What is Reality?
The More We Look At It the Less Real It Seems.
A ten page look at where physics theory currently stands as regards the “reality” we experience. For the sake of brevity I will just highlight some of the headings and quotations and their sources:-
“We humans have a bit of a problem with reality. We experience it all the time, but struggle to define it, Let alone understand it. It seems so solid and yet, when we examine it closely, it melts away like a mirage”.
“We are now at a point where it is equally credible to claim that reality is entirely dependent on subjective experience, or entirely independent of it. Reality has never felt so unreal.”
Excerpts:- Is reality the same everywhere? – String theory – Multiverses.
Can we perceive reality?
“Everybody knows that we don’t see all of reality. I say we see none of it.” Donald Hoffman University of California, Irvine.
“Reality depends on us, it depends on the way we see the world. But at the same time, what we are perceiving is one aspect of this reality because our perception is shaped by the senses we happen to have.” Mazviita Chirimuuta at University of Pittsburgh.
Is your perception of reality the same as mine?
“We perceive the world in relation to what we already believe.” Tali Sharot University College, London.
Do we make reality?
“Largely for want of a better alternative, it has been impossible to erase the conscious observer from quantum mechanics. if anything, subjectivity has recently begun to reassert it’s centrality in the making of objective reality.” See Quantum Bayesianism or QBism – There is no objective reality only our subjective estimation of it.
Markus Muller, University of Vienna. Kelvin McQueen Chapman University, California.
It would seem that we are still treading the same path as Sir James Jeans in 1930:-
” The stream of human knowledge is heading towards a non- mechanical reality. The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm.”
Max Planck (1944) was of the same opinion.
Sri Aurobindo:- “Consciousness is the fundamental thing in existence. It is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness and all that is in it. The microcosm and the macrocosm are nothing but consciousness arranging itself.”
As far as I am concerned the missing link in all this theorising is consensus belief, the co-creation of reality. Once you realise that it takes two to tango then you can understand that reality is co-created by those consciousnesses that wish to experience that reality.
As long as this subject is approached from the point of view of an individual brain, mind, consciousness an understandable concept will be incapable of formulation. Quantum entanglement is proving total interconnectedness, instantaneous communication which leads to the elimination of space and time. Which leaves, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or, reality is in the perception of the believer, albeit a shared mass belief.
Now we have no concept of what constitutes consciousness or awareness but if we consider that “we” create all that we are currently experiencing, our reality, then we create our physical body, our brain, our mind?, which leaves us independent of same.
So take comfort and realise that “you” cannot die because you were never “real” in our sense of the word but “you” have always been and will always be.
New Quantum Experiment May Prove That Objective Reality Does Not Exist
This is taken from Sputniknews.com 17/11/2019
Scientists in Edinburgh have been using quantum computers to measure the behaviour of photons while being observed in order to determine if reality changes its behaviour depending on if it is being observed or not.
A new paper published in Science Advances in September claims that reality may in fact be subjective.
According to the theory in the study, particles can simultaneously exist at several places or states, known as superposition. This is only the case, however, when they are not observed.
Once a quantum system is observed, the specific location or state is established thus breaking the superposition.
In 1961, physicist Eugene Wigner advanced a thought experiment, applying quantum mechanics to an observer being observed themselves. If his friend were to toss a quantum coin, in a state of both heads and tails, each toss would establish a definite outcome observed by the tosser.
Anyone outside of the room, however, would not be able to establish a definite outcome, and according to the theory, puts the person in the room in a “superposition” of all of the experiment’s possible outcomes.
Therefore, the reality perceived by the friend inside the room is contradictory to the reality observed from the outside.
Časlav Brukner from the University of Vienna found a way of translating the “Wigner’s friend” hypothesis into a real experiment to prove that reality may be subjective to individual observers.
Brukner conducted the experiment using two “Wigners” and two “friends” in two separate boxes, where their states where measured both inside and outside each respective box.
The experiment was conducted at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University on a small-scale quantum computer using three pairs of entangled photons.
The first pair of photons and their polarization inside their boxes are measured. The pair outside the two boxes remain on either side and can also be measured.
After many weeks, they succeeded in demonstrating that quantum mechanics may contradict the assumption of objective fact.
Natural behaviour being subject to an observer has been proven before, such as in the famous double slit experiment. However, consciousness has not yet been proven as a prerequisite for this phenomena.
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So we could posit that consciousnesses focusing with agreed imaginative scenarios break the superposition thereby creating the desired reality. Reasonable?
Reality and You 