Theory vs. Observation: Part Two

There’s many a conflict that rages between observation and theory. What is observed cannot be; what cannot be alas is observed. Sceptics, those supporting theory, dump down on those who contradict theory because they witnessed something to the contrary. “It can’t be therefore it isn’t.” The witness dumps down on the sceptic with the statement, “I know what I saw”. Impasse! Perhaps there is a third option, one where both theory and observation can coexist.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

If you observe something that is impossible, and it really is impossible, and if the observation can’t be faulted, and the impossibility of the theory can’t be faulted, what possible resolution can there be? Well one possibility is that some as yet undiscovered genius marries theory and observation and both live happy ever after. That’s certainly happened before and no doubt will happen again. The other is that there needs be a realm where both theory and observation can illogically both exist, same time; same place. That incompatibly of theory and observation, side-by-side, being ultimately compatible is itself a contradiction. Fortunately, there are such realms apart from Alice’s looking glass wonderland.

Now one such realm is your dreams. Though I haven’t experienced it, apparently dreaming of yourself flying (as in Superman, not as in a aircraft) is a common scenario. You’re not Superman; you can’t fly. Your dreams however provide contrary observational evidence that you did fly. And so something both is (observation), and is not (theoretical logic), at the same time. In your dreams you can accomplish six impossible things before breakfast – that is before you wake up.

Even when wide awake it’s relatively easy to imagine images from within your own wetware (that mind within the brain) that can contradict what you know to be impossible with images of doing just that, like for example pitching a perfect game in the seventh game of the World Series and also hitting the winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning with thousands of female fans rushing onto the field to (well it’s your imagination so fill in the blank)!

Cinema provides another medium. Well there are Superman movies after all, one with a tag line, if I recall correctly along the lines of “you really will believe a man can fly”. Theory: in space no one can hear you scream, yet you hear (that’s a form of observation) the sound of spaceships battling it out with their photon torpedoes and phasers on the big screen.

Closely related, video games or something cut from the same cloth, computer or other simulations. You’re an astronaut simulating a lunar landing. Oops, you slipped up and crashed on the Moon and should have died, but you didn’t really crash and you most certainly didn’t die. You live to simulate another day. Just about any action-oriented video game (observation) will contain so many massive physics anomalies (theoretical impossibilities) as to cause any physics professor to take up the bottle in despair.

And so, if we have mediums that can reconcile theory and observation though both are incompatible, then who’s to say the contradictions we note and log in ‘real’ life may not be really real at all (well we know they can’t be) but perhaps the result of someone else’s dreams or video games and thus we’re not really real at all either! If we exist in a simulated universe, then, as the song title goes, “Heaven knows, anything goes”.

Let’s assume for the moment that the concept of a simulated universe or a virtual reality is actually via computer software, say something akin to a video game or a simulated reality as used for training purposes.

It’s unlikely that your virtual reality can be the product of quasi current day technology, although it’s possible that some human(s) in the 25^th Century have concocted up a 25^th Century equivalent of an ancient history video game titled 21^st Century Planet Earth. That aside, perhaps the programmer is not human at all but an extraterrestrial! Perhaps that extraterrestrial(s) has inserted itself into our virtual reality as our ‘ancient astronauts’ concept, otherwise known as those mythological polytheistic deities part and parcel of nearly all cultures, but could incorporate the more ‘modern’ monotheistic concept as well.

Anyway, one subset of all those thousands of polytheistic deities are those trickster gods known throughout all polytheistic mythologies. As the name suggest, these were deities who weren’t quite always on the up-and-up, but loved to play tricks, sometimes nasty and malevolent tricks. The bottom line is that trickster gods couldn’t be trusted.

But I can imagine that our virtual reality computer programmer fashions itself in the guise of a trickster god. Such a being would delight in creating our virtual reality that contains all of the anomalies we note and log in our seemingly real reality. What better trick than to create dozens of anomalies along the lines of conflicts between theory and observation; that something can both be and not be at the same time, and having ‘his’ created subjects try to figure it all out! What delicious fun enjoying their befuddlement!

Common or well known trickster gods of ancient mythology include Satan (Christianity), Loki (Norse), Maui (Polynesia), Raven & Coyote (North America), and Eros, Prometheus and Hermes (Ancient Greece).