Why? Part II - "Ouch, My Head Hurts"

[Dillinger]

This is somewhat a continuation of the concept started in the first "Why?" thread:

http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75277

This is going to be long, but do please hear me out. This stuff fascinates me. I eat this up like candy. (If you must, you can just skip to the questions at the end and have some fun.)

Serious scientists have been theorizing about the ramifications of what quantum discoveries might mean on the macro level - on the level of existence. The plane you and I are on.

One legitimate theory sounds so SciFi that most people dismiss it as nonsense. Because it is so surreal, it is hard to grasp, and because we have collectively viewed it as fiction for so long now. However, many of you might realize, there are many things we take for granted that were originally introduced as fiction in Science Fiction novels - space travel, the internet, the computer... and on and on...

The theory I'm referring to is the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics, first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett III. (Interestingly enough, 1957 is the year I was born.)

According to this theory "no system ever jumps discontinuously into an eigenstate"

WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY, DILLINGER?

What this means is that at any instant there are always at least 2 possible paths or outcomes that can occur. Apply this to living beings, to yourself. For every quantum-mechanical branch point in your life (and there have been billions upon billions), you have split into two or more yous, riding along parallel but disconnected branches of one gigantic "universal wave function."

Say you need to make a decision. A simple yes or no decision but that decision could radically change your life. I use this "radical" example to better exemplify what I'm talking about but its the same even for the smallest, seemingly insignificant things as well. Say you are deciding if you should get married to someone or not. Yes takes your life in one direction, No takes your life in another. One person, different paths - different possibilities - different outcomes - a completely different life depending which path you choose.

According to the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics - both happen. Its the either/or/both truth of the quantum world. Light can be a wave or a particle or both. It depends on the moment, how you look at the moment, - its all in the observer. This is an observer created universe we all live in.

We are the same stuff in this macro world as exists in the micro world. Those quantum particles make up who we are.

So at that decision moment two separate universes are created - one in which you get married, one in which you do not.

Which is the real you?

You are... you who are reading this at this very moment. Because we only have this moment, this instant - time is an illusion.

When someone says live for the moment - think about it carefully - all we have are these moments...

Now you might wonder "Why, then, do I feel myself to be in just one world?" Well, according to Everett's view, you don't - you feel all the alternatives simultaneously, it's just this you going down this branch who doesn't experience all the alternatives.

Ever see the sig line I used to use here? "'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." ???

HELL YEAH!

So - we now come to the ultimate question:

"Why is this me in this branch, then? What makes me - I mean this me - feel itself - I mean myself - unsplit?"

Here is an example from Douglas Hofstadter:

The sun is setting one evening over the ocean. You and a group of friends are standing at various points along the wet sand. As the water laps at your feet, you silently watch the red globe drop nearer and nearer to the horizon. As you watch, somewhat mesmerized, you notice how the sun's reflection on the wave crests forms a straight line composed of thousands of momentary orange-red glints - a straight line pointing right at you! "How lucky that I am the one who happens to be lined up exactly with that line!" you think to yourself. "Too bad not all of us can stand here and experience this perfect unity with the sun." And at the same moment, each of your friends is having precisely the same thought... or is it the same?

Such thoughts are at the heart of the "soul-searching question." Which brings us to the question and answer part of this thread. Have some fun...

• Why is this soul in this body? (Or on this branch of the universal wave function?)
• Why, when there are so many possibilities, did this mind get attached to this body?
• Why can't my "I-ness" belong to some other body? (Its obviously circular and unsatisfying to say something like "You are in that body because that was the one made by your parents." But why were they my parents and not sometwo else?)
• Who would have been my parents if I had been born in Hungary? Or Ethiopia? Or anywhere else? Or if someone else had been me?
• Or... am I someone else?
• Am I everyone else?
• Is there only one universal consciousness?
• Is it an illusion to feel oneself as separate, as an individual?
• Is there a world - a branch of the universal wave function - in which you didnt' make that stupid mistake you now regret so much? Aren't you jealous? But... how can you be jealous of yourself? (Besides which, there's another world in which you made yet stupider mistakes, and are jealous of this very you, here and now in this world!)
• And the most fundamental riddle that each of us must ask: "Why is my unitary feeling of myself propagating down this random branch rather than some other? What law underlies the random choices that pick out the branch I feel myself tracing out? Why doesn't my feeling of myself go along with the other me's as they split off, following other routes? What attaches me-ness to the viewpoint of this body evolving down this branch of the universe at this very moment in time?

One can fall even more deeply into a pit of paradox when one realizes that there are branches of this one gigantically branching universal wave function on which there is no evidence for quantum mechanics whatsoever, branches on which there is no Everett or many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are branches in which Literotica does not exist. There is even a branch in which this entire thread - this post - got written exactly as you see it here, except that it ended with a different flutzpah.

 

[Wiggles]

It's an entertaining thought/theory. How does it relate to me?

I'll never know, and it doesn't influence my life in any way.

It is interesting though, kind of a gip that we can't experience it all, consciously.

But I wonder if we do? Sometimes I feel like I'm living a dream, something that's already been done. Driving down the road on a sunny day, the perfect song on the radio. And I think to myself, I miss this. But how can I miss it? It's now.

I get moments where I feel like I'm looking at myself from someone elses perspective, completely ripped away from whatever I was doing.

It's very entertaining to think about what is really going on, but I'll leave the majority of that to the thinkers. I'm just thanking my lucky stars that the life I lead seems to go in one straight line, everything flows along.

 

[Ishmael]

OK, wax philosophic

First of all, the mathmatics of quatum mechanics just don't work unless the 'multiple-universe' is true. The argument is over whether they already existed, and still do, or whether they are 'created' on the fly as you suggest.

To complicate your concept of "I"ness, is the theory of 'quantum inseperability'. This is based on Goldbergs postualte that any particle, once divided, will always be continuosly and instantaneously in contact with the missing half. (By the way, the only possible exception to the limit of the speed of light.) The 'Big Bang' theory (now pretty well accepted) states that this universe, ergo ALL universes, began as a single primordial particle. The implication is obvious that all universes, therefore all "I"'s are inextricably joined. If that is true, then there is no difference between you and your Hungarian self. Just a matter of getting the two parts to communicate.

Hmmmmmm, where's my aspirin?

Ishmael

 

[Silverlily]

Ok, probably not the response you were looking for (I'm sorry, the Dill in universe Zeta got the good answer), but I believe in luck of the draw. I used to think there reasons or some order to things, but not anymore.

Some of the questions do get other answers, however.

Who would my parents have been if I were born in Hungary? Displaced Italians, duh.

Am I someone else? Only on alternating Thursdays.

Am I everyone else? *shudder* I hope not. Granted, I've done some rotten things in my life...

One universal consciousness? No

Is it an illusion to feel oneself as separate, as an individual? When you consider how much of what we call "reality" is based on our own perceptions, isn't everything an illusion?

Is there a world - a branch of the universal wave function - in which you didnt' make that stupid mistake you now regret so much? Aren't you jealous? But... how can you be jealous of yourself? Jealous, no, waste of energy. I'm actually rather relieved I'm unaware of my other "selves", the competition would probably kill us all.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

You've been dipping into your Tao of Physics and Dancing Wu-Li Masters again, haven't you, Dilly?

You remember what the doctor said about that. . . .

 

[sunstruck]

Ok first, you've seen one too many episodes of Sliders (and by that I mean at least one episode).

Second...why? Why is it so difficult for sci-fi fanatics to grasp the idea that there is only one world? One plain of existance? Theories are great fun...but they aren't science. There's no proof. It's just an idea. A brilliant, interesting and maybe even palpable idea, but nothing more.

So while it's great fun for us to sit at our computers and theorize and debate, I will NEVER understand why people get paid to come up with these ideas. Because honestly....even if it were true..........so what? You can't DO anything with it.

Oh...and you should see Donnie Darko immeadiately. My head still hurts from that film.

 

[Dillinger]

Second...why? Why is it so difficult for sci-fi fanatics to grasp the idea that there is only one world? One plain of existance? Theories are great fun...but they aren't science. There's no proof. It's just an idea. A brilliant, interesting and maybe even palpable idea, but nothing more.

I've never seen Sliders...

As far as this being just "great fun" and not science. Most "respectable," well educated, well respected mainstream physicists would disagree with you... *grin*

 

[Ishmael]

lol

Ok first, you've seen one too many episodes of Sliders (and by that I mean at least one episode).

Second...why? Why is it so difficult for sci-fi fanatics to grasp the idea that there is only one world? One plain of existance? Theories are great fun...but they aren't science. There's no proof. It's just an idea. A brilliant, interesting and maybe even palpable idea, but nothing more.

So while it's great fun for us to sit at our computers and theorize and debate, I will NEVER understand why people get paid to come up with these ideas. Because honestly....even if it were true..........so what? You can't DO anything with it.

Oh...and you should see Donnie Darko immeadiately. My head still hurts from that film.

Sunstruck, go to goggle and type in "Quantum Teleportation". Read the scientific papers. There is a 'laymans' article there. Teleportation was done in 1990 at Los Alamos. This is NOT science fiction. It is science fact.

The same mathmatics that made the teleportation experiment a reality (by the way, the 'idea behind "Quantum Leap") is the same math that dictates that there HAS to be multiple universes.

Dill isn't in the realm of science fiction. He is asking metaphysical questions based on known science.

Ishmael

 

[sunstruck]

Re: lol

Sunstruck, go to goggle and type in "Quantum Teleportation". Read the scientific papers. There is a 'laymans' article there. Teleportation was done in 1990 at Los Alamos. This is NOT science fiction. It is science fact.

The same mathmatics that made the teleportation experiment a reality (by the way, the 'idea behind "Quantum Leap") is the same math that dictates that there HAS to be multiple universes.

Dill isn't in the realm of science fiction. He is asking metaphysical questions based on known science.

Ishmael

Dilly is always in the realm of science fiction. He likes it there.

And how does teleportation from one place in this world to another (and I'm not saying I believe that happened, I'll have to look it up, and even then...I'd have a hard time believing it) proove that there are OTHER worlds? That makes no sense.

 

[Silverlily]

Re: Re: lol

Dilly is always in the realm of science fiction. He likes it there.

Then you don't know him very well. Dill may like SciFi, but he is hardly always in that realm.

 

[seXieleXie]

thanks a lot dilly

you just broke my brain

 

[sunstruck]

Re: Re: Re: lol

Then you don't know him very well. Dill may like SciFi, but he is hardly always in that realm.

It was just a joke. Dillinger is one of my favorite people here. He knows that.

 

[Dillinger]

Thanks guys...

sunstruck, KittenEyes... kiss me please?

 

[Ishmael]

Re: Re: lol

Dilly is always in the realm of science fiction. He likes it there.

And how does teleportation from one place in this world to another (and I'm not saying I believe that happened, I'll have to look it up, and even then...I'd have a hard time believing it) proove that there are OTHER worlds? That makes no sense.

OK Here's the link:

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

The experiments to 'prove' that which you seek are under consideration now. The opening of a portal to another universe is not talken lightly, even by those rascally scientists. Fortunately, unlike biogentics, quatum physics is a field that requires very specialized equipment and enormous power requirements. Joe Schmoe won't be doing it in his basement anytime soon.

As far as 'sense' goes, what if this were the 1600's and Dilly was taking about a 'flying machine'? If he talked about it enough, they'd lock the looney bastard up.

Ishmael

 

[Nathon_88]

Ahhh......Whubbabbbbbwubbba......

I get the theory, I get the idea.........just, so many different worlds.......

What if Hitler hadn't survived the mustard gas attack?
What if Russia hadn't gone communist? They had the chance.....6 months of perfect democracy before Lenin took over.

 

[freescorfr]

Ok Dilly, I'm far to weary from other pusuits to explore this coherently just now.

However, as a matter of amusement I would say, off the top of my head, that the thread three weeks ago on "Reality" and our perception of what is real is highly relevant.

Basically what we work with to understand everything is models and these have all their own set of landscapes and layers.

In Quantum Electrodynamics, for example, matter largely reduces to an exchange of photons, electromagnetic 'particles' which have no mass, 'waves' that have no position, a dynamic relativistic interchange between 'particle' and 'wave' where time has no simple meaning. Thus the idea of objective substance itself is seen to be no more than an emergent property of interactions between ephemeral and transcendental constituents. The non-substances that surround it (time and space) are likewise emergent concepts of our belief system (logical necessities due to our dualist mode of thought), dependent upon our assumptions of direction, our labels, and the desire to 'ground' our concepts in a fixed framework, to have foundations to our world.

These fixed frameworks are our models - economic models, political, religious, psychological etc.

If we accept that any concept of scientific reality is arbitrary (which we can see in the co-existence of both quantum and classical versions for different purposes), we must ask what other concepts could we use ? From a complexity theory viewpoint it is not a matter of replacing our physical views, but of supplementing them, by adding new layers that target purposes currently neglected in a material perspective. The material world is only one level in what is perhaps a continuum of emergent levels, that form the whole of reality. Even on a material level we can use different paradigms to evaluate different sub-levels, e.g. in physics (quanta), biology (evolution) and technology (systems) terminologies. The labels we use for these different levels are not, on a complexity viewpoint, interchangeable, this means that a reduction to the lowest level is invalid. We must treat the emergent properties of each level as self-contained and discrete, yet recognise that the levels do interact (in both directions). Our labels are, in essence, relations, that allow us to tie together diverse aspects of our reality, e.g. the word 'planet' contains within itself links to multiple concepts, other associated labels. These labels can exist at many levels, including their symbolic and metaphoric uses in poetry and myth. All such categories (divisions of our world) are seen ultimately to be creations of mind and not inherent in reality.

And that is where our questioning - your questions lead us - back to being contructs of our own minds.

However, for me the questioning itself is a spiritual activity - I enjoy it when you do this - it makes me feel better to stop from the world and muse. Amuse even. Good on you Dilly.


You know how keen I am on complexity theory.

 

[ag2507]

This just illustrates the problem of taking a micro concept and try to apply it to a macro world: even Einstein thought of the quantum as an abberation that he really didn't want to handle - Planck thought of it as a Mathematical Trick he had to use to get his calculations to work.

There is now thousands of man years of Math that is built on that simple artifice used about 100 years ago - hard to believe Planck worked this out so long ago - that the artifice has become real. The reality is, nobody really knows why the math works: it just does. Someday someone will figure it out and the quantum will become linear again. And in a few years it will become a historical artifact.

A lot of the fantasy comes from the need to create multidimentional universes in order to make linear progressions out of wierd discontinuities. It's fun though isn't it!

A

 

[DéjàNu]

You answer yourself your own questions Dillinger
(if we see the spiritual side of it tho)...

Because we made choices.... we choose this soul in this body with all those possibilities.

Now the real question is Why did we choose this path...

 

[Ishmael]

This just illustrates the problem of taking a micro concept and try to apply it to a macro world: even Einstein thought of the quantum as an abberation that he really didn't want to handle - Planck thought of it as a Mathematical Trick he had to use to get his calculations to work.

There is now thousands of man years of Math that is built on that simple artifice used about 100 years ago - hard to believe Planck worked this out so long ago - that the artifice has become real. The reality is, nobody really knows why the math works: it just does. Someday someone will figure it out and the quantum will become linear again. And in a few years it will become a historical artifact.

A lot of the fantasy comes from the need to create multidimentional universes in order to make linear progressions out of wierd discontinuities. It's fun though isn't it!

A

It is amusing, and even more so when applied experiments verify the math.

The implication being that the 'unified field' theory must explain the validity of the quantum math experiments.

Addressing Freescofr.

Heisenbergs Uncertainty Priciple explained:

"There will be a meeting of all literotica members. I can tell you where, or when. But not both."

Cheers,
Ishmael

 

[heterotic]

This is somewhat a continuation of the concept started in the first "Why?" thread:

http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75277
.

Old Dilbert cartoon--the garbage man figured out how to choose which path, and found a perrfectly good VCR in a trash can, etc.

 

[heterotic]

This just illustrates the problem of taking a micro concept and try to apply it to a macro world: even Einstein thought of the quantum as an abberation that he really didn't want to handle - Planck thought of it as a Mathematical Trick he had to use to get his calculations to work.

There is now thousands of man years of Math that is built on that simple artifice used about 100 years ago - hard to believe Planck worked this out so long ago - that the artifice has become real. The reality is, nobody really knows why the math works: it just does. Someday someone will figure it out and the quantum will become linear again. And in a few years it will become a historical artifact.

A lot of the fantasy comes from the need to create multidimentional universes in order to make linear progressions out of wierd discontinuities. It's fun though isn't it!

A

It is endless SF fodder, isn't it? But have you ever checked out superstring theory? Makes it all come together and work, not just as mathematics, but intuitively once again. I use the word "intuitively" in a very broad sense, of course. www.superstringtheory.com has a good message board on the theory. If you read far enough in, you'll see where my name came from.

 

[heterotic]

Re: OK, wax philosophic

To complicate your concept of "I"ness, is the theory of 'quantum inseperability'. This is based on Goldbergs postualte that any particle, once divided, will always be continuosly and instantaneously in contact with the missing half. (By the way, the only possible exception to the limit of the speed of light.)
Ishmael

Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox, the random motions of particles long separated influence each other instantaneously. Since it's still random motion, it doesn't technically break any rules. What I like about it is its other name: Passion at a distance. I know there's a lot of people that can relate to that, on this board.

 

[freescorfr]

I'm into repeating things today. Here's a poem I put in Luscious Lionesses poetry thread - to add an element of culture.


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if ever I should come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

 

[Private Vasquez]

I got serious brain cramp reading that (math scares me)....but does this go along the same lines as "Would I be the same me if my dad had gone to Mississippi State U. instead of staying here? Would my personality, soul, the me of me be intact if I had a different mom or dad (different genes)?" Or am I way off in my own world?

 

[Dillinger]

I was trying to some of the concepts of quantum physics in a direction - one at a time - that can be more easily grasped and dealt with. And make it fun as well.

I've started down this path before here at Lit. As I mentioned, my thread from a while back.. "Why?":

http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75277

is very much a prelude to this thread. I would love it if people who have an interest in this discussion first go to that thread and answer the questions there and then come back here and ponder these questions. I tried to design it in a way that takes us step by step a bit deeper into the riddle...

There are so many paths to follow - I avoided "information" and Von Neumann's Catastrophe and "form" and Shroedinger's Cat and Bell's Theorum on purpose, for the time being - to try and deal with one level at a time. I know they're all inter-related, of course... I was just trying to find a way to approach these concepts and also have some fun with them.

And I am most certainly welcome to any direction that people want to go in with this... just trying to avoid lecturing or making is so dense that our heads really do start to hurt.

There is madness to my method, you know.