Psychedelic researcher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna had this to say about the amazing color-change ability of the cuttlefish:
'I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the squids and octopi have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future.
In the not-too-distant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.'
When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.
The bootstrap paradox is the paradox arising, if time travel is possible, relating to the existence of information and objects not created at any specific instant of time but instead traveling in a time loop. In simpler terms, an object is brought back in time, and it becomes the object that was initially brought back in time in the first place. Numerous science fiction stories are based on this paradox, which has also been the subject of serious physics articles.
The term "bootstrap paradox" refers to the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", based on a Munchausen story; the term was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein's story By His Bootstraps.
On this website you can peruse the debate that followed the paper presenting the Simulation argument. The original paper is here, as are popular synopses, scholarly papers commenting on the first paper, and a couple of replies to these comments.
The Simulation argument is continuing to attract a great deal of attention. I regret that I cannot usually respond to individual queries about the argument.
Professor Nick Bostrom
Director, Future of Humanity Institute
Faculty of Philosophy & James Martin 21st Century School
Oxford University
