is reality as we know it, really a dream?

Somehow I doubt that you jumped off the Empire State Building, or maybe it wasn't the real one. Go to NYC, try it again, and see what happens! (oops, there i go again. If I don't hear from you for the rest of time, I'll feel guilty!) But if you're just an illusion, it won't much matter.

I wasn't impressed. I seriously doubt that Meagain, in his heart of hearts, really believes there is anything illusory about the Empire State Building. If "illusions have consequences", and those consequences have predictable results, in what sense are they illusions? From a pragmatic standpoint, the difference is inconsequential.

Human minds are cursed with the dilemma of being capable of formulating questions that are unanswerable in any definitive way. According to evolutionary psychologists, our minds seem to be neurological computers "fitted by natural selection with combinational algorithms of causal and probabalistic reasoning about the material world around us." (S.Pinker, 2009,1997), p.524. How The Mind Works. "We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life and death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in short-term memory. We cannot see ultraviolet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannnot solve problems like free will and sentience". (Ibid., p. 561). Of course, Pinker could be wrong, as I'm sure he is about many things. But "how can we be sure, in a world that's constantly changing?" (Young Rascals, 1967) We can become paralyzed by uncertainty, led astray by wishful thinking, or muddle through on the basis of our admittedly limited faculties.

The discoveries of general and special relativity and quantum phenomena in physics should make reality even more uncertain. But the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation ("consciousness causes collapse") has opened the door to "mind over matter" theories associated with the "Fundamental Fysiks Group. Fritjoph Capra ( The Tao of Physics) tried to interpret the phenomena in Taoist terms. Some in New Age circles have taken it farther, opening the door to what has been called Quantum mysticism (aka, "quantum quackery" Quantum Quackery | Skeptical Inquirer , "quantum woo". The wow and the woo – Physics World) The potential for degenerating into pseudoscience is palpable.
Quantum Quackery | Scientific American
D. Athearn, (1994). Scientific Nihilism: On the Loss and Recovery of Physical Explanation;
How to spot quantum quackery
Patrick Grim Philosophy of Science and the Occult

For all I know, the mystics may be right. I've opted for the more pedestrian approach of accepting reality as it appears to be, unless I have clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. This seems like a pragmatic approach, and so far it seems to have gotten me by in the admittedly limited world in which I operate. Bertrand Russell said that a truly rational person wouldn't expect the sun to come up tomorrow just because it always has before. Such a person may be "rational' but I think (s)he'd be foolish. Since the sun has always 'come up" (i,e., the earth has rotated on its axis ) a savvy gambler would bet on it doing so tomorrow, absent further information. Science and Abrahamic religion tell us that some day it won't, but I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.I've had what could be interpreted as mystical experiences, and have even chosen to let them change my life. But I remain open to the possibility that they can be explained by known psychological factors. Meanwhile, I guide my life by principles I find self-evident: the power of unconditional love, peace, and devotion to social justice to produce a better world in utilitarian terms. And I want to help bring such a world about cuz, well, it would be "better".

 

The point is, and I think I tried to get this across to you last time but didn't succeed, is that it doesn't matter if the physical universe, at a quantum level is illusion. Because we, as living people, exist in the same physical realm as all physical Beings--i.e. we have a physical body, etc. There are rules to physical reality that maintain a consistency to that physical reality, and to continue existing in that physical reality, you have to follow those rules. The mind is nonphysical because it exists beyond the physical reality of individual moments of Now. It is what ties those individual moments into the continuous reality that we understand. So instead of individual moments of physical being, where all that is physical exists within and only within that present moment of a Quantum Now, the mind creates a reality where physicality flows with time and the present physicality is ever present. So instead of a series of countless quantum collapses, we have a continuous reality. The implication here is that the mind could exist without the physical body, but I know you have trouble with that. But regardless, in order to exist within this physical realm, we need our physical body to be living and supportive (with its blood flow and oxygen and so forth) of our mind as it has a physical presence, a presence that is evidenced by our conscious state of being.

But the physical body, being a part of the illusion of physicality, i.e. being part of the hologram, cannot exist outside of the physical laws that determine how it exists. Because the quantum information that creates this illusion, must be maintained. So jumping off the empire state building, or doing anything else that catastrophically alters the quantum information of our body, will destroy that body. Jumping off the empire state building would create the phenomena of your body splattered across the pavement. Your brains would appear as cottage cheese splattered from whatever is left of your head. In the quantum moments after your fall, that is the phenomena that would then be created until someone cleans it up. There is no longer a living structure with the associated blood and oxygen flow that would allow your mind to have a physical presence within the physical reality. Physical reality is still an illusion, your body is still an illusion, but now it does not support life. I think this is what MeAgain meant by illusions have consequences.

The mind cannot be an organ. The brain is an organ. An organ is a physical thing, and by definition, the mind is nonphysical. Open up any good dictionary, i.e. a dictionary for adult usage, and look up the definition of physical (which will specifically exclude things of the mind) and Mind, which will be defined as nonphysical. If the mind was an organ, we could dissect it and study it. But we cannot, we can only dissect the brain. I would put down money and say that no respectable neurosurgeon would ever make that claim. I would say the same for psychologists, but---if that's what Pinker says, well... as my daughters would say, "OMG!"

I have an awful lot of books on mind, and consciousness,, and even psychology, but I do not have that one, so I don't know what it says, but if he limits the human mind because of what our eyes can see, or how many words we can hold in our short-term memory, I would remind him that Jung defines the ego as that part of the mind that filters out all the nonessential phenomena in order that we maintain a consistent conscious personality. Perhaps I cannot hold 10,000 words in my short term memory, but I speak multiple languages, I read multiple alphabets including thousands of Chinese/Japanese characters (the Japanese have about 2,000 essential characters that students must know to get through High School, most Japanese adults know much more than that, there are a few Japanese characters that are not used in Chinese and there are many Chinese characters not used in Japanese. A typical Chinese adult will know far more characters than I do, in addition to what most Japanese adults know, and I may not know all the ones they do, but I am certainly close, (i.e. I know all the essential characters and many more) I also know many Chinese characters used in Chinese) so while my short term memory may be limited in how many words I use in at a given time, I have access to many more words within my memory. While speaking or reading Japanese, for example, I may have very few if any english words in my short term memory. But if someone starts speaking to me in English, or Tagalog, my short term memory will access that vocabulary. Likewise, with our senses, we cannot see in ultraviolet because our physical eyes do not pick up ultraviolet. Some animals can see in such wavelengths. That is not a limitation of our mind.

The mind is a very powerful thing. Consider Anton's Syndrome, or the Anton-Babinski Syndrome---where people become blind because of brain damage, but they deny that they are blind because the mind convinces them that they can still see by creating a mentally induced visual experience. The patient believes they can see, even though they cannot.

Pinker's materialist summary of the brain ignores quite a bit of problems and paradoxes unanswered. There are so many advancements in philosophy for example, that were later confirmed by science. But at the time, there was nothing in the science that could have allowed the philosophers at that time to understand such things. Then there is the research at MIT that I told you about in the other thread, where researchers were able to alter reality with human intention. If the mind is simply a material thing, like an analog computer, then how would it ever be able to have a nonlocal impact on anything. In the experiement they did such things as alter the coagulation rate of human blood, the growth of insect larva, the .ph of water, and other things. The results, as I mentioned, were so powerful that they bled over into the control side of the experiments and it had to be isolated.

I am very aware of quantum quackery. This is why I have a friend who is a quantum physicist who goes over my stuff with me to make sure that whatever I say or write is sound quantum mechanics. Actually I have two such friends, though the other one travels extensively and so he doesn't always have the time to help, though he does have the interest. As far as the Tao of Physics, I read it once and have never returned to it, unlike the work of quantum physicists and other scientists who get deep into the actual science and which I return to quite a bit. Books that are far more mind blowing than Capra. Capra is a physicist. But its been years since I read that book--its on a shelf in my basement.

The thing is, I am not a quantum physicist, but I do write philosophy. We could certainly dismiss Kant as a quack---he wrote that there is a whole side of the world that we cannot perceive. Or Burke---existence is perception, i.e. we cannot know if anything other than phenomena has existence. In the other thread where we were debating, you dismissed Hegel as getting into strange metaphysics (I forget your exact words). Yet these people and their ideas have had a tremendous impact upon the world we live in. So what separates them from quacks who try to use New Age BS to turn science into a gimmick for the ignorant? In fact, we can even argue whether Kant was right or wrong in whether a thing has a thing-in-itself---a noumenal side we cannot perceive. There was no way to prove it back in the day. We could say that they formulated questions that were unanswerable in any way, as you said. But the crazy thing is, science is now proving Kant and Burke right. Sartre said the concept of essence was an embarrassment to western philosophy. Yet clearly he was wrong as we understand quantum information.

So why is their argument not quackery? Why do they have such a deep impact on our world, despite the fact that most struggle to read them? Because a philosopher takes the limits of the knowledge that is available to him at that time, and uses it to create a sound theory, just as is done in science, which based on the reason, knowledge, and opinions of that time, cannot be denied.

The Modern Age began when Descartes introduced an argument in skepticism and came upon the one thing he could not deny---I think therefore I am. The Modern Age stopped dead in its tracks so many years later, not because science reached a limit, but because Locke and Hume presented two unrefutable, but opposing, arguments. One said that there is no physical, only mind, and the other said, there is no mind only physical (And a joke at that time went, 'No matter, never mind.') It took Kant to resolve the issue, which in the process, separated science from the church, for the Modern Age to continue marching on. He did not solve the problem (because look, we are basically arguing the same thing today---you on the materialist side and me on the essentialist or Idealist side), but he presented a sound work around that could not be denied.

I welcome anyone to deny my arguments, because then it means they are not yet sound.

I would also argue that striving to answer those questions which seem to have no answer is what leads to the progress of mankind. Just look at what milestones in human thought, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel all achieved--even if they didn't achieve the final answer--but we are moving towards it. In today's world, philosophy and science has taken us to the point where we dismiss the nonphysical. And Leibniz Principle of Sufficient Cause tells us that if we can't answer the deepest questions of Why, or in the case of the Modern World, if we just dismiss those questions, then life is meaningless and absurd. And indeed, that is a core problem of our world today.

I argue that there is a nonphysical---and science has always worked with it without realizing what it is----the wave. The radio wave, the electromagnetic wave, the quantum wave, they are all the same--nonphysical. (Not the sound wave, it represents physical movement.) Science minded people feel obligated to debate me on this, but they haven't defeated the argument yet.

That sounds great, but in a meaningless world, in fact, a world made meaningless by that very same utilitarianism, pragmatism, and materialism, how far do you think you will get?

 

By the way, there is no such thing as "on time ". One is either early or late.

I once attempted to prove the illusory nature of perceived life . I took a two by four 3 feet long and while holding one end of it, dropped it close to my feet, and raised it sharply until it met my forehead with considerable force. Huh. Failed again.

 

Now that is an interesting perspective. I look forward to it. There was a Cosmologist who was interviewed by a science magazine who said he believed there was no time. I wanted to find out more, but it was not my magazine, and I forgot who it was.

Oh, now I remember, it was a cosmetologist, and she said... (I'M JOKING!!! It was a cosmologist at some big university)

I place time as nonphysical. It is no coincidence therefore that Einstein used, what are called, imaginary numbers, to calculate the time side of his equations. The fact that time moves at the speed of light is very simply demonstrated by his space-time triangles. One pop-culturally famous physicist---I forget his name---Wolf?---said that light moved through time the way we move through space. Regardless, there is a long formula that states that the speed of time is equal to c.

The next moment of now is the length of one photon away, The length of the last moment of now is one photon past.

The nonphysical does not physically exist, as we experience existence by that which is physical. The nonphysical is the realm of the No-thing. And if we then argue that what is physical is just an illusion, then I suppose we could say that the point of Now is illusion also. But then, how would we refer to what is the current structure of the hologram if it is not the point of Now.

I guess first we need to clarify, what do we mean by illusion? For me, it means that the physical world is not the same as what we view it to be. For me there is probably something there, like a single frame of a movie film. It is there for only 1 moment of Planck Time, which is a point of time that is so small it is used in string theory. Within that moment, objects may, or may not, only partially exist. But for that moment, it is the total of all physical existence. All quantum waves have collapsed into existence for that moment, and in the next moment other particles or subatomic particles will collapse into existence. So each point of now exists for that brief moment like the frame of a movie. But when you put all the frames together, like a movie, you create what we experience as an ever present physical reality. So what we are really experiencing is the phenomena of those brief blinks of physical being strung together like a movie. If the mind were physical it would be trapped in these single frames of existence. But the mind is nonphysical so it exists beyond individual points of existence and strings them together into the reality we know.

It seems that there would be a present Now at which time there is the collapse we experience.

But it is not necessary. Because we do not experience the particles and subatomic particles, we experience the phenomena of the empirical world we live in. Quantum Physicists are still not sure if there is even a collapse into physical particles. There could simply be a decoherence in the wave where a subatomic particle comes close enough to collapsing that from our perspective there is a particle there. In other words, there is no collapse, just the phenomena. Either way does not make a difference to my philosophy, because it is the phenomena that we experience, not the actual thing.

But in this latter case, since there is no actual present moment of collapses, we could say that there is no actual Now, because physical being does not even come to that point of collapse into being. Then the word Now, simply becomes a label for the experience of each moment of phenomena.

 

The only way I know that time doesn't exist is that I look exactly the way I did when I was first exposed to a mirror at age five.



( enjoy your musings.)

 

...

 

Considering you've denied the reality of time, that won't be possible.

 

Not quite sure if our civilization could be considered ghosts or angels. When duhz one become the other? what are we? & what are the extent of our perceptions? Were they made limited to a lower capacity?

 

I don't mean to knock this approach really. It is the way of the Modern World.

When we talk about whether our physical world is an illusion or not, it doesn't really have much bearing on our overall lives, unless perhaps, you subscribe to an Eastern philosophy and the meditation upon this concept helps with your detachment from the world. As I mentioned, I am sure, in our last conversation a few years ago, our physical reality is as real as it can be, and therefore it is the most real thing we have as we make our way through our mortal lives. This is what gives meaning to our lives. So I actually agree with you on accepting reality as it appears to be, is a better approach. Carl Jung would point out that it is the very reason we have an ego (especially one as he defines it).

But to be overly pragmatic, objective and utilitarian comes at a great cost----disenchantment.

Bertrand Russell made that comment to make a point exaggerated for shock value. Obviously a gambling man would be foolish to bet on that. But when I worked in the stock market, numerous times I heard stockbrokers tell clients that whatever they were thinking, wasn't going to happen. Usually it was in connection with a very speculative stock move that the customer wanted to take part in. I would always pull the stockbrokers aside and tell them that they can't say that, because anything can happen in the stock market. You can explain why such a thing is unlikely, why it is risky to speculate in such a way, and even explain how quickly such very speculative plays, especially those that defy reason, can turn. But they shouldn't tell them that it will never happen, because it does. The only exception would be cases where people are ignorant to the structure or mechanics of the investment. For example, you have novice investors who believe that a stock split would double or triple, or whatever kind of split it is, their money. They ignorantly think that a 2:1 split, for example, would double their money. But what they don't realize is that the price halves so, they have double the shares, but still the value of their holdings is the same.

The last company I worked for was Charles Schwab, and I still trade through them. One time, a few years after I left, I was making just such a very speculative trade. We were in a fast market and the system went down so I had to call and place it through a broker. I believe it was Fannie Mae, which, despite managing government subsidized debt, at that time was riddled with debt and bankrupt. The broker tried to advise me not to do it, and actually said it will never go up. I told him that I was in a hurry to get the trade done and asked him who his manager is. He told me, and I responded, I used to work there, and when you get off this call, I want you to ask him who I am. After he placed the trade, I told him that, I know it is sound advice what you are trying to give me, but here is why it is moving the way it is and why I am trading it---I then proceeded to explain about the huge number of short sellers, who were borrowing shares to sell on the belief it would go down. And what speculators were buying it for. Then I gave him a tip on what to tell customers about this investment, because undoubtedly others were calling in to place trades in it. I certainly hope he asked his manager who I was, and I would have loved to hear the response he got---especially if he told him he tried to stop me from placing a trade. And despite the bad and unsound situation the stock was in, I made a quick sizable profit.

You know if you would have found Marx before you found Christianity, you would have made a fine Marxist. I would debate Marxists as a teenager, They were so utilitarian and pragmatic. When you told me that you were Native, I seriously thought you would have been trolling me, if it wasn't for your online name, which should have clued me to what Nation. Perhaps it is just your online persona. Hegel would have been proud of you. The perfect Hegelian specimen. (By the way, a tip on reading Hegel, in response to your earlier comment about him elsewhere in this forum---he liked to take the reader through a series of exercises that would eventually lead to the same materialist conclusions he had. So on the surface he may seem more of a metaphysician, but his idealism was very materialist).

Seriously though---it is all at a cost of disenchantment. I understand that though. A good part of my life was spent looking for proof that there was a nonphysical--god, etc. I experienced things that other people probably would have accepted as proof, but I rationalized them away. A good part of my life I was convinced that science would probably have all the answers, at least the ones that mattered, at some point in the future. There were crazy things that happened in my life, and I would just write them off as synchronicities. But for some reason, I had to know, so I kept searching, and searching until one night, something happened in a way that I could not deny what had happened, no matter how hard I tried. And I still have that same Western skepticism. In a House or Yuwipi ceremony (spirit calling ceremony) there is a part of my mind that is busy asking, how can they do this? What tricks could this be? Though the answer is always, no, this can't be faked.

In my previous post I talked about why it is important to ask the questions we cannot answer. I believe that the current nihilism has deeper implications than we realize. That it is part of a bigger constellation of issues. We could say that the fin-de-siecle, which was literally the Age of Nihilism that Nietzsche was observing, happened at a time when empirical science was about to hit a wall that would have limited how much further it would progress. The mechanical Newtonian science was running its last legs. We can make steampunk musings about what could have come next, but there was a limit to how far mankind could advance with that. But then along came Einstein and the barriers were pushed further. Quantum Mechanics has the potential to push us even further, but the current nihilism may very well be a symptom that science is reaching that wall again. It doesn't seem like it as the amount of new information we are discovering is massively tremendous, and tower over the number of discoveries made in all of the past history of man. But at some point soon, I think we will hit a plateau where we may learn new things about the world, but we no longer move forward, unless something knocks us over that wall. And Quantum Mechanics certainly has that amazing potential.

But can we use it, with its current limitations, to create, for example, a teleportation device, like in Star Trek or The Fly. Obviously if we wanted to teleport a living thing, the question of life becomes very serious. Its not hard to speculate that we could probably one day figure out how to teleport a human, but once their physical body is restructured at the other end, would they still be alive? The materialist would say, yes, because everything is just as it was before hand. The essentialist would say, wait a minute, how can we be sure that the person's soul is being transported as well? Would you be willing to test that?

We may never be able to achieve that, it may simply be impossible to teleport living flesh, who knows. But before such science could even be possible, or even things like interstellar space travel, and so forth, science needs to have a multidimensional understanding of the universe that is much deeper than where we are today. And if the universe has a nonphysical side, we need to---in fact, it is essential to---understand that as well. And step 1 is to identify it. This, I believe, is the most Promethean conclusion to the story of Eve eating the apple from the tree of knowledge---that we too become as gods.

But as to the utilitarian, pragmatic, and materialist approach-----Well there is this:

And for that we need to say keep it up! Even though I don't take back my previous comment on it----I still have to commend you on this. That's what it is all really about at the end of the day.

 

The wisdom behind such a limitation, is that if our souls are immortal, such a knowledge of that fact would make our lives meaningless. Like the gambler in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone that ended up in a casino where he always won. It didn't take him long to realize that winning had become meaningless. We may very well be able to shape reality however we want it, and perform magic at will. But if we knew this, and that we knew we would not really die, then why live in the physical world at all? And then, immortality would become an incredible meaningless bore.

 

To clarify what the limitation of quantum mechanics is, in my opinion---it is this dogmatic adherence to materialism---the idea that only the physical world exists. This is why quantum physicists stick with the math of the science, and tend to not want to pin down what their math actually tells us. Because it indicates a world that they themselves will say is very strange and weird. But it wouldn't be so weird if they would accept that there is a nonphysical side to the universe. On the one hand, the argument of nonphysicality is simply speaking in terms of other dimensions. But then we make the mistake that other dimensions follow the same laws that our physical dimensions do, which science tells us is not the case---light, for example, presents us with a reality that is very different from what we experience, because the light wave is simultaneously in all positions of space time.

So light from a distant galaxy 400 Million Light Years away, from our understanding, took 400 million years to reach us, but from the perspective of that light, it was a simultaneous flash--it was both here and at that galaxy simultaneously. This is why Einstein said that if a particle of light flew by a mirror at the speed of light, would it see itself? In a world where the laws are physical the way we understand life to be, it would not---because the light has to travel to the mirror and reflect back at the speed of light as the particle zooms by also at the speed of light. But Einstein answered that it would in fact see itself, because light does not have a relative speed. Einstein's c is a constant. If, for example you were flying in a fighter jet at 400 mph and another jet was flying towards you at 400 mph, the relative speed between you and the other jet is 800 mph. But that does not mean that the light from the top of his tail fin is coming to you at the speed of light plus 800 mph. and for anyone that is observing you fly by on the ground, the light from your tail fin is not reaching them at the speed of light minus 400 mph. To all observers, the light is travelling at the same speed.

Science fails to consider that this is because light travels through the 4th dimension. It's in Einstein's math, if you ask a scientist they will agree, so its not like this is something they overlooked, but it is not significant to them, because they see it all as a physical thing, and so light having no relative speed is simply a quirk of physicality. Every new higher dimension adds a set of infinite new directions, yet we cannot comprehend which directions those are even for just the 4th dimension, so that whole issue gets shoved under the rug and ignored.

An example of how these implications are ignored, which limits our understanding of the universe is the issue if linked particles. Theroetically if you simultaneously create two particles, and send them off in opposite directions, that changing the spin, or direction or anything else of one particle will do the same instantly for the other particle. This has been demonstrated to be true, that there is somehow a communication between the two particles. But what is crazy is that as the particles move away from each other, this communication should be delayed by the speed of light. But it has been demonstrated that regardless of the distance they are apart, the communication is still instantaneous. The reason baffles scientists, but it shouldn't---the answer should be obvious. This communication is not subject to the laws of of the 3 dimensional physical world--it is nonphysical, something of a higher dimension.

 

What happened in our pasts is that we did have peace & powers to remain peaceful. & we did travel around. Whatever happened to change all that. Was partially our own arrogance. & part of our limitations were voluntary. We volunteered ya see. To be primitive. This has happened more than once to us. We are being given another chance to be nice again. Yet partially many dont wanna be nice.

 

Not entirely our fault that bad stuff happened. Worse beings than us make bad for all of creation. This actually is necessary. For if all was good. All would be under an even worse form of slavery. I hope @least some of this makes sense. Because sometimes i lose sight of reality. Because there are twists & turns all over. It does help to know that sentience is an ancient concept. Anything other that makes no sense. & only ridiculous doubletalk can only explain away some of it. & guess what? some of the doubletalk led to same conclusions reached a lilwhile ago that were poopooed. Just amazing & quite enlightening. Many thanks you are dearly loved.

 

This gets into what I mean by the world being radically subjective. If we decided that a flash of light was going to be the point of Now for a group of people, there will be one moment when the light flashes that happens so many nanoseconds before the people see the light. Then there is a different time that this light reaches each person's eyes (i.e. collapses into a photon at the edge of a collapsed atom (or part of a collapsed atom), within the eyes of each person) then there is the time that the atom in that eyeball ejects an electron (which requires a new set of collapses--the atom (or part of it), and the electron) which then must travel to the brain through the optic nerves, and then must be recognized as the flash representing Now.

I have gone through this exercise, and I agree that this point of Now does not exist, and that if this is how we define Now as a collective Now, then that is right.

This is the Now of Newtonian science--the idea that it is the same now clear across the universe. Einstein would say that he changed that, and made Now relativistic. This means that everyone has a different Now.

I remember we had a similar conversation before. I explained to you that I define the quantum now as a point that is 1 planck time by 1 planck length. I would write the space this represents but the text commands on Hip Forums no longer has the superscript command. I guess my old BASIC computer skills can be used---planck time is about 5.3910632 x 10^-44 seconds and Planck lenght is 1.61619997 x 10^-35 meters. Planck length is about 10^-20, or 1/10^20th, the diameter of a proton. The smallest thing that a human eye can see is a dot about 1/10th of a milimeter. The ratio of that dot to the size of the observable universe, is the same as 1 planck length to that dot. 1 planck time is the period of time it takes light to move 1 planck length. Below these dimensions, physical reality cannot exist as quantum mechanics and the theories of relativity deny each other.

My concept of the Quantum Now, is that all physicality that exists within that moment, only exists for that moment. This means that the Quantum Now represents all quantum collapses into physical particles clear across the universe within that infinitesimal moment. This states that it is the same Now clear across the universe as Newton said, but that this Now is relativistic as Einstein said. So in the Now where a number of photons appeared at the edge of the light, the eyes of the people were registering the light before it flashed on, and the minds of those people were perceiving a number of moments even before that, a Now that is now past. So even as it is the same now all around, it represents a different perception of now.

I am working on a laptop at my dining room table. Another quantum implication of this idea is that in any single one of those moments, and most likely all of them, my table and my laptop, and even my own physical body may only partially exist. In a single such moment, there is no guarantee that all of these particles would be collapsed into existence. Then there is the question of whether particles even collapse into existence, as I have been saying--scientists are still unsure of this. Whether particles collapse or not, it is only the phenomena that we experience. So even then there is a question of how deep the illusion actually is.

But as long as we define the Now in terms of human experience you are correct. We certainly cannot identify a single quantum now even if it does fully collapse into physicality. And after that point of time, it is gone---returned into the realm of nonphysicality. So as humans, we cannot even know the Now.

 

Not exactly----the Quantum Now is the closest we come to physicality. It is a single point of Now where all that physically exists, has collapsed into particles. Quantum Mechanics tells us that the particles that make up all physical things are both a particle and a wave. We could also say that they are both mass and energy. My argument is that it is only the particle side of the wave-particle that represents physical existence. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that as particles, or subatomic particles they have a space-time position, i.e. a physical position in both space and time.

They also have inertia, meaning that they are not in motion. Inertia is something that science cannot quite identify, but it is nonetheless equivalent to mass. Mass is inertia and inertia is mass. When we speak of motion in Quantum physics it is a very strange thing---because something in motion cannot have a position in quantum mechanics. When it is in motion, it is a wave, which means that it is superpositioned, meaning that it is simultaneously in infinite positions across space and time. Now even though we say it is in motion, it really isn't in the sense we understand motion to be, as the Quantum Physicist, Bernard d'Espagnet explains in his book, On Physics and Philosophy, there is no trajectory. After all, as I point out, since it has infinite positions, it is already everywhere. There is no place for it to move to.

If we argue that only the present has existence, then the Quantum Now is literally that point where that existence actually exists. The particles exist but only for the smallest of moments, which generates the phenomena of their existence.

If we compare the consciousness of the observer observing reality as a film, the observer is consciously observing the film, unaware that it is broken up into individual frames. Those frames are the quantum now; the blips of reality represented by the collapse of the wave into particles. Each frame goes by so fast that the observer is unaware of the frames, but instead sees a steady movement of the action within the film, a steady flow of reality.

Now, the reason why I answered not exactly to your point is that I do argue that there is a First Cause---and that First Cause is mind, which is a very general thing in philosophy and could represent anything from a human mind, to a universal mind, or god. What determines how, when, and where a particle will collapse is quantum information. The quantum information has an intentional object which is the particle it collapses into. I took the concept of intentional object from the Philosopher Brentano who says that every thought has a potential object---the thing that the thought is about. Is the quantum information conscious? It has many of the same characteristics that define life---it has a memory, it can transfer information, receive information, learn new information, and so forth. So that is a tough question. Schopenhauer, writing before quantum mechanics said the world was made up of will and appearance. However he was an atheist and did not like the idea that this will had a consciousness to it, otherwise he would be talking of a religion.

Sorry I was not clear on this. I meant the photon would appear on the edge of the light bulb, or if it is a clear light bulb, at the edge of the filament. This is the starting point of the phenomena for the light from that light bulb---which the flash of is supposed to represent the point of Now for the people looking at it.

They cannot physically see the light before it exists. My point was they cannot even see the light, when it flashes, because light travels about a foot for every nanosecond, so they do not even see the flash until it reaches their eyes, but only after it is absorbed into an atom within their eyes, which then sends an electron through their optic nerve and into their brain where they consciously realize, Oh, it's now---which is already multiple nanoseconds after the light flashed.

But since you brought it up (or did I mention it in my example?)----the light already exists as a wave even before it flashes and certainly before they are consciuously aware of it-----because the superpositioned wave has infinite positions across space-time. If quantum information is mind, and the observers mind's also represent mind, is it possible that some of them may pick up on this information and know of the flash before it happens? It is possible that this is what clairvoyance is about.

Yes, the quantum wave exists prior to, during, and after the particle collapses. But I argue that it is a nonphysical thing. It is the essence of the particle and the object the particle makes up. I refer to the future as absolute potentiality. But it collapses into actuality, which is the actual point of physicality.

The reason why I use a time frame so small is that quantum mechanics does not have particles appearing and then just sitting around for the day. As I have said numerous times, waves may not even actually collapse into particles. But if they do, they only stick around for an infinitesimal point of time. Particles are collapsing all the time if they do collapse, and then they go back into the wave. A point 1 planck length by 1 planck time is a point wherein all simultaneous collapses across the universe can occur, and we can therefore say that for that point, all the collapses that have occured within that point represents the totality of existence for that moment. In the next point there will be new collapses, representing a new totality of existence.

In this brief moment of time, there is no guarantee that enough particles collapse that an object is completely there in physical form. but in that moment, those particles are the ones that are there. Our observation of reality, like someone watching a movie, would never allow us to see a point of time so infinitessimal. We are basically talking about the times and distances used in string theory. But in this moment, this is the totality of physical existence. We could also explain this in terms of string theory in that the universe is physically present one string at a time.

Yes, it is there, whether it is as a wave or a particle; energy or mass, but quantum mechanics tells us that as a wave, it is part of a very strange superpositioned reality---so I therefore say it is nonphysical.

What is important is not whether the body is wholly there physically or not, because if it doesn't even collapse into particles, or even if it does, what we experience is not the actual particles, rather it is the phenomena of those particles.

And because our bodies and the empire state building are waves more than they are particles, and that these waves are superpositioned, then yes, there is really no independent thing. And that is the same with everything.