January 16, 2009

Our world may be a giant hologram.
posted by homunculus 15 years ago
  • we all live in a yellow submarine...
  • They just keep proving ancient Buddhists right, don't they?
  • Their world views certainly do seem kindred in many ways. One Religion that’s Actually Embracing Science: Buddhism
  • Given this, that we do indeed live in hologram, must I wipe my arse more or less for a good picture?
  • Well, that fits into my belief that I am "living" in a simulation.
  • You're not living in a simulation. You're living on the right-hand edge of an ATM card.
  • are we a hologram or is the hologram us think about it
  • If only it WERE a hologram, I wouldn't have totaled my car last week - I'd have passed through that other vehicle! And another thing about this holographic analogy: if a tree falls in a holographic forest, and nobody hears it - does it make a crash? Berkeley would have said that God hears it because He's the projectionist? So if the universe is a hologram IS there a projectionist?
  • Oh, Jesus, Dan, don't tell me you're one of those fucking head-in-the-sand liberals who refuses to see the flaws in your "real world" theory and embrace the truth of Intelligent Cinematography. TEACH THE CONTROVERSY
  • My wife says we might have one hand on an edge pixel for this universe and one on an edge pixel for the next universe. That would place us in the projection booth ourselves, even though we only think we're specks in the wrong movie...
  • I read the Karl Pribam stuff back in the 80's, most interesting. Boils down to: your mind is an interference pattern.
  • TEACH THE CONTROVERSY --MCT In his day, Bishop Berkeley took up the cudgel of British Empiricism against Continental Rationalism, saying that *sense perception* is the only surely existing thing, hence his problem with the tree in the uninhabited forest... Now theoretical physicists try to use math to explain or even go beyond experience, but I always liked Hans Vaihinger's tolerant idea that truths are merely fictions treated AS IF they were true. Hopefully this cosmic hologram idea will prove itself to be a useful fiction?
  • Wow, that just blows me away. It will take some time to absorb. I have all sorts of questions about this......
  • I always find it really neat when experiments yield totally unexpected results. This happens so many times (like the Penzias and Wilson result referred to in the same article), and yet politicians and the like often say that fundamental research is a waste of time. Thanks homunculus for the post!
  • What Darshon said. So many levels of fascinating, so much for my tiny brain to try and process.
  • To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour...
  • "If only it WERE a hologram, I wouldn't have totaled my car last week - I'd have passed through that other vehicle!" Actually, according to quantum theory it's possible to pass through that other vehicle, just rather unlikely. Better luck next time!
  • Yellow submarine? doubtful Today our Hologram World is ruled by Tiny Masters.
  • In English, please.
  • In English, please Here's one attempt. Part 1) First, getting to the Aspect experiment mentioned in that article. Imagine a brick and a sledgehammer. You hit the brick with the sledgehammer and it breaks. You hit it again, and again until you have tiny pieces, like grains of sand. Now take two of these grains of sand. They are completely separate objects, right?... These grains of sand more or less correspond to the mental picture that the average person has of atoms (or, for those that believe they are more educated, of elementary particles): separate, indivisible objects, that are the constituents of the world. What Aspect has shown experimentally, and which had been predicted decades ago by Quantum Theory, is that those bricks/atoms/elementary_particles/Monkeyfilter_units_of_poo are not necessarily independent objects but that they can be interconnected (in effect, being a single "quantum" object) while appearing to be two objects independent one from another. English descriptions of this usually drop the necessarily from the above sentence and replace can be by are. They then often proceed to extrapolate to say that everything is interconnected, which explains neatly telepathy, ESP phenomena, the greater popularity of MeFi over MoFi, etc.,... but I digress. Part 2) Holograms. It would be difficult to provide a better explanation than the wikipedia entry on the subject. Perhaps to summarize/simplify: a 3D "picture" can be stored in a 2D picture. Part 3) Bohm's holographic theory, grossly over-simplified and misrepresented but hopefully suitable for understanding the article quoted by BlueHorse: Our description of the world as a collection of independent "atoms" in 3D is incorrect; there are no independent "atoms" - they are all interconnected and there is only one true fundamental object that is a giant hologram. We believe we are in the 3D picture but, really, we are part of a 2D hologram... sort of. Part 4) the brain as a hologram ("hologram-envy") Fact: memories of individual objects do not correspond to a single location/neurone in the brain. We have only one brain. <sarcasm> Hey, this sounds like the description of holograms never mind the absence of mathematical model... So why not say that our brain is itself a hologram. So, instead of the Universe being a single hologram, each of our brain carries its own Universe by being itself a hologram. This can explain so much, like telepathy, ESP, .... </sarcasm>
  • My understanding of a hologram is that it's a representation of something that is not actually there, a visual recording so to speak. If the universe is a hologram, does that mean we're a recording of something of happened a while ago, i.e. copies?
  • Here's a better explanation of the idea, for the non-scientific .
  • That is an eloquent and concise defuzzification, curieux! I fear, however, that much research will be required before we may truly understand the mysterious properties of the Monkeyfilter_unit_of_poo.
  • I'm still struggling to wrap my head around this. I find myself re-thinking about, or questioning what/why I am seeing at any moment, differently. I just have so many questions about this.....
  • It's like quantum mechanics in terms of understanding: it leaves you thinking What. the. fuck? Basically, rather than viewing the universe as made of separate pieces, it may be composed of pieces that are connected with every other piece. The implication of that are staggering though it'll probably be decades before we're able to take advantage of that view.
  • Which brings us back to the first three comments in this thread..
  • My brain just broke.
  • So, where does deja vu fall in to this, I wonder.
  • ...and if you look at it stoned, you're like, whoooooaaaaaa...
  • I fear, however, that much research will be required before we may truly understand the mysterious properties of the Monkeyfilter_unit_of_poo. This is an ongoing experiment. In their quest for finding the ultimate structure of matter, physicists build huge instruments that fling particles one at another. Sophisticated Monkeys, on the other hand, rely on a much simpler, but efficient experiment created by tracicle, to pursue the much needed research.
  • to pursue the much needed research I smell a federal research grant application.
  • The smell comes after the research is started.
  • ...in terms of understanding: it leaves you thinking What. the. fuck? My take on this is by the time you get to this point, barring an advanced math degree or an IQ of 210, that's about as far as your going to get. *wanders off to fling a few particles in the name of holographic research*
  • Would this older mofi discussion, or holding forth, on FUNCTIONALISM illuminate the present hologram/phantasm take on ultimate reality? Or would it just confuse things more? As in the post's WHY link stating that "...functionalism characterizes the mental in terms of structures that are tacked down to reality ONLY at the inputs and outputs." Let's see, the input goes through a black box, or hologram-like thingee, the output is the spin of a distant electron, a feeling of confusion, or maybe a train wreck...
  • ....on the acid note; whenever I've dropped I've seen everything in fractals. It's truly the most amazing thing. Thanks, homunculus, for your never-ending capacity to give good 'post'.
  • Universe: Physicists almost certainly not a figment of my imagination.
  • More on that here. But even if space/time is not composed of discrete units at this amazing level of experimental precision, at least it's going to remain discreet about the next measurement level down...
  • I don't know nuttin about measuring time or space. Let's ask someone. Maybe Zeno's.