My Life as a Hologram

I don’t tell this story often, because no one believes it.

It was 1979, my senior year at Hartwick College, in Oneonta NY. One early morning I woke up from a dead sleep and had what could best be described as a vision of my future. In this vision, I would move to San Francisco, and create something that would make me famous. And I saw myself standing on stage in front of a huge audience. At the time, I knew no one who lived in San Francisco. I didn’t even know anyone who had visited. It seemed entirely random. I was majoring in economics so I could become a banker in New York City, not a stage performer in San Francisco.

After graduating, I traded my beat-up Datsun 510 to my sister for a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, where my brother had moved a few years earlier. I slept in a sleeping bag on his couch and applied for banking jobs. I had two offers, and was planning to pick one of them.

Meanwhile, sometime after my so-called vision, an ex girlfriend dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. While I was in LA, she invited me up for the weekend. I went. She convinced me that San Francisco was a much nicer place than LA, and I should move there. I said I’d stay if I could find a job on Monday. I was almost out of money. Otherwise, I would return to LA and accept one of the offers there.

On Monday morning, I walked into a branch of Crocker National Bank in San Francisco, asked for a job, and got one, as a teller. I’ve lived in the San Francisco area ever since. This is where I created Dilbert. And I have stood on stage in front of huge audiences a few hundred times, just as I saw it in the vision.

I’ve had several of these so-called visions. Most of them happened just the way I saw them. A few haven’t happened yet, but could. So how do I explain it?

The obvious explanation is that I remember the alleged visions that come true and forget the ones that don’t. I can’t rule that out. Another possibility is that I have some weird psychic ability. That seems unlikely. If people had that sort of ability it would have been measured in a lab by now.

Perhaps my subconscious makes all my decisions, and creates all of my so-called visions. Then it does its best to make me do the things that would make the visions come true. That seems like a perfectly good theory.

But my favorite theory is that I’m nothing but a hologram in a computer program built by my ancient self, before the planet was destroyed by some disaster. The reason I can glimpse my future is that I have all of the qualities of the real me who wrote my program. In other words, I can accurately imagine my future because it is playing out much like I would have authored it myself.

The great thing about this theory is that I can find all sorts of clues to validate it. For example, when I come up with a “new” idea only to discover that others have had the same thought, this fits my theory too. The reason other people have my same thoughts is because they were programmed by my ancient self, who only had a finite number of thoughts to build into the program. This reality is bound to have repeats.

Then there is all the science I don’t understand. One explanation is that it’s over my head. But I prefer the explanation that it is nothing but gibberish programmed into the system. The reason I don’t understand string theory, for example, is that there are no real scientists, only holograms programmed by my ancient self. And since my ancient self didn’t know string theory, he concealed that fact by making it seem as though it is just too complicated to understand.

That’s how I would have programmed it.

Comments

[Jerry McLellan]

Scott obviously has more control over his life than I do. Ever since I was a kid, I've always wondered if I was the only human in a world full of robots, and that I was just there to amuse someone. I had this idea even before I ever saw an episode of the Twilight Zone, or the Matrix had been dreamed up. I'm thinking that Scott Adams, and heck this whole internet thing, is just another situation set up by the technicians to see how this rat will behave. Scott is lucky, he gets to be God in his world. I'm just a rat.

[Phil]

What about the possibility that you dreamt of moving to San Francisco, becoming famous and speaking in front of thousands of people AFTER it actually happened. Then, due to a malfunction in your brain, you only think that it is a memory of a dream from 1979, when the dream actually occurred last night.

The "visions" which haven't come true, those are just dreams. The "visions" which have come true are nothing more than false memories.

[HALiverpool]

and people wonder where megalomaniacs come from.

[Andrew]

You know, I have another theory about your invention problem you keep running into.
Marketing has gotten to the point these days that advertising has nothing to do with the product they are selling, yet at the end you feel like you need that product.
I would suggest that perhaps all your inventions were created after you had unknowingly seen some form of advertisement for a product. You subconsciously feel the need to have something that does bla, since you can’t think of anything that does bla, you invent it; and because of the marketing technique your invention is identical to what they are selling. It’s kinda like that trick where my wife makes me to do something by convincing me that it was my idea in the first place…

[Paul R]

This sort of speculative thinking has been around for a long time. It even has a name - solipsism.

[Diana W]

You keep mentioning the programming was done by your 'ancient' self. Ever consider that you were an 8 or 9 year old boy at the time the earth was being destroyed and you wrote the program? That could explain why you wrote yourself to be a professional cartoonist, put off getting married so long, any why the world is so screwed up. A young kid might consider a program where terrorists fly planes into buildings as 'cool'. I could forgive an 8 year old for writing this mess, but if you were ancient, then you were either senile or one morose, twisted son of a bitch.

[Mike]

I was going to comment on how freaked out I was by your post, namely because I have had the same thoughts before.... (Did your ancient self perhaps create more than just 'you'.. did he make others... am i a distant 'relation' then of you, some how?)

.. but i cant, because I am laughing too much at what this post's direct URL says...
Look at it: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/08/my-life-as-a-ho.html

I think its rather hillarious myself... :P

[karan]

Call me crazy, but I get something like this sometimes right at the edge of sleep - but more limited I guess. It's like snippet of a conversaation, sometimes with people i've not met before, or maybe just a few seconds of me walking somewhere I've never been before.

I've written it down once and it came around 6 months later, but I've never "controlled" it or even been able to see how to get to that point - I'm a skeptic myself, but I can't explain it.

Sounds like from the other comments here I'm not the only one :)

[Lulu]

This is why people should keep a dream book. If a dream is vivid enought to remember when awake, you should write it down. I think people would be surprised at what comes true if they did this. I know that I have had several dreams that have come true and some that I think were premonitions. I live in New Orleans and when we were leaving to evacuate for Katrina, I KNEW the city was going to be destroyed. It felt totally different this time. I had dreamed this whole scenario years before, and at the time I was dreaming this, I told people my dream in detail. If you write your dreams down, you have a reference and maybe in the future can be prepared.

I do think everyone has this ability. And, as far as being a hologram, in times past and in the future, people will give this ability whatever name fits current culture.

People need to be aware of their inner self. It is always trying to lead you to a better place.

[Rich T.]

[Scott wrote: But my favorite theory is that I’m nothing but a hologram in a computer program built by my ancient self, before the planet was destroyed by some disaster. The reason I can glimpse my future is that I have all of the qualities of the real me who wrote my program. In other words, I can accurately imagine my future because it is playing out much like I would have authored it myself.]

Not that anyone is going to pay any attention to this, but another explanation is the LDS (Mormon) one: that your life began in a premortal state, with Heavenly Parents, and you lived as a spirit there until you chose a to come to Earth at an appointed time, to grow and be tested in different ways, with a veil of forgetfulness, which at times is thin enough for you to glimpse certain things, including some of what you helped author for your time here on Earth - just not as a literal computer programmer.

[Wayne]

I'm having trouble reconciling what Scott says about psychic phenomena not ever having been demonstrated "in a lab" with his apparent review of a book entitled "The Counscious Universe," which posits that psychic, or "psi" phenomena have been demonstrated time and time again by rigorous, scientific methods, and that it's just a matter of time before the scientific community accepts them. The review is as follows:

"I loved it. It made my head spin for days.

Scott Adams, cartoonist and author of The Dilbert Future, The Dilbert Principles, and many other books."

And it can be found at http://www.deanradin.com/book.html , where the first chapter can also be read (http://www.deanradin.com/Chapter1.html , link previously provided by commenter "C4 Chaos").

[Geo B]

Scott, I too have had dreams where later I saw what I had seen - but they are only brief situations that I remember, like sitting with someone in a certain place. Weirds me out when I realize I'm there.

[Dilbert's Rabbi]

...makes my faith in God seem rather elementary...

[Scott (Not Adams)]

Did you document the vision at the time it occurred? Or could your memory be false?

If nothing else, it makes picking the proper verb conjugation a bear. "Now remembering having previously foreseen what was just done." Ick.

[ET]

It's one of those things that's been "discovered" before:

http://www.amazon.com/Darwinia-Robert-Charles-Wilson/dp/0765319055/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/103-9164687-5125402?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188219414&sr=8-7

Stop borrowing other people's ideas! :P

[Jim Fuller]

Scott,

I think you need a brainiologist to find a medical explanation or something. At least they can give you some medicine so you won't remember anymore...

[Frank]

So rather than believing the simple explanation, you prefer to think the world revolves around you. Anything you don't understand is bogus, anything you don't see doesn't really happen. That seems more than a little ego-centric, don't you think?
I agree with a previous post that the visions never really happened, you probably had the "visions" after the fact. Or at least they were so vague that you just filled in the details after they happened. For example, how did you know where you were in your "vision?" Was there a sign in the room where you were giving your presentation "Welcome to San Francisco?"

[Tom]

My first guess was that your initial vision made it easier for you to make the choices that lead you there. For example, in weighing the decision to go west, you were already leaning that way, at least subconsciously, because of your vision. Seems self-fulfillilng.

[Charlie]

A friend forwarded me a link to your blog entry because of a conversation we had. Interestingly, I often have the exact same fantasy. I wonder how many of us there are.

[moi]

Pfff, i don't like the idea that we're all a part in a program that was created by your ancient self. I'd rather be created by MY ancient self. That would mean that you owe your succes to me, well, the ancient me. You can repay the digital me whenever you feel like it. I prefer cash or a super computer.

[Himanshu]

Your theory of human programming goes real deep...it kinda makes me think if this could be true...

Anyways was the 10 year old boy who wrote to you real or was it a hoax?

We are anxious to know

[Tormod]

You also have another possibility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=befugtgikMg

Derren Brown, in this clip, EXPECTS his subject to have a vivid memory of something false. A retrospectively rewritten memory.

As he expects this, then obviously there are somebody who knows of this a great deal better than I am. Just watch the clip and see.

As I'm learning more and more about how memory, I'm flabbergasted that they never taught this in school. But, as Mr Adams would happily point out, I cannot be sure that they didn't..... hehe

[wolfizzi]

Let's see now. There are billions of people on this planet, and every one of them has an average of three dreams each day (or night for the non-undead). When people dream, their mind concocts a plot around details generated from random thought/images. These thought/images happen as electric impulses flash across the brain as it reboots itself during sleep.

Hitchcock said that there are only twenty plots; the rest is just details. It makes perfect sense that people will randomly get precognitive dreams.

Commentors have suggested that Scott's "vision" may have lead him to move to San Francisco and perform on stage. This theory can't be completely discounted. Others have suggested that Scott's memory of the vision developed over time, to conform to his present day situation.

If you haven't guessed from past comments, I'm an attorney. As such, I am no stranger to the fact that people's memories are nearly always tainted with their perception of the way they want things to be. I routinely see witnesses recount completely different, oftentimes conflicting, versions of the same event. Interestingly, each witness's version is usually favorable to the witness. Allowing for some intentional fabrication by witnesses, I am still convinced that most people remember things the way they want them remembered.

Getting back to that rebooting brain. Each night (for you day-walkers) while sleeping, your brain has little to do but to go over memories. In essence your brain is remembering remembrances. If you accept that people remember things favorably for themselves, each review of the memory will be remembered in a way that is incrementally more favorable to the rememberer.

If Scott had an image of San Francisco pass through his brain at 2:15 a.m., then had an image of some generic performer on a stage at 4:47, his mind could develop a plot in which he was the performer, and he was in San Francisco. After thousands of "dreams," this one random dream is an acceptable occurrence. Later Scott goes to L.A. because his brother is there. No mystery there. Ex-girlfriend invites him to S.F; I would have gone, too.

At some point Scott begins to remember the dream - only more favorably than in it's original form. Now, he is receiving accolades on stage in San Francisco. The recollection of the dream may cause him to focus his attention on "getting famous" so that the dream comes true. With the passage of more time, and as additional good things happen in Scott's life he remembers the dream, but each time the dream is changed (usually Scott will be portrayed a little better in each remembrance).

I don't rule out the possibility of precognition. I can't, and won't as I have had some pretty weird stuff happen to me, too. But, I do know that, in fact, memory supplementation does happen. And when it does, it tends to support people's beliefs and belief systems.

On the subject of dream precognition, someday I will get around to writing about a dream I had, and the subsequent events that mirrored my dream, but it scares the shit out of me each time I try to write about it. Right now, the hairs on the back of my neck are sicking straight out, and my spine is tingling, so I have to quit. The toilet's calling me, maybe I'm just full of ...

[Julian]

I am just going to get "it's only humour" response, but I have to say your theory is absurdly narcissistic.

[bradhapa]

Excellent! My program is executing exactly as designed.

You see, you were right about this being some type of virtual existence that was created with certain predetermined outcomes. These dreams you have really have been pre-programmed to turn into "reality." But you were off on one detail; your earlier self didn't program it, mine did.

It's quite a twist of fate, I realize. But that's the way it goes.

The good news for "me" is that you are about to have a dream where, after waking, you will feel compelled to share your fortune and glory with me in a significant way.