I have a mild interest in science fiction for the simple reason that it is sort of a predictor of what is to come based on reality. While most fictions miss the mark completely, some hit bull’s-eye with uncanny precision.
The most interesting of the lot, however, are those that we never see coming because they sound too ridiculous or those that are presently the case but sound like fiction.
A bit of Physics
My most vivid memory of what sparked my interest in this concept is reading the novel Timeline by Michael Crichton. It tells the story of how a time machine was invented (based on the principles of quantum physics). This machine disintegrates your body here and “assembles” you back together in your destination – the past.
It created such mental images in my mind that I began to think of how probable the story was.
Later I came across Einstein’s theory of special relativity with the simple illustration of the twin paradox. In the thought experiment, one of the twins travels into space at a speed close to the speed of light. By the time he returns, the twin who remained on Earth would have aged more.
This seemed to drive home the point that time as we know and experience it is not a constant. That there probably isn’t a simple universal way (such as a clock) to accurately measure the passage of time.
Because when in motion, time actually slows down (a reference back to the travelling twins who both synchronised their watches before setting out, only to find that the one on earth had read farther ahead than the travelling clock).
There is real explanation of how even at 10% of the speed of light, a clock would slow down by about 1% – not to talk of going the whole 299792458m/s.
But this slowness of time at a high speed can only be measured by a stationary observer, not the person to whom it is happening. This suggests that we are likely confined in a space that makes it impossible to see reality and time as it really is.
What you see is not what it is, really
Another interesting thing that suggests the mythical nature of reality is the Observer Effect. This is a theory that says, in layman’s terms, that since we are only able to see an object when light falls on it, then the fact that we can see it due to the incident light (which the object being observed reflects) changes the nature of what is observed.
By implication, observing an object changes it, so that what we see is not the real thing but its altered state.
A simpler example is when you check the pressure in a car tire. You can only do this by letting out air from the tire which, consequently, changes the pressure in the tire.
This puts in doubt, then, what exactly we can objectively consider as reality. If nothing is the way it seems and time is a mental construct; if life is a subjective experience and it is altered just by experiencing it; what then is reality?
Or maybe it’s all a game
Lastly, I find this mash-up of conversations with Elon Musk about how we might be in a simulation interesting.
The argument is that 40 years ago, the games that existed were just dots on a box. Today we have games that are almost photorealistic. At this rate of improvement, sometime in the future, we will most likely have games in augmented or virtual reality that would be almost indistinguishable from reality as we know it.
Now, if that is a possibility, then how likely is it that it hasn’t already been done; that we are living in a simulation right now? How likely is it that we are in base reality? The odds are one in a billion, according to Musk.
Yet, reality as we know it is as real as anything can be. The emotions we feel when someone shows us love or when we hit our pinky toe against something; the physical objects we interact with all feel very real. It doesn’t seem to be a construct of the mind that a car or plane exists when you sit in it.
Autopsy or Biopsy?
It’s hard to say which is actually real. But that was not the aim of my rambling. This could be both a biopsy and an autopsy of reality as we know it, depending on who’s reading.
“Reality”, to me, is in a state that can be likened to a quantum superposition that is similar to the “dead and alive” state of Schrödinger’s cat.
The observer plays a vital role in determining which state reality is in. But this is done not by mere direct observation but by a non-concrete interaction – a choice to believe in one.
