Einstein never saw this, but it's PRECISELY that statistical & unpredictable nature of the Universe that makes every new thought & action--essentially change itself--possible. Without that, the Universe would be like a machine, limited to the movements & actions designed into it, but never capable of producing or creating anything new--much like the static mechanical Universe described by Isaac Newton. It's hard for most people, including scientists, to recognize that the rules for the macrocosm and the microcosm are very different, and don't mesh well using our current theories of reality. But in real life, they do mesh--completely. The entire macrocosm is composed of atomic matter, and thus everything that exists in the macrocosm functions from the most elemental level under quantum rules. That means everything in the Universe is subject to the whims of consciousness. Consciousness creates the Universe--constantly & continuously. It's NOT the other way around.
I honestly can't refute your claims here. I don't know. It's been my experience that you can select any topic or field of inquiry and there will be individuals connected with that who are dishonest, or charlatans or worse. I don't claim every person interviewed by Dr Greer is honest & up front, but I agree with Dr Greer's basic tenets. He's telling the truth about ETs and I feel his explanations for why we haven't been told about them is mostly accurate. I am a life-long amateur astronomer. I'm also a science lover and advocate generally, and deeply interested in several different specialty areas of scientific inquiry. A decade ago I was a true skeptic about ETs being here. I accepted the popular scientific limitations taught by physics, that nothing can travel faster than light, and the vast distances between stars & galaxies make it impossible for any civilized society to travel those distances within reasonable time frames. That made perfect sense to me. I discounted even the possibility of ETs being here. Then, I saw several UFOs myself, and my whole perspective was shattered in one evening. I don't blame anyone for not believing me or taking me seriously. I remember well how hard-nosed I had been as a skeptic. I understand that point of view. But I can't set aside what I saw either, and I can't explain what I saw in any other way than ET, because NOTHING man made could do what it did. So, I'm convinced ET is here now. I'd love to meet him, but with the mind set of humanity being what it is now, I also understand why the super-peaceful and respectful ETs want nothing to do with us other than simply watching over us till we mature enough to be more accepting of our own and other's differences. Like Dr Greer, I know ET didn't come here in spacecraft using fossil or atomic fuels. They use inter-dimensional travel systems that allow them to cover the vast distances in acceptable time frames. Yes, I know to some forum readers I will sound crazy. Exactly my own reaction a decade ago. But when you see them do stuff no human capable of doing, you follow the evidence and draw new conclusions based on that evidence--if you are truly science minded.
If you wouldn't mind, please post you UFO story here. I'd love to hear about it. http://www.politicalforum.com/index...eclare-that-aliens-have-visited-earth.535760/
An interesting observation I just noticed: There are almost exactly as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy - 100 Billion. And while stars do not typically interact electrochemically, they do interact gravitationally.
To judge from the amount of spiel they broadcast every effing day, they don't seem to keep very much 'secret' to me - they seem to want the whole world to know! lol
I read a lot of physics books. So, like you, I have an...ehm...addiction to physics. Anyway, I've read on multiple occasions that the universe may be behaving like a giant quantum computer. Everything in it including us are just manifestations of the computations that are going on. I don't know how that relates to the question of whether the universe has conscious, but it seems like there could be some overlap in these areas. I don't know.
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? High-profile physicists and philosophers gathered to debate whether we are real or virtual—and what it means either way https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/ This was initiated by a paper that shook the rafters. It is a great discussion: David Chalmers Professor of philosophy, New York University Zohreh Davoudi Theoretical physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology James Gates Theoretical physicist, University of Maryland Lisa Randall Theoretical physicist, Harvard University Max Tegmark Cosmologist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Also, Dr Gates found mathematics identical to correction algorithms used for computers, in the equations of String Theory. So maybe we live in a self-aware computer.
Hmm...is the universe billions of yesrs old or just programed to seem that way? This kind of thinking leads to all kinds of questions.
A old friend of mine got into a fundamentalist type of religion and started rejecting science. We got into it one day about carbon dating and things like the age of the universe. He ended up making the "God the trickster" argument - God created the universe in a way intended to trick scientists as a test of faith. The idea of a simulated universe sheds a whole new light on that argument. Note that the idea of a simulated universe incorporates the idea that we are all self-aware computer programs.
Perhaps self-aware computers programs are child's play in some world of the overlords and we are the playthings of a 13 yo boy. We could be nothing more than a super-advance version of SimCity. One interesting question that comes up is that of the "real physics". Does the world of the overlords operate on the laws of physics we know or do we have a special set of physics that only apply to our world?
What laws of physics must exist in order to be able to program is the only pertinent question to this diversion? In other words can logic exist in a complete vacuum where there is nothing? How does one achieve the concept of "1" in a complete vacuum where is nothing at all? A program based entirely of zeroes would not have any logical ability to do comparisons since all zeroes are equal to each other irrespective of how many zeroes you might have. Ergo there must be something in this vacuum and whatever that something is it must have attributes even if the only attribute is that the something exists. The programming logic can now rely upon does the something exist or not. Give the something other attributes like dimensions and locations and now we can have logic that applies to the something with respect to the attributes.
The “God the trickster”, like the Devil trickster, argument is flawed, IMO, because it anthropomorphises an entity larger and more powerful than the Universe itself. It’s also illogical; why create a universe of set defined rules then violate them? For what purpose? Just to screw with us? Sidestepping on the “self-aware computer program” thought for a minute; a common philosophical discussion is interacting with other species or machines which are of equal or greater intelligence than our own. Should they be granted equal rights? What are the differences between a actual intelligence and one just very well programmed to act like an actual intelligence? The Turing Test was designed to detect the difference, but what are its limits of detection? The first “Blade Runner” movie focused specifically on this question. Coming back to the God and we’re all computer program question, the comment made by René Descartes makes the most sense to me: “I think therefore I am”.
One of the real mysteries in physics is that of the values of the physical constants - the speed of light, Planck's constant, the gravitational constant, the electric and magnet field constants, and so on. If these valued varied the universe as we know it couldn't exist. Atoms would have never formed. Our universe seems to be finely tuned. So the questions arise: Did we get fantastically lucky? Are there underlying laws that force these values that we haven't yet discovered? Did God make it that way? Some religious people point to this as evidence for a god. How did these values just happen to have the values needed so that atoms and all that we observe can exist? One school of thought goes back to the idea that universes may be bubbling up constantly, each with different values for the physical constants and even different physical laws. Perhaps for every universe like ours that works that emerges from the quantum foam, there are thousands or millions or billions of failed universes where atoms could not exist. Or maybe the overlords are running experiments to see what universes work and how many sets of laws of physics can produced. Or, could a conscious universe be in play somehow. Some years ago there was interest in the work of Burkhard Heim [see Heim Theory], who seemed to have produced equations that predicted the values of the physical constants. But in the end I think it was determined that he had inadvertently used circular reasoning and it wasn't actually predictive. Too bad. He also seemed to have produced the math needed for interdimensional travel. You could shift to a different dimension in space where the speed of light was greater, allowing one to exceed the speed of light in our own dimensions of space.
The fine-tuned universe problem is definitely intriguing. I see two possible solutions. You guys may be able to think of more...I don't know. One, our universe could be one among many that exist in the bulk. It's the multiverse theory. The parameters of our universe are the way they are because there are so many universes that one of them was bound to be this way. We just happen to be lucky enough to be in this one. Maybe the string theory landscape that predicts 10^500 universes might not be as ridiculous as it seems. Second, our universe could be intelligently (or consciously) designed. The naive implication for me is that this would have happened externally. But, you got me thinking with the thread that maybe this theory could be equally valid even if the design were internal vs. external. What if instead of there being a God the universe itself is God? I'm also not turning a blind eye to the idea that we may one day create self-aware entities of our own. If we allowed them to interact in the everyday world along side us you might be willing to pass it off as being nothing more than another invention of humans, albeit a really clever one. Afterall, I didn't come away from watching I, Robot thinking Will Smith was the God character or anything. But, if we confined their consciousness to the digital/quantum world of a computer and didn't allow any interaction with our world such that not even they would be able to understand our existence would we then be playing the role of God? If that day ever comes and we can demonstrate consciousness at that level then it will solidify the concept that we could be nothing more than pieces of information in someone else's simulation as well. It does make you ponder doesn't it?
The fine-tuning problems strikes me as a fantastically important unresolved problem in physics; perhaps the most important problem of all. It may be the key to a theory of everything. Everything in physics depends on the physical constants yet we have absolutely no idea why they have the values they do. It is the elephant in the lab.
Douglas Adams answered the questions above; https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70827-this-is-rather-as-if-you-imagine-a-puddle-waking Just because the value of Pi is a constant everywhere in the Universe does not imply that it was "created". Instead it is just a product of math which is the language of the universe and those who don't understand math substitute the term god instead. Or to put it another way, since everything can be measured that makes math the "ruler" of the universe! Yes, pun intended!
My personal inclination is towards a cyclical universe but with a twist. If we imagine an infinite space with multitudes of universes in them then they could be acted upon by "tidal forces". To put this into more familiar concepts an ocean can have an area that began as a block of ice that warmed, expanded, vaporised, cooled, condensed, contracted and reformed into ice. If there were multiples of these cyclical universes our universe might be affected by those in our vicinity. As far as intelligent goes it is possible that communication between universes is accomplished via quasars. All of the above is pure speculation on my part.
Imagine an intelligent/self aware microbe on a slide. This creature perceives its world as a two dimensional plane, while we are watching is in our 3D reality. Now think about us being on someone/things slide and it watching us from its 5D world....what are the other dimensions it lives in? Likely we only see this Universe with the senses we evolved with, but there are many more we have no access to.
Rupert Sheldrake has talked about this, the OP, and when I brought him up a few times, he was attacked as a charlatan. ha ha Tom Campbell the nasa physicist thinks we live in a VR, and he uses the video game analogy. He has recently received the funding to do a series of complicated double slit experiments looking for evidence which will take place over the next years to support this hypothesis. Since he is considered to be "out there" of course getting a grant would be impossible. I think he crowd funded it. It will at least be interesting to see what these 5 or 6 different experiments yield.
The specific value only depends on the method of measurement. But by any method of measure it would still be a constant and would always be C/D. Same goes for all the constants. The values we measure depends on the physics we use. But they would always have to produce a universe that works. And why that happened is a mystery. It could be that they are somehow forced values based on some deeper physics we don't understand. But that only deepens the mystery. What physics? We must be missing something fundamental. As far we we know right now, the values could be arbitrary. And that seems highly unlikely. It would be the greatest coincidence in the history of the universe.
"It is also believed by many who study this that consciousness may be an emergent property of very large information systems. For example, it is thought that the most likely candidate for an artificial consciousness is the largest network in the world - the internet. One day when large enough and complex enough, it may or may have simply come alive at some critical threshold." I don't buy it. We have consciousness not just because there is a bunch of "complexity" involved, but because the complexity we have is arranged in such a way as to make consciousness as we know it possible. Given how many machines we already have plugged into the global internet, I would say that it's already more "complex" than many lifeforms on this planet today, yet they have no consciousness of their own even as a network. There are no emergent properties that are other than what is designed and intended by their designers. They're nodes in a network doing what they're meant to do. Our brain cells and neurons and so on are nodes in a network of their own, but their "design" is quite different from that of the machines we plug into the vast network we call the internet. Consciousness also appears to operate on something of a spectrum with different levels of awareness and intelligence, and interestingly even creatures without brains have a certain level of complexity that allows them to sense and interact with the world around them, e.g. trees responding to the environment and, if I'm not mistaken, able to communicate in some capacity with one another. This they do without any consciousness as we know it, given that they have no nervous system. Is there anything about the universe at large that suggests such a state? I'm not sure we possess the necessary perspective to observe that. It's problematic that we are essentially imprisoned within the universe and wholly subject to it, being "creations" of it and very limited in our observational capacity. We can't look at the whole thing, we can't measure every aspect of it, we can't even get an external perspective of it. It's like trying to study a tree while locked up somewhere inside its branch structure, unable to see even the exterior of the tree, let alone all of its inner workings, and also unable to peer into its most microscopic, innermost workings.
How would we know? Self awareness and action with intent are two separate issues. The internet may think it is acting out of free will when in fact it is driven by the actions of those using it. It gets back to the question of whether we have free will, or are just acting out according to our hardware/software and inputs that result in our actions, with choice being an illusion.
