I sometimes wonder if there's an entire thriving universe out there made of dark energy and dark matter, and those dark scientists are trying to figure out where the missing 5% of the universe is :)
Joe made a fundamental mistake here: Dark Matter and Dark Energy are _completely_ different concepts that are as unrelated as you can get. Dark Energy is just a name given the to unknown force that's causing the universe to expand at an increasing rater. This expansion is a structural fact of the universe. Our only question is: "what powers it?" This is different from Dark Matter which is matter we're only detecting via gravitational forces at massive scales. Problem is, that could just be a mistake in our theories about regular matter. If so, then Dark Matter would be an illusion that we made up.
Im a biologist and we havent even figured out how photosynthesis works exactly. it appears superposition is involved... I think the most important thing is to keep asking questions even woo woo ones, and testing them...and be nice to your plants
It really is, but I think it somewhat ironically cuts both ways. We as humans anthropomorphize, but I think we also discount consciousness in the animal kingdom. I tend to think there's a lot more going on in the subjective experience of everything from elephants to octopuses than the average person stops to think about.
I always thought that stars could actually be living beings. They're born in stellar nurseries, grow to a fully adult form, have complex processes going on inside them, they grow old and die and upon their death they seed the surrounding area, producing offspring stars.
I read a book called "The Mind of God" by Paul Davies, in the 'holographic universe' realm of theory, and something that stuck with me was the idea that 'thoughts' and consciousness neither originate nor store in the physical brain but the brain acts like a Receiver for consciousness that is transmitted from the universe. While the scientific world has moved on from the theory, there's something about that idea that resonates to me.
@@JustinMcVicarWell I'm an artist and... well yeah that's sometimes true but I often put thought into my art. I can't argue one being better than the other.
@@JustinMcVicar I also imagine those "Eureka" moments when the answer just pops into your head. Or after meditating or "In a zone" and that 'detached' feeling lingers and you're mind is somewhere else but your body's on autopilot. Or those brief moments of clarity when you feel like you have knowledge and solutions to a problem you've never studied, before it dissipates and you cant regather the thoughts. Could it be from the ether?
@@Kai...999 also an artist, a musician, and might be why it resonates with me. An inspired song could be created and recorded in a couple of hours and would sound full and complete but other songs could take days and weeks to get it down the way I hear it in my head and I might not ever be happy with the result. The inspired work versus work that felt like "work" to create also seemed to induce different reactions from listeners too, gravitating more to the inspired work, while I might have to explain my other work. This might be a legitimate science experiment for some musician scientists to undertake 😂.
The idea that pure consciousness could exist in isolation without any mechanisms for memory, knowledge, or the ability to sort stimuli into qualia is Lovecraftian as hell
Oooohh, that's a really neat thought! Or maybe consciousness actually, literally exists (as a tangible thing) in one/some of those theoretical little foldy-dimensions 😮
Technically that's what many Bibles refer to as hell. Lost..so cold it burns like brimstone fires. You become lost from that large universe consciousness, aka God. No body, no sound, no heat, just your consciousness, lost and alone
@@idontwantahandlethough it does, but in another universe. all universes are infinite. we are here, in these living systems, temporarily. but since both living systems and consciousness NEED each other to evolve, we ebb and flow between the 2. i only know this because i died and returned recently. over there i realized that i've done it a million times.
Its insane how planetary solar systems mimic the bohr rutherford diagram for atoms with their electrons orbiting the atom and in the solar systems case planets orbiting the sun. Its just the odd comparisons that make you go “uhhh…” like that nebula that looks like DNA telomeres in space.
@@JimbletonJamesThere's also the fact that cosmic filaments *look* like neruons. Are we just some "subatomic" life inside some other creature's brain? Do we have universes and life in our own brains? 🤯
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Well it was meant as a joke, simply writing down that statement would be enough to invalidate that statement for the first half and then the second half is the part that makes it funny because that one was like a legitimate thing that's been put forward.
I remember a futurama episode where bender gets lost in space and becomes a god/planet. he ends up meeting a conscious cosmic cloud/being which he asks if the being considers itself god. That episode is probably one of my favorite, and the creators using a very interesting theory.
Yes! Thank you, that was such a great episode. And honestly, if there is God, that is exactly how I imagine it acting and talking. It postulates and theorizes its place in the universe, as opposed to the classical domineering "IT'S ME! I'M GOD, BITCHES! KNEEL!"
@@vamuse if i was god i'd definitely be bragging about it, but that's probably why im not cut out for the job lol. i gotta watch that episode, sounds neat
The eye is a little more sophisticated than just seeing color and objects. There are certain mapping of the photo receptors that pre-interpret shapes before sending that information to the brain. Certain objects get priority - eyes, for example. If someone is watching us, we're hardwired to notice that.
Ah reassuring to hear this is evolution and not paranoia. I can always sense when someone is staring from just a fraction of a second glance, in a crowded room and with my back otherwise turned
😂It's funny, when I was a kid (I was a weird kid) I would thank lightbulbs for working, apologize to doors for slamming them, that sort of thing. I even hated throwing things away because I didn't want to hurt its feelings. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I KNEW IT! KNEEL BEFORE MY CHILDHOOD DISORDERS!
Holy shit! I thought I was the only one. I even had trouble picking out a toy at the store because I thought it would somehow hurt it's feelings or something. It wasn't constant and not for everything. Damn childhood was weird 😂
I once loved a short novel that described clusters of conciusness created by randomness as actual aliens. At some point I remeber one of them stating that their form of intelligence is common and organic conciousness is actually far rarer. Considering that the way they came into existence was determined by randomness among the information out there but it is still less conditional than organic life, it made a lot of sense. I love the concept.
Boltzmann brain right, you just don't see it much in Sci-fi. The novel is actually one of those highschool japanese light novels called Haruhi Suzumiya's Melancholy. The series has some interesting sci-fi ideas like this one and I read it just because I caught that it described this exact concept but it doesn't manage to elaborate much further on these ideas unfortunately.
What if the system running the simulation doesnt have enough power to simulate every particle at all times so they just stay in a compressed indeterminate state until they are observed. Like occlusion culling in a video game.
this has been my standing theory for a while, it fits well into the holographic universe theory. It doesn't even necessarily have to be an intelligently coded reality, it could also just be an emergent property of our reality being a projection and the necessity for conservation of energy causing things to tend towards a lower "energy state" like an uncollapsed waveform.
As a video game/computer nerd, the very first thing that I thought of when I originally heard of the double slit experiment is that we discovered one of the universe's memory-saving processes. It almost seems so obvious that once you look at it that way it becomes pretty hard to believe that it's NOT true.
@@asivnondigital8098 I've definitely found the more you learn about both coding and physics, the harder it becomes to deny that there's some pretty eminent correlations
This is a very common reaction/suggestion (as the replies show). The problem is that it requires more information to describe a quantum superposition than a collapsed classical state (since you have to describe all possible states, not to mention their probability curves.) So it has the opposite effect.
There's an ancient philosophical exercise regarding this concept: "does a bear sh*t in the woods?".... Or wait no, maybe it was "if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it really make a sound" 👍
I like this because this is probably exactly what’s happening to us. Not saying I believe the “brain universe” theory 100%, But there is absolutely something going on that we’re missing solely because we are too fkn small to see it
Last week they just released study on first mouse/human brain cells mixed with traditional electronics, and trained in a way only those who learn evolve/survive
The idea that there was a recognizable state of being at every scale from small to large, was something I always liked about Madeline L'engle's books. In one of the books iirc the characters are even having their adventures inside the cell of another character.
@@y5mgisi NOPE! in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles has a blood disease involving mitochondria and he gets to communicate with one of these mitochondria cells, because it turns out to be a conscious being.
Yes, in "A Swiftly Titling Planet". Charles Wallace has a blood disease, and in trying to cure it, he communicates with mitochondria. I think he goes on to be a fairly major character, although I don't remember clearly. Interestingly, mitochondria have their own genome and are thought to have evolved from a separate organism living symbiotically with single cell eukaryotic organisms.
@@squirlmy the book sounds bloody interesting, pun intended 😂. I looked it up expecting hard science fiction but it's a kids book, pretty deep subjects for young adults tho. The plot has some similarities with 'Blood Music' by Greg Bear, seriously deep and excellent read!
I’m a firm believer that “Every system is made up of subsystems, and every system is a subsystem of a larger system. We just have limits to what we can see and imagine.”. It’s clear that looking at the map of the universe, we are dealing with a very neuron like structure. Just because we can’t see past our universe, doesn’t mean that our universe isn’t just a cell of a larger system of universes. We very well could be the Higgs boson of that larger system.
oh my god i've been trying to articulate this for days. i keep saying the universe is a macro organism and humans are the cells, planets are the organs, scaling further and further out based on perspective of course
@@maggiesimpsin706Lol, yeah it’s been proven that humans get comfort from patterns like this and seek them out in nature. Arguably it gives us a sense of control
Right but cells help humans function. What in the hell do we as humans do to help the larger system? Or are we a virus and an unintended consequence of the system.
Two comparisons to Toy Story: toys are moving until someone enters their room and observes the toys in their places. Buzz Lightyear’s explanation that he’s not actually flying but “falling with style” is like our own feelings of consciousness-we are just falling with style/collection of chemical reactions to our environment like less sophisticated life forms.
So why does Buzz Lightyear, with his layered ego and his dillusions of whatever also become inanimate when a human walks in? Just thot that as was reading first few comments, but I did always wonder.
@@rozhamilton9955because he is compelled by a wider consciousness than his own toy brain has control of. Much like myself, when faced with the visage of a radiant sky, I am unable to pull back the veil and see the godhead behind the sunset-flamed clouds, so too is Buzz unable to throw himself wide and cry out to Andy: "I See You! Answer Me!" Yet we both sit and dream of it...
I love this theory I once thought about it like what if each cell in your body is actually everything you see in space and vice versa and you’re basically looking at gigantic cells or organisms in the sky that seem to live forever but when you go down scale everything lives and dies fast and you are at the center of infinity and are ultimately large and tiny at the same time
I once imagine that a single thought of a cosmic god takes 1 billion years to happen, in this scenario the conscience would be almost imperceptible in our point of view
It's crazy how the veins on a leaf look just like the circulatory system, and the roots of a plant look just like lung bronchioles. Nature has so many repeating patterns, even the radio scan image of the universe looks almost interchangeable with a CAT scan of a brain. As the technology improves and science is able to explain things better and better, everything just becomes way more mysterious. Then add on-top of all that how surreal and comical politics has become, like everyday the news seems more and more like an episode of SNL. America keeps electing geriatric clowns as POTUS. Like George W was so terrible at speaking David Letterman had a weekly segment of the hilarious this he said wrong, every single week for 8 years. Then there was Trump, I don't even need to say anything, we all know his only real talent was roasting, he didn't do a single thing as president. Now we got Biden, he can't even walk up stairs without falling over, he's a greater physical comidian than Chris Farley, and these are the guys who were selected to run the world. If that's not proof that the universe is conscious and also that the universe has a hilarious sense of humour? I don't know what else could have made all this ridiculous stuff happen?
@eduardonegrao8364 This is my argument with religion and God. Time dilation. Even if a magic being existed, it's perception of time would be scaled so far up we could never communicate with it. Let alone it being able to perceive our existence. To it, we've already come and gone 1000 times a second. Like we're in a Hadron collider .
Something I’ve heard which fascinates me, which I’d love to see a video on is how the behavior of ant colonies can be described as conscious. Not the ants themselves, but the entire colony working together to make decisions and build structures may also be aware of itself and conscious in the way a brain might be. I’d love to see more videos on a consciousness. It’s so interesting to me because it’s the one field of study that often bridges the gap between religion and science and I think it’s humbling that there’a still a phenomenon without a perfect explanation.
No, giving credence to our random childish nonsense is definitely crazy. Having very refined, scientifically verifiable theories based on measurable data is what makes childish nonsense into something rational and tangible, and decidedly not crazy. It’s crazy all the way up until one has narrowed down the discourse into a specific and knowable phenomenon that can be recreated and observed
and just deciding to calling it crazy is a decision. hypothesis are not crazy. they are only crazy if you blindly follow them as soon as you think them out into existence @@maaingan
HUH, I had no idea this had a name! I used to trip a lot on DXM (dissociative/psychedelic) and I would often spend that time thinking about myself, the meaning of life and other complex questions. I am not religious, I think maybe I was looking for something spiritual, but I remember seeing and coming to the conclusion that everything is conscious, just different levels of sophistication based on the complexity of the container (a human brain being more capable than say a chair). It made so much sense, it answered a lot of questions that I had and brought me peace. It made me feel calm about my fragile mortality, that my body would die one day but my consciousness would continue on. Even though I'm not religious, I have a hard time believing I simply won't exist one day. Existence is all I've ever known.
because the same thing when you sleep your body is alive and sending signals but your consciousness falls asleep and wakes up in the span of a few seconds. Your consciousness is just using your body as a vessel/vehicle and will never witness an actual death or birth
That's how i think of it too. When u connect ur senses (through meditation or artificially with psychedelics) the ego (the "operating system" of our consciousness) "dies", but ur still conscious. It's just that the "I" falls out of the equation. I mean, if u think of biology, it's like a universe inside a universe with it's own set of rules.
Fellow dxm user spotted, ate a gram a few hours ago lol. These sorts of things are so wild to think about while on it, it gives you a different perspective than psychedelics do. When I was still in highschool it would almost compell me to study spirituality and I'd try to find connections between beliefs and science, like the Law of One
I've been thinking about the large astronomical objects and structures, and that they may be a type of lifeform that does make conscious decisions. But the spacetime scale is so unimaginably different from humans, that for us to comprehend its actions would be like trying to understand the human mind from looking at individual atoms in the brain.
It would be like one of your mitochondria understanding the full scope of your body, only harder, because instead of the mitochondria you’re actually closer on the scale of the ATP that feeds your organelles rather than organelles.
And also maybe their perception of time might be different, so in that moment that takes mother earth to décide what to wear to prom with mars maybe like a million years pass and humans come and go.
Like the gods of old they saw in the constellations. Ive toyed with that idea too, that what if there could be dramas unfolding above our heads, but our lives are like that of fruit flys, born breed die before they can even 'blink'.
I thought the same think about stars moving over time; if it’s a choice among multiple bodies over millions of years, how is there only ever consensus?
@@craigh5236 Except that they behave in a precisely random way, so in some sense it's not a conscious decision if it's predictable over time via pure probabilities.
The wife and I have been getting sucked into a ton of your videos lately. I dig the humor, and simple explanations of complicated topics. All the X's and O's, my nilla.
Well it's been said that photosynthesis shows a rudimentary sort of consciousness while using entanglement, so things being conscious on a fundamental level may not be too much of a stretch.
Panpsychism has always seemed like a really far out idea, but consciousness emerging from unconscious material seems equally far out to me. So who knows🤷♂
@@thebatman6201 that's exactly his point? he's a conscious being that emerged from an unconscious universe, he's saying that doesn't sound much more realistic than a conscious being coming out of a conscious universe
@@thebatman6201 Agreed. Maybe I didn't make my point clear enough. I think all theories we have on consciousness now seem equally whacky. Like we're kids trying to understand a puddle without having seen rain.
Christian worldview is consciousness (God) is infinite while time and space are finite. In essence, it isn’t the conscious rising from the unconscious but rather the unconscious being created from the conscious.
I mean if you accept a conscious mind as just a very specific arrangement of particles then it would make perfect sense for it to be possible but very rare
I've given this a lot of thought and kind of fell into the conclusion that "it is relative". I personally don't like to use the word "consciousness" because people attach a bunch of stuff to it that is usually human specific and not actually required to create a general definition. However, if we use the word as it is constructed in the English language, meaning the word conscious and the suffix ness, then I like that definition since it basically comes out to something like "the ability to perceive and respond to one's environment". Dr David Wulpert has a nice definition of an observer and it is something like "an observer is a system that acquires information from the environment to stay out of quantum equilibrium" and a "natural system"(what the observer observes) is "a system that is always in a state of quantum equilibrium". Meaning a falling chunk of rock isn't an observer because it just basically follows the path of least resistance but if I want to remain an observer I had better move out of the way. Everything is a combination of something smaller and at every step it requires some sort of "self-other" recognition that is relevant given the scale. If we try to describe that in general terms it comes out to look fairly analogous to computation on both sides but one is reversible and the other isn't. Some fairly recent research seems to suggest that the edge of the universe may act as a sort of observer and black holes may also act as some sort of observer. What if consciousness is the opposite of light in some sort of fundamental way? Once an observer has observed it can't un-observe and that could be described using something like a light cone.
Hey I find your way of thinking very interesting. Could you expand what you mean with this? "If we try to describe that in general terms it comes out to look fairly analogous to computation on both sides but one is reversible and the other isn't".
Historically consciousness has either been regarded as being the same thing as light or being very much like it. How many other fundamental forces do we have? Gravity? Spin?
@@yael123gut Well if we look at a so-called "natural system", or what the observer observes, we could in theory predict all future states of that system given the initial state. With an observer, or all observers that I'm aware of, that isn't the case. Once an observer has observed, that process can not be reserved and running it again even with the exact same variables will give at least a slightly different result and will compound over each timestep.
I think that before we can go looking for consciousness we need to define what makes consciousness in the first place. we know we are conscious but we don't know how it works.
Penrose is still alive, so should probably be talked about in the present tense. Anyway, I think this is all woo-woo, or at least a high level overview of it makes it sound woo-y. Part of the problem is defining consciousness. Sean Carroll said in one of his AMAs that he thinks consciousness isn't just one thing, and as we get better at understanding the different phenomena that make it up, it will become less mysterious.
To me pretty much the whole thing is non-falsifiable to an almost comedic degree. What's the difference between a conscious proton with no way of demonstrating to us that it's conscious, and a proton that isn't conscious to start with?
You're thinking too literally, I understand what you're saying. But here's my rebuttal. Why does it have life? And would it exist without it? Can it exist without a it? It's like, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound if there's nobody there to hear it. The answer is no, it's just air pressure. On a macroscopic scale, would the universe exist if there was nobody there to experience it? Again, no - because there's nothing to collapse the wave function. Consciousness is literally engrained in the very fabric of reality. To put it another way, if you have a box of Lego, you're only going to be able to create different combinations of those Lego blocks, you're not going to come out with Meccano. Same goes for the universe, you can't just create things that were not already part of the system, consciousness was always in the box.
@@Old299dfksound and tree and air and pressure and wave and function are all words and concepts that you’ve already come to understand only through sensory input because that’s all that an emergent human consciousness was able to come up with as a way of understanding the world because it’s bound by sense right, they’re just words they’re just terms they’re linguistic tools. and they’re useful, sure! but whether or not we’ve bounded these terms accurately at all - and whether they’re even best understood as separate things - i think THAT’S probably the underlying tension here. i think you’re thinking too familiarly; you’re coming at the question with a hammer and it’s looking like a nail to you. i don’t think it’s likely or unlikely that consciousness is everything - i think all that we can say so far is that it’s all that WE have :)
I tend to think it has to do with the complexity of information processing. So in biology, the more complicated the nervous system, the more "vivid" the conscious experience of that being is. In this sense, perhaps a single mushroom is not conscious, or at least not "very" conscious, but many mushrooms working in symbiosis with many trees within an ecosystem is collectively conscious. And maybe the unfolding of the universe from moment to moment, all those particles interacting with each other, creates a superconsciousness which is the universe experiencing itself, a consciousness as aware of you and I as we are of our individual cells and the molecules within them, which is to say, not at all. Just speculating here, and looking forward to scientific breakthroughs which help us get closer to understanding.
@@Adam-kn3tvwhich kinda begs the question to me: If the universe or parts of it like local clusters (where information exchange is possible for long periods of time) is continuous. How is the universe experiencing itself given that time must elapse so much faster for it because the information moves so slow. It wouldn’t even comprehend that humans are alive or lived once.
@@ThePowerfox18God experiences himself through all degrees of consciousness, not from outside of it. There is no outside of it. As a rock, consciousness and God do mot experience time in the manner we do....we are part of this universe as well, if fact we are the fruit of the universe. God experiences the physical passage of time through every kind of being that has a complex enough brain to be aware of it.
A mushroom may not be conscious anymore than an ovary is. But a mycorrhizalnetwork? Holy crap, so much potential for networked consciouness there!@@Adam-kn3tv
@@ThePowerfox18it’s just SCALED up or down…. Similar to how different animals experience sound and light all different on the same spectrum. Just at different frequencies. FREQUENCIES!!!!! FFFRRRREEAAAAAKKKKKK ONCE SEE
Joe I applaud your fearlessness in always bringing the woo-woo side of science to the masses. It gives me hope that one day we’ll figure out this universe we are in. We must entertain (& prove or disprove) everything to get to the truth.
Very late to the party here, I know. Many apologies 😅. I’m just curious on your perspective: what is the fundamental difference between “woo-woo” and a “hypothesis” if there is one?
But the ETs are far smarter than you and figured it out that the whole universe is nothing but conscious and created tech and craft based on this principle. So while you sit around with your buddies parroting that nothing can go faster than light they pop in and out of alternate dimensions and travel the universe in the blink of an eye. Maybe we could get there too one day if closed minded and limiting people like yourself didn't hold us back. What if tech like that required an entire race to harmonise their collective mind - the most powerful thing we know about - there are more neurons in your brain than there are stars in the sky Everything is connected in ways you cannot fathom - maybe spend more time contemplating quantum physics and become humbled a bit more
@@CJ-cc8gi lol, ET's are sitting somewhere in a pool of mud trying to figure out multi celularity. Just because somehting vaguely looks like something else, doesn't mean its the same.
here's a twist: adding on to your suggestion that the universe may have consciousness, maybe life in the universe is the manifestation of said consciousness.
Yeah but then how did that universe consciousness become sentient/"real"? It's like the old argument with God, if he's the first mover, then that begs the question of who created him.
@@davidgjam7600that is true for every theory of the beginning of the universe. A theologian can't answer that question any more than a physicist can. The human mind can't get past nothing becoming everything.
Yes , we’ve reached that conclusion in middle school, the real question is why? What’s the point of experiencing anything when you experience everything, they are functionally the same in terms of energy as in why waste energy on experience when the end result is the heat death of the universe expenditures of energy for the sake of experience seems like a massive waste when that energy could be used to fight entropy.
@@pakde8002that’s objectively not true, there is no “nothing” there was always something, just because you can’t convince dosent mean no one can. In any situation you slice it there was always an eternal something either cycled universes, multiverse in which ours is a branch of a larger whole or there being a higher plane of reality that ours is a derivative representation of , you really gotta stop thinking about time in a linear fashion if you want to understand the universe, it’s all one big orgy of energy and repeating patterns
The Double-Slit Experiment is simple: When unobserved, it shows all possible realities. When you put a sensor on it, you're effectively saying, "I want to know what happened in /this/ *specific* reality."
That’s exactly what I’m thinking why do we call the laser we make these photons go through we simply describe it as “we’re observing” Doesn’t a laser will have a an effect on this photon ?
its not anything to do with slits or dots or consciousness. its about how it chooses and doesnt choose one slit at identical times in 2 places. it implies the right side told the other side what to do instantly, but light isnt instant.
@@bryanb2653 im not claiming it right or wrong or that the experiment isnt flawed, i dont know. im simply stating that most people think the experiment is "magical" because a photon "chooses" a slit when its more fascinating that the opposite side knows faster than light.
This gets even more mind-blowing when you realize that this applies to starlight coming from millions of lightyears away. There's no double slit of course, but part of what the double slit (and other experiments) tells us is that a photon remains in a superposition of all possible locations until it's measured/observed. So when a photon leaves a star, it leaves it as an expanding sphere superposition (more precisely, the shell of half a sphere or so), and that superposition continues with the sphere eventually having a radius of thousands of light years. When you see a star, your retina is "measuring" that photon, and the entire rest of the sphere instantly knows. @@stephendouthart1328
Back in 2020 I wrote a paper regarding this. Trust me, proving consciousness is hard coz we don't even know what consciousness is fundamentally. I used interaction of everything as shared information resulting to consciousness, but my prof was not convinced. He wanted me to utilize chemistry and biology
Yes, consciousness is a result of a factor of elements. A compass points north, (and south) as a result of an apparent force upon it. You are aware it does so as a result of a number of chemical and biological processes that make you aware that a force is acting on the compass. Your responses are "computed" whereas the compass does not choose which way to point. Also the magnetic field does not choose to act at random or indeed randomly choose which way to make the compass point. Beware the woo.
It's funny that people have such strong opinions when it's epistemologically impossible to know one way or another. "NO! Use my unprovable assumptions, not those other ones!"
@@iamtheiconoclast3At a fundamental level, the universe appears probabilistic. This is not an unproven assumption. On a macroscopic level, it appears far more deterministic. At some point there is enough dependency from one particle to another for the uncertainty to appear almost completely negligible. IMO this is enough to argue against the idea of free will. We have a will, we do not determine that will. Physics does, just as it determines what is possible in chemistry, which then determines what is possible in biology.
Star Maker is one of my favorite books ever! The part about the conscious stars is one of the best parts. I really recommend every scifi lover to read this book.
One of my favorite explanations for existence is that we are in a dream of some greater being. When something comes into existence, it's part of that being splitting off, and then it rejoins it upon death/destruction. I compare it to the ocean. The ocean is THE ocean, it's one entity, but sometimes a splash creates water droplets. They come out of the ocean and then rejoin the ocean and cease to be a droplet. Even though they weren't the whole ocean for that moment. The greater being is conscious, everything is conscious, we as individuals do not hold the consciousness within us. We swim in the sea of consciousness and our consciousness is in direct relation to existence around us. Think of it like this, how can you be so devastated seeing a child be injured but someone saying, "Over one and a half million people have died from COVID in the US" doesn't really trigger anything? Because they're not within your observation. Your consciousness inside you is limited to your experiences. The greater consciousness that embues you with your own mini temporary consciousness relative to your surroundings within your body is still in everything else. You're just a droplet with its own experience of existence for a brief moment. And in that moment you're cut off from the consciousness of the entire ocean. In a dream, there is dream logic, and there are parameters within your dream even though you're not actively constructing them, and that's why flying can be just something you can or can't do, and the physics your brain conjures are just there. If you tried to examine dream physics in some way, I'm pretty sure it would be very much like what we observe in our reality. Which can be summed up as "UMMM WHAT???" That's like the thesis of modern physics. Yeah I just find it a really beautiful explanation that makes sense but is more thought provoking and makes you ask questions. The best kind of explanation. The simulation theory is basically this theory but a consciously constructed reality within a computer vs a result of imagination and creativity within the dream of a brain. Kind of fits with most major religions also, they have that "deliberate intelligent design" view as well, that's the only big difference. And I feel like the meaning of life and where we come from and where we go is captured poetically and accurately with the droplet of water from the ocean analogy. What does it mean, how do you define the droplet, how can you say that droplet ceases to exist despite still physically existing in a distributed yet connected state, what is it to be a droplet and the ocean, or come from the ocean to rejoin it. This works on a physical and spiritual level. We do just end up as redistributed atoms in the universe. You're currently partially made of stars. Part of you will eventually become part of a star again. But it applies to the soul as well. I think about this a lot lol. Yes, I'm just a writer who likes philosophy, but history does show that scientists get the ideas to test things from people like us, sci-fi has literally shaped our tech. It's not worthless.
This is pretty much analytical idealism. We are disassociations of an overarching mind at large. And that everything is made up of consciousness/dream stuff.
The way I see it is that the Universe is at least partly conscious, since we are part of the Universe and we are conscious. As Carl Sagan said. "We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to selfawareness".
There's a difference between consciousness and being self-aware. A new born baby is conscious but doesn't become a self-aware person for roughly 1.5 to 2 years.
That depends on what consciousness is. Are bug conscious. Is that the proper term. There's not a good term for what Scott is talking about. The term consciousness is a pretty vague term..
I always question whether the universe's biggest mysteries has already been solved within the Earth as in a reoccurring pattern seen on Earth's natural environments such as trees being present in the galaxy some way or another.
Honestly when you think of the universe, it makes sense that a conscious could be born out of anything of any size as long as the properties that builds it makes sense for them
I am not in any way, shape or form a physicist, and may be showing my ignorance on this subject, but my theory is, it is not the observation that makes the two pattern groupings, it is the addition of the sensor. How far away from the slits is the sensor? If it is close enough to be anywhere within the vicinity of the protons, then the physical presence of the sensor disrupts the waveform pattern of the protons so they group into two lines.
The obvious argument against that to me is the fact that the “decisions” are always the same. If we did the double slit experiment and sometimes got interference and sometimes none with the same setup, then perhaps the universe is consciously deciding which to do but since the results always follow predictable laws, not so much.
Nah. This is how science is currently done aka controls. If you had any experiment with the same consistent “setup” but only small sample size your results would be random but with a sufficiently large group of humans (or rats or monkeys, etc), their “decisions” would eventually statistically group into predictable patterns. Same with the photons
Certain things within our own bodies are outside of our control and follow predictable laws. The digestive-system dynamos food into energy, lungs inhale and exhale (and with that you exercise executive control, hold your breath too long, and your body will pass out and take automatic control, but at the same time, you mush choose to hold your breath when you go underwater, because otherwise would be to drown) , the heart beats, blood pumps but can pool in the lower half due to gravity (which would beckon the question of "Are there laws of physics that God does follow or must follow? be it that he "set the parameters" so things could function smoothly, or even that he had to work within to begin with, being I guess a "super-constant"? Similarly, in a simulation/video game with procedural generation (thinking No Mans Sky, Minecraft, etc. where the programming creates unique "random" worlds, are often constructed of a base set of parameters and variables in algorithms. Some things may be "randomly" generated, but behind the scenes, there is a very complex set instructions determining how those "randomly generated" parameters came together. As it tends to go, whether in nature or in human design, nothing is ever truly "random", there is just always a direct chain of cause and effect; we just perceive something to be random because the variables that contribute to it measure beyond comprehension. Take for instance, a 6-sided-die. There are so many unfathomably different (from minutely to wildly different) ways you can jiggle, toss, and, roll that die in you hand (though, for the near-infinite ways you can roll it, 1/6 of them will result in 1 and so on. But lets say you want to consistently roll high with a 6, theoretically, if you could take a time you rolled a 6,isolate and replicate every variable (from roll, to throw to jiggle, to the wind) of a dice toss, you could ensure the roll of a 6 every time. On that same note, there are the near infinite ways you can roll a die, 1/6th of those will be each number; but the ability to truly understand the incomprehensible number of factors at play in a simple dice roll, so we call it "randomness". But in reality, everything is made by a complex "set of laws" overseeing a direct chain of cause and effect; for whatever factors we played into it, or if they be natural. There's a whole lot of gray when it comes to "free will", "survival instinct", like I said even control of breathing, or eating (deciding what to eat, when to eat, and will it be healthy for you). You can't assume that because things follow natural laws that there is not free will or decisive intent.
@@jakeh2049 right, but that’s ultimately my point. The pattern emerges to the point that we can make an accurate prediction what WILL happen. Ie, we will always get an interference pattern with setup a and never with setup b. We can’t do the same with conscious animals who are making their own decisions. If we send them through a maze, some will go right some will go left and some will sit and do nothing. Even the same animal will sometimes make completely different decisions as they did in a previous run.
@@bobbywade3282 it certainly SEEMS that way, and even Einstein believed that everything is at its core perfectly deterministic (“god does not play dice”)- ie if you had perfect knowledge of every particle and their momentum and direction, you could predict exactly what was going to happen in the future. But quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle completely blew away that argument. You can NEVER know all those variables exactly, and even if you somehow could, the quantum uncertainty means you could still only predict the *probability* of the outcome of the throw. But the fact that we can calculate that probability In quantum mechanics with astonishing accuracy Definitely hints that there’s no consciousness involved since any sentience making conscious choices will Inevitably choose a different path which would Be easy to see on the data, but we just don’t see that. Also, as far as the points about the human body go, sure, but those are autonomic responses, not consciousness. Our bodies aren’t able to breed underwater, but someone who is determined to drown themselves are able to consciously override those restrictions
@@monad_tcp completely fair point, however, the point I’m making is that if you run an experiment, thousands of times, one on a on conscious, deterministic system, that follows specific laws, and the other, on a conscious being able to make choices, You’ll be able to see a clear difference in the data, because the conscious being can decide to make changes on a whim, whereas a deterministic system can only do what the laws allow it to do
Strangely enough this is a theory that has existed for thousands of years- early meso American societies had the ‘teotl’ and the practices of Taoism in Asia also have similar ideas. Knowledge is cyclical.
Yep, panpsychism is just animism all over again. It's one of humankind's oldest spiritual beliefs. Maybe it was right all along and we strayed from the truth.
@@ImVeryOriginal literally yes it does. All our scientific knowledge, theories, inventions and data ultimately stem from the ideas and observations of early humans. Early spiritual beliefs didn't come out of nowhere, it was early humans trying to make sense of reality. Even without data or knowledge our ability to observe and recognize patterns is insane. Even when we get all the details wrong we tend to get a lot of the big picture stuff right.
When I was a kid people treated multiverses like a "woo woo" topic, nobody wanted to touch that subject and today, altough it's not proven yet, it's very well accepted, debated topic. It gives me hope when scientists come down from their pedestals and mingle with the mortals.
About the double-slit experiment… Occam’s Razor… it could just be the slight electromagnetic field generated by the observing the device collapses the waveform into particles. Observing does reduce the energy slightly. That could be enough.
That’s always what I’ve wondered, is observing the reaction introducing a variable into the equation that alters the behaviour of the particles that we currently don’t understand? Seems simpler than some of the explanations currently in use (like have they run the experiment in the exact same way as with the observer there and running, with only something obscuring the observers view?)
Physics has an analysis tactic called hidden variables. Basically, you run your math/simulation with a "black box" in the equations to see if mysterious results can be attributable to some previously unknown variable(s). So far, no such analysis suggests there are hidden variables in experiments like the double-slit. Choice or agency would show up as a hidden variable.
It's actually not the weirdest thing in QM it's the expected behavior because you're interacting with the the photon via a particle that collapses it. It doesn't just collapse just because you observe it, it collapses because in order to observe it you must have something that interacts with it. It's really concerning there are so many people out there that keep parroting that this experiment is weird or shows that there's some kind of woo woo nonsense going on like that photons must "know they are being observed" or that we must be living in a computer simulation. Like, no, you either don't understand the double slit experiment or you intentionally misrepresent it to get attention.
Finally someone with sense in these comments. The double split experiment is a very interesting experiment as it is, we don't need to add some "photons are conscious of being observed" bullshit to make it more interesting.
Genuine question, does that mean things like quantum computers are actually bogus? Because I was under the impression they'd be able to calculate multiple possibilities at once and predict the future. Is that our "flying cars"? lol
I don't know man, the photon can decide which slit to pass through all it wants, but unless it has the means to _actualize_ that decision it'll behave like a mindless photon. This kind of makes the psychokinetic power a necessity, and kind of makes it all coo coo for coco puffs.
Yep. The equations governing the evolution wavefuctions say enough. The wavefunctions evolve deterministically, even if the measured result is probabilistic. There doesn't need to be any kind of decision involved.
You kind of hit the nail half-on the head. In reality it is concious, but lacks the means to actualize ... or conceptualize it. All things are concious. Unfortuantly, conciousness*, intelligence, intent and action are all a consequence of the functional organization of that matter. a photon is like a single bit in a computer.
@@N3ur0m4nc3r It might be yours and other peoples hypothesis that “everything is conscious”, but we have zero evidence that this is the case. From my understanding, outside of our individual subjective experiences that we can talk about and share notes on, we don’t really have evidence that consciousness exists at all. I don’t know how you’d find evidence that photons have a subjective experience, even if it were true.
@@JesseDriftwood a better way to put it would be to say that "dark energy is not understood and so it's used as a wild card to prop up every insane theory imaginable by doing the heavey lifting of what if'
I've been really considering panpsychism recently, but I really don't get this whole idea of things moving because they choose to. There is a big difference between being aware of your self and things happening to you, and being able to move yourself. We're self-aware and yet can't just move ourselves any which way, we're constrained by the laws of physics and our own physiology. Also, where I'm considering the idea of "everything is conscious", it's not so much that. It's more that consciousness is kind of a spectrum, and where we say "that's consciousness" is arbitrary. It's basically like life. There's a progression from the fundamental particles, to atoms, to molecules, to organelles, to cells, to multicellular beings. Where do you draw the line and say that's where life starts and before that it's not life? You probably have an answer, and that makes sense. My point isn't to say you can't draw a line, it's just that the term "life" doesn't mean a whole lot other than an easy way for us to categorise things.
Agree with the first part, disagree with the second. Consciousness is a thing that arises out of constructs that are complex enough. A rock is not just on the low end of the spectrum of consciousness. It's not on the spectrum at all, because it doesn't have the physical requirements of creating consciousness. Same with bacteria or simple multicell organisms.
I caught that too. I think its easy to conflate consciousness and intelligence, since for us they come together as a package. Intelligence is the processing power, consciousness is the display. Speaking theoretically there could be a super intelligent AI with no correlated consciousness and an atom with a drop of consciousness but no intelligence.
@@jamiedorsey4167the measurement of and test for both consciousness and intelligence are subject to you definitions of them. Currently there are no universally agreed definitions or tests of either. Of course, you are free to choose your definitions and tests and measure them based on that, however this is in effect just an arbitrary judgement. This is one of the current issues with AI and AGI, in that at the moment even if it was to develop, there is no guarantee that we would recognise it, or reach universal agreement on it.
@@iamtheiconoclast3 That’s really cool acc. This is the closest I’ve come to really putting my thoughts on this topic into words, so it’s nice to see someone agree!
This reminds me of the Futurama episode titled "Godfellas" (Season 3, Episode 20), wherein Bender has a conversation with what appears to be a sentient, galaxy-sized being that he believes to be God. During the scene, Bender finds himself marooned on in space after being ejected from the ship. Feeling alone and desperate, he starts talking to the stars and asking for guidance. Suddenly, a passing meteor crashes into the asteroid, revealing a complex sequence of events that eventually lead to the creation of life on the asteroid, including a civilization that evolves and worships Bender as a deity. As Bender continues to talk to what he believes is God, he experiences the passage of time in a unique way. The conversation spans millennia in just a few minutes for Bender, and he learns about the universe's complexities and the challenges of being a deity. The "God" figure explains the nature of existence, fate, and free will. Eventually, Bender and the deity have a philosophical discussion about whether or not God truly exists, and whether the deity's role is more of a passive observer or an active participant in the universe's events. The scene is a mix of humor, existential contemplation, and a unique twist on the concept of a conversation with a higher power.
I never really understood the double slit experiment. If no observer, it's a wave. That's fine. But if observed, it's a particle. But if it's a particle, then it gets absorbed in your eyes or the sensor, so it never reaching the back wall. At least not the one you observed. So what exactly happens? It's not like you can observe a single photon and then let it go "thanks for stopping by, now go on your marry way as you were". It's also unlikely that the one photon you capture is shouting to the others "Hey guys, we're being watched, get into formation!". I know these animations tend to oversimplify things, but I feel in this case either everyone gets it wrong and even the people explaining don't really understand it, or it's way oversimplified to the point that it doesn't make sense anymore.
It makes perfect sense, it’s just as basic as it sounds. Light acts like a wave until something capable of noticing it is present, where it then acts as a particle. How can it be both? That’s the superposition, it IS both. In a quantum state, time does not exist. The light goes “back,”- to us anyways, it would be considered backwards- in time and becomes a particle at the moment of observation. Imagine a box with a dead cat that becomes alive every time you open the box, but is dead whenever the box is closed. Observing the cat brings it backwards to a state of life, where it is now free to act differently from how it had to act while dead. The particle indeed reaches the back wall because it goes in a straight line. You are able to observe light from the side as it continues past you in a straight line, that’s how lasers work. You are not absorbing the laser energy from the side, just because it’s visible. The photon is visible on it’s own from all directions. How light can be seen at all in the first place is a separate, but related, field of physical science worthy of your own consideration and attention. Light, and indeed energy itself, always exists in both an excited and static state simultaneously, however can only manifest itself as only one observed state at a time…. So far. Quantum computers will be able to exploit this effect of both knowing and unknowing to calculate trillions of times more efficiently then a modern computer, and if viable, could even make both rudimentary manipulation of time and space a very real reality. We will never be able to teleport entire worlds like in movies, but sending a molecule across the room or sending a simple message backwards in time a few microseconds will certainly be a possibility.
@maaingan The problem is that light is invisible and undetectable until it comes in contact with something. Think about it. You don't see the light moving towards the moon. You can only see the light hitting the moon and bouncing off of it into your eyes. If you could see all the light passing by, the whole sky would be lit up and you couldn't distinguish any object from it, it would be a white wash. Same true for everything. You can see your hands in front of your face because light bouncing off of it and hits your eyes, but you don't see the path the light takes. So it's impossible to observe light without altering it. It can never go back the way it was. By the act of observing, it changes direction, wavelength or both.
In my understanding of panpsychism, I had never heard it presented this way. It was more so that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe even on a quantum level and as a system gets more complex and coherent then consciosness like our own is emergent out of that. This wouldn't imply stars can think and react the way we do. A star would be closer to the consciousness level of something like a cell, but still even lower than that.
I think I complained on one or more of your previous videos about the loud alarm which was very disturbing to me due to autism and oversensitivity to sound. I don't know if it was a conscious decision this time, but I'd like to thank you for having the "woo woo alarm" well balanced relative to your voice. I much appreciate it and I'm sure there are others who also appreciate it :)
Many years ago I watched a video by Ian Xel Lungold about his theories on the meaning of the Mayan Calendar. His lectures described everything as having a base level of consciousness, even the inanimate. Base levels have action-reaction, and higher levels move to stimulus-response. Everything reacts to rules of physics, and the reaction to those rules can be defined as being conscious of them. By that logic, all matter reacts to physics, and all matter is conscious at some level. This concept always stuck with me above anything from his lectures. Everything bound by physics is conscious of physics. That became my definition of consciousness. To me, current studies are trying to define "Intelligence", not "Consciousness".
A segment from 'Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within'... My new understandings of what many call 'God -The Holy Spirit' - resulting from some of the extraordinary ongoing after-effects relating to my NDE... Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what some scientists are now referring to as the unified field of consciousnesses. In other words, it’s the essence of all existence and non-existence - the ultimate creative force behind planets, stars, nebulae, people, animals, trees, fish, birds, and all phenomena, manifest or latent. All matter and intelligence are simply waves or ripples manifesting to and from this core source. Consciousness (enlightenment) is itself the actual creator of everything that exists now, ever existed in the past, or will exist in the future - right down to the minutest particles of dust - each being an individual ripple or wave. The big difference between chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and most other conventional prayers is that instead of depending on a ‘middleman’ to connect us to our state of inner enlightenment, we’re able to do it ourselves. That’s because chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows us to tap directly into our enlightened state by way of this self-produced sound vibration. ‘Who or What Is God?’ If we compare the concept of God being a separate entity that is forever watching down on us, to the teachings of Nichiren, it makes more sense to me that the true omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of what most people perceive to be God, is the fantastic state of enlightenment that exists within each of us. Some say that God is an entity that’s beyond physical matter - I think that the vast amount of information continuously being conveyed via electromagnetic waves in today’s world gives us proof of how an invisible state of God could indeed exist. For example, it’s now widely known that specific data relayed by way of electromagnetic waves has the potential to help bring about extraordinary and powerful effects - including an instant global awareness of something or a mass emotional reaction. It’s also common knowledge that these invisible waves can easily be used to detonate a bomb or to enable NASA to control the movements of a robot as far away as the Moon or Mars - none of which is possible without a receiver to decode the information that’s being transmitted. Without the receiver, the data would remain impotent. In a very similar way, we need to have our own ‘receiver’ switched on so that we can activate a clear and precise understanding of our own life, all other life and what everything else in existence is. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day helps us to achieve this because it allows us to reach the core of our enlightenment and keep it switched on. That’s because Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what scientists now refer to as the unified field of consciousnesses. To break it down - Myoho represents the Law of manifestation and latency (Nature) and consists of two alternating states. For example, the state of Myo is where everything in life that’s not obvious to us exists - including our stored memories when we’re not thinking about them - our hidden potential and inner emotions whenever they’re dormant - our desires, our fears, our wisdom, happiness, karma - and more importantly, our enlightenment. The other state, ho, is where everything in Life exists whenever it becomes evident to us, such as when a thought pops up from within our memory - whenever we experience or express our emotions - or whenever a good or bad cause manifests as an effect from our karma. When anything becomes apparent, it merely means that it’s come out of the state of Myo (dormancy/latency) and into a state of ho (manifestation). It’s the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, being awake or asleep, or knowing and not knowing. The second law - Renge - Ren meaning cause and ge meaning effect, governs and controls the functions of Myoho - these two laws of Myoho and Renge, not only function together simultaneously but also underlies all spiritual and physical existence. The final and third part of the tri-combination - Kyo, is the Law that allows Myoho to integrate with Renge - or vice versa. It’s the great, invisible thread of energy that fuses and connects all Life and matter - as well as the past, present and future. It’s also sometimes termed the Universal Law of Communication - perhaps it could even be compared with the string theory that many scientists now suspect exists. Just as the cells in our body, our thoughts, feelings and everything else is continually fluctuating within us - all that exists in the world around us and beyond is also in a constant state of flux - constantly controlled by these three fundamental laws. In fact, more things are going back and forth between the two states of Myo and ho in a single moment than it would ever be possible to calculate or describe. And it doesn’t matter how big or small, famous or trivial anything or anyone may appear to be, everything that’s ever existed in the past, exists now or will exist in the future, exists only because of the workings of the Laws ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ - the basis of the four fundamental forces, and if they didn’t function, neither we nor anything else could go on existing. That’s because all forms of existence, including the seasons, day, night, birth, death and so on, are moving forward in an ongoing flow of continuation - rhythmically reverting back and forth between the two fundamental states of Myo and ho in absolute accordance with Renge - and by way of Kyo. Even stars are dying and being reborn under the workings of what the combination ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ represents. Nam, or Namu - which mean the same thing, are vibrational passwords or keys that allow us to reach deep into our life and fuse with or become one with ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’. On a more personal level, nothing ever happens by chance or coincidence, it’s the causes that we’ve made in our past, or are presently making, that determine how these laws function uniquely in each of our lives - as well as the environment from moment to moment. By facing east, in harmony with the direction that the Earth is spinning, and chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for a minimum of, let’s say, ten minutes daily to start with, any of us can experience actual proof of its positive effects in our lives - even if it only makes us feel good on the inside, there will be a definite positive effect. That’s because we’re able to pierce through the thickest layers of our karma and activate our inherent Buddha Nature (our enlightened state). By so doing, we’re then able to bring forth the wisdom and good fortune that we need to challenge, overcome and change our adverse circumstances - turn them into positive ones - or manifest and gain even greater fulfilment in our daily lives from our accumulated good karma. This also allows us to bring forth the wisdom that can free us from the ignorance and stupidity that’s preventing us from accepting and being proud of the person that we indeed are - regardless of our race, colour, gender or sexuality. We’re also able to see and understand our circumstances and the environment far more clearly, as well as attract and connect with any needed external beneficial forces and situations. As I’ve already mentioned, everything is subject to the law of Cause and Effect - the ‘actual-proof-strength’ resulting from chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo always depends on our determination, sincerity and dedication. For example, the levels of difference could be compared to making a sound on a piano, creating a melody, producing a great song, and so on. Something else that’s very important to always respect and acknowledge is that the Law (or if you prefer God) is in everyone and everything. NB: There are frightening and disturbing sounds, and there are tranquil and relaxing sounds. It’s the emotional result of any noise or sound that can trigger off a mood or even instantly change one. When chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day, we are producing a sound vibration that’s the password to our true inner-self - this soon becomes apparent when you start reassessing your views on various things - such as your fears and desires etc. The best way to get the desired result when chanting is not to view things conventionally - rather than reaching out to an external source, we need to reach into our own lives and bring our needs and desires to fruition from within - including the good fortune and strength to achieve any help that we may need. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo also reaches out externally and draws us towards, or draws towards us, what we need to make us happy from our environment. For example, it helps us to be in the right place at the right time - to make better choices and decisions and so forth. We need to think of it as a seed within us that we’re watering and bringing sunshine to for it to grow, blossom and bring forth fruit or flowers. It’s also important to understand that everything we need in life, including the answer to every question and the potential to achieve every dream, already exists within us.
There is no way to "observe" a subatomic particle without interacting with it. A photons behaviour changing after interacting with a detector is not that strange. The photon doesn't choose anything. It's like hitting one pool ball with another pool ball and deciding that the first ball is choosing to roll across the table.
@@georgepetrou501 At the human scale you can't "see" any photons that don't make contact with your retina. At the sub-atomic scale you can't tell if a single photon is going one way or the other unless it makes contact with your detector. I put quotation marks around observe because we are not actually observing anything directly. The detector is just telling us weather it made contact with a photon or not or whatever. This is a core tenant of quantum mechanics: All information exchange is mediated through interactions of particles. Another way to put it is: You can't know anything about anything else unless you "touch" it or it "touches" you (quotation marks because I'm speaking figuratively not literally... tho it is sort of literal).
Interesting that you think it's a brain, when it's already known that the universe is a dream Azathoth is having, and the closer you guys are to discovering the answers you want, the closer you are to waking him up and all of this ending. So perhaps the universe is like a brain, and the vast nothingness is the part of the brain that isn't doing anything but functioning, and there are little pockets of life or something else here and there, entertaining him while he sleeps. Also, H. P. Lovecraft gave it a name, but Azathoth doesn't actually have a name. At least, nothing as simple as a name like we understand it.
"Guy in a coma? It's complicated." That was hilarious! I have wondered if perhaps the whole universe was broken up fractally into various conscious units. It sounds like panpsychism is the name for that general, or a very similar, idea. It's cool to know it has a name and that some presumably smart people think it's a viable enough idea to at least be worth investigating. And it was what I heard of the double slit experiment that made me wonder about that. That said, thanks to the hard problem of consciousness, it could be very difficult for us to confirm consciousness outside of animals, and especially outside of biological systems.
I love this. I've believed this since the 90s when I saw the Babylon 5 episode where they said "The Minbari believe the Universe is sentient in a way we will never truly understand, and we are the universe breaking itself apart to try and understand itself." There are too many "coincidences," and things like the strong and weak nuclear forces being absolutely perfect for life to exist, to believe there couldn't be something more going on. I've also always thought that picture of the galactic web, or universal web, or whatever it is called, looks so much like neuron pathways and that the universe is just a giant brain, or maybe a regular sized brain that we just perceive as giant as we think about ourselves and explore ourselves. Thanks for the video.
I always hated that argument. Of course everything is just perfect for life to exist as it is, because it does. If things were different, different stuff would exist and that stuff too would think "wow everythings just perfect". Also, our brains are wired to see patterns. So yeah, they might look like neurons to you. Some clouds look like elephants. Even if galactic features were neurons and part of a conscience, why should they look like human neurons?
@@Anuchan When did physicists say the Universe is conscious? Must've missed that paper. Did you even watch the video or did you just see the title and assumed science confirmed your woo woo theories?
I was towards the end when I began thinking, that we need to be open to different types of consciousness and not anthropomorphize consciousness... Then, you said it too! 😂 I find a lot of fellow scientists to be quite arrogant in their thinking. They always put Our human consciousness as the top level, when I could easily debate that fungus is functioning on a much higher level than ours.
We’re actually pretty dumb monkeys when you think about it. We really do not think any more logically than chimps and monkeys and use the same instinctual patterns as they do.
or maybe the quantum state IS the wave function and instead of insisting that electrons have classical positions and velocity we accept that position and velocity is just what we can observe when we probe the wave function and we look at what's actually there and not add a mystical observation force that is not described in anyway as to why it does what it does.
Since there are no absolutes maybe consciousness and awareness comes in different degrees. Like how aware someone or something is. I love thinking about this stuff thank you very much for the video which I will be watching multiple times!
All you need to prove this is one twelve ounce glass, two people and a bottle of vodka. One drinks, the other doesnt. The next day ask them both to recall the events of the night. Lol. Awareness and consciousness aren't the same thing.
The universe essentially being the mind of God makes a lot of sense to me. It perfectly merges mind and matter, religion and physical science together. I also think even the universe itself isn't the ultimate level of consciousness, so even God may have a god haha.
What if no choice was made? What if the photon just did what it was supposed to do? What if there is no choice or consciousness but simply everything playing out as it has to because this is what it does and how it does it?
Yeah. It's just another "consciousness of the gaps" approach. We don't know why stuff behaves the way it does - IT MUST BE BECAUSE CONSCIOUSNESS WOOOOOOW.
@somedudeok1451 All your comments are very reductionist rather than giving the theory a fair shake, or maybe waiting until there's further research on it
@@isaacthecorncob Funny how people treated almost every breakthrough in science in that same way. Who knows, what the true nature of the cosmos is, I sure as fuck dont but if I dont know then im free to throw up theories for as long as I want until one of them sticks.
The fact that scientists’ new discoveries and theories are tapping into ideas that have been accessed by spiritual masters for hundreds of years is amazing.
i had many of these intuitions this exact morning. it's not the first time these pop up in my mind out of nothing. i credit youtube channels like yours for that. the level of divulgation here is way better than any other in the world. it feels like standing on the shoulder of the giants. i have a hard time understanding why nobody accepts the fact online education has gone way beyond classic systems and use it as model in european countries for example. keep up the good work!!
I've thought about this a lot. I tend to think that anything that processes information has a subjective experience of that information. Our brains give rise to a rich conscious experience, while a photon only has the subjective experience of its current state.
According to relativity a photon (or anything going the speed of light, so as far as we know so far, just photons) arrives at its destination instantaneously from its point of view. So it wouldn't even have time to experience anything.
@@misfits7833 Unless it passes through a subspace vortex created by a quantum interference field in the antimatter manifold! sorry, been watching too much Trek lately. Nobody does technobabble like STNG O_o
@@misfits7833A photon technically experiences all time in the universe instantaneously. As the speed of light invariably makes time stop. A photon, like you said, doesn't experience time.
If no one objects, I will repeat here a comment I made on another channel's video a few months ago: Many years ago, my uncle said something that has stuck with me. I think that his statement was eloquent and I reproduce it here as best I can remember it. "We know that a cell of an adult mammal, when placed in an appropriate environment, can arrange matter around it to form a copy of that mammal. This cell is composed of chemical structures, which are composed of molecules, which are composed of smaller elements that, taken separately, are generally considered to be devoid of life. "These elements, in their turn, are composed of subatomic particles which are composed of still smaller particles which, at the most basic level, appear to be nothing more than localized distortions in the fabric of spacetime which continuously flicker in and out of existence in ways that I don't pretend to understand. "So, we have tiny regions of twisted nothing, surrounded by lots more nothing, interacting in regular and increasingly complex aggregations until they display the characteristics that we call life, and ultimately, intelligence." Given the hierarchical nature of the universe that he described above, starting with minuscule distortions of spacetime and building in organization and complexity to living organisms, at what exact point does "consciousness" manifest itself? We agree that humans have consciousness. Our closest relatives, the apes, demonstrate complex reasoning and the use of language, so presumably they are conscious as well. The same is true of marine mammals. Other mammals such as dogs and crows do not demonstrate the use of complex language but they are clearly able to communicate with each other, and with us if we know how to listen. Presumably they are conscious in some degree. Ants communicate things appropriate to their needs by using chemical signals, and they demonstrate organizational skills that allow a colony to accomplish things that the individuals never could by themselves. There is obviously some degree of consciousness here, perhaps a lesser degree than, say, a dolphin, but it is still present. Moreover, communication between ants enables the entire colony to behave as if the colony has a form of consciousness as well. The colony is able to gather food, react to threats and make decisions about its welfare, as if the consciousness in the individual ants is added together to create a more capable consciousness. Jellyfish are a similar case. They do not have brains, but they accomplish all the necessary functions of eating and reproduction because they are composed of specialized cells which take care of specific tasks in the same way that ants do in their colonies. Jellyfish have rudimentary nervous systems and are able to react to outside stimuli, so their constituent cells are obviously communicating with each other and they are aware of the things that are important to them. What if consciousness is not a question of "you have it or you don't," but rather a question of degree? Tardigrades and amoebas accomplish the same things as jellyfish in their respective domains. Recently it has been discovered that even trees communicate with each other about things that affect their survival. Like the so-called "higher animals," all of these creatures, and even the very cells that compose them, are aware of the things that are important to them, so each of them can be said to have that degree of consciousness. Now, how exactly can "lifeless" collections of subatomic particles become "living" organisms? And how, then, do these organisms achieve the degree of consciousness that they evidently possess? What if we have it backwards, and life does not cause consciousness, but consciousness causes life? What if consciousness is intrinsic to the sea of subatomic energy that we perceive as the physical universe? And, in the same way that this indivisible sea of energy is organized in different structures of varying complexity to create the appearance of physical objects and living beings, the consciousness that this energy embodies is likewise gathered, in corresponding degrees, in those same structures? Thus, you and I, and the dolphins and amoebas and trees and, yes, my desk and the planets and the stars, would be fundamentally inseparable parts of one unimaginably vast consciousness. At the same time, we are also our individual selves, creations of that one consciousness. In a very real sense, we are "the universe observing itself." I'd like to recommend to you a book called "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. It is non-fiction, and it explores the idea of our energetic nature and interconnectedness through the discoveries of two scientists working in completely different fields who independently arrived at the same conclusion. The book was last printed in 1991 so it is long out of print, but there are book search websites where you can get a used copy. I found it fascinating.
I subscribed to your channel more than 5 years ago, back when you used to talk about spacex. And I fell in awe with your curiosity and interests. I no longer see your videos that frequently but every now and then I do and it reminds me how cool your channel is and then I start doing a marathon of your videos hahah Thanks for your content! 😊
Doesn't observation necessarily mean you are interacting with the thing you're observing? How would you measure a photon without slightly interacting with it and changing its course?
Ok, so search for Quantum Eraser by Fermilab or PBS Spacetime if you want to learn more. In short, they used a crystal after the slits to split the photon into two entangled photons. One goes to the plane and the other is sent to detectors spaced to determine which slit it went through. If the detectors are on, the photons arriving at the plane act like a particle; if they are off, they acts like a wave. This is the same even if the distance to detection is longer than the distance to the plane, which suggests these particles don't experience time normally. If you destroy the data from your observation, the entangled particles also return to wave behavior.
The oldest religious scriptures of Hindus are VEDAS. One of them is Yajurveda. It contains a couplet, "Yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde" meaning "As is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body (universe), as is the cosmic body so is the human body".
I might have said this a couple videos ago, but I love the Episode 2 Obi-Wan thing Joe has with his hair right now. So does that mean that the particles have conscious? Or is it the Force? Have we discovered midichlorians??
Think of reality itself as one effectively infinite field of consciousness and what we interpret as "particles" are one instantiation of the universe's mental processes, but aren't in and of themselves conscious. To put it simply, everything is *of* consciousness but not everything *is* conscious. Does that make sense?
The midichlorian stuff (aka soul particiles) was already written by Thomas Edison. Read his "spirit phone"/"necrophone" theories about building an optical detector for souls.
I like to think of the double slit experiment as more proof towards us being in a simulation than anything. Particles go into “memory saving” mode and then once a conscious being views the particle, in any way, it’s becomes “real”
‘Memory saving mode’ is the perfect way to describe the in between state. I also think it is good evidence of a simulation, but I think that the simulation is still naturally occurring, not existing in some 5th dimensional beings’ science project.
But that's not true at all. It's a common misunderstanding resulting from misrepresentations of the double slit experiment. In short: the term "observer" doesn't refer to a conscious being. It refers to a "measurement", which in QM is any kind of interaction that reveals the inner state (e.g. position and momentum) of the particle. A photon scattering off an electron is a measurement, no matter if someone is around to record it.
@@efovex Exactly. When scientists use the word "observer," they don't mean it the same way a lay person does. I often wish science had picked a different word because it confuses the issue and sends people down the woo-woo path when they misinterpret what "observer" means in a scientific setting. I always feel the same way when people start talking about "aliens from another dimension" and I have to stop and say, "That's not how dimensions work."
@@efovex but we have to look at the measurements, that’s what I mean by “in any way.” There’s no way to know what happened before we looked at the measurements
the whole point of NDT's statement was a criticism of pinning everything unknown to a single explanation. doesn't work when you open it up to "any conclusion". what you're talking about is forming theories in general. that's well accepted in science and it's the beginning of the scientific method. starts with a hypothesis.
@@_WeDontKnow_And yet he, as a scientist, repeatedly states there is no God, when science can’t rule out anything until it’s been conclusively and repeatedly proven. He can say he doesn’t believe, he can say there’s no proof that God exists, but he can’t say that there is proof God doesn’t. So personally I think Neil is a clout-chaser. He’s a smart, educated man but can’t resist smugly mocking anyone who believes in something he can’t technically disprove because even smart people are subject to human foibles and like to have other people tell them they’re right. Brains don’t necessarily equal wisdom.
@@_WeDontKnow_ "what you're talking about is forming theories in general" What colour is the sky in your world? Because statements like this are a strong indication that you are living in your own private world of imagination. The OP was talking about the argument from incredulity/ignorance. If you are unfamiliar with that fallacy, then you obviously need to do so very much more research on that science actually is, never mind what a "theory" is... "You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan “There is a cult of ignorance… and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” - Isaac Asimov
@@IRGeamer I enjoy how you gave no actual points toward my comment. you quoted part of it and then said "since you said this, that means ur dumb" please actually address something I said and specifically respond to it. you're just showing how little you know when you're avoiding that specific line of action. much love, have a good one.
I like the idea that a large body like a star or black hole is sitting there just thinking introspectively and occasionally meeting a DMT traveler on the astral plain. Imagine a universal network of knowledge and emotion connecting everything and sitting just below the surface of our known reality.
2:00 Putting double slit experiment and black matter next to each other made me think. Like obviously it's not the same situation, but what, if our methods of observation of Dark Matter just make the information that could have reached us normally - interfered by the method itself. Like we can't see Dark Matter not because it is invisible/doesn’t produce light/something, but because the way we look hides the data pattern that exists in some form, that would be visible if we haven't "looked" at it. It still leaves that interference pattern - but it's just that we are in the "dark spot" between two light slits. Like we still see some effects of it like gravitation - similar to how we probably could detect the observation plate being heated by the laser.
Zero Point Energy be dark energy that make up an entire feel like the Higgs field but it's all negative and when stuff falls into it creates dark matter? The idea would make sense if the field is always zero than anything falling into it that is positive would be negative which dark matter is mainly negative Mass
They often don't specify, to the public at least, what the "observer" actually is. Or the distance between the slits. I think I saw a video made by other physicists about this some time ago and the distance between slits should be pretty small. And the "observer", IIRC, was some sort of a lens that would interfere with the photon or even absorb it then re-emitting it. The "weirdness" of quantum mechanics seem to be cause by the fact that the energy of your measuring particle is very high compared with the measured one. That's like wanting to detect the motion of a snooker red ball by throwing the cue ball at it pretty hard and determine the red ball's position and speed based on how the cue ball bounces back to the observer. We know that the red ball will no longer be on its original vector after that.
this is the part that science communicators tend to fall flat on. "observation" or "measurement" has a distinctly passive implication to lay people, but in reality, it's the most disruptive thing you could possibly do - bouncing, transferring, redirecting in order to catch a result. this is the source of the entire measurement problem and topics like this are essentially just science of the gaps without addressing that detail.
The distance is such that the light (the wave amplitude of which is well known) will overlap and *should* create the desired interference pattern. You shoot one photon at a time. If your which-slit-detectors are off, cumulatively they develop an interference pattern, graphing where they land, as if each photon went through both both slits and interfered ... with itself. Like the ripples from two pebbles dropped in water. If your detectors are on, you can see photons going through one side or the other. No more interference pattern. It doesn't seem to matter how you do the detecting. If it's not clear to you exactly what the meaning or significance of the "observer" is .... welcome to the club. There is nothing that's not weird about this. The weirdness of it has withstood scientific scrutiny for 100 years or more.
It just drives me absolutely crazy that I’ve heard this explanation of double slit experiment many many times in many many videos and they never reveal exactly how the detector works, because it’s well understood that when you try to measure something, you change it, and so if your measuring which of the slits the electron or photon goes through, then you’re gonna change its behavior and they just kind of skip over that !
I think they omit that because there's more than one way to do it but I was really surprised because somebody recently asked me about the double slit thing and I was like the one with the gold foil and they're like what does gold foil have to do with it. Gold foil was involved in the early detectors that were used with it, so I don't know why that information got separated but it kind of feels like it shouldn't have been.
Same here! And it's also funny how the explanation is always illustrated through some dopey animation with the photons going slow motion. Why not just show us the real experiment being performed, instead of some fake animation?
I'm not a scientist, but when considering the speed planets, stars, galaxies, etc., move, rotate through space, universe, BALANCE is maintained, look at how everything constantly maintains balance, to know exactly how everything balances throughout the universe, it must all be consciously connected, to imagine an omni present consciousness would be to realize the universe is an infinite brain balancing everything...Quantum entanglement experiment with the neutrons color changing over distance, this sparked the realization that everything is connected, all neutrons are in contact with the Big Brain, It knows everything and how to influence balance, an Omnipresent Intelligence.
I find the idea that things like particulars or atoms are conscious very hard to believe but the idea the universe, galaxies, nebulas, etc have a type of consciousness is something I'm willing to consider. Even something as small by comparison as planets is again something that I could see as true. If everything is conscious then it could be impossible to ever find out as the various particles etc that make up the devices designed to try and prove it might decide they'd rather humanity never got to know it and intentionally mess with the results. 😊
As someone who has had out of body experiences and a near-death experience, it is encouraging hearing people like you talk about this kind of thing because I myself got a first-hand experience that informed me that we are all one consciousness, and that the universe is conscious - but of course "proving" this is harder when my consciousness couldn't exactly record anything when I was dead or when I was out of my body. I am hopeful with what scientists are discovering these days that it will all be made clear soon, though. :-)
These things that you can’t describe, are called “God” and a “soul.” He made you and everything. it’s not that everything has consciousness, but everything bows to His Will. He controls everything in this life and the next. . Fact that you were saved from death means He has given you another chance to find Him. He is the way, the truth, and the light. Talk to God, repent and he will accept you into his loving arms in this world and the next.
@@user-ic7cc5gj3p lol I am fully aware of God and soul. But what I experienced showed me that no one religion is the full picture, and that there is no reason why anyone should feel ashamed or guilty for being oneself. I have nothing to repent for, I am not guilty. What is it that you think I have done, exactly? I'm human, perfectly imperfect just like you.
@@de_cre_vi There is no human alive who is perfect. You have done wrong in your life. Anything no matter how small. A small lie, blaming God when things go wrong, being prideful, envying others, hating someone in your heart. All these and so much more. You’ve done probably most of them at some point. Sin isn’t just murder and rape. It’s every little bad thing you do that you might not even think is a big deal. There are many religions and mankind loves to dilute and pervert things to their own way. No amount of rituals or good deeds or offerings will get you to heaven. You can’t just try to be a good person and no one living or dead has power to help you. Except Jesus. Anyways, it sounds like you’ve been given a gift by having some glimpse that you are more than flesh and blood. But one day, your body will fail and die and your spirit will be taken away. You have the choice, until that day, to either accept that you are a sinner and that Jesus died for you, or you can ignore it. Turn away from him, let those false religions you’ve heard make you blind and deaf to the truth. Let me simplify it for you. Any religion that requires you to do something, pay money, make sacrifices, journey a thousand miles or kill others who aren’t like you, these are all false religions. No man has the power to save himself, and the best among us is filthy in the eyes of God. The only way we enter into paradise is through Jesus. Everything else is a lie. God loves you and I hope one day you understand and accept that. I wish you all the best.
I sometimes wonder if there's an entire thriving universe out there made of dark energy and dark matter, and those dark scientists are trying to figure out where the missing 5% of the universe is :)
What if it’s the closer alternate universes that contribute to unconscious of the scientists in the 5% :)
I like the way you think!
What if there are 20 overlapping universes all trying to figure out what the missing 95% of thier respective universes are?
Haha nice!
Joe made a fundamental mistake here: Dark Matter and Dark Energy are _completely_ different concepts that are as unrelated as you can get. Dark Energy is just a name given the to unknown force that's causing the universe to expand at an increasing rater. This expansion is a structural fact of the universe. Our only question is: "what powers it?"
This is different from Dark Matter which is matter we're only detecting via gravitational forces at massive scales. Problem is, that could just be a mistake in our theories about regular matter. If so, then Dark Matter would be an illusion that we made up.
Im a biologist and we havent even figured out how photosynthesis works exactly. it appears superposition is involved... I think the most important thing is to keep asking questions even woo woo ones, and testing them...and be nice to your plants
See michael levin. His team is way ahead.
I thought photosynthesis was well understood, what does superposition have to do with it?
I try to be nice to my houseplants but try telling that to my dogs tails 😊
Be good to your plant overlords, without whom nobody would exist.
Plants, not pants. That's my bad.
“We need to make sure that something is actually looking back at us, and we’re not just seeing our own reflection” hell of a good quote
Let me first ask what Wilson thinks and I will get back to you
brave little toaster looking at the flower scene :(
Man... I was just reading your comment/quote precisely as Joe said it in the video 😳🤯
It really is, but I think it somewhat ironically cuts both ways. We as humans anthropomorphize, but I think we also discount consciousness in the animal kingdom. I tend to think there's a lot more going on in the subjective experience of everything from elephants to octopuses than the average person stops to think about.
IKR!?! I was thinking the exact same thing!
I always thought that stars could actually be living beings. They're born in stellar nurseries, grow to a fully adult form, have complex processes going on inside them, they grow old and die and upon their death they seed the surrounding area, producing offspring stars.
yeah, nuclear life
They are actually alive
The ancient egyptians thought the stars were where their gods came from particularly Sirius- The Dog Star home of Anubis, Isis and Osiris.
This was an exact episode on Courage The Cowardly Dog lol
Beautiful stuff
Better not piss them off or we'll get a When Day Breaks scenario
I like the idea of panpsychism because it has the beautiful implication that we are the sensory organ that reality evolved to understand itself.
I like this
masterfully explained
Too bad it's an untestable idea.
"We are the energetic probes of the universe"
I read a book called "The Mind of God" by Paul Davies, in the 'holographic universe' realm of theory, and something that stuck with me was the idea that 'thoughts' and consciousness neither originate nor store in the physical brain but the brain acts like a Receiver for consciousness that is transmitted from the universe. While the scientific world has moved on from the theory, there's something about that idea that resonates to me.
You ask any artist or writer where they get their ideas. They always give the same answer, "I don't know, it just came to me."
That did not even cross my mind!
@@JustinMcVicarWell I'm an artist and... well yeah that's sometimes true but I often put thought into my art. I can't argue one being better than the other.
@@JustinMcVicar I also imagine those "Eureka" moments when the answer just pops into your head. Or after meditating or "In a zone" and that 'detached' feeling lingers and you're mind is somewhere else but your body's on autopilot. Or those brief moments of clarity when you feel like you have knowledge and solutions to a problem you've never studied, before it dissipates and you cant regather the thoughts. Could it be from the ether?
@@Kai...999 also an artist, a musician, and might be why it resonates with me. An inspired song could be created and recorded in a couple of hours and would sound full and complete but other songs could take days and weeks to get it down the way I hear it in my head and I might not ever be happy with the result. The inspired work versus work that felt like "work" to create also seemed to induce different reactions from listeners too, gravitating more to the inspired work, while I might have to explain my other work. This might be a legitimate science experiment for some musician scientists to undertake 😂.
The idea that pure consciousness could exist in isolation without any mechanisms for memory, knowledge, or the ability to sort stimuli into qualia is Lovecraftian as hell
The Bolzman brain?
Or nirvana
Oooohh, that's a really neat thought!
Or maybe consciousness actually, literally exists (as a tangible thing) in one/some of those theoretical little foldy-dimensions 😮
Technically that's what many Bibles refer to as hell. Lost..so cold it burns like brimstone fires. You become lost from that large universe consciousness, aka God. No body, no sound, no heat, just your consciousness, lost and alone
@@idontwantahandlethough it does, but in another universe. all universes are infinite. we are here, in these living systems, temporarily. but since both living systems and consciousness NEED each other to evolve, we ebb and flow between the 2. i only know this because i died and returned recently. over there i realized that i've done it a million times.
The 'Big Brain Universe' theory is something I've ALWAYS considered as extremely possible...
Its insane how planetary solar systems mimic the bohr rutherford diagram for atoms with their electrons orbiting the atom and in the solar systems case planets orbiting the sun. Its just the odd comparisons that make you go “uhhh…” like that nebula that looks like DNA telomeres in space.
@@JimbletonJames the law of scale invariance
@@JimbletonJamesThere's also the fact that cosmic filaments *look* like neruons. Are we just some "subatomic" life inside some other creature's brain? Do we have universes and life in our own brains? 🤯
highly probable
and totally improbable, the fantasies some people come up, now that is amasing.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I totally believe this!
Well it was meant as a joke, simply writing down that statement would be enough to invalidate that statement for the first half and then the second half is the part that makes it funny because that one was like a legitimate thing that's been put forward.
I remember a futurama episode where bender gets lost in space and becomes a god/planet. he ends up meeting a conscious cosmic cloud/being which he asks if the being considers itself god. That episode is probably one of my favorite, and the creators using a very interesting theory.
Yes! Thank you, that was such a great episode. And honestly, if there is God, that is exactly how I imagine it acting and talking. It postulates and theorizes its place in the universe, as opposed to the classical domineering "IT'S ME! I'M GOD, BITCHES! KNEEL!"
the episode was called godfellas
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all
@@vamuse if i was god i'd definitely be bragging about it, but that's probably why im not cut out for the job lol. i gotta watch that episode, sounds neat
Yeah, bender was doing good as a gon until everybody died…
This is a photon, his name is Jim.
Jim likes to go fast! See Jim go fast!
of course it’d be a dude
They actually identify as a photon
Yes Jim, short for James and totally not Gabriel.
@@Forke13yeah but are you a wave photon or one of those "particle" photon, because my cousin Jippie said you could be both..
The eye is a little more sophisticated than just seeing color and objects. There are certain mapping of the photo receptors that pre-interpret shapes before sending that information to the brain. Certain objects get priority - eyes, for example. If someone is watching us, we're hardwired to notice that.
So the eyes are basically emailing the brain and the important stuff (eyes faces snakes etc) gets a priority tag, heard
Ah reassuring to hear this is evolution and not paranoia. I can always sense when someone is staring from just a fraction of a second glance, in a crowded room and with my back otherwise turned
😂It's funny, when I was a kid (I was a weird kid) I would thank lightbulbs for working, apologize to doors for slamming them, that sort of thing. I even hated throwing things away because I didn't want to hurt its feelings.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, I KNEW IT!
KNEEL BEFORE MY CHILDHOOD DISORDERS!
they never left. they're all just waiting to greet you on the other side for payback
@@360.Tapestry What kind of nightmare fuel are you peddling there buddy? 😳
Holy shit! I thought I was the only one. I even had trouble picking out a toy at the store because I thought it would somehow hurt it's feelings or something. It wasn't constant and not for everything. Damn childhood was weird 😂
@@UKnowIfUKnow the worst kind: the kind that comes true
@@360.Tapestry 🤣🤣
I once loved a short novel that described clusters of conciusness created by randomness as actual aliens. At some point I remeber one of them stating that their form of intelligence is common and organic conciousness is actually far rarer. Considering that the way they came into existence was determined by randomness among the information out there but it is still less conditional than organic life, it made a lot of sense. I love the concept.
Remember the title?
I would love to know the name of this book.
It sounds a little like the black cloud by sir Fred Hoyle
The concept is known as Boltzmann Brain.
Boltzmann brain right, you just don't see it much in Sci-fi. The novel is actually one of those highschool japanese light novels called Haruhi Suzumiya's Melancholy. The series has some interesting sci-fi ideas like this one and I read it just because I caught that it described this exact concept but it doesn't manage to elaborate much further on these ideas unfortunately.
What if the system running the simulation doesnt have enough power to simulate every particle at all times so they just stay in a compressed indeterminate state until they are observed. Like occlusion culling in a video game.
this has been my standing theory for a while, it fits well into the holographic universe theory. It doesn't even necessarily have to be an intelligently coded reality, it could also just be an emergent property of our reality being a projection and the necessity for conservation of energy causing things to tend towards a lower "energy state" like an uncollapsed waveform.
As a video game/computer nerd, the very first thing that I thought of when I originally heard of the double slit experiment is that we discovered one of the universe's memory-saving processes. It almost seems so obvious that once you look at it that way it becomes pretty hard to believe that it's NOT true.
@@asivnondigital8098 I've definitely found the more you learn about both coding and physics, the harder it becomes to deny that there's some pretty eminent correlations
This is a very common reaction/suggestion (as the replies show). The problem is that it requires more information to describe a quantum superposition than a collapsed classical state (since you have to describe all possible states, not to mention their probability curves.) So it has the opposite effect.
There's an ancient philosophical exercise regarding this concept: "does a bear sh*t in the woods?".... Or wait no, maybe it was "if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it really make a sound" 👍
Your gut bacteria thinks it is impossible for joe to exist.
I like this because this is probably exactly what’s happening to us. Not saying I believe the “brain universe” theory 100%,
But there is absolutely something going on that we’re missing solely because we are too fkn small to see it
@@sharkbait5557Yep, so many questions, very fascinating stuff.
this is horrifying ❤
You would be amazed by what we are really thinking.
Why are my gut bacteria wondering about the existence of joe?
0:03 How does a photon have a shadow?
With the power of all mighty Adobe Premiere
Their known as shadow particles, sharticles for short
@@jitterrypokery1526lmao underrated comment
You can’t see what’s behind the particle unless it’s a wave.
The photon decided to
Could we get a video about neuromorphic computers sometime? That sounds incredibly interesting!
Last week they just released study on first mouse/human brain cells mixed with traditional electronics, and trained in a way only those who learn evolve/survive
The idea that there was a recognizable state of being at every scale from small to large, was something I always liked about Madeline L'engle's books. In one of the books iirc the characters are even having their adventures inside the cell of another character.
You're thinking of magic school buss.
This definitely also happened in the magic school bus, but not what I'm thinking of. @@y5mgisi
@@y5mgisi NOPE! in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles has a blood disease involving mitochondria and he gets to communicate with one of these mitochondria cells, because it turns out to be a conscious being.
Yes, in "A Swiftly Titling Planet". Charles Wallace has a blood disease, and in trying to cure it, he communicates with mitochondria. I think he goes on to be a fairly major character, although I don't remember clearly. Interestingly, mitochondria have their own genome and are thought to have evolved from a separate organism living symbiotically with single cell eukaryotic organisms.
@@squirlmy the book sounds bloody interesting, pun intended 😂. I looked it up expecting hard science fiction but it's a kids book, pretty deep subjects for young adults tho. The plot has some similarities with 'Blood Music' by Greg Bear, seriously deep and excellent read!
I’m a firm believer that “Every system is made up of subsystems, and every system is a subsystem of a larger system. We just have limits to what we can see and imagine.”. It’s clear that looking at the map of the universe, we are dealing with a very neuron like structure. Just because we can’t see past our universe, doesn’t mean that our universe isn’t just a cell of a larger system of universes. We very well could be the Higgs boson of that larger system.
Like a galaxy in a grain of sand.
oh my god i've been trying to articulate this for days. i keep saying the universe is a macro organism and humans are the cells, planets are the organs, scaling further and further out based on perspective of course
@@maggiesimpsin706 this is called organicism
@@maggiesimpsin706Lol, yeah it’s been proven that humans get comfort from patterns like this and seek them out in nature. Arguably it gives us a sense of control
Right but cells help humans function. What in the hell do we as humans do to help the larger system? Or are we a virus and an unintended consequence of the system.
Two comparisons to Toy Story: toys are moving until someone enters their room and observes the toys in their places. Buzz Lightyear’s explanation that he’s not actually flying but “falling with style” is like our own feelings of consciousness-we are just falling with style/collection of chemical reactions to our environment like less sophisticated life forms.
That was an incredibly helpful explanation.
So why does Buzz Lightyear, with his layered ego and his dillusions of whatever also become inanimate when a human walks in?
Just thot that as was reading first few comments, but I did always wonder.
Did you think Toy Story was just an animated kids movie?
@@vjr5261sir, no. It's a corn.
@@rozhamilton9955because he is compelled by a wider consciousness than his own toy brain has control of. Much like myself, when faced with the visage of a radiant sky, I am unable to pull back the veil and see the godhead behind the sunset-flamed clouds, so too is Buzz unable to throw himself wide and cry out to Andy: "I See You! Answer Me!" Yet we both sit and dream of it...
I love this theory I once thought about it like what if each cell in your body is actually everything you see in space and vice versa and you’re basically looking at gigantic cells or organisms in the sky that seem to live forever but when you go down scale everything lives and dies fast and you are at the center of infinity and are ultimately large and tiny at the same time
I once imagine that a single thought of a cosmic god takes 1 billion years to happen, in this scenario the conscience would be almost imperceptible in our point of view
It's crazy how the veins on a leaf look just like the circulatory system, and the roots of a plant look just like lung bronchioles.
Nature has so many repeating patterns, even the radio scan image of the universe looks almost interchangeable with a CAT scan of a brain.
As the technology improves and science is able to explain things better and better, everything just becomes way more mysterious.
Then add on-top of all that how surreal and comical politics has become, like everyday the news seems more and more like an episode of SNL.
America keeps electing geriatric clowns as POTUS. Like George W was so terrible at speaking David Letterman had a weekly segment of the hilarious this he said wrong, every single week for 8 years.
Then there was Trump, I don't even need to say anything, we all know his only real talent was roasting, he didn't do a single thing as president. Now we got Biden, he can't even walk up stairs without falling over, he's a greater physical comidian than Chris Farley, and these are the guys who were selected to run the world. If that's not proof that the universe is conscious and also that the universe has a hilarious sense of humour? I don't know what else could have made all this ridiculous stuff happen?
"I am both large and tiny..." what a pickup line!..lol
@eduardonegrao8364 This is my argument with religion and God. Time dilation. Even if a magic being existed, it's perception of time would be scaled so far up we could never communicate with it. Let alone it being able to perceive our existence. To it, we've already come and gone 1000 times a second. Like we're in a Hadron collider .
@@juicewilliss that is a good point, in the end is all about escales...
I really enjoy the fact that Joe tackles all kinds of topics, even "far out" topics like this.
Something I’ve heard which fascinates me, which I’d love to see a video on is how the behavior of ant colonies can be described as conscious. Not the ants themselves, but the entire colony working together to make decisions and build structures may also be aware of itself and conscious in the way a brain might be.
I’d love to see more videos on a consciousness. It’s so interesting to me because it’s the one field of study that often bridges the gap between religion and science and I think it’s humbling that there’a still a phenomenon without a perfect explanation.
Then dismisses them with the woo woo alarm like some arrogant atheist
I've had this theory since I was 10 years old. It's so refreshing to know that my thoughts are not too crazy.
It is basically crazy
had imagined the same theory about the same age
No, giving credence to our random childish nonsense is definitely crazy. Having very refined, scientifically verifiable theories based on measurable data is what makes childish nonsense into something rational and tangible, and decidedly not crazy. It’s crazy all the way up until one has narrowed down the discourse into a specific and knowable phenomenon that can be recreated and observed
and just deciding to calling it crazy is a decision. hypothesis are not crazy. they are only crazy if you blindly follow them as soon as you think them out into existence @@maaingan
Saying earth is round in 1600 would be considered crazy.
HUH, I had no idea this had a name! I used to trip a lot on DXM (dissociative/psychedelic) and I would often spend that time thinking about myself, the meaning of life and other complex questions. I am not religious, I think maybe I was looking for something spiritual, but I remember seeing and coming to the conclusion that everything is conscious, just different levels of sophistication based on the complexity of the container (a human brain being more capable than say a chair). It made so much sense, it answered a lot of questions that I had and brought me peace. It made me feel calm about my fragile mortality, that my body would die one day but my consciousness would continue on. Even though I'm not religious, I have a hard time believing I simply won't exist one day. Existence is all I've ever known.
because the same thing when you sleep your body is alive and sending signals but your consciousness falls asleep and wakes up in the span of a few seconds. Your consciousness is just using your body as a vessel/vehicle and will never witness an actual death or birth
But there was a time (a very very long time) that you did not exist..?
That's how i think of it too. When u connect ur senses (through meditation or artificially with psychedelics) the ego (the "operating system" of our consciousness) "dies", but ur still conscious. It's just that the "I" falls out of the equation. I mean, if u think of biology, it's like a universe inside a universe with it's own set of rules.
@@annelikriek6294maybe they're referring to something like quantum immortality?
Fellow dxm user spotted, ate a gram a few hours ago lol. These sorts of things are so wild to think about while on it, it gives you a different perspective than psychedelics do. When I was still in highschool it would almost compell me to study spirituality and I'd try to find connections between beliefs and science, like the Law of One
I've been thinking about the large astronomical objects and structures, and that they may be a type of lifeform that does make conscious decisions. But the spacetime scale is so unimaginably different from humans, that for us to comprehend its actions would be like trying to understand the human mind from looking at individual atoms in the brain.
It would be like one of your mitochondria understanding the full scope of your body, only harder, because instead of the mitochondria you’re actually closer on the scale of the ATP that feeds your organelles rather than organelles.
You have to think deeper..you have to think about the atom. It's a little ball surrounded by orbiting electrons. That's your reality
And also maybe their perception of time might be different, so in that moment that takes mother earth to décide what to wear to prom with mars maybe like a million years pass and humans come and go.
You're thinking way too literal, be more conscious of your own thoughts!
Like the gods of old they saw in the constellations. Ive toyed with that idea too, that what if there could be dramas unfolding above our heads, but our lives are like that of fruit flys, born breed die before they can even 'blink'.
Can't we proove the photons aren't "choosing" to be shy, since they do this 100% of the time reliably?
I thought the same think about stars moving over time; if it’s a choice among multiple bodies over millions of years, how is there only ever consensus?
Exactly.
photons are fake
There are people that are creatures of habit and they react reliably to whatever situation. Maybe photons are just that.
@@craigh5236 Except that they behave in a precisely random way, so in some sense it's not a conscious decision if it's predictable over time via pure probabilities.
The wife and I have been getting sucked into a ton of your videos lately. I dig the humor, and simple explanations of complicated topics. All the X's and O's, my nilla.
It’s Monday man. Can I have one day without an existential crisis
Nope he literally uploads on Mondays
Well it's been said that photosynthesis shows a rudimentary sort of consciousness while using entanglement, so things being conscious on a fundamental level may not be too much of a stretch.
Panpsychism has always seemed like a really far out idea, but consciousness emerging from unconscious material seems equally far out to me. So who knows🤷♂
I think your perspective only makes sense if you forget that you are also a part of the universe
@@thebatman6201 that's exactly his point? he's a conscious being that emerged from an unconscious universe, he's saying that doesn't sound much more realistic than a conscious being coming out of a conscious universe
@@thebatman6201 Agreed. Maybe I didn't make my point clear enough. I think all theories we have on consciousness now seem equally whacky. Like we're kids trying to understand a puddle without having seen rain.
Christian worldview is consciousness (God) is infinite while time and space are finite. In essence, it isn’t the conscious rising from the unconscious but rather the unconscious being created from the conscious.
I mean if you accept a conscious mind as just a very specific arrangement of particles then it would make perfect sense for it to be possible but very rare
I've given this a lot of thought and kind of fell into the conclusion that "it is relative". I personally don't like to use the word "consciousness" because people attach a bunch of stuff to it that is usually human specific and not actually required to create a general definition. However, if we use the word as it is constructed in the English language, meaning the word conscious and the suffix ness, then I like that definition since it basically comes out to something like "the ability to perceive and respond to one's environment". Dr David Wulpert has a nice definition of an observer and it is something like "an observer is a system that acquires information from the environment to stay out of quantum equilibrium" and a "natural system"(what the observer observes) is "a system that is always in a state of quantum equilibrium". Meaning a falling chunk of rock isn't an observer because it just basically follows the path of least resistance but if I want to remain an observer I had better move out of the way. Everything is a combination of something smaller and at every step it requires some sort of "self-other" recognition that is relevant given the scale. If we try to describe that in general terms it comes out to look fairly analogous to computation on both sides but one is reversible and the other isn't. Some fairly recent research seems to suggest that the edge of the universe may act as a sort of observer and black holes may also act as some sort of observer. What if consciousness is the opposite of light in some sort of fundamental way? Once an observer has observed it can't un-observe and that could be described using something like a light cone.
Hey I find your way of thinking very interesting. Could you expand what you mean with this? "If we try to describe that in general terms it comes out to look fairly analogous to computation on both sides but one is reversible and the other isn't".
Historically consciousness has either been regarded as being the same thing as light or being very much like it. How many other fundamental forces do we have? Gravity? Spin?
@@yael123gut Well if we look at a so-called "natural system", or what the observer observes, we could in theory predict all future states of that system given the initial state. With an observer, or all observers that I'm aware of, that isn't the case. Once an observer has observed, that process can not be reserved and running it again even with the exact same variables will give at least a slightly different result and will compound over each timestep.
I think that before we can go looking for consciousness we need to define what makes consciousness in the first place. we know we are conscious but we don't know how it works.
Or reverse engineer it and try and find it. Could go both ways who knows.
I'd love to see you explain some of the cool stuff happening at CERNs antimatter factory. Their anti hydrogen experiment really drew my interest.
Penrose is still alive, so should probably be talked about in the present tense. Anyway, I think this is all woo-woo, or at least a high level overview of it makes it sound woo-y. Part of the problem is defining consciousness. Sean Carroll said in one of his AMAs that he thinks consciousness isn't just one thing, and as we get better at understanding the different phenomena that make it up, it will become less mysterious.
To me pretty much the whole thing is non-falsifiable to an almost comedic degree. What's the difference between a conscious proton with no way of demonstrating to us that it's conscious, and a proton that isn't conscious to start with?
Glad I wasn't the only one that found the use of past tense bizarre. I had to go check in case he'd died and I somehow missed it.
same here! I actually went and checked on google... he actually turns 92 tomorrow! (since I am writing this on the 7th of August)
You're thinking too literally, I understand what you're saying.
But here's my rebuttal.
Why does it have life? And would it exist without it? Can it exist without a it?
It's like, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound if there's nobody there to hear it. The answer is no, it's just air pressure.
On a macroscopic scale, would the universe exist if there was nobody there to experience it? Again, no - because there's nothing to collapse the wave function.
Consciousness is literally engrained in the very fabric of reality.
To put it another way, if you have a box of Lego, you're only going to be able to create different combinations of those Lego blocks, you're not going to come out with Meccano.
Same goes for the universe, you can't just create things that were not already part of the system, consciousness was always in the box.
@@Old299dfksound and tree and air and pressure and wave and function are all words and concepts that you’ve already come to understand only through sensory input because that’s all that an emergent human consciousness was able to come up with as a way of understanding the world because it’s bound by sense right, they’re just words they’re just terms they’re linguistic tools. and they’re useful, sure!
but whether or not we’ve bounded these terms accurately at all - and whether they’re even best understood as separate things - i think THAT’S probably the underlying tension here.
i think you’re thinking too familiarly; you’re coming at the question with a hammer and it’s looking like a nail to you. i don’t think it’s likely or unlikely that consciousness is everything - i think all that we can say so far is that it’s all that WE have :)
Finally, some scientists are beginning to see that consciousness is the basic stuff of everything.
I tend to think it has to do with the complexity of information processing. So in biology, the more complicated the nervous system, the more "vivid" the conscious experience of that being is. In this sense, perhaps a single mushroom is not conscious, or at least not "very" conscious, but many mushrooms working in symbiosis with many trees within an ecosystem is collectively conscious. And maybe the unfolding of the universe from moment to moment, all those particles interacting with each other, creates a superconsciousness which is the universe experiencing itself, a consciousness as aware of you and I as we are of our individual cells and the molecules within them, which is to say, not at all. Just speculating here, and looking forward to scientific breakthroughs which help us get closer to understanding.
@@Adam-kn3tvwhich kinda begs the question to me:
If the universe or parts of it like local clusters (where information exchange is possible for long periods of time) is continuous.
How is the universe experiencing itself given that time must elapse so much faster for it because the information moves so slow. It wouldn’t even comprehend that humans are alive or lived once.
@@ThePowerfox18God experiences himself through all degrees of consciousness, not from outside of it. There is no outside of it. As a rock, consciousness and God do mot experience time in the manner we do....we are part of this universe as well, if fact we are the fruit of the universe. God experiences the physical passage of time through every kind of being that has a complex enough brain to be aware of it.
A mushroom may not be conscious anymore than an ovary is. But a mycorrhizalnetwork? Holy crap, so much potential for networked consciouness there!@@Adam-kn3tv
@@ThePowerfox18it’s just SCALED up or down…. Similar to how different animals experience sound and light all different on the same spectrum. Just at different frequencies. FREQUENCIES!!!!! FFFRRRREEAAAAAKKKKKK
ONCE
SEE
Joe I applaud your fearlessness in always bringing the woo-woo side of science to the masses. It gives me hope that one day we’ll figure out this universe we are in. We must entertain (& prove or disprove) everything to get to the truth.
Why though, what's the point of finding truth
@@jacobclose1296 depends on which truth I guess.. boredom, pain, horniness?
@@kyley69woyotehorniness definitely
Very late to the party here, I know. Many apologies 😅. I’m just curious on your perspective: what is the fundamental difference between “woo-woo” and a “hypothesis” if there is one?
I was expecting some mention of the fact that for 99% of human existence, humans believed that rocks, stars, rivers, everything has consciousness.
we also used to be wrong about 99.9% of everything we believed
But the ETs are far smarter than you and figured it out that the whole universe is nothing but conscious and created tech and craft based on this principle.
So while you sit around with your buddies parroting that nothing can go faster than light they pop in and out of alternate dimensions and travel the universe in the blink of an eye.
Maybe we could get there too one day if closed minded and limiting people like yourself didn't hold us back. What if tech like that required an entire race to harmonise their collective mind - the most powerful thing we know about - there are more neurons in your brain than there are stars in the sky
Everything is connected in ways you cannot fathom - maybe spend more time contemplating quantum physics and become humbled a bit more
@@CJ-cc8gi lol, ET's are sitting somewhere in a pool of mud trying to figure out multi celularity. Just because somehting vaguely looks like something else, doesn't mean its the same.
here's a twist: adding on to your suggestion that the universe may have consciousness, maybe life in the universe is the manifestation of said consciousness.
Yeah but then how did that universe consciousness become sentient/"real"? It's like the old argument with God, if he's the first mover, then that begs the question of who created him.
@@davidgjam7600that is true for every theory of the beginning of the universe. A theologian can't answer that question any more than a physicist can. The human mind can't get past nothing becoming everything.
Yes , we’ve reached that conclusion in middle school, the real question is why? What’s the point of experiencing anything when you experience everything, they are functionally the same in terms of energy as in why waste energy on experience when the end result is the heat death of the universe expenditures of energy for the sake of experience seems like a massive waste when that energy could be used to fight entropy.
@@pakde8002that’s objectively not true, there is no “nothing” there was always something, just because you can’t convince dosent mean no one can. In any situation you slice it there was always an eternal something either cycled universes, multiverse in which ours is a branch of a larger whole or there being a higher plane of reality that ours is a derivative representation of , you really gotta stop thinking about time in a linear fashion if you want to understand the universe, it’s all one big orgy of energy and repeating patterns
Exactly - We're the universe' senses in it's quest for knowledge...
The Double-Slit Experiment is simple: When unobserved, it shows all possible realities. When you put a sensor on it, you're effectively saying, "I want to know what happened in /this/ *specific* reality."
That’s exactly what I’m thinking why do we call the laser we make these photons go through we simply describe it as “we’re observing”
Doesn’t a laser will have a an effect on this photon ?
its not anything to do with slits or dots or consciousness.
its about how it chooses and doesnt choose one slit at identical times in 2 places. it implies the right side told the other side what to do instantly, but light isnt instant.
@@stephendouthart1328 no the laser is doing something mechanical to the photons. It doesn’t talk.
@@bryanb2653 im not claiming it right or wrong or that the experiment isnt flawed, i dont know.
im simply stating that most people think the experiment is "magical" because a photon "chooses" a slit when its more fascinating that the opposite side knows faster than light.
This gets even more mind-blowing when you realize that this applies to starlight coming from millions of lightyears away. There's no double slit of course, but part of what the double slit (and other experiments) tells us is that a photon remains in a superposition of all possible locations until it's measured/observed. So when a photon leaves a star, it leaves it as an expanding sphere superposition (more precisely, the shell of half a sphere or so), and that superposition continues with the sphere eventually having a radius of thousands of light years. When you see a star, your retina is "measuring" that photon, and the entire rest of the sphere instantly knows. @@stephendouthart1328
Back in 2020 I wrote a paper regarding this. Trust me, proving consciousness is hard coz we don't even know what consciousness is fundamentally. I used interaction of everything as shared information resulting to consciousness, but my prof was not convinced. He wanted me to utilize chemistry and biology
Yeah I don't think this thing has legs.
At least not with what we know.
Yes, consciousness is a result of a factor of elements. A compass points north, (and south) as a result of an apparent force upon it. You are aware it does so as a result of a number of chemical and biological processes that make you aware that a force is acting on the compass. Your responses are "computed" whereas the compass does not choose which way to point. Also the magnetic field does not choose to act at random or indeed randomly choose which way to make the compass point.
Beware the woo.
It's funny that people have such strong opinions when it's epistemologically impossible to know one way or another. "NO! Use my unprovable assumptions, not those other ones!"
i tried to turn in an english paper for a math class, too. what a dinosaur, amirite?
@@iamtheiconoclast3At a fundamental level, the universe appears probabilistic. This is not an unproven assumption. On a macroscopic level, it appears far more deterministic. At some point there is enough dependency from one particle to another for the uncertainty to appear almost completely negligible.
IMO this is enough to argue against the idea of free will. We have a will, we do not determine that will. Physics does, just as it determines what is possible in chemistry, which then determines what is possible in biology.
Star Maker is one of my favorite books ever! The part about the conscious stars is one of the best parts. I really recommend every scifi lover to read this book.
oh that book tickles my brain in so many ways
Yep, it's a good one!
Just ordered it, hoping it will live up to the hype :D
@@lemonlemonlemonlemonlemonlemo I know right! A book to re-read from time to time, because there's so much going on!
@@boohoow It will! It's a unique book, I think, a really amazing read!
One of my favorite explanations for existence is that we are in a dream of some greater being. When something comes into existence, it's part of that being splitting off, and then it rejoins it upon death/destruction. I compare it to the ocean.
The ocean is THE ocean, it's one entity, but sometimes a splash creates water droplets. They come out of the ocean and then rejoin the ocean and cease to be a droplet. Even though they weren't the whole ocean for that moment.
The greater being is conscious, everything is conscious, we as individuals do not hold the consciousness within us. We swim in the sea of consciousness and our consciousness is in direct relation to existence around us.
Think of it like this, how can you be so devastated seeing a child be injured but someone saying, "Over one and a half million people have died from COVID in the US" doesn't really trigger anything?
Because they're not within your observation. Your consciousness inside you is limited to your experiences. The greater consciousness that embues you with your own mini temporary consciousness relative to your surroundings within your body is still in everything else. You're just a droplet with its own experience of existence for a brief moment. And in that moment you're cut off from the consciousness of the entire ocean.
In a dream, there is dream logic, and there are parameters within your dream even though you're not actively constructing them, and that's why flying can be just something you can or can't do, and the physics your brain conjures are just there.
If you tried to examine dream physics in some way, I'm pretty sure it would be very much like what we observe in our reality. Which can be summed up as "UMMM WHAT???" That's like the thesis of modern physics.
Yeah I just find it a really beautiful explanation that makes sense but is more thought provoking and makes you ask questions. The best kind of explanation.
The simulation theory is basically this theory but a consciously constructed reality within a computer vs a result of imagination and creativity within the dream of a brain.
Kind of fits with most major religions also, they have that "deliberate intelligent design" view as well, that's the only big difference.
And I feel like the meaning of life and where we come from and where we go is captured poetically and accurately with the droplet of water from the ocean analogy. What does it mean, how do you define the droplet, how can you say that droplet ceases to exist despite still physically existing in a distributed yet connected state, what is it to be a droplet and the ocean, or come from the ocean to rejoin it.
This works on a physical and spiritual level. We do just end up as redistributed atoms in the universe. You're currently partially made of stars. Part of you will eventually become part of a star again.
But it applies to the soul as well. I think about this a lot lol. Yes, I'm just a writer who likes philosophy, but history does show that scientists get the ideas to test things from people like us, sci-fi has literally shaped our tech. It's not worthless.
This is pretty much analytical idealism. We are disassociations of an overarching mind at large. And that everything is made up of consciousness/dream stuff.
The way I see it is that the Universe is at least partly conscious, since we are part of the Universe and we are conscious. As Carl Sagan said. "We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to selfawareness".
There's a difference between consciousness and being self-aware. A new born baby is conscious but doesn't become a self-aware person for roughly 1.5 to 2 years.
That depends on what consciousness is. Are bug conscious. Is that the proper term. There's not a good term for what Scott is talking about. The term consciousness is a pretty vague term..
I always question whether the universe's biggest mysteries has already been solved within the Earth as in a reoccurring pattern seen on Earth's natural environments such as trees being present in the galaxy some way or another.
That’s how it ALL works. Or not works, but is…. Scaled up or down.
Honestly when you think of the universe, it makes sense that a conscious could be born out of anything of any size as long as the properties that builds it makes sense for them
I am not in any way, shape or form a physicist, and may be showing my ignorance on this subject, but my theory is, it is not the observation that makes the two pattern groupings, it is the addition of the sensor. How far away from the slits is the sensor? If it is close enough to be anywhere within the vicinity of the protons, then the physical presence of the sensor disrupts the waveform pattern of the protons so they group into two lines.
The obvious argument against that to me is the fact that the “decisions” are always the same. If we did the double slit experiment and sometimes got interference and sometimes none with the same setup, then perhaps the universe is consciously deciding which to do but since the results always follow predictable laws, not so much.
Nah. This is how science is currently done aka controls.
If you had any experiment with the same consistent “setup” but only small sample size your results would be random but with a sufficiently large group of humans (or rats or monkeys, etc), their “decisions” would eventually statistically group into predictable patterns.
Same with the photons
Certain things within our own bodies are outside of our control and follow predictable laws.
The digestive-system dynamos food into energy, lungs inhale and exhale (and with that you exercise executive control, hold your breath too long, and your body will pass out and take automatic control, but at the same time, you mush choose to hold your breath when you go underwater, because otherwise would be to drown) , the heart beats, blood pumps but can pool in the lower half due to gravity (which would beckon the question of "Are there laws of physics that God does follow or must follow? be it that he "set the parameters" so things could function smoothly, or even that he had to work within to begin with, being I guess a "super-constant"?
Similarly, in a simulation/video game with procedural generation (thinking No Mans Sky, Minecraft, etc. where the programming creates unique "random" worlds, are often constructed of a base set of parameters and variables in algorithms. Some things may be "randomly" generated, but behind the scenes, there is a very complex set instructions determining how those "randomly generated" parameters came together.
As it tends to go, whether in nature or in human design, nothing is ever truly "random", there is just always a direct chain of cause and effect; we just perceive something to be random because the variables that contribute to it measure beyond comprehension.
Take for instance, a 6-sided-die. There are so many unfathomably different (from minutely to wildly different) ways you can jiggle, toss, and, roll that die in you hand (though, for the near-infinite ways you can roll it, 1/6 of them will result in 1 and so on.
But lets say you want to consistently roll high with a 6, theoretically, if you could take a time you rolled a 6,isolate and replicate every variable (from roll, to throw to jiggle, to the wind) of a dice toss, you could ensure the roll of a 6 every time.
On that same note, there are the near infinite ways you can roll a die, 1/6th of those will be each number; but the ability to truly understand the incomprehensible number of factors at play in a simple dice roll, so we call it "randomness". But in reality, everything is made by a complex "set of laws" overseeing a direct chain of cause and effect; for whatever factors we played into it, or if they be natural.
There's a whole lot of gray when it comes to "free will", "survival instinct", like I said even control of breathing, or eating (deciding what to eat, when to eat, and will it be healthy for you). You can't assume that because things follow natural laws that there is not free will or decisive intent.
@@jakeh2049 right, but that’s ultimately my point. The pattern emerges to the point that we can make an accurate prediction what WILL happen. Ie, we will always get an interference pattern with setup a and never with setup b. We can’t do the same with conscious animals who are making their own decisions. If we send them through a maze, some will go right some will go left and some will sit and do nothing. Even the same animal will sometimes make completely different decisions as they did in a previous run.
@@bobbywade3282 it certainly SEEMS that way, and even Einstein believed that everything is at its core perfectly deterministic (“god does not play dice”)- ie if you had perfect knowledge of every particle and their momentum and direction, you could predict exactly what was going to happen in the future. But quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle completely blew away that argument. You can NEVER know all those variables exactly, and even if you somehow could, the quantum uncertainty means you could still only predict the *probability* of the outcome of the throw. But the fact that we can calculate that probability In quantum mechanics with astonishing accuracy Definitely hints that there’s no consciousness involved since any sentience making conscious choices will Inevitably choose a different path which would Be easy to see on the data, but we just don’t see that.
Also, as far as the points about the human body go, sure, but those are autonomic responses, not consciousness. Our bodies aren’t able to breed underwater, but someone who is determined to drown themselves are able to consciously override those restrictions
@@monad_tcp completely fair point, however, the point I’m making is that if you run an experiment, thousands of times, one on a on conscious, deterministic system, that follows specific laws, and the other, on a conscious being able to make choices, You’ll be able to see a clear difference in the data, because the conscious being can decide to make changes on a whim, whereas a deterministic system can only do what the laws allow it to do
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Strangely enough this is a theory that has existed for thousands of years- early meso American societies had the ‘teotl’ and the practices of Taoism in Asia also have similar ideas. Knowledge is cyclical.
Yep, panpsychism is just animism all over again. It's one of humankind's oldest spiritual beliefs. Maybe it was right all along and we strayed from the truth.
Animism is an idea as old as culture. That doesn't mean it's true. And no, it has nothing to do with current scientific knowledge either.
@@ImVeryOriginal literally yes it does. All our scientific knowledge, theories, inventions and data ultimately stem from the ideas and observations of early humans.
Early spiritual beliefs didn't come out of nowhere, it was early humans trying to make sense of reality. Even without data or knowledge our ability to observe and recognize patterns is insane. Even when we get all the details wrong we tend to get a lot of the big picture stuff right.
When I was a kid people treated multiverses like a "woo woo" topic, nobody wanted to touch that subject and today, altough it's not proven yet, it's very well accepted, debated topic. It gives me hope when scientists come down from their pedestals and mingle with the mortals.
The descension of physicists into cult-like groups working on untestable ideas is not a reflection of the reality of something their ideas.
About the double-slit experiment… Occam’s Razor… it could just be the slight electromagnetic field generated by the observing the device collapses the waveform into particles. Observing does reduce the energy slightly. That could be enough.
That’s always what I’ve wondered, is observing the reaction introducing a variable into the equation that alters the behaviour of the particles that we currently don’t understand? Seems simpler than some of the explanations currently in use (like have they run the experiment in the exact same way as with the observer there and running, with only something obscuring the observers view?)
Occam’s Razor is absolute garbage .
This is a complex subject and your poor grammar made it difficult to understand what you're trying to say
If that was the case we would see a spectrum from single position through to a spread when observing rather than two stark differences.
@@mericanignoranc3551 Not if it's kept sharp.
Physics has an analysis tactic called hidden variables. Basically, you run your math/simulation with a "black box" in the equations to see if mysterious results can be attributable to some previously unknown variable(s). So far, no such analysis suggests there are hidden variables in experiments like the double-slit. Choice or agency would show up as a hidden variable.
So, the universe IS fn with my life for giggles. Ok, now it’s personal
It's actually not the weirdest thing in QM it's the expected behavior because you're interacting with the the photon via a particle that collapses it. It doesn't just collapse just because you observe it, it collapses because in order to observe it you must have something that interacts with it. It's really concerning there are so many people out there that keep parroting that this experiment is weird or shows that there's some kind of woo woo nonsense going on like that photons must "know they are being observed" or that we must be living in a computer simulation. Like, no, you either don't understand the double slit experiment or you intentionally misrepresent it to get attention.
Finally someone with sense in these comments. The double split experiment is a very interesting experiment as it is, we don't need to add some "photons are conscious of being observed" bullshit to make it more interesting.
Genuine question, does that mean things like quantum computers are actually bogus? Because I was under the impression they'd be able to calculate multiple possibilities at once and predict the future. Is that our "flying cars"? lol
I don't know man, the photon can decide which slit to pass through all it wants, but unless it has the means to _actualize_ that decision it'll behave like a mindless photon. This kind of makes the psychokinetic power a necessity, and kind of makes it all coo coo for coco puffs.
I agree with you, but I’d guess it’s this type of behaviour that they use to explain dark energy or something like that.
Yep. The equations governing the evolution wavefuctions say enough. The wavefunctions evolve deterministically, even if the measured result is probabilistic. There doesn't need to be any kind of decision involved.
You kind of hit the nail half-on the head. In reality it is concious, but lacks the means to actualize ... or conceptualize it. All things are concious. Unfortuantly, conciousness*, intelligence, intent and action are all a consequence of the functional organization of that matter. a photon is like a single bit in a computer.
@@N3ur0m4nc3r It might be yours and other peoples hypothesis that “everything is conscious”, but we have zero evidence that this is the case.
From my understanding, outside of our individual subjective experiences that we can talk about and share notes on, we don’t really have evidence that consciousness exists at all. I don’t know how you’d find evidence that photons have a subjective experience, even if it were true.
@@JesseDriftwood a better way to put it would be to say that "dark energy is not understood and so it's used as a wild card to prop up every insane theory imaginable by doing the heavey lifting of what if'
I really appreciate the enjoyably comedic and agnostic approach with which you explain some very controversial topics. Thank you for this video
I thought the double slit experiment conclusions were due to the electromagnetic fields of the cameras effecting the movement of the photons?
Damn Joe, if all people were more like you, I wouldn't be a grumpy old man at 26yo. Thank you for all the intelligently enlightening content.
26 isnt old lmfao
It’s a joke, genius
I've been really considering panpsychism recently, but I really don't get this whole idea of things moving because they choose to. There is a big difference between being aware of your self and things happening to you, and being able to move yourself. We're self-aware and yet can't just move ourselves any which way, we're constrained by the laws of physics and our own physiology.
Also, where I'm considering the idea of "everything is conscious", it's not so much that. It's more that consciousness is kind of a spectrum, and where we say "that's consciousness" is arbitrary. It's basically like life. There's a progression from the fundamental particles, to atoms, to molecules, to organelles, to cells, to multicellular beings. Where do you draw the line and say that's where life starts and before that it's not life? You probably have an answer, and that makes sense. My point isn't to say you can't draw a line, it's just that the term "life" doesn't mean a whole lot other than an easy way for us to categorise things.
I pretty much agree with all of this. Weird. :)
Agree with the first part, disagree with the second. Consciousness is a thing that arises out of constructs that are complex enough. A rock is not just on the low end of the spectrum of consciousness. It's not on the spectrum at all, because it doesn't have the physical requirements of creating consciousness. Same with bacteria or simple multicell organisms.
I caught that too. I think its easy to conflate consciousness and intelligence, since for us they come together as a package. Intelligence is the processing power, consciousness is the display.
Speaking theoretically there could be a super intelligent AI with no correlated consciousness and an atom with a drop of consciousness but no intelligence.
@@jamiedorsey4167the measurement of and test for both consciousness and intelligence are subject to you definitions of them. Currently there are no universally agreed definitions or tests of either. Of course, you are free to choose your definitions and tests and measure them based on that, however this is in effect just an arbitrary judgement. This is one of the current issues with AI and AGI, in that at the moment even if it was to develop, there is no guarantee that we would recognise it, or reach universal agreement on it.
@@iamtheiconoclast3 That’s really cool acc. This is the closest I’ve come to really putting my thoughts on this topic into words, so it’s nice to see someone agree!
This reminds me of the Futurama episode titled "Godfellas" (Season 3, Episode 20), wherein Bender has a conversation with what appears to be a sentient, galaxy-sized being that he believes to be God. During the scene, Bender finds himself marooned on in space after being ejected from the ship. Feeling alone and desperate, he starts talking to the stars and asking for guidance. Suddenly, a passing meteor crashes into the asteroid, revealing a complex sequence of events that eventually lead to the creation of life on the asteroid, including a civilization that evolves and worships Bender as a deity.
As Bender continues to talk to what he believes is God, he experiences the passage of time in a unique way. The conversation spans millennia in just a few minutes for Bender, and he learns about the universe's complexities and the challenges of being a deity. The "God" figure explains the nature of existence, fate, and free will. Eventually, Bender and the deity have a philosophical discussion about whether or not God truly exists, and whether the deity's role is more of a passive observer or an active participant in the universe's events.
The scene is a mix of humor, existential contemplation, and a unique twist on the concept of a conversation with a higher power.
I never really understood the double slit experiment. If no observer, it's a wave. That's fine. But if observed, it's a particle. But if it's a particle, then it gets absorbed in your eyes or the sensor, so it never reaching the back wall. At least not the one you observed. So what exactly happens? It's not like you can observe a single photon and then let it go "thanks for stopping by, now go on your marry way as you were". It's also unlikely that the one photon you capture is shouting to the others "Hey guys, we're being watched, get into formation!". I know these animations tend to oversimplify things, but I feel in this case either everyone gets it wrong and even the people explaining don't really understand it, or it's way oversimplified to the point that it doesn't make sense anymore.
It makes perfect sense, it’s just as basic as it sounds. Light acts like a wave until something capable of noticing it is present, where it then acts as a particle. How can it be both? That’s the superposition, it IS both. In a quantum state, time does not exist. The light goes “back,”- to us anyways, it would be considered backwards- in time and becomes a particle at the moment of observation. Imagine a box with a dead cat that becomes alive every time you open the box, but is dead whenever the box is closed. Observing the cat brings it backwards to a state of life, where it is now free to act differently from how it had to act while dead. The particle indeed reaches the back wall because it goes in a straight line. You are able to observe light from the side as it continues past you in a straight line, that’s how lasers work. You are not absorbing the laser energy from the side, just because it’s visible. The photon is visible on it’s own from all directions. How light can be seen at all in the first place is a separate, but related, field of physical science worthy of your own consideration and attention. Light, and indeed energy itself, always exists in both an excited and static state simultaneously, however can only manifest itself as only one observed state at a time…. So far. Quantum computers will be able to exploit this effect of both knowing and unknowing to calculate trillions of times more efficiently then a modern computer, and if viable, could even make both rudimentary manipulation of time and space a very real reality. We will never be able to teleport entire worlds like in movies, but sending a molecule across the room or sending a simple message backwards in time a few microseconds will certainly be a possibility.
@maaingan The problem is that light is invisible and undetectable until it comes in contact with something. Think about it. You don't see the light moving towards the moon. You can only see the light hitting the moon and bouncing off of it into your eyes. If you could see all the light passing by, the whole sky would be lit up and you couldn't distinguish any object from it, it would be a white wash. Same true for everything. You can see your hands in front of your face because light bouncing off of it and hits your eyes, but you don't see the path the light takes. So it's impossible to observe light without altering it. It can never go back the way it was. By the act of observing, it changes direction, wavelength or both.
In my understanding of panpsychism, I had never heard it presented this way. It was more so that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe even on a quantum level and as a system gets more complex and coherent then consciosness like our own is emergent out of that. This wouldn't imply stars can think and react the way we do. A star would be closer to the consciousness level of something like a cell, but still even lower than that.
I think I complained on one or more of your previous videos about the loud alarm which was very disturbing to me due to autism and oversensitivity to sound.
I don't know if it was a conscious decision this time, but I'd like to thank you for having the "woo woo alarm" well balanced relative to your voice. I much appreciate it and I'm sure there are others who also appreciate it :)
Henceforth it shall be officially known as the “Woo Woo Klaxon.”
Many years ago I watched a video by Ian Xel Lungold about his theories on the meaning of the Mayan Calendar. His lectures described everything as having a base level of consciousness, even the inanimate. Base levels have action-reaction, and higher levels move to stimulus-response. Everything reacts to rules of physics, and the reaction to those rules can be defined as being conscious of them. By that logic, all matter reacts to physics, and all matter is conscious at some level.
This concept always stuck with me above anything from his lectures. Everything bound by physics is conscious of physics. That became my definition of consciousness. To me, current studies are trying to define "Intelligence", not "Consciousness".
A segment from 'Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within'...
My new understandings of what many call 'God -The Holy Spirit' - resulting from some of the extraordinary ongoing after-effects relating to my NDE...
Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what some scientists are now referring to as the unified field of consciousnesses. In other words, it’s the essence of all existence and non-existence - the ultimate creative force behind planets, stars, nebulae, people, animals, trees, fish, birds, and all phenomena, manifest or latent. All matter and intelligence are simply waves or ripples manifesting to and from this core source. Consciousness (enlightenment) is itself the actual creator of everything that exists now, ever existed in the past, or will exist in the future - right down to the minutest particles of dust - each being an individual ripple or wave.
The big difference between chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and most other conventional prayers is that instead of depending on a ‘middleman’ to connect us to our state of inner enlightenment, we’re able to do it ourselves. That’s because chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows us to tap directly into our enlightened state by way of this self-produced sound vibration. ‘Who or What Is God?’ If we compare the concept of God being a separate entity that is forever watching down on us, to the teachings of Nichiren, it makes more sense to me that the true omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of what most people perceive to be God, is the fantastic state of enlightenment that exists within each of us. Some say that God is an entity that’s beyond physical matter - I think that the vast amount of information continuously being conveyed via electromagnetic waves in today’s world gives us proof of how an invisible state of God could indeed exist.
For example, it’s now widely known that specific data relayed by way of electromagnetic waves has the potential to help bring about extraordinary and powerful effects - including an instant global awareness of something or a mass emotional reaction. It’s also common knowledge that these invisible waves can easily be used to detonate a bomb or to enable NASA to control the movements of a robot as far away as the Moon or Mars - none of which is possible without a receiver to decode the information that’s being transmitted. Without the receiver, the data would remain impotent. In a very similar way, we need to have our own ‘receiver’ switched on so that we can activate a clear and precise understanding of our own life, all other life and what everything else in existence is.
Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day helps us to achieve this because it allows us to reach the core of our enlightenment and keep it switched on. That’s because Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what scientists now refer to as the unified field of consciousnesses. To break it down - Myoho represents the Law of manifestation and latency (Nature) and consists of two alternating states. For example, the state of Myo is where everything in life that’s not obvious to us exists - including our stored memories when we’re not thinking about them - our hidden potential and inner emotions whenever they’re dormant - our desires, our fears, our wisdom, happiness, karma - and more importantly, our enlightenment.
The other state, ho, is where everything in Life exists whenever it becomes evident to us, such as when a thought pops up from within our memory - whenever we experience or express our emotions - or whenever a good or bad cause manifests as an effect from our karma. When anything becomes apparent, it merely means that it’s come out of the state of Myo (dormancy/latency) and into a state of ho (manifestation). It’s the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, being awake or asleep, or knowing and not knowing.
The second law - Renge - Ren meaning cause and ge meaning effect, governs and controls the functions of Myoho - these two laws of Myoho and Renge, not only function together simultaneously but also underlies all spiritual and physical existence.
The final and third part of the tri-combination - Kyo, is the Law that allows Myoho to integrate with Renge - or vice versa. It’s the great, invisible thread of energy that fuses and connects all Life and matter - as well as the past, present and future. It’s also sometimes termed the Universal Law of Communication - perhaps it could even be compared with the string theory that many scientists now suspect exists.
Just as the cells in our body, our thoughts, feelings and everything else is continually fluctuating within us - all that exists in the world around us and beyond is also in a constant state of flux - constantly controlled by these three fundamental laws. In fact, more things are going back and forth between the two states of Myo and ho in a single moment than it would ever be possible to calculate or describe. And it doesn’t matter how big or small, famous or trivial anything or anyone may appear to be, everything that’s ever existed in the past, exists now or will exist in the future, exists only because of the workings of the Laws ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ - the basis of the four fundamental forces, and if they didn’t function, neither we nor anything else could go on existing. That’s because all forms of existence, including the seasons, day, night, birth, death and so on, are moving forward in an ongoing flow of continuation - rhythmically reverting back and forth between the two fundamental states of Myo and ho in absolute accordance with Renge - and by way of Kyo. Even stars are dying and being reborn under the workings of what the combination ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ represents. Nam, or Namu - which mean the same thing, are vibrational passwords or keys that allow us to reach deep into our life and fuse with or become one with ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’.
On a more personal level, nothing ever happens by chance or coincidence, it’s the causes that we’ve made in our past, or are presently making, that determine how these laws function uniquely in each of our lives - as well as the environment from moment to moment. By facing east, in harmony with the direction that the Earth is spinning, and chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for a minimum of, let’s say, ten minutes daily to start with, any of us can experience actual proof of its positive effects in our lives - even if it only makes us feel good on the inside, there will be a definite positive effect. That’s because we’re able to pierce through the thickest layers of our karma and activate our inherent Buddha Nature (our enlightened state). By so doing, we’re then able to bring forth the wisdom and good fortune that we need to challenge, overcome and change our adverse circumstances - turn them into positive ones - or manifest and gain even greater fulfilment in our daily lives from our accumulated good karma. This also allows us to bring forth the wisdom that can free us from the ignorance and stupidity that’s preventing us from accepting and being proud of the person that we indeed are - regardless of our race, colour, gender or sexuality. We’re also able to see and understand our circumstances and the environment far more clearly, as well as attract and connect with any needed external beneficial forces and situations. As I’ve already mentioned, everything is subject to the law of Cause and Effect - the ‘actual-proof-strength’ resulting from chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo always depends on our determination, sincerity and dedication.
For example, the levels of difference could be compared to making a sound on a piano, creating a melody, producing a great song, and so on. Something else that’s very important to always respect and acknowledge is that the Law (or if you prefer God) is in everyone and everything.
NB: There are frightening and disturbing sounds, and there are tranquil and relaxing sounds. It’s the emotional result of any noise or sound that can trigger off a mood or even instantly change one. When chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day, we are producing a sound vibration that’s the password to our true inner-self - this soon becomes apparent when you start reassessing your views on various things - such as your fears and desires etc. The best way to get the desired result when chanting is not to view things conventionally - rather than reaching out to an external source, we need to reach into our own lives and bring our needs and desires to fruition from within - including the good fortune and strength to achieve any help that we may need. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo also reaches out externally and draws us towards, or draws towards us, what we need to make us happy from our environment. For example, it helps us to be in the right place at the right time - to make better choices and decisions and so forth. We need to think of it as a seed within us that we’re watering and bringing sunshine to for it to grow, blossom and bring forth fruit or flowers. It’s also important to understand that everything we need in life, including the answer to every question and the potential to achieve every dream, already exists within us.
There is no way to "observe" a subatomic particle without interacting with it. A photons behaviour changing after interacting with a detector is not that strange.
The photon doesn't choose anything.
It's like hitting one pool ball with another pool ball and deciding that the first ball is choosing to roll across the table.
How are you interacting with it when you observe it?
@@georgepetrou501 At the human scale you can't "see" any photons that don't make contact with your retina.
At the sub-atomic scale you can't tell if a single photon is going one way or the other unless it makes contact with your detector.
I put quotation marks around observe because we are not actually observing anything directly. The detector is just telling us weather it made contact with a photon or not or whatever.
This is a core tenant of quantum mechanics: All information exchange is mediated through interactions of particles.
Another way to put it is: You can't know anything about anything else unless you "touch" it or it "touches" you (quotation marks because I'm speaking figuratively not literally... tho it is sort of literal).
Interesting that you think it's a brain, when it's already known that the universe is a dream Azathoth is having, and the closer you guys are to discovering the answers you want, the closer you are to waking him up and all of this ending. So perhaps the universe is like a brain, and the vast nothingness is the part of the brain that isn't doing anything but functioning, and there are little pockets of life or something else here and there, entertaining him while he sleeps. Also, H. P. Lovecraft gave it a name, but Azathoth doesn't actually have a name. At least, nothing as simple as a name like we understand it.
I refuse to believe that. I believe with all my heart that the universe is named Ted; or Edward for short. 😁
"Guy in a coma? It's complicated." That was hilarious!
I have wondered if perhaps the whole universe was broken up fractally into various conscious units. It sounds like panpsychism is the name for that general, or a very similar, idea. It's cool to know it has a name and that some presumably smart people think it's a viable enough idea to at least be worth investigating. And it was what I heard of the double slit experiment that made me wonder about that.
That said, thanks to the hard problem of consciousness, it could be very difficult for us to confirm consciousness outside of animals, and especially outside of biological systems.
7:13 - Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's Orch OR theory of consciousness is fascinating.
I love this. I've believed this since the 90s when I saw the Babylon 5 episode where they said "The Minbari believe the Universe is sentient in a way we will never truly understand, and we are the universe breaking itself apart to try and understand itself." There are too many "coincidences," and things like the strong and weak nuclear forces being absolutely perfect for life to exist, to believe there couldn't be something more going on. I've also always thought that picture of the galactic web, or universal web, or whatever it is called, looks so much like neuron pathways and that the universe is just a giant brain, or maybe a regular sized brain that we just perceive as giant as we think about ourselves and explore ourselves. Thanks for the video.
I always hated that argument. Of course everything is just perfect for life to exist as it is, because it does. If things were different, different stuff would exist and that stuff too would think "wow everythings just perfect".
Also, our brains are wired to see patterns. So yeah, they might look like neurons to you. Some clouds look like elephants.
Even if galactic features were neurons and part of a conscience, why should they look like human neurons?
When I was in college, a girl told me everything is conscious. Little did I know she was a physicist ahead of her time.
Being a pothead is not the same as being a physicist.
@@ImVeryOriginal So it's just a coincidence that physicists and potheads say the same things?
was that her argument for refusing to swallow? (yes, this type of humor is not typical on this channel lmao)
@@Anuchan When did physicists say the Universe is conscious? Must've missed that paper.
Did you even watch the video or did you just see the title and assumed science confirmed your woo woo theories?
@@ImVeryOriginal1:20
I was towards the end when I began thinking, that we need to be open to different types of consciousness and not anthropomorphize consciousness... Then, you said it too! 😂 I find a lot of fellow scientists to be quite arrogant in their thinking. They always put Our human consciousness as the top level, when I could easily debate that fungus is functioning on a much higher level than ours.
We’re actually pretty dumb monkeys when you think about it. We really do not think any more logically than chimps and monkeys and use the same instinctual patterns as they do.
or maybe the quantum state IS the wave function and instead of insisting that electrons have classical positions and velocity we accept that position and velocity is just what we can observe when we probe the wave function and we look at what's actually there and not add a mystical observation force that is not described in anyway as to why it does what it does.
Since there are no absolutes maybe consciousness and awareness comes in different degrees. Like how aware someone or something is. I love thinking about this stuff thank you very much for the video which I will be watching multiple times!
All you need to prove this is one twelve ounce glass, two people and a bottle of vodka.
One drinks, the other doesnt. The next day ask them both to recall the events of the night. Lol.
Awareness and consciousness aren't the same thing.
The universe essentially being the mind of God makes a lot of sense to me. It perfectly merges mind and matter, religion and physical science together. I also think even the universe itself isn't the ultimate level of consciousness, so even God may have a god haha.
Brahman and Atman. The Hindus knew this 10,000 years ago.
What if no choice was made? What if the photon just did what it was supposed to do? What if there is no choice or consciousness but simply everything playing out as it has to because this is what it does and how it does it?
Mind blowing assessment
correct
Yeah. It's just another "consciousness of the gaps" approach. We don't know why stuff behaves the way it does - IT MUST BE BECAUSE CONSCIOUSNESS WOOOOOOW.
@somedudeok1451 All your comments are very reductionist rather than giving the theory a fair shake, or maybe waiting until there's further research on it
@@isaacthecorncob Funny how people treated almost every breakthrough in science in that same way. Who knows, what the true nature of the cosmos is, I sure as fuck dont but if I dont know then im free to throw up theories for as long as I want until one of them sticks.
"Everything being conscious " is the basic idea behind the humor in every Far Side comic strip 😂
The fact that scientists’ new discoveries and theories are tapping into ideas that have been accessed by spiritual masters for hundreds of years is amazing.
i had many of these intuitions this exact morning. it's not the first time these pop up in my mind out of nothing. i credit youtube channels like yours for that. the level of divulgation here is way better than any other in the world. it feels like standing on the shoulder of the giants. i have a hard time understanding why nobody accepts the fact online education has gone way beyond classic systems and use it as model in european countries for example. keep up the good work!!
The problem is that we don't know what we aren't learning--because we don't know it!
Holy Photons Batman, you've really dialed in the video production. Impeccable. Content is brilliant as always, too. Way to go, Joe!
I've thought about this a lot. I tend to think that anything that processes information has a subjective experience of that information. Our brains give rise to a rich conscious experience, while a photon only has the subjective experience of its current state.
According to relativity a photon (or anything going the speed of light, so as far as we know so far, just photons) arrives at its destination instantaneously from its point of view. So it wouldn't even have time to experience anything.
@@misfits7833 Unless it passes through a subspace vortex created by a quantum interference field in the antimatter manifold!
sorry, been watching too much Trek lately. Nobody does technobabble like STNG O_o
Its a gradient from non zero to us and more. I dont know why so much push back exists to this. Like lol
@@misfits7833nobody means experience like we experience. It means non zero awareness at all levels.
@@misfits7833A photon technically experiences all time in the universe instantaneously. As the speed of light invariably makes time stop. A photon, like you said, doesn't experience time.
If no one objects, I will repeat here a comment I made on another channel's video a few months ago:
Many years ago, my uncle said something that has stuck with me. I think that his statement was eloquent and I reproduce it here as best I can remember it.
"We know that a cell of an adult mammal, when placed in an appropriate environment, can arrange matter around it to form a copy of that mammal. This cell is composed of chemical structures, which are composed of molecules, which are composed of smaller elements that, taken separately, are generally considered to be devoid of life.
"These elements, in their turn, are composed of subatomic particles which are composed of still smaller particles which, at the most basic level, appear to be nothing more than localized distortions in the fabric of spacetime which continuously flicker in and out of existence in ways that I don't pretend to understand.
"So, we have tiny regions of twisted nothing, surrounded by lots more nothing, interacting in regular and increasingly complex aggregations until they display the characteristics that we call life, and ultimately, intelligence."
Given the hierarchical nature of the universe that he described above, starting with minuscule distortions of spacetime and building in organization and complexity to living organisms, at what exact point does "consciousness" manifest itself?
We agree that humans have consciousness. Our closest relatives, the apes, demonstrate complex reasoning and the use of language, so presumably they are conscious as well. The same is true of marine mammals. Other mammals such as dogs and crows do not demonstrate the use of complex language but they are clearly able to communicate with each other, and with us if we know how to listen. Presumably they are conscious in some degree.
Ants communicate things appropriate to their needs by using chemical signals, and they demonstrate organizational skills that allow a colony to accomplish things that the individuals never could by themselves. There is obviously some degree of consciousness here, perhaps a lesser degree than, say, a dolphin, but it is still present. Moreover, communication between ants enables the entire colony to behave as if the colony has a form of consciousness as well. The colony is able to gather food, react to threats and make decisions about its welfare, as if the consciousness in the individual ants is added together to create a more capable consciousness.
Jellyfish are a similar case. They do not have brains, but they accomplish all the necessary functions of eating and reproduction because they are composed of specialized cells which take care of specific tasks in the same way that ants do in their colonies. Jellyfish have rudimentary nervous systems and are able to react to outside stimuli, so their constituent cells are obviously communicating with each other and they are aware of the things that are important to them.
What if consciousness is not a question of "you have it or you don't," but rather a question of degree? Tardigrades and amoebas accomplish the same things as jellyfish in their respective domains. Recently it has been discovered that even trees communicate with each other about things that affect their survival. Like the so-called "higher animals," all of these creatures, and even the very cells that compose them, are aware of the things that are important to them, so each of them can be said to have that degree of consciousness.
Now, how exactly can "lifeless" collections of subatomic particles become "living" organisms? And how, then, do these organisms achieve the degree of consciousness that they evidently possess?
What if we have it backwards, and life does not cause consciousness, but consciousness causes life? What if consciousness is intrinsic to the sea of subatomic energy that we perceive as the physical universe? And, in the same way that this indivisible sea of energy is organized in different structures of varying complexity to create the appearance of physical objects and living beings, the consciousness that this energy embodies is likewise gathered, in corresponding degrees, in those same structures? Thus, you and I, and the dolphins and amoebas and trees and, yes, my desk and the planets and the stars, would be fundamentally inseparable parts of one unimaginably vast consciousness. At the same time, we are also our individual selves, creations of that one consciousness. In a very real sense, we are "the universe observing itself."
I'd like to recommend to you a book called "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. It is non-fiction, and it explores the idea of our energetic nature and interconnectedness through the discoveries of two scientists working in completely different fields who independently arrived at the same conclusion. The book was last printed in 1991 so it is long out of print, but there are book search websites where you can get a used copy. I found it fascinating.
I subscribed to your channel more than 5 years ago, back when you used to talk about spacex. And I fell in awe with your curiosity and interests. I no longer see your videos that frequently but every now and then I do and it reminds me how cool your channel is and then I start doing a marathon of your videos hahah
Thanks for your content! 😊
Doesn't observation necessarily mean you are interacting with the thing you're observing? How would you measure a photon without slightly interacting with it and changing its course?
Agreed, and I've never understood it. Time to look into the double slit again...
Ok, so search for Quantum Eraser by Fermilab or PBS Spacetime if you want to learn more. In short, they used a crystal after the slits to split the photon into two entangled photons. One goes to the plane and the other is sent to detectors spaced to determine which slit it went through. If the detectors are on, the photons arriving at the plane act like a particle; if they are off, they acts like a wave. This is the same even if the distance to detection is longer than the distance to the plane, which suggests these particles don't experience time normally. If you destroy the data from your observation, the entangled particles also return to wave behavior.
I love Scott's approach which is both open minded and cautiously critical in a nice balanced way
The oldest religious scriptures of Hindus are VEDAS. One of them is Yajurveda. It contains a couplet, "Yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde" meaning "As is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body (universe), as is the cosmic body so is the human body".
This video was wickedly fun and the reason I subscribed years back. Also, you look great, Joe
I might have said this a couple videos ago, but I love the Episode 2 Obi-Wan thing Joe has with his hair right now.
So does that mean that the particles have conscious? Or is it the Force? Have we discovered midichlorians??
His hair is consciously throwing a party in the back.
His hair is giving me unwelcome 70s flashbacks.
If Star Wars is real, fuckin hell
Think of reality itself as one effectively infinite field of consciousness and what we interpret as "particles" are one instantiation of the universe's mental processes, but aren't in and of themselves conscious.
To put it simply, everything is *of* consciousness but not everything *is* conscious. Does that make sense?
The midichlorian stuff (aka soul particiles) was already written by Thomas Edison. Read his "spirit phone"/"necrophone" theories about building an optical detector for souls.
I like to think of the double slit experiment as more proof towards us being in a simulation than anything. Particles go into “memory saving” mode and then once a conscious being views the particle, in any way, it’s becomes “real”
‘Memory saving mode’ is the perfect way to describe the in between state. I also think it is good evidence of a simulation, but I think that the simulation is still naturally occurring, not existing in some 5th dimensional beings’ science project.
When it was not being observed it went into 5 paths, then when watched it went into two. I feel like the 2 would save more energy.
But that's not true at all. It's a common misunderstanding resulting from misrepresentations of the double slit experiment.
In short: the term "observer" doesn't refer to a conscious being. It refers to a "measurement", which in QM is any kind of interaction that reveals the inner state (e.g. position and momentum) of the particle.
A photon scattering off an electron is a measurement, no matter if someone is around to record it.
@@efovex Exactly. When scientists use the word "observer," they don't mean it the same way a lay person does. I often wish science had picked a different word because it confuses the issue and sends people down the woo-woo path when they misinterpret what "observer" means in a scientific setting.
I always feel the same way when people start talking about "aliens from another dimension" and I have to stop and say, "That's not how dimensions work."
@@efovex but we have to look at the measurements, that’s what I mean by “in any way.” There’s no way to know what happened before we looked at the measurements
Hi Joe! Thanks Joe! :) I love this type of physics! I vote for a video on neuro-morphic computers.
When scientists get too high...
Not possible
“I don’t know what I saw… therefore aliens [or insert any conclusion here like everything is conscious]”
~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Or, everything is so well ordered, therefore, computer simulation.
the whole point of NDT's statement was a criticism of pinning everything unknown to a single explanation. doesn't work when you open it up to "any conclusion".
what you're talking about is forming theories in general. that's well accepted in science and it's the beginning of the scientific method. starts with a hypothesis.
@@_WeDontKnow_And yet he, as a scientist, repeatedly states there is no God, when science can’t rule out anything until it’s been conclusively and repeatedly proven. He can say he doesn’t believe, he can say there’s no proof that God exists, but he can’t say that there is proof God doesn’t. So personally I think Neil is a clout-chaser. He’s a smart, educated man but can’t resist smugly mocking anyone who believes in something he can’t technically disprove because even smart people are subject to human foibles and like to have other people tell them they’re right. Brains don’t necessarily equal wisdom.
@@_WeDontKnow_ "what you're talking about is forming theories in general"
What colour is the sky in your world? Because statements like this are a strong indication that you are living in your own private world of imagination. The OP was talking about the argument from incredulity/ignorance. If you are unfamiliar with that fallacy, then you obviously need to do so very much more research on that science actually is, never mind what a "theory" is...
"You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts."
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“There is a cult of ignorance… and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
- Isaac Asimov
@@IRGeamer I enjoy how you gave no actual points toward my comment. you quoted part of it and then said "since you said this, that means ur dumb"
please actually address something I said and specifically respond to it. you're just showing how little you know when you're avoiding that specific line of action. much love, have a good one.
I like the idea that a large body like a star or black hole is sitting there just thinking introspectively and occasionally meeting a DMT traveler on the astral plain. Imagine a universal network of knowledge and emotion connecting everything and sitting just below the surface of our known reality.
2:00 Putting double slit experiment and black matter next to each other made me think.
Like obviously it's not the same situation, but what, if our methods of observation of Dark Matter just make the information that could have reached us normally - interfered by the method itself. Like we can't see Dark Matter not because it is invisible/doesn’t produce light/something, but because the way we look hides the data pattern that exists in some form, that would be visible if we haven't "looked" at it. It still leaves that interference pattern - but it's just that we are in the "dark spot" between two light slits.
Like we still see some effects of it like gravitation - similar to how we probably could detect the observation plate being heated by the laser.
Zero Point Energy be dark energy that make up an entire feel like the Higgs field but it's all negative and when stuff falls into it creates dark matter?
The idea would make sense if the field is always zero than anything falling into it that is positive would be negative which dark matter is mainly negative Mass
They often don't specify, to the public at least, what the "observer" actually is. Or the distance between the slits. I think I saw a video made by other physicists about this some time ago and the distance between slits should be pretty small. And the "observer", IIRC, was some sort of a lens that would interfere with the photon or even absorb it then re-emitting it. The "weirdness" of quantum mechanics seem to be cause by the fact that the energy of your measuring particle is very high compared with the measured one. That's like wanting to detect the motion of a snooker red ball by throwing the cue ball at it pretty hard and determine the red ball's position and speed based on how the cue ball bounces back to the observer. We know that the red ball will no longer be on its original vector after that.
this is the part that science communicators tend to fall flat on. "observation" or "measurement" has a distinctly passive implication to lay people, but in reality, it's the most disruptive thing you could possibly do - bouncing, transferring, redirecting in order to catch a result. this is the source of the entire measurement problem and topics like this are essentially just science of the gaps without addressing that detail.
The distance is such that the light (the wave amplitude of which is well known) will overlap and *should* create the desired interference pattern.
You shoot one photon at a time. If your which-slit-detectors are off, cumulatively they develop an interference pattern, graphing where they land, as if each photon went through both both slits and interfered ... with itself. Like the ripples from two pebbles dropped in water.
If your detectors are on, you can see photons going through one side or the other. No more interference pattern. It doesn't seem to matter how you do the detecting.
If it's not clear to you exactly what the meaning or significance of the "observer" is .... welcome to the club.
There is nothing that's not weird about this. The weirdness of it has withstood scientific scrutiny for 100 years or more.
It just drives me absolutely crazy that I’ve heard this explanation of double slit experiment many many times in many many videos and they never reveal exactly how the detector works, because it’s well understood that when you try to measure something, you change it, and so if your measuring which of the slits the electron or photon goes through, then you’re gonna change its behavior and they just kind of skip over that !
I think they omit that because there's more than one way to do it but I was really surprised because somebody recently asked me about the double slit thing and I was like the one with the gold foil and they're like what does gold foil have to do with it. Gold foil was involved in the early detectors that were used with it, so I don't know why that information got separated but it kind of feels like it shouldn't have been.
Same here! And it's also funny how the explanation is always illustrated through some dopey animation with the photons going slow motion. Why not just show us the real experiment being performed, instead of some fake animation?
I'm not a scientist, but when considering the speed planets, stars, galaxies, etc., move, rotate through space, universe, BALANCE is maintained, look at how everything constantly maintains balance, to know exactly how everything balances throughout the universe, it must all be consciously connected, to imagine an omni present consciousness would be to realize the universe is an infinite brain balancing everything...Quantum entanglement experiment with the neutrons color changing over distance, this sparked the realization that everything is connected, all neutrons are in contact with the Big Brain, It knows everything and how to influence balance, an Omnipresent Intelligence.
I find the idea that things like particulars or atoms are conscious very hard to believe but the idea the universe, galaxies, nebulas, etc have a type of consciousness is something I'm willing to consider. Even something as small by comparison as planets is again something that I could see as true. If everything is conscious then it could be impossible to ever find out as the various particles etc that make up the devices designed to try and prove it might decide they'd rather humanity never got to know it and intentionally mess with the results. 😊
As someone who has had out of body experiences and a near-death experience, it is encouraging hearing people like you talk about this kind of thing because I myself got a first-hand experience that informed me that we are all one consciousness, and that the universe is conscious - but of course "proving" this is harder when my consciousness couldn't exactly record anything when I was dead or when I was out of my body. I am hopeful with what scientists are discovering these days that it will all be made clear soon, though. :-)
These things that you can’t describe, are called “God” and a “soul.”
He made you and everything. it’s not that everything has consciousness, but everything bows to His Will. He controls everything in this life and the next. . Fact that you were saved from death means He has given you another chance to find Him. He is the way, the truth, and the light. Talk to God, repent and he will accept you into his loving arms in this world and the next.
@@user-ic7cc5gj3p lol I am fully aware of God and soul. But what I experienced showed me that no one religion is the full picture, and that there is no reason why anyone should feel ashamed or guilty for being oneself. I have nothing to repent for, I am not guilty. What is it that you think I have done, exactly? I'm human, perfectly imperfect just like you.
Ladies… you’re both wrong
@@de_cre_vi There is no human alive who is perfect. You have done wrong in your life. Anything no matter how small. A small lie, blaming God when things go wrong, being prideful, envying others, hating someone in your heart. All these and so much more. You’ve done probably most of them at some point. Sin isn’t just murder and rape. It’s every little bad thing you do that you might not even think is a big deal.
There are many religions and mankind loves to dilute and pervert things to their own way.
No amount of rituals or good deeds or offerings will get you to heaven. You can’t just try to be a good person and no one living or dead has power to help you. Except Jesus.
Anyways, it sounds like you’ve been given a gift by having some glimpse that you are more than flesh and blood.
But one day, your body will fail and die and your spirit will be taken away.
You have the choice, until that day, to either accept that you are a sinner and that Jesus died for you, or you can ignore it. Turn away from him, let those false religions you’ve heard make you blind and deaf to the truth.
Let me simplify it for you. Any religion that requires you to do something, pay money, make sacrifices, journey a thousand miles or kill others who aren’t like you, these are all false religions. No man has the power to save himself, and the best among us is filthy in the eyes of God.
The only way we enter into paradise is through Jesus. Everything else is a lie.
God loves you and I hope one day you understand and accept that.
I wish you all the best.