Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?
Reality:
Reality! It’s second nature to us. It is what we live our entire lifetime in and are forever within that lifetime surrounded by. Reality isn’t just interacting with matter and energy (and associated forces); ditto time and space, but in lots of less intangible ways like comprehending the names of objects and their nature; dates, and their importance; and places (we’ve never been to). And there are other concepts you can’t really grasp in your hand yet which you’d consider real – like Wednesdays and blueness and freshness. And there are also your mental realities of memories and knowledge and emotions, etc. You often interact with reality in degrees of ignorance just because that reality is just the way things are, and are done, even if you don’t know the full evolution of why it came to be that way.
But is reality really real in the sense that it would still be an identical reality even if you didn’t exist, or yet exist, or that your equivalent halfway across the world, or the Universe or as someone generations ago or to come experiences it? You’d probably agree – surely rain a million years ago has the same wet reality as rain you or your equivalents experience. The stars would still shine even in a lifeless Universe. You believe it, but can you prove it?
Reality must also be an individual’s experience. You can experience something creative – a painting, a song, a book, a garden, interior decorations, or a work of common or extraordinary architecture. That’s one reality. But you can’t share or come to terms with the nature of the reality experienced by the creator part and parcel in creating that work. So your perception of reality is somewhat limited. As the song title goes, “Is that all there is?” The answer is “No”. Your reality isn’t another person’s or species reality, and further more, your day-to-day reality is but a small subset of all possible realities, reality here equated to environments, past, present and future and just beyond your event horizon. It’s self evident that a NASA astronaut has a quite different day-to-day reality relative to that of an Australian drover who road the range a century before.
While you of course have some say in expanding your personal reality event horizon, you could change jobs or move halfway around the world, or win the lottery, some environments and associated realities are forever beyond your reach. You can’t experience life a thousand years ago, or in the future; you can’t currently live on Mars; if you weren’t born an American citizen, even though you’re now an American citizen, you can’t become President of the United States
But wait. What if reality is all in the mind – your mind? You are the sum total of all there is. Then anything you want is yours. If you imagine living on Mars, then Mars is your home! Assuming however you’re not the be all and end all of life, the Universe, and everything, an associated question might be if you have never heard of it, or experienced it, or imagined it, does ‘it’ have reality? Even if you have heard, but forgotten about it; experienced it, but not at this very moment; even if you have imagined it, but not currently, does ‘it’ have reality?
Before getting to the nitty-gritty of reality, I’ll just point out that there are various components to reality. There are lots of ways those components can be put together – as Black Holes, as planets, even as people. But the most mysterious component of all is probably mind – a construct of reality and by reality that can comprehend reality. You are an example of reality’s way of comprehending reality – or some of it anyway!
Is Reality Observer Dependent or Independent?
One of the most important players in all things quantum is the observer – that person or instrument that makes a measurement will decides between all possible outcomes. Even though the Copenhagen Interpretation says that Mother Nature only makes up Her mind – collapses the wave function of possibilities to a specific outcome – when an observation or measurement is made, and until then all possibilities are, well, possible, then I have to ask, how on Earth (or in the Universe) did anything happen before any life (and associated mind) evolve? Taken to its logical conclusion, the Copenhagen Interpretation would say that prior to the origin and evolution of life, the Universe didn’t exist because there was nothing with sensory equipment and a comprehending mind around to observe it and give it existence. [Of course if the Universe (actually Multiverse) has always existed and therefore if life has always existed somewhere or other, that would take care of that little problem quick-smart.] Regardless, how does Nature make up Her mind today in those parts of the Universe where there are no observers? Observers, to my mind, are an irrelevance and while a part of reality, do not determine what reality actually happens. Reality exists – it is what it is and what it is exists independently of any observer or mind or consciousness.
Another important player in all things quantum is the concept of probability, or chance, or randomness or uncertainty or indeterminacy. That’s in stark contrast to classical physics where all things are predetermined and where cause and effect rule the roost.
Now to my manner of thinking, quantum uncertainty, the core of which is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, is only uncertain because there are observers trying to measure things, although fundamentally they can not ever get a precise measurement, no matter how good their instruments are, or ever will be. You can’t measure things in the micro realm without affecting the every thing you are trying to measure. However, remove the observer from the picture and things are as certain and predetermined in the micro world as they are in the macro (classical) world. An electron might jump around like a flea as it is pummelled with photons of all wavelengths and energies from radio to gamma, and to an observer trying to measure the electron’s position and velocity finds it is always somewhat uncertain, nevertheless, at any specific point in time, it’s somewhere with precise coordinates, and it’s travelling at a specific velocity.
Any radioactive substance decays at a known rate – the half-life. If you have 1000 atoms of a radioactive substance, and the half-life is one year, do you really need to interrupt your holidays after one year to check that there are still 500 radioactive atoms left?
Now apparently an isolated neutron will decay into an electron, a proton and (I believe) an antineutrino within roughly ten minutes. If you could put an isolated neutron in an impenetrable box, and put it on your closest shelf, do you really need to open the box – other than to satisfy personal curiosity – ten years later to find out what’s in the box? If you believe the Copenhagen Interpretation, there’s a possibility that there is still just a neutron in the box. Me, I think that’s so unlikely a possibility that you could stake the family fortune on the outcome and win hands-down. To flog a dead horse, the Copenhagen Interpretation says that you have to actually observe something in order for it to have reality. Until you observe, all possibilities are, well, possible. Mother Nature makes up her mind when you observe. But it does seem to be possible to know the reality of something without measuring or observing it because of entanglement, where knowing the state of one object, immediately gives you information on the state of something intimately associated with it, but which you don’t actually observe.
To be continued…
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