Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network

[guthrio]

Originally Posted by ketzer

The holographic principal is a rather bizarre one to take in at first. But once one remembers that regardless of whether that universe, which is thought to be out there, is holographic in nature (if it exists out there at all :), the universe we live in is the holographic one created by our brain.

I find it interesting that the human brain must fold the cerebral cortex into so many contortions because its power to process information is correlated not to its volume, but to its surface area. Which is interesting because the maximum amount if information that can be contained in any give volume of space, is also proportional not to the volume, but to it's surface area. Which is interesting because if that volume is a sphere, and the information is actually at its maximum density, then its radius will be determined by the Bekenstein bound, which is the radius that a black hole will have. So blackholes are places in the universe which contain a maximum density of information, but that density, and hence the corresponding volume is determined by a two dimensional surface area, not the three dimensional volume as intuition would expect (not to mention places where that information is no longer accessible to us). Which is interesting because holograms are three dimensional illusions, created from two dimensional surfaces. Which circles back around to our own brains, which compute and create the holographic universe within our heads in which we live, but whose power to do so also seems to be dependent on two dimensional surface area. A computed holographic universe, which appears to be computed in two dimensions not three, with three dimensions just being an arrangement of two dimensional surfaces. Which is interesting because our 4 dimensional reality can be though of as an illusion created by an arrangement of 3 dimensional realities observed sequentially though time. All very interesting in how these patters of created realities seem to repeat fractally as we move from lower to higher dimensions. Networks of networks of networks, all encoding the information that we use to create and experience our realities.

The upshot of all this is that if someone tells you are dense, and that all you have between your ears is a black hole, you can take that as a compliment.

As an aside, there is more information hidden away in the black hole at the center of our galaxy as there is in the rest of the known universe, outside of black holes, combined. And there are countless backhoes in the universe. The upshot of which is that even if John Snow knew all of the knowable information in the universe, relatively speaking he would pretty much still be extremely ignorant. Poor John, he will always know nothing.

I almost forgot, if John did know all the knowable information in the known universe, his head would have to have a surface area at least the size of Switzerland, which it clearly doesn't. So it seems John Snow knows considerably less then what is, relatively speaking, practically nothing, and will never know any more. You know less then nothing John Snow.

https://www.pbs.org/video/how-to-det...nsions-ekf1gb/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxVlGAFX7vA
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...o-dimensions/#

Ketzer,

It was fascinating to listen to the speaker's theories in your references.

I have to admit, my understanding of the gist of what he said escaped the "quantum-sized limit" of my understanding of much of it, "more or less, considerably less or more than more or less!" (my favorite line as a bartender in my high school's rendition of a play about a fictional town in the wild west).

I also have to admit my gratitude to Inavalan for two superb references (1) Michael Talbot's as the author of, The Holographic Universe, to which Busby referred earlier, and (2) renewing my interest in Seth, a non-physical entity channeled by Jane Roberts, who like Talbot died before her time (yes, I know that's an oxy-"moronic" statement!) though Seth’s voice was likewise silenced.

Along with Michael Talbot helping me understand how to make sense of the term "holographic" for a layman (like me) through his ground-breaking book, it is Seth's contributions that enabled me to realize why the gist of John Snow's "holographic computational limitations of the universe" may be moot! Why moot?

Because of the following paragraph's in reference 1 (from a search engine of the texts of Seth's books, relating to the word "atom"):

"(Pause at 9:35.) As I have said frequently, time as you think of it does not exist, yet in your terms, time’s true nature could be understood if the basic nature of the atom was ever made known to you. In one way, an atom could be compared to a microsecond.
It seems as if an atom “exists” steadily for a certain amount of time. Instead it phases in and out, so to speak. It fluctuates in a highly predictable pattern and rhythm. It can be perceived within your system only at certain points in this fluctuation, so it seems to scientists that the atom is steadily present. They are not aware of any gaps of absence as far as the atom is concerned.
(9:41.) In those periods of nonphysical projection, the off periods of fluctuation, the atoms “appear” in another system of reality. In that system they are perceived in what are “on” points of fluctuation, and in that system also then the atoms (seem to) appear steadily. There are many such points of fluctuation, but your system of course is not aware of them, nor of the ultimate actions, universes, and systems that exist within them.
Now the same sort of behavior occurs on a deep, basic, secret, and unexplored psychological level. The physically oriented consciousness, responding to one phase of the atom’s activity, comes alive and awake to its particular existence, but in between are other fluctuations in which consciousness is focused upon entirely different systems of reality; each of these coming awake and responding, and each one having no sense of absence, and memory only of those particular fluctuations to which they respond.
Now: Resume dictation. These fluctuations are actually simultaneous. It would seem to you as if there would be gaps between the fluctuations, and the description I have used is the best one for our purposes; but the probable systems all exist simultaneously, and basically, following this discussion, the atom is in all these other systems at one time."
—SS Chapter 16: Session 567, February 17, 1971

And the bolded portion of Seth's comments in Reference 2:

Seth details a philosophy of conscious creation. This philosophy supposes that:
* Physical reality arises from consciousness, not the other way around.
* We create our own reality.
* We are not at the mercy of a disjointed deity or subconscious.
* We are multi-dimensional beings; more than our physical bodies.
* Time and space are dimensional “illusions” we jointly create and by which we tacitly agree to abide.
* At the core of our being, we reside in a realm in which time and space do not exist.
* We are, in essence, creative spiritual beings having an earthly experience.
* The fate of each of us is in our own hands.
* We have multiple, perhaps infinite, life experiences. Problems not faced in this life will be faced in another.
* We cannot blame God, society, or our parents for “misfortunes,” since before this physical life we chose the circumstances into which we would be born and the challenges that could best bring about our development.
* We form physical matter as effortlessly and unselfconsciously as we breathe. Telepathically, we are all aware of the mass ideas from which we form our overall conception of physical reality.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Switzerland, anymore"!

Maybe we never were, more or less, considerably less or more than more or less...

Reference 1: https://findingseth.com/q/session:567+ATOM/

Reference 2: http://www.the-office.com/seth/

[Altair]

It's all nice and well to fantasize about being timeless and living in some other space and 'reality' but it serves little purpose to us right here, right now. That's how it feels to me. It feeds our imaginative mind but doesn't seem to improve our lives. There are many unknowns so who knows how much of what has been said here is true, but thus far speculation and/or ''experiences'' that can be explained through psychology (loss of sense of time, seeing your deity) and physiology (ecstasy, bliss).

[guthrio]

Originally Posted by Altair

It's all nice and well to fantasize about being timeless and living in some other space and 'reality' but it serves little purpose to us right here, right now. That's how it feels to me. It feeds our imaginative mind but doesn't seem to improve our lives. There are many unknowns so who knows how much of what has been said here is true, but thus far speculation and/or ''experiences'' that can be explained through psychology (loss of sense of time, seeing your deity) and physiology (ecstasy, bliss).

Altair,

How nice and well would you feel if you, like our ancestors before us, could make the unknown known by thinking about and then acting upon, ideas that could help make lives easier?

Our progress is made by learning what is beneficial in some heretofore unknown way, rather than relying on the "same" way.

Why, you would have to walk across continents, swim oceans, and physically ask an untold number of people in order to find any of the correspondents to whom you have just sent your text to in milliseconds.

....just to state the "status quo" is preferable.

From a practical standpoint, do you actually NEED or WANT to remain bound by "yesteryears' ideas of what can make your life easier? Or would you rather begin walking the earth to find us just to tell us about how you'd rather not (or more to the point, "how you'd rather we not waste YOUR time" doing so")?

We have ALREADY learned that we are limited by our limited ideas about ourselves.

Some others (like me!) ...not so much.

The choice to advance, or not to advance, our OWN lives inviolably belongs to us all to make for ourselves!

...and, of course, to be restrained, or freed, by our own opinions.

Yes, the Seth stuff is interesting reading. I read that with the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics in the first half of the twentieth century a good deal of new age philosophies and beliefs came about incorporating some of the weirder implications and speculations of what the science was showing. If Seth is not legit, and to be fair, it does take a good deal to accept a story like that, then those who created the material must have spent a good deal of time getting ahold of and researching whatever material was available in those pre internet days. I did not know much about Seth until the last couple of years. So when I started reading it I was struck but how much of what is said is in line with some of the conclusions that I had settled into myself from being interested in the newer theoretical physics and its potential implications. Had I come across it earlier in my life I would have most likely tossed it aside as nonsense.
One Seth idea that strikes me lately is the idea that we are multidimensional beings living more then one life experience simultaneously. I could not begin to explain it as it is really only something of a feeling, but I do often feel like this reality we are living is not a singular thing, but rather many going on at once and not necessarily being experienced separately. I have mostly interpreted the quantum wave collapse as probable possibilities of many worlds being filtered by consciousness into the awareness and experience of only one outcome we call 'real'. Sort of a hybrid of the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations. Kind of like tuning a TV to only one show out of the many transmitting through the airways. In other words there is not really many different versions of me all experiencing those other many different worlds at the same time. They many worlds are there in the probability wave, but it is my awareness of only one of them that makes the difference. But lately I have been wondering about that again. Maybe if somehow, beyond my ability to understand it, there really are as many versions of me as there are versions of Everette's many worlds and I am all of them at once. How that works with me feeling so individual and singular in this one world is of course well beyond the capability of this one me to comprehend... if it is the case at all, but who knows what one cannot know.
Either way I suppose if I find myself in a reality and world not to my liking, then I have myself to blame as I either rode the crest of a collapsing quantum probability wave of my choosing to end up here (with all you crazy people), or perhaps I am the surface of that ocean and sending all of those waves to crash against the beach and watching them all at once. ???

Or perhaps more likely I am just going nuts, but hey, so is everyone else these days in my current apparent experience of reality, so why not.

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by ketzer

...
One Seth idea that strikes me lately is the idea that we are multidimensional beings living more then one life experience simultaneously. ...

Maybe if somehow, beyond my ability to understand it, there really are as many versions of me as there are versions of Everette's many worlds and I am all of them at once. How that works with me feeling so individual and singular in this one world is of course well beyond the capability of this one me to comprehend...

Or perhaps more likely I am just going nuts, but hey, so is everyone else these days in my current apparent experience of reality, so why not.

I prefer your way of going nuts than what I see around, especially through the media.

When I think about the physical plane, I think about a virtual blueprint, which for an easy visualization I imagine as a rectangular sandbox. One section of the sandbox (a 2D rectangle) is the “3D space”, while the other dimension of the sandbox is “time”.

When you incarnate, you project into one of the points of this sandbox: a time coordinate, and a space coordinate. Then as you go through your life you move on the positive time axis.

In this model, you can imagine that the sand in the box isn’t completely homogeneous, and there can be some periodicity, some cycles, with which some time / space properties exhibit some variation.

You can also imagine how an event happening in any point of the sandbox sends ripples in all time / space directions, and to a certain degree can be sensed in any point of the sandbox.

Another important aspect of the model, is that each one of us has his own sandbox (the parallel universes), created by our own individual subconscious, based on the common blueprint. Those sandboxes aren’t identical, reflecting our individual characteristics and beliefs.

It is like each one of us in front of our terminals, connected to a virtual reality.

Zooming in into the time axis of that model, we discover that time itself is a rectangular sandbox. Not only time isn't linearly rolling at constant pace into one direction, but each probability branches in another direction inside the sandbox.

What's happening inside the multidimensional physical sandbox has no beginning and no end, and changes continuously with every choice every "incarnated" point of awareness makes. I put it in quotes, because I refer here not only to human incarnations, but to all the other consciousness forms that go through a physical experience. With every ripple, the sandbox expands in all directions too, as new choices are made by the participants.

In this model there are versions where the humanity went extinct in various ways, in various "historical" moments, past and future, as there are versions in which humanity picked optimum paths that developed the man beyond imagination, e.g. consciously living both in the physical and non-physical during the same incarnation, which insures his accelerated evolvement.

It is like a school, which changes all the time with every new promotion of pupils, some awesome, some catastrophic.

It isn't that there are several of this-me that live in parallel universes, but each incarnation of the incarnational entity-me enters into a chosen point of the physical sandbox, and driven by its free-will traces its path. My incarnations don't sequence through the positive historical time. They can start in any point of the physical sandbox, past or future as the incarnational entity-me chooses.

From this perspective, it isn't that we can forward the humanity or destroy it. Those manifested possibilities are there, in the sandbox, it is just during this particular incarnation I choose to follow a certain path. The outcome doesn't matter. In some cases one individual may trace a new path, which expands the sandbox, but this doesn't really matter. It isn't a progress, it isn't a regress.

It only matters that new promotions of points of awareness, incarantional entities go through their evolvement process, making use of this physical sandbox.

Originally Posted by ketzer

The holographic principal is a rather bizarre one to take in at first. But once one remembers that regardless of whether that universe, which is thought to be out there, is holographic in nature (if it exists out there at all :), the universe we live in is the holographic one created by our brain.

I find it interesting that the human brain must fold the cerebral cortex into so many contortions because its power to process information is correlated not to its volume, but to its surface area. Which is interesting because the maximum amount if information that can be contained in any give volume of space, is also proportional not to the volume, but to it's surface area. Which is interesting because if that volume is a sphere, and the information is actually at its maximum density, then its radius will be determined by the Bekenstein bound, which is the radius that a black hole will have. So blackholes are places in the universe which contain a maximum density of information, but that density, and hence the corresponding volume is determined by a two dimensional surface area, not the three dimensional volume as intuition would expect (not to mention places where that information is no longer accessible to us). Which is interesting because holograms are three dimensional illusions, created from two dimensional surfaces. Which circles back around to our own brains, which compute and create the holographic universe within our heads in which we live, but whose power to do so also seems to be dependent on two dimensional surface area. A computed holographic universe, which appears to be computed in two dimensions not three, with three dimensions just being an arrangement of two dimensional surfaces. Which is interesting because our 4 dimensional reality can be though of as an illusion created by an arrangement of 3 dimensional realities observed sequentially though time. All very interesting in how these patters of created realities seem to repeat fractally as we move from lower to higher dimensions. Networks of networks of networks, all encoding the information that we use to create and experience our realities.

The upshot of all this is that if someone tells you are dense, and that all you have between your ears is a black hole, you can take that as a compliment.

As an aside, there is more information hidden away in the black hole at the center of our galaxy as there is in the rest of the known universe, outside of blackholes, combined. And there are countless backhoes in the universe. The upshot of which is that even if John Snow knew all of the knowable information in the universe, relatively speaking he would pretty much still be extremely ignorant. Poor John, he will always know nothing.

I almost forgot, if John did know all the knowable information in the known universe, his head would have to have a surface area at least the size of Switzerland, which it clearly doesn't. So it seems John Snow knows considerably less then what is, relatively speaking, practically nothing, and will never know any more. You know less then nothing John Snow.

https://www.pbs.org/video/how-to-det...nsions-ekf1gb/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxVlGAFX7vA
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...o-dimensions/#

Oh my gosh, you are so intelligent ketzer

[Busby]

Originally Posted by guthrio

Busby,

Thank you so much for your recommendations. Seems that the name of Newton is a pretty reliable author of books to read beginning of course with the Principia....

And on behalf of Wayne Newton, who isn't, to my knowledge, an author of scientific books, let me just quote the title of one of his songs, "Danke Schoen"

....by way of thanks, in German.

P.S. Hope you enjoyed reading Message of a Master ��

Your Message of a Master I have read through and even slept on it hoping to be able to pinpoint a response that would make sense.

Oddly enough as I started to read it I was immediately transported to the original moment I read 'The Autobiography of a Yogi' - the text had the same sort of clang. Reading further led me to the conclusion of there being some kind of common denominator, one which had triggered you to suggest me reading it.

It's quite clear to me that any response would require an immense amount of discussion simply because so many pieces of the web in which we find ourselves would all play a part.

If I'm not mistaken this concept of using the the universe's 'talents' was quite the rage about a decade ago. A book 'Secrets' (I think) took the world by storm and made all sorts of promises.

But basically yes, I'm sure that I can recognise 3 or 4 people I have known who were able to evolve within their own space by not being impeded by rules or regulations and by general dogma of all kinds. It seems also quite clear to me that these 'understandings' whether natural or learned can be as much negative as positive. Well-known musicians, singers, artists, business people, writers and so on practice the art of using the universe's laws. In some cases, say politicians, the laws are put into play in very negative ways.

For me it's quite simple, I'm convinced that mind is above matter, that all there really is is one large mind. I'm also convinced that human imagination is not ye appreciated as the 'driving force' of all that there is. The use of humankind's imagination has moved the organic Earth into the non-organic, the world of man's own making.


PS: that bit about the common denominator and your Danke Schoen made me chuckle, German is my second language and I love it, it has opened the doors to a much wider world than would otherwise have been.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by guthrio

Altair,

How nice and well would you feel if you, like our ancestors before us, could make the unknown known by thinking about and then acting upon, ideas that could help make lives easier?

Our progress is made by learning what is beneficial in some heretofore unknown way, rather than relying on the "same" way.

Why, you would have to walk across continents, swim oceans, and physically ask an untold number of people in order to find any of the correspondents to whom you have just sent your text to in milliseconds.

....just to state the "status quo" is preferable.

From a practical standpoint, do you actually NEED or WANT to remain bound by "yesteryears' ideas of what can make your life easier? Or would you rather begin walking the earth to find us just to tell us about how you'd rather not (or more to the point, "how you'd rather we not waste YOUR time" doing so")?

We have ALREADY learned that we are limited by our limited ideas about ourselves.

Some others (like me!) ...not so much.

The choice to advance, or not to advance, our OWN lives inviolably belongs to us all to make for ourselves!

...and, of course, to be restrained, or freed, by our own opinions.

Hi Guthrio...

I'm more a down to earth kinda guy. Let me know when you fly through the air flapping your arms, when you have materialized things from 'thin air', or when you have cured illnesses (not a headache or stress) with 'healing hands'. I suppose it is all possible and to say it isn't would be 'limiting' wouldn't it?

Meanwhile I'll go and do those very things in a video game!

Originally Posted by inavalan

I prefer your way of going nuts than what I see around, especially through the media.

When I think about the physical plane, I think about a virtual blueprint, which for an easy visualization I imagine as a rectangular sandbox. One section of the sandbox (a 2D rectangle) is the “3D space”, while the other dimension of the sandbox is “time”.

When you incarnate, you project into one of the points of this sandbox: a time coordinate, and a space coordinate. Then as you go through your life you move on the positive time axis.

In this model, you can imagine that the sand in the box isn’t completely homogeneous, and there can be some periodicity, some cycles, with which some time / space properties exhibit some variation.

You can also imagine how an event happening in any point of the sandbox sends ripples in all time / space directions, and to a certain degree can be sensed in any point of the sandbox.

Another important aspect of the model, is that each one of us has his own sandbox (the parallel universes), created by our own individual subconscious, based on the common blueprint. Those sandboxes aren’t identical, reflecting our individual characteristics and beliefs.

It is like each one of us in front of our terminals, connected to a virtual reality.

Zooming in into the time axis of that model, we discover that time itself is a rectangular sandbox. Not only time isn't linearly rolling at constant pace into one direction, but each probability branches in another direction inside the sandbox.

What's happening inside the multidimensional physical sandbox has no beginning and no end, and changes continuously with every choice every "incarnated" point of awareness makes. I put it in quotes, because I refer here not only to human incarnations, but to all the other consciousness forms that go through a physical experience. With every ripple, the sandbox expands in all directions too, as new choices are made by the participants.

In this model there are versions where the humanity went extinct in various ways, in various "historical" moments, past and future, as there are versions in which humanity picked optimum paths that developed the man beyond imagination, e.g. consciously living both in the physical and non-physical during the same incarnation, which insures his accelerated evolvement.

It is like a school, which changes all the time with every new promotion of pupils, some awesome, some catastrophic.

It isn't that there are several of this-me that live in parallel universes, but each incarnation of the incarnational entity-me enters into a chosen point of the physical sandbox, and driven by its free-will traces its path. My incarnations don't sequence through the positive historical time. They can start in any point of the physical sandbox, past or future as the incarnational entity-me chooses.

From this perspective, it isn't that we can forward the humanity or destroy it. Those manifested possibilities are there, in the sandbox, it is just during this particular incarnation I choose to follow a certain path. The outcome doesn't matter. In some cases one individual may trace a new path, which expands the sandbox, but this doesn't really matter. It isn't a progress, it isn't a regress.

It only matters that new promotions of points of awareness, incarantional entities go through their evolvement process, making use of this physical sandbox.

Hi inavalan

Thanks for the reply, though I am not sure I entirely understood. Anyway, to the extent I did, some possibly analogous concepts for that sand box might be the eastern mystic's Akashic Records or the physicist/philosopher's Block Universe. The path we trace through that spacetime sandbox might be thought of as what physics would call a "world line" through spacetime, and if asked they might say 'you are that world line'. Of course, as far as I understand it, that is a line traced through one "world", and if Everette is right, then there are perhaps infinitely other possible worlds in which one is drawing world lines at the same time. Yet, this Seth multi-me concept makes me wonder if all those other worlds are all that separate, or if they are more mixed up together in that sandbox of yours.

Perhaps your sandbox analogy is more relevant metaphor, particularly if we are moving through that sandbox in accordance with the arrow of time. Starting on one side of the sandbox, and following that arrow to the other, there are very few paths that could have gotten us to the grain of sand we are on at the start, but countless paths to hop from grain to grain to get to the other side. So in that sense there is much more information and entropy in the direction we call 'future', but much less in the direction we call past. Then as we progress through that spacetime sandbox, always following that arrow of time, the number of potential paths that could have lead to the grain we are on from the side we started from grows, and the number of potential paths of grain hoping left to us to get to the far side diminishes accordingly.

So we might see, entropy always increasing in the past but decreasing in the future. We don't see it that way because of course when we look back our memory tells us that we only took the one path to get to the grain of sand we are on, but perhaps that is not so. Perhaps, just like one of Feynman's particles, we actually take every possible path to get there, at the same time, experiencing all possible events that could have happened along the way, and our 'memory' is just telling us we only took the most probable one. That would fall more in line with the Seth idea. Thinking about (as best as I can understand it) Shannon's information theory, entropy is analogous with information, and so perhaps if Seth is right, at a ?higher level?, 'multi-me' is living all those world lines at once, and amassing all that information in that me sandbox as I go from one side to the other, from birth to death. From that conceptual perspective, multi-me is not just one world line, but a network of world lines all leading to through and beyond the grain of sand I am on. Now let that arrow of time float about like the needle on a compass, and the possibilities of multi-me experiences become almost endless for just that one me sandbox. I can start at any grain along any wall, (or perhaps even in the middle), and pick a direction from my compass, and move to the others side, accumulating all those paths and all that information as I go.

The upshot is that Mr. Murry doesn't really live his groundhog days sequentially, but does so all at once, and is perhaps only examining them as if they were individual sequential events.

Of course, there are still countless other sandboxes to explore so I would still, relatively speaking, know nothing.

Originally Posted by janielee

Oh my gosh, you are so intelligent ketzer

Why thank you, my ego does love such treats, and is always ravenously hungry.

I do however have to be careful about how and when it eats, as it is liable to turn into one of those nasty gremlins and go about mucking everything up for the rest of me. It has done so many times before. It starts running about gobbling up food wherever it can find it and ends up, when its gluttony spree is over, with a rather embarrassing case of indigestion.