Sunday, July 18, 2010
Half-formed thought about a fully-formed universe
Dreher has written several times about a quantum-related idea (can't really call it a theory) that energy and matter may not be necessary concepts; that the universe may consist of nothing more than information in the Shannon sense.
Quantum and Shannon are both binary, thus probably 'sideways' to the more likely truth. If you stay with waveforms and analog math, you can reach the same point with fewer paradoxes and less weirdness. The only question that remains unanswered is "what's waving?" ... but that's a simpler question than the quantum crap.
If consciousness is a 'reception' of, or resonance with, the field of waves, then several questions about spirits, clairvoyance and telepathy may turn out to be physically explainable. We may even be able to state what happens to consciousness after death.
A more interesting but even vaguer connection: Studies of genetic coding appear to be leading toward a single complete origin. In this picture, life didn't slowly and randomly build toward its current complexity; instead, the full complexity was already present in the code from the start. Each type of critter, or each individual species, keeps only some parts of the code. Some of the unused parts may be completely gone, and some may remain present as 'macros', ready to be compiled when the species needs them. (Polistra discussed this once in the context of the Paddlefish, which seems to show that fish had the 'macro' for legs from the start, long before conditions on land enabled them to get out and walk.)
Combining these two vague notions: What if the genome is a concrete 'instantiation' of the information-bearing waves? The field pushed the right atoms together to form amino acids, then led them to link into proteins, and so on. All a dance of synchronous rhythms, waves responding to waves. Here's a metaphor.
(Footnote: Here's an earlier study that tends to confirm this line of thinking.) ¶ 10:13 AM
Quantum and Shannon are both binary, thus probably 'sideways' to the more likely truth. If you stay with waveforms and analog math, you can reach the same point with fewer paradoxes and less weirdness. The only question that remains unanswered is "what's waving?" ... but that's a simpler question than the quantum crap.
If consciousness is a 'reception' of, or resonance with, the field of waves, then several questions about spirits, clairvoyance and telepathy may turn out to be physically explainable. We may even be able to state what happens to consciousness after death.
A more interesting but even vaguer connection: Studies of genetic coding appear to be leading toward a single complete origin. In this picture, life didn't slowly and randomly build toward its current complexity; instead, the full complexity was already present in the code from the start. Each type of critter, or each individual species, keeps only some parts of the code. Some of the unused parts may be completely gone, and some may remain present as 'macros', ready to be compiled when the species needs them. (Polistra discussed this once in the context of the Paddlefish, which seems to show that fish had the 'macro' for legs from the start, long before conditions on land enabled them to get out and walk.)
Combining these two vague notions: What if the genome is a concrete 'instantiation' of the information-bearing waves? The field pushed the right atoms together to form amino acids, then led them to link into proteins, and so on. All a dance of synchronous rhythms, waves responding to waves. Here's a metaphor.
(Footnote: Here's an earlier study that tends to confirm this line of thinking.) ¶ 10:13 AM
