#yes i know it's about quantum mechanics but today it's a metaphor

[wonderlandwalker]

Istg most fandoms on here are like Schrödinger's damn cat. It'll either be really cute and makes me giggle and kick my feet or it's so gutwrenching it makes me wanna rip my heart out of my chest. You never know which one it'll be until you've already read it.

[sciencestyled]

Narrative Science: Or, How Your Pathetic Little Brains Are Finally Able to Grasp the Obvious Through Stories

Ladies and gentlemen—if indeed I must dignify this audience with such a lofty title—I deign to address you today on a matter that, while likely far beyond your meager intellectual reach, I shall attempt to elucidate. Why? Because, much like a benevolent demigod, I find it amusing to elevate the clueless masses—if only for the fleeting duration of this discourse—into the dazzling, blinding light of understanding. Yes, my poor, unwashed friends, today we discuss the profound and, dare I say, indispensable role of narrative in the august field of science. Or, as you might comprehend it, how telling a good story stops your eyes from glazing over when faced with something more complex than a TikTok dance tutorial.

Ah, the power of narrative! It’s almost charming—no, let’s be honest, it’s downright pitiful—how you small-minded beings require the spoon-feeding of stories to make sense of the sublime grandeur of scientific truths. For instance, I assume you all know how myths and legends (those delightful bedtime tales for adults with an IQ lower than room temperature) helped early cultures explain natural phenomena. Allow me to illustrate this with an example even you could understand: the myth of Thor, the Norse god with a hammer and a flair for over-the-top theatrics. You see, in a time when people lacked the sophisticated knowledge that I effortlessly possess, they looked to figures like Thor to explain the simple concept of thunder. Today, of course, we know that thunder is merely the sound produced by lightning—essentially, nature’s way of having a little fun at your expense. But back then, people concocted stories to fill the void where scientific understanding now thrives (or at least limps along, depending on the company one keeps).

One can hardly overstate the comedic irony in observing modern scientists—those who should theoretically be above such childish devices—turn to storytelling to communicate their complex ideas. It’s as if the narrative is some kind of magic trick that suddenly renders the incomprehensible palatable to the common folk. Take, for example, Einstein and his thought experiments (a term here meaning “theoretical musings dressed up as narratives because no one understood what the heck he was talking about otherwise”). When Einstein likened the experience of free fall to being weightless, he wasn’t just spouting off random gibberish—he was engaging in scientific storytelling! And lo and behold, the masses, who would otherwise recoil in terror from equations resembling alien hieroglyphs, found themselves captivated, even entertained, by this little narrative sleight of hand. It’s almost adorable how easily people are beguiled by a well-crafted story.

But let us not dwell solely on the past, for the present offers no shortage of scientific breakthroughs made digestible through narrative. Consider the hapless scientists of today, valiantly attempting to educate the world about quantum mechanics. They might as well be speaking Klingon to a room full of Trekkies (not that you would understand such a reference, but humor me). Yet, with the cunning use of metaphor, these scientists transform bewildering concepts like superposition and entanglement into something you can grasp—like Schrödinger’s cat. Yes, the absurd notion that a cat could be both alive and dead at the same time (a concept that no doubt leaves many of you scratching your heads and looking for the nearest exit) becomes remarkably clear when framed within the confines of a simple narrative. It’s truly laughable how a story about a cat in a box can illuminate one of the most complex areas of modern physics.

Ah, but I can already hear the groans of those among you who find my words too taxing for your fragile egos. “Why does he insult us so? We are here to learn!” (Or so you claim.) Very well, let me then descend further into the murky depths of your comprehension and bring forth the subject of science fiction—a genre that, while amusing in its absurdity, has often proven prescient in predicting future technological advancements. Perhaps you’ve heard of a little film called Star Wars? Yes, I thought so. And while your interest in it likely stems more from the flashy lightsabers and less from its subtle allusions to futuristic technologies, one cannot deny that the franchise has inspired actual scientific developments. Take the humble communicator, which today we know as the smartphone—an invention so ubiquitous that even you might have one in your pocket, despite having no real understanding of how it works. But let’s not give you too much credit. The point is that these seemingly far-fetched ideas have a way of worming their way into the collective imagination and eventually, into reality. The bridge between fiction and fact is built upon the sturdy planks of narrative—a construction that, I dare say, even the most primitive among us can traverse.

In the grand (forgive me, I meant to say "utterly pedestrian") scheme of things, it becomes glaringly obvious that storytelling is not merely an adjunct to science; it is its very lifeblood. To learn science is to immerse oneself in a narrative—a tale woven with the threads of curiosity, discovery, and, above all, the desire to communicate the incomprehensible to the incorrigibly ignorant. Were it not for the compelling narratives that accompany scientific knowledge, one shudders to think what feeble grasp of the world you might have. Without the power of narrative, you would be little more than cavemen staring at the stars, grunting in confusion (or perhaps frustration) at the mysteries beyond your ken. But thanks to the sublime artistry of storytelling, you are elevated—if only slightly—above the level of your ancient ancestors.

So, my dear audience, as you stumble through your tragically limited understanding of the world, remember this: It is not mere facts and figures that bring you closer to enlightenment, but the narratives that dress them up in a manner palatable to your pitiable intellects. Embrace the story, for it is your only hope of grasping even a fraction of the vast expanse of knowledge that lies before you. And should you ever find yourself in possession of a scientific concept that you wish to share with others, do not hesitate to cloak it in the comforting garb of narrative. For as much as it pains me to say it, stories—simple, infantile, delightfully condescending stories—are the only way you will ever make sense of the wonders of the universe.

[bardonastick]

The Meaning of Life (Or at least a pretty convincing metaphor I came to while in the shower trying to find it)

tl;dr Life is Art, but that might not really mean anything to you unless you go through the steps to understand it.

Read this if you’re like me and need to figure out the meaning of life before you even get out of bed in the morning, let alone deal with bigger problems.

Kind of long at 2493 words, but Part 1 is all metaphysics so you could skip to Part 2 to get the good stuff. Part 1 might help you understand what I mean when I talk about the “literal and fundamental universe” or whatever.

I hope this answers some important questions for me and you both.

Preface

So, I often have a problem where I can’t find purpose for my actions, or I can’t find the desire to do them – not really the desire, I know that deep down I have that, but rather the feeling of that desire, or maybe the motivation.

It’s hardest when getting up, and today was one of those hard days. I don’t even want to say hard, because that’s not how it felt. It wasn’t difficult to get up and do something so much as I just simply didn’t have the nerve or the want.

I’ll get back to that point about nerve later.

After debating it a little bit (since I didn’t have anything to do today), I finally encouraged myself to go take a shower and sort out what I was trying to think about.

Part 1

My analysis started with a question about existence. I just started out by thinking, and I returned to something I had thought about in the past, about how the universe consists of only substance, interaction, and in their combination, change. Well, this time I was thinking about fundamental components more. There’s an idea that the universe is One, which I believe, and that everything is in Duality, which I can also believe but with slight skepticism.

I looked into the duality: really, it’s a human concept. Yes or no, masculine or feminine, light or dark, the list fills itself in (or maybe it does not, another dual-faced proposition). I thought about it from the perspective of what we know about the fundamental nature of the universe. From this perspective, Existence and Non-Existence, each the other’s opposite, make up the universe. The non-thing is as much an effective entity as is the thing, despite, by its nature, not really existing.

But that didn’t really seem right, and I went further down to specifics, to quantum mechanics. At their basics, the most fundamental particles – protons, neutrons, electrons – are made of quarks. And how many quarks does it take to produce a particle? Except in very rare cases, it takes three. No more, and absolutely no less. Taking that a step up, what do we find in atoms? Except for minimal hydrogen atoms, matter is built with units made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. So it seemed that three was the most basic number of “things that pretty much always come together.”

Something was different about this, though. I’ve never fully understood quark theory (up, down, top, bottom, strange quarks? Spin? Color theory? Someone get me a textbook) but I had learned that neutrons have a curious property of weighing as much as one proton and one electron combined, and also that they don’t carry a charge. So, this debate between duality or triplicity can really be both of those things, as the third building block of the atomic structure is sort of a combination of the first two, but equally necessary.

In our original equation, that thought of Substance + Interaction = Change, it seems I got the order wrong. Interaction wasn’t really a “thing,” it was the function in between, it was the plus sign. So what we have here is +Substance * -Substance = Change, or SubstanceA + SubstanceB = Variety, where the symbol (+, *, etc.) in the middle of the expression isn’t so much definable but rather itself definite, all we know is that it is there and it is happening and doing something.

A relevant question before I go on would be, why do I consider Change a distinct thing? Part of me wants to say that it’s because, unlike substance, it doesn’t have an opposite – that change is a state that even itself can be affected by, and that a change from change is “stagnation,” a state that is, of course, changeable. Another word I could use to try to express this concept I’m defining as Change could be “possibility,” and that within possibility is the possibility of unchangingness, so they are inherently the same. And secondly, I believe (though this can be debated and interpreted in different ways by different people) that matter and substance simply “are” and do not have an innate property of change (though they do have an innate property of being “changeable”). Hence why an interaction is required for change to occur. I saw a quote once that went something along the lines of, “When two chemicals meet, if there is any interaction, they are both forever changed,” which is what I’m basing this off of. So while change itself is not something you can hold the same way you could substance, I consider it as literal as substance – which holds the properties of interactability and changeability but, as single instances, cannot interact or change. That’s another good clarification, that the things I’m defining here are done so on a basis of being literal and foundational, as opposed to something like the color red which is true based on perception and is an extension of the greater idea of substance, or something like the emotion fear which is not a “literal” entity, or does not exist outside of our conception of the name we give to a particular set of circumstances that are soaked with change. (That is not to say that emotion is not “real,” it is very real and valid and I will get to this later, but understand that it is not an inherent or immutable part of the universe as I see and describe it.)

Good to note: there are no words that can define this concept in 1:1 fashion, so bear with and fit this into your own mental schema however you need to, even if the words themselves don’t mean the exact same thing to me as they do to you.

Part 2

So, I’ve got all this stuff about the universe, which is cool and all, but it’s not really what I boarded this train of thoughts in order to find.

“So, what did I want to find?” I asked myself.

Firstly, I wanted to find what question I was needing or wanting to ask, I replied.

“And that was?”

… Good question. To which I answered, almost instinctively and almost purposely, almost self-servingly, self-revealingly, imitatively, or maybe by chance: “How do I want?”

Or something like that, the lines are kind of fuzzy. I ought to start thinking out loud and recording it so I can retrace my train of thought.

But it was funny because, even though I didn’t ask “What is the meaning of life?” (I mean, I did, almost habitually, but I laughed because it was such an old and basic question, one I had worked past many times. The meaning to life isn’t something that can easily, effectively, or even worthwhile-ly be summed up in an answer to one question, the real answer was a series of other, more important, relevant, or worthy questions and the answers to those ones) my question revealed some implicit assumptions about the nature of conscious existence and human life and spirituality. How can one want without the implication that to receive one’s wants is “good,” “positive,” or worthwhile? This seems redundant, but it ties back into other “truths” that we as humans and philosophers have relatively worked out – truths such as that life is completely subjective, nothing in it is moral or polarized until we attribute to it morality or polarity – you know, thoughts like that. And it was funny, because what else do I know that has repeatedly been critiqued as, at least potentially, meaningless, though it can have meaning if someone chooses to give it meaning and others choose to perceive that meaning or yet others?

Art.

Art has neither literal nor fundamental purpose in the nature of the universe. The same is absolutely, exactly true of life.

Like life, Art is an outcome of an otherwise true force. So it is not inherent, necessary, or fundamental in any other context (except human life but we’re getting there, hold on), it is not essential or absolutely existing in any way, yet, like every other thing in the universe that is not a lone trio of quarks, or a lone hydrogen atom with an atomic weight of 2.014, or a clear cut dynamic of change like a supernova or cold star death, does it still have meaning? Of course! And that is just as much true because you give it meaning as it is because it is meaningful itself. Debate that if you’d like, but I would imagine it will be a fairly unfulfilling endeavor.

Art, music, movies, literature. Life.

When they say art imitates life or life imitates art, that is not only true, but it could be even truer.

Life is the single ultimate form of art. And if someone is able to debate that and show me an even more ultimate form of art, I will be more ecstatic than I already am at this revelation.

So, this is it. The point of life is, without better words to say it, the act of “doing” life itself. Think about it. What is the point of a painting? What is the point of a song? From the perspective of an empirical scientist, a physicist, someone analyzing meaning only in terms of fundamental universal properties, it is nothing! “But,” you cry, “that isn’t true!! Art has plenty of meaning!! It evokes emotion! It causes change!” To which I reply, tears in my anecdotal eyes, “Yes! Exactly! Thank you!”

Whether or not we serve life is a decision we might not have yet made, but life is and always will be serving us. Life serves us in the same way a painting serves the person who wanted to see it – it doesn’t matter in what way it serves, because the point is that it does.

Life is both the painting you go to see and the painting you create. And if it isn’t serving you, then I have the simplest advice that will hopefully excite you as much as it does me: if you don’t like this painting, do whatever you can to get to a different museum. If you don’t like this song, keep rifling through albums or tracks until you find the one you want. And if you don’t like the painting you have on your own easel – and, taking a look at the x-rays of old renaissance paintings, we know this works – start painting over it. (I am not saying or even implying that this is always easy. But what I am asking is, what other option do you have?)

And now, only now, am I so, so close to answering the question that I woke up with and that I couldn’t solve until the shower I took multiple hours, one unplanned nap, and a few menial tasks later.

Okay. So we’ve discovered that life is the ultimate art. Neat.

And say you’re not just satisfied using yours to see others’ pictures and concerts and movies and books, you want to do more with yours than just let it exist. Amazing.

Well, let’s do a thought exercise. Pick an art skill (painting, composing, cinematography, writing, etc.) that you’re not that great in. Now think of something great, and imagine, realistically, going about creating it with that skill.

Hard. You probably aren’t going to get anywhere near what you wanted or had in mind. Imagine wanting to make something like the Mona Lisa with only a week of solid, dedicated practice and a box of crayons. That would be my example. It wouldn’t be pretty.

If you are skilled in one of those other ones, try the same exercise again with the skills and resources you’ve already worked for and try to make something just as good as your first goal but translated into the other medium. Easier? Or maybe just as hard, but you’re more successful. For me, I could compose a symphony representing something like the Mona Lisa far better than I could create its image.

Life is art and making art be the way you want it to be takes skill.

And of course there’s nothing saying you have to refine yourself! You may want to make something abstract and unpredictable. You might pick up the brush or sit down at the keys and follow whatever ideas you find. And that is just as perfect and just as good.

But if you have a specific goal or want in mind, then, like any other skill, you have to learn how to turn your want into reality. You have to build that skill.

Now it’s time to answer my own question.

I don’t need to find the meaning of life to find the desire to get out of bed at six in the morning. The meaning of life is implicit in my existence and in my desire to get up that early. Getting up early is a specific skill (within the grander skill of living) that I have to learn on its own if I want to do it. It is a specific art style, a flick of the wrist, a trainable technique that I can learn to use effectively. It seems disconnected from my greater purpose while I’m learning it. But once I’ve got it down, its place in the grander scheme will be obvious and intuitive.

Your art (read: life) can and should be for you first.

But.

Some people dedicate their art to a specific cause or desire. Maybe they get a feeling from it. Maybe they don’t.

Maybe they dedicate a portion of a page to it, maybe the whole book.

I think that is respectable and amazing.

Some people let other people choose what their art is. They only use the techniques they are forced to master, only create what someone else wants to see on their canvas.

I think that’s sad. I think it’s highway robbery of a perfectly good life. And I think it’s not my damn business or place to say otherwise. But I think it’s worth saying anyway.

So anyway. Do what you want. Live the life you want to – a phrase which so many people have heard but so few people, including myself until just today, don’t understand in the way I’ve just described. Go make your art, in any medium and with any emotions or purposes you want. Go live. And, if you’re so inclined, learn how to do it better.

But that sort of begs another question, doesn’t it? How do you want? How do you know what you want? What do you do if you don’t even know where to begin?

Well, that answer is the same as the answer to this, the question I asked myself at the beginning and that brought me here in the first place: “How do you find an answer when you don’t even know what the question is?”

Here it is:

You go explore.

 Thank you,

A Friend

[sciencespies]

If you thought quantum mechanics was weird, you need to check out entangled time

https://sciencespies.com/physics/if-you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-you-need-to-check-out-entangled-time/

If you thought quantum mechanics was weird, you need to check out entangled time

In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics.

The focus of their worry was what Schrödinger later dubbed entanglement: the inability to describe two quantum systems or particles independently, after they have interacted.

Until his death, Einstein remained convinced that entanglement showed how quantum mechanics was incomplete. Schrödinger thought that entanglement was the defining feature of the new physics, but this didn’t mean that he accepted it lightly.

“I know of course how the hocus pocus works mathematically,” he wrote to Einstein on 13 July 1935. “But I do not like such a theory.”

Schrödinger’s famous cat, suspended between life and death, first appeared in these letters, a byproduct of the struggle to articulate what bothered the pair.

The problem is that entanglement violates how the world ought to work. Information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, for one.

But in a 1935 paper, Einstein and his co-authors showed how entanglement leads to what’s now called quantum nonlocality, the eerie link that appears to exist between entangled particles.

If two quantum systems meet and then separate, even across a distance of thousands of lightyears, it becomes impossible to measure the features of one system (such as its position, momentum and polarity) without instantly steering the other into a corresponding state. 

Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps.

The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality?

The answer, as it turns out, is yes.

Just when you thought quantum mechanics couldn’t get any weirder, a team of physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported in 2013 that they had successfully entangled photons that never coexisted.

Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement swapping’ had already showed quantum correlations across time, by delaying the measurement of one of the coexisting entangled particles; but Eli Megidish and his collaborators were the first to show entanglement between photons whose lifespans did not overlap at all.

Here’s how they did it.

First, they created an entangled pair of photons, ‘1-2’ (step I in the diagram below). Soon after, they measured the polarisation of photon 1 (a property describing the direction of light’s oscillation) – thus ‘killing’ it (step II).

(Provided)

Photon 2 was sent on a wild goose chase while a new entangled pair, ‘3-4’, was created (step III). Photon 3 was then measured along with the itinerant photon 2 in such a way that the entanglement relation was ‘swapped’ from the old pairs (‘1-2’ and ‘3-4’) onto the new ‘2-3’ combo (step IV).

Some time later (step V), the polarisation of the lone survivor, photon 4, is measured, and the results are compared with those of the long-dead photon 1 (back at step II).

The upshot? The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted.

What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter.

Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.

Lest this scenario strike you as too outlandish, Megidish and his colleagues can’t resist speculating on possible and rather spooky interpretations of their results.

Perhaps the measurement of photon 1’s polarisation at step II somehow steers the future polarisation of 4, or the measurement of photon 4’s polarisation at step V somehow rewrites the past polarisation state of photon 1.

In both forward and backward directions, quantum correlations span the causal void between the death of one photon and the birth of the other.

Just a spoonful of relativity helps the spookiness go down, though.

In developing his theory of special relativity, Einstein deposed the concept of simultaneity from its Newtonian pedestal.

As a consequence, simultaneity went from being an absolute property to being a relative one. There is no single timekeeper for the Universe; precisely when something is occurring depends on your precise location relative to what you are observing, known as your frame of reference.

So the key to avoiding strange causal behaviour (steering the future or rewriting the past) in instances of temporal separation is to accept that calling events ‘simultaneous’ carries little metaphysical weight.

It is only a frame-specific property, a choice among many alternative but equally viable ones – a matter of convention, or record-keeping. 

The lesson carries over directly to both spatial and temporal quantum nonlocality.

Mysteries regarding entangled pairs of particles amount to disagreements about labelling, brought about by relativity.

Einstein showed that no sequence of events can be metaphysically privileged – can be considered more real – than any other. Only by accepting this insight can one make headway on such quantum puzzles. 

The various frames of reference in the Hebrew University experiment (the lab’s frame, photon 1’s frame, photon 4’s frame, and so on) have their own ‘historians’, so to speak.

While these historians will disagree about how things went down, not one of them can claim a corner on truth. A different sequence of events unfolds within each one, according to that spatiotemporal point of view.

Clearly, then, any attempt at assigning frame-specific properties generally, or tying general properties to one particular frame, will cause disputes among the historians.

But here’s the thing: while there might be legitimate disagreement about which properties should be assigned to which particles and when, there shouldn’t be disagreement about the very existence of these properties, particles, and events. 

These findings drive yet another wedge between our beloved classical intuitions and the empirical realities of quantum mechanics.

As was true for Schrödinger and his contemporaries, scientific progress is going to involve investigating the limitations of certain metaphysical views.

Schrödinger’s cat, half-alive and half-dead, was created to illustrate how the entanglement of systems leads to macroscopic phenomena that defy our usual understanding of the relations between objects and their properties: an organism such as a cat is either dead or alive. No middle ground there. 

Most contemporary philosophical accounts of the relationship between objects and their properties embrace entanglement solely from the perspective of spatial nonlocality.

But there’s still significant work to be done on incorporating temporal nonlocality – not only in object-property discussions, but also in debates over material composition (such as the relation between a lump of clay and the statue it forms), and part-whole relations (such as how a hand relates to a limb, or a limb to a person).

For example, the ‘puzzle’ of how parts fit with an overall whole presumes clear-cut spatial boundaries among underlying components, yet spatial nonlocality cautions against this view. Temporal nonlocality further complicates this picture: how does one describe an entity whose constituent parts are not even coexistent?

Discerning the nature of entanglement might at times be an uncomfortable project. It’s not clear what substantive metaphysics might emerge from scrutiny of fascinating new research by the likes of Megidish and other physicists.

In a letter to Einstein, Schrödinger notes wryly (and deploying an odd metaphor): “One has the feeling that it is precisely the most important statements of the new theory that can really be squeezed into these Spanish boots – but only with difficulty.”

We cannot afford to ignore spatial or temporal nonlocality in future metaphysics: whether or not the boots fit, we’ll have to wear ’em.

This article was first published in April 2018.

Elise Crull is the assistant professor in history and philosophy of science at the City College of New York. She’s co-author of the upcoming book “The ‘Einstein Paradox’: Debates on Nonlocality and Incompleteness in 1935”.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

#Physics

[s33]

Qualia, Information, and Brain

Is it possible that qualia are properties of experience that don't affect information processing in the brain? Yes.  Sort of. Information processing does get affected, but only because it consists of qualia processing qualia. Let me explain.

The idea that the brain is ‘processing information’ is only true metaphorically. The brain is composed of concrete physical structures, not abstract logical functions. To say that there is information processing in the brain is like saying that there is profit in a dry cleaning business. It’s true in an informal, naive sense, but there’s no ontological difference between ‘profit’ and the excess of dollar bills in the cash register or the electronic states in a computer when the owner checks their bank account. The profit is an idea that we have about how the business is running, but the business itself doesn’t know that it’s profiting.

The same confusion exists when we talk about ‘information’ being processed ‘in’ a brain or computer. We are dazzled by both the depth of knowledge required to understand neurology or computer engineering, and by the feeling we get when we use sophisticated, trendy terms like ‘information processing’, so we don’t generally question the nature of information itself. If we did question it, we would find that there is no good reason to consider information anything more or less than the property of a mental experience in which our thinking is informed - that is, when our thinking seems like it has acquired new and potentially useful thoughts. The physical world of brains and computer hardware, if it were strictly physical and unconscious, would have no use for any such mental property as information, since every aspect of the world would be governed by deterministic forces and blindly probabilistic causality branches. If you have charge and momentum, mass and energy, etc, then there is no need for any kind of signals or accounting. The gears would simply turn because they have to, not because there is some process of accounting and comparison telling the charge to change polarity or strength.

To sum up - there is no need to invoke any informative entity to explain any physical process in a physical universe. Physical processes, especially on the quantum level, certainly remind us of how think and are informed, but if such a process were informing itself nonlocally or faster than light, retrocausally etc, there is no compelling reason to label it ‘physical’. In fact, when we cross the classical limit into quantum theory, we have left all pretense of materiality behind and have moved into a realm of pure abstraction…interpretations of interpretations. It is just as useful to think of the quantum world as microphenomenal (based on low level experiential interactions, aka sensory-motive qualia) is it is to think of quantum as microphysical (form/field-force) or information-theoretic. If we are going to insist on quantum mechanics existing in the absence of all awareness, then we would have to understand exactly why and how it could ever appear that it does not.

Physical mechanisms should reduce to chain reactions of forms or forces. The should not need to know or detect anything. There should not be any role for a conscious perceiver or participant in shaping their behaviors. Church-Turing Thesis, which is considered to be one of the foundational pillars of computer science and of all computing that really exists today, shows that any problem which is computable can be executed by blind mechanical functions. Just as we can solve any simple arithmetic problem by counting on our fingers, all problems that can be solved by computation will be equally valid when we use properly configured physical switches,  gears or electronic substances that can be set in a way that causes other settings to change or prevent change. As long as *we* (conscious seers, counters, and thinkers) can see and count and logically think about the significance of the result of such switches switching, the result will be reliable and potentially useful to us (informative).

In other words, computer science proves that computation need not involve any information processing at all, but rather only a chain reaction of changing formations. A physical machine has no ‘in’ or ‘out’, no ‘ones and zeros’, only charged field surfaces and volumes in motion or stasis. A ‘program’ is literally nothing but the sequence of moving parts of a machine.

Anyhow, now that we have made clear why it is not logical or parsimonious to conflate any physical phenomenon in a physical world with the presence of disembodied ‘information’, we can do the same thing with qualia. This has been done several times in the history of philosophy - Searle’s Chinese Room, Leibniz Mill, Plato’s Cave, etc. Alfred Korzybski’s phrase ‘the map is not the territory’ is a bit more general, so it applies to both the relation of information to physics, information to qualia, and physics to qualia. Information is an intellectual map* of a territory that is composed of either physical or mental qualia. Physics is a perceptual map of hypothetical qualia.

I know that it will sound outrageous to many readers to assert that physics is the map and qualia is the territory, but that is only because our physical theory includes the fallacious premise that it is not a theory. The only thing that we know for sure about physical phenomena is that they are reliable features of most of our waking experience - they are a category of qualia which subjectively seems to transcend our subjectivity, but so do other non-physical things like math and logic. In my understanding, it makes more sense that all phenomena are more like qualia or ‘dream-stuff’, then they are like ‘star-stuff’ or ‘number-stuff’**.

The irony is that it is pragmatic logic that tells us this. We don’t have to believe in anything supernatural or mystical to understand it. All that we have to ask is how the physical brain’s activity would change if there were no such thing as sight or sound or feeling. Would the rhodopsin molecules in the retina not become isomerized by a certain range of electromagnetic stimulation? Would the same neurons not release glutamate that cascades into other molecular releases along the optic nerve and visual cortex? No, logically, nothing would change if there were no such things as colors, shapes, and images. As long as there are atoms, molecules, cells, and bodies (setting aside for the moment the fact that they too are only known to be tangible-touchable qualia), nothing about the behavior of those bodies would change. Nothing about the way that chemical reactions in the brain ‘process information’ would change. If we believe that qualia does not have to exist, then we cannot logically justify that qualia could possibly exist. Neither information processing or formation collisions could logically lead to any ‘emergent properties’ without qualia/consciousness, but both physics and information could be derived by splitting and masking properties of qualia.

*an informational map is itself made of the intellectual qualia of thinking. I use the pretentious term ‘cognitive-cogitative’ qualia to reveal the parallels that I suggest between thinking and other qualia modalities, such as ‘visible-optical’, ‘aural-sonic’, and ‘personal-social’. More on that here.

**regardless of how many dreamers we believe the universal dream belongs to. If Monotheism were true, the physical universe would be part of the dream of a single God. If theism were false, the belonging relation may not need to exist at the absolute level. Experiences of God, or of being God could still exist, but they would just be features of an even larger dream in which are also dreams in which those experiences of divinity cannot be accessed. My absolute truth here is that what can always be accessed is qualia. Whether we believe in God or gods or computation, its all forms of qualia.

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Do you know your own soul history?

The best thing any person can do at this time is to work on healing and discovering the self. Do you know your own soul history? Can you say where your soul came from with confidence? If these questions intrigue you then maybe this article may have some value you can take in your own journey. Many people will not take the time to look inside the self and began the healing process. If you are one who is constantly asking the question who am I really and how did I get here, congratulations you are embarking on discovering the beauty of your true nature and what your purpose is. What does that even mean you may ask? It will be what you as the individual makes it mean. Yes the choice is in the hands of the observer as in quantum physics. If you have the choice to view yourself however you desire; the best question may be why do you choose to view yourself the way you do? What makes a person great is already inside just waiting to be claimed and discovered. A person can choose a long difficult road for soul growth and expansion of love and wisdom or a person could take a little time every day to work on self discovery through meditation and free writing for example. Why does it even make sense to do these things and why does it matter? First of all if you don't value yourself you may value very little in life and that is the first sign of trauma and disconnect. One may not seem to care deeply in to any thing at all at this state and that is part of the process. If you don't know you are unhappy and why, it may be hard to even know where to start the healing process. By the way if a person says they do not need healing my question to them would be can you tell me exactly why you are here alive on Earth/Gaia today? Point being that all beings have a purpose in the grand picture of all that is. Weather you know what your purpose is or not you still have one and self healing is the doorway to discovering not only your purpose but your true nature as well. With that said would you not agree that learning your purpose is at least kinda important? If you could agree with that idea then here is some insight for self discovery.

We live in this great time of expansion and now have many sources for our own self discovery. One of the most comprehensible ways is to have an Akashik reading, this will give you a mapped story of your souls origins from the beginning of time as it where. Another way is to have a QHHT session from Deloris Cannons teachings and students. Yet meditation is another way we can unlock deep truths about the self. Some of the most devoted yogis and spiritual Gurus simply have a practice they seek to perfect and through this practice they began to unlock pieces of self that is aware of the divinity within. How ever you choose to embark on this journey is ultimately up to you so just go with your own discernment and use your hearts intuition to guide you. This may be one of the most difficult things to do but very necessary to remove the thought process as the driver and switch to the intuitive, wisdom of the hearts desire to guide you. From that stand point the excitement of self discover begins to blossom and the doorway to enlightenment becomes unlocked. You are an eternal infinite soul living out this human experience here on Earth. Have you ever asked yourself what do I truly desire? We are all beings of energy and light formed by a resonant frequency that is the grand accumulation of the soul memory essence through expressive experience and infinite plaines of existence stemming from the Grand Galactic Central Sun Source Light. First critical step is realizing that you are a soul first then a human avatar. There are many resources that go in to detail explaining of what a soul actually is. For the purpose of this article we will speak of the soul as your individual essence, aware, and conscious being that is the free willed driver. The body or avatar is simply the vehicle we use to house the soul essence for the individual experience and with that comes all sorts of interesting complications. If source is whole and perfect and we all come from source as stated earlier then why do we experience these interesting complications. It is part of the experience to fall from the grace of all that is perfect eternal and complete only to heal, grow and reconnect. Think about it for a moment if you are perfect forever and all knowing would it not be brilliant to create and share. If you are source then you are one so would it not make sense to create another version of yourself? Ok some deep stuff up for your individual discernment and that is the beauty of it we all have slightly different lenses we look thru for the individual perspective. How does all of this apply to self healing and discovery? If you know who you are and where your soul came from you will quickly began to discover your purpose for existence. Today so many people just brush that aside they would just assume be ignorant and play out the so called normal 3D life. Most people in the UFO spiritual community  understand that is a dis service to the rest of the population because souls that choose to remain ignorant tend to hold back the development of the whole like a parachute. This is part of the challenge to awaken as many individual souls on Earth/Gaia as possible for coming changes that are completely decided by the collective. If we all make up the collective in the sea of consciousness would it be vital to pay attention to what type of energy we are contributing. Ask yourself do you have thoughts that muddy up clear water sorta speak? Any  defeating thought could hold not only you back from your full potential it could also hold back the collectives full potential for piece and harmony in the universe and on Earth/Gaia. The best thing any one individual can do is be authentic to what they feel. Instead of over thinking just be in a shared space with your heart and know that everything else is part of the illusion.  

Ok so you discover these amazing things about yourself now what is the significance of all this? Through your journeys you have learned that we are all part of Source and you individually contribute to the sum of all that is. If we are all part of this cosmic web of consciousness then your contribution to this shared reality could be one of enlightenment and love. The most interesting thing about that statement is that we all have a choice to be enlightened or not. Here is the kicker many people don't realize they even have a choice and that was by design from beings opposing the growth and freedom of will through many forms of control like currency for example. Now the daily activities that take up most of the day are revolved around these control mechanisms. These mechanisms are distractions that can make a person focus but more times they seem to be unnecessary obstacles we allow our selves to be sucked in to. All these things must be spoke of so we are aware and take back the control of our own journey. If you are feeling some sort of stuck like many are at this time then would you like to know there is some sort of hope in it all? Do you want to be in control of your own journey and if so would you choose a fulfilling exciting journey, abundant with love? Who would willingly choose a life of poverty, war and famine? Maybe those on the other side of the fence are receiving some sort of benefit keeping others enslaved in this manner. We are not and can not be victims to this so called group of service to self beings. Self healing and discovery means taking back the power of the wisdom that is truly yours.

Many people don't know who they are let alone understand how important self healing and discovery is at this time in Earths evolution. Why back and forth with Earth the individual you and self healing/discovery? It is all connected in the web of consciousness and the more aware you are the more you can contribute to the shift of mother Earth moving in to 5th density. Would you desire a fulfilling experience involving soul growth and evolution if you fully believed it was possible? The more aware one is the more becomes possible and the future becomes more malleable to the highest desire for that individual. As more individuals self heal and discover the collective energy also become more malleable for everyones potential temporal reality. That is the point grow and expand together with as many individual soul essence that add to the dynamic of a multicolored conscious web and co exist with our galactic family from other star systems in harmony. Think about this everyone wants to go to the party but not everyone wants everyone to be there. Can you think of reasons why a person would not get invited to a party? This does not make them bad or you bad it just means we have an idea of what we like and who we like to be around. Here is another great question do you think that Source would pic and choose who gets to come to the party and who does not? Yes these are all metaphors and they get the mind thinking cause all that exists does so because of thought. If thoughts are unclear then choice has little influence on motivation for what you do or don't do in your life. We must learn we all have choice and take that power thru healing and self awareness to control a desired outcome in this evolutionary step.Every being is already contributing to this conscious web we all share so again what are you choosing to contribute? We are all in this together and that is why working on the self is so very important at this time! It is not about being selfish or service to self but through the work and healing of the self we understand the interconnectedness we all share and that changes how we all treat each other. Blessings of light and love remember we are all one.

Author, Erik Chavez Arcturian Star Seed