The fly wasn’t the weird part. The information was.
A few days ago, I made a video about a fly that woke up inside a computer.
Most people focused on the fly.
Which makes sense.
A fly living inside a machine is strange enough on its own.
But the more I sat with it, the more I started thinking that the fly was actually the least interesting part of the story.
Because the fly wasn’t copied.
Nobody scanned a body.
They scanned a brain.
Every connection.
Every pathway.
Every signal.
And what they ended up holding wasn’t really a brain at all.
It was the pattern of one.
The information.
And somehow that was enough.
The digital fly still moved.
Still reacted.
Still behaved like a fly.
And that’s the part that messes with me.
What If We’ve Got It Backwards?
We all quietly assume the physical thing is what matters.
The body.
The brain.
The atoms.
The stuff you can touch.
That’s what feels real.
But what if we’ve got it backwards?
What if the information is the real thing?
And the physical object is just where it happens to be stored?
Once you start looking at the world through that lens, it’s everywhere.
Your DNA is information.
Your memories are information.
Money is information.
A book is just paper until information is written onto it.
A hard drive is just metal until information is stored inside it.
Take the information away and the object suddenly loses most of its meaning.
So if a handful of instructions can recreate the behaviour of a living thing...
What does that make us?
The Problem With Calling It “Just A Copy”
The easy answer is that we’re different.
We’re real.
The fly is a copy.
But the experiment doesn’t let you say that quite so cleanly.
The fly was a copy too.
And it still did everything a fly normally does.
So whatever line you want to draw between yourself and the fly...
You have to draw it somewhere other than behaviour.
And that’s harder than it sounds.
The Two Books Thought Experiment
Here’s the thing that flipped the idea for me.
Imagine I hand you two books.
One contains every discovery humanity has ever made.
The other is completely blank.
Same paper.
Same weight.
Same size.
Physically, they’re almost identical.
But nobody would call them equally valuable.
The value was never in the paper.
The value was in the information.
Once you notice that, you start seeing it everywhere.
DNA is basically code.
Your body reads it like instructions.
Your eyes.
Your skin.
Your organs.
Your brain.
All assembled from information.
A video game looks like a world.
Mountains.
Cities.
Rivers.
Characters.
But underneath, it’s information pretending to be a place.
The player sees a world.
The machine only ever sees code.
The Part That Gets Weird
Now things start getting strange.
If the fly was just a pattern of information, then that pattern was moved.
Out of a living brain.
Into a machine.
Two completely different materials.
Cells in one.
Silicon in the other.
And the pattern didn’t seem to care.
It worked in both.
Think about what that quietly implies.
The information didn’t need the original body.
It didn’t need biology.
It just needed somewhere that could hold the pattern and run it.
If that’s true, then the material was never the point.
Carbon.
Silicon.
Whatever comes next.
They’re just places for the pattern to sit.
Interchangeable containers.
Okay... I Need To Slow Down
I need to stop for a second.
Because you have no idea how many dots I’m trying to connect in my head while writing this.
And I can already feel where my brain wants to go.
It wants to go somewhere conspiratorial.
Somewhere completely unhinged.
And I’m deliberately not letting it.
Because the second you start talking about information existing independently of the thing storing it, your mind starts reaching for huge answers.
Maybe too quickly.
So let me slow down.
The Song Analogy
Think of a song.
The same song can play from a vinyl record.
A CD.
A phone.
A laptop.
Different objects.
Same song.
You’d never say the song is made of plastic.
Or metal.
Or glass.
The object isn’t the song.
It’s just carrying it.
So what is the song actually made of?
That’s the question that stuck with me.
Because some scientists have started asking something similar about reality itself.
Not whether reality is fake.
Not whether we’re definitely living in a simulation.
Just this:
What if the physical world isn’t the deepest layer?
What if it’s only the layer we experience?
The Folder Icon
Think about clicking a folder on your computer.
You’re not actually touching the file.
You’re touching an icon.
A little picture standing in for something much more complicated happening underneath.
Something you never directly see.
What if reality works like that?
What if matter is the icon?
And information is the thing underneath?
I know how that sounds.
But honestly, so did the fly.
A few years ago, if you’d told me there was an insect walking around inside a computer, I’d have laughed.
Now it’s just true.
And that’s the uncomfortable pattern.
Every time technology takes a leap forward, something we were certain about suddenly becomes a question.
Maybe Matter Isn’t The Bottom Layer
Solid ground turned out to be mostly empty space.
Thoughts turned out to be chemistry.
Again and again, things that seemed fundamental got demoted to something running on top of something else.
Matter feels like the floor of reality.
The thing everything else is built on.
The thing we’ve been standing on this whole time.
But people have been wrong about the floor before.
Again.
And again.
And again.
So maybe matter isn’t the bottom layer.
Maybe it’s just another layer.
Maybe information sits underneath it.
And if that’s true...
Then whatever we’re standing on right now...
Probably isn’t the bottom.
And honestly?
I think that’s where the rabbit hole really begins.