This shows to me that I can make good stuff. In a multiplayer setting with some competitive element it might even have been great.
My game prototyping tool Trabant I think is great at least on a theoretical level, but I can't be sure as I've never spent time on dogfooding.
So I can do good things and I can do great things in theory. That feels reassuring now that I'm about to embark on writing a book on afterlife and what not. The book is supposed to be science-based but written in a popular style. The paradox and conundrum of 'popular' and 'science' aside, I do too feel that great science needs five things:
- highly significant evidence,
- reproducibility and a large body of reproduced experiments,
- falsifiable statements,
- skeptics within and outside the field,
- acceptable theories to make findings fit with other large bodies of science.
The last one is required to attain a critical mass of convinced scientists, which then will affect our perception of the world. Many findings lacking a credible theory have been dismissed as junk science. This is a well-known fact, with plate tectonics and meteorites as classic examples ("stones don't fall down from the sky, there are no stones in the sky").
This is also where parapsycology in general falls short, and I'm not even able to make sense out of it. I'm convinced that we have souls, but I highly doubt that they exist inside our (flat?) 4D universe. They might be outside of time entirely, but that would be very strange and would not explain human souls sticking around in places of their life and death for some time (for which there are some indications that some do).
The universe might be built-up by more than four dimensions, but that would be equally nutty as we can't even envision more than three space dimensions.
The only answer seems to be that there are parallel dimensions, and that the universe here is a sandbox which our souls can step in and out of. The other side is by some (who've experienced it and come back remembering) explained as having different "levels," where animals are lower and humans higher, etc. Hm. It doesn't fit with spacetime the way we know it.
So possibly parapsychology is only just good science, not great; and in which case I'll only be able to produce a good book and not a great one. Argh. I'm not caving for this little bump in the road though. :)
