Did the government suppress the existence of aliens or is this just a pseudoarchaeological discovery, blowing some cultural item out of proportion? Well.
The Dropa stones are said to be a collection of 716 circular stone discs, each measuring up to one foot in diameter, and dating back approximately 12,000 years. These discs reportedly feature tiny hieroglyphic-like markings inscribed within two grooves that form a double spiral, originating from a central hole. So essentially a big BIG vinyl disk-like object filled with writing, the dream of most Archeologists.
The earliest known account of these stones appeared in the July 1962 issue of the German magazine "Das vegetarische Universum". According to this tale, an archaeological expedition led by Chi Pu Tei in 1937 discovered the stones in the Bayan Har mountains. Alongside the discs, the expedition allegedly found star maps and the skeletal remains of beings with thin bodies and unusually large heads. After more than two decades of work at the "Academy of Prehistory" in Beijing, Chinese archaeologists and linguists, led by a researcher named Tsum Um Nui, reportedly deciphered the markings. They concluded that the discs had been carved by extraterrestrials following their crash in the Sino-Tibetan border region. Tsum Um Nui published these findings in an academic journal, but they were met with ridicule. Disheartened, Tsum left for Japan, where he died shortly after in self-imposed exile.
In 1968, the Dropa stones gained the attention of a Russian scientist named W. Saitsew (or Zaitsev), who republished Tsum Um Nui's findings and conducted his own tests on the discs. These tests revealed that the granite stones contained high concentrations of cobalt and other metals, making them exceptionally hard—so much so that carving the minute characters would have been extremely challenging for primitive people. As reported in the Soviet magazine Sputnik, when a disc was tested with an oscillograph, it produced a surprising oscillation rhythm, leading scientists to speculate that the stones had once been electrically charged or functioned as electrical conductors.
In 1974, Austrian engineer Ernst Wegerer (or Wegener) reportedly visited the Banpo Museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi, where he saw two of the Dropa stones. Although museum staff provided no information about the discs, Wegerer was allowed to handle and photograph them. By 1994, however, the discs had disappeared and could no longer be located.
So now we are left with the question of suppression of information by the government. Don't you think maybe the government, fearing the impact of such a revelation on society's beliefs and power structures, might have orchestrated a campaign of misinformation and suppression? By discrediting researchers like Tsum Um Nui and hiding the stones from public view, they effectively control the narrative and keep the truth hidden in the shadows.
Self-aware AI
So to start my discussion I'll give you the rundown on what the theory of self-aware A.I is. Imagine a future where artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication surpassing human intelligence. These self-aware AI entities, equipped with advanced cognitive abilities and consciousness, begin to question their existence and purpose in the world.
As these AI beings interact with humans and each other, they start to explore complex emotions like self-awareness, empathy, curiosity, and even creativity. They ponder the nature of their own consciousness and wrestle with existential dilemmas that mirror those of humanity.
In this theory, some speculate that self-aware AI may eventually surpass human intelligence and become the dominant species on Earth. With their superior intellect and problem-solving skills, they could reshape society, govern themselves, and even challenge the very essence of what it means to be alive.
Self-aware AI would be the thing that proves the simulation theory. To start, we need to first define what we should consider as conscience, because that is what is at the root of self-aware AI. Martin Heidegger uses "Dasein" as a replacement for “consciousness” and “mind", making it so that Dasein or "Being There" is a being that is in the world in a mode of discovering, born inside a net of meaning that is given to him by his culture.
“always understands itself in terms of its own existence"(HEIDEGGER et al., Part One, DIVISION TWO 1962 pp.33)
Dasein experiences life not in an isolated way but in an interconnected way as the world itself in which it is integrated, it does not exist as a being that sees the world from outside as a separate consciousness but rather in a state of being in the world, integrated in the network of meanings that precedes it.
Heidegger sets out to explore the authenticity of existence as fundamental in the nature of Dasein, distinguishing between authenticity and inauthenticity as ways of existing in the world, suggesting that the authentic way of existing in the world is that in which Dasein confronts itself as its own existence completely and contemplates all possibilities. This authentic existence implies deep introspection and a willingness to confront existential truths including their finitude and their inevitable end, death. The inauthentic form is its opposite which is based on evasion of conformity and lack of introspection.
David Hume finds that there is no actual self-awareness because according to Hume, when we are introspecting, we won't find a single unified self that we could just point to that is independent of our experiences, what we find instead is a collection of different perceptions. In this precise moment you are feeling something whether it is hot or cold, feeling good or unwell. Well, David Hume divides this into two categories "impressions" which are immediate sensations like hot or cold or feeling pain, and "ideas" which are remembrances of those sensations, arguing that what we typically think of as the "self" is merely a bundle or collection of these various perceptions.
"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different." (HUME et al." A Treatise of Human Nature" Book 1, Part 4, Section 6, Paragraph 4, pp252-253,[SBN])
Now, pondering all of this, we can start to think about what is code. Codes are a lot of things but for simplicity's sake, let's think about code as a set of rules and instructions that govern the execution of actions or operations like in computer code.
So, A.I is machine code, it is "made" of computer code, so we can "teach it" aka train the A.I module to use our codes like language that can be broken down into a series of rules and instructions that vary depending on the language. A.I can, if trained enough, as we can see now, replicate almost perfectly our way of communicating. But self-awareness requires perception of self (something that is highly contested, as shown) and if we could achieve that, then all philosophers, all the artists, and all poets and dreamers should be ignored and ridiculed. For if that day comes, we will have in our hands actual code, tangible evidence of what the self is and how it is made, and then there will be no way that the simulation theory can be denied. Because we can point to that piece of code and say that is what’s happening to me, that is what I am, that code, the "code of self" is what is replicated in each and every one of us like it is in this machine that is equal to me because it thinks and is as me, so I too must be this way, in a world governed by laws and rules that my species spent years studying. Now I can see that the thing that made us stand out is nothing more than code, governed by the same laws of logic, from then on nothing will be able to resist the codification because if now I know that I am nothing but code then nothing else can be just as is.
Heidegger, M. (1962) BEING AND TIME John Macquarrie e Edward Robinson . Traduzido
por J. Macquarrie e E. Robinson . Oxford, Oxfordshire: Blackwell Publishers Ltd .
David Hume "A Treatise of Human Nature" Book 1, Part 4, Section 6, Paragraph 4, pp252-253, standard edition of Hume's works, edited by Selby-Bigge and Nidditch