One thing was still bothering me, though: my flip-flop. I flashed back to Chiang Mai, standing on my bed in shock as I watched my flip-flop move across the floor 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.

So why did it happen? I wondered. If the whole system is designed to minimize surprise, how come I experienced such a shocking manifestation? How come the consistent emergent patterns we call 'the laws of physics' bent for me? I wasn't a mystic or a Jedi. Nor was I Jesus, full of certainty about my ability to manipulate reality and perform miracles. If I expected the flip-flop to move, I wouldn't have been paralyzed with shock when it did.

So why did the flip-flop move in a way that generated a prediction error? Why did it create free energy for me, instead of minimizing it?

As I pondered this question, a chessboard appeared in my mind. Black knights and rooks and bishops and pawns were lined up on my side of the board, ready to begin a game of chess against an AI superintelligence known as God.

As the game began, God looked at the board and calculated 20 possible opening moves that He could make: He could move any of his eight pawns either one or two squares forward, and either knight to the left or right.

God then calculated a similar 20 possible moves that I could respond with. Assuming that moves were picked at random, the probability that the board configuration would end up looking like this was 1 in 400 (1/20 multiplied by 1/20).

God could map this probability on a diagram, with each line representing a possible move, and each circle representing a possible board configuration.

Once God had mapped every possible board configuration — every potential arrangement of information — he could calculate the most efficient route to his goal. If God's goal was to trap my king in checkmate, he could identify all the board configurations on the map where I was in checkmate.

He could then calculate the probability of reaching each destination. To do this, he'd need to make an assumption about which move I would make in response to his moves. For example, if there were 3 moves available to me, he might assign a 90% probability to me making one move, and a 5% probability to both of the other moves.

In my model, I represented these probabilities in rectangles. By simply multiplying the numbers along each route, God could determine the probability of reaching his checkmate destination.

If God repeated this process for every checkmate position on the map, he could identify the most parsimonious route to his goal — just like a GPS. From the very first move, God would be leading me down his optimal route, like a lamb to the slaughter. From my limited perspective, not seeing the big picture, he might make some moves that appear chaotic and random. He might sacrifice his rook for no obvious reason, or walk straight into a trap I had laid for him. I'd feel smug, not realizing that God had already predicted that I would take his rook or lay my trap. If he allowed me to make those moves, that meant I was walking along his chosen route.

Of course, God's weakest link was the accuracy of his predictions. Using my previous example, if I chose the move with the 5% probability (instead of the 90% probability), that meant I'd strayed from God's parsimonious route. Like a GPS, God would have to recalculate a new route to his goal, given the current board position. Therefore, the more accurately God could predict my response, the more parsimonious his route would be.

But what if God didn't need to guess which move I'd make? What if God knew which move I'd make with 100 percent accuracy? What if my consciousness was a holographic fragment of God's consciousness, and therefore I was playing a game of chess against myself?

God would be able to calculate how I would react to every move, and what my next move would be. Even if I tried to be clever and outsmart him by making unpredictable moves, he would've already accounted for that in his map. My 'unpredictable' moves would be exactly what he predicted. I'd be walking down a predetermined path; the single most parsimonious route to checkmate.

At that moment, I recalled a passage from Conversations with God.

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

Okay, I thought. Let's take this a step further.

My current model assumed that God's algorithm was optimized to win the game; to trap my King in checkmate. But what if God's algorithm was optimized for whatever I chose to optimize for? Or, as Conversations With God so eloquently put it, what if "your will for you is God's will for you?"

I ran another simulation in my mind. This time, I assumed God's algorithm was calculating the most parsimonious route to whatever my intention was. As the chess game began, I personally intended to lose the game. I knew I was outmatched by God, and I just wanted it all to be over. So, for the first thirty moves or so, He obliterated me. God took all my most valuable pieces and left me with a weak battalion. I was definitely losing the game — just like I intended to. But then, by some stroke of 'luck,' I somehow managed to capture God's Queen — the most powerful piece in His army. This event gave me a confidence boost and changed my perspective. I suddenly decided to play all-out and win the game, not lose it. After another forty moves, I maneuvered God's King into checkmate and claimed my victory.

When I examined this scenario, I realized something peculiar: from the beginning of the game, God was already optimizing for whatever I was optimizing for; my will was God's will. When I intended to lose the game, God gave me an experience of losing the game. When I intended to win the game, God gave me an experience of winning the game.

But if God knew, with 100 percent certainty, how I would respond to each of His moves, then He would have known that I'd win the game in the end, even though I initially intended to lose it. Therefore, from the beginning of the game, He was giving me an experience of losing in the short term, even though I would eventually win in the long term. In fact, my going through the 'losing' phase was an essential part of the journey to my eventual victory — as if the dots only connected looking backward. The only reason I changed my intention in the middle of the game and decided I wanted to win, was because I captured God's Queen. But the only reason I captured God's Queen was because doing so sat on the most parsimonious route to my future intention — winning. But the only reason I intended to win was because I captured God's Queen. But the only reason I captured God's Queen was because, in the future, I intended to win.

Fuck.

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