In Alice in Wonderland (or was that Through the Looking-Glass – I can never remember which one of the two it was*) it’s stated that it’s possible to believe many (as in six) impossible things before breakfast. Science and associated philosophies have had to deal with impossibilities and wildly improbable things, some of which are straight forward, and some of which aren’t – perhaps to the point where something possible is in fact impossible and fundamentally wrong. Conversely, something considered impossible might in fact be possible and fundamentally right.
A cautionary note: when it comes to what’s possible or impossible; plausible or implausible; probable or improbable, majority doesn’t rule. This isn’t a democracy. If a billion people believe nonsense, it’s still nonsense. This however is in contrast to what has been proven beyond a reasonable scientific doubt. If a billion people continue to disbelieve something that has been proved, then it’s those billion people who are nonsense, not the idea.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
FIFTHLY, there are those other apparent impossibilities that involve contradictions between solid theory and solid observation. For example, astrophysicists predict that in-the-beginning (the Big Bang event) equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created. Observation says otherwise – it’s a matter dominated Universe. Physicists predict a certain value for the vacuum energy. Experiment shows the vacuum energy to be some 120 orders of magnitude less that what theory mandates – the biggest discrepancy between theory and observation ever in the history of science. Theory suggests that the physical laws, principles and relationships that govern the Universe should be able to be unified into a Theory of Everything (TOE) – an ultimate equation that can fit on the front of a tee-shirt. The most brilliant minds on the planet have struggled decade after decade after decade to find one that works in practice. Absolute failure has resulted – at least to date. Something’s screwy somewhere!
FINALLY there is a resolution to all of this that will make nobody happy! That resolution applies whether you consider something to be impossible but science doesn’t; science says something is impossible but you don’t agree; or everyone agrees something is just not on. And that resolution is that life, the Universe and everything is a work of fiction – an illusion. For example, there are art works that can depict 2-D images of objects that are impossible to construct or be realised in 3-D. You can believe hundreds of impossible things before breakfast, lunch and dinner if you take films, TV shows, holograms and video games at face value. The list of impossibilities that you’ll find written in novels, short stories, plays, fine literature or the pulps, comic books galore – well, fiction full-stop – would itself fill a goodly sized book, perhaps several volumes worth.
So, our Universe, filled with many paradoxes, contradictions, impossibilities, implausibility’s, or improbabilities reads more like sci-fi or looks more like a video game or computer simulation. If so, then we’re part of the Universe and then we’re part of the simulation by powers or people (aliens?) unknown and probably unknowable, just like a character in a video game can’t be aware of the identity of either who created the game, or the player.
The Universe isn’t real; Planet Earth isn’t real; you’re not real; I’m not real. However the Universe is virtually real; Planet Earth is virtually real; you are virtually real; as am I. We’re all the creation of someone, or something, else that is real. Or maybe that entity in itself is the creation of an even more remote – one step further removed – something. It’s like a character in a film making a film; a character in a video game creating a video game; a character in a novel writing a novel; a person depicted in a painting who is making a painting.
The rational is that in any given reality that includes an advanced technological species, the number of virtual realities relative to the one that actually exists, could be in the ratio of thousands to millions to one. Reality is going to be vastly outnumbered by virtual reality. So the odds are rather in favour of us (humans and associated real estate) being one of the virtual realities.
Now if you imagine yourself as god (or a good computer programmer or creator of video games) creating a universe from scratch, well, being not quite Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Perfection, might you not for one reason or another cut corners or accidentally stuff things up and end up creating in your virtual world impossibilities, implausibility’s or improbabilities?
In this scenario, as the song lyrics state, ‘heavens knows, anything goes’!
Could this mean the Loch Ness Monster exists? Of course!
Could radioactive nuclei go ‘poof’ for no reason? Yes indeed!
Could aliens be abducting humans from their beds? Of course!
Could two separate and apart sets of software (quantum physics and relativity) be collectively governing the Universe, meaning no TOE? You bet!
Could heaven and hell exist (as your afterlife software subprograms)? I think that could be the case!
Could this illusionary or simulated Universe be one where things can both be and not be (particle and not-particle-but-wave) at the same time? Of course!
What would it take to swing one around to the simulation point of view? Well, you’d need a set of observations that could not be refuted, ideally experimental ones that are repeatable and repeated, that science, not even in it’s wildest theoretical best, can adequately and naturally explain, and which at the same time shatters some ultra well established and most fundamental of scientific principles – say gravity. What if all tennis balls, and only tennis balls, started floating upwards? Either that would demonstrate a simulated Universe, or else you’d better be prepared to think supernatural. Of the two, at least the former is still scientific and rational!
Since we don’t apparently have floating tennis balls, perhaps there is some other, maybe not quite so obvious an anomaly. One that comes to find are various observations of objects in deep space that appear connected by bridges of matter yet which have widely differing red-shifts, thus widely differing velocities. The problem is that the red-shift – velocity relationship is one of the rock-solid foundations of all standard cosmology. On the other hand, the close distance relationships of objects with vastly differing red-shifts some via linking bridges is based on actual observations (usually associated with professional astronomer Halton Arp) which any astronomer can verify (if they want to; most don’t because it challenges their career’s work. It’s easier to just shrug and say ‘it can’t be, therefore it isn’t). [For additional information see:]
Arp, Halton; Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies; Cambridge University Press; Cambridge
Arp, Halton; Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science; Apeiron, Montreal
Arp, Halton; Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations, Apeiron, Montreal
Another possible example is with respect to apparitions, ghosts, phantoms, spectres, spirits, spooks, wraiths – call them what you will like ‘things that go bump in the night’ if you wish.
Now I must stress that I am NOT, repeat NOT, talking about séances, ouija boards, spiritualism, mediums, channeling, and yucky ectoplasm. Rather, just old fashion unexpected, unplanned, undesired, unwanted close encounter with those things that go bump in the night and go ‘boo’ and like to haunt things. The unfortunate thing is that said encounters go back to the ancient Greeks (and probably before if there were records) and proceed through every century up through and including the 21st. Ghostly encounters are recorded across the entire spectrum of the human condition. Young and old; male and female; every race, creed, culture, socioeconomic group, nationality, IQ level, etc. has recorded encounters. By now, that’s probably in the hundreds of thousands to millions of cases, not all by any means noted and logged in the literature. I’m sure many members of the great unwashed keep quiet for obvious reasons. Problem one: has each and every one of those witnesses to ghostly happenings been mistaken?
Problem two is the counterpoint. If you can see or hear ghosts, or photograph them or record them and their activity with other instruments, then ghosts must be composed of matter and energy, yet there is no way known to science to form these ghostly apparitions, comprised of necessity of matter and energy. Since ghosts are apparently whatever leaves the body after death, and since a body doesn’t lose any mass in that interval or transition between life and death, there’s no decrease of X amount of grams, the ghost has to be comprised of nothing and be 100% immaterial – but then you couldn’t see or hear them! That contradicts all those millions of witnesses.
One can invoke the idea of parallel worlds to explain ghosts, not as the remains of the dead but is barely perceptible images of living beings on a parallel world; a parallel Earth in all probability. But parallel worlds or universes are theoretical at best and the macro mechanism(s) by which these macro ghostly entities could appear in our realm is also very hypothetical, and it’s compounding one speculation by heaping on it another.
So the bottom line is that science says they (meaning the remains of dead entities) can not be; witnesses testify otherwise. Impasse! On the other hand, the simulation argument works for me. Impasse no longer!
* Having since looked it up, I’ve confirmed it as the White Queen’s statement from Through the Looking-Glass.
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