Mermaid on the breakwater

But this is what I don't get. I am closing my eyes and touching my face, ye, I can still feel my cheekbones, my jawline, my stubble, my mouth, my ears, my nose, my eye sockets, it's still all there... So how can I be a hologram if I feel completely solid and whole? And doesn't the same apply for everything else?

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Hodge

Because feelings are perceptions that originate in your brain. Have you ever been hooked up to a virtual reality machine (whatever happened to those, anyway?)? Also, have you heard of phantom limbs?

This isn't the kind of hologram that we know of. Those just display an image. This hologram would contain information for sensory input—your face feels solid because your brain orders the information the way you perceive it, not because things are actually that way.

The hologram creates an "image" of matter, upon which all our senses are based. Taste is the interaction of matter on our taste buds, smell the interaction of matter on our olfactory system, touch the interaction of matter on our skin, sight the interaction of matter, photons, and our optic nerve, and hearing the interaction of vibrating molecules on our ear drums. As a rule, everything we know comes from our five senses in some way, so it's perfectly conceivable that this is all an illusion.

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wyf

sounds like that shroedingers cat thing. is it alive? Is it dead? its both til you open the box!

Foxee

Stubbed toes and smacking your funny bone should REALLY be telling you something here. So should stepping on upside-down matchbox cars and leggos in your bare feet.

Life would be much more comfortable if things politely waited for us to notice them before they become real. OR...someone ELSE could be looking at things when you aren't and THAT's why they're real!

Which means that there are tons of people who we can't see all staring at things. Kinda creepy. Leave some food out for those people. - they're getting eyestrain.

Hmm...and if a bunch of things are still real in a pitch-black room then maybe people in an alternate dimension of reality are doing the looking - just to make things around you real. That could be expensive. I bet they're union workers.

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Jeff Colburn

What you're talking about is quantum physics.

All things are made of energy, but what determines how that energy will manifest in the physical world is the interaction of an observer. There is an infinite number of possibilities for any physical thing.

For example, if there is a basketball laying on the ground and you turn your back, then that basketball can be in an infinite number of places behind you, but when you turn around your perception and expectation of reality puts it in one place. If it wasn't moving, then you expect it to be in the same place when you look back at it. If it was rolling on the ground, then when you look back you expect it to be in a different location, depending on its speed, direction and the terrain it rolled over.


Have Fun,
Jeff

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Faustling

The quantum stuff reminds me of Schroedinger's cat. Thanks for the info anyway.

Mermaid on the breakwater

Lol, this made me laugh. I just get this image of Homer Simpson saying "Heeeey, Maaaarge, we have to look at stuff to make it reeeaaal."

Hodge

Schroedinger's Cat was Schroedinger's response to the sheer bizzareness of quantum theory. The example of the half dead, half alive cat was supposed to refute the theory, although since the cat would be an observer, it doesn't quite work.

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Mike C

Wasn't this the whole basis of the Matrix? Things are only as they are because that's what your brain's being told that's the way they are? Back in the acid days we used to freak kids out with the 'brain in a bottle' theory, which is again the same thing; you experience what you think you experience because electical impulses to the brain feed you information.

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Mermaid on the breakwater

The only problem I have with it is the thought that if we are partially aware that that is the case, then wouldn't we go a bit mad or our brain reject these conventions?


I think we're reading a bit too much into what is possible. I am not too sure it's very likely. But then I am not that wise on this subject.

ClancyBoy

The Matrix story was stolen from Sophia Stewart's novel The Third Eye (She sued Warner Brothers and won) which is a sci-fi retelling of the New Testament. Early Christianity adopted the idea of the physical world as illusion from Platonism.

To Plato, only essences were real. A horse for example, is only a manifestation of reality, like a shadow cast on the wall of a cave. The only real thing was the idea of a horse. That is, the essence of horse-ness

Not to be argumentative, but QM really isn't what you're looking for. In QM there is uncertainty because when some things like electrons are observed they change their state. That doesn't quite translate to the whole world being an illusion, because things larger than subatomic particles do not change when you look at them.

For this question you really should be looking to philosophy, not particle physics.

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Hodge

Sorta, except the Matrix was about tapping into our perceptual centers and imitating a reality that does exist, whereas the holographic universe idea is about the whole of "reality" being nothing more than information that our brains arrange in a certain way (there's a holographic hypothesis for the brain, too). It's similar, but the latter idea implies there's something "real" beyond the hologram, and there are apparently freaky ways to manipulate the hologram (should it exist). I'd recommend Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe," although be forewarned—the first part deals with the science that supports his idea, and it's quite cool, but after that he goes into all this new agey bullcrap and basically assumes it's all real without substantiating it.

The quantum theory thing (which is the one firmly grounded in science—the holographic universe/brain idea is NOT scientific theory) is basically just that all particles are also waves. When there is no observer, a particle is simply a waveform that could be doing anything—an electron ceases to exist as a fixed point in space and an actual particle when we stop looking at it.


As for Plato's ideas—he doesn't believe physical objects don't exist. He believes they are cheap imitations of those perfect essences—shadows of their real selves. He doesn't believe that the physical world doesn't exist, though. He believes these perfect forms or "essences" exist on a separate plane from our own (though not a physical, tangible plane).


Also, I'd say partic

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blademasterzzz

Hm, about the whole "waves turned into particles when observed" thing - to what extent? What does "being observed" mean? I mean, we see things because photons and thus light reflects off objects onto our retina and an image is formed in our brain, but what part of this process exactly changes waves into particles? Or even when being observed in an experiment. What outside influence? Electronic equipment measuring the particles? What exactly? That's what I don't quite get.

Lyonidus

im pretty sure this theory is called solipsist but id have to google it to be certain and i just cajnt be bothered.

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Hodge

I don't remember the qualifications for "observation," but they don't require consciousness. It doesn't have to be us or any other conscious organism, as far as I know.

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