Quantum Dice or Random Connections?

"God does not play dice with the universe," quipped Einstein.

While we now know this statement is patently false, I was reminded of the sentiment lately, as I was experiencing a little trouble with a creation I was trying to build in my SL home in Discordia. I find that the name of my home region is quite appropriate on occasions. The fnords of Linden Labs often cause uneasiness and outright consternation; try as I might to figure out why they've set up this or that script function in such a manner as to not work intuitively.

Anyhow, as I was saying, before the fnord led me off down the yellow brick road of doom, Dice, and their use, was the project I was working on. You see, I was building a dice popper. Yes, basically the exact same type of item one finds in the center of the boardgame "Trouble" (Milton Bradley/Hasbro games). Only mine is bigger than avatar sized, and contains -two- dice. One pink, and one blue.

So without returning to the problems I was having with the script, I basically, finally got the thing to work. The first iteration took two dice and continually bounced them around and around like a lotto machine on meth. I hadn't gotten the command structure included to actually control on and off, so this was the mesmerists dream of a swinging pocketwatch. The only problem was everytime I logged back on I got the message: "Your item D6 has been returned to your inventory lost and found from region so-and-so because it went offworld."

What the hell?

So one night I was determined to get to the bottom of the problem. I sat and watched the Popper. I was in IM's with people so it wasn't as big an ordeal as it might have been. Suddenly, from the corner of my screen I caught the sight of one of the dice flying -through- the popper's semi-transparent, virtually-plexiglass walls. Was it lag? .......Nope, sure enough, the message came through chat. D6 has been returned yada yada yada.

Damn.

Apparently, the dice hypnosis machine that I was planning to take over the world with, was subject to bouts of quantum tunneling on a macroscopic scale. Who knew the physics engine was that detailed?

So, this leads me down another of many myriad pathways that oft keep me from sleeping. I have spoken briefly to Maggie about interconnections before. If we are to assume matter and energy are interchangeable, or time and space, or any of a whole host of other symmetries, and that the concept of entanglement holds true (read or see 'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene for further information. or Wiki it ;) ), then we are all interconnected.

Carl Jung espoused this as the collective unconscious. The transfer of information, archetypes, feelings, (energy? data?) through unconscious means to others. So....if you believe that an energy pattern, a 'soul' is reincarnated beyond this shell we use in this lifetime, in this particular universe or dimension (hmmm...are we trapped in this universe of 11 dimensions or can the pattern exist and traverse within other multiverses with differing sets of physical laws?) then, by the concept of entanglement, we must have come across some of the other Patterns that make up other 'souls' several times before.

Which brings me back to SL and the internet in general. The world itself, through the means of this global connectivity, has become somewhat smaller. The possiblities of meeting 'souls' interconnected to your own through shared energy (love, hate, friendship, death, sex, etc. . .) is real and easier, since the energy is connected regardless of physical distances, although the physical bodies of the people are not. Therefore, to get to my point in a rather roundabout way, could we not send and receive energy-connections; friendship, love, what have you, to others through an analogy of quantum tunnelling called Second Life? I believe the souls with the connections know the answers to that.