*my lil disclaimer - i tend to be crass, sarcastic, and cynical...in all honesty, i know NOTHING of consequcnce about the universe and its workings nor do i pretend to...my function here is simply to play devil's advocate and nudge people's minds in different directions so perhaps someone much wiser may open their minds to constructive possibilities i could never even fathom*
That being said -
I'll start with the sarcasm before moving on to my main point or thought. A vicious attack that hopefully no one takes personally (and if you feel yourself being attacked, see above...). It seems the majority of users on this site seem to have a lot of stock put into the idea of multiple realities...that every concious decision that a human makes spawns another parallel universe. That there are literally an infinite number of "you"s on an infinate number of "earths" in an infinite number of multiverses. To me, this is as idealized as the concept of a Heaven where angels play harps and you are given your every desire and need as you relive your best day for all of eternity. It really is a nice picture, and there is some inherent logic to it that stems from our inate sense of morality and reward. and i suppose yes, it is possible...surely i've never visited the afterlife that i can remember, so i guess i can't credibly debunk it, especially since it really is a popular general view of a LOT of chirstians historically...but i'd still be willing to wager my life and the life of all those dear to me that its a pretty ignorant viewpoint from a philosopical AND scientific standpoint.
so, i feel, is the VERY popular notion of alternate realities in the popular sense. (and for those of you starting to bore of my writing style, bow out now because it gets more laborious from here). For those of you who contest alternate realities...lets examine. Your basic premise is that every concious decision is polarized and can spawn two alternate realities, thus a given person makes such an obscene, incalculable amount per day, the population as a whole throughout all of time creates an infinate amount of possibilities and tangents. This leads to the following problem -
Conciousness (in human form) is nothing but a single grain of sand on the fabric of space time...so, in a direct interpretation of that range of thinking, there are only two possibilities.
ONE: that there was ONLY a single universe until human-like conciousness (any polarized thinking by any being...but under this premise we'll assume that no concious beings were spontaneously created with the universe) and only when the first entity with polorized thought made his first 'decision' was the first tangent created, or
TWO: consciousness was an energy which started WITH the universe, and the polarized properties are inherent in everything not just what we think of today as concious beings. that matter itself posesses the same potential for infinite possibilities. This generates a problem for anyone who decides they want to bound from one parallel universe to the other though. Scientifically, the chain of events that led to the human condition is IMPOSSIBLE, yet it did happen. The chances are so astronomical that even serious scientists use it as PROOF of the design of a higher power. So if matter was "choosing" different paths to take, a 'parallel' universe would never have evolved in the way that ours did, never led to humanity in that single grain of sand on the fabric of all of space time. The entire map of our galaxy would look very different from one universe to the next, let alone how our solar system evolved, let alone how our planet was shaped, let alone how life evolved, let alone how human civilization evolved. Is it possible? is it what we WANT to believe?...wings, halos and harps...i can never say for sure.
I could blather on about it for a while longer, but that was just my devil's advocate talking. I do have a point and thought somewhere under all this.
If you don't know the concept behind a moebius strip, leave now -
The main point in this whole exercise is that SO much of space/time study is based on one huge inherent flaw...the human mind. There's an interesting passage on the splash page for TTI...talks about how "a minute is a minute because we say its a minute"...i think most people interpret that statement's implications wrong, including what follows it on that page. It goes on to say that a day on another planet would be longer, and a year, etc...
NO!...its MUCH BIGGER THAN THAT.
Time IS simply a measure of spatial change. Thats it. Thats all it is. And the ONLY reason time exists is because our brains function as a filter to understand that change and percieve it in a linear fashion. Without our brains to decode space/time, the entire spectrum of it would be an instant. I'm not saying it would be ONE instant in fact, i'm saying it was be ZERO instant...undevisable...a thing we have no way of appreciating or understanding. To us, our brain is sending and recieving constant stimuli from senses, and like a very advanced computer, we decode the stimuli, and that is where our sense of time comes from.
Therefor - take out the brain, take out time.
Hard to imagine? Sound a little too abstract? (back to the moebius strip...)
One of the interesting things behind a Moebius strip is that it helps us understand what a two dimensional universe would look like in three dimensions. Imagine you're living ON the moebius strip, in two dimensions. You're walking along, you're walking along...in a strait path, never altering your course...you could walk for infinity, and you start to believe you're living on a plane that extends in two directions, and infinitely so. so god comes to you and says, "Hey junior, check it out...this world doesn't go on forever! you can actually cover a significant bit of ground if you just jump the space between instead of walking all the way around!"...but you are a two dimensional being. you have no concept of the third dimension, thus no matter how hard you try, the only way you can see your universe is in two dimensions...extending infinitely in both directions. Why? because you can only ever experience what your two dimensional mind can interpret.
HOPEFULLY thats a little less abstract...I know it still requires a bit of imagination...but now apply that to how we appreciate time. We appreciate time only in the way our mind decodes the experience of spatial change (whether that be the earth moving around the sun, an electron moving a kajillionth of a micrometer, or stimulus moving from our eyes to our brain). Without the human brain (or at least the human understanding of 'conciousness'), all of space time is 0 and undivisible. Everything that "happens" happens instenaneously...see the problem with our language? I can't even convey it without making allusions to it happening in an instant...a measure of time that STILL moves forward...a divisible unit. There's no language that I know of to explain it better...maybe someone else can offer a more poetic way to put it.
Thats all for now, but I welcome comments, verbal attacks, cyber-castrations, chicken sandwiches...whatever you're feeling in response to this...I haven't said anything new, I know. If anyone was hoping for more, please see the above disclaimer.
Joe
That being said -
I'll start with the sarcasm before moving on to my main point or thought. A vicious attack that hopefully no one takes personally (and if you feel yourself being attacked, see above...). It seems the majority of users on this site seem to have a lot of stock put into the idea of multiple realities...that every concious decision that a human makes spawns another parallel universe. That there are literally an infinite number of "you"s on an infinate number of "earths" in an infinite number of multiverses. To me, this is as idealized as the concept of a Heaven where angels play harps and you are given your every desire and need as you relive your best day for all of eternity. It really is a nice picture, and there is some inherent logic to it that stems from our inate sense of morality and reward. and i suppose yes, it is possible...surely i've never visited the afterlife that i can remember, so i guess i can't credibly debunk it, especially since it really is a popular general view of a LOT of chirstians historically...but i'd still be willing to wager my life and the life of all those dear to me that its a pretty ignorant viewpoint from a philosopical AND scientific standpoint.
so, i feel, is the VERY popular notion of alternate realities in the popular sense. (and for those of you starting to bore of my writing style, bow out now because it gets more laborious from here). For those of you who contest alternate realities...lets examine. Your basic premise is that every concious decision is polarized and can spawn two alternate realities, thus a given person makes such an obscene, incalculable amount per day, the population as a whole throughout all of time creates an infinate amount of possibilities and tangents. This leads to the following problem -
Conciousness (in human form) is nothing but a single grain of sand on the fabric of space time...so, in a direct interpretation of that range of thinking, there are only two possibilities.
ONE: that there was ONLY a single universe until human-like conciousness (any polarized thinking by any being...but under this premise we'll assume that no concious beings were spontaneously created with the universe) and only when the first entity with polorized thought made his first 'decision' was the first tangent created, or
TWO: consciousness was an energy which started WITH the universe, and the polarized properties are inherent in everything not just what we think of today as concious beings. that matter itself posesses the same potential for infinite possibilities. This generates a problem for anyone who decides they want to bound from one parallel universe to the other though. Scientifically, the chain of events that led to the human condition is IMPOSSIBLE, yet it did happen. The chances are so astronomical that even serious scientists use it as PROOF of the design of a higher power. So if matter was "choosing" different paths to take, a 'parallel' universe would never have evolved in the way that ours did, never led to humanity in that single grain of sand on the fabric of all of space time. The entire map of our galaxy would look very different from one universe to the next, let alone how our solar system evolved, let alone how our planet was shaped, let alone how life evolved, let alone how human civilization evolved. Is it possible? is it what we WANT to believe?...wings, halos and harps...i can never say for sure.
I could blather on about it for a while longer, but that was just my devil's advocate talking. I do have a point and thought somewhere under all this.
If you don't know the concept behind a moebius strip, leave now -
The main point in this whole exercise is that SO much of space/time study is based on one huge inherent flaw...the human mind. There's an interesting passage on the splash page for TTI...talks about how "a minute is a minute because we say its a minute"...i think most people interpret that statement's implications wrong, including what follows it on that page. It goes on to say that a day on another planet would be longer, and a year, etc...
NO!...its MUCH BIGGER THAN THAT.
Time IS simply a measure of spatial change. Thats it. Thats all it is. And the ONLY reason time exists is because our brains function as a filter to understand that change and percieve it in a linear fashion. Without our brains to decode space/time, the entire spectrum of it would be an instant. I'm not saying it would be ONE instant in fact, i'm saying it was be ZERO instant...undevisable...a thing we have no way of appreciating or understanding. To us, our brain is sending and recieving constant stimuli from senses, and like a very advanced computer, we decode the stimuli, and that is where our sense of time comes from.
Therefor - take out the brain, take out time.
Hard to imagine? Sound a little too abstract? (back to the moebius strip...)
One of the interesting things behind a Moebius strip is that it helps us understand what a two dimensional universe would look like in three dimensions. Imagine you're living ON the moebius strip, in two dimensions. You're walking along, you're walking along...in a strait path, never altering your course...you could walk for infinity, and you start to believe you're living on a plane that extends in two directions, and infinitely so. so god comes to you and says, "Hey junior, check it out...this world doesn't go on forever! you can actually cover a significant bit of ground if you just jump the space between instead of walking all the way around!"...but you are a two dimensional being. you have no concept of the third dimension, thus no matter how hard you try, the only way you can see your universe is in two dimensions...extending infinitely in both directions. Why? because you can only ever experience what your two dimensional mind can interpret.
HOPEFULLY thats a little less abstract...I know it still requires a bit of imagination...but now apply that to how we appreciate time. We appreciate time only in the way our mind decodes the experience of spatial change (whether that be the earth moving around the sun, an electron moving a kajillionth of a micrometer, or stimulus moving from our eyes to our brain). Without the human brain (or at least the human understanding of 'conciousness'), all of space time is 0 and undivisible. Everything that "happens" happens instenaneously...see the problem with our language? I can't even convey it without making allusions to it happening in an instant...a measure of time that STILL moves forward...a divisible unit. There's no language that I know of to explain it better...maybe someone else can offer a more poetic way to put it.
Thats all for now, but I welcome comments, verbal attacks, cyber-castrations, chicken sandwiches...whatever you're feeling in response to this...I haven't said anything new, I know. If anyone was hoping for more, please see the above disclaimer.
Joe