Deepika

[Shashi Learns @ShashiLearns]

The dictator's position is now in danger.

If you can't write, just retweet.

Long live the revolution.

[Ankit Mayank @mr_mayank]

This is NOT crowd for FIFA WC

This is NOT crowd to watch any Bollywood celebrity

This is the Tsunami of crowd of Gen-Z protesting against Modi Govt

Talk about Revolution, it is here 🔥

[Prakhar Gupta @prvkhvr]

What the actual

[Deepika @Deepika73295030]

@replohq Replo

[Deepika @Deepika73295030]

@bejeweledxleigh You need to calm down

[non aesthetic things @PicturesFoIder]

wait…

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

Every single one of these videos is AI-generated, and if this doesn't concern you at least a little bit, nothing will

The newest model: https://t.co/zkDWU8Be9S

(Remember Will Smith eating spaghetti? I have so many questions)

[X @X]

hello to everyone with <200 followers

we see & love you

[Varun Mayya @waitin4agi_]

In 2020, I wrote a short sci-fi story that a few people in my community remember. It ends with an interesting twist, and I thought this might be the right time to just copy paste it on to Twitter, with what's going on with Sora:

1/ The Year 2100
“Space is fake” said Issac nonchalantly, both feet on the table.

Issac was a computer scientist and game programmer. The smartest our generation had ever known. It was an honor to see the famed 26 year old Indian, in the flesh.

“What do you mean?” asked the second President of the World.

Whoops. I forgot to give you context. My name is Rohan, and I was the only member of the press invited to the grand round table hosted by the President of the World itself.

In the year 2100, humanity had decided to do away with borders. After the War, the citizens of the Internet became frustrated with rampant censorship and media manipulation that their governments were subjecting them to. They decided to band together and form the largest democracy on Earth. The Internet elected their own leader from among themselves.

The first President of the World was a famous YouTube star, the first independent creator to reach over a 100 million subscribers. He was more famously known as the “President with no legs”. Under his rule, all the major governments were overthrown, all major diseases overcome and financial stability restored through Universal Basic Income. Humans lived in harmony with robots and nature — something no government believed possible until the first President of the World.

The second President of the World had just been elected, hours after his predecessor died of a heart attack. It was claimed that the old President had an unhealthy heart because he couldn’t exercise. A lack of legs can do that to you.

The second President was eager to prove his mettle to the world. The first thing he did after being elected into power was livestream his swearing-in ceremony. This man clearly understood branding. Unfortunately for him, the first President had solved most of humanity’s pressing issues. The second didn’t have much to play on, so he went after humanity’s last and biggest remaining challenge - What happened before the big bang?

To accomplish this, he brought together the smartest in the world. Computer scientists, astrophysicists, electronic engineers and everyone else who could play a part in figuring out humanity’s biggest mystery.

I was the only odd one out in the room. I assumed I was brought here not for my intelligence, but for my ability to unfurl this story to the world. I maintain my position — this man knew his branding.

2/ 299,792,458

Issac was the one everyone was looking to for an answer. At the age of 15, he published a paper on the programmatic nature of the Universe. That’s what science has been trying to prove for centuries, hasn’t it? Science is technically a process that was systematically proving that the nature of reality was entirely logical. Issac had proved that the universe worked like a computer. He was considered a genius among his peers, even among physicists three times his age.

“What do you mean space is fake?” asked the President. He looked genuinely puzzled.

Everyone in the room was looking at Issac. He was still fiddling with the display on his arm, legs still on the table.

“What you see when you look up is a cheap after-image. Whoever programmed this universe didn’t even try” he smirked.

A hush fell upon the room.

“But people have been up there” said the Head of Technology, breaking the silence.

“Yes, humanity has multiple space bases. We’ve even conquered Mars. What do you mean by Space is fake?” added on Soham. Soham was considered one of the leading astrophysicists in the world by most people familiar with the subject.

Issac pulled his feet off the table. He clasped his hands together.

“Well, it’s fake to you and me. Not to the people up there.” He said. His lips curved at the corners.

“What you see when you look up is an afterimage from a few seconds ago. It’s not real-time!”

Atania, another astrophysicist pointed up at the atrium. Her voice startled the puzzled audience.

“Well, here’s something to think about. When you hear a plane, do you ever have trouble spotting it in the sky? If you look up where the sound seems to be coming from, the plane is no longer there. That is because it takes time for the sound waves to reach you, and by the time they do, the plane has moved on. So, in a sense, you are “hearing back in time,” because the sound you hear is the sound of the plane several seconds ago, not the sound of the plane now.

When you do spot the plane, you are actually seeing it as it was a tiny fraction of a second ago because like sound waves, light waves take time to travel too. Nothing can travel faster than light, but as fast as it’s given credit for, light still needs time to get from one place to the other. Whether it’s across a hallway or across a large length of the universe.”

Isaac continued “No, that’s just a theoretical explanation of why you are seeing an afterimage up there from down here.”

Atania frowned. “Huh? That’s solid, proven science. If the Sun burned out today, we’d only know about it 8 minutes later. That’s an undisputed fact.”

“That theory is correct, but you’re explaining a consequence, not the core reason.” Issac stated.

Nobody in the audience blinked. It seemed like Isaac was about to explain an obvious truth that nobody had realized in their lifetimes.

“Have you guys ever played a 3D computer game?” He asked, surprising the audience with his jarring question.

Almost everyone nodded. Very few people in the room had grown up without playing a 3D game in virtual reality.

“Do you notice what happens in a 3D game if you look far away? Like at the Sun or the hills in the distance, for example?”

“Things at a distance are rendered at a lower resolution, sometimes they’re just a pre-rendered static image. This is essentially because computers cannot render everything at a distance, especially things that aren’t required to be drawn on screen at the moment. It’s just too resource intensive!” He exclaimed.

“So you’re shown a fake image?” asked the President.

“Yup, an image that was last rendered. The further you are from what you’re viewing, an older rendered image is used.”

“Try and take a guess as to what the rendering speed is in our universe” asked Issac to the crowd, a twinkle in his eyes.

Nobody answered. Nobody was taking chances looking like a fool in this audience.

“299,792,458 meters per second” answered Isaac. “The so called speed of light”, he smiled.

Nobody said a word. He was right. It seemed obvious.

“If anything moves faster than the speed of light in front of you, it’ll look like it’s teleporting but the truth is that you’re just lagging” he went on to explain.

“So this computer we exist in...it has a maximum render speed at the speed of light. But more importantly, rendering is observer specific. For those of you uninitiated with the quantum world, I’d like to bring your attention to the fact that an observer is what makes the rendering happen. But not in the way most people think.” he continued.

“A lot of people take this to mean that the universe renders for them and only them. That isn’t true, it renders as long as any observer is in the scene. Think of it like this. Say there are two players in a multiplayer game in virtual reality and Player 1 and 2 are wearing headsets in two apartments in different parts of the world.

In the game, say Player 1 explores a new area, say a room. In the room, there’s a desk on the right and a couch on the left. Also, let’s say there’s a coffee mug on the desk. Now I have a question for you — without looking, what’s on Player 1’s right?” he asked.

“The desk” answered the Head of Technology. It seemed like an obvious answer.

“Wrong. It’s actually whatever is on his right in the apartment in real life.” said Issac, grimly.

People in the audience were expecting a smarter answer. Nobody looked impressed.

Atania was about to speak.

“Let me finish. What I’m trying to say is that until Player 1 looks to his right in the game, it isn’t rendered, until he actually looks at it” He added.

” Quantum mechanics tries to prove precisely this. But it’s a little more complicated. Let’s assume Player 1 never looks to his right, so a desk is never rendered. At the end of the day, the pixels on the screen on your face render the desk on his right only when he looks there. Up until that point, what’s on his right could be anything!”

“Yes, on his right is just technically pixels. It could render into anything. There’s theoretically a chance it could be a pony or a the Eiffel tower” Said Atania.

The President was listening with keen interest. He wasn’t sure where the conversation was going.

“Well, when I said anything, I didn’t mean absolutely anything. Every outcome of what it could be has a probability, and not all of these probabilities are the same. It’s much more likely to be a desk than the Eiffel tower, and that’s because of the constraints of physics. Imagine if each “probable” outcome was projected on the right in the color blue. Let’s assume the intensity of the blue color represented the probability of that event happening.” explained Issac.

“So the Eiffel tower would be in a very faint blue whereas a desk or a chair would be a darker shade of blue?” asked Atania.

“Glad to see we’re finally on the same page” said Issac. “If Player 2 enters the room from the same direction Player 1 did, and neither player looked to the right, then the probable outcomes of what’s on the right can still vary.”

“But here’s the kicker. If either Player 1 or 2 looks to the right, then the quantum superposition ends. The waveform collapses. If any player looks to the right, then all the probabilities with shades of blue collapse, and only probability arises. This probability becomes the truth, and is would be represented in the darkest shade of blue. All other shades will cease to exist. Which means that if Player 1 looks to the right and there’s a desk, then from then onwards, the desk becomes the truth of that position, and Player 2 will also see a desk if he looks to the right. This works the other way round too. If Player 2 looks to the right before Player 1, and that location is unexplored, then he creates the truth for that position the instant he explores or ‘observes’ it.”

“So you’re saying any observer works. It’s not different realities for different observers. You’re saying that each observation by any observer reduces the number of possible outcomes, and we live in a shared observer universe.” said Atania. She sounded like she’d just had her Aha! Moment.

“Yes. What I’m implying is that this is a procedurally generated universe. Everytime an observer performs the act of observing an unexplored area, that part of the universe is generated. Quantum mechanics is actually the perfect way to implement a procedural universe.” added Issac, air quoting as he said the words ‘generated’.

3/ Telescope

“So we live in a simulation? You’re implying we have no free will and someone coded this universe?” asked Atania.

The President cleared his throat before Isaac could answer.

“This is all great, but we’ve got everyone here together to speak figure out what happened before the big bang. We’re going off a tangent here. I need something actionable.” he asserted.

“Well yeah, I���m getting to that.” assured Isaac. “It took me 5 years to figure out a way to find the Source of all creation” he said.

“Go on” motioned the President. He was eager to prove his mettle to the people.

“Well I don’t know what happened, but I know a way to actually see the beginning of the universe.”

“Remember the Hubble Telescope from the early 2000s? When it took a picture of a galaxy 100 million light years away, we were seeing the galaxy as it looked 100 million years ago. At the time that light left that galaxy, dinosaurs ruled Earth and humans would not appear for millions of years...”

Everyone’s eyes widened. They knew where he was going with this.

“How old is the universe?” he asked, pointing at Soham.

“13.772 billion years. We know this from the expansion rate, incase anyone’s wondering.” replied Soham. He knew what was coming.

“If you want to know where we came from, we need to see all the way back in time. To be more precise, we need to create a telescope that can see 13.772 billion years back in time.”

The President knew from the moment it left Isaac’s mouth that this was a great idea. It would cement his legacy. He would be known as the first President who built a monumental telescope. The first to find the Source.

The room agreed and moved fast. Within minutes , the President ran a global crowdfunding campaign and raised over 7 billion Bitcoin to build the Source telescope.

The construction employed 3000 engineers spanning 30 different specializations. It was a project that lasted 2 years and 5 months — a true testament to humanity’s adeptness at building technology at breakneck speeds.

The telescope stood a great 4000 kilometers in height. It had a viewing area at the top that could house 40 people.

4/ Lol
The celebrated unveiling was scheduled to happen on New Year’s eve. A great debate was hosted before anybody got a chance to look through the aperture. It was attended by a billion people — both in person and through live-stream. The religious camps, the simulation believers and the nihilists — they were all outside, wearing caps and t-shirts preaching their own beliefs. They were all curious about who was right — faiths were about to be tested and religious books were about to rewritten.

All of the members of the first meeting were invited to the viewing room. As part of the President’s press mandate, I was invited too.

Did we live in a simulation? Was this all God’s creation? Was there a meaning to life?

We were about to find out now.

The President stepped up to the plate. He knew the media was watching, so he had to deliver a speech. “It’s all theatrics” he had told us in the backroom, winking.

After what seemed like forever, he invited Issac to the viewpoint. He had promised Issac that he’d be the first to look through the aperture, and he wanted to make good on that promise.

Issac sighed. For once, it seemed the genius himself wasn’t sure what to expect.

He stepped up to the plate, and positioning himself on a rotating chair in front of the telescope. With one eye closed, he peered through the lens. His left hand fiddled with the focus knob for a few seconds — he was presumably looking for a clearer picture.

Suddenly, his entire body froze. Issac didn’t move or take his eyes off for a whole minute.

He then stood up, and it looked like the blood in his face had been drained. He stared at the room, visibly distorted.

“And..?” asked Atania.

Issac didn’t speak. He simply shook his head and walked out of the room.

I was curious now. There were very few things that were capable of shaking Issac.

Atania walked up to the plate, repeating the motions that Issac had demonstrated to the room.

She too, stared at the lens for what seemed like an eternity.

“Oh boy, Prez!” She exclaimed. “You’re going to have a hard time dealing with this!”

It was my turn next. As the President called out my name, I stood up, ironing out the kinks in my skirt. I walked silently toward the plate and dragged the chair to a more comfortable position.

My heart was beating faster than usual. What could these people possibly have seen?

I leaned forward, closing the distance between my right eye and the lens. There was definitely something in the viewport, but since I’d taken off my glasses, I had to play with the focus knob to get a clearer picture. I could tell that there was an image followed by some text in what seemed like the English language.

And then I saw it. My eyes widened and my heart froze. The hair at the back of my neck stood up. Chills ran down my spine.

There, all the way at the beginning of time, was a message.

At the bottom of the frame was a scrolling list of unfamiliar names in English.

And at the very top was a troll face, titled with the words “End Credits”.