Realistic thoughts on Multi-Verse Theory

[just say know]

Have you considered an alternate angle or version of this world? Another version of this very existance you live in today? have you ever thought.... "what would have it been like if say; the native americans weren't slaughtered, diseased, and raped and had their land stolen?" or "what would have it been like if perhaps we didn't alter the world around us massively (which historically leads to self extinction if you pay attention to your history)"

perhaps you think of a world where humans evolved differently; whether that's a social, emotional, physical, psychic, cultural, neurological, or societal alternative feature of evolution? maybe you think of a world where we settle our differences slow and steady? maybe that alternate world has more time and patience. maybe that world is healthier, better, and more efficiently and sustainably progressive?

well when i think of the "Multi-Verse Theory" i think of this. alternate actions that changed the world around us. i think of the Multi-Verse Theory when i see people doing nothing about their situation or when i see people acting on their situations. i think of it when i read books, watch movies, and think of fantasy thoughts such as preperatory speaking (i find i prepare situations alot; none of them actually happen: but what would happen if they did? would i be prepared to go with my pre-concieved "plan" for the situation like saying what i imagined myself saying or acting how i imagined myself acting?)

i often think of Multi-Verse Theory as less of a Theory and more of a "Law" of reality. the Law goes as such "Reality is shared, acted upon, and manufactured. Reality is what you and those around you make of it. Reality is a one-way stream of the Past being it's foundation, the present being it's experience, and the Future being unfabricated, unpredicted, and unreal; essentially the Future is both fiction and non-fiction. essentially Time and Space work together to create a single dimension. space could be those that walk around the world changing it and Time can be the reality that spaces creates. it's like a video game almost; you progress, your progress gets saved, and you continue to progress."

maybe that's not an offical "Law" - whatever. but i think it portrays a realistic version of Multi-Verse Theory. This Perspective of Multi-Verse Theory was inspired through the mystical experiences of LSA; although LSA only manifested the perspective that was already there in my opinion.

i don't doubt other ideas and perspectives of Multi-Verse Theory but i do think this concept can be accepted as truth; that the Multi-Verse is what could have been; perhaps rather than another existence entirely. but i also think of the Theory that explains that Consciousness doesn't die out and that it is immortal. and i think of the afterlife according to Multi-Verse Theory. and i think "what if Multi-Verse Theory is just the same theory that states that reality is a group of scenario's like a program such as minecraft; a randomly generated world of contexts and existence." and what happens if life is just a bunch of Dimensions or Alternate realities?

hmm...

well i suppose these are my thoughts on the matter; if anyone doesn't mind i would much appreciate some feedback of your own theories and perspectives and ideals. Have you ever found proof or insight into the more classical theory that there exists other worlds we aren't entirely aware of yet? i know that this is a very real concept we're considering but what about you? what is your take on it?

 

[Xorkoth]

I had an experience once on 2C-E, which I am not claiming to necessarily be true but it was a compelling experience that led to the following idea (and also built upon my reading of the book Flatland):

If you think of our 3-dimensional world on a graph, you can easily see that the third dimension of it is composed of an infinitude of "slices" of 2-dimensional space in a direction orthogonal to the plane created by a 2-dimensional space. Similarly, it's not difficult to imagine time as the "next" dimension, where the entirety of the 3-dimensional universe is one "slice" of the 4-dimensional space, and that though we are able to freely traverse the 3-dimensional space, we are stuck drifting in one direction in our particular slice of 4-dimensional space. The "spacetime continuum" is the entirety of this 4-dimensional space, all space and time together. What, then, would be the "next" dimension, the next level up? Perhaps it is reality itself, the specific spacetime continuum you reside in just being that one slice of 5-dimensional space that you happen to reside in, but were it possible to move dimensionally in that direction, you might encounter different realities, different spacetime continuums, that range in all possible outcomes both minute and dramatic.

On this 2C-E trip I experienced seeing this structure laid out before me, and I had what seemed to be a revelation: that our actions and conscious choices modify our position on these higher dimensions. For a long time I had been pondering of idea of free will vs predestination. I wondered how, if time is a dimension, and spacetime exists as a structure, it is that anything we do can change anything. If the passage of time is an illusion, then the future is already set in stone, though we can't see it. So where does free will come in?

Imagine that your self, your consciousness, exists as a point within the grand "graph" of all of the dimensional spaces. At all times you exist somewhere within all of these dimensions, even though as a human you are limited in many ways as to your movement within these beyond the 3rd. I experienced a vision where in "front" of me I saw branches I could take based on my immediate decisions, which would plop me into subtly different versions of the future. If I took one branch, then the next moment I would see yet more branches. It gave me the idea that free will is still real because when we make decisions in life (from minute to important decisions), it actually moves our "consciousness point" not only within the 3rd dimensional space, and through time, but also through the higher-dimensional space. So when we make a decision, it actually alters the reality that we exist in. So we move out of the particular spacetime continuum slice that we had just been in, where the past, present and future are fixed, into another one where it is different from where we just were. And this is happening constantly.

Like I said I don't know if this is true but it was a phenomenally interesting experience and has shaped my thinking about this subject since.

 

[turkalurk]

interesting thing about an infinite multiverse, in an actual infinite existence of finite storylines, each slightest variation of every storyline would play out an infinite amount of times. Mind officially blown!

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah it's intense to try to conceptualize, it really begins to illuminate the vastness of infinity as a concept.

 

[Flickering]

Have you heard of quantum immortality?

 

[Xorkoth]

No, interesting thought experiment though.

 

[Journyman16]

Robert Heinlein developed a basis for his stories in which every time an author invented a story, a Universe was born. It went well for a few books, up until about 'Time Enough for Love' and then every book from then on somehow came back to Lazarus Long and his incest with his mother and daughters... Not sure if it was a fading mind or not but I never saw another of his books worth reading - prior to that he'd done some excellent writing.

Greg Egan wrote a book called 'Schild's Ladder' that Xorkoth in particular might enjoy. It inbvolves people exploring the planck-level 'graph' that is the vacuum structure as the 'non-vacuum' created by an experiment spreads at half the speed of light, destroying Reality. I'll be extremely impressed with anyone who only reads it once. :D Mind-expanding but also a good story - the hallmark of an excellent author.

Another view of the multiverse comes from Greg Bear in his book 'Eon' - again this is not a light read although an excellent story. An asteroid comes to circle Earth and it is identical to one the people can see in the asteroid belt. Visiting it brings a surprise because although it clearly came into the solar system under power, there seems to be nobody there. Inside is hollowed out and clearly it was designed to spin so people could live on the inside walls.

The 6 chambers they enter are filled with mystery, including some that suggest time travel. The 7th chamber outclasses all the other mysteries. And there are no spoilers here - this is all in the first couple of chapters. :D It gets BIGGER! So big that when I heard there was a sequel I didn't bother getting it. There was no way Eon could be improved on, expanded or followed up, it's that good a book.

And I was wrong! Eternity is probably the best sequel to anything I have ever read! I am unsure how Bear's head fits on earth but he has an incredible mind.

 

[Journyman16]

On the subject, some thoughts. Provoked by comments in another thread, I realised most people don't have the reservations I have about the multiverse supposed to flow on from quantum physics.

Most people seem to have the idea that quantum physics implies that every decision splits off a new universe, because in QP the trigger appears to be consciousness. In contrast, in Relativity, the Observer is integral to the system but the system runs by itself. QP seems to say Consciousness CAUSES the system and this is usually described as 'collapsing the probability function.'

The problem is, leaving out the sentence about Relativity, those two statements appear, to me, to be mutually exclusive. The normal view seems to be (& I am happy to be corrected here as all this is simply my view resulting from lots of reading across 4 decades - I make no claims to 'expert' status) that Consciousness creates Reality and decisions cause new universes to come into existence.

The problem is... HOW?

We view the infinitude as a chaotic sea of virtuality, or perhaps a fractal foam of unrealised probability or even just an aether of virtual space, and that consciousness 'chooses' a possibility and it 'becomes.' The issue I have is that once that perception has occurred, where can decisions made from WITHIN the chosen reality ever find a place to create a new universe?

I hope I am being clear enough to be understood.

Once we 'choose' a reality, we engage in it. It might even be that the engagement IS the choice. If we are 'engaged' in a collapsed probability function, is there any possible way we can engage outside that reality?

If not, and I've never even come across a hint that this might be possible or even that anyone is wondering about it, then our choices cannot create new universes - if there is a multiverse it has to have been 'chosen' or engaged per universe at some point in the past. Maybe that's why physicists dismiss any possibility of communication or travel between universes? To do so you must disengage from the reality in which you are - at that point physics no longer has a definition for what you are. (mind you, I don't think anyone has a meaningful definition of consciousness anyway :D )

So... have I gone astray? Are there holes in this somewhere?

 

[turkalurk]

i think people tend to inflate some logical implications of some hypotheses into conclusions it never intended to claim. i think the confusion occurs with the distinction between our perceived reality and objective reality that can only be accessed as a perceived abstraction. Since the only reality we can observe is our experience of the physical world, it stands to reason that this perceived reality is influenced by how the conscious mind perceives it.

Furthermore, when you look at time as being a perception, if you take time out of the equation and look at the implications of an actual infinite existence, its not that a new universe is created, but rather an infinite amount of universes with each variation of any possible timeline exists within the wave-function of reality. Which reality you are experiencing is correlated with the particular frame of reference of the observer.

Does this make sense and seem more realistic and logical?

 

[Journyman16]

*grins* You should read Schild's Ladder...

Think of it like this... Do you know Schrödinger's cat idea? You have a cat in a sealed box with a deadly source that is truly random as to when it might activate and kill the cat. Until you open the box, there is no way to know if the cat is alive or dead, and so the cat exists in a quantum state called 'quantum superposition.'

Quantum superposition is similar in concept to the unrealised probability that consciousness is thought to 'collapse' by choice.

So... open the box and consciousness is now in a universe where the cat is definitely (say) dead - no more superposition. So, how is it even feasible to change things so you move to a universe where the cat is now alive?

The other possibility, brought in by the idea that time is perceived only and not a real construct or dimension, is that all things exist in all possible states, not as unrealised probabilities but as actualities and our decisions move US through the 'graph' from point to point. This gets very messy, very quickly because it seems to fuck around with the whole 'shared reality' concept. At what point does your universe cease to coincide with mine if we keep moving to different points in the 3D (or even 4D) graph?

One thought is that our shared reality is the result NOT of where we are in the graph, but in the commonality of our perceived 'selfs' so it is only if your self is radically different to mine that we 'disappear' from each other's perceptive realities. And near as I can tell, this means that the ONLY thing to actually exist is Consciousness - the perceived reality and even the 'graph' of possibility is all a construct of consciousness.

Now I have to go dodge the men in long white coats who want me to try on my new jacket with extra long sleeves... :D

 

[turkalurk]

*grins* You should read Schild's Ladder...

Think of it like this... Do you know Schrödinger's cat idea? You have a cat in a sealed box with a deadly source that is truly random as to when it might activate and kill the cat. Until you open the box, there is no way to know if the cat is alive or dead, and so the cat exists in a quantum state called 'quantum superposition.'

Quantum superposition is similar in concept to the unrealised probability that consciousness is thought to 'collapse' by choice.

So... open the box and consciousness is now in a universe where the cat is definitely (say) dead - no more superposition. So, how is it even feasible to change things so you move to a universe where the cat is now alive?

The other possibility, brought in by the idea that time is perceived only and not a real construct or dimension, is that all things exist in all possible states, not as unrealised probabilities but as actualities and our decisions move US through the 'graph' from point to point. This gets very messy, very quickly because it seems to fuck around with the whole 'shared reality' concept. At what point does your universe cease to coincide with mine if we keep moving to different points in the 3D (or even 4D) graph?

One thought is that our shared reality is the result NOT of where we are in the graph, but in the commonality of our perceived 'selfs' so it is only if your self is radically different to mine that we 'disappear' from each other's perceptive realities. And near as I can tell, this means that the ONLY thing to actually exist is Consciousness - the perceived reality and even the 'graph' of possibility is all a construct of consciousness.

Now I have to go dodge the men in long white coats who want me to try on my new jacket with extra long sleeves... :D

i see the flaw in this assumption is that it assumes that because something might as well not exist(as we will never be able to conceptualize it from our subjective view point) means the same thing as something does not actually exist (because we lack an ability to conceptualize it without using the properties of consciousness.) To me, consciousness is an emergent property of a thinking system. Without the components of the system in which consciousness emerges from, consciousness would not exist. It seems like a silly anthromorphism to assume this emergent property of our biological system exists seperately from that which it emerges from. Would it not seem absurd to think that the world did not exist before living organisms were around to experience it? Imo, inflating consciousness into all that exists seems nonsensical. The properties of our consciousness may very well supervene on lower level properties of the material universe, but it would be incredulous to say nothing supervenes consciousness. That would be a false claim at solving a mystery by simply saying we can't solve the mystery so the mystery doesn't actually exist. You can say it might as well not exist to you, but to say it really doesn't exist in actuality, would just be another argument from ignorance.

I like the idea of balance. not to focus too much on the observer or what is being observed, but recognizing its the whole relationship. the whole object/subject system. Its not just existentence(actuality) but also nonexistence(potentiality). Or, more specifically the whole system of potentiality(future) being( present) actualized(past).

 

[Journyman16]

The issue with having consciousness depend on the system it uses is that Physics is telling, from several different angles, that the universe is not real. There is evidence of the holographic nature of our reality. Quantum theory and string theory BOTH have nothing at the base of reality. And an interesting point to ponder is none of the physical systems, nor even the psychological ones yet have even a working hypothesis for just what consciousness is.

I've said before, there appear to be only 2 things in existence, the universe and consciousness, and the evidence for the universe is insubstantial. (I like puns)

There is also an issue for how something created inside the working system of the universe could EVER manage to affect the structure beneath it. Unless you can suggest a way, I think we have to presume consciousness, if it is to have ANY quantum effect, has to exist outside the results of the collapsed probability function. i.e. consciousness is at the same level as the fractal foam, not at the level of the universe.

And it explains many strange things that our Science runs away from and denies existence of, even though we all experience them. ESP, Psi, clairvoyance etc. did not just spring out of whole loth, they came about because people sought names for events that happen to us. They may not be atomic bomb level but so many people have so many experiences that cannot fit into the Standard Models we use in Science that the level of evidence is equal to that of a nuclear event.

Calling consciousness an 'emergent event' is the same as saying we know what electricity is because we have a label. Nobody has yet worked out even how a brain 'constructs' the world we see based on the chemical signals received, let alone described how the Self arises from it. The best they have managed is to mumble about 'agents' that dominate depending on circumstances - actually defining the sense of self such agents might possess is not even attempted.

Nor have they resolved the God-cell problem. All cells, no exceptions, operate the same way. A 'signal' is received and the membrane either triggers a function inside or it lets something through the wall. This tells the cell to do something and then a signal leaves. The problem is that there are no other cell mechanisms - so how do you and I 'decide' to move and arm or leg? How do we originate a thought, or have a conversation, when ALL cells are reacting mechanisms?

How can a system built entirely of reaction devices, ever generate anything by itself? How can there be an 'emergent property'when nothing in the system can initiate?

 

[turkalurk]

i don't believe that an observer initiates reality itself, but rather initiaites an experience of reality based on their subjective perspective. Existence and the observable universe are not the same thing. We can observe the universe, and maybe we are in a sims game, but the sims game still exists as a microcosm within the macrocosm of all things.

furthermore, the entire system of all things never does anything by itself. Remember, monism is non-reductive. existence, exists as a whole, consciousness is not seperate. We don't call a dead person conscious. We can only apply consciousness to a thinking system. There is little if any reason to believe that our consciousness exists outside and seperate from our nervous system.

 

[Journyman16]

Ah... my experience suggests consciousness definitely exists outside the nervous system. The lack of the God cell suggests the same thing. We have no explanation physically for what makes us what we are. Not everything we do is in response to the outside world and even one event somehow originating within a person means the physical is NOT all there is. It also strongly suggests 'we' are not physical in nature, that we merely drive bodies around for a while.

Astral travel is an experience that, described from outside by someone who hasn't done it, can be explained away as imagination, delusion or illusion, but from inside the experience, it is none of those things. And it is very convincing as to whether or not you are simply a body/brain. And given our lack of success in Science of finding any other factor, it suggests the Being, the piece of consciousness, is something other than simple energy.

In fact, if you care to investigate such things, there are several different fields we perhaps generate or perhaps use, but which are definitely associated with us, that we can detect, but THEY don't give an answer as to what consciousness is either. A field still needs to be generated in some way, but there is no current explanation that I have seen for how a Self might emerge from what is basically a set of frequencies. And 'emergent property is just a label, not an explanation, so we are left with a mystery.

There is no actual solid evidence to suppose existence or even reality exists apart from the conscious beingness. There is no way to show there is anything at all apart from selfness - it easily could all be an information flow experienced by a Being. We could all be entities within the ultimate split-personality imagining interaction and events, creating worlds and Earth within a collective mind field where the original God has gone schizophrenic in the ultimate way.

But there is no getting around the fact that, no matter WHAT the reality, no matter how we explain it, there is an 'I' that views things, even if the 'I' you think you are is just me imagining there is another 'i' out there. 'I' am still perceiving and looking at input. So we each have evidence of consciousness, no matter how we think of it. What we DON'T have is evidence of anything else...

Unless of course, we can leave our bodies and have different experiences that demonstrate we ARE something separate, that there is more than one form of existence and we can 'see' ourselves from outside. THEN we have a reality we can talk about. :D

 

[rickolasnice]

i don't believe that an observer initiates reality itself, but rather initiaites an experience of reality based on their subjective perspective. Existence and the observable universe are not the same thing. We can observe the universe, and maybe we are in a sims game, but the sims game still exists as a microcosm within the macrocosm of all things.

furthermore, the entire system of all things never does anything by itself. Remember, monism is non-reductive. existence, exists as a whole, consciousness is not seperate. We don't call a dead person conscious. We can only apply consciousness to a thinking system. There is little if any reason to believe that our consciousness exists outside and seperate from our nervous system.

Yeah this is what I believe.

Any and all claims of paranormal abilities never make it past the first test that ensures we separate subjective truths from objective truths.

Don't get me wrong I have experienced a lot of what some would call paranormal goings on.. I've had an OOBE, I've dreamt the same dream as my girlfriend, annndd.. minds gone blank but i know there's more.. but there's nothing that me or anybody else has experienced that hasn't been or couldn't be shown to be produced by the brain..

OOBE's and astral projection - I'm sure we've all had dreams that felt completely real.. Your mind literally has the ability to create a whole world inside your head with scenery, people, love, hate and everything in between. It really is that powerful.

Premonitions - Lots of possibilities.. From your brain tricking itself into thinking that it thought about the event you just witnessed before the event, when chances are - you didn't. A bit like a modified de ja vu. It could be that the premonition is of something that has a good chance of happening any way (and your belief that it didn't is the whole "you only see what you want to see" thing). It could be that you day dream about things all the time.. you've dreamt up countless events and gone over all possible outcomes.. but it's only the ones that happen that you remember having.

Etc etc etc etc..

Multiverse theory..

I really don't like it

 

[Xorkoth]

^^ But how do you explain that you and your girlfriend had the same dream? It seems unlikely that you both generated the same thing at the same time. Though I grant that it could be you didn't have the SAME dream, but just found it to be close enough to the same upon discussing it.

One time 2 months before my mom's dad died, she had the most intense dream of her life where she attended his funeral. She experienced the entirety of the funeral in this dream, in great detail, down to conversations people were having, decorations, etc. She woke up knowing it was real. Then 2 months later he died and when she went to his funeral it was precisely the same, down to conversations she heard people having and decorative details. It's one of my biggest pieces of evidence that such things are possible, since I have never personally experienced anything that intense. The most intense thing I have experienced probably is a whole bunch of times when me and my ex-wife were close, of hearing her say something to me and going upstairs to ask her about it and then her saying she never said anything but was just thinking about asking me that.

Most things that seem to happen I realize can be explained away, but there are those events which I can't explain.

 

[rickolasnice]

Because we had both spent all day with each other, side by side, there's a good chance that our dreams would have involved similar things. As for the details - It's a lot more likely that our dreams weren't as identical as we thought. She'd mention something from the dream and i believed my dream involved the same and vice versa. A bit like the reverse of thinking about a dream you just had - you know you know what it was but the harder you try to remember the less you do.. The idea that we both had the same dream was installed when one of us recognized something from the others. Then it's a back and forth "Then did this happen?"

I don't wanna throw a neggy nancy spanner into your spanner but did she tell anyone about this dream before it happened? As I said premonitions are almost never as accurate as you think they are at the time of the event.. and that's if the premonition actually happened and it isn't your brain instilling a false memory (form of dejavu)

As for your ex wife.. It's entirely possible and imo, more probable that her semi-subconscious internal dialogue would think up questions, statements, conversational pieces aimed at you.. I think everyone does.. It's just those thoughts come and go and are forever forgotten about multiple times a minute.. unless something happens which causes you to consciously think about it. It's entirely possible she did say something out loud but to herself rather than to you. It's entirely possible that the question she wanted to ask you was a question she thought of minutes, an hour, a day ago and the questioning herself over calling you and what for prompted the memory. It's entirely possible that it never happened

 

[Journyman16]

For many years I have had regular, and mostly uninteresting deja vu events. But I know where and when they came from - I would have a dream that was especially vivid, with lots of inconsequential details, and they were so vivid I would recall them on waking. Sometime in the next couple of years I would be in a situation and one little thing would change & I would be 'in' the dream. I have more than 30 of these.

What I can't figure out is WHY? They are not important moments, they are not pivotal. I was travelling with a mate in Qld and because of the dream I could tell him we had to turn left for Mackay even though the map said straight. I was playing chess in a lounge in Sydney and the trigger was my bosses wife walking around the corner with a plate of snacks... normal things, no life-altering moments.

I was about to head out with a mate to go (hopefully) pick up. I was ready, waiting on him, and as he came out to go, I got violent illness symptoms, stomach and bowel. I wanted to go, he tried to persuade me and I couldn't move. He left and 2 minutes or less, I was well. (no mobiles in those days :D)

He passed a car in the wrong spot, has a head-on and rolled it 3 times, and totalled his old man's falcon and where I would have been sitting the roof was crushed down to an inch above the seat.

And while some dreams might be working through the days events, many of them are processing the floodlight perceptions and they rely on associations YOU have, so it would be extremely unusual for 2 people to have the same dream even if they had been together the whole day. And many dreams have little to do with anything that occurred during the day, floodlight OR spotlight.

Yes, lots of this stuff can be rationalised, but rationalisation is not necessarily explanation.

 

[Foreigner]

I have no idea if there are multiple universes or not. I've read the logic, and I suppose the dream is capable of producing anything.

If I feel into the idea, intuitively it doesn't seem likely. Everything is happening right now, there's nothing else. Even if you can see the future, that's still stemming from the perception of this moment. There's nothing beyond that.

Obviously the truth is probably beyond any of us, I just don't see the point of a universe where all potential choices actually happen. There is no evidence for it, and if there were we would still only experience our singular outcome.

So for all practical purposes, it doesn't really matter.

 

[swilow]

Multiverse theory provides a reason for why our universe is apparently 'fine-tuned'. Statistical probability suggests at least one of many universes will be able to support life and of course we have to be in that one.

I think there is a distinction between the idea of 'many' universes or 'infinite' universes, and I'm not really sure which permetuation we discuss in this thread.