We Are the Code Writers, Testers, and Players of this Program Called Universe
I just read an interview with theoretical physicist Paul Davies about his new book, Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life.
His thoughts on the nature of the universe in just this interview are the closest explanations to my own intuitive view that I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering. I’m pretty excited right now. I can’t wait to read this book. Two points he makes that really resonate with me:
1. The very nature of the universe, the laws of physics, are directly related to the the observer as creator and our current mind/brain phenomenon of consciousness is an inevitable aspect of the universe.
It is the structure of this relationship between the mind and the brain and its relationship to reality through observation that is the key that actually constructs not just the universe, but the very laws of physics. Personally, my biggest disconnect with the above scenario actually being possible is the fact that we can indirectly observe a time in history before the human brain. How can human consciousness have affected events going all the way back to the big bang? Now Davies addresses that question with plausible explanations from quantum mechanics:
John Wheeler’s idea is that it attempts to provide an explanation for the bio-friendliness of the universe from entirely within it. Now, the difficult point is that we have to explain why life today can have any effect on the laws that the universe emerged with at the time of the big bang.
So one way to think about this is that there will be many past histories that will lead up to the present state of the universe. In the remote past, its state was fuzzy. Now in the lab, it’s all very well to put an atom in a certain state and experiment on it at a later time. But when we’re applying quantum physics to the whole universe, we simply can’t establish the universe in a well-defined quantum state at the beginning and make observations later. We’re here and now. So we can only infer backward in time. It’s part of conventional quantum mechanics that you can make observations now that will affect the nature of reality as it was in the past. You can’t use it to send signals back into the past. You can’t send information back into the past. But the nature of the quantum state in the past can’t be separated from the nature of the quantum state in the present.
2. The universe at its most basic level is made of information and current reality is the result of the universe processing this information.
The most exciting part is that he takes this idea that has always been a very basic truth for me, and completely connects it with my other most basic truth, that there is progress and meaning in our movement through time!
And the key point here is that the degree of error, which is inherent in the laws [of physics], depends on time. As the universe gets older, there are fewer errors because it’s had longer to compute. If you go back to the first split second after the big bang, then the underlying errors in the laws of physics really would have been very large. So instead of thinking of the universe as beginning magically with a bang, and the laws of physics being imprinted magically on the universe with infinite precision right from the word go, we must instead think of the laws as being emergent with and inherent in the universe, starting out a little bit vague and fuzzy, and focusing down over time to the form that we see today.
This view offers the amazing possibility of acknowledging and allowing for our own place as the creators of the universe that we observe, while still leaving the door open for limitless progress and improvement. As our consciousness expands and improves, it becomes more precise and focused. This progress is then reflected back through the very nature of reality that we improve upon simply by observing it with a “lower degree of error.” Its like the universe is this massive computer code that we are constantly rewriting and testing and refining simply by observing and existing within it. Beautiful.
