Quantum Imagination

Small intro and caveat: There are not enough good blog entries as of late and thus I feel the need to resurface and attempt to provide something fascinating (if you become a fascist after reading this, then you have gone too far).

I am no physicist (although I am quite confident in my own physicality) and thus I might get some things wrong here; all the more for a reader to respond, than to actually have something to say! But when we talk about electrons and atoms we find a curious little thing occurring, this ‘occurrence’ has caused an entire new school of thought called Quantum Mechanics, which surprisingly works dynamically different than classical or macro physical mechanics (such as gravity, plants and mass etc). The way to successfully systematize this ‘occurrence’ is to postulate that when a choice for an electron is presented, instead of the classical way of seeing things as either/or, we find the quantum idea to go both. Thus it is only when we ‘look’ that we find only one way has been taken, prior to looking both were taken.

This kind of thought in the firm solid structure of respectable science, has allowed their kid-brothers to dazzle us with interesting stories, mixing truth with fiction in a various amount of ways. We now think of multiple dimensions, possible universes, and the ‘space-time’ continuum. The idea is that whenever there is a choice given in our actual world, both are taken, the one you pick and the one picked by our counterpart. To paraphrase a great book “it is that when a coin lands heads here on our world, it most definitely lands tails in theirs!” From here, a great inquiry can be ‘imagined’ as to how many different versions of events can take place, but let me take it a bit farther.

Suppose that this might apply to all and any imaginative means; specifically not that they are imaginable but that another actual-possible world has it. Thus, there is a world where I am still Christian and one where Nixon did not get water-gated. Take it a bit farther, suppose there are different histories, and further yet, different universal evolution! Different rules for matter and on and on into the most possible possibilities our imagination can unveil. Ignoring the philosophical side of this, it goes without saying that there is such a world out there which has various events taking place, those events being the ones you think up. Now think of television!

We have all watched and loved to see our favourite actors or movie stars shoot laser weapons or kill dragons; but in some kind of quantum-imaginative way, those events are taking place in a distant and other possible world. It is not that events like Star Trek are taking place, but the real and exact events like Star Trek are taking place. There is a world where Captain Picard really does command the Enterprise and so forth.

From our quantum imagination we can find and imagine all sorts of things, and now add a perhaps meaningless but dare I say interesting possible-quality of being pseudo-real. So let that be a lesson to those who ponder terrible things or wondrous things, for your thoughts although not really creating these events is in fact, on a sense of possibility, are taking you to ‘real’ places. That magical island of Lost is real and John Locke is really dead, what a pity; for I find a possible-Lost where John Locke is actually alive much more entertaining.

What might this mean for our daily choices? I think we are not so situated within our bodies and minds and this actual world as much as we might think. In a sense each choice we face is a question “which possible world do you exist in?” and at each of these moments we craft our existence into one of these worlds. See this not as you making out of yourselves a kind of person with character as a sculptor makes a statue out of clay, this would merely be a regular existential approach. Instead think of a vast plurality of circuits, where your soul or mind is the only thing you really are. At each crossroad you make a choice onto which path you take, and your soul ‘rides’ it out. You are riding your personal existence and flowing into and out-of everyone else’s existence as a plethora of possibilities dies and are reborn in each second in each space. I am not being poetic or romantic here.

Think about this the next time you drive or walk to work, the next time you choose to eat this or that; or, God-fearing, the next time you change the channel! That’s a real world you are watching there...