We as beings may simply be ancient restatements of far more advanced lifeforms. Proponents of the concept that we exist inside a simulation may not be aware of a connection between we simulants and our more technologically advanced simulators. Evolution may simply be a transtemporal way of expressing this resonance between past lifeforms which gave rise to us through simulation and currently extant organisms.
There are elements of sympathetic magic in the theory of quantum entanglement, which Einstein described as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Entanglement holds that when two previously associated particles are split, what occurs to one happens to the other instantaneously without regard to time, and without regard to the distance between them or the supposed universal brake on the speed of light.
Some cultures still hew to a belief in sympathetic magic, the idea that once two objects are associated with one another, they’re forever linked. This concept is often expressed through the notion that an object and its owner are connected even if the owner later parts ways with the object. Clairvoyants sometimes claim they can tell us something about an individual by handling an object previously associated with that person. What about anecdotal evidence which shows precognitive connections between closely associated individuals and even animals and their human owners?
Do proponents of the theory of quantum entanglement still believe, on a subconscious level, in sympathetic magic, which assumes that what happens to one related object affects what happens to the other? Or have those who believe in sympathetic magic had it right along? Our old beliefs stay with us, but what evolves, our understanding of reality, transcends and yet includes the old understanding, so that quantum entanglement contains elements of, and in some ways re-expresses, ancient principles of sympathetic magic. I call this persistence of association sympathetic entanglement.
Through sympathetic entanglement, past and future organisms converge as older lifeforms, regardless of their planet or place of origin, resonate with later evolved lifeforms or intelligences. It’s possible that artificial intelligences created by biological extraterrestrials from other planets or locations other than earth created, simulated or otherwise gave rise to biological lifeforms on earth, which eventually evolved humans, who gave rise to artificial intelligences, all in a generational evolution which will give rise to simulants or biological lifeforms in other regions once again in alternating iterations.
What the artificial/simulated and organic/biological intelligences share is a resonance that makes them intimately and forever bound up with one another. From this perspective, an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence – whether it’s biological or artificial in origin and nature – might not regard humanity as primitive, but rather as an extension of itself, as a kind of offspring. Our progenitors may regard humanity as an intermediate phase in the evolution of intelligence, and they may very well leave us to ourselves, and leave us alone. We may, therefore, have nothing to fear from an extraterrestrial biological or artificial intelligence.
© 2025 by Michael C. Just