A nice, inspiring post. This reasoning is in many respects along the lines of my paper "On the Tangled Hierarchy of Wave Functions and Observers", posted on Qeios https://www.qeios.com/search?q=pav%C5%A1i%C4%8D .
Preceding ideas can be found in the book "
The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality Hardcover – November 17, 2020
by Robert Lanza (Author), Matej Pavsic (Author), Bob Berman (Author)
Hello, and thank you for this and all your posts. You have really opened my mind to considering reality. A beautiful thing!
There's a lot I could say and ask, but I just wanted to try to articulate one thing that this brings me to think about - relating to the "new scientific paradigm" and "new modes of scientific investigation".
You mention Bacon's (?) "foundations of science" and the one that I stop on is the second - the idea that there is an objective reality.
I "was trained as a scientist", and by that we all mean, of course, "objective" science of the kind defined above - which everyone can repeat because reality has a presumed existence outside of any individuals. We are invited to consider that this is the only kind of science - and that anything failing this test is not science and not real.
However I would contend that a truer definition of science would be something like: good faith enquiry into the nature of reality. Most of 'objective science' fits that (and works because of adherence to 'good faith'), but there are clearly limits to which aspects of reality can be examined in a way which meets the criterion of objectivity.. .and yet what lies beyond is still reality!
For example I can do 'experiments' regarding my subjective experience which lead to observations an theories that nobody else can replicate - because they are not in my head and can never be. You might call this 'subjective science' and I don't see that it is any less valid.
It seems a facile truism, but surely central to any consideration of reality, that all observations, explanations, propositions and knowledge can only exist as part of subjective experience anyway. 'Subjective science' is all we have, period. Now we might encompass within that some kind of mapping of 'objective science' but it is only ever held indirectly - that is, through the sensations of light reflecting from the papers we might read or the instruments we inspect, through to the conceptions we might make of the laws we read about, and so on. It's all 'just in our heads', obviously.
I think this can fit with your outlook - perhaps with the "other 50%", and there is a LOT to consider about that of course. But when you say..
"I think that our greatest challenge as scientists is to create a new scientific paradigm combined with new modes of scientific investigation"
..it makes me think that these new modes should explicitly drop the requirement for objectivity, which you have argued yourself is violated anyway.
And it seems to me that if you do that, you also have to jettison ideas like "our" paradigm.. ..which imply to me a shared and therefore objective understanding. I think you have to go further and also say that other people, and their theories, also only exist in our own experience.. ..which means all I can really say is they only exist in MY experience!
I am, further, perfectly prepared to believe that I might find, through the use of subjective science, that really I don't exist either and what I think of as 'my' experience is just a localized, and temporarily isolated patch of something you might call a 'global subjective experience'... ..but I feel like it is necessary to first drop the adherence to ideas of 'objective material reality' and science in order to find out!
Just my 2 cents :) Thanks again, and please know that I really appreciate your work..
Look up the definition of "solipsism" if it's not already familiar to you. It's the opposite of objective science, and when we get there, we truly have no science remaining. Somewhere between solipsism and objective reality we must find a scientific protocol that allows us to learn from one another and embark on joint explorations, but doesn't deny the validity of our different findings.
You are expressing that you don't want this stuff to be true.. ..but I'm not sure why you think it isn't actually true.. Just because it's facile doesn't mean its wrong.
Personally the conclusion I draw is not to take things too seriously. It's abundantly obvious that at this level I really know nothing, I can't even distinguish reliably whether things are "real" or not, whether this is a dream (can you??), so why not just relax and go along with whatever it is - maybe one day I'll find out but until then it would seem like a pointless and costly ego trip to presume I could encompass this stuff when clearly I can't.
I'm saying that there's a lot we can agree on in the 3D world. I can go for a walk with a random person in my neighborhood and we both point to the same leaves changing color and we both smile when we see a fox.
100% the 3D world is very cool.. ..but I think once you start talking 'objectively', and looking for complete answers that 'you' can encompass it all gets very sticky very quickly... ..I feel it hinders understanding reality.
I am interested in 'objective science' - for its own sake, but also because the fact it clearly has limits is a strong signal to me that this way of doing science can't go further. Ironically I have come to this point in significant part by reading your writings.. :)
Moreover it seems quite easy to build a loose cosmology based on the end point of objective science - our brains are interfaces to hyperdimensional structures which collapse the wave function etc - that is good enough for me, and far more defensible than anything objective science can offer. According to that perspective I am literally a bag of neurons - what utter nonsense, who could possibly really believe this about themselves!
A possible answer is the Inverse Quantum Zeno Effect. the relationship between IQZE isn't so clear, but I'm pretty sure that one can use iQZE to jerk a quantum system around without messing with the probabilities that are supposed to be random.
A nice, inspiring post. This reasoning is in many respects along the lines of my paper "On the Tangled Hierarchy of Wave Functions and Observers", posted on Qeios https://www.qeios.com/search?q=pav%C5%A1i%C4%8D .
Preceding ideas can be found in the book "
The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality Hardcover – November 17, 2020
by Robert Lanza (Author), Matej Pavsic (Author), Bob Berman (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Biocentric-Design-Creates-Reality/dp/1950665402
Hello, and thank you for this and all your posts. You have really opened my mind to considering reality. A beautiful thing!
There's a lot I could say and ask, but I just wanted to try to articulate one thing that this brings me to think about - relating to the "new scientific paradigm" and "new modes of scientific investigation".
You mention Bacon's (?) "foundations of science" and the one that I stop on is the second - the idea that there is an objective reality.
I "was trained as a scientist", and by that we all mean, of course, "objective" science of the kind defined above - which everyone can repeat because reality has a presumed existence outside of any individuals. We are invited to consider that this is the only kind of science - and that anything failing this test is not science and not real.
However I would contend that a truer definition of science would be something like: good faith enquiry into the nature of reality. Most of 'objective science' fits that (and works because of adherence to 'good faith'), but there are clearly limits to which aspects of reality can be examined in a way which meets the criterion of objectivity.. .and yet what lies beyond is still reality!
For example I can do 'experiments' regarding my subjective experience which lead to observations an theories that nobody else can replicate - because they are not in my head and can never be. You might call this 'subjective science' and I don't see that it is any less valid.
It seems a facile truism, but surely central to any consideration of reality, that all observations, explanations, propositions and knowledge can only exist as part of subjective experience anyway. 'Subjective science' is all we have, period. Now we might encompass within that some kind of mapping of 'objective science' but it is only ever held indirectly - that is, through the sensations of light reflecting from the papers we might read or the instruments we inspect, through to the conceptions we might make of the laws we read about, and so on. It's all 'just in our heads', obviously.
I think this can fit with your outlook - perhaps with the "other 50%", and there is a LOT to consider about that of course. But when you say..
"I think that our greatest challenge as scientists is to create a new scientific paradigm combined with new modes of scientific investigation"
..it makes me think that these new modes should explicitly drop the requirement for objectivity, which you have argued yourself is violated anyway.
And it seems to me that if you do that, you also have to jettison ideas like "our" paradigm.. ..which imply to me a shared and therefore objective understanding. I think you have to go further and also say that other people, and their theories, also only exist in our own experience.. ..which means all I can really say is they only exist in MY experience!
I am, further, perfectly prepared to believe that I might find, through the use of subjective science, that really I don't exist either and what I think of as 'my' experience is just a localized, and temporarily isolated patch of something you might call a 'global subjective experience'... ..but I feel like it is necessary to first drop the adherence to ideas of 'objective material reality' and science in order to find out!
Just my 2 cents :) Thanks again, and please know that I really appreciate your work..
Look up the definition of "solipsism" if it's not already familiar to you. It's the opposite of objective science, and when we get there, we truly have no science remaining. Somewhere between solipsism and objective reality we must find a scientific protocol that allows us to learn from one another and embark on joint explorations, but doesn't deny the validity of our different findings.
You are expressing that you don't want this stuff to be true.. ..but I'm not sure why you think it isn't actually true.. Just because it's facile doesn't mean its wrong.
Personally the conclusion I draw is not to take things too seriously. It's abundantly obvious that at this level I really know nothing, I can't even distinguish reliably whether things are "real" or not, whether this is a dream (can you??), so why not just relax and go along with whatever it is - maybe one day I'll find out but until then it would seem like a pointless and costly ego trip to presume I could encompass this stuff when clearly I can't.
..and "must" is a very strong word!
I'm saying that there's a lot we can agree on in the 3D world. I can go for a walk with a random person in my neighborhood and we both point to the same leaves changing color and we both smile when we see a fox.
If all life is a dream, is it your dream or mine?
And why should our two dreams agree?
An answer avails if we're both "the Divine"
At our core, I am you and you're me.
https://www.classicalpoets.org/2024/12/intersubjective-bootstrap-a-poem-by-josh-mitteldorf/
100% the 3D world is very cool.. ..but I think once you start talking 'objectively', and looking for complete answers that 'you' can encompass it all gets very sticky very quickly... ..I feel it hinders understanding reality.
I am interested in 'objective science' - for its own sake, but also because the fact it clearly has limits is a strong signal to me that this way of doing science can't go further. Ironically I have come to this point in significant part by reading your writings.. :)
Moreover it seems quite easy to build a loose cosmology based on the end point of objective science - our brains are interfaces to hyperdimensional structures which collapse the wave function etc - that is good enough for me, and far more defensible than anything objective science can offer. According to that perspective I am literally a bag of neurons - what utter nonsense, who could possibly really believe this about themselves!
(obviously it's my dream btw!)
We are all characters in a dream of Universal Consciousness.
;-}
(a shorter way to say this: objective science reached its limits in 1925, and now subjective science is all that's left)
The Divine and psychic being hidden in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a conclusion I had also drawn, because what other "slack" is there?
;-o
A possible answer is the Inverse Quantum Zeno Effect. the relationship between IQZE isn't so clear, but I'm pretty sure that one can use iQZE to jerk a quantum system around without messing with the probabilities that are supposed to be random.
"Random" casts a broad net...