Howdy, dearder. I hope you are well.
Today, I have been thinking much about Schrödinger's Cat (I'm rewatching Netflix's "Dark" for the third time). I always find it so fascinating how, according to our understanding of quantum mechanics, the act of observation seems to play a major role in the physical state of the Universe itself. That something so innocuous, not to mention rather vague, as the abstract idea of 'observation' could influence physical reality in any manner seems remarkable, almost magical. For sure, it has stumped the greatest minds for decades, and will likely continue to do so for many more to come.
This morning at work, I was thinking about just how interesting it is that our perception of reality is so heavily shaped by our bodies. After all, our very act of being is a highly subjective experience, influenced solely by the mechanical means in which our species has happened to evolve. The same is true not only between individual members of our species, but between every species we know to exist. It seems when one thinks very hardly about almost anything, definitions have a hard time maintaining themselves. Life... observation... reality... Upon closer inspection, these terms are not so concrete as one may think.
Evolution is an expression of chemical reaction that encodes pure survivability into little strips of data that propagate themselves. The expressions that mix best with others and beget their offspring into being have a natural advantage towards success, and those more successful offspring have a better chance at reproducing, as their so-called 'parents' did. Through this process over many millennia, I have arrived to this desk, in this office, at this time, with this thinking brain, and these typing hands that feel the keys, and these seeing eyes that watch myself type, and these hearing ears that listen to that typing, and this smelling nose that sniffs the dusty plastic and the wonderful aroma of the Country Kitchen bakery down the road.
People across the ages have tried to understand the pseudoscientific art of alchemy, but goodness gracious, the alchemy was US the whole time! We create new things from something else every second we're alive. It's so esoteric- we turn mind into matter, and matter into mind!
What is 'mind,' anyway? From the knowledge we have to go off of, mind is just another form of matter. An amalgamation of protein flashing with electricity across their many neuron synapses. Our head is a cloud, and our thoughts are the valor of Thor himself streaking across the black-purple canvas of closed-eye sky! Truly and simply put, it's awesome.
Initially this morning, as it was early and I was tired and I had not had any coffee, I had written this little idea about how matter relies on observation to exist and how that's so crazy, and I cringe even thinking about that. Obviously, matter exists across the Universe, even though "Jai guru deva, om" is only said here on Earth. There are unthinkably distant reaches of the cosmos that have never been perceived by any human or our far-reaching observational devices. We can detect and comprehend things so far away, yet there is much that will remain unknowable to us regardless of how advanced we become in the future.
Certain swathes of the fabric of All That IS are expanding away from us at such a fast rate, that no device we could feasibly create to traverse that distance (Einstein-Rosen Bridges not included) could ever make it across the gap. All of this to say- we may never be able to observe some spaces of the Universe. Thus, we will never have any way to know for sure what exists in that space.
In a theoretical philosophical sense, perhaps not based very strongly on genuine science, as I'm no real scholar: what if that space with which we will never interact will always exist in a fluctuating wave of probability, as there may never be observation which occurs to collapse the matter into a definite state? It exists out there in the dark, devoid of appearance, texture, smell, noise... existing like a forest of trees falling forever in a hidden forest, dreamt up by a daemon that does not know what trees are. That daemon (ourselves) would never have any way of knowing with any certainty what does or does not exist in that space.
Obviously, assumptions can be made based upon our understanding of the physical properties of the Universe, based upon that which has been observed anywhere else across All That IS and is presumed to be true for its entirety. But the difference is, we know how we perceive that which we know... what if it only exists that way _because_ we have perceived it? What if it was a swirling mass of entropic probability up until the very first second any tool of calculation breached its depths? I could describe it as swirling and gray or translucent and wavy, but none of these adjectives would do it justice, as such a state of undefined state is all but physically incomprehensible to a brain that has evolved to see in color and texture.
(Done writing for now, as I'm leaving my computer. I may or may not add to this later).
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