You've all heard phrases like, "He lives in another world", or "Visiting another country is like visiting another world", "A good book is your ticket to another world", "the world of finance", "a child's world", "a fantasy world". All of these are some form of system or community with its own rules. They are places with enough freedom to be able to completely immerse yourself within. Each of these and many others, if they change over time, follow the course of evolution.

Previously I've explained how evolution shapes the world to get it growing, and different stages of growth. Here I'd like to describe a transitional period from a late stage of growth: intelligence and prediction, to the early stages of a world. Like many things in nature, the development of worlds can follow a cycle, the end of one leading to the beginning of another.

One of the benefits of intelligence is the ability to predict the future. Nothing magical, but for example if someone throws a baseball to you, you can usually predict its future position with enough accuracy to put out your hand and grab it. As evolution improves this ability it can become quite powerful, but it can never be perfect.

Simulating an entire world to predict its future would be a dream come true, but for anyone existing in that world, a perfect simulation requires a perfect recreation. You don't get the benefits of speed or flexibility of conditions. For that, you must give up accuracy. The baseball may land a few centimeters outside the center of your hand, so wear a glove. Once you do decide to give up accuracy, you plant the seeds of a new world.

Your simulation will contain simple rules, but not the rules of the world it's simulating. It will have flexible conditions, not necessarily the ones it's simulating. The content of the simulation can also be flexible. It may start out simulating the chosen world, but it is not the chosen world, it is a new one. Depending on how the simulation is constructed, it may be able to simulate a completely different world. Put another way, it IS a completely different world.

Once you've built your simulator, you can build another. You can use one to simulate one world, and the other to simulate another. You can set each one up as you please and the simulation will run on the rules it simulates. They may not be "real" worlds, but they are your worlds, your creation. Here we have discovered creativity.

Throughout the history of our universe this process may have happened many times. Most notably we have the human brain and the computer. The human brain allowed cultures, many different creative worlds that develop far faster than biological evolution, but use simple tools. Some of the most complex cultural tools were biological creatures. The computer allowed non-cultural technology, which develops far faster than culture, but for the most part still simulates cultural forms. Theater became movies, carriage became car, material became plastic, etc.

The future will be far more creative than the present. We have yet to see all the new worlds that technology makes possible, and it is progressing faster than we can keep up with. I'm looking forward to the day when our wealthy citizens grow tired of luxury and move on to competing with each other by showcasing their creativity. I'm looking forward to the new Renaissance.