I’m blocked on all my current tasks at work so I went to MacNiven’s to take a break, and, like I do, I’m reading a physics book.
This one is about the various “Universe as Holographic Information” hypotheses.
Short version
The deepest reality of our universe is two-dimensional hologram, one of Space and one of Time, encoded on the surface of the thing.
The four-dimensions we experience are a side effect of consciousness interpreting the info at any given “coordinate” on the 2D space in a 4D immersive light and sound show.
Fascinating.
This particular holographic hypothesis asserts that it is, in fact, information that is the ultimate reality, and the experience we have as conscious beings, mass, electricity, weather, all of it, emerges from interpreting that information.
Information must be encoded some”where”, and so the physical 2D space is required, whereas the 4D experiences we have are consequence.
So it is consciousness that, literally, creates the “physical” world we experience.
This reminds me of the first verse of the Gospel of John.
LOGOS as creative force.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In order to make sense of (interpret) the two-dimensional hologram, a four-dimensional experience of sensory input is as simple as it can be — but no simpler.
Consciousness, then, is the bit of the universe that, literally, makes sense of it all.
Makes sense.
Makes.
Creates.
It is, literally — think words, information — making sense of the physical 2D universe that creates the 4D world we live in.
I find this hypothesis both fascinating and repugnant.
The author makes a good case that it does, however, explain a lot of mysteries without resorting to obvious bullshit like string theory though. (ugh)
It also reconciles the problem of the asymmetrical (one-way) flow of time we experience at the Newtonian scale and the T-symmetries we find at the quantum scale.
And it accounts for the non-locality of quantum physics (entanglement, or, as Einstein called it, “spooky action at a distance”) in a satisfying way.
My intuition tells me this “information as bedrock” stuff is onto something.