Thoughtful Cynic

Patterns and interactions between patterns

The energy itself isn’t what’s important, but the pattern that’s created from the combination of matter and energy—that’s what creates life. I suggest reading the book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Green. That part about how, when you get down to the plank length scale, everything is basically made of up the same stuff just in different 10 dimensional patterns, blew me away. These patterns and the interactions between these patterns are what gives rise to everything in the universe. This has changed my view of death as simply another change in the pattern vs. the end of anything. Similar to a drop going into the ocean. 

Now, there’s a thought…

If an atom decayed in just the wrong place at just the wrong time, and as a result Abraham Lincoln died as a child, the world would be a very different place. Random quantum events keep the future from being set. This means our decisions matter even if they’re mechanical. They contribute to an open future.

The speed of NOW

Everything exists at the speed of light , including all the nuclear reactions. That’s the absolute speed or rather the moving speed limit where all motion and being at rest coincide. It has no relative direction unlike the relative velocities do. That’s the speed of horizon and the speed of now, if you wish. The main thing about it is that it is the speed of causality which is but a sequence one after the other. Now the question is can you reverse the causality sequence? The answer is, of course you can. Only would you notice any difference? Of course, you won’t.

Quantum indeterminacy gives us no more free will than classical physics gave us.

All it does is create a sort of breeze, by which our consciousness is occasionally blown to-and-fro.

Obviously, there is something in our mind that makes a “Choice” of some sort, but this doesn’t seem to fit with any current models of “Free Will” (which seem to indicate that our “free will” is a conscious, deliberative behavior).

Probabilities, Possibilities and chance outcomes

“And someday, we may actually figure out the fundamental unified theory of the particles and forces, what I call the “fundamental law.” We may not even be terribly far from it. But even if we don’t run across it in our lifetimes, we can still think there is one out there, and we’re just trying to get closer and closer to it. I think that’s the main point to be made. We express these things mathematically. And when the mathematics is very simple — when in terms of some mathematical notation, you can write the theory in a very brief space, without a lot of complication — that’s essentially what we mean by beauty or elegance.

Here’s what I was saying about the laws. They’re really there. Newton certainly believed that. And he said, here, “It is the business of natural philosophy to find out those laws.” The basic law, let’s say — here’s an assumption. The assumption is that the basic law really takes the form of a unified theory of all the particles. Now, some people call that a theory of everything. That’s wrong, because the theory is quantum mechanical. And I won’t go into a lot of stuff about quantum mechanics and what it’s like, and so on. You’ve heard a lot of wrong things about it anyway. (Laughter). There are even movies about it with a lot of wrong stuff.

But the main thing here is that it predicts probabilities. Now, sometimes those probabilities are near certainties. And in a lot of familiar cases, they of course are. But other times they’re not, and you have only probabilities for different outcomes. So what that means is that the history of the universe is not determined just by the fundamental law. It’s the fundamental law and this incredibly long series of accidents, or chance outcomes, that are there in addition.

And the fundamental theory doesn’t include those chance outcomes; they are in addition. So it’s not a theory of everything. And in fact, a huge amount of the information in the universe around us comes from those accidents, and not just from the fundamental laws. Now, it’s often said that getting closer and closer to the fundamental laws by examining phenomena at low energies, and then higher energies, and then higher energies, or short distances, and then shorter distances, and then still shorter distances, and so on, is like peeling the skin of an onion. And we keep doing that, and build more powerful machines, accelerators for particles. We look deeper and deeper into the structure of particles, and in that way we get probably closer and closer to this fundamental law.”

Murray Gell-Mann

I am proof of quantum physics

Could it be that my tumblr experience helps to prove the theory of quantum physics?

I opened my tumblr so I could instantly store articles, links, videos, podcasts, photos, just…anything, for looking at later. Usually I would stick all kinds of stuff in my tumblr and then if I had time at night, I would go through them and delete them as I finished them. Sometimes I would catch up on everything over the weekend. So, my tumblr was nothing more than a storage vault. 

Then, I let Andy know about it because there was something, I don’t remember what, I had stored there for him to take a look at later. Now, someone else knew about my tumblr. I added a photo to go with my name.

I learned about using tags and devised a method of tagging so I could pull up stuff I needed later. Now, my tumblr was a real storage device. I wasn’t dumping stuff anymore. Instead, I was filing stuff away, under multiple headings, that I could easily access again in the future when I needed it. Genius!! Right.

Because of my tags, someone else found my tumblr and began following me. Then, someone else. I added a little tag line about myself that sounded kind of cynical but curious — like me.

I became curious about the people who began to follow me, so I went and checked out their tumblrs. Wow. Some people really have great tumblrs. Really. I began to follow some other people and to tumble for photos and art. Hours would pass and I would realize my little storage tumblr was taking up a lot of my time. Hmpff.

My tumblr was boooorring. lol. I figured out how to pick out themes and experimented with 5 or 10 until I realized there wasn’t one set up for what I needed. Maybe one day I will design one for myself. I see that Tumblr has a How-to-design-your-own-Tumblr-Theme link I can explore. I know people are seeing my posts, so I want my tumblr to be liked. I guess it is an extension of who I am, somehow. Maybe everything we do online is just that —- a projection of ourselves out to the world at large. 

Today, I am trying to find a happy medium. My tumblr is still my storage area and I have become better at tagging my stuff so I can find it later. I still can’t figure out how to tumble something using the bookmarklet thing and give it multiple tags. It runs them all together, for some reason. Guess I should look that up. 

So, how does all this relate to Quantum Physics? 

Once I realized I was being observed, I changed the way I do things. Once there is an observer, it changes the outcome. I will never know what my tumblr would have been like without an observer. Weird, isn’t it? 

We pop out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere

I can’t find a quote, but didn’t Jung say, if not exactly, that we are not our thoughts, but the observer observing our thoughts - the driver in the cockpit that is so hard to pin down. Perhaps a zombie could be described as a machine without the observer.If there is a tangible observer, perhaps it could exist without the machine, which would lend credibility to the theories of reincarnation and astral projection, or even floating off into heaven or hell. It does seem strange that we pop out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Nothing else does that.. I’ve heard that it happens in quantum physics but it’s not something most of us can observe happening. It seems more likely that we are a manifestation of something that was already here, and that the manifestation is brief. The consciousness may be millions of years old, or even eternal, which I imagine could get monotonous without having the benefit of forgetting everything after every life cycle.

~~ Michael Simon