Science tells us that matter/energy may be pixels of information

reply to post by Matrix Rising

One interpretation of what? I don't understand what your talking about.
You keep talking about one interpretation of this and one interpretation
of that but what are you talking about?

Interpretation:
There is evidence. And there are multiple theories to explain the "hows and whys" that evidence is our result. But each of those multiple theories explain the available evidence equally well, each is equally predictive of behavior, and there isn't any particular reason to accept one over another.

For example, the Copenhagen interpretation as opposed to the Many worlds interpretation.

You say you don't know what's occuring outside of
observation but why don't you know?

How can I?

It's been written about in peer reviewed journals
and experiments have confirmed this.

That may be true, but it is irrelevant on many levels.

We're questioning the very nature of existence here. We're saying that the computer screens we're each looking at might not really exist. Given that context...how can you take on faith a peer reviewed journal that also might not exist written and reviewed by people who might not exist discussing experiements that might never have been performed?

If all physical matter in the universe might be a hologram...wouldn't it be reasonable to suggest that all your journals, experimenters, peer-reviewer, experiements and experimental results might also be holograms?

a legitimate science of consciousness will be difficult to establish because it will necessarily delve into the realm of the irrational. the arguments thus far in this thread are evidence of this.

but do not mistake "irrational" for "not-real" or "unimportant".


the psycho-nautical explorers bear the responsibility of venturing out and bringing back the treasures of the new world. this is the only way that an irrational science can be legitimized and eventually codified. in order to leave these shores, it is most important to have an accurate map of our existing reality.


i am amazed with people that think this type of thinking is a waste of time. the lack of answers to this particular set of questions is the most profoundly dissatisfying aspect of my own existence. in fact, to me, it is the ONLY thing that really matters.


thanks, OP! its pretty rare that one of these "quantum" ATS threads is worth the server space it is hosted on.

Originally posted by LordBucket
...How can I?...

in John C. Lilly's "Programming the Human Bio-Computer", the doctor lays out the framework of many meta-levels of reality which are necessary for the functional perception of reality as we know it.

he goes further to offer the reader an experimental setup by which these meta realities can be explored and studied.

the conclusion of his experiments suggest that the faculties needed to experience frames of reality which supercede our current reality are an innate but latent part of our own consciousness.


i suspect that you, lordbucket, are already somewhat familiar with these concepts and are only playing around with the notion of objectivity by asking the question quoted above. yes?

reply to post by tgidkp

i suspect that you, lordbucket, are already somewhat familiar
with these concepts and are only playing around with the notion
of objectivity by asking the question quoted above. yes?

I've not read of Lilly's particular framework, but generally speaking yes, I'm familiar with a variety of possible frameworks.

However, I would suggest that the question I posed stands regardless of the framework we choose. Even if we accept the various levels of Lilly's biocomputer, I would still say that awareness is only aware of what it is aware of. I mean...it's a statement so obviously self-evident that it seems silly even to say it.

There may well be "higher levels" of awareness of which component awarenesses are part. And those levels of awareness may be aware of everything their components are aware of, even though the componenets are not aware of what the "higher levels" of awareness are aware of. Or there may be other possible relationships. A is aware of B is aware of C is aware of A. Or there may be partial overlaps. There are many possible arrangements.

This may call into question who the "I" is in all this, when your "biocomputer" is a collection of awarenesses overlapping to some degree or another. But it doesn't change the basic question: how can an observer know what's going on outside of its observation?

My "mind" may be aware of my brain. My brain may be aware of nerve impulses going back and forth between organs. But the "me" who is writing this has never seen my brain, and has no direct awareness of nerve impulses. I merely theorize them as one possible explanation for the apparent relation between my thoughts and the behavior of my body.

And there may well be a "higher awareness" that is aware of the sum of all these parts, as well as a yet "higher" awareness that is aware of the sum of all these parts for all of humanity collectively, as well as an "All" awareness that is aware of everything that exists...and from one possible perspective you could say that all of everything that exists is "I".

But even if true, any particular awareness is only aware of what it is aware of. For any given I, that I can only know what it is aware of. The moment it knows more, it's a different I.

reply to post by Matrix Rising


So what makes RU real? How do those in RU know they are not just part of a simulated Universe similar to our own. See that's the point of the brain in the vat idea, we just don't know, we can't know.

Originally posted by ALOSTSOUL
So if I could some how trick my brain into believe there is no wall then I will be able to run through it?

I like the idea of this holographic/projected universe, however I just can't wrap my head around it.

Well, and that is the crux of it. You can't trick your brain into making it disappear. But you CAN "trick" the Universal Wavefront.

Like in the Matrix when the spoon bending kid says, "The question isn't can you bend the spoon or not. The question is, is there a spoon?" (or something like that).

There are tales of monks in Tibet that can accomplish "impossible" things. The same stories are told of specific people in various cultures throughout history.

Now, i am not a proponant of this theory. But i enjoy pondering it a lot, as it is very interesting.

What if the universe is like a fractal? If that is so, everything that we see and think of as enormous in the universe, could be fit in a tiny dot within a dot at the very edge of one tiny arm of the fractal.

Play with this to get what I mean. Imagine that everything that we see, actually exists deep deep within the fractal. Keep going in deeper and things seem to get impossibly small.

But how would we be able to prove where we are within it?

We call atoms the smallest units of matter. I know we do have the big hadron collider and people working on string theory. But what if even beyond the strings things are still made up of smaller parts? What if there is no limit to it. What if everything is made of smaller things going on into infinity.

The whole universe could be one small particle that makes up something we can never even comprehend.

Maybe all the galaxies, stars and planets have a function for some larger piece of matter, that we can never understand.

Maybe we too have a function, in carrying out our every day lives, that we don't understand, but somehow benefits something.

Originally posted by loner007
So in order for this theory to work means we have to acknowledge that an observer needs to be present and that means that the universe itself is the observer and it has to be intelligent in order for all those bits not to run amok and that life as we know it is an extension of that same observer manipulating all the bits......

..or it is being maintained by a group or groups primarily invisible to those inside the hologram who are acting as observers.

This could be happening for various reasons.
Spiritual development, profit, or mere entertainment.
That would mean that we aren't in "reality" so to speak.

The noticing of the repetition of a series of numbers being indicative of data fed into the hologram and also messages to those within it.

- Lee

reply to post by Frakkerface


LOL

well, you actually will be able to create a universe in a computer in a few years .... can u tell me when you will be able to prove that there is a person in the sky looking at you and listening to your prays ... never?

reply to post by loner007


actually, no

it doesnt need anyone manipulating the bits .. you create the system, and the system will work based on math ... and thats what we see everywhere ... math is the language of the universe

----

my idea is that the universe would be bits of information and everything we see actually doesnt exist

in my opinion, the universe is not made of pixels, because it doesnt exist, there is no graphic output for the universe, the universe is in all our heads

1- we may be part of the universe, we would be like AI in a computer receiving information from the universe to interact and change it, so if we see something is because a computer system is telling us that this something is there

2- we may be external to the universe, but experiencing it, like seen in the movie Matrix

to actually prove that it will be possible in a few years, actually we wont be able to prove that, but we will be able to prove that our universe could be simulated in a computer, and the applications of that will be huge

Originally posted by Frakkerface
this is fascinating BUT isn't this kind of like a a religious person pushing origins on to a god? I mean, nothing is solved, just pushed further back/away.

I'm quite amazed at some of the things science proposes and yet ridicules anyone for having belief in a god.

I am also amazed by that. However, I have heard other scientists talk about string theory (which this topic involves) in less than glowing terms, or to some degree you could say not all science is created equal and shouldn't all be lumped together. Some scientists are just as skeptical of string theory concepts where there's no evidence as they are about supernatural creator claims where there's no evidence.

It's one thing to develop theories which have no evidence to support them, perhaps for entertainment value or to propose future experimental tests which may prove or disprove a hypothesis. But it's something else entirely to develop beliefs on such theories, before there is evidence to confirm them, which seems premature to me. Therefore, I don't yet worship at the church of string theory, but I do like reading articles about it to see if they will ever come up with any evidence to prove any of it.

Originally posted by LordBucket
If all physical matter in the universe might be a hologram...wouldn't it be reasonable to suggest that all your journals, experimenters, peer-reviewer, experiements and experimental results might also be holograms?

Yes. I'm not agreeing the initial supposition is reasonable, but if you start with that supposition, what you have stated is a logical result of that supposition.

[edit on 17-6-2010 by Arbitrageur]

All matter is made from energy...intelligent energy. You could say intelligent energy=God or divine energy = universal consciousness. Different people call it by different names. Collectively, the ALL is One, because there is nothing but energy (aka God). Since everything in the universe is made of energy, then we (collectively) are God. God incarnates bits of himself (sub divides his energy through the big bang) into 3D to experience. To have the knowledge and all knowingness of being an astronaut is different from actually incarnating and experiencing being an astronaut, because experiences in a 3D world allows you to encounter infinite variables which alters your perception , which allows you to gain knowledge. God (energy) created the 3D world to experience himself...infinitely. Also, an added twist for the reason for the big bang is it created a "here and a there", which then creates the illusion of linear time. It's all quite fascinating and the original OP only fits into this entire concept.

[edit on 17-6-2010 by ptmckiou]

Oh man... How many threads saying the same thing slightly differently are you going to make?

We do not live in the movies, this is not the matrix and you are not going to jump into someone's body and make them explode.

Here is a quick simple fact that destroys his whole 'observer' argument.

WE DO NOT OBSERVE ANYTHING DIRECTLY. It is physically impossible for the human mind to be a direct observer. Now apply that to the observer effect and notice how utterly ill thought out and ridiculous this guy's claims are. As always....

Originally posted by Faiol
reply to post by Frakkerface

 

LOL

well, you actually will be able to create a universe in a computer in a few years .... can u tell me when you will be able to prove that there is a person in the sky looking at you and listening to your prays ... never?

"The idea arises that there is a white bearded, majestic fellow, sitting on a throne in the sky somewhere and that is who is making judgements of who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. But that is not the only image that we have to subscribe to. This is a "straw god" that materialists setup, then they disprove it, and think they are going somewhere."

reply to post by LordBucket

There is evidence. And there are multiple theories to explain the "hows and whys" that evidence is our result. But each of those multiple theories explain the available evidence equally well, each is equally predictive of behavior, and there isn't any particular reason to accept one over another.

Man, I remember trying to explain that to him a very long time ago. The guy is denser than lead ... or is he... idk now with all this hologram nonsense.

He fails to equally understand that the entire holographic principle is based no on observed facts, but on mathematical constructs that don't exist in reality. He'll do nothing more than evade and attempt to piss you off when you corner him. His greatest tactic is to continuously say over and over and over that he doesn't want to debate YOUR arguments, he's debating HIS arguments. Christ, try and figure that one out!

Originally posted by LordBucket


And there may well be a "higher awareness" that is aware of the sum of all these parts, as well as a yet "higher" awareness that is aware of the sum of all these parts for all of humanity collectively, as well as an "All" awareness that is aware of everything that exists...and from one possible perspective you could say that all of everything that exists is "I".

But even if true, any particular awareness is only aware of what it is aware of. For any given I, that I can only know what it is aware of. The moment it knows more, it's a different I.

You are correct, but the overarching "All" consciousness for lack of a better term is not an "I" its just an "Am." Aware of everything any of the "I's" is aware of, in a non distinct, non selective way. It has no "self" identity, because there is nothing that it isnt, and for there to be an "I" there must be "other" as a contrast. It is nondual.

Our logic is different, (necessarily dualistic) and thats one of the problems in describing that non dual state. For us, even though we have an idea about "potentiality" we still try to deal with it with our "either/or" dualistic framework which is dictated to us by our wiring. I would even suggest that there is a possibility that the slit experiment doesnt actually show that consciousness makes something that is potential one thing or another in fact, our consciousness just assigns it a position so that we can work with it. For our convenience. I would say that at the ultimate level of truth, the thing itself hasnt changed, but because we are incapable of observing "potential" something that is both "this and that and neither this and that" for us it becomes one or the other in practice.

IMHO, Kantor did a MUCH more thorough and substantiable job in Information Mechanics back in 1974, if you're into "everything is information" philosophies.

At least you can derive well-known relationships like Maxwell's Equations from his maths, which is more than you can say for the holographic universe aficionados'.

We are all dead, at the moment of our death our consciousness was transfered into a computer simulation which simulates the world as it was at the moment of our death. We are not aware of this and we will live out the remainder of our "life" and upon our death in this simulation we will continue but we will be presented with whatever our beliefs were.

If you believe in heaven you will be presented with a heaven simulation, if you believe science can extend our lives indefinitely a "discovery" will be made that extends our lives and you will live forever in the simulation. It is all dependent on what you belief system is.

Who is doing this? Who knows, human kind in the future decided that if they have the technology to do this why not let people live indefinetly. Or is it some alien race that grabbed our conscousness upon our death so they could study us? Or perhaps all these theories are wacko. You decide

reply to post by LordBucket


You're not making any sense.

You said:

Interpretation:
There is evidence. And there are multiple theories to explain the "hows and whys" that evidence is our result. But each of those multiple theories explain the available evidence equally well, each is equally predictive of behavior, and there isn't any particular reason to accept one over another.

For example, the Copenhagen interpretation as opposed to the Many worlds interpretation.

Over course there's reasons to accept one interpretation over the other one. For instance some physicist accept Copenhagen and some accept many worlds because many worlds reduces the role of the observer. They don't explain them equally well.

Read David Deutsch's book Fabric of Reality or Amit Goswami's The Self Aware Universe and you can see why some people subscribe to Copenhagen and some to Parallel universes.

You said:

If all physical matter in the universe might be a hologram...wouldn't it be reasonable to suggest that all your journals, experimenters, peer-reviewer, experiements and experimental results might also be holograms?

This also doesn't make any sense. You're confusing information with the holographic image. Experimental results wouldn't be a hologram because the hologram is a manifestation of information encoded on a 2-D surface.

The hologram doesn't contain the information, it's a projection of the information.

Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein showed that this is what we see with matter. Information isn't contained in the volume but on a 2-D surface area that's 1/4 the size of the volume. So the 3-D volume is an illusion, a phantasm that projects the information that's encoded in the 2-D surface area.

The trouble with that proposition is cross referencing.

To change a pixel to any of its range(s) of selection has no effect on a single other pixel on the screen.

Physics on the other hand says if you change one part of the system or remove something from the system it does have an effect on [other elements within/subject-to] the system.

Everything is essentially integrated with everything else.

It is like looking at the surface of things & because one hasn't sounded out the rooting depths [or lack thereof] of the visuality.

Technically one could create a programmed system that had requisite calculated integration specifications,
but at some point it is entirely possible that it becomes more trivial to implement the actual reality than to fabricate/calculate & project the complexities of it.

In the low probability event it is a 'program' [projection/image] then it is in all sane likelihood highly encrypted & has cross referencing 'systematic' integration coded into it.

People like to trivialize the manipulation of the Universe, either with a big magic buddy god, or by making it part of some potentially accessible machine program/projection.

IMO it just isn't that simple.
I won't say it is impossible, but i would only give it the same neighborhood of probabilities that i give to the existence of a 'god',
which is why i am effectively atheist, with just the slightest bit of agnostic openness to future data/experience proving elsewise to be the case.

If you have a two dimensional data system then you have to use more than a one to one information packeting. It is an insufficient data source. A two dimensional pixel of information, must somehow store the additional 3rd dimension information as well.

That might likely show up in processing as well as time problems,
ie. if you move a space forward but the data access takes 1.5 units of time to calculate, then for very big moves/distances this is going to become painfully obvious for the occupants of the hologramic program. The time relationship is going to be inconsistent.

It almost seems easier to imagine a higher or equal dimensional data source projecting some lower/equal dimensional hologram. Then you can have one to one data mapping with possible extra capacity.

Maybe we are a species that has taken being 'visual beings' to the point of disease or intellectual disability.

(facetious)
"If it doesn't fill [poke] my eye, then it must not exist."
Which also includes "If it fills your eye but not mine, 50 miles away, then it must not exist & YOU are 'mass hallucinating'."
"If i didn't see it then i can continue to deny it."

[edit on 17-6-2010 by slank]

reply to post by Phlegmi


It is a little "whacko" but that doesnt mean it isnt interesting to contemplate.

If it were the case, I want to kick those peoples butts for not making my simulation more interesting, and including in it aches, pains, aging and religious fanatics.

Or maybe I was poor and just got the welfare death simulation.