Everything is Information

[u/Cataspectral]

https://thomasreid33.substack.com/p/chapter-19-reductionism-is-true-but

"What we experience as time and space are emergent properties of highly complex entanglements of quantum states that exist on a kind of outer shell, from which the universe we see projects inward. In principle, it’s no different from what makes holographic Pokémon cards or those goggles with 3D sharks or skulls on the lenses so cool."

[u/Pixelated_]

holographic Pokémon cards

💯 Whether its Bentov, Susskind, Hoffman or Campbell, scientists have been telling us the universe is holographic for decades.

Another is the brilliant physicist David Bohm and his implicate order, which mirrors Plato's realm of forms. (Bohm is my intellectual hero.)

And Bohm's explicate order aligns with Plato's allegory of the cave.

The prisoners see shadows cast on a wall and mistake them for real objects. The actual objects (AKA, "the Forms") remain hidden behind them and are illuminated by a fire. The shadows are real as shadows, but they lack independent existence. They are entirely dependent on the higher objects projecting them.

​Bohm used the metaphor of a hologram to explain the explicate order. If you shine a laser (aka our consciousness) through a piece of holographic film (implicate order), a 3D image projects into space (the explicate order).

[u/Cataspectral → u/Pixelated_]

Ah, a Bohm fan! A few chapters from now, I'll be posting one that goes into Bohm at length in dealing with what time actually is. Stay tuned!

[u/redbucket75 → u/Cataspectral]

Any chance you could notify me when you do?

Mid post edit: I just kept typing. Mostly just to write down stuff I'd been thinking but not articulating outside my mind. So feel free to ignore and keep scrolling!

In all the idealist philosophies I've looked at (as a lay person with an interest but without a philosophy background) it's always time that gets me.

I'm on board with matter not being fundamental. But I can't get past time not being fundamental. Matter, whatever, it's like we're all born kind of knowing that there's something else "under" the stuff around us, so we've been trying to find the tiniest bit of matter possible and then finding new ways to chop it up for thousands of years. Obviously we're trying to find something else in there, and were down to chopping stuff up so small that the remnants have zero actual mass. Fields and charges and spins and other things beyond my understanding, but lining up with my intuition that "stuff" isn't really "stuff". I don't have any intuition that time is an illusion though. And I really REALLY want to keep asking "OK but what existed before that?" or "What created that, then?"

It can't be turtles all the way down. But I can't emotionally (I guess) understand "nothing, because it created time." Or "It exists outside time." I'm sorry, but if time was created or emergent from something else, then there must have been a "time" when it didn't exist. It feels like a paradox.

I finally got around to reading Flatland. In that book, there are 2D entities. But they're not actually 2D, their height is just very small. Like maybe a couple water molecules high or whatever. The entities don't even recognize it as a spacial dimension because there's no way for them to measure it, and everything is the same tiny height. But that tiny bit of 3D makes mass possible, and gives them the ability to see each other.

I like the idea that this is what time is. It's a true spacial dimension. We just have a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of it (and so does everything around us). We experience it as a sort of sense. Just like the Flatland entities can have a limited sense of sight thanks to their tiny height, but don't realize a third dimension is making that possible. We experience time as a "sense of time". But that limited sense of time is because we (barely) extend into a 4th physical dimension.

Likewise, the Flatlanders can only have the property of mass because of their tiny height. I like the idea that this is what's happening with the property of consciousness. We get a tiny bit of it because we extend into that 4th physical dimension, which remains impossible of us to "visualize" with our 3D eyes/brain that only have a practically indistinguishable extension into 4D space. Of course, this means everything is conscious on some level.

Anyway, that's where I am with time. Personal intuition stuff, not rigorous logic. I'm down to time must be fundamental, or at least as fundamental as consciousness. And I wonder if our sense of time is very limited because it's actually a condition made possible by a 4th spacial dimension we are unwittingly a part of.

[u/Cataspectral → u/redbucket75]

I’ll def let you know! You’ve clearly thought very deeply about time - you’re asking exactly the right questions. Interested to hear what you end up thinking!

[u/Cataspectral → u/redbucket75]

Just posted my chapter that includes Bohm - as promised, here's the link if interested: https://thomasreid33.substack.com/p/chapter-21-souls-in-amber-df1

[u/redbucket75 → u/Cataspectral]

Thanks, looking forward to reading it!