I noticed that our readership has been very active in the Matrix topic. In short: there is an opinion that we all live in a world designed by someone, and most of us, except for our friends, relatives and the president, may simply not exist in reality. If you missed the discussion, you can check out the topic here, and in the meantime, I found some more interesting ideas and explanations for our phantom world.
Many people believe that the state of our meat (yes, our health) and the state of our mind (our mood) are closely related. In medicine, there are a lot of phenomena when consciousness directly determines our physical state (from placebos and psychosomatics to mass hysteria). Nevertheless, this idea, which is based on intuition as the main argument, is usually ignored by scientists, if not directly condemned. As we said, science deals only with phenomena that can be measured and proven, or experimentally seen, and intuition has never been part of the equation. Many scientists prefer to pretend that what cannot be measured does not exist. This is the scientific approach.
For most scientists today, there is no connection between consciousness and matter. Mind became part of the metaphysical world, and matter became part of the physical. Nevertheless, as you well know, the discovery of quantum phenomena, which all scientists agree with, leads us to the phenomenon that the world that we observe exists only in our imaginations. The most mysterious aspect of quantum theory is that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. If one of the parts is missing, reality disappears. Reality does not exist without an observer: only waves, waves of probability remain.
Perception: the result of our brain's enhanced processing?
According to physicist David Bohm, our perception of the world is the result of extensive processing of our brains over the centuries. This treatment has created a division, which the physicist considers to be artificial, between humanity and nature and between human and human.
In other words, according to Bohm, our perception is responsible for the fragmentation of the universe. He believes that quantum theory assumes that the concept of fragmentation is untenable, and the whole world should be conceived as an indivisible whole, in which the observer and the observed are one. In this one, the scientist includes not only matter, but also consciousness. For him, consciousness and matter are two sides of the same coin. Without going into details, let's just try to imagine for a start that emotions are a bridge or interface between our body and our consciousness.
Behind the radio, which converts electromagnetic waves into sound, and the fax, which converts electromagnetic waves into two-dimensional images, came the hologram, which converts electromagnetic waves into three-dimensional images. The next invention will be machines that can translate electromagnetic waves into three-dimensional images that can be "felt". Through close interaction with a computer, an imaginary environment within virtual reality can be created for the observer. In the most successful cases of creating a virtual environment, users are completely immersed in the simulation. This world "feels" them.
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Could our brains be a 3D virtual reality machine?
Could our brain, this complex network of neurons, be such a machine? A machine that creates, in the process of interacting with waves of matter, three-dimensional images with shape, texture, color, sound, smell and taste? A device through which the waves collapse? A device through which one of the many possibilities becomes real, at least for us? Who chooses?
Bohm argues that we are all observers who create the reality in which we live. In fact, this statement is much older than Bohm. The trend of solipsism has already gone out of fashion. One question we might ask ourselves is, is the world we create real or virtual? Since we are all “equipped” with the same brain, we all feel that we are creating the same reality; we can even say that the world is real because it is “the same” for most of us. However, there is a possibility that a human being with a damaged brain will experience a different experience and a different reality. Will his reality be less “real” than ours?
Another important question for us will be this: does this world, created by our consciousness from waves of matter, include our inner world, which we cannot share, but which is clearly no less real for us than the outer one? Are we creating it? How real is it? How limited? Can we change it? Do our molecules affect it?
Unfortunately, I cannot give you answers to these questions, since I am guided by a scientific approach. But the idea is extremely interesting.
When the world became round and not flat
From the very inception of Christianity and over the next centuries in the West, it was believed that our planet Earth is a static sphere around which planets revolve in ideal circles, and the stars are unchanged, like photographs on a wall. The human race was an alien and ephemeral phenomenon in an ideal and eternal world. It was only in the sixteenth century that several observations made by Copernicus (1472-1543) and later confirmed by Galileo (1564-1642) showed us a different reality.
Even though the earth was always in motion and the stellar ceiling did not always gap over our heads, this discovery was experienced like a supernova explosion, like a Big Bang, like something gigantic and cosmic. As if the image of the sky could affect their entire existence, it seemed to people that, together with the opening of the doors to the sky, they left the prison, limited only by their imagination and common consent. They felt free, were reborn.
The fruits of this new thing could be seen in all areas of culture: religion, philosophy, art, literature, science and technology. Modern science was born. This episode from the life of humanity can be a good example of underestimating the power of imagination and its processing.
Quantum theory: finding a gap in the wall between matter and consciousness
Quantum theory appeared not so long ago. She has not yet managed to leave the doors of research institutes and certainly has not yet penetrated into the public consciousness. This theory could start the next big scientific revolution, perhaps even more colossal than the Copernican revolution. This time, it is not the heavens that will collapse, but the very substance of the Universe, and with it we.
After Copernicus and Galileo, we will have to destroy - not without pain - the wall that separates us from heaven. Could it be that the wall between matter and consciousness has been put in place solely by consensus? Here's some food for thought and discussion.
Ilya Khel