The Two-Slit Experiment

[Buddy]

Bud and Bluelamp,

I have to say your discussion is difficult to follow. I don't understand it, but I wonder if you are talking about the "Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory" which is in Wikipedia. It seems to be the origin of Feynman's description of anti-matter as regular matter moving backward in time. In Wikipedia, "absorber theory" appears to be a mathematical solution to the "problem" of advanced and retarded waves from Maxwell, which in turn appear to be mathematical rather than physical. I don't understand any of the math, but the "absorber theory" seems to be important because it preserves time symmetry: it operates with time moving in either direction (future to past or past to future). And that has to do with conservation of energy, because it appears that energy conservation is associated with time symmetry. The modern field theories are all "symmetry" theories. (And "forces" appear through symmetry-breaking and transition to "ordered" phases.) The idea of the absorber theory is that an electron doesn't feel its own field, but responds to another electron. And when a photon moves between two electrons, the absorber theory makes it possible for either electron to be the emitter or the absorber. That is where the backward-time moving part comes in. An electron emits a photon (moving say past-to-future), but it can also be treated as absorbing an anti-photon (a photon moving future-to-past), etc.

That sounds pretty much like it, though I don't follow the math so much as I think of the explanations in terms of patterns I'm familiar with in various contexts.

Perhaps you could describe what you understand time reversal symmetry to be,

Generally speaking, anything that can happen on one arrow of time, exactly matches everything that happens on the other arrow with no loss of energy.

and how you see the broader symmetry question.

In terms of patterns that make sense to me. IOW, the instantaneous workings of time/event reversal on the quantum level with the QM computer calculations, translates to the principle of self-organization on our scale and on up to cosmic scales, OSIT.

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That quote is here, (during the Frank years, though...)
{snip}

The part in the quote about creating/destroying reality and creating separate universes to live in doesn't 'connect' with me anywhere yet, but the rest...about us all being interconnected, the mind represents all that exists, that there is no limits, all is ultimately one... is heart-warming and recognizable to me as being consistent with how I tend to see things too.

As just one example: I find that the idea of the mind being unlimited, and therefore essentially one with all that is, to be rather consistent with my notion that the inductive, context based awareness IS the environmental energy fields all around us, streaming in, with data, to be blended in our nervous systems with everything else we have ever perceived, making self-remembering possible.

With such a notion, "paying attention to reality right and left" simply means "step out of your shallower mind space where you tend to hang around a bit too much and start using the rest of the mind that's available to you and for which the brain is wired to accommodate!"

I think there are more than two, because understanding doesn't take place in a vacuum. Did you catch what went unstated regarding the idea "when we set ourselves up to get a certain result, it sets up a channel for an appropriate behavior coming the other way?"

I saw that you had said this with some pregnant meaning, I'm afraid I don't grasp why exactly.

See below, next.

Can you see the QM components in the entire set up of the Cassiopaean experiment?

There are a number of ways this can be interpreted. Can you explain your meaning more exactly?

I meant that the pattern of the slit experiment set ups matches the pattern of the C's experiment, starting with the ambiance, or setting of a session, to the prepared questions, the participant-observers and their interaction with the board and component set up of the experiment. This allows a connection with a future state that allows a two way energy flow - communication within the constraints of the board and it's component pieces for the purpose of resolving the questions being posed as "inputs to the problem directed to the future", with outputs flowing back to the past (our present).

Once I understood the slit experiments (which are clearly defined from the initial idea to the final 'result'), it simply became another pattern that I am now familiar with. Now, this pattern suggests itself anywhere it is useful, whether thinking about QM, the C's experiment or the Mubarak situation. The Mubarak thing was just a metaphor of this same pattern intended to show the difference between "love and light" problem solving efforts and what can actually be done when people interact with a plan in mind. (Note: I made no value judgments of good or bad, nor did I suggest who exactly was responsible in Egypt - I was just noting the actions as an example of a recognizable pattern in the conventional terms of the slit experiments, should a person want to look at it that way for some reason).

So. . , (please correct me if I am wrong. I thought I understood before where you stood on the Double Slit experiment, but recently went back to read your posts again), there IS in your view a wave function collapse; probabilities exist, there is a wave of light traversing both slits, but then it does become a "particle" of light after measurement. This is different from David George's view that there is NEVER a particle of reality that light collapses into, but only ever a wave and we just have a mistaken understanding of what we are seeing on the lab bench. (If I am correct in understanding HIS view, and please forgive me, David George, if I am wrong.)

We don't really know what the electrons do. Like an electron gun shooting electrons at a phosphor screen in the old tv and pc monitors, the single slit experiment itself is rather dull and predictable isn't it?

In the double-slit experiment, people imagined electrons behaving as a wave. Probably because they were already familiar with wave dynamics, or ocean waves at the beach going through a breakwater or something (for example). They needed the wave to explain interference patterns and in order to explain why electrons didn't follow a particular path, landing at a particular destination. The theory was supposed to predict that when electron 'waves' went through the slits, the interference patterns should predict where electrons would clump together. Where the waves added up we should expect to find electrons, where the waves canceled each other out we should expect to find no electrons. But that didn't turn out to be predictable along linear dynamics either, did it?

Turns out, we weren't able to actually predict where to find electrons until we squared to get the probability amplitude, which led to the particular idea that would make sense of this behavior (an event running forwards and backwards symmetrically on the quantum level).

So, it seems both the electron and the wave are hypothetical and each could be used as appropriate to explain whatever behavior is perceived as long as we don't introduce contradictions into the mix.

But, and here I think is your particular logical requirement, the wave will not collapse into a point without some manner of DOing on the part of the experimenter. In this case, the DOing is the act of placing detectors at the slits,

As I see it, the key is 'interaction' between the observable (electron) and the observing equipment (detector) as Bondoni and Bell pointed out. The human looker's role is to clarify the problem, decide on the needed constraints and 'arrange stuff' to allow for a certain range of expected (but unknown) outcomes.

and that this is a physical interaction, not just a passive looking on, and the wave function collapse itself is purely mechanical in nature.

Using the wave function analogy, the 'result' that we call 'collapsing the wave function' is not literally some kind of transition from 'particle' to 'wave' to 'particle' or whatever. It's just the electrons or energy configurations or whatever are following pathways that are, or become, available in both directions. (and here is where I prolly get kicked out of the discussion :D).

The act of DOing is what collapses the function. DOing creates the reality and the ability to know that reality. --Or perhaps better put, DOing causes reality to respond and react accordingly.

Is that in line with your current working belief set?

Sounds close enough. As a possible confirmation of that understanding, did the C's say our life is a reflection of our interaction with all creation, or our observation of all creation? To me, the universe appears to be dynamic and the interaction of patterns of something with other patterns of something seems to be what makes things happen.

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I could probably buy it if I could reconcile it with universal principles that deal with energy, like 'conservation of energy' and 'path of least resistance'.

Quantum physics is kind of more information conservation than energy and via Feynman paths, many worlds get this naturally.

OK, I get where you're coming from.

We don't have time travel. Shouldn't 'having time travel' precede time travel paradoxes?

Well from an information point of view, just communicating with the Cs is time travel

OK, it's just that I don't see anything I'd recognize as 'time travel'. I see energy being traded for information on both arrows of time via an energy channel. And this is not much different from how I understand 'getting an insight'.

As a simple example, let's say you're mentally working on a heavy problem. For 30 minutes you concentrate on all the elements, turning them in all directions, looking for hidden relationships and patterns. At the end of the 30 minutes, you experience a "problem quake" (software engineer term) and the elegant simplicity of the problem's essence hits you and you know what solution to implement. In this example, you traded all that mental/physical energy with yourself as you exist 30 minutes into your future. At the exact instant of the 'insight', the inputs to the problem in one direction rolled into the solution breaking down to the inputs coming from the future! Very similar to those basic quantum computer calculations!

In the C's experiment, everything that is done just before the 'connect' with the C's is what I mean by setting up a channel for an appropriate behavior coming the other way. Remember in the early days, how 'just setting up a board and waiting' didn't do much good at first? Laura and co. had to spend time grooving in the appropriate behaviors until the 'correct' universe configuration (involving Jupiter) was in place. At that point, the channel was 'properly set up'.

and 4D STS going back in time to redo our 3D history would be time travel too.

Understood, but I'm unable to integrate that at this time. I am still learning too, after all. :)

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In case it helps to understand me, I see that Universe is absolutely chock full of patterns. Some uniform, a great many non-uniform (fractal and multi-fractal). Feynman's path integrals describe 'hoppy' kinds of paths that are fractal. Scientists and researchers have discovered that heartbeats are not uniform, but fractal. Coastlines and the boulders and rocks that go with them are fractal in their geometry. Tree growth is based on fractal patterns. On the widest scales, scientists have also discovered and described the multi-fractal distribution of galaxies. All motion is movement of patterns (of 'things') in patterns of motion.

So, it's not that I know anything about physics, as such, it's that I study the stuff I can understand and when I see the pattern, I can automatically match it to all other same or similar patterns I'm aware of and see that hermetic axiom in play. If I run into an idea that seems too conceptually linear and has no actual evidentiary base, my mind doesn't quite know what to do with it. Or so it seems. :)

 

[go2]

FWIW….The effort of the imaginative mind to secure itself by misusing the methods of science, which are suited to questions concerning how of the physical world, to answer the what of reality and the why of purpose, is a fruitless path for man.

Reality is not found in sheets of differential equations or mathematical logic. To me, the frontier of human potential is developing the capacity to directly perceive reality via the higher centers resonant with the universe. My soul is comfortable with mystery; it is the intellect which demands answers to its fears.

My words reflect a feeling that mathematics and scientific method have become Gods that threaten to devour mankind, as men insecure living with mystery, ambiguity, subjectivity, and paradox become more and more absurd in their Towers of Babel.

There is, once again, a general and common conclusion reached by the majority of the theorists in this volume, and best elucidated by Schroedinger and Eddington. Eddington begins with the acknowledged fact that physics is dealing with shadow, not reality. Now the great difference, he says, between the old and the new physics is not that the latter is relativistic, nondeterministic, four-dimensional, or any of those sorts of things. The great difference between old and new physics is both much simpler and much more profound: Both the old and the new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact--forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.

Thus, in perhaps the most famous and oft-quoted passage of any of these theorists, Eddington eloquently states: “In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper….The frank realization the physical science is concerned with a world of shadow is one of the most significant of recent advances.”

Schroedinger drives the point home: “Please note that the very recent advance [of quantum and relativistic physics] does not lie in the world of physics itself having acquired this shadowy character; it had ever since Democritus of Abdera and even before, but we were not aware of it; we thought we were dealing with the world itself.”

And Sir James Jeans summarizes it perfectly, right down to the metaphor: “The essential fact is simply that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical pictures…They are nothing more than pictures—fictions if you like, if by fiction you mean that science is not yet in contact with ultimate reality. Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentieth-century physics is not the theory of relativity and its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant discovery that things are not what they seem; it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality. We are still imprisoned in our cave, with our backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the wall.”

“The symbolic nature of physics,” Eddington explains, “is generally recognized, and the scheme of physics is now formulated in such a way as to make it almost self-evident that it is a partial aspect of something wider.” However, according to these physicists, about this “something wider” physics tells us—and can tell us—nothing whatsoever. It was this radical failure of physics, and not its supposed similarities to mysticism, that paradoxically led so many physicists to a mystical view of the world.

As Eddington carefully explains: “Briefly the position is this. We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness—the one center where more might become known. There [in immediate consciousness] we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols….Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that…which science is admittedly unable to do.”

 

[Leon1]

Hello again guys, the whole thread I have found very interesting, even if my small input has generally been noise, I find it useful making that noise as it helps me process oddly enough.
Putting my thoughts out there in the universe so to speak.

As a simple example, let's say you're mentally working on a heavy problem. For 30 minutes you concentrate on all the elements, turning them in all directions, looking for hidden relationships and patterns. At the end of the 30 minutes, you experience a "problem quake" (software engineer term) and the elegant simplicity of the problem's essence hits you and you know what solution to implement. In this example, you traded all that mental/physical energy with yourself as you exist 30 minutes into your future. At the exact instant of the 'insight', the inputs to the problem in one direction rolled into the solution breaking down to the inputs coming from the future! Very similar to those basic quantum computer calculations!

In the C's experiment, everything that is done just before the 'connect' with the C's is what I mean by setting up a channel for an appropriate behavior coming the other way. Remember in the early days, how 'just setting up a board and waiting' didn't do much good at first? Laura and co. had to spend time grooving in the appropriate behaviors until the 'correct' universe configuration (involving Jupiter) was in place. At that point, the channel was 'properly set up'.

Reminds me of a couple things from my past.

One was the reading of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and the other was my realisations related to the same.

I was into MC's for years before my arthritis had me giving it up.
I often used to strip/rebuild and often try to upgrade my bikes. Often in a repair I would spend hours working every angle trying to solve a problem
After hours of mental and physical work, quite often I would sit back, have a ciggie a cup of tea, and PoP! I would get an insight that invariably solved the problem.

This had happened on several occassions and as you are sayingits as if one needs to invest the energy first.

Its a similar process for Lucid dreaming from my experience too or even cogitation of mental problem solving. In Lucid dreaming which I used to experiment in some years back I most often needed to store huge ammounts of mental energy through huge ammounts of mental activity in order to trigger the onset of the Lucid states. Learning is no different as far as I can see in that respect. One can go over the same information many times until one sits back in a moment of rest and suddenly an insight can change the whole understanding.

Leon

 

[David George]

Bud,

It seems to me you are reading a great deal of significance into the concept of time reversal symmetry that the concept may not possess. As I said, it appears to be a mathematical concept. According to Wikipedia the time reversal aspect of a photon in the Wheeler-Feynman theory solves the "problem" created by two alternative solutions of a "Maxwell equation", where a light wave may end up being absorbed at a future time, or it may end up being absorbed at a past time. So the "problem" is that the classical solutions contradict each other: it does not make sense that a light wave can be absorbed either in the future or in the past. Feynman came up with an equation in which the "unphysical" wave (your choice) is cancelled out (=0) in our universe, and time symmetry is preserved.

Why was it necessary to preserve time symmetry? It may be because classically, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (according to Newton). So that when a cannonball strikes a wall, the wall strikes the cannonball. The total "energy" of the cannonball-wall system in the action-reaction sequence is then conserved. This seems to tell us that "energy" is conserved in any action-reaction sequence. And it introduces the notion of symmetry: the reaction is symmetrical (equal and opposite) to the action. The idea of energy conservation and of time symmetry then appears to underpin all physical processes. Noether's theorem, a mathematical description of the energy-conserving "symmetry preserving" action-reaction sequence, showed (as far as I understand it) that energy conservation requires "time symmetry". A reversed action-reaction sequence should occur at the same rate as an original sequence. So as more was found out about how things happen, in order to "obey" this "law" of nature, time symmetry must be preserved. And Feynman's theory appears to provide for that.

(Time symmetry is not the only symmetry that must be preserved. There are two others (C & P), which I don't understand, and neither is preserved in experiments. Only the combined symmetry charge-parity-time CPT is "preserved", but it does not appear testable because the whole universe must be reversed in order to test it. So whether symmetry, or even energy conservation, is a valid way of looking at physical reality is doubtful. It may be valid locally, but some motions or action-reaction sequences appear to be irreversible. Since CP symmetry is seen to be violated, physicists are now looking for "supersymmetry" at the LHC in order to preserve 300 years of physics!)

However, the physical reality of time flowing backward as well as forward is not suggested by the mathematical theory. I think it is only a way of speaking, of dealing with events "as if" for example an electron moves back in time rather than a positron moving forward in time. The physically real event is one in which elapsed time from cause to effect in a system always moves in the same direction. That makes sense, because our clocks always move in the same direction, and we measure elapsed time with clocks.

With this in mind, I am trying to understand your vision. You appear to see a kind of "many worlds" system in which not only is there an infinite number of "parallel" universes whose timelines (moving toward the future) can intersect, but also there is an equally infinite number of universes whose timelines run in the opposite direction to the one we inhabit. So as we move in one time direction (say, toward our future) there is another universe moving towards us in the opposite direction, toward our past. Is that how you see it?

You also seem to envision the two-slit experiment as being set up to provide a place and time for the meeting of the two universes - or, at least, the experimental setup and operation illustrates the meeting of the two universes. But how does this meeting influence the impact pattern of the particles? By what mechanism, in the two-universe system, does the interference pattern arise in the two-slit experiment? Simply to argue that the meeting is characterized by an interference pattern does not explain the interference pattern. It is known that an electron is a material body. In the physical reality that I experience with my senses, a material body does not pass through two spatially separated slits at the same time. What happens in the physical reality that you experience? I wonder if you can explain that clearly in a few words. Otherwise, I would have to say that to create a view of physical reality based on a non-physical mathematical concept is a mission impossible.

I should add Feynman's words about the electron experiment. He said that no one understands it.

Quoting him again (from Six Easy Pieces; it is also in an earlier post): "It is impossible to design an apparatus to determine which hole the electron passes through, that will not at the same time disturb the electron enough to destroy the interference pattern.... No one has ever found (or even thought of) a way around the uncertainty principle. So we must assume that it describes a basic characteristic of nature....
"One might still like to ask: 'How does it work? What is the machinery behind the law?' No one has found any machinery behind the law. . . . We have no ideas about a more basic mechanism from which these results can be deduced."

I have been trying to describe exactly that "more basic mechanism": the moving electron's path is influenced by the electromagnetic waves it emits. That is, I believe there is a physically real mechanism to explain the result. It does not require any time reversed universe. Similarly I have explained the result of the "photon" two-slit experiment, and it does not require any time reversed universe. Can you explain where I am wrong? If not, what do you see in the physical reality you experience with your senses that requires a time reversed universe?

go2 wrote,

"The effort of the imaginative mind to secure itself by misusing the methods of science, which are suited to questions concerning how of the physical world, to answer the what of reality and the why of purpose, is a fruitless path for man."

go2, I agree with that to a point. If the imaginative mind does not attempt to find out what the mechanisms of the physical world are, as they are understood by the methods of science, there is much room for confusion. Newton was able to show that the influence causing an apple to fall from a tree is the same influence causing orbital motions. He was able to quantify the influence! He understood some of the machinery, but could not explain how the influence was transmitted. He left his description at "instantaneous action at a distance". Einstein rewrote that part. But in both cases, there is an understandable description of the "how", as you put it. (I think that "why" can also be a question of "how".) And the scientists themselves did not rest, and do not rest, once they can put a mathematical formula to work. They want to know about the what and why of reality, to add to the "school of knowledge". And here there is a tendency of quantum mechanics practitioners to misuse their own methods, by interpreting them as the machinery of the physical world.

As an example, there is a widespread notion among "scientific" writers that "God plays with dice", i.e. that nature is inherently uncertain, even random. They come to this view directly from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that the act of measuring makes the measurement uncertain. At small scales humans can only make statistical predictions about the outcome of a measurement, due to that measurement uncertainty.

The region of measurement uncertainty provides a space in which anything can happen so long as it disappears before it can be observed. The defenders of quantum mechanics -- scientists, I mean -- interpret this as a natural uncertainty. That is, nature is uncertain of itself! Hence the view, "God plays with dice". But Mother Nature does not play with dice -- quantum mechanics plays with dice! As I noted above, Feynman admits we do not know the machinery. In this case, the scientists are "misusing" their own knowledge.

I agree that it is futile to build a world view on natural processes that are not understood. But it does not help anyone when those who purport to understand natural processes misunderstand their own methods. I suspect the formal quantum mechanics training says nothing about any broader "philosophical" implications of measurement uncertainty or the statistics-based wave function, but that does not stop the scientists from thinking about it. I believe they have been thinking about the wrong things. For 100 years, there appears to be no effort to figure out the machinery behind the two-slit experiment - in other words, to come up with a physical model of an atom (a model that can give a visual picture).

The book passage you quote repeatedly mentions "shadows". I wonder if that emphasis comes from Plato. The shadows in the physical reality I sense are insignificant compared with the brilliance and fine resolution of the illuminated natural world. And the brilliance and resolution become even finer when illuminated by knowledge. But modern "science" is limited by its requirement to quantify and predict events. Where does that requirement come from? I believe it comes from the masters of the scientists: their patrons in government and industry, who seek some source of profit or ill-defined "good" through technology. (What is the purpose of the universe, in your view?) Then the shadow is in the eyes of those who think "science" can show us a way - it is like thinking a car can show us where to go.

"Both the old and the new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact--forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality."

Unfortunately, the new "new physics" in the age of mass communication is happy to promote the illusion that the shadows and illusions it confronts are real. This illusion affects the physicists themselves, as I have tried to show in the example above.

Leon,

I can understand exactly where you are coming from. I have found exactly the same thing myself. I have filled up hundreds of pages with high school algebra moving symbols around, and worked myself into a kind of confused trance, trying to figure out what they meant. The discovery of what they represent -- in a visual physical reality, not the "mathematical" representations -- is like a gift from God (or Mother Nature). It is immensely satisfying, and the satisfaction lasts a long time. Where does the "insight" come from? Maybe it comes from the future. The illumination in no way lessens the miraculousness of nature for me. The library in the "school of knowledge" (science) in no way diminishes the value of the process in the "school of thought".

 

[Buddy]

This had happened on several occassions and as you are sayingits as if one needs to invest the energy first.

Yup. in Work terms and in Work contexts, we'd call it "paying in advance".

It seems to me you are reading a great deal of significance into the concept of time reversal symmetry that the concept may not possess.

Or maybe not, because that doesn't seem to really be exactly what I'm talking about. What I'm suggesting as a 'possibility', because there seems to be no perceivable constraints that prohibit it, is that everything in the universe is moving in a direction we can call 'forward in time' AND that same stuff in the universe is also moving in a direction we can call 'backward in time'. Where the two movements meet we have the present moment in all its richness, complexity, simplicity and mystery.

The fact that the future is coming this way to meet us at the same time we are headed that way to meet it is what explains how there can be an 'ever-present now'. This would also explain how the C's could say that the past, present and future are all happening simultaneously and there is nothing but "now". Because that's how we experience it (or can experience it for those who don't). Because we are thoroughly embedded in this universe and our perceptions 'accumulate' on one arrow of time, we don't perceive the backwards arrow the same way that we perceive the forwards one. We perceive events on the backwards arrow as self-organization phenomena, serendipity, insights, mysterious happenings or "glitches in the matrix" kind of stuff, etc.

Here is what appears to be an adequate visualization:

A Sphere spiral by MC Escher or perhaps mapping a logarithmic spiral onto the Riemann Sphere.
_http://www.clowder.net/hop/Riemann/Riemann.html

However, the physical reality of time flowing backward as well as forward is not suggested by the mathematical theory. I think it is only a way of speaking, of dealing with events "as if" for example an electron moves back in time rather than a positron moving forward in time. The physically real event is one in which elapsed time from cause to effect in a system always moves in the same direction. That makes sense, because our clocks always move in the same direction, and we measure elapsed time with clocks.

With this in mind, I am trying to understand your vision.

Maybe that's the problem. 'Let go' for a moment and try to feel the vision on it's own terms. First, unless I misunderstand you, you have a tendency to say "it's only mathematics" as if there were a requirement that math not actually represent something.

Mathematics equations underlie all currently discovered fractal patterns and algorithms have already been developed to 'analyze' patterns to discover the mathematical rules that generate these patterns (see the Jpeg 2000 standard, for example), so the "two" are "one". The symbols have substance.

There is math that is only math though and is just symbol pushing because the variables don't really represent anything in reality. That kind of math is just a game to some folks.

Finally, the deal with the clocks? That is true from our point of view, but is "our point of view" as this direction of time the only one possible? Your statement also demonstrates a possibility for benefitting from efforts to step out of the box and look at things in a more non-linear way. Just as an exercise in "lucid thinking" if nothing else. :)

 

[David George]

In response to this,

"It seems to me you are reading a great deal of significance into the concept of time reversal symmetry that the concept may not possess."

Bud wrote,

-- "Or maybe not, because that doesn't seem to really be exactly what I'm talking about. What I'm suggesting as a 'possibility', because there seems to be no perceivable constraints that prohibit it, is that everything in the universe is moving in a direction we can call 'forward in time' AND that same stuff in the universe is also moving in a direction we can call 'backward in time'. Where the two movements meet we have the present moment in all its richness, complexity, simplicity and mystery."

Bud, I take from your response that you are not after all speaking about the Feynman equation solving the classical problem for light waves. So you are not dealing with physical reality 'constrained' by the requirement to reproduce our sense experience (in which clocks always appear to move in one direction) by experiment, but with a possible 'unconstrained' physical reality in which some universal 'stuff' flows in two directions at once, meeting in the present moment. Does this universal 'stuff' follow a rule such that cause precedes effect? Or can effect precede cause in some universes? I imagine in such universes, anything is indeed possible.

-- "The fact that the future is coming this way to meet us at the same time we are headed that way to meet it is what explains how there can be an 'ever-present now'."

I am not sure that your statement is a statement of fact. In the physical reality I experience with my senses, a "fact" is an event we cannot alter -- it has already occurred. But it may be a valid image, if by "the future" you mean future time. But you seem to be saying that the future is some kind of moving entity, "coming this way", while we are "headed that way". And between the two of us, we meet in an "ever-present now", like two cars moving toward each other and colliding. Does "the future" then move at some speed, at the same "time" we move at some speed, according to ticks of a clock? Then both "the future" and "us" must be moving in the same direction according to the clock.

If not, then are you saying simply that present time moves into future time, and future time moves into present time? That makes sense. I believe I have already said that it is up to us how to perceive the "flow" of time: we can see it as moving from future to past, or from past to future. It depends on our point of view. That may have some relevance to your comment, if you recognize the need to make a choice.

So in a cause-effect universe, which I 'constrain' to mean that cause precedes effect, cause may lie in the future relative to effect, or cause may lie in the past relative to effect (the latter being the conventional view, I believe). My requirement that the cause of an event must precede the event leads to a naturally arising sequential time; whether this sequential time moves past-to-future or future-to-past is up to us to decide. Are such causal relations unconstrained in your universe?

-- "'Let go' for a moment and try to feel the vision on it's own terms. First, you have a tendency to say "it's only mathematics". Mathematics equations underlie all currently discovered fractal patterns and algorithms have already been developed to 'analyze' patterns to discover the mathematical rules that generate these patterns (see the Jpeg 2000 standard, for example), so the "two" are "one". The symbols have substance."

I mean that the mathematicians -- for example, Feynman -- recognize that the mathematics is a "shadow" (to use a word from 2go's post) of physical reality. To take the mathematics as representative of physical reality is to go where not even the physicists go. (Feynman called his technique of renormalization a "shell game". He knew it did not represent fundamental understanding.)

I am confused by your language. Perhaps you can describe the substance of the symbols of the mathematics equations underlying all currently discovered patterns, and algorithms developed to analyze patterns to discover the mathematical rules that generate these patterns. By "substance" do you mean the mathematics equations, etc. have some physical form, apart from their appearance on paper? Or do you mean the universe is a system of mathematical symbols? Or do you mean they illuminate some natural principle (according to our sense experience of physical reality)?

-- "There is math that is only math though and is just symbol pushing because the variables don't really represent anything in reality. That kind of math is just a game to some folks."

Could you give an example? As far as I understand it, mathematics attempts to find "truth", whether in an abstract sense or as a tool of physics. Mathematicians may seem to be in some strange space, but physicists often turn to them when they can't figure out what is going on in physical reality. At the same time I believe that due to its failure to seek a visual physical model of an atomic system, physics has wandered down a path leading to mathematics-based theories that become ever more obscure and "unphysical" -- i.e., nonsensical.

-- "Finally, the deal with the clocks [moving in only one direction - DG]? That is true from our point of view, but is "our point of view" as this direction of time the only one possible? Your statement also demonstrates how you could benefit from efforts to step out of the box and look at things in a more non-linear way. Just as an exercise in "lucid thinking" if nothing else."

I am not sure how to step outside the "linear box" of time. From your description, it appears that everything happens simultaneously there. In my universe, time flows -- at variable rates. It slows down when I'm having a good time. It seems like a moment lasts a long time. When I am busy, time flies. Twenty-four hours can be like an eternity or a vanishing minute -- in both good and bad ways.

Indeed, I find the "flow of time" to be a fascinating sense experience. In the right space, I enjoy the sense of future events flowing past me on their way to my memory: light waves, and sound waves, arrive at my eyes or ears from the future -- and there is no past! In thinking about light over the years, I have come to recognize a universal moment -- I call it a "light moment", in which the whole universe is present in the same moment - "now", that is. And I come to this recognition as follows: if I look at a distant object (say even a star), then at the very same moment I see it, it 'sees' me (or the Sun)! And this "principle" can be applied to every material body in the universe, no matter how near or far. If some light source illuminates two separated bodies, and there is a line of sight between them, then they also are illuminated to each other. As light scattered from the first body falls on the second, simultaneously light scattered from the second body falls on the first. Applying this to our Earthly human consciousness, and imagining our brains as transmitters and receivers of electromagnetic radiation, i.e. light (which I believe is the case), if we are able to tune in to our transmitting and receiving system, then at the same time we "imagine" some distant system, if the distant system is tuned to the same frequency it may be "imagining" us - at exactly the same moment! This conjecture may not be so far out. Identical twins may well be "hard wired" to the transmit and receive on the same frequency, since they have a telepathy-like ability. Out-of-body experiences seem to employ some kind of distant projection of consciousness. These case lead me to think there is much we do not know about physical reality.

On the other hand, I can't imagine everything happening at once. I don't even try to imagine it, because it doesn't make any sense to me. So I guess I am limited that way.

 

[combsbt]

I've been thinking about this topic and I have some resources to include in the discussion:

Q: (L) That's what I thought. Go ahead, Roger, ask what
ever you like. (RS) I want to know whether we can have
any clues on the propulsion systems of UFOs?
A: Sure!
Q: (RS) What's the mechanism of the propulsion?
A: This is difficult to answer when posed in such a manner,
as we are talking about multiple realities, density levels and
various modes as well!!
Q: (RS) Is the gravity experienced by an anti-particle in the
field of matter attractive or repulsive?
A: Repulsive when thought of in the way that is parallel to
your studies, but, as we alluded to in the previous answer,
there are more realms involved besides the one with which
you are most familiar.
Q: (RS) The next question is: particles move, matter moves,
in our direction of time, do anti-particles, anti-matter, flow
backward in time?
A: Think of it as merely one seventh of the equation, Roger!
Q: (L) Can we get an answer on whether this is the case
strictly on the third level of density?
A: Backward.
Q: (RS) Yes! I am interested in the propulsion systems of
UFOs, the only way that I can perceive travelling the long
distances involved in interstellar space is to have what is
called a "space/time" machine. We cannot move the
enormous distances unless you can fold, somehow, time and
space. You cannot fold space unless you join it and fold
time. You cannot have interstellar travel unless you have a
space/time machine. But, a space/time machine means to
also have the ability to move forward and backward in time,
to manipulate time. (L) Yes, you would have to cross
distances and simultaneously move backward through time
so that you would end up arriving wherever you are going
essentially at the same moment that you left. (RS) That is
why I asked whether we can use anti-matter as a propulsion,
because it would be repulsive in the right direction. The
second question whether, when we use anti- matter, we
would move backward in time. Because, some of those
objects, you see them moving, and they can be moving in
space but not in time, or they could be moving in time but
not in space. If you see a UFO, it does not mean that it is in
our time. It could be in a completely different time. (L) And,
they disappear sometimes right before the eyes of the
observer, and the question is: where do they go? (RS) They
could be standing still in space, but moving time. Or moving
backwards. (L) And, there are a lot of abductions reported
where there is seemingly no time lost at all. They come in,
haul the victim out, do whatever they do, and then they slide
them back in a fraction of a second away, if not at the
identical second they took the victim out! (RS) Yes! This
article I presented is exactly about this point! If, indeed, anti-
particles have lift, then necessarily they have to go backward
in time. Then they manipulate this: you can have an abduction
any length of time inside the craft, but in our time, in our level
three, it is zero time! (L) Yes, exactly! And not only that,
there is the phenomenon of the craft that looks small from
the outside, but inside is huge! (RS) That is all tied up in it!
This is very exciting. I am learning the language. In our third
level, the motion in space and time occurs via the change of
the unit of time and space, therefore, can we change the
unit?
A: Yes, this is precisely what we mean when we speak of
"transiting from 4th to 3rd."
Q: (RS) So, when they travel from 4th to 3rd, they change
the units. That is precisely what is in the article in the journal!
[Holds up book.] This is published in the Ukraine, [turns to
page and displays diagrams and equations] this is the
experiment to test anti-gravity. There is a two mile long
tunnel which is a vacuum inside. They suck the air out. The
first measure is to shoot photons to identify, at the end of the
two mile tunnel, the no gravity point. The second measure is
to shoot a neutron, and we know that a neutron is attractive.
So, after two miles, the energy is very, very low. So, there is
no gravitational effect when the neutron hits the point. Then,
the third step is to shoot an anti-neutron at the same time and
see what happens. This experiment will resolve this issue that
this board has answered very scientifically. We call it the
gravity of anti-particles because we don't know. It can be
down... Einstein predicts this as attractive as a neutron,
anti-matter and matter have the same gravitational attraction.
That's what Einstein says. But, when Einstein's theory was
proposed, in 1915, anti-matter wasn't discovered until 50
years later. If now, theoretically, the only way a particle, in
our theory, can go up, can have lift, is if time is reversed.
There is no other possibility. So, if this experiment is correct,
then the space/time machine is absolutely a consequence and
can be tested in a laboratory. You can have a particle
moving backward and forward in time. [Displays new
diagram.] This is the other experiment which is, in this case,
is done by putting a particle which is neutral and subjecting it
to... since we don't have a bunch of anti-matter - ideally we
would have a pellet of matter and replace it with anti-matter
- we don't have a pellet of anti-matter, at this point, there are
ways to do it though and it can be measured as to which
way it moves, up or down. Now, the question of the units, it
is very important, a fundamental question, because, say, you
are outside a UFO, and you see the UFO as big as a car,
say, and people go inside and report this enormous interior.
There is no other way to do this than by changing the unit.
What is for us one inch, that unit is completely different
inside. For us the unit is the same along the three directions.
Now, if you are inside, they can have different units in
different directions. This means that if you are outside a
cube, and you go inside, the shape, not only the dimensions
but the shape even, can be different.
A: Density borderline cross awareness. Does Roger have
familiarity with density definitions?
Q: (L) Did we ever get a density definition, TR. (T) Just
about the seven levels. (L) Okay, what is a density
definition?
A: Review, using your own knowledge base, i.e. network.

This is the session with Roger Santilli present. The C's respond that in 3rd density, anti-matter does in fact flow backward in time. Of course this is "merely one seventh of the equation". This session gives some perspective on this discussion in terms of realms and density levels.


Now, I was researching this topic a little bit and I looked at the physicsforums.com website (very helpful with physics and math questions) and came across a post in a thread titled "quantum double slit experiment" by our very own Arkadiusz Jadczyk! His absence in this thread seems a bit strange to me because he usually chimes in on these types of topics, so I hope it is ok with him that I reproduce his post here:

When you model this experiment on your PC, and it is easy to do it, you see the following.

First you have the source. It prepares quantum state of the particle. The you have the slits. You model the slits either as a pure Hamiltonian interaction or it may have some detection capacity. If it has some detection capacity, the interaction of the slits with the wave function is different - wave function will evolve differently with time. You can easily this and see the difference on the screen if you add, for instance, small detectors of positions or momenta around the slits. Then you have the screen. The screen has the detection capability and it reacts to the wave function when it reaches it. It also causes its collapse. Different parts of the screen reacta, after a somewhat random time, with the wave function, and the probabilities depend on the shape of the wave function and its change with time. This shape and its change with time depend on what was shaping the wave function before - that is on the Hamiltonian and non-Hamiltonian interactions before. One run of your simulation - you get one dot. Millions runs - millions dots - but some of the runs may give non-detection. Anyway after many runs you get the interference pattern. You can now play with the screen part or with the slit part, change its parameters and see how the pattern on the screen changes.

So, you have a computational model of the phenomenon. It describes pretty well what you observe.

Now, where is the particle? You do not need it in the simulation experiment. If you wish, you can add to that some Bohmian trajectory, but it does not play any role in this approach. All you need is the wave function and its interaction with the slits and with the screen. You get in this way exactly what you see in a real experiment.

You can model the same way tracks in a cloud chamber. Again, you do not need a particle. All you need is the interaction of the wave function with detectors - this cause repeated collapses of the wave function (which we do not see) and detectors reactions that accompany these collapses - which we can record and see. You can simulate this way particle tracks, including their timing. But there are no particles there! A mystery? Perhaps.

He shows something similar to what David George is saying, that you do not need a 'particle' to model the results of the experiment.

 

[Leon1]

"But you will see it is not easy. And it is not cheap. One has to pay a lot. For the bad payers, the lazy, the losers, no chance. One must pay, pay a lot, pay immediately and pay in advance. Pay from oneself. With sincere efforts, wholeheartedly, without expectations. The more you will be willing to pay without reticence, without cheating, without falsity, the more you will receive." snipped from a discussion :- _http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=2961.15

Yup. in Work terms and in Work contexts, we'd call it "paying in advance".

Thanks Bud, even small snippets like "paying in advance" can lead to a synchronistic path to other information, ie I found the other post by reading without anticipation and found a related subject.

 

[Buddy]

Bud, I take from your response that you are not after all speaking about the Feynman equation solving the classical problem for light waves. So you are not dealing with physical reality 'constrained' by the requirement to reproduce our sense experience (in which clocks always appear to move in one direction) by experiment, but with a possible 'unconstrained' physical reality in which some universal 'stuff' flows in two directions at once, meeting in the present moment. Does this universal 'stuff' follow a rule such that cause precedes effect? Or can effect precede cause in some universes? I imagine in such universes, anything is indeed possible.

Well in this idea, in 'backwards time', some causes would be in the future and their effects would be seen or felt or not, in our present. So a given direction would have cause-effect chains. But even in the direction we are used to, we can't always pinpoint the exact cause of something because everything is seemingly interrelated and cause-effect chains often seem to be also.

I am not sure that your statement is a statement of fact.

You're right. I meant to say 'idea' not 'fact'. My mistake.

If not, then are you saying simply that present time moves into future time, and future time moves into present time? That makes sense.

Yeah, but I'm not yet certain we're understanding it the same way.

I believe I have already said that it is up to us how to perceive the "flow" of time: we can see it as moving from future to past, or from past to future.

I must have missed that. I will go back and re-read because my understanding is not so much that we have a "choice" how we perceive the flow of time with our physical senses because our brains seem hardwired to perceive and 'accumulate' memories in only one direction. Either that (hard-wired) or 'programmed' for linear perception along one direction like a "story" that always goes Past ---> Present --> Future.

So in a cause-effect universe, which I 'constrain' to mean that cause precedes effect, cause may lie in the future relative to effect, or cause may lie in the past relative to effect (the latter being the conventional view, I believe). My requirement that the cause of an event must precede the event leads to a naturally arising sequential time; whether this sequential time moves past-to-future or future-to-past is up to us to decide.

That reads like how I would describe it too except it seems like you are describing the possibility in either/or terms and suggesting some kind of ability to conventionally perceive the future to past arrow. In my view, both arrows are happening simultaneously and conventional perception is along what we call the past, present, future line.

So, in case you're wondering 'then how do you know?', the answer is 'I don't'. It's just a model that makes sense to me and seems to explain things.

By "substance" do you mean the mathematics equations, etc. have some physical form, apart from their appearance on paper?

I don't know about physical form. I'm just saying if you add one apple to one apple you have two apples. The one and the one equal two symbols represent the apples and where there might be any question we can go look at the apples. That's all. If you're doing math and the symbols don't represent a part of reality you're dealing with as a problem to solve, then what is being accomplished and how will the context-based awareness help keep a sanity check on the activity?

I am not sure how to step outside the "linear box" of time. From your description, it appears that everything happens simultaneously there. In my universe, time flows -- at variable rates. It slows down when I'm having a good time. It seems like a moment lasts a long time. When I am busy, time flies. Twenty-four hours can be like an eternity or a vanishing minute -- in both good and bad ways.

I'm assuming you're just talking about your subjective experience of time? Most everyone experiences time this way, OSIT.

The idea I'm talking about is just an idea that tends to explain things (to me) in sensible ways. It may not be satisfactory or even sensible to others.

Thanks Bud, even small snippets like "paying in advance" can lead to a synchronistic path to other information, ie I found the other post by reading without anticipation and found a related subject.

 

[David George]

Bud,

I have to ask, did you post on the "Cosmic Variance" blog? If not, there are two Buds!

 

[Buddy]

This is the page I found, so, I assume you mean this page:

_http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/02/26/dark-matter-just-fine-thanks/comment-page-1/#comment-154711

No, it's not me. Bud and Buddy are not that uncommon actually. For the record, I used to participate in a web-based computer discussion in the early 90's on slashdot and usenet, but to date, have never had a 'discussion' on a blog or any other forum.

 

[go2]

As an example, there is a widespread notion among "scientific" writers that "God plays with dice", i.e. that nature is inherently uncertain, even random. They come to this view directly from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that the act of measuring makes the measurement uncertain. At small scales humans can only make statistical predictions about the outcome of a measurement, due to that measurement uncertainty.

The region of measurement uncertainty provides a space in which anything can happen so long as it disappears before it can be observed. The defenders of quantum mechanics -- scientists, I mean -- interpret this as a natural uncertainty. That is, nature is uncertain of itself! Hence the view, "God plays with dice". But Mother Nature does not play with dice -- quantum mechanics plays with dice! As I noted above, Feynman admits we do not know the machinery. In this case, the scientists are "misusing" their own knowledge.

God plays dice with the infinity of irrational numbers, pi for example. God was rational on the six days of creation and on the seventh he relaxed in a gambling den fearing the boredom and stagnation of a totally rational universe would leave man and woman without possibility or responsibility to become beings in the image of God. :)

The book passage you quote repeatedly mentions "shadows". I wonder if that emphasis comes from Plato. The shadows in the physical reality I sense are insignificant compared with the brilliance and fine resolution of the illuminated natural world. And the brilliance and resolution become even finer when illuminated by knowledge. But modern "science" is limited by its requirement to quantify and predict events. Where does that requirement come from? I believe it comes from the masters of the scientists: their patrons in government and industry, who seek some source of profit or ill-defined "good" through technology. (What is the purpose of the universe, in your view?) Then the shadow is in the eyes of those who think "science" can show us a way - it is like thinking a car can show us where to go.

The shadows are a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadows aren't "in physical reality", but physical reality is the shadows.

The requirement to measure and predict lie within the scientific method, although I agree politics and economics often determine the uses of science.

As to the purpose of the universe.......this is it!

 

[David George]

Bud wrote,

". . . my understanding is not so much that we have a "choice" how we perceive the flow of time with our physical senses because our brains seem hardwired to perceive and 'accumulate' memories in only one direction. Either that (hard-wired) or 'programmed' for linear perception along one direction like a "story" that always goes Past ---> Present --> Future."

I started a topic on "Time", but there was not much response there. However, I don't believe we are hardwired or programmed in the past-present-future direction. I think it may come from our physiology and language. Our eyes point "forward"; we move "forward"; we move toward some "future", and leave the present "behind" us - in the past. So our natural motion is from past to future, and we construct a timeline concept on that motion (this is my idea of how it comes about, anyway). But what happens to our ancestors, those who have gone "before" us but lie "behind" us? The timeline becomes less clear. Now what if we do not move, and simply view a scene instead of walking towards it. The light arriving at our eyes - does it arrive from the future or from the past? And the cause of that light motion - it precedes the light, so does it lie in the future relative to the light, or in the past?

It seems to me you can choose either way. But there is a consequence to that choice. In the conventional view past-present-future, the creation moment of the universe lies in the past. And there is indeed an "accumulation" of causal relations leading to the present. Where is this accumulation? It is in memory, both in terms of physical systems and in our memories. But there is no "accumulated past" anywhere in physical reality. You say yourself that what exists, in physical reality, is "now", the present, which contains all the accumulated causal action of the universe. Does this accumulated causal "memory" contain accumulated past causes, or accumulated future causes? Again, your choice, except if you place a Big Bang 13.9 billion years in the past, you are stuck with it. It becomes a "real event", whether you like it or not, whether it makes sense or not (and the physicists have a hard time making sense of it). And you are stuck with all causes lying in the past, and you are forbidden from placing any cause in the future, because of the contradiction with the "arrow of time".

However, if you decide that cause lies in the future relative to effect, and the light coming into your eyes is coming from the future, and the cause of the light lies in the future relative to the light, then the accumulation of causal relations, accumulated in memory, does not require some past accumulative procedure. The past ceases to be a necessary part of physical reality. There is no need for some past "real event", i.e. a Big Bang. Accumulated memory still exists "now", except it accumulates from future causes. And how far in future time are those future causes? They are a "light moment" away. We cannot locate a physically real event such as a Big Bang in the future; rather, the universal creation moment is forever and always at least one moment "ahead" of us, in the future. We are freed from the necessity of that 13.9 billion year old "real event", which is not shown to be "scientifically" valid anyway. So the consequence of the choice is quite significant. There may be some way to accommodate the Feynman advanced/retarded wave effect in it, but that is beyond my math skills.

go2 wrote,

"God plays dice with the infinity of irrational numbers, pi for example. God was rational on the six days of creation and on the seventh he relaxed in a gambling den fearing the boredom and stagnation of a totally rational universe would leave man and woman without possibility or responsibility to become beings in the image of God."

"The shadows are a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadows aren't "in physical reality", but physical reality is the shadows.
"The requirement to measure and predict lie within the scientific method, although I agree politics and economics often determine the uses of science."

I remember Plato, but I don't think I ever believed in his "ideal" form. What would be the ideal form of something not yet invented (or evolved)? From reading the ancient writers I get the sense they were exploring what we would now call "psychology", our ideas and thoughts, etc. And that would include our mathematical and scientific methods for dealing "ideally" with the physical reality we sense. Those methods and ideas do not necessarily explain what we sense, but they may allow measurement and prediction. They become significant when they allow us a vision of what is really going on, not necessarily in their terms, but in our terms - the vision in our own heads.

With regard to pi, I'm sure Mother Nature was not pleased with God's recreational pursuit. However, I wonder whether the apparent infinity of pi is a clue from Mrs. N. that there is no relation between the circumference of a circle and its radius? One curves; the other is a straight line. But in a curved spacetime universe, there are no straight lines. There is always a gravitational field that warps spacetime.

 

[anart]

Hi David George,

Apologies if you've mentioned this before and I missed it, but have you read the Wave Series or Secret History of the World?

 

[Buddy]

As an example, there is a widespread notion among "scientific" writers that "God plays with dice", i.e. that nature is inherently uncertain, even random. They come to this view directly from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that the act of measuring makes the measurement uncertain. At small scales humans can only make statistical predictions about the outcome of a measurement, due to that measurement uncertainty.

The region of measurement uncertainty provides a space in which anything can happen so long as it disappears before it can be observed. The defenders of quantum mechanics -- scientists, I mean -- interpret this as a natural uncertainty. That is, nature is uncertain of itself! Hence the view, "God plays with dice". But Mother Nature does not play with dice -- quantum mechanics plays with dice! As I noted above, Feynman admits we do not know the machinery. In this case, the scientists are "misusing" their own knowledge.

As I see it, the whole idea behind the "God and dice" analogy was simply to point out apparent insensibilities on the quantum level. In fact, when Einstein made that comment about God NOT playing dice, it seems it was to emphasize his idea of "hidden variables" which we simply haven't found yet. Naturally, this provided an opportunity for others to 'turn the phrase' for their own purposes.

Also, the grammatical error in the quote above shows that when the speaker leaves out the 'point of view' of a speaker, writer, or scientist, the reader can get the impression that 'objective reality uncertainty' is being discussed when it is mostly the 'mental construct' that is being referenced, OSIT. IOW, 'uncertainty' is from the point of view of someone unable to 'see' or 'find' the missing information. 'Objective Uncertainty' (uncertainty from the universe's point of view) cannot be demonstrated to exist, OSIT. I thought Thomas Bayes already demonstrated that concept for humankind's more mundane problems.

The shadows are a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadows aren't "in physical reality", but physical reality is the shadows.

Plato's "The Republic" is said to have been written around 380 B.C. As I understand it, translating the ideas into English required the closest possible approximations between that visionary-style aspect of the Greek language and the existing concepts available in English, so mis-interpretations are always possible.

Having said that though, I tend to agree with the above. In case it's interesting, I see this concept as the difference between the 'things' we're familiar with and the underlying patterns that create or result in the 'things' by driving them into material manifestation on the arrow of 'time' we perceive.

To me, the patterns that result in and move around the superficial, kickable things, exist on every scale and on every level of abstraction - from the quantum level to the cosmological (Universe) level. As layers and layers of self-similar structures across all scales, the uncountable patterns in the universe are progressively reducing as well as increasing in complexity.

By directly sensing or by simply thinking of all or some of these patterns as being widely distributed in physical processes, then from our 3D visual perspective, we can see, or think of, these various patterns as becoming visible or actualized when they collect up 'lumps' of matter. We might even say that everything we can experience with the major senses, is lumps of matter organized in this way.

Whether any given layer is 'solid' or 'abstract' (deeper and more general), it is still a constituent part of Universe's make-up and, as a result, just as 'real' as any bucket you can kick. IOW, all actual patterns - symmetrical, fractal, multi-fractal or whatever, that actually exist, on any scale or level, are like layers of interactions and interlocking movements and are all on the same 'realness' level. And anything that is real can be 'felt' or experienced in some way.

How can we know this? For one thing, the beauty and timelessness of Sufi poetry consists of multiple layers of meaning that reflect a similar understanding of a multi-layered reality; Native American languages evolved for dealing with this reality, and can be used to describe a universe of layered mutual actions where the processes are more important than the objects; Creative computer programmers 'see' problems as layers of patterns that can be explored and understood using inductive thinking; Deaf people from different geographical areas who use different Sign languages can communicate successfully within days, and sometimes hours. Sign puts more emphasis on action and process - verbs - than most spoken languages, and has a much richer three dimensional space to describe relationship.

Since, from our point of view, these pattern-based aspects of reality have demonstrable objective existence, the ability of Signers, Native Americans, Sufis, computer programmers, alchemists, mystics, etc to establish communication very quickly would make sense (just like it is much easier to translate across Native American languages than from one such language to a noun-based language like English or any language like it). All Sign languages are profoundly equivalent since they all describe the same "legends".

To me and others, this is the "Universe context" that keeps a sanity check on the effects coming from the "land of the lost": the tightly focused deductive doings of people who seem to be missing some of their faculties (present company excluded, of course :)). In the final analysis, our Work will either fit in with and explain everything of what we can already see and experience, as it is currently doing, or it will sink as irrelevant, now or later, no matter how tight the inner logic (or math).

OSIT