How Bandersnatch is wrong about suicide
By: Dr. Jedediah Walls
Tags: Black Mirror, Simulation Hypothesis, Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Mental Health

Netflix’s “Bandersnatch” let’s your choose your own adventure.

Netflix’s new Black Mirror episode, titled “Bandersnatch” is amazing. The protagonist is led through a choose-your-own-adventure hellscape that the viewer controls. While youtube offered us the ability to create these kinds of choice-led narratives, this takes it to a whole new level.

Before I go farther, I guess I want to start my own choose-your-own-adventure with you.

The first choice that you are presented with is you’re okay with spoilers or not. There are spoilers from here on out, so if you don’t want to see them it’s time to move on. If you continue forward, it’s because you are okay with us talking about the story of Bandersnatch in detail. Do you accept? Or do you refuse?

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Okay, our choice is now locked in.

The second choice in front of you is to know that this ultimately a conversation about suicide, but how suicide is portrayed in science fiction. The subject of suicide is real and difficult, with serious considerations. If you are reading this because you are feeling suicidal, or you want to tackle suicide in a more serious way, then please click here.

Our take is about science fiction, and it’s not so serious. It’s looking at how science fiction portrays these digital multiverses, and ultimately it’s creative fun. I hope to challenge this idea that digital multiverses are hopeless. Call this a hopepunk interpretation of simulation theory.

With these two choices made, we can tell our story.

Let us begin. Image credit: Netflix

One of the biggest threads in the story revolves around Colin, and Colin’s conspiracies about the future and the P.A.C.S. mystery. It seems that Colin has seen the hidden mysteries of the universe and that he knows things about the various multiple timelines of reality that are unfolding around him.

And then he dies by suicide.

At least, that’s one of the options provided. Colin explains that it doesn’t matter if he dies because, in some other timeline, he’s still alive.

Colin doesn’t worry about his life in this branch of the multiverse because, as far as he is concerned, other Colins in other timelines are going to keep going. In Colin’s view, his life is irrelevant because in all the other versions of him continue to survive.

This is a theme that we see constantly in multiverse stories, perhaps most famously in Rick and Morty’s theory of the infinite Ricks. Because the universe is vast and infinite, the actions of most Ricks are meaningless and don’t really matter.

And I just want to say that this is complete hogwash.

Hogwash, you say? Image credit: Netflix

We see that perspective a lot in multiverse-based fiction. The idea that a multiverse = meaninglessness is a major story arc of the science fiction. It predates computers and simulations to some extent. Earlier in history, Friedrich Nietzsche proposed the idea of the eternal return: that existence was repeating on an infinite loop. He said that whatever actions you took, you locked into time to be forever repeated. Though Nietzsche wanted us to love this fate, it still sounds pretty bleak.

The thing to understand here is that this is just one interpretation of the way multiple realities work and there’s no place where this rule is etched in stone. This is fiction, and there’s literally no reason it really has to be that way. Ultimately, it’s a trope, just another plot device to tell a story.

What would the purpose be of a collection of choose-your-own-spacetimes?

One take on the multiverse is simulation theory, which assumes that all these multiverses are part of a huge virtual simulation. That’s VERY fitting for Stefan’s world, as it seems to not just be a multiverse, but a digital multiverse heavily influenced by computer and code. So for the purposes of what I have to say here I am assuming that we are discussing not just a multiverse, but a virtual, simulated multiverse. And this gets pretty relevant for Colin.

In other places, I have described The Monument: an theoretical information-based multiverse that incorporates all possibilities across all timelines. The Monument is everything that happens from the big bang forward — and every possible thing that could ever be after.

If reality was a choose-your-own-adventure, the Monument would be the whole book. It would be every forking path ever possible. And probably a few that are impossible. It sounds very much like what Colin claims to be trapped in — an endlessly repeating simulated construct of all the possible choices that branch out in front of us.

If Colin could somehow step outside of the Monument and look at himself, he’d see the sum totality of everything he could be: all possible choices he could ever make across all possible timelines. If you were Rick from Rick and Morty, you would see all the infinite Ricks. As for Colin, it’s enough to fool himself into thinking that he is not unique, important, or necessary. Colin compares it to Pacman: endlessly running through a maze.

But I want to offer a different perspective, and it has everything to do with WHY such a Monument could exist. What would the purpose be of a collection of choose-your-own-spacetimes? If we are all Pacman (or Ms. Pacman), is our existence meaningless?

“Your existence is not meaningless, Stefan!” Image credit: Netflix

The way that I see it, our existence inside of a Monument is quite meaningful. As unique actors with at least minimal free choice in an information system, we have the unique ability to take the narrative into drastically different places. And that’s why, if we did live in a multiverse, we are not just meaningless drones, but fundamentally important parts of the system.

Colin wouldn’t see all his choices laid out. He’d see a lot of his choices as pretty common, but he’d see places where he could open up whole new pathways. Turns out the system isn’t fixed or set, but always changing.

These kind of science fictions are more powerful when they treat us as important parts of the system rather than hopeless cogs inside it.

Our role as independent agents inside a digital multiverse gives us a perspective that no artificial intelligence could simulate any better. We would all experience our vector of space-time in a totally unique way that allows us the possibility of taking it directions otherwise not explored. Simulated multiverses wouldn’t lock us in a cage as much as present us opportunities at every moment to unlock something new, unknown, and totally outside the standard.

It turns out that Pacman’s maze can be broken. It is possible to find cracks in the game and get to the “end screen” which opens up possibilities the programmers didn’t plan for. You start on their maze but you end up playing a game they never imagined. Most people agree with me that this is the real ending and purpose of the game.

PAC-MAN’s elusive end screen.

Turns out there’s some speculation out there about free will inside of very determined systems. For instance, Stephen Wolfram shows examples in his work about how things can follow a determined system and yet still exhibit no definite law. He muses that even in the determined system there is a means for things to have free will.

So as above, so below?

If I was programming a vast multiverse, I’d program it specifically to see the unique things that pop out. If I found something I didn’t program for, I’d devote a lot of attention and resources to exploring it. I’d be fascinated, because, in a future where everything can be simulated in every possible way, new and spontaneous actions are the ultimate treasure hunt.

So if you know anyone who is using simulation theory or the multiverse to portray the universe as meaningless and hopeless, this is what I want you to tell them. In this kind of science fiction, the goal isn’t to be hopelessly trapped. The goal of the multiverse is to find all the Easter eggs and split-screens that we possibly can. I encourage science fiction writers to look at it this way: that death does not set someone free. Instead, death just takes one whole instance of you out of the running. It locks you out from any alternative user paths that lead to more Easter eggs. Maybe the point is to make it to the next level and become the one instance of you that keeps going. Maybe that alone makes your life the best kind of Easter egg there is.