Reality is Subjective

I've been meaning to make this post for a while now, but it's a bit of a tough subject to talk about. Not that it's controversial, it's just a bit much for some people, myself included at times.

Before we get started, I wanted to clarify the direction I'll be taking this blog in. And by that I mean what I'll be writing about on this blog. For the most part it'll try to make it technology-oriented, but I'll also be making the occasional post about things like today's post (and I don't mean that as in meta-posts), about people, about social interactions, about life.

After reading the post title you're probably wondering what I mean by reality being subjective. Well, not what I mean, but how I mean to explain it. That's where things get interesting (or complicated, depending how you look at it).

To understand what I mean one must understand the many-worlds theory, which is the idea that there are an infinite number of universes. One must also understand the concept of predeterminism, which is the idea that every event has been determined not only by the previous event but every event before that all the way back to the beginning of the universe. One must also be able to understand the idea that time is multi-dimensional.

To better understand these ideas (except predeterminism) it's helpful to watch the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

(Don't forget to watch part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBaYMESb8o)

This is where things become weird: All those realities, all those infinities, all are yours. And they're all mine. In this universe, where I consider myself conscious, where I'm writing this post while listening to some music and casually chatting with some friends online, this is my universe. But, this universe, with all of it's events, is only happening to me. Everyone has their own universe, each one different, each one with its own set of unique events, each one "belonging" to a single consciousness. Every moment, every decision, every event from a keystroke to the spin of a sub-atomic particle, each one creating a different universe, but none of those belonging to what I, as an individual, perceive as my universe, what I perceive as reality, as my reality.

However, this view conflicts with the idea of predeterminism, which I also believe to be true. With predeterminism, all of the events in my universe have been determined right from the big bang all the way to the end of the universe. But, time being limited to the universe itself, and understanding that a line in time viewed from a higher dimension (or even from outside the universe) can simply be viewed as a single event. Taking that idea to the extreme, the entire universe, with every predetermined event within it, can be viewed as a single event from beginning to end. But it makes sense, because there's a universe for every possible eventuality, so it's only logical that each of those universes was branched off from some sort of "seed" universe, at the beginning of "time", each branch being created when there's more than once possible outcome to a certain event (the spin of a subatomic particle, for example).

But there's a big problem with all this. A problem with all of these events. A problem with this sequence of events leading up to the universe you call your reality:

Death.

What happens to my universe when I die? What happens to your universe when you die? It's not like it can be handed off to someone else. It also can't just suddenly end because you die, the laws of the universe as we know them (at least in this universe, my universe) don't really allow for the entirety of reality to just vanish.

So then what happens? What happens is this:

We don't die in our own reality. We can't. Of course, others can die in our reality. We can die in others' realities (or at least the version of us that appears in others' realities can). But not in ours.

Now, this may sound like wishful thinking (oh, not to worry, you won't ever die, you'll live forever!), but as far as I can tell the logic behind it is solid.

There's already an infinite number of universes, with every possible beginning, every possible end, and every possible event from every possible beginning to every possible end. Every single one of them has already been determined from the moment they began. Not only that, but they all exist, simultaneously.

But they've already happened.

What I mean by that is that none of what you do, none of what I do, is going to change the way your reality, my reality, is. You can't change what's already happened, and given that all events are predetermined, that means every single one of them has already happened.

In a way, it's like a film: The movie, in its entirety, already exists from beginning to end. You can't change the movie. Whether you want the main character to take a left turn or a right turn, he turns right. Whether or not you want her to open the door for the killer, she'll open it (out of sheer stupidity, no less). All of it, from beginning to end, already exists. Every last part of it. But there's different cuts of the movie. There might also be remakes of it. There's different movies altogether where none of the story is the same.

It's the same thing with this universe, with every universe. They've already been made. They've already happened. And you can't change them.

So where does that leave us?

In a sense, we observe. What do we observe? How do we observe? Why do we observe from a human body? If everything is predetermined, then what is consciousness? How is it that we're observing things in what we perceive to be our lives if our lives aren't actually "life" in the traditional sense of the word because of predeterminism?

I have one possible answer: We are not humans. There is no such thing as being human. Humans are not individuals. Humans are part of each universe (or at least the ones where humans exist which, statistically speaking, are vastly outnumbered by the ones where humans DON'T exist).

But then, if we're not human, what are we?

We are the universe. Our own universe, anyway. And we've decided to press "play" on one of the humans in our universe.

There's more like this I can get into, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.