Here I discuss some basic aspects of quantum mechanics that are not often explained and are often at the heart of common misconceptions about the role of consciousness in reality and the type of reality that is implied by quantum mechanics.  More >

Ultimately, we're not made of things but of processes; we're not objects or subjects, we are happenings.

Both subject and object are complementary aspects of an experiential process. The process is fundamental whilst the subject and object are virtual appearances.

The unified cosmic process (Brahman) has subject=God (Supreme Self) and object=quantum field (spirit world).

This unified cosmic process operates 'between' moments of existence; changing the state of NOW so that it seems that there are many successive moments.

As these moments blur together there seems to exist myriad individual experiential processes (Atman), which operate 'across' moments of existence.

This is how Atman is Brahman, depending on whether we contemplate the process as operating 'between' or 'across' moments. When 'between' it is One, whilst when operating 'across' it is many.

The individual experiential processes (Atman) have subject=Jiva (personal self) and object=Maya (phenomenal world).

In this way the unified cosmic process seemingly animates myriads of virtual processes, hence the One manifests as many. Many subjects (embodied beings) and many objects (physical universe).

But ultimately there is just one unified cosmic process, which can be known as either one subject (God / Supreme Self) or one object (quantum field / spirit world).

Anyway, that is one possible English interpretation of the mathematics that I intuitively received and have been contemplating since 2000. The maths is crystal clear and very succinct but it is hard to find words to describe it because words have so much egoic / materialist baggage attached.

Hope it makes sense to you...

BTW for much more detail see System Science of Virtual Reality.

Worldly concepts, words and thought processes cannot give the mind enough traction to grasp reality. However the mind itself CAN grasp these things and the intellect can understand. Although the word 'mind' means different things to different people... Hence I'll explain a little of where I'm "coming from" in regards to 'mind'...  More >

The following is a brief overview of an information system ontology and metaphysics, i.e. those concepts, entities and processes that provide a foundation for a non-materialist, consciousness based world-view. The explanation is kind of technical because it is difficult to explain non-materialist issues in a mostly materialist language, however the understanding itself is very simple and intuitive once one shifts to a non-materialist paradigm. This explanation starts from general principles and works towards particulars.  More >

There are some who believe that only sentient beings such as humans can collapse quantum wavefunctions. IMHO this is a fallacy and it leads to a paradox, which can be resolved by developing a deeper understanding of consciousness.

The paradox is, if sentient being are required to collapse a wavefunction, then how could the classical universe exist before sentient beings evolved, and how could sentient beings evolve if the classical universe didn't yet exist? At what stage did the pure quantum potential suddenly start collapsing into particular classical actualities? How did this new ingredient "wavefunction-collapsing-sentience" arise from the pure quantum potential? There is a maze of paradoxes here...

In fact any interaction with another system will collapse the wavefunction. Any observation will do it, because whenever an observable is required by another system as part of an interaction the wavefunction must collapse to provide an observable. This approach is a natural part of an efficient simulation algorithm, which only computes the state of a virtual system when another virtual system requires an observable in order to experience and interact with it.

The sensitivity to collapse is why researchers are having so much trouble building quantum computers, they call it the "decoherence problem". In order to perform computations with wavefunctions we can't have them collapsing willy-nilly, but the slightest interaction with any aspect of the surrounding universe will collapse the wavefunction. So how can one develop a framework within which to compute with wavefunctions?

If it was only sentient beings who collapse wavefunctions then the decoherence problem would be easy to solve, just put the quantum computer in an opaque box and don't let anyone open the box until the computation has had plenty of time to complete. Then a sentient being can open the box to collapse the wavefunction and observe the final result of the computation. This is not what happens in reality.

The only way out of the quantum-sentience-paradox is to accept that not only complex systems with complex forms of awareness (such as ourselves) are involved in the collapse of the wavefunction, but even simple systems with simple forms of awareness. Hence the way out of paradox is to overcome anthropocentric concepts of consciousness and accept some form of panpsychism, such as pan-proto-experientialism.

Even a fundamental particle has its own primitive form of consciousness - nowhere near as complex and rich as ours, but it is aware nevertheless. A particle couldn't interact with other particles if it wasn't aware of their existence and their state of being. It needs to observe their state of being in order to react to them, and this observation collapses the wavefunction of the other particles.

Thanks to Tim Cumper for raising this issue and inspiring me to write this article...

Taking numbers consisting of 1's and squaring them reveals an interesting countup-countdown pattern in the resulting product.

1^2= 1

11^2= 121

111^2= 12321

1111^2= 1234321

11111^2= 123454321  More >

I just read a very thought provoking article The Truth by Eric Gross, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In response to it something came to mind, certainly not as a criticism but simply as an extra dimension to consider...  More >

I empathise with the difficulty that people have in grasping the mystic perspective. For those with an empiricist perspective these issues are usually perplexing and seemingly inside-out and back-to-front. I will briefly describe an approach to the mystic perspective that some have found useful.

Consider an AI mind within a VR simulation. If this mind had an empirical perspective it would seem to it that it had inner cognitive phenomena and that it lived within an external physical universe. However in a deeper sense these are just perceptual illusions and the actual reality is a single unified information process that is imperceptible, universal, non-local, timeless, all-pervading, etc. Realising this fact leads to a mystic perspective.  More >

• What questions can science not answer? http://qr.ae/7Xh2

• What are some taboos in science? http://qr.ae/Jzq

• What is consciousness? http://qr.ae/7FD

• What is sentience? http://qr.ae/TRw

• Hard Problem of Consciousness http://qr.ae/7nhU

• What is naive realism? http://qr.ae/0cq

• What exactly are qualia? http://qr.ae/7NA4

• What is matter? http://qr.ae/7nnn

• Does matter exist? http://qr.ae/7nta

• What is it like to be a quantum computational process? http://qr.ae/7nht

• Is the universe a simulation? http://qr.ae/TlI

• Is it possible to create a general system simulator? http://qr.ae/jab

• In simple terms, what does the Stern-Gerlach experiment imply about the nature of quantum systems and observable phenomena? http://qr.ae/7vvJ

• Now that naive realism has been disproved by quantum mechanics, how will this impact our collective paradigm? http://qr.ae/0Sr

• If society undergoes a paradigm shift to a non-naive realist paradigm, which words will retain their meaning and which will change? http://qr.ae/7nCC

• Is a photon a particle or a wave? http://qr.ae/7KBb

• What basic principles would need to be covered by a “virtuality tutorial”? http://qr.ae/72X9

• What are memes and memeplexes? http://qr.ae/7ndi

• Is the concept of a ‘person’ a social construct? http://qr.ae/7nUN

• How do you know if you are self-aware? http://qr.ae/7Ryr

• Can we have an agreed-upon definition of ‘reality’? http://qr.ae/KSb

• What is the “problem of the external world”? http://qr.ae/7vyG

• Do spirits exist in Reality? http://qr.ae/7G76

• How can you learn faster? http://qr.ae/7tA7

• What is evil? http://qr.ae/7tmW

• How have Enlightened beings lived in human society? http://qr.ae/7nyv

• What is a memetic disease and how do they operate throughout our minds and cultures? http://qr.ae/7nMq

• How is the concept of a memetic disease related to the concepts of physical, psychological and social diseases? http://qr.ae/7nEi

• What is the most endemic and destructive cultural phenomenon of all time? http://qr.ae/7tBw

• Is the phenomenon of ethnogenesis an example of memetic autopoiesis of a collective intelligence? http://qr.ae/7Ih0

• What use is the I Ching? http://qr.ae/1N8

• What does it mean to be a person with big karma? http://qr.ae/cmc What is karma?

• What does it mean that everything in the world is a teacher? http://qr.ae/0yV Sadguru - teacher within.

• What is one thing you have to believe before you can experience it? http://qr.ae/030 Experiencing oneself as a “person in a world”…

• What is the unique quality that is in the consciousness of the human beings who have attained the Supreme Enlightenment? http://qr.ae/dIU Complete absence of delusion

• What is the likelihood humans don’t have the brain power to fully comprehend the answer to why we exist? http://qr.ae/7p14

• What are system leverage points and why is it useful to know? http://qr.ae/7IF3

• Is nature self-similar across scales? If so, what is the principle in which it is self-similar? What are some examples of self-similarity? http://qr.ae/a3a

• What is one important thing that no one told you about? http://qr.ae/7RGl The universe isn’t a mechanism that one must ‘manipulate’ and that events are not just ‘accidental’ happenings - instead the universe is alive and responsive…

• What is a narrative? http://qr.ae/0OG

• What is a fractal? http://qr.ae/0gU

• Is there a meaningful relation between fractals and cellular automata? http://qr.ae/0bu

• What do the results of the PEAR GCP ICRL experiments say about consciousness and how can we scientifically explain them? http://qr.ae/v0h Consciousness itself, unaided by known physical mechanisms, can influence physical reality.” The likelihood that this is due to chance is one in a trillion (10^-12)…

• What major social problems have been solved by philanthropy in the last 50 years? http://qr.ae/7r9u

• What do you think of the many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? http://qr.ae/7yfA

• Also “System Science of Virtual Reality” is a relevant ebook http://bit.ly/9XhElB for those who wish to explore deeper.

• Signs of an emerging Paradigm http://bit.ly/dfxL4R

• Shape of the Emerging Memeplex and How to Nurture It http://bit.ly/bWtL1e

• I Ching’s Advice on Nurturing the Emerging Memeplex http://bit.ly/cjRgrC

• The I Ching’s “Wisdom for this Phase of the Journey” http://bit.ly/cFxqD5

See the original and other answers at http://www.quora.com/Is-the-universe-a-simulation

At the bottom of this page there are also some other answers and my comments on them.

I will not attempt to answer this question here, but merely provide some links to instances where the idea has been discussed. This idea is becoming increasingly popular within the scientific debate because it provides an explanatory framework that allows us to comprehend quantum phenomena that were previously incomprehensible...

Whilst it is impossible to comprehend the quantum mechanical description of the universe in terms of 'physical' phenomena, at the same time we are finding that thinking in terms of information processes allows us to understand quantum phenomena, not as something bizarre and paradoxical, but as the natural & necessary properties of a simulated virtual reality.  More >

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” (Alexander Pope)

Quotes from Chapter 13 “The Yoga of the Division of the Cosmos into Body and Soul” from the Bhagavad Gita.  More >

I see two approaches to this issue and will introduce them by briefly describing the context and development of each, showing how one leads into the other. I have endeavoured to keep this as simple and concise as possible for a subject of this depth.  More >

Synthesising Whole Systems

Quoted from the excellent article Complexity Theory: Actions for a Better World by Chris Lucas, CALRESCO (The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems)

This action section of our website will list practical suggestions for using the ideas of complexity science and related areas to counter the ignorance, hate and violence that are so destroying our heritage, our societies and our planet. And note that these problems are all mental ones, they are problems of 'thought' and not of 'things', the result of inadequacies in our collective mental states, of our approach to life, our lack of wisdom, not of the inherent inadequacy of our material possessions. Our approach will be to look at 'whole systems', but this will require a far more wide ranging perspective than those we normally label as 'science', taking into account also philosophy and spirit. Any whole system comprises an holarchy, i.e. many nested and overlapping sub-systems, these are all important components of the totality that we wish to improve, so that it is essential that all these aspects are included, we will have no 'blinkered' perspectives here, no reductions to one dimension out of the many that concurrently exist, no divorce of psychology from sociology, of economics from ecology, not even of philosophy from science, or science from religion ! From physicist David Bohm:

"The essential new quality implied by the quantum theory is... that a system cannot be analyzed into parts. This leads to the radically new notion of unbroken wholeness of the entire universe. You cannot take it apart. For if you do, what you end up with is not contained within the original whole. It is created by the act of analysis."
Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1983), Whole Systems

This suggests that if we wish to understand the whole then we must take into account how all these analyses interrelate, how our abstract slices fit together to create the overall result and how that can change dynamically, and this is just the form of synthesis undertaken by the systems sciences. But to understand the implications of this wider viewpoint, we must start with thought itself.

Some relevant quotes from elsewhere:

"There is this hope, I cannot promise you whether or when it will be realized - that the mechanistic paradigm, with all its implications in science as well as in society and our own private life, will be replaced by an organismic or systems paradigm that will offer new pathways for our presently schizophrenic and self-destructive civilization." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy) [FR]

"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes." (David Bohm) [FR]

"In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world-view emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process." (Fritjof Capra) [FR]