Proof Of Afterlife By Memory
3.1. Section One – Is Life Analog Or Digital?
3.1.1. Life As A Digital Being
Close your eyes for a moment. Now open them. Now close them.
Tell me, was the environment you saw a digital or analog?
The environment was analog of course, right?
Throughout history our world has been considered an analog world. Take sound for example. You do not see many vinyl phonograph records anymore. A vinyl phonograph record is continuous tone. It was formed by a stylus burrowing into vinyl. There are no information bits. On the other hand we have digital recordings. Sound recorded digitally is discrete pieces of information stored into memory bits. Sound from a vinyl phonograph and sound from computer memory can be indistinguishable. However, they are recorded using two different concepts. One is analog and one is digital.
Before concluding the outside world is analog look at this illustration:
This illustration shows my crude representation of the human eye and brain. Light comes into the eye through the cornea, then through the lens, and finally onto the retina. In the retina light fires nerves. Electric impulses from nerves are sent through the optic nerve into the lateral geniculate nucleus in the brain. From there they are sent to the visual cortex. It is in the visual cortex that the outside world is manifested.
Note: We are using the example of perceiving the environment visually for clarity purposes. This does not imply that non-sighted people record any less information than sighted people. Nor does it mean that non-sighted people experience any less of the environment than sighted people. Non-sighted people experience the same richness of life as sighted people. They merely experience life in a alternate manner. Reality however complete in every way.
3.1.2. Examination Of The Senses
We believe we are analog because an analog recording is considered to be of higher quality than digital recording. Close inspection of a continuous tone recording like a vinyl record does not show discrete bits of sound. We do not see individual pieces of sound. However, the argument that a vinyl recored is higher quality than a comparable digital recording is simply a matter of resolution. The analog vinyl phonograph record reproduces the sound faithfully when first pressed. The compact disk reproduces the sound faithfully as well. The quality of digital sound reproduction is not dependent on physical medium. Sound quality is dependent upon the digital resolution of the recording. For example a sound recorded at twelve bit resolution will reproduce more accurately than sound recorded at eight bit resolution. In the digital world the resolution can be increased to increase recording quality.
The digital world has another advantage over the analog world. A digital recording will not degrade over time. An analog vinyl record is best when first played from a new record. Freshness of recording medium matters. Each time the record is played the sound quality degrades slightly. The phonograph stylus wears the grooves when played. Additionally time itself works against the analog recording. Slow material decomposition will cause sound to degrade. Over time the analog recording may not even be recognizable.
On the other hand, digital recordings are pristine always. Digital playback is a bit-for-bit copy of the original recording. The original and copy are identical. That is why human beings are digital. As we look closer this becomes even more apparent. Here is a diagram of a section inside the retina of the eye:
The receptive field shown on the right is where light hits the inside of our eye. Embedded in the receptive field are rod and cone cells. Rod cells (shown in yellow) detect monochromatic vision (black and white). Cone cells detect color. These nerves send electric impulses to the bipolar cells. There is some logic processing at the bipolar level. Then the output is sent to the ganglion cells where information is processed further. Then the data is sent out the optic nerve to the brain as shown on the right.
3.1.3. Our Environment As A Digital Picture
Human beings are digital recording devices. Digital recordings are independent of the physical world. They are made up of data stored in memory. In 100 years a digital recording will be exactly the same as it is today. When recording and playback is bit-for-bit the quality remains perfect regardless of time. Whether played today, or 100 years from today, the recording will be identical. Information, stored in computer memory, remains the same over time.
The human mind is digital in makeup. While the world may “feel” analog the evidence of hardware shows differently. When you look closely at the retina of the eye it is apparent that we are digital. As such we are surrounded by a digital world. The illustration below shows a section of the retina, at the cell level, converting the environment into electrical data impulses:
3.1.4. Capturing Reality Into Memory
Digital cameras capture images using a CCD (charged coupled device). The CCD is similar to the retina in our eyes. The CCD is represented by an array of small dots called pixels shown below.
An image captured this way is called a raster image. A raster image is a series of dots arranged in columns and rows. A typical camera is made up of thousands of tiny colored dot receptors. One square inch of the screen will be made up of 5,000 receptors. The receptors are so small and so close together that our eye blends them together into a continuous tone picture. The picture is nothing more than small colored dots arranged in columns and rows. If you looked at a camera CCD under a microscope you could see the array of tiny color receptors. Shown above is a matrix 2000 pixels wide by 1400 pixels high. The inset shows the pixels at the upper right corner of the picture magnified. The first four pixels are marked by red box around each one. The color (hue and brightness) assigned to each of those four pixels is shown in yellow. Each of the four pixels has 16 bits of memory wired to it. Stored in that pixel’s memory location is a 16-bit number that represents that color.
The human mind operates like the digital camera. As we look out into the environment we absorb it into memory. Our mind records the environment into memory.
Proof Of Afterlife By Memory – Section Two – Absorbing Reality Into Memory