Brian Greene has a new book coming out on the 25th of January. It it titled The Hidden Reality and each chapter goes over different aspects of parallel universes, including what observations are leading us to believe there are parallel universes, which there seems to be quite a few! The consensus is out on if there are parallel universes and if so what kind of parallel universes they are, but all of the experiments and mathematics we've done so far suggest indirectly there should be.

Go here http://www.facebook.com/BrianGreenePhys ... 7146470109
You might have to hit 'Like', but you can read the first chapter of his book now and get an idea of what will be covered in it. Can't wait to read more.

To order
http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reality-Pa ... 0307265633

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Brandon

You might be more interested in his book if you had some clue as to who Brian Greene is and what his book is about. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos Here is his short bio off of his Facebook page.

Very true, Brian Greene is an awesome dude and he elegantly (literally!) can describe the observable universe and beyond. The Elegant Universe (1999) by him is a must read. Fabric of the Cosmos(2004) too, both are excellent reads and will take you on some terrific journeys. This new book of his should be even more breathtaking to read, and I can't wait.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elegant_Universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_of_the_Cosmos

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Brandon

Sounds to be an interesting book and worth a look (though space for more books at the moment, chez moi, is perilously low, as I never dispose of any!).

Brian Whitworth addresses - and dismisses - the multiverse idea in his Light paper (2011 edn, revised from the 2010) thus:

Many worlds theory
That quantum collapse is a random event that doesn’t arise from prior world events makes it an
uncaused cause. As this threatened the foundations of twentieth century physicalism, in 1957 Everett
suggested the many worlds answer, that every quantum choice spawns an alternate universe. If every
quantum possibility actually occurs in an alternate reality, no choice is ever actually made, and the new
universe, now the multi-verse, remains mechanical and deterministic. Everett "solved" the problem of
quantum randomness by inventing a multiverse machine around the quantum ghost. While initially
ignored, physicists today prefer it three to one over the Copenhagen view (Tegmark & J. A. Wheeler,
2001) p6, despite its staggering overheads. Billions of galaxies of photons, electrons and quarks each
making billions of choices a second for billions of years means the:
“… universe of universes would be piling up at rates that transcend all concepts of infinitude.”
(Walker, 2000) p107.
Many worlds theory offends Occam’s razor by assuming more than it explains. Deutsch's attempt
to rescue it by letting a finite number of universes “repartition” after each choice just recovers the
original problem, as what decides which universes are dropped? The clockwork multiverse theory is a zombie theory
reincarnation of the clockwork universe theory that quantum theory demolished a
century ago. Why indeed should an immense multi-verse, like a doting parent with a video-camera,
copy everything our universe might do? The ex post facto argument of many worlds merely illustrates
the lengths some will go to explain away what quantum theory implies, that choice exists in our world.
This model prefers a single universe with choice to a static meta-verse with none.

Brian says in an email, btw, that in a planned chapter 6 of his series (he's currently working on no 4, on Matter), he will address whether we have a "self" via the brain, so that should be interesting to await.

Do we really have a problem integrating MBT with the idea of all particles being conscious (and hence able to initiate a quantum collapse)? After all, in a reality of digital data, consciousness is just self-aware, self-modifying data, achieved (presumably) out of a complexity of simple conscious particles (themselves data), and thereby gaining an increasing decision-space. Would it not be odd if it were not so? Comments, negative or otherwise, to enlighten me, please!

Arthur

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"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Arthur,

Wonderful thoughts, at first I was awed now I have come to. There is no problem integrating MBT this way, I don't think. Although I am not one to be well versed with MBT, this line of logic sounds fit for it. It also comes with a deal of having criteria, justifying consciousness as the central role of it all.

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Brandon

I do. I don't buy it. Particles under no influence by Consciousness behave with uncertainty (pure probabilistic). Consciousness Intent can turn probabilities into certain direction. If particles could collapse themselves, why don't they do it whenever they feel like? And imagine a particle opposing to your Consciousness Intent and saying: "I don't care you want me to go that way, I'll go another way, you are not my daddy!!!"

Claudio

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"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Some believe existence is not intrinsic. That is to say your car does not turn on and off by itself, it requires interaction to exist properly. To exist you must face conditions external to you that you are not fully in control of. Again, just opinion, but well grounded in some eastern beliefs.

So to relate, a particle may need another particle to become consciously aware to begin with. The awareness is dependent on the interaction involved. Otherwise neither one of them exist consciously; existence is dependent on something else interacting with you, or you interacting with it.

Edit: In this post, I am stating that the car's existence (interaction, awareness, etc) is dependent on you existing as well. So the car can be considered an "observer" here that is interacting with a human "observer" or vice versa. It's (the car) also interacting with the surrounding air, different sorts of radiation like thermal energy and sun light or what have you, electromagnetism, the ground, gravity, etc.

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Brandon

Brandon,

The MBT model of a VR is that our experience of a VR is what is presented to our minds as they exist as digital consciousnesses, the IUOCs, within digital Consciousness Space. TBC calculates the probabilities which serve as the model/simulation of the physical aspects of the VR as they are progressed delta t by delta t. The consciousnesses as IUOCs are what provides the free will, the choices, and what they observe is collapsed out of the over all probability field within TBC and then modified by the VRRE aspect of TBC to 'personalize' the input data stream. There is no model space, no holodeck as in Star Trek, no 'out there'. The experience of the VR is entirely within the minds of the participants and of course, within TBC where it is calculated/generated.

Ted

Ted,

Just curious, is this not to be confused with Brain in a vat? We're getting our consciousness from a computer kind of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

Also, how does the MBT model approach the Boltzmann brain paradox if the above is true?

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

"The Boltzmann brain paradox is that it is more likely that a brain randomly forms out of the chaos with false memories of its life than that the universe around us would have billions of self-aware brains. The rationale behind this being paradoxical is that, out of chaos, it is more likely for one instance of a complex structure to arise than for many instances of that thing to arise.
This ignores the possibility that the probability of a universe in which a brain pops into existence, without any prior mechanism driving towards its creation, may be dwarfed by the probability of a universe in which there are active mechanisms which lead to processes of development which (given a starting state that is unlikely but not as unlikely as the spontaneous appearance of a brain with no precursor) offer a reasonable probability of producing a species such as ourselves.
In a universe of the latter kind, the scenarios in which a brain can arise are naturally prone to produce many such brains, so the large number of such brains is an incidental detail."

Just for clarity and out of curiosity, wondering how MBT fits into that problem if at all.

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Brandon

Brandon,

If you do not consider the source and nature of consciousness as fundamental, as MBT does, you get questions like these that you refer to. You have just been working on how the reality you believe that you observe around you works, just as physics does and all of science. I have pointed this out to you before. Tom in MBT does not speak to PMR science, is this or that right and how do you advance it. Tom provides a basis for understanding how the ancient concept of reality being based upon Consciousness or Mind, the Void, Indra's Net, our experienced reality as illusion, can be integrated with science and digital technology and an explanation of how it all arose from the Void. This is the part that you are totally missing out on as you don't see a reason to read the books. The basics of it are there in what I have said, but you are not picking it up and creating a mental understanding from that as yet. Tom's books have a much expanded version in many ways. But in the books, Tom gives really only the outline of the development of Consciousness, AUM and everything that exists. He describes randomness within reality cells containing in effect and 0s and 1s which interact randomly and eventually, through evolution/natural selection (and just like the model of creation of our reality) develop to the point that a conscious computer is the result. That conscious computer is essentially everything that is. It segregates IUOCs off within itself and sets them to interacting within VRs to refine their digital natures, i. e. lower the entropy of their digital contents and code. It created the VRs 'within itself' as an environment for these IUOCs to interact and TBC as a sub computer within itself with the special function of creating the VRs. If this rings no bells with you, then you might have to read the books to get it. There are other things on the board by Tom and by myself that would explain further. Look in the third section of the Index page of the BB to find them.

Ted

A great interview with Brian Greene and Stephen Colbert, where Greene tells Stephen that he's made of a bag of particles governed by the laws of physics,
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... ian-greene

(Also discusses Parallel Universes, Multiverse and Holographic principle)

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Brandon