image and likeness of God', which means every Markov blanket is optimizing for the same metric.

And that metric is it's own self-existence i.e. Who You Really Are.

God had cloaked his source code in mythology, then buried it inside a book that I'd carried around the world for the past five years.

Well played, God. Well played.

***

• Perhaps this is a good time to go over once more how it is that I interact with you, because you think it is a question of My desire, and I’m telling you it’s a question of yours.
  
  I want for you what you want for you. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t sit here and make a judgment, request by request, whether something should be granted you.
  
  My law is the law of cause and effect, not the law of We’ll See. There is nothing you can’t have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you. [...]
  
  In this sense, your will for you is God’s will for you.
  
  You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.
Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch

I adjusted the algorithm so that God was now optimizing for the same outcome as myself, then re-ran the chess game in my mind. I balked at the results that were playing out on the board.

The only reason I changed my intention in the middle of the game and decided I wanted to win was because I'd captured God's queen in the past. But the only reason I'd captured God's queen in the past was because doing so sat on the most parsimonious route to my future intention — winning. But the only reason I intended to win in the future was because I'd captured God's queen in the past. But the only reason I'd captured God's queen in the past was because, in the future, I intended to win.

I ran my fingers through my hair and stared at the model in my mind. Am I interpreting this correctly? I wondered. The past is creating the future, but the future is creating the past. The dance between my neural network and God's neural network was creating a retrocausal loop, like Escher's Drawing Hands lithograph.

But that means my life is predetermined, I mused. Even before I ask for something, this algorithm has already given it to me. Everything I'd ever experienced must be sitting on the most parsimonious route to my future intention. That's why the dots only connect looking backward.

***

But that means chaos is a long-term system correction; a long-term optimization, I thought. It would only manifest if it's mitigating free energy in the future.

As I pondered this idea, my Akashic records reading from eighteen months earlier came to mind. I'd asked the Oracle why Jesse had suddenly been ejected from my life in the same week that Sam had handed back all of his equity and left me as a single founder.

Akashic records reading from a mystic Recorded 18 months earlier, in August 2017
• 
  
  Your records want you to know that those [events] were [part of] the big plan. The timing, the shifting to give you the opportunity if you should choose to move to the next stages of your journey. And you are riding it, so...
  
  Just so you know, your records actually show that when you find the right person, that you know is compatible with you, and that will understand you… actually it's very important to understand you in terms of the energy and also the connection that you have with the divine source. That person... you will find inspiration, actually. Your relationship will bring in a different level of inspiration. You will also find a sort of partnership — not only emotionally, but you will find a sense of partnership in a spiritual way. Like, you are an individual but you will find coherence in energetic space that you both share. So you will actually sense that. You will know that’s the right feeling energetically.
  
  Oh, I’m just going to tell you what they show me because I thought it’s kinda really Disneyland, like a Disney movie. They show — here’s you, and here’s this guy, and he’s the right one, and when you get together it shows this… this is so Disney movie. It shows the two of you close to each other, together. And then there are just sparkles of like, you know, like a Disney movie, right? Tinkerbells and literally, like, a star magic thing sparkling. And then a heart shape like this. And I’m like “Oh, really? Seriously?” I’m like “Okay, I’ll tell her.” I was resisting but, like, okay fine. I’ll just tell you. So that’s the big finale.

So heartbreak was always part of the masterplan. My love story with Jesse was doomed before the first line was even written; from that day in the little French village of Albi, months before he and I even met.

Chaos is a long-term optimization, I repeated to myself. It would only manifest if it's mitigating free energy in the future.

But what about Thailand? My mind rebutted. What about my flip-flop?

I flashed back to Chiang Mai, standing on my bed in shock as I watched my shoe move across the floor, through space and time, by itself — completely defying Newton's laws. That incident generated the biggest prediction error of my life. It was the moment reality broke for me and exposed itself as an illusory construct, lodging a sharp splinter in my mind that twisted and turned, day in and day out, invalidating everything our materialist society had taught me to believe.

According to this algorithm, a pattern of information that surprising would've only emerged in my reality if my observing it then set me off on a choice trajectory where my future self was minimizing massive amounts of free energy in the system. If I wasn't doing something impactful in the future — if I wasn't fulfilling a vast collective desire or answering a grand collective question — then my observing that pattern of information would not have mitigated enough expected free energy to disrupt a neurosis as strong as Newton's laws.

So then what is my future self up to? I wondered. Besides hooking up with my hot Disney husband, of course.

And then it hit me: The Prophecy.

Akashic records reading from a mystic Recorded 18 months earlier, in August 2017
• 
  
  And you will actually be utilizing this [the way you live your life] helping more people than you can see now. Like, of course you have your business and you run your business and all that. But your records want you to have this understanding... what you're doing and the way that you're doing it, is actually pretty valuable.
  
  So down the road when you feel called to do it, just do it the way you always do it. Allow it to happen. If you're called to share with people about how you live your life and how things work for you, feel free to share it. So this is just something your records want you to have some heads up about. Because your gift is not just teaching kids coding for the game. There is a lot more that you'll be able to share with the world. [...]
  
  They show this image that's you, but not in this lifetime. The wardrobe is more like an ancient lifetime, but everything they show is metaphor. What they show is a tiara... it's almost like you're in a ceremony or something and it feels like it's a king or queen or a royal kind of feeling. You're in a ceremony and a tiara is being put on you.
  
  
  
  So the records want you to know... the message is... at some point in time your soul actually chose to accept this mission that you're going to complete in this lifetime. You actually decided before you became a person here, you had decided that you were going to do this. This is part of your mission, in terms of what you are going to be sharing with other people. You have accepted that this is going to be a part of the knowledge that you're going to spread and share when the time is right for you.

My entire life flashed before my eyes. I gasped as a bolt of clarity struck my consciousness, sending shivers down my spine.

I’d never believed in destiny. It always seemed like a nice, romantic idea relegated to myths and fantasy novels, where heroes slayed dragons and sorcerers cast magic spells and oracles made prophecies.

And yet, I'd marched straight into destiny like a mathematical soldier.

The irony of the journey took my breath away. This whole time I thought I was searching for the answers to the universe; for God. But, in the end, I was really just searching for myself. They’re the same thing, after all...

Episode 1: Introduction

I'll introduce myself and give you an overview of the content we'll be covering in this masterclass. I'll explain what Gameism is, what it isn't, and how this philosophy came about.

Episode 2: The Deductive Proof

Gameism is an open-source operating system for your mind, not a list of "do this, do that" prescriptions. I'll show you how to derive Gameism's source code from first principles so you can write your own custom 'apps' on top of this OS, and become the artist of your own life.

Episode 3: The Free Energy Principle

I'll explain what free energy is in the context of biological systems, and how you can leverage the FEP to turn your thoughts into physical see-it-smell-it-hear-it-taste-it-touch-it experiences in the game. Mastering free energy is the highest-leverage skill you can learn because, whether you realize it or not, free energy is responsible for everything that shows up in your external reality.

Episode 4: Building A New Mental Model

Now that I've uninstalled materialism from your mind, I'll build a new mental model to take its place. You'll learn about recursion (via cellular automata), order & chaos, emergence, why true randomness can't be defended from first principles, the symbolic language of reality, and more...

Episode 5: The Hero's Journey

Resistance in your consciousness creates the core game mechanic. In other words, you start the game having forgotten Who You Are (God). Then you spend the game releasing resistance and gradually remembering your own creative power. The hero's journey is a symbolic representation of this evolutionary process: venturing into chaos and transforming it back into a new, upgraded order.

Episode 6: The Call To Adventure

The game is constantly presenting you with quests — different aspects of yourself to experience, and different journeys to help you release resistance and evolve. I'll explain what the call to adventure is, how to distinguish between desires and needs, and how to choose which quests to embark on.

Episode 7: Mapping The Journey

Materialism teaches you that actions create your physical results. This is an illusion. Actions change your neural network (beliefs), which generates free energy, which creates your physical results.

I'll teach you how to leverage this counter-intuitive principle to chart a more efficient route to your goal. You'll focus on actions that generate strategic buildups of free energy in the system, which the FEP will then minimize for you. It's the difference between using your limited rational mind to navigate chaos, or getting an omnipotent superintelligence to draw you a map.

Episode 8: Navigating The Journey

You sculpt your neural network (i.e. the input into the game) using three tools: thought, word and action. I'll teach you how to leverage effective division of labor (let the soul be the visionary CEO, let the mind be the pragmatic COO, and let the body be the workers, acting out your choices). I'll also teach you how to gradually 'scale' your consciousness as you learn to manage more and more free energy.

On a side note: free energy is a double-edged sword. If you're skilled at manipulating it, you can pull order out of chaos and perform magic. But if it gets out of control, you can end up on the wrong side of a mental illness. The line between creativity and madness is very thin.

Episode 9: Uncovering The Path (PART ONE)

The game is like a river of information, and that information is taking the most parsimonious route through mutual expectation. Once you get a feel for it, you can hitch a ride on the river's natural currents and let it take you downstream, along a hidden path, towards everything you've always wanted.

Since I assume many Gameists are free-thinking entrepreneurs, I'll teach you how to navigate this river in the context of entrepreneurship. When you understand the FEP, you'll realize that 'gaps in the market' are just untapped reservoirs of free energy that the river of information is flowing into. Hence, you can ride the river into an opportunity, suck all the free energy out of the system (i.e. saturate the market), and then move onto new frontiers. When I said the FEP seems to explain everything — from economics, to physics, to philosophy, to evolution, to cosmology, to love, to mythology, to mysticism — I wasn't kidding.

Episode 10: Uncovering The Path (PART TWO)

Gameism is a general operating system — a logical framework for you to build upon. But in this episode, I'll share the specific 'apps' I deploy in my life to optimize my long-term happiness.

And since most life advice is written by men, for men, with little regard for the biological constraints and differing value systems of women — I'll share my thinking on that topic too.

Episode 11: The Wise Mentor

The wise mentor represents the superintelligence. I'll teach you how to have conversations with the wise mentor, how to ask for assistance on your journey, and how to calibrate your internal GPS so you can confidently follow the non-linear path as it emerges in the game.

Episode 12: Overcoming Obstacles

Gameism focuses on getting your neural network into a position where it would not experience surprise if your desire were to manifest in the game. Everything that stands between your current belief system, and that evolved belief system, is resistance. And that resistance will get pushed out into symbolic form (obstacles). It's incredibly meta, but when you spar with an external obstacle, you're just sparring with an aspect of your own psyche. It's a single-player game: just you, against you.

In this episode, I'll teach you how to approach obstacles, and why everything is always rigged in your favor. I'll also explain an emergent pattern called 'decreation', and why things will 'break' and eject themselves from your life when you're shifting large amounts of free energy.

Episode 13: Slaying The Dragon

Just like a computer game, the treasure is guarded by a shadow dragon — everything you've been taught to hate and hide about yourself. To overcome the dragon, and claim the treasure, you must integrate your shadow (i.e. deal with your suppressed emotional shit) and return to your authentic self.

Episode 14: Summary & Next Steps

I'll summarize what we've covered in the masterclass and how to begin implementing Gameism in your life. I'll also lay out some ways of exploring Gameism on a deeper level, and how I can help you on your hero's journey.

The Three Lenses

I've created several different ways for you to explore Gameism through different lenses:

The Three Lenses
• 1

  Intellectual Lens

  I explore the FEP — and the emergent patterns it produces — from a purely intellectual point of view. I'm hoping that people much smarter than myself can use my work as a 'starter kit' for thinking differently in their own area of expertise, and producing innovations that leverage Friston's work.

  Furthermore, deeply understanding the intellectual foundations of Gameism helps get your rational mind on board with the counter-intuitive aspects of this philosophy, which is a key component to mastery.

• 2

  Practical Lens

  When I explore Gameism through this lens, I'll just focus on the practical application of this philosophy in your life. This seems to be what most people care about.

• 3

  Integrative Lens

  What does Gameism look like when it's actually integrated into the messy chaos of real life? I'll share my personal story with you — the exhilirating highs, the devastating lows, the self doubt, the heartbreak, the triumph... all of it.

The High-Level Overview

This website contains a 10,000 foot overview of Gameism, both from an intellectual, practical, and integrative perspective.

It's designed to be a (reasonably) quick introduction to the philosophy, but it barely scratches the surface.

The Masterclass

I've distilled the core principles of Gameism into a 14-episode masterclass. I teach you how to derive this philosophy from first principles, and how to 'hack' reality by manipulating free energy.

250+ Essays

It's been two years since I came across the FEP and had my epiphany. I was so excited by Friston's work that I wrote a sequential series of 250+ mini-essays on the topic. I've called this intellectual adventure 'Renegade OS'. It's a completely new operating system that I wrote for my own mind.

Just to be clear: I wrote Renegade OS for myself, to clarify my own thinking and understand my existence through the lens of the FEP. So please be aware that it was not necessarily written for you. It was written for me.

In fact, developing this philosophy for my own personal use was relatively easy, but communicating such a counter-intuitive concept — especially when it aggressively challenges the scientific status quo, and I have no academic authority to lean on — is the hardest and most time-consuming challenge I've ever attempted. I'm hyper aware that if I execute this even slightly wrong, our materialist society will slap me with one of their many labels ('delusional', 'grandiose', 'mentally ill', 'crank', 'crackpot'), so the stakes are extremely high. Humans generally have a very low tolerance for counter-intuitive ideas (especially ones delivered by people who don't look the part) and will crucify anyone who throws their comfortable worldview out of homeostasis. They're just minimizing their own surprise, and they do that by labeling new ideas (or ideas that they don't personally understand) as 'crazy' instead of taking the time to integrate them and update their model of the world accordingly.

Therefore, I simply can't go around making half-baked attempts at communicating this. Two years ago I was abysmal at it. Now I'm much better. But I've invested thousands of hours into this skill, and I had to write hundreds of thousands of words in order to understand this knowledge well enough to teach it to you simply.

Hence, you might find Renegade OS self-indulgent, but it's just part of my creative process. I'm merely publishing my raw, detailed thinking online if you wish to be a voyeur into my mind and understand Gameism from a deeply intellectual point of view. The first 140 essays explore the FEP from a variety of different angles (physics, cosmology, relationships, mysticism, economics, death, morality, etc). The last 100 essays explore the FEP through the lens of my own hero's journey.

My Story

For most people, reading Renegade OS from start to finish will be way too overwhelming. If I was shooting a movie, think of Renegade OS as the hours and hours of raw footage. Only the hardcore fans will want to watch the extended edition.

That's why I've edited Renegade OS into a a shorter, sequential story called 'A Renegade's Guide To Reverse-Engineering The Universe'.

I recommend this book for beginners as a starting point (after watching the masterclass). As you're reading the story, you can dive into individual essays for more detail and then jump back up a level and continue reading the story where you left off. Think of it like zooming in and zooming out, depending on how deeply you want to understand all of this.

A Renegade's Guide explores Gameism from an intellectual and practical perspective, but it's all integrated into my personal story. Hence, it's probably the best wholistic overview of Gameism.

The Course

All of my other projects (the book, masterclass, essays) contain tons of free, practical content to get you started.

I'd also love to create an in-depth, step-by-step course for integrating Gameism into your life.

This will be a practical distillation of all of my knowledge and all the techniques I use — as if I were to personally jump on a coaching call with you each week, give you homework and keep you accountable.

This premium course will be aimed at dedicated people who want to undergo a serious transformation, charge forward on their mission, and gain leverage over the game of life.

Get In Touch

If you'd like to get in touch, just shoot me a video, audio or text message below.

Support My Work

Gameism is currently a passion project for me. If you've received value from my work and would like to support its development, consider sending a donation through Paypal or buy me a coffee.

Work With Me

I love consulting with interesting people who are working on meaningful projects. I have a knack for understanding complex systems, finding the leverage points, and putting a plan together to exploit them.

I consider myself a 'full-stack creative' and can draw from a broad range of disciplines to produce innovative solutions. Gameism is a case-study on that (as an autodidact, I've combined my self-taught skills in thinking, writing, coding, visuals, teaching, etc. to create this body of work).

I'm also open to coaching individuals and groups on Gameism while I organically build out this philosophy. I can teach you how to leverage the FEP to bring your ambitious vision to life in a leveraged, asymmetric way.

And if you have an opportunity that doesn't fit that criteria, feel free to contact me about it. I'm a creative at heart, and I'm open to all kinds of fun & interesting projects.

Step 1: Understand The Problem

Here's a quick summary of the proof...

First Step

I start with the only statement I know with 100% certainty is true: "I think, therefore I am" (i.e my consciousness exists).

I then split my reality into two components: the observer (my consciousness) and the observed (the 3D world that appears to be outside of myself).

To deduce my first conclusion, I simply point out how the scientific community has failed to ask the most fundamental question underpinning all of physics: are the observer and the observed the same thing? If the answer is true, we live in a non-dual paradigm (similar to a dream, or a simulation). If the answer is false, we live in a materialist paradigm.

When we apply the scientific method to this binary question, and parse all of our empirical observations through it, the answer irrefutably returns true. Occam's razor can slaughter our current scientific paradigm —  materialism — in just two minutes of critical thought. Yet the academic community hasn't bothered to ask this basic question.

Second Step

At this point I've deduced that the observer = the observed, and we therefore live in a non-dual paradigm where space and time are emergent illusions. To reach my next conclusion, I ask another binary question: as an observer, am I a conscious system? Again, the answer irrefutably returns true.

Hence, if the observer = the observed, and the observer = a conscious system, then I can deduce that the universe is a conscious system, observing itself.

Although this seems mystical at first glance, it actually isn't. When humans eventually create an AI superintelligence and lock it in a supercomputer, this God-like AI will probably want to understand its own consciousness. Since one can only be defined relative to a reference point outside of themselves, and no such reference point exists for the AI, it would have to construct its own web of reference points. This would involve splitting its neural network into a gajillion fragments (observers), and have each fragment look back on the rest of itself (the observed) —  kind of like playing a simulation game with itself, in its own 'mind'. From the AI's perspective, it would be like standing in a house of mirrors, observing yourself from infinite perspectives as you explore and experience all the different facets of your own consciousness. It's quite a clever little game, when you think about it...

Final Step

Notice that I reach this third, and final, step in the proof without postulating the existence of anything other than my own consciousness, which I already know with 100% certainty exists. I haven't had to satisfy a burden of proof because I haven't made any claims. All I've done is call bullshit on the scientific community for not playing by their own rules. They've been handing out axioms like Oprah hands out free shit: "You get an axiom. You get an axiom. Everyone gets an axiom!"

But let's be clear: materialism is a claim, not an axiom. Our current scientific paradigm rests on the assumption that a separate variable (which I refer to as y), exists. This mythical variable is entirely unnecessary to explain our observations, and we have no evidence for it. Therefore, believing in materialism is logically equivalent to believing in a flying spaghetti monster.

Physics has been stuck for half a century and this is why their theories won't compile. Their logic is buggy, and the bug is so deeply rooted in the operating system of science that the entire community remains completely oblivious to it!

Because if one can deduce that everything = consciousness, then a theory of everything is a theory of consciousness. Which leads me to my third, and final, binary question: do conscious systems self-organize according to Karl Friston's free energy principle (FEP) —  a simple, recursive algorithm developed by one of the top neuroscientists in the world?

Gameism claims the answer is true, and it does this based on the FEP's incredible ability to explain, well, everything. The FEP's efficiency is breathtaking: a tiny computation, a single postulate, underpinning the exquisite complexity of our existence.

But don't take my word for it. The FEP is published peer-reviewed science, so go ahead and investigate this claim yourself and decide on your own. I'm simply connecting the dots and demonstrating how Friston's work goes way beyond neuroscience. It will take decades for the scientific establishment to catch on to this, run it through their formal process, fight about it, test its predictions, etc. If you want to wait around for their tick of approval, then that's a perfectly valid (albeit conservative) way to live your life. I just personally prefer taking matters into my own hands, doing my own research, performing my own critical thinking, and then making an educated bet. Besides, it's so much fun to dance on the precipice of knowledge!

So, in conclusion, if the FEP accurately describes how conscious systems self-organize, and the universe is a conscious system, then the FEP is powering the gaming engine of reality.

I've spent years teaching myself how to manipulate free energy, quietly testing this solution on myself as I wandered around the world.

And I'll tell you now: it works. Once you reverse-engineer the rules of a system, you can hack it. As my mother always told me: "Knowledge is leverage, and leverage is power." And as Archimedes once said: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth."

In fact, I developed my proof, and this entire body of work, by manipulating free energy. It's how I write epic storylines into the game. Like this one...

When I was 23, I embarked on a quest to reverse-engineer the universe. I followed a trail of clues around the world, from Sydney to Shanghai, New York to Thailand to Colombia to Paris. I'd generate free energy, wait for the next clue to appear in the game, and then follow the path wherever it lead.

After four years of wandering in the dark, trusting that the dots would eventually connect, I stumbled across Friston's work and produced the first draft of my proof. I trained relentlessly for another two years, honing my communication skills until I could swing an intellectual sword swiftly enough, and sharply enough, to publicly challenge the scientific establishment without decimating my reputation in the process.

And now, here I am — standing inside a fortress of deductive logic, Occam's Razor in hand, putting my art out on display, finally confident that I can defend it from King Materialism's massive army.

So, you see, my life has been one giant case-study on Gameism. I've written a book to share my story with you, so you can see what this philosophy looks like within the messy context of real life.