"Yes," he replied. "For us to exist right now, certain things had to happen billions of years ago. Therefore, all the particles and laws of physics were created billions of years ago, to lead us here, to this pier, where you and I exist."
"That's actually not true," I countered. "As John Wheeler said, 'The past is not really the past until it has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present.'
Think about it this way. Let's say I have a puzzle that represents this current snapshot in time. Certain things about the universe have been measured, and they are represented by puzzle pieces. We only have half of the puzzle in place, and the gaps in the puzzle represent unmeasured things — for example, dark matter and dark energy."
"If you examine this model, you realize that the missing gaps could be filled with any combination of puzzle pieces. As you start filling in the gaps, the remaining puzzle pieces have to take on certain shapes to fit together with the existing information we have about the universe.
My point is this: up until the moment we observe a puzzle piece, it can take on various shapes. But if you're a scientist looking back at the finished puzzle, it will appear as if the puzzle pieces always were that shape. Otherwise, they never would have fit together."
"It's like our game of negative twenty questions," I continued. "You ask yes/no questions, and I answer them. Answering questions is equivalent to handing out new puzzle pieces. You eventually get 42 as the correct answer (i.e. you finish the puzzle). You assume that 42 had always been the answer — just like you assume the puzzle pieces had always been that shape. In actual fact, I could have changed the answer at any point in time as long as it maintained consistent logic. I also could have changed the puzzle pieces at any point in time, as long as they still fit with the puzzle pieces you had already observed.
Which brings me to my next point. If the universe can generate any kind of puzzle piece to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and those puzzle pieces are generated the moment they are observed, then are scientists discovering the laws of our universe, or creating them?"
"They're discovering them," Zac answered. "In a computer game, time may be created in the present moment, but the rules of the game were set up from the very beginning when the programmer wrote the source code. If a scientist was running around in a Minecraft world, they'd discover the laws of physics. They wouldn't create them. That's silly."
"You're forgetting one very vital point," I said. "The universe created itself. Its codebase is dynamic because it's a neural network. A neural network can create the rules as it goes. It can also change them on the fly, in the present moment."
"How?"
"Okay. Let's extend our puzzle analogy. Let's say we have a puzzle that represents our current snapshot in time. This puzzle has a missing hole in it, which represents a gap in our understanding. Let's also assume there are two potential future states of the universe. In Future State A, the human race builds a specific technology device. In Future State B, we build a different technology device. Both devices require different laws of physics — represented by puzzle pieces — in order to be built.
Let's say, in the present moment, we somehow trigger a switch that catapults the universe towards Future State A. As a result, scientists 'discover' a puzzle piece in the present moment that is essential for this Future State A to come about. By 'discovering' this puzzle piece in the present moment, Future State B becomes impossible to reach."
"However," I continued, "I could just as easily have triggered Future State B and 'discovered' a completely different puzzle piece in the present moment, making Future State A impossible to reach.
My main point is this: a choice made in the present moment about a future state determined what puzzle piece the scientists 'discovered' from the past. Therefore, the puzzle piece wasn't discovered at all — it was created."
"No," Zac shook his head. "That's crazy. That means the future is creating the past. But that's obviously wrong. The past is creating the future. If I throw this grape in the water right now, what I chose to do in the past determines the future state of the grape being in the water. But you're saying, the future state of the grape being in the water caused me to throw it in the past. But throwing it in the past caused the future state of the grape being in the water."
"Well done, Zachary," I grinned. "You just discovered the mindfuck that is retrocausal loops. I'll cover those once we're deeper down the rabbit hole. And when I do, try not to go into a catatonic state. I promise you — once you see these, you can't unsee them."
"Oh, God." He massaged his temples. "This evening has already fucked with my mind. You're saying there's more?"
"I'm merely saying that when I'm done, you will never see your life the same way again. You can opt-out now if you want." I held out the palms of both my hands. "This is your last chance, Zachary. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
Zac grabbed the imaginary red pill and slid it down his throat.
"You're a curious soul, Zac. Let's continue by reading this section of The Holographic Universe…"
Jahn and Dunne are not so timid. They believe that instead of discovering particles, physicists may actually be creating them. As evidence, they cite a recently discovered subatomic particle called an anomalon, whose properties vary from laboratory to laboratory. Imagine owning a car that had a different color and different features depending on who drove it! This is very curious, and seems to suggest that an anomalon’s reality depends on who finds/creates it.
Similar evidence may also be found in another subatomic particle. In the 1930s Pauli proposed the existence of a massless particle called a neutrino to solve an outstanding problem concerning radioactivity. For years the neutrino was only an idea, but then in 1957 physicists discovered evidence of its existence. In more recent years, however, physicists have realized that if the neutrino possessed some mass, it would solve several even thornier problems than the ones facing Pauli, and lo and behold in 1980 evidence started to come in that the neutrino had a small but measurable mass! This is not all. As it turned out, only laboratories in the soviet union discovered neutrinos with mass. Laboratories in the United States did not. This remained true for the better part of the 1980s, and although other laboratories have now duplicated the Soviet findings, the situation is still unresolved.
Is it possible that the different properties displayed by neutrinos are due at least in part to the changing expectations and different cultural biases of the physicists who searched for them? If so, such a state of affairs raises an interesting question. If physicists do not discover the subatomic world but create it, why do some particles, such as electrons, appear to have a stable reality no matter who observes them? In other words, why does a physics student with no knowledge of an electron still discover the same characteristics that a seasoned physicist discovers?
Michael Talbot
"By the way," I said, "Talbot wrote that book nearly thirty years ago, so science has obviously progressed since then. I'm not saying his examples are evidence that scientists are creating the subatomic world, because I generally don't like inductive arguments. However, the algorithm does demonstrate that scientists are not discovering the natural world — they are creating it."
"So if scientists believe dark matter and dark energy exist, does that mean they'll find evidence of it one day?" Zac asked.
"I don't know," I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."
"But if scientists are creating reality, shouldn't their belief in dark matter eventually lead to its discovery?"
"No," I replied.
"Why not?"
"Who do you think placed the idea for dark matter and dark energy in the mind of these scientists? Do you think it was random? It wasn't. Nothing is random. If they had the idea for dark matter and dark energy, it's because that idea played into a mathematical masterplan.
The scientists are just getting a physical experience of Who They Believe Themselves To Be — namely, scientists. They can run off and have so much fun hypothesizing and running experiments and getting lost in theoretical wonderlands — and reality will generate all the tools and toys and ideas they need to experience themselves as that. This game world is like an infinitely flexible simulation. You pick a quest, and it will procedurally generate everything you need to experience yourself on that quest.
If a scientist was right about everything, that wouldn't be any fun, would it? If they knew the answer to every question, there'd be no need for scientists anymore. The joy is not found in the answer — it's found in the experience of finding the answer. The joy is in the journey; the process of experiencing yourself as whoever you choose to be along the way. It's like God said…"
If the world existed in perfect condition, your life process of Self creation would be terminated. It would end. A lawyer’s career would end tomorrow were there no more litigation. A doctor’s career would end tomorrow were there no more illness. A philosopher’s career would end tomorrow were there no more questions.
And God’s career would end tomorrow were there no more problems!
Precisely. You have put it perfectly. We, all of us, would be through creating were there nothing more to create. We, all of us, have a vested interest in keeping the game going. Much as we all say we would like to solve all the problems, we dare not solve all the problems, or there will be nothing left for us to do.
Neale Donald Walsch
"This reminds me of a scene from The Matrix, when Agent Smith is talking to Morpheus," I said.
Have you ever stood and stared at it? Marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered? Where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.
The Matrix
