Superpositional states

[andrew]

What I meant by not agreeing that everyone comes into one's life for a purpose is the suggestion of 100% predeterminism - that there's some sort of grand scheme being played out by the gods, in which we are mere puppets acting out their (at times rather cheesy) script. As I used to say to my son Anno when he was 3, "there is no Fat Controller!" (being the big boss in Thomas the Tank Engine). That's not to say that there might not be some higher form of reflective consciousness - after all, why should it start and end with us? Our brains (including our sense of self) is a network of 100 billion neurons working in concert. Since our galaxy contains 100 billion stars, perhaps the Milky Way also experiences a sense of self... and since the measurable universe contains 100 billion galaxies, perhaps it too experiences the ultimate sense of self??  "And God created man in his own image and likeness..."  But getting back to the concept of purpose, do you mean this in the sense of some ultimate plan? Or simply (and unarguably) that every encounter we make has a knock-on effect in our lives?
For what it's worth, I agree with Peter that everything is simultaneously true and false, but with the qualification that each view is incomplete without the other: "The difference between [Peter] and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make believe, while to him make believe and true were exactly the same thing"  aka in quantum theory "superpositional states"...

[AlexanderDavid]

EDIT: I've since changed my mind vis-a-vis what I had posted here before, so I've deleted it.

[andrew]

Gives new meaning to the name Peter Pan ("all"), doesn't it?    And it explains how Peter Pan is able to switch sides on a whim, because it's all the same to him.

But I agree, quantum mechanics is a fascinating subject, especially since it demonstrates as fact many teachings of Eastern traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.  

Have you read Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics??

I'm not an expert in any of those things and so cannot articulate as well (and for that I apologize), but I do find the subject fascinating and the more I learn about things the more I'm convinced of their reality.  Fundamentally, opposites and fragmentations of any kind break down.

We are all one, we are all "the Pan."

Yet we are simultaneously all different, all unique!

If we are conscious, and we are made of the same basic components as everything else, why can't they at least have potential consciousness as well?  And since the First Law of Thermodynamics says that nothing is created or destroyed, it only changes form, that means that everything that makes up myself, for example, has always existed and will always exist in some form(s).  Therefore fundamentally I'm no different from anyone or anything else--it's just the particular form I'm taking now that appears different.

Quite true - all that's different is the pattern. Yet it's the pattern that matters!  Shakespeare and Hitler were made of the same stuff after all...

Not to mention that "I" am a collection of microscopic fundamental particles, despite having a single consciousness.  Therefore doesn't it stand to reason that everything that exists, at least potentially, has a singular consciousness pervading everything?  That's as near a definition of "God" as I can conceive.

What's more, I think particle states can help us understand why anything exists at all--at absolute zero, absolute rest, nothing can happen.  Only in excited states does anything happen, and that causes particles to separate and interact with each other like separate entities--

at absolute zero they would be solid, all part of a greater whole but not acting.  

Actually not so. The 3rd law of thermo-dynamics prevents anything from reaching absolute zero, for if an atom could theoretically stop moving, it wouldn't simply be a stationary atom - it would cease to exist* - which would subtract 1 atom from the total energy of the universe, and thus contradict the 1st law! (*it is only energy that gives an atom form and the illusion of solidity in the first place. Absolute zero = zero energy = zero atom/electron/quark/whatever)

Is the world we encounter, then, an "excited" state where things can happen and where division and fragmentation appears to be the order of the day?  And the matter making it up is equivalent to the energy keeping up the excited state, isn't it?

So I understand (IF I understand!) But remember what Erwin Schrodinger  warned: "Anyone who thinks they've understood quantum theory hasn't understood it, because it is by definition incomprehensibe to the human brain."  Werner Heisenberg has a fascinating chapter in his "Physics and Philosophy" about how we lack the words to convey what's going on.   

While we're on the subject I don't believe in the simplified form of reincarnation most often accepted--that there was one past life before this, and will be one future life after this.  I think it's more of a Frankenstein hybrid, and at most you might be a large percentage of one singular individual who came before you, but very unlikely (if possible) that you're the exact same individual.

Quite agree. It's only the ego that craves immortality for the self.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and I apologize, but the subject fascinates me, and I wonder what anyone else thinks.

We're on the General Topic page, so no need to apologise!

[AlexanderDavid]

Quite true - all that's different is the pattern. Yet it's the pattern that matters!  Shakespeare and Hitler were made of the same stuff after all...

Haha, exactly.  Which is why religions tell us to love our enemies and pity them for walking in darkness, rather than hating them for being "evil."

[andrew]

Many years ago my son Anno (who was killed in 2001) and I came up with our own vision of the universe that we called our Donut Theory, largely influenced by the mushrooms that grow on our mountainside. In a nutshell: the universe is not spherical but donut (aka torus) shaped. The "Big Bang" was not a one-off event 13 bn years ago, but is an on-going recycling of energy that re-emerges at the centre of the donut's (black) hole. This centre is approx 13bn light years from where our galaxy currently lies on its expanding journey to the 'edge' of space-time, where the temperature approaches absolute zero.  Here matter can no longer hold together - the atoms drift apart until they too decompose back into protons neutrons and electrons, and finally - at a zillionth of a degree above absolute zero (= Planck's limit) - into quarks... whereupon they simply disappear - and instantaneously reappear (by a non-local, quantum leap) at the centre, where they re-emerge to start the journey all over again. "And so it will go on, as long as quarks are gay and innocent and heartless."  
Oh yes, one other part of our theory: the fundamental particle is a single unit of space-time. Energy is condensed space-time. Matter is super-condensed space-time.  Nothingness is a mathematical limit that doesn't actually exist - like absolute zero.
All of the above is doubtless unmitigated rubbish, but it was fun thinking it up!

[AlexanderDavid]

That actually somewhat resembles a colorful idea of the universe that I once came up with, using the metaphor of a movie projector and screen.

At the center is the "projector" that projects in all directions simultaneously and eternally, and the rays stretch out from the center onto the "screen," which is like the interior of a hollowed-out shape that completely surrounds the "projector," and the image projected is like a motion picture--it appears three-dimensional (or rather, four-dimensional if you count time) to its inhabitants but it's an optical illusion and is really more equivalent to the two dimensions on the movie screen.  But we're all connected to (and we all come from) that "projector" via the "light rays" that are our true essence projecting our "images" onto the "screen."  And it's possible to move your consciousness along that lifeline to the center, and that's what we call having a "religious" or "out of body" or "communion" experience.

I no longer quite believe that, but it's amazing where the mind will take you if you let it, isn't it?

[andrew]

Lovely image that conjures - I shall think of it as I hit the soft-and-downy tonight! Reminds one of Plato's cave....

[AlexanderDavid]

Lovely image that conjures - I shall think of it as I hit the soft-and-downy tonight! Reminds one of Plato's cave....

Wow.  I'm flattered! 

And I wasn't aware of Plato's allegory of the cave, but I looked it up and now you mention it, I agree!  Just imagine what he could have done if there had been movies in his time, eh? 

[smiles]

Ignorance is bliss.
H.P. Lovecraft often warned in his short stories that man should not delve too deeply into the mysteries of the universe in case we find what we think we're looking for.