Weird Things Begin to Happen When You Examine Consciousness

Transcript

this video is sponsored by the personal information removal service in cogni protect your online data and personal information from data Brokers and search sites use my link in the description to get 60% off in cogne annual plan we've all experienced it perhaps we were walking down the street perhaps we were sitting on a park bench perhaps we were watching a video at home suddenly it hit us a momentary but Lucid Breakaway from our normal perception our normal focus on what seems like Center Stage we look around and realize no one is watching what we are watching no one is seeing what we are seeing everyone else is watching something different their own show from their own position in the theater we realize there isn't even really A Center Stage or show at all there's just one big audience each individual performing in their own section with their own Spotlight for themselves occasionally some performances bumping into each other their spotlights briefly overlapping this realization has a term known as saund which is defined as the sudden awareness that everyone is living an entirely unique life just as complex Vivid and real as one's own the millions of people whom you've passed by physically or digitally all the blurs of the cars you've seen fly by all the rear Silhouettes that you've waited behind in line all the lights of apartment windows that caught your eye each of these flickers in your life belong to unfathomably Deep full lives just as your passing car hazy silhouette and dim window light belong to your yours this world emanates a spectrum of conscious experience devoid of centrality billions of people experiencing each moment in the strange and almost ethereal Realm Of Consciousness but what is this realm what does every life every story and every observation suggest about the nature of what we are experiencing as a whole what do we all share in this theater of existence what is this theater of existence how real are the shows we watch and the stories we tell the observer effect most of us tend to think that there is one true reality which is fixed and independent of observation and subjectivity though this sounds obvious and intuitive there are legitimate reasons to question this to consider the possibility that reality as we Define it might be meaningfully altered by our observations not merely as it appears to us but reality itself both throughout history as well as presently there are both philosophers and physicists who believe to varying degrees that reality is far more entangled with observation than what we tend to think the 18th century Anglo Irish philosopher George Barkley went so far as to argue that observation not only Alters reality but creates it in other words reality does not exist independent of the mind but is the result of the Mind the fundamental nature of everything is not matter but mental constructs or ideas in the mind this view would eventually come to form the metaphysical philosophy known as subjective idealism though at the time Barkley referred to it as immaterialism of course there appear to be many problems with this argument the idea that reality is created purely out of mental constructs seems to suggest that without the presence of conscious being somewhere nothing would occur in that location since there would be no reality being created the classic tree falling with no one around to hear it would not make a sound but it would also seem that with this Theory it couldn't even fall but of course it appears that it could things do seem to happen in the world regardless of any person or animal present an empty room devoid of any person animal or plant can be left and returned to without any apparent changes and everything appearing to have continued as one would expect a candle that was lit in the room before leaving for example assuming there is no draft or alterations to the oxygen levels in the room will continue to burn and the wax will have continued to have melted at the rate that one would expect when they return how then could observation create reality if things don't appear to cease happening when no one is around perhaps our brains create the continuity but with the amount of coordination required amongst other brains that seems far less likely for Barkley the answer was God since everything was always being observed by God things always happen everywhere even when there are no humans or animals in direct proximity for some of us this might sound like an interesting conclusion but for many others of us this likely sounds like we took a very wrong turn somewhere but what if this idea of ubiquitous observation points us towards something profound a place we can Traverse and explore without needing to bring God With Us Quantum anti-realism quantum mechanics is the field of physics that deals with the nature of reality at the atomic and subatomic level particles like electrons photons neutrons and so on during around the 1930s there were two opposing views forming about the nature of reality pertaining to Quantum Mechanics the first view is known as realism which was supported by Albert Einstein among many others realists argue that the universe is real and independent of observation and measurement the physical world everything including tiny particles at the quantum level is deterministic and fixed with definitive properties as previously mentioned this is what we all tend to Inuit it but the problem is quantum mechanics appears to pose serious threats to this view the other opposing school of thought is known as anti-realism which was argued for by the physicist Neils bore among many others anti-realists argue that particles have undefined properties and they only become defined when they are observed or measured in this Theory reality at least at the quantum level is not real in a defined fixed sense until it is observed or measured this has been displayed in several experiments including the famous double slit experiment where a particle that otherwise acts as a wave without a defined State suddenly acts as a particle with the defined State when it is observed through the slit it's being sent through no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon said the American physicist John archal Wheeler non-locality in 1972 the American physicist John clauser conducted an experiment in which he used photons emitted from calcium atoms to explore the correlations between particles that had interacted with each other at the subatomic level this process of interaction results in what is known as int angled particles where their Quantum States become linked the conclusion of clouser's experiment proved something extremely strange a violation of what is known as locality which in physics refers to the principle that an object can only be directly influenced by its immediate surroundings in 2022 clauser along with Anton Zinger and Alan aspect won the Nobel Prize for their work which collectively proved one of the most confounding aspects of quantum phenomena quantum entanglement their work showed that not only does a particle being measured determine its state but the act of measuring one particle also determines the state of the other particles it is entangled with even when the particles are separated by vast distances potentially light years away even though supposedly information cannot travel faster than the speed of light the determination of one particle State instantaneously determines the others collectively these findings show that locality appears to not be fundamental to reality in other words the universe is not locally real and Quantum phenomena does not operate in a deterministic fixed way with this the anti-realists were right and Einstein was wrong everything in the universe appears to be far stranger and more interconnected than we could even conjure up with our most presumptuous of woo Woos it from bit what is at the bottom of all this interconnectedness what causes particles to do or not do something is there something more fundamental than matter and energy that Bridges the gap between the material world and the observed reality some individuals believe the answer is information perhaps reality is not purely mental like Barkley thought and it is not purely determinant and independent like Einstein thought but rather reality is created by the interaction between the two in other words reality is formed through the information exchanged between material and measurement this idea was proposed by John archal Wheeler with what he coined the participatory Universe this idea has led some individuals including wheeler to believe that reality is fundamentally information processing essentially no different from the information processing of a computer or brain thus the bottom of all reality is essentially binary bits of information or sets of yes or no answers reality becomes reality through the processing of these bits of information via yes or no questions asked through methods of measurement experiments based on what is known as Wheeler's delay Choice experiment have in fact unbelievably but definitively shown that the behavior of particles become defined not only when a measurement is made but when the choice of what kind of measurement is made put differently the question being asked of reality affects the answer given by it with this reality seems to almost function like a giant game of 20 questions but it has yet to even pick an object for us to guess instead by asking certain yes or no questions reality becomes defined to describe this process wheeler coined the phrase it from bit he wrote it from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom at a very deep bottom in most instances an immaterial source and explanation that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes no questions and the registering of equipment evoked responses in short that all things physical are information theoretic in origin and this is a participatory Universe the nature of Consciousness with Observer Centric theories of reality and physics we are seemingly left with the same problem that Barkley's philosophy of idealism faced we are left without an observer to explain the continuity of occurrences in the cosmos the falling trees the burning candles the swirling dust in deep space what allows for the events in the cosmos when no apparent measurement is occurring where more information is being processed famously Einstein once asked those who argued for Observer Centric theories do you really believe the Moon is not there when you are not looking at it but what if we have a misunderstanding of what it means to look and what qualifies as a measurement or observation there is a theory about the nature of reality and Consciousness that is equally controversial as it is profound known as psychism psychism claims that Consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon of a complex biological system but rather it is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe everything down to individual particles possess a sort of note of Consciousness a quality of mind consider how we as humans acquire our Consciousness it appears to come about through the matter and energy that make up our brains but how does matter and energy produce conscious firstperson experience if it does not possess the ingredient of Consciousness to begin with psychist resolve this dichotomy by arguing that matter does possess the quality of Consciousness and a system simply becomes more conscious as matter combines and becomes more complex in Arrangement but throughout all levels of complexity the quality of Consciousness persists things only appear to the human mind as conscious when they appear like a human mind because perhaps the human mind is felicious projecting its own standard of mindedness onto the world a giant brain If Consciousness were to be a fundamental feature of reality what would that suggest about how information travels how particles act and interact how reality unfolds and is altered through observation in some sense could there always be observation and information processing what if the universe functioned like a giant brain always exchanging and processing information with itself who is to say that the Universe couldn't and doesn't think would this explain the effects of observation the unfolding and apparent indeterminate malleability of quantum events and the entangled interconnectedness of part particles across vast distances we have a habit as humans of extracting ourselves from processes and equations as if we are observing the universe and the we is separate but of course we are not we are ourselves entangled with it and perhaps in our attempt to observe and Define the universe we are like a mirror faced against another mirror we reflect ourselves and see nothing we are missing something and that something is perhaps in us or a part of us a part of everything we are like neurons in the brain of the cosmos trying to understand what the whole brain is doing of course it's crucial to State how much of all this nearly everything that's been mentioned is extremely theoretical and Abstract some ideas being far more so than others as we weigh out into the theoretical depths where we find ideas like panchis and a universe that could think we shed most of our scientific skin and morph into a more esoteric and philosophical form in truth we have we haven't yet even defined what or how Consciousness Works in ourselves and so applying it to everything is quite a leap likewise in the case of the universe not being locally real and reality being defined by observation and choice of measurement perhaps these are merely limitations in our knowledge or in our capacity to perceive and form knowledge perhaps these seeming in congruities are overcomable perhaps not or perhaps our reality is as strange and participatory as it appears ultimately our Frameworks of thought are weak and the mysteries of the universe are infinitely heavy whatever reality is or isn't we will almost certainly never know but if we return to that experience of Saunder the realization that everyone else is experiencing their own unique life just as Vivid and real as one's own the meaning of vivid and real take on an unfathomable and almost Eerie meaning now in this deeply interconnected and perhaps Observer Centric reality the events we observe and the story we tell seem to be imbued with some substrate of the cosmos that affects or indicates so much more than we can even fathom every person every brain every tree every leaf every clump of dirt every Rock every planet every Star and every particle all participate in telling the story of everything the sum of each subjective reality weaves together the singular objective reality there is no separate it is all one our uncertainties our questions our answers and our false convictions our parts of realities interplay with truth just as how our thoughts shape each of our own lives the cosmic reality shapes our thoughts and then maybe just maybe our thoughts turn back out and help shape reality regardless of whether or not the universe is exchanging information with itself and observation is fundamental to everything one area we do not want our information to be observed in exchanged is our personal information and data by malicious third parties online but the truth is this is almost guaranteed to be the case companies known as data Brokers and search sites are constantly observing Us online and taking and selling our personal information that's why this video sponsor in cogni a personal information removal service is such an important and Powerful tool in today's world particularly as these problems only get worse incognet quickly and effectively puts a stop to these data broker sites and helps ensure your private reality stays your private reality essentially data Brokers obtain your personal information like your name social security number login credentials home address and so on by extracting it when you buy something or fill something out online they then sell this information for a profit to third parties which can lead to Relentless spam or Worse identity theft hacking fraud stalking or harassment legally these companies must remove your information when you request it but it would be a full-time job trying to do this that's where incog steps in incog does it for you all you have to do is complete a short easy sign up process and provide a quick Grant to incog to work on your behalf then they immediately locate and reach out to these data Brokers and search sites having your information removed rapidly and effectively even better with incog annual subscription they continue to automatically follow up to ensure that your information stays removed you could track the progress right on incog dashboard begin the process today by clicking my link in the description or going to incog dcomp pursuit of wonder and you'll get 60% off in cni's annual plan and of course as always thank you so much for watching in general and see you next video [Music]