Reality is a computer projection: physicists
October 4, 2012
Is our reality a projection of information, like the hologram image of Princess Leia projected by R2D2 in Star Wars? (Credit: Lucasfilm)
Whatever kind of reality you think you’re living in, you’re probably wrong. The universe is a computer, and everything that goes on in it can be explained in terms of information processing, speculates New Scientist in a special issue on What is reality?
“Quantum physics is almost phrased in terms of information processing,” says Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. “It’s suggestive that you will find information processing at the root of everything.”
In fact, every process in the universe can be reduced to interactions between particles that produce binary answers: yes or no, here or there, up or down. That means nature, at its most fundamental level, is simply the flipping of binary digits or bits, just like a computer. The result of the myriad bit flips is manifest in what we perceive as the ongoing arrangement, rearrangement and interaction of atoms — in other words, reality.
According to Ed Fredkin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, if we could dig into this process we would find that the universe follows just one law, a single information-processing rule that is all you need to build a cosmos. In Fredkin’s view, this would be some form of “if-then” procedure; the kind of rule used in traditional computing to manipulate the bits held by transistors on a chip and operate the logic gates, but this time applied to the bits of the universe.
Proving that the universe is a quantum computer is a difficult task. Even so, there is one observation that supports the idea that the universe is fundamentally composed of information. In 2008, the GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in Hannover, Germany, picked up an anomalous signal suggesting that space-time is pixelated. This is exactly what would be expected in a “holographic” universe, where 3D reality is actually a projection of information encoded on the two-dimensional surface of the boundary of the universe (New Scientist, 17 January 2009, p 24).
This bizarre idea arose from an argument over black holes. One of the fundamental tenets of physics is that information cannot be destroyed, but a black hole appears to violate this by swallowing things that contain information then gradually evaporating away. What happens to that information was the subject of a long debate between Stephen Hawking and several of his peers. In the end, Hawking lost the debate, conceding that the information is imprinted on the event horizon that defines the black hole’s boundary and escapes as the black hole evaporates.
This led theoretical physicists Leonard Susskind and Gerard’t Hooft to propose that the entire universe could also hold information at its boundary — with the consequence that our reality could be the projection of that information into the space within the boundary.
Comments (96)
by Tillman
Describing the universe this way, as a digital computer operating a data processing code, a.k.a. a Turing machine, makes it easier to see how Gödel’s theorems apply to reductionism in physics. It is unquestionable that Gödel’s theorems apply to digital computers. So either reality cannot really be reduced to a Turing machine as described in this article, or else Gödel’s theorems really do apply to physics and thus we must admit that physics itself has no way of ensuring that it will be found complete (producing a reality to answer all the valid questions that it raises about itself) and now way of ensuring that it will be fundamentally consistent with itself; we might eventually find that the digital code of the universe produces a nonsensical and bizarre reality that is self-contradictory. This latter part is the deduction from Gödel’s second theorem. So if the universe is a computer, or if physics operates like a computer in that it begins from a closed and countable set of physical laws (even a countably infinite set), then it is not just our ability to understand the universe that is fundamentally limited — the reality itself must be fundamentally limited in its ability to be self-consistent and complete. Again, the alternative to a universe limited by Gödel’s theorems is that reality is not really reducible to an axiomatic system (such as a computer as this article describes), and if so then reductionism — the effort to reduce it to a set of basic laws — must still fail although reality could in that case be self-consistent and complete.
by Joshua Tilghman
Matter has to be just information. This is the only way we can stop asking the question, Who created God? If everything is information, including us, then the answer is in the question.
http://www.spiritofthescripture.com/blog
by barasheet
God is neither matter nor information…He is Spirit..and the Originator of both so is outside this construct of time/space dimension…He made that which is visible by that which is invisible, He said ‘Let there be..” and the matter and energy formed from the commanded information…God is Eternal…an abstract meta physical concept which is outside our experience but inside our intangible image of God we were created in. As this information is formed in my head and this mode of coding is relaying it from information into matter for you to accept or reject….
by libra9
What evidence do you have for your assertions?
by vaidy bala
Science is machine like deals with cause and effect. When everything in the materiel universe is changing the underlying authorship is hidden. It is also sentient. How any computer program can intuit this feature that is a like a living being? So, anything we do is only approximation, is capable of being revised frequently, that is about the best job we could do. This is my perception. Try we must, because we are curious creatures of creation.
by egore
geo 600 picked up a signal that was never confirmed and ever since everyone is trying to make it into speculation.
by Dr.Pratt
I think New Scientist kind of dressed this idea up a bit. If we are only projections of numerical data on the inside rim of a black hole, there would be a lot of problems, such as losing the informaiton ito a larger space time. Our universe is more like a White hole-Black Hole combination and with this scenario, the expansion would allow for the keeping of the informaiton within the projected black hole space. If this is the case, then the one(s) that built this object, would not be mindifull of us as one second of their time woudl be about 250 million years…gave or take a few million. We woudl come and go and they would just be taking off their lab coat. I say this because probablitly alone will not allow for something this complex. we are someones science project, if this is the truth.
by Al Stein
Would you concede tha your “White hole-Black hole” scenario is in itself a binary entity? And if so how does that differ from the flipping of digits referrred to in the article.?
by Mitch
Nah, reality’s like a steam engine.
by steve
Wow, if you want to know something ask a physicist, they know everything! …True!
by MrFriendly
I don’t see where the scientists themselves said that the universe is a computer simulation. I think New Scientist just jumped to that conclusion.
The articles I’ve seen on this topic, written by actual physicists, seem to just mention that the universe seems to “compute” information by the flipping of atoms, but they were using that term very loosely.
by Marcos Marin
Humans have a strong tendency to lose themselves in their abstractions and begin believing they are true. They have no Ariadne to help them out of the labyrinth, poor things.. It is either that or believing such publications are purposefully sophistic, which although not all that far fetched, require the very smarts which would defeat the purpose. : )
by B.
Nice comment… Sometimes I feel like the only person who sees so many clever people conflating their conceptions and reality.
by Klaatu
Ah thinks we need us some enhanced AI…as in Weiwei.
Then we need to light up Jupiter and movemars a little closer.
by ali
BUT THEN THE QUESTION ARISES, WHAT CREATED THAT QUANTUM COMPUTER THAT THIS UNIVERSE IS BASED OFF???? IS THAT ALSO A COMPUTER PROJECTION THEN? IF SO THEN INFINITE LOOK OF PROJECTIONS WHICH DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! AT THE SOURCE HAS TO BE SOMETHING ELSE THAN A COMPUTER PROJECTION!
by CF
:)
by Marcos Marin
The blind clock maker did it. Or should we call it the blind calculator maker?
by Rob Falgiano
It’s an unreasolvable contradiction. Which means that life is paradoxical and absurd. Which to me implies nearly infinite possibilities to influence reality.
by MaikU
ANSWER IS GOD.
by Gabriel
Who created God?
by GAUSS
Jeff, god of biscuits did.
by barasheet
God has no need of creation for He is ‘simple’ and is composed solely of Spirit….only complex material requires a cause such as the universe…thus the question who created God is contradictory in its conception…the Divine of The Bible does not need creation for it was by Him and for Him and through Him all complex things were created…An infinite number of ‘greater gods” is logical contradiction…for the one who was created has no right to the claim of godhood Definition, capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as
a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe. Any other supposed deity is merely a created being posing as the Divine as the ancient Caesars tried, and demonic creatures do..
by Rob Falgiano
God has always existed. God is a contradiction and so is life itself. Once you believe this, all things are possible like the last episode of Star Trek Next Gen :-) Picard embraces a paradox to save humanity.
by George Elliott
Ali: I agree with you and I would suggest that the “something” at the source might best be labeled “ultimate originator”, yes?
by Marcos Marin
No, because this concept already has a name, namely “Uncaused Cause”, why mud the philosophical waters even more by inventing new terms to old concepts? reserve it for new ones. =)
by Tyler McGhee
Can I update my graphics processing?
by Beastyp
I guess Princess was Thug LIfe. Someone hacked in Tupac. So awesome.
by Bri
It was Luke. He hacked in Tupac.
by GAUSS
There have been a good number of these kinds of articles coming out lately. It’s useful to bear in mind that we’ve imposed order and structure onto our portion of the observable dimensions of the universe. We don’t even know for sure if there are indeed higher dimensions. Nature does not abide by the laws that we set forth. Nature simply is, and we observe it. Just because some ‘laws’ we formulate prove true in many cases, it does mean that they will not break down in future scenarios. Many people think that the laws of physics are infallible, or that a mathematical proof is somehow a word from the Origin of the Universe. This is nonsense. Mathematics exists because mankind invented it. It turns out to be quite useful for describing things, but it extends only as far as we can see into the heart of our reality.
Now, what these professors are really talking about is finding the roots of an infinitely chaotic system, i.e. the universe. Should any such roots exist, it doesn’t warrant jumping to the conclusion that the universe is a computer. One hundred years ago, nobody even knew what a computer was (Wiener’s later work on cybernetics aside). Since then, we’ve gotten so completely computer-obsessed that we can’t see nature for what it is: pure existence. To think that nature would exist as something even remotely like what was only invented in the tiniest flicker of a moment in the universe’s history is arrogant, fanciful, and entirely anthropocentric.
This is extremely disappointing.
by Allanx
Ahh, but that’s just the thing. If you believe in Platonism, then humans did not “invent” math or (by extension) computers. We discovered them. Assuming that matter interacts with other matter in a deterministic fashion on the quantum level, producing predictable outputs, then the principles behind both math and computers have already existed in nature since the dawn of time, independent of sentient beings. There’s nothing anthropocentric about that.
by Rob Falgiano
Exactly.
by GAUSS
That’s a solid point. Still, determinism isn’t clearly defined in the case of nature either, especially not in quantum mechanics, wherein probability theory is central.
by Gabriel
Gauss….for goodness sake, enough with the masochism. Yes, there is much we don’t know, but if we’re smart enough to ask these questions, we’re smart enough to learn them, and in time, we will….It’s silly to say speculation of this sort, even if proven false later on, is somehow ‘arrogant and anthropocentric”. Of course it would be anthropocentric…we’re humans trying to understand this stuff, as with math and the other stuff you mention we invented – what else would it be?
Our understanding can only stretch so far at any given time, but it’s always growing….to say that we are ‘arrogant’ for making speculations on things, is silly….doesn’t sound too different from the usual apprehension people have, like we’re “playing god”, everytime we get to a new threshold. Why people are somehow unconsciously adamant in “putting humanity in it’s place”, I don’t understand.
My point is Gauss…what you say make sense, but a little silver lining wouldn’t hurt….you should feel happy that lot of such articles are coming out recently, because it could show a trend that people are getting excited about our prospects enough to start making them…and we may not have the answers today, but we will have them, period, if we’re devoted enough to find them. Our centrality may seem like it’s constantly knocked down, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of actually claiming it one by one — it’s self-defeating to say that it’s arrogant to think up speculation on stuff like this, because it’s such theories that drive progress, force recognition of truth, and actually create the control we once thought we were already born with.
In other words, while it’s good to remember that we weren’t born with the centrality we once thought we had, that doesn’t mean it will always be that way.
by Bri
We discovered math. It exists on it’s own. Ours is based on units of ten, but it really is a language of relationships. The symbols we use are anthropomorphic, but the laws we discover are eternal. One plus one equals two. That’s not going to change . E=MC squared is a law of this reality. The symbology we use to represent it is human. One of the main laws of the universe is entropy. Living system go contrary to that law with neotropy. Live life by the laws of neotropy. Find or create order!
by GAUSS
That mathematics is the language of relationships is true. We’ll not differ on that point.
by Bri
You seem to imply that you differ on other points. Yours is a formidable intellect. Please explain further. I enjoy your input!
by GAUSS
There is no element of masochism in my comment.
Your points are well taken.
by Gabriel
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any offense….I’m sick of the rampant cynicism that seems to be everywhere nowadays…I try to make a point of being almost annoyingly optimistic, because i feel their is actually reasons to feel optimistic about our conditions then people give credit for.
It’s not a case of marginalizing people’s troubles – just that, we have it alot better then people really think, and maybe it doesn’t make people feel better…but then again, it really should.
by GAUSS
No offense taken whatsoever. I admire and respect your optimism. Your are right that the world definitely needs more of that.
by Ian Clarke
Darwin’s detractors probably used words like “arrogant” and “fanciful” (in fact, they probably still do!) It’s only a theory – “disappointing” strikes me as a rather odd reaction.
by GAUSS
I agree 100% that our reality is something like what we might call a ‘hologram.’ That’s not the issue here.
by OmniDo
Well, there is the idea that circles do not exist, neither do spheres.
Instead, theyre all simply a collection of triangles offset to each other, a finite number of times.
The idea that there is no such thing as a perfect circle, is silly.
Anything Perfect is, by definition, “complete and wholly finished.”
If nothing can be perfect, (not even a circle because it apparently cannot have an exactly finite measurement) is to suggest that such geometry is inherently flawed.
If that is true, then you cant have anything finite at all, nor any absolutes (whoops) like 1 or 0, because they themselves, are finite.
I’d rather chalk this up to our juvenile comprehension of the universe and call it a day.
by melajara
For a bunch of ancient philosophers there were “space” and “matter”, space being an empty container and matter being rather dumb and uninteresting.
It happens that matter is seemingly surprisingly rich and complex and inasmuch we are able to probe it deeper, always more complex and richer.
The, what if the information projected were pitted to the observer perspicacity/understanding powers?
It would mean the reality projected here, is not necessarily the reality projected “there” where there are no observers. The universe would be mostly a dark room with light spots here or there, depending of the observers, a variation of the anthropic principle and abiding to a general principle of parsimony.
Of course there are even more radical interpretations, e.g. Bishop Berkeley’s “immaterialism”, but this is not reconcilable with physicalism or the noawadays fashionable emergentist monism many neuroscientists are favoring to explain the existence of the mind, alias “res cogitans”.
by melajara
The, what -> Then, what
Where is the Edit button, GRR!!!
by yawn
Old news, read Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.
by JC
I feel that a big question is Where are we in the sequence of the projection? The first take? The millionth? Or perhaps the final credits and the out-takes? Feels like the out-takes!
by trakk
According to some hindu scriptures “everything is our imagination ”
Looks like these guys came to the similar conclusion albeit using a different approach.
by Bri
They are far mote detailed about the nature of reality, and they don’t view it as imagination.
by trakk
well they have far more advanced technology and knowledge on which they could base this conclusion, than those ancient sages or whatever who wrote those scriptures.
As time passes, our knowledge about everything obviously gets more detailed
by trakk
And what those scriptures said was more in a philosophical point of view implying what we imagine as real is not. So if what these guys discovered is true then everything we imagine as real is infact a computer projection.
This is what i wanted to say.
by DCWhatthe
I wouldn’t trust my intelligence, or the intelligence of any human living today, to answer the simulation-or-not question. Reserving judgment until our intelligence is directly enhanced by several orders of magnitude.
by Marcos Marin
I feel your pain, my friend. But even though we are not very smart to find answers to particular questions, sometimes we can ask, with slightly better chance to answer, if there is an reachable answer at all. I’m afraid even smart beings would not be able pierce the unfathomable. =(
by Jerry
You can’t fathom a higher level of intelligence! It’s akin to a human understanding infinity or zero. We can surmise the general concept but the understanding is impossible, it’s the most annoying and absurd aspect of religion, assuming we could have a single bit of information on the functioning of a higher being. It’s like expecting bacteria to have the slightest clue about us.
by Marcos Marin
I acknowledged that. So if you cease the parroting long enough to think about what I said, you’ll realize we can decide more things about whatever can or cannot ever be possible than a bacteria. We may not be able to know how or why, but we sometimes, and I actually said RARELY, can know what or if.
Please, read my words more carefully.
by Guy Clinch
Hasn’t this “space-time is pixelated” stuff been debunked by the ESA?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/06/137634397/physicists-almost-certain-the-universe-is-not-a-hologram
by Editor
I can’t tell. There are some missing pixels in their statement.
by Marcos Marin
Those anti-aliased snobs!
by Bri
That part was cut out of the original Star Wars. She hid her message after her work out tape.
by Khannea Suntzu
Please update universe, this version sucks. Reboot reboot!
by Editor
13.7 billion years later…. “Oh no! It’s a repeat!”
by Bri
That’s the problem with these low budget reality networks. At least there are no commercials!
by Ilona Selke
Great article!!!
….. It ‘s an interactive hologram, which includes as part of the choices what we project into the light-beam…. A toroidal structure, …..but what creates that in the first place? Well…suffice it to know that we are active participators…. as practice will show. One just has to figure out the parameters.
What lies at the core of it all? That is the dance for which we are designed to dance…to turn our gaze towards that source…. and then the dance is blissful.
by Bri
True dat!
by RWoock
Princess Leia you are looking rather masculan.
But does this explain why we can only move forward in time and not backward? If reality is a projection, then is it playing out a predefined/predetermined reality? To what pupose?
by GratefulRob
Like a computer, ‘Time” is the iteration from one state to the next. Each iteration changes the state.
by Gorden Russell
Purpose? We don’t need no steenkeen purpose! Only the tin god running the simulation knows the purpose of the projection. Shakespeare had it right, “to the gods we are as flies to wanton boys.” Somewhere out in the void the cosmic keyboard is being clicked by Cthulhu. Only the elder gods know the purpose of all these manipulations.
Have you ever noticed how things come out of nowhere and just leave you flat? Just when you think that things can’t get much worse and you are struggling to pick yourself up, something else comes in out of left field to knock you down again, and then things are soooo much worse.
It’s as if we were all characters in a screenplay in the word processor of Yog-Sothoth. This elder one is writing the script for a cosmic episode of “Lost” and whenever things start to calm down for a minute, Nyralothep throws in an invisible dinosaur to eat the pilot and drops a polar bear down onto a tropical island just to keep things interesting. This is why shit happens.
by Gorden Russell
Oops! I miss-spelled “nyarlathotep.” Azathoth made me do it.
by Gorden Russell
“And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods — the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.”
—H. P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep
Yep, that’s gotta be the guy running the projection.
by Bri
Wow! How bleak! That’s not the god, or universe I see. Sounds like your in the clutches of Shiva. Shiva makes his bed with the skins of dead enemies and where’s a necklace of skulls. It’s really just a representation of the forces of annihllation. What has a beginning, has an end. I worship Vishnu expansions. In Hindu mythology, birth and death emanate from an eternal life. For this world to exist as a plane one thing at a time, it has to begin and end. In infinity ALL things begin and end an infinite number of times. Doesn’t matter which direction you choose, if you could continue for all of eternity, you would come across the same things an infinite number of times. The problem is that this is inconceivable to a finite mind. If you cloth your soul with death and despair, you can do this for a very long time. I’d rather see how things balance out. Allow things to have there season and fade. That way everything is renewed. The cycle is endless. Life is bitter sweet. Life is a bowl of cherries. If you just dive in and eat, you’ll break your teeth on the pits. You have to learn to eat around them, plant them, grow more cherries! Look at the woman born with no arms. She see her potential, not her impediments. If you wallow in your sorrows, you’ll never find your dreams.
by Rob Falgiano
Actually, for all our “unimportance” we’re just as important as any sentient beings. Our mortality gives our life an urgency that immortals may envy, just as we envy the endlessness of immortals. We are both, in my opinion. We die and get returned to the great immortal conscience and then we come back again. Possibly in karmic circles.
by Bri
Funny you should say that. That’s been my experience.
by Rob Falgiano
Your personal experience? I’d love to hear. I do believe reincarnation is possible, whether this reality is virtual or not. But for some reason I don’t think I’ve been here before, though perhaps other planets.
by Marcos Marin
On the contrary, if it was a simulation THEN going backwards in time would be feasible. Same backwardness for the pixelation argument, dont bother, those people are messed up, they are supposed to.
by Rob Falgiano
I think perhaps the purpose is the experience. With the limitations of mortality what meaning will we give to life? Will we celebrate it, in all it’s absurdity? Being immortal would be no improvement. What meaning could life have when we have no incentive or urgency to achieve? Knowing everything as an immortal would be no favor. So I figure it’s all about the cycles. Live, die, returned to infinity, then try again.
by Anonymous
Leia’s more gangsta than I remember.
by Xav
i didn’t remember princess leia looking so badass…
by Marcos Marin
and only then Luke realized something was amiss… :-D
by Marcos Marin
For those who don’t like generalities:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5988347/star-wars-incest
“omg, I kissed my own sister!”
“Luke, I’m your BROTHAa”
(see how I cleverly made 2 jokes in 1?!)
by Bri
Are you kidding me? Look at the look on Lukes face! He’s loving every minute of it!
by Marcos Marin
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
by Bri
Ones and zeros. Sounds like Yin’s and Yang’s to me. Computronium is the physical manefestation of spirit. Take AI and multiply it times infinity and you’d get god like intelligence. The problem boils down to a finite in comparison to an infinite. Another Yin And Yang. Opposites of the same coin. All of everything comes from the one. The one is comprised of everything.
by Camaxtli
Seems to me that once you run into an infinity, you’ve hit a roadblock. It means there’s something not actually understood because more information is needed, or its not being perceived or conceptualized properly. Its a sign that a line of reasoning or investigation needs to be adjusted.
by Bri
The problem with infinity is that it’s endless and beginingless. As soon as you try to define it, your examples are meaningless. No matter how large a set of information that you use to compare it to, it is effectively invisible to actual infinity. Imagine everything in the universe, multiply it times the largest conceivable number, and compare that to infinity. Infinity just keeps on going. No matter how large your sum was it will disappear in comparison. Infinity is in every square inch of everything in every conceivable direction and dimension. That’s what is real. What we see is an illusion created by consciousness, or what we refer to as God. Infinite knowledge. Infinite power. Inconceivable to a finite mind.
by Camaxtli
I think infinity is the illusion and is not an acceptable answer to any useful question.
by Marcos Marin
You are right, Camaxtli. But let us be less “general” lest others begin to cry around us, shall we?
>> “or its not being perceived or conceptualized properly. Its a sign that a line of reasoning or investigation needs to be adjusted.”
Yes, but more specifically, by an adjusting of measurement UNIT.
If others still need more particulars, divide 1 by 3 and then compare the result to the SAME NUMBER but represented in base 3, that is, your adjusted “conceptualization”, as you put it.
Maybe someone still need even more particulars? Sure, with a little bit more work, even irrational numbers can be used, and YES, they ARE infinite! And yet used for comparisons all the time! For saecula saeculorum… Here, try taking the integral of a circle’s circumference or finding its area, now do it without ADJUSTING to the appropriate UNIT Pi, an irrational, INFINITE, value. There is a whole set of different infinities! Actually an infinite set, misguided foolish mathematicians have actually gone crazy about it, lol.. boy, I’m so wise it hurts!
by Camaxtli
I am struck blind with revelation Marcos. :) Do you get pretty good internet reception up there on that mountain top?
by Marcos Marin
At the top,
of my Hand made Ivory Tower,
At the top,
of my Hand made Mountain Top,
You do not,
get Broad band,
Broad band,
GET YOU.
by SigLNy
Just a quick point. Infinite sets CAN have beginnings. Like the set of natural numbers for example, the paradigm of an infinite set. It goes to infinity but begins with 1.
by rob falgiano
I agree completely. I’m writing a book that touches about this topic as we speak…
by Alan
Nonsense. Infinity is well understood. Ask any mathematician.
by GAUSS
Infinity is partially understood. :) The mathematicians certainly do their part.
by Rob Falgiano
The universe is paradoxical. That is the nature of reality. Once this is accepted then all things become possible. You are trying to find an easy answer to a cosmic situation. Not to be found. We’ll never resolve which came first – “god” or the universe, and either answer would be paradoxical.
by Bri
No question in my mind. Infinite intelligence came first. Everything only appears real. Merrily, merrily merrily , life is but a dream.
by Rob Falgiano
Well said. And I fully agree.
by Camaxtli
So, the obligatory question: Is the quantum computer doing the projecting ‘real’ or is it virtual computer projection of yet another quantum computer? Oh look, infinite regression.
by Gorden Russell
“…you’re making me feel like I’d never been born.” — John Lennon