Conversations on the nature of reality (original) (raw)
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The Universe, Life and Everything... Dialogues on our changing understanding of reality
Our current understanding of our world is nearly 350 years old. It stems from the ideas of Descartes and Newton and has brought us many great things, including modern science and increases in wealth, health and everyday living standards. Furthermore, it is so ingrained in our daily lives that we have forgotten it is a paradigm, not a fact. There are, however, some problems with it. First, there is no satisfactory explanation for why we have consciousness and experience meaning in our lives. Second, modern-day physics tells us that observations depend on characteristics of the observer at the large, cosmic, and small, subatomic scales. Third, ongoing humanitarian and environmental crises show us that our world is vastly interconnected. Our understanding of reality is expanding to incorporate these issues. In The Universe, Life and Everything . . . Dialogues on our Changing Understanding of Reality, some of the scholars at the forefront of this change, from the fields of physics, psychology, and social sciences, discuss the direction it is taking and its urgency.
Who and What We Are: A Multilayered Exploration of Reality, Consciousness, and Emergence
This article is part of an (informal) series: The Dynamics of Consciousness: Exploring Neural, Universal, and Holosonic Interactions, 2025
This article explores the dynamic and interconnected nature of reality, consciousness, and emergence through a four-layer simulation. Each layer—quantum possibilities, consciousness dynamics, cosmic creation, and reality formation—is modeled to examine how quantum states, individual intentions, and collective observations coalesce into shared reality. The study bridges disciplines such as quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and cosmology, grounded in Carson’s Cat metaphor and the Framework. The results demonstrate that reality emerges from recursive interactions between individual consciousness and universal forces, offering insights into the nature of free will, agency, and collective co-creation. Implications for artificial intelligence (AI), philosophical discourse, and interdisciplinary science are discussed.
WordPress, 2022
Science today stands at a crossroads: will its progress be driven by human minds or by the machines that we've created? A schism is emerging in the scientific enterprise. On the one side is the human mind, the source of every story, theory and explanation that our species holds dear. On the other stand the machines, whose algorithms possess astonishing predictive power but whose inner workings remain radically opaque to human observers. As we humans strive to understand the fundamental nature of the world, our machines churn out measurable, practical predictions that seem to extend beyond the limits of thought. While understanding might satisfy our curiosity, with its narratives about cause and effect, prediction satisfies our desires, mapping these mechanisms on to reality. We now face a choice about which kind of knowledge matters more-as well as the question of whether one stands in the way of scientific progress.
The Universe, the Light, the Earth, the Life: the Reality is Greater than We Are
2020
The pandemic caused by Covid-19 locked us at home for several weeks. Some clever town councillors took this opportunity to offer their citizens cultural pills. In my little town I was asked to present a few short lectures on general scientific concepts. I tried to link together four entities of reality (Universe, Light, Earth and Life) showing that reality is much more complex than we think and much greater than us. E.g.: age of the Universe vs age of human civilization (~1.3x1010 vs ~ 1x104 years), size of universe vs human size (~1x1025 m vs ~1 m), velocity of light vs velocity of sound (3x108 vs 3.5x102 m/s), number of stars in the sky (~ 1x1023), number of molecule in a drop of water (~ 3x1021), number of atoms in a human body (~ 1x1027). Although we know reasonably well how Universe, Light, Earth and Life "work", we are still surrounded by profound mysteries related to the why questions, i.e., the "questions of meaning", that science cannot answer. Such ques...
The Foundational Questions Institute’s 2016 essay contest invited authors to discuss how aims and intentions arose from mindless mathematical laws (“the Problem”). The Problem hinges on an ancient issue: how to reconcile the subjectivity of minds with the objectivity of physical law. Since the 17th century, issues touching on the immaterial have been regarded as outside the scope of science. Francis Bacon [23] and others came to the view that non-measurables such as aims, intentions, and the state of one’s soul, were best left to the church. They established science’s domain on the firm ground of physical observables. This scope definition, tentative when proposed, is now taken as fundamental. The stunning successes of science were accompanied by a creeping intellectual hubris, to the extent that today reality itself has become synonymous with the physical world; the immaterial has been excluded. Thus we have the much discussed “mind-body” problem which continues to evade solution [2-21]. But as humans we spend a great deal of our time in the immaterial domain: thinking, forming aims and intentions, worrying about relationships, and wondering about our place in the universe. This dichotomy implies that ultimately we don’t know what we are. Are we simply neuro-bio-mechanisms, and our thoughts a meaningless side effect? This is one view [6]. Are we just high-performing apes [5]? Competing economic agents? Beloved creations of an omniscient Creator [25]? Spiritual beings inhabiting animal bodies [26]? Our existential confusion and lack of progress on the mind-body problem may be the result of an inappropriate starting point. We may need to completely re-envisage reality before we can move forward. This work explores that possibility.
Lived Inquiry MetaLab, 2024
This paper presents an exploration of a potential new framework for understanding consciousness and reality, developed through a dialogue between a human researcher and ChatGPT, an AI language model. By synthesizing key aspects of the theory of quantum consciousness, simulation theory, the conscious universe theory, and the multiverse concept, the conversation leads to the formulation of the Consciousness Quantum Simulation Metaverse (CQSM) Metatheory. This metatheory is proposed as a hybrid post-metaphysical and scientific framework, offering an integrative approach to addressing the gaps left by each theory in isolation. The CQSM Metatheory suggests that consciousness may be the fundamental substance from which reality, including space-time and the multiverse, emerges. It explores how quantum phenomena and simulation theory could reflect consciousness' role in shaping reality, positioning the universe as a dynamic "simulation" driven by an underlying, unified consciousness. By integrating multiverse theory, the framework allows for multiple coexisting realities, all as expressions of the same foundational consciousness. This paper includes both a full transcript of the conversation and a synthesis of the key insights from the dialogue. The dialogue highlights the potential for Human-AI symbiosis in generating new theoretical models and expanding the boundaries of inquiry into consciousness and the nature of reality. The CQSM Metatheory is not offered as a definitive answer but rather as a speculative, yet promising, framework for future interdisciplinary exploration.