“The idea of God is a pseudo-religious anthropomorphication of an extra-dimensional force of nature.”
- Xenocrates
y very first blog entry delved into the concept that we live in a very logically structured mechanised universe. My second entry sought to explain the nature of the master of this domain. Now considering all things, neither entry delved any deeper than our common understanding of these things. I say “common”, because those are ideas that anyone, given some careful observation of the world around them, could have derived on their own. The truth of the matter however, is that our understanding of God and the Universe is still a very human one. In the post immediately before this one, I explained that our obsession with love is not much more than our obsession with ourselves. The same can be said of our understanding of God and the Universe. What is really going to blow your mind, is that for the last 10,000+ years of recorded human civilization, we’ve always imposed a human image upon our understanding of our universe. Everyone from the native American Indians who worshipped the great spirit right back to modern day Christians have always worshipped a humanised God.
What this post is going to do, is to throw everything you think you know and understand about God and our universe out the window - and start with very simple ideas, layering them with progressively more complex ideas, until we have a logical explanation of that concept we collectively refer to as God. Eventually, you will realise that we’re not doing anything different today from those who worshipped forces of nature that they barely understood. Now follow me closely, as this is going to be a very deep mind assault of epic proportions.
Nothing
Can you imagine “nothing”? Do you know what nothing is? It’s not empty space - since space is something. It’s not a vacuum, since a vacuum is also something. So what really is nothing? The question falls over onto itself, since to question what nothing is, is to insinuate that nothing is something. It is logically fallacious, thus making the very question itself absurd. You cannot ask what nothing is, since nothing cannot be imagined without some reference to something. Therefore, in our attempt to imagine nothing, we will always first imagine something, and then remove that something to create the idea of nothing. That’s how our mind works. That’s how it’s always worked. The truth about nothing is that the human mind cannot conceive of it, since our minds cannot work with without some existential point of reference. Therefore, conceptually speaking, nothing does not, and never did exist - and that is a logically accurate discription because:
- The expression “nothing does not exist” defines nothing and simultaneously;
- If nothing does not exist, then there was always something…
Confused? The statement “nothing does not exist” has dual meanings which are both accurate at the same time. Quite simply, nothing cannot exist without there being something (since this creates the counterbalance that causes the possibility of nothing to exist). Therefore if something had to exist for nothing to ever have been, then nothing never existed in the first place. There was always something there; something infinite, something persisting, something that kept nothing from ever existing in the first place. This undefined something is the first existential point of reference for the rest of the universe.
A Point
Imagine a point. Not a dot, but a point. If you imagine a dot, it defeats the purpose of imagining a point. For even though a dot could be considered a point, a point is not necessarily a dot as a dot takes up space. However, in order to make this easier on your brain cells, you can use a dot for reference purposes. However, in the vast emptiness that once was, the only thing that existed was a point. This point has no mass, no weight, no length, no depth, no breadth - it is just a point. To your understanding, this point might not exist, since as it has none of the qualities that would make it visible to your mind. But it does exist. Your mind’s inability to perceive it will be fixed momentarily. This infinitessimally simple idea of a point is the zeroeth dimension.
A Line
Now imagine a second point, and imagine a line between these two points. Now we have something we can recognise. This line only has length. From the moment you drew a line between the two original points, you added another dimension to the point you imagined in the first place. A point has no physical characteristics. Adding a line to the point, now causes it to enter the first dimension.
A Shape
A line can be lengthened, shortened or even bent into a curve. We can use mathematical equations to describe this line. However, it is ultimately still just a line. A system which is made up of several disconnected lines is still a first dimensional system. That system takes on wholly different attributes when those lines are connected into a closed shape. You can now modify it’s length and breadth on the various sides to produce other shapes. Thus once several lines are connected to produce a closed shape, we enter the second dimension.
An Object
Let’s say you have a closed square shape. Create a second closed square and connect all the corresponding corners of the second square to the first. Now you have a cube. What you’ve just done is to add depth to your original 2-dimensional object, thus allowing a whole new range of mathematical operations to be performed on it. Objects we see and interact with in everyday life contain these properties. Once we added depth to a conceptually flaw two dimentional object, we automatically move it into the third dimension.
A State
Imagine that the length of four of the adjacent parallel sides of your cube was extended. Your cube is now a cuboid. However, you are conscious of the fact that your cuboid was once a cube, but now the state of your cube has changed. Subconsciously, we register this as a differential change in state of the cube over time. We know this since we remember our cuboid was once a cube. Since we only exist in the third dimension, we are only able to see the current state of the cube in snapshots of its change to a cuboid. We rely on our memory to recognise the change of state over time. However, there is another dimension in which all of the states of the cube exist in ”plain view” and can be seen simultaneously and perpetually. In this dimension, the actual change of cube to cuboid is seen as one elongated object of change in a state of perpetual actuality in which it is neither cube nor cuboid, but every state of cube to cuboid at the same time. This dimension is Time, which is the fourth dimension.
Quantum Possibilities
Imagine that your cube didn’t actually change into a cuboid. Imagine that instead of the length along four of the adjacent parallels changing length, one of the faces of the cube collapsed into a point. Then your cuboid would have turned into a pyramid. This is an alternate timeline from the one in which your cuboid turns into a cube. Theoretical physicists refer to this as a quantum possibility and they exist as a timeline which branched off from the first where both the pyramid and the cuboid started off as a cube. If you built a machine to traverse the fourth dimension and changed the history of the cube so that it became a pyramid instead of a cuboid, you would have “created” a branching alternate timeline. Theoretically, there are an infinite number of branching alternate timelines in which the cube could have become a pyramid, a cuboid, a sphere, a diamond - any shape you can think of. All possible branching timelines exist in the fifth dimension.
Parallel Timelines
What if our three-dimensional object didn’t start as a cube? What if it started as a pyramid and then evolved into a cube? What if it was a sphere first, but lost its infinite number of surface points to become a diamond shape? These changes of state do not have the same starting point, and thus do not belong to the same timelines. These completely alternate timelines do not exist in the same dimension. They each have their own branching timelines where in one a cube becomes a cuboid, in another, a pyramid becomes a cube, and yet another, a cuboid evolves into a cube and so on. So therefore, you cannot travel back in time to change a cube into a pyramid if it was never a cube to begin with. You’d have to travel to a parallel timeline where the three dimensional object was a cube to do that. To travel to a completely parallel timeline, you have to go to a place where all of these completely unrelated, completely parallel timelines, each with their own start states, end states and branching parallels are all collectively visible. This place is the sixth dimension.
Universal Timelines
What if all simple shapes evolved into more and more complex shapes until no shape exists? For example, imagine that all pyramids became cubes, all cubes became cuboids, all cuboids became diamonds, all diamonds evolved into shapes with more and more sides until they became spheres, until all shapes became spheres, then spheres became something else that couldn’t possibly exist until everything ceased to exist? This represents a possible end to a universe where cubes exist. Of course, it could end differently where when all shapes begin as spheres and the process is reversed until they become a point and the universe collapses and ceases to exist. This is another possible ending to the universe of cubes.
In fact, there are an infinite number of possible outcomes to the universe. Some scientists say that the universe will continue to expand until all energy forms become inert, thus bringing about an end and yet others say that all the stars in the universe will eventually nova until the universe is filled with black holes thus collapsing all matter into an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense object. The bottom line is that there are many possible ways that the universe could end. As it exists now, one end has already been predestinated by how the universe began. This is realised through an immense and indeterminately complex chain of cause and effect. If we wanted to view alternate outcomes for the universe, we would have to travel to a place where we could see all the possible timelines for the entire universe, where we could see every possible end for every possible object that could exist in the universe. That place would be the seventh dimension.
Parallel Universes
So far we’ve been using the simplistic concept of a cube to explain the different planes of reality. So far we’ve been assuming an entire universe where cubes exist. But what about universes where cubes cannot evolve into pyramids or vice versa? In such a universe, the rules of mathematics are different. In fact, there could possibly be an alternate universe where mathematics doesn’t apply and discreet concepts are irrelevant. In such a universe, a discreet shape such as a cube couldn’t exist, since the fundamental laws of that universe such as physics and mathematics are different. This universe would have started differently from the universe in which cubes exist. Let’s say that the universe where cubes exist started with a big bang while the universe where cubes cannot exist started with silence. These two beginnings represent two different universes with two different laws, two different timelines, and two different sets of possible endings. If we wanted to travel to a universe where only spheres can exist or where cubes cannot exist, we’d have to go to a place where we could see every possible universe. That place would be the eigth dimension.
Time Travel is actually Dimensional Travel
Every dimension above the fourth embodies the idea of a place where alternate or parallel outcomes exist. If you wanted to jump into a flux-capacitor powered DeLorean and travel through time, you’re not actually traversing time as much as you are traversing dimensions. Time is constant. You can’t change it. Changing a timeline means changing the the sequence of cause and effect throughout the entire universe, thus creating an alternate timeline. However, technically speaking, you didn’t actually create an alternate timeline as much as you travelled to one. It only appears that we’ve created an alternate timeline through our time travel because we’re only viewing a snapshot of the current dimension. Every possible timeline from any given object in the universe already exists. However, as three-dimensional objects, we can only see a snapshot of the current state in time. Our memory is what cues us into the reality that time exists since we remember when the state was different. If we were 4-dimensional beings, time would exist to us as a single plane. There would be no past, no present, no future; just a constant expression of simultaneous beginning and end. Neither life nor death exists in the fourth dimension, since both describe a snapshot of a state in the third dimension. Therefore, if we were fourth dimensional beings, we would be eternal and “live” forever.
Examine the popular Science Fiction comedy “Back to the Future“. When Doc Brown and Marty McFly go back in time to stop Biff from preventing his dad from marrying his mother, they’re not such much changing the timeline of the universe they came from as much as they’re simply partaking in the events of an alternate timeline which already existed. The very act of traversing time is a part of a sequence of cause and effect in the dimension above the fourth, which caused the intrepid duo to discover an alternate timeline of the same universe. To do so they would have had to go to a dimension which contained the “visibility” of alternate timelines. This dimension would have be one level higher than the one they’re trying to traverse. This is because the one being traversed only contains a snapshot of the current state of itself while the one above contains every state of the dimension below. Therefore, if Doc Brown and Marty McFly wanted to travel from their 2015 to an alternate 2015 from their current 1985, (both are points in the fourth dimension), they will have to traverse the fifth dimension which contains all possible 2015’s branching off from their 1985 to get to the one they want.
Similarly, if we wanted to travel from a universe that started with a big bang to a universe that started with silence, we will have to travel to one dimension above the eigth dimension, since the eigth dimension contains all of these possible alternate universes with all their possible beginnings, timelines, and endings. This dimension only facilitates travel between alternate universes in the eigth dimension, since the eighth dimension only allows you to exist in only one universe at a time. This place of traversal where all possible universes with all their possible beginnings, timelines, and endings are simultaneously accessible, is the ninth dimension.
Where God sits
Heh, now as immensely gargantuan the cognitive task of imagining what I’m trying to present here, there’s actually more. What if you were to imagine all of the possible universes, with all of the possible beginnings, all of the possible timelines and all of the possible outcomes as a single snapshot, or better yet, a point in an even grander system, where else do you go from here? We would have to imagine an alternate plane of reality which is so different from any of the infinite possibilities represented by the ninth dimension. However, no other infinity exists other than the dimension which contains every possible infinity. But that still doesn’t explain the wherewithall of energy. At this level, theoretical physicists have created a concept known as Superstring Theory, based on 10 dimensions which eventually evolved into M-Theory which is based on 11 dimensions. In a nutshell this describes a dimension which is made up of pure energy, vibrating in such a way that it manifests the sub-atomic particles that create the existence of every other possible realm. This dimension of pure superstring energy is described as the tenth and eleventh dimensions.
At this level, we are talking about the existence of a reality that is not a reality - not as we define it anyway. This is a reality which permeates every other dimension, since one rule always remains the same: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it merely transforms from one state to another. However, we have conceeded that everything that has a beginning, also has an end. Our universe began, and thus it will end at some point. The energy that creates matter is the same energy that forms universes. When a universe ends, the energy goes back to its source. With the recent confirmation of the existence of anti-matter, we know that when energy moves in between dimensions, it spontaneously (and quite explosively) spawns the creation of a new universe - with an explosive display that starts from a point and quickly expands to the sixth dimension in less than a second. Now if you recall from Genesis 1:2, the Bible asserts that God manifested our universe as a grand display of light. Now if you don’t believe in God, where did this energy come from? While many scientists are effectively agnostic or atheist, they are becoming increasingly confident in the idea that the energy that manifested the universe is:
- The creating power of the universe since all matter is made of energy.
- The substance of everything that does and could possibly exist.
- Everywhere, in every dimension, all the time, everytime.
I found this description to be very intriguing, because that eerily resembles the standard accepted definition of God:
- Omnipotent - Having the creating and controlling power of everything
- Omniscient - Having the knowledge and the outcome of everything.
- Omnipresent - Everywhere, all the time, everytime.
To me, that is absolutely FASCINATING. This is particularly so since scientists discovered that sub atomic particles (eg. electrons) are virtually untraceable. They literally flit in and out of existence in solid matter. This is what eventually led scientists to theoretically discovering a membrane universe that is parallel to and permeates everything that could possibly exist. This particular universe is made up of pure energy and none of the laws of physics we currently understand apply there. Every universe is quite literally an extension, an emanation of this membrane based super-universe. Scientists theorise that when the membranes in this universe extend into each other, it creates a massive explosion of energy that creates a new physical domain with its own laws of physics and mathematics. This means that new universes are probably constantly being created. Big bangs are probably going off all the time - with the same source of energy being the underlying trace for all of them. This supernatural, super-thin, alterate pseudo-reality, is the source of all energy, the source of all matter and all that exists, all that could possibly exist and all that has yet to exist. This source, the first cause, the functional cause, the final cause, where all energy, sentient or otherwise both emanates from, returns to and is the effect of all causes is what we’re actually referring to as God.
Conclusion
Now that we have a better understanding of what we’re actually dealing with, it is easy to concede that when we refer to “God” and identify God as some kind of humanoid representation, were are actually referring to a force of nature that has the capacity to manifest itself in just one of the infinite number of forms that can be manifested. The universe is one of many such manifestations - along with everything in it. When ancient man worshipped the elements and the forces of nature, they were not doing anything significantly different from what we’re doing today. We too worship a force of nature. We just decided to put a human face and characteristics to it.
The Bible “humanises” the descriptions of God for human reference purposes. Technically God can manifest itself as anything, anyone, any shape, any idea, any way, any how at any time for any reason. Notice how I deliberately sidestepped describing God as manifesting “himself” in favour of using the word “itself”. God is not a person. God is a force of nature. God is nature. Therefore the human attribute of using a pronoun to denote sexual identification doesn’t really apply. It only exists to allow humans to be able to make some reference point of some kind to the entity. I would imagine God only takes on a human form when dealing with humans for ease of relation. If in some parallel universe there is some intelligent biological entity that worships God that is physically different from us, God would manifest itself to them in their form as well - just so that they can relate. The truth is that God is formless.
Technically, this very post cannot truly accurately describe what God really is in entirety. We are still making references to abstract man made ideas that help us to conceive of what God really is. To understand the immensity of the deepness of this paradox, try to imagine explaining the concept of world government to an amoeba. There is simply no point of reference for an amoeba to fully appreciate that idea. God is in the same way to us. When we understand how infinitely insignificant we are as beings lesser than tiny specs of dust in a recursively complex structure of reality that is so impossibly, infinitely, profoundly complex, then we can gain a better appreciation for the complexity of the idea of what God really is.
The science seems pretty hard core - but it does nothing more than collectively work together to prove that:
- As much as there is a creation, there is a creator. The universe is an effect of the existence of an entity that transcends the existence of the universe itself. We like to call that entity “God”.
- There is life outside of and perhaps parallel to death (not necessarily after - that’s narrowminded sequential thinking). A 10-dimensional universe guarantees that and thus, we have reason to believe in eternal life on some extra-dimensional plane.
- The idea of God transcends religion. God was not created by religion. It’s more the other way around. Many religions may have gotten the details wrong, but the concept of God remains.
- The circle of life coincides with the first law of thermodynamics that energy merely moves from state to state. Thus when a loved one dies, their lifeforce returns to the source from which it was spawned.
- If there are 10 dimensions, which embody every possible permutation of every possible reality, then I’m pretty sure there is an alternate universe out there where beings are made of pure energy, where time has no bearing on life, where there is no suffering, no tears and no dichotomy of good and evil.
Irrespective of Religion, we have to concede on some level that there is more to reality than sticks, stones and death. Science has shown us that we are apart of a near infinite chain of cause and effect. There are no accidents to this simulation. Everything in it has purpose. The universe was never that simple to begin with.
References:
There’s an incredible amount of material that I had covered as sources for this post. Many of these are pretty lengthy exegeses (not unlike this post). However, all that I’ve done is to condense a lot of this material into ideas that are relatively easy to follow - hopefully to the layman. However, in denoting other reference sources, I thought it would defeat the purpose of this post by pointing you to other websites with lots of text to peruse. Instead, I thought it would be more intuitive to scour YouTube for some videos that elegantly explain all of the material that I have posited here in some condensed form. One of these videos I discovered actually touches on the very substance of this post. It explains the concept slightly differently, but the idea is effectively the same. A lot of this delves rather deep into quantum mechanics - but not so deep that you can’t follow. If you enjoyed this post, then I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy these videos!
The 10 Dimensional Universe:
BBC Horizon: Parallel Universes (Parts 1 through 5)
The God Theory
35 comments
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May 12, 2008 at 9:27 am
Nester-san
Lol, I remember the 11th dimension thread on CY, caused lots of confusion and chaos. It might be crazy, but I have tried on many an occasion to imagine in totality the idea of it all, and for mill-seconds I understand it all perfectly. Then my brain seizes up from shock…and it goes away
May 12, 2008 at 3:44 pm
xenlogic
Heh, that’s quantum mechanics for ya.
You might want to checkout an alternate blog with similar content that I discovered. It states that God is Irrelevant. I thought it was an interesting read. It seems to coincide with some of what I’ve written here. The writer appears to be atheist though - at least from the PoV that he sees God as possibly part of nature that can be explained; thus the “magical” reference of “God” is no longer necessary.
Interesting… :eusa_thin
May 14, 2008 at 12:19 am
aporia
Thanks for writing out all this. It might be just fun for you but I’m sure it largely benefits the un/intellectual public.
The God part is relatively easy to understand.
It is the prayer or praying part that really confuses me.
May 15, 2008 at 10:44 am
xenlogic
Prayer is really meant as an act of worship. The problem is that most christians are being taught that prayer is a means by which you ask God for stuff.
However, since God is omniscient, He already knows what you need before you ask for it - which makes using prayer as a means of asking God for stuff pretty redundant. Prayer was, always is, and always was meant to be used for worship. It’s just another one of those things that man made religion has corrupted - which I imagine is what led to your confusion.
May 15, 2008 at 11:28 am
alamanach
xenlogic, I love your posts, but they drive me crazy. Why must the universe have a beginning and an end? If you are going to “throw everything (I) think (I) know and understand about God and our universe out the window”, then that includes the finite timeline. If we are throwing everything out, then show me that the universe isn’t eternal.
Your dimensions six through eight do not involve anything that wouldn’t fit in your fifth dimension. Your ninth dimension, by definition, is mathematically incompatible with the other eight. It could not, therefore, be a dimension. I think you are sometimes confusing dimensions with something hierarchical. There is a really good book on higher-dimensional mathematics called “Geometery, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension, by Rudy Rucker. (I highly recommend it.) Read it, and I think you will see what I am saying.
If God is not a person, then what motivates Him to “relate” to people?
By the way, I am in complete agreement with your conclusion point #3. It is something I was thinking myself just yesterday. All the time I see atheists take the most simplistic, superficial, superstitious interpretations of a particular religion, and use the faults they find in it to (supposedly) disprove God. If religions were a little more willing to admit that they don’t have every last answer– that they, too, are groping in the dark– I think we’d all be better off.
May 15, 2008 at 3:28 pm
xenlogic
Sir Al!
First off, sorry for driving you crazy! LOL!
On Finite Universe:
We live in a finite universe. Anything that begins, ends. This we know to be true about every physical object. We can trace the universe’s beginning to a singulariy. It therefore stands to reason that everything in it will end at some point. Most physicists agree it will be in the cataclysmic event they like to refer to as the “Great collapse”. This is basically where every star in the universe burns out, either going nova or collapsing into a black hole. The process will repeat itself ad infinitum until all the kinetic energy in the universe returns to a potential state.
On Dimension 6:
Dimensions 6 through 8 are not on the same level as dimension # 5. Dimension 5 only contains the alternate timelines from the same origin of every object in the universe. Dimension six contains alternate dimension 5’s, each with a different origin for each object in the universe. Therefore Dimension 6 contains multiple dimension 5’s. This recursive logic goes all the way up to the 9th dimension. The 10th and 11th dimensions are those that wrap around all the others. This is the basic premise in superstring theory. I admit I have severely dumbed it down here for relatively easy comprehension, as getting into the microscopic details of quantum mechanics was not the intention.
On God vs The People:
A better question to ask is, “Are people just a side effect of the universe or are they a deliberate incarnation of some cosmological will?” If we take the latter position, we cannot avoid giving God a personality. If we do, we would have to argue that if we have personalities and God created everything and God is the actualisation of everything that could possibly exist, then it would mean that we have to accept that God has some kind of personality. That opens up a whole other can of worms. However, as I said before, making sense of the simultaneous “God is” and “God isn’t” ideas perhaps requires a line of logic for which human understanding has no point of reference. Consider this the same as teaching politics to an Amoeba.
On Atheists:
Atheists are people grabbing at straws to hold on to the belief that death defeats karma. It’s a hyper-cynical position which is usually arrived at out of frustration from trying to make sense of a universe that appears to defy human understanding. If they realised how profoundly illogical any cosmological explanation is without an eternal, supernatural source, they’d spend more time being quiet. Now with the introduction of M-Theory, even hard science is proving them wrong. You simply cannot have a finite universe without an infinite source. Otherwise, you would run into the problem of infinite recursion. M-Theory solves that problem by basically proving that theists were right all along. It’s just that theists think of God as a person, and not a parallel trans-dimensional source of energy.
May 15, 2008 at 7:52 pm
alamanach
On a finite universe:
Yeah, but who says the universe has a beginning?
On dimension 6:
Your fifth dimension is a set of alternate 4D spacetimes. In dimension 6, if I understand you correctly, you have a different set of 4D spacetimes, spacetimes of a different origin than those in the fifth dimension. But 5D space can contain an infinite number of 4D spaces; it is like stacking 0-thickness 2D plates into a 3D volume; the volume will never be filled. So, I can see no reason to posit dimensions 6-8.
Superstring Theory, by the way, collapses these higher dimensions to scales that are vanshingly small. They exist basically out of mathematical necessity, and are not repositories for alternate universes.
On God versus the People:
So are you saying God is a person or not? I think you just called me an amoeba…
On Atheists:
“…they’d spend more time being quiet.” Great line.
May 15, 2008 at 9:50 pm
xenlogic
On the finite universe:
The universe is expanding. That means at one point it was once a singularity. If it was a singularity, then that was the beginning. If it has a beginning, then it has an end. It’s simple logic really.
On The Multi-Dimension:
Ok, I see where you misunderstood. Let me see if I can make this ultra-simple:
Dimension 5 contains all alternate timelines from the SAME origin for every object.
Dimension 6 contains every possible timeline from every possible origin of every possible object.
Dimension 7 contains every possible end to the universe, from the SAME origin of the universe.
Dimension 8 contains every possible alternate origin of the universe and every possible alternate end for the SAME universe.
Dimension 9 contains every possible universe that could possibly exist.
Dimension 10 is a spatial realm that wraps all the other dimensions below in a recursive coil, with each dimension containing the one below it. This would facilitate interdimensional travel (once we figure out how to implement quantum tunnelling).
Dimension 11 is the brane universe (posited in M-Theory) that permeates all the other dimensions. As you said, it is almost impossibly thin and layers all matter at a level of closeness that is impossible to imagine. It is the universal energy source (think of the “Force” in Star Wars) that is responsible for causing and binding the universes together. This is the source of all energy and the first and final cause of all things. Dimension 11 is what we refer to as God.
So there are in effect:
- 3 physical dimensions (length, width, depth)
- 1 Transitive dimension (time)
- 6 Spatial dimensions (5 - 10)
- & 1 quantum dimension (11, aka God)
Watch the first video I posted. It’ll probably explain it a lot better than I have here. It’s just that it might be a little harder to follow because it uses mathematical logic to build on the ideas.
“They exist basically out of mathematical necessity, and are not repositories for alternate universes.”
- And you are absolutely right. But the math never lies.
In fact, the math proved that it is impossible to have a physical domain without an anti-physical domain. That’s why String & M-Theories exist: To balance those mathematical equations, thus proving that some alternate infinite reality must exist. If they don’t, then all of the ostensible phenomena upon which our math is based is lying to us in a way we can’t perceive. This is because our math is right everytime in predicting these ostensible phenomena in our universe.
On God vs The People
LOL @ Al
God is not a person. Period. We call God a person only for referential purposes. This is so that we have something to base the rest of our logic on. I metaphorically called humankind an Amoeba because it doesn’t matter what point of reference we use to try and approximate what God really is. Most of them will fail because the intrinsic definition of what those terms are will ultimately run afoul of our Definition of God (and thus provide fodder for nitpicking, believe-in-nothing, atheists). When we define God, we are not defining a person (that’s the first mistake most theists make). We are actually defining a force of nature. The intrinsic nature of this “force” is an unknowable idea to humankind, because humans have no referrant to correctly approximate this idea - hence my metaphorically comparing humans to an Amoeba in our attempt to use human language to describe God.
Imagine an Amoeba trying to approximate the idea of politics. There’s nothing in an Amoeba’s epistemology that has a referrant for anything more sophisticated than “eat, multiply, die”. Amoebas know they live in some space. They don’t know however, how big their world is, or how far down the rabbit hole goes. Humans are in the same way to God. We don’t know exactly how big our universe(s) are or how deep down the rabbit hole goes. We know it’s a hole. We know it’s deep. We know there’s a God and comparatively speaking, we only know this from simple logic. We don’t know exactly however, how big, how far, how wide, etc. Those are concepts for which the human mind has no referrant. So everytime we talk about God, we are actually using subtle anthropomorphications just so that we can wrap our puny brains around this infinitely complex idea that we call “God” just for the sake of simplicity.
You follow?
May 15, 2008 at 10:38 pm
alamanach
Finite universe: OK.
Multiple dimensions: Whatever their origins, all these possible universes are, individually, 4D. You can fit an infinite number of them in 5D space. There is no need to posit a 6D space just because some universes have origin A and some universes have origin B.
I watched the first video until I couldn’t take it any more and had to turn it off, screaming. But I am very familiar with what they are saying. Read Rucker’s book; his explanation is subtly different from, but definitely superior to, the video.
Math doesn’t lie? Maybe. But Georg Cantor’s uncountable sets are awfully suspicious.
God vs the People: Yeah, I follow. You’re talking about the numinous God that even religion doesn’t talk about. I did one of my senior theses about Him. Beware: that God invented logic, and is not bound to it.
May 16, 2008 at 8:25 pm
xenlogic
On the Multiverse:
Aah. Now I realise why you’ve misunderstood. Let me see if I can break this down to you a different way:
Are you familiar with the concept of recursion? Wait, of course you are. For other readers who are not mathematically inclined like you and I, recursion is a concept in mathematics where a function calls on itself to produce a geometric progression. One popular application of recursion is in the concept of factorials. 5-factorial = 120 (5×4x3×2x1 = 120). In actuality, 5-factorial = 5 x (4-factorial). 4-factorial = 4 x (3-factorial)… and so on. That is recursion in a nutshell for those of you who fell asleep in math class. :p
Now the Multiverse is recursive construct. Each higher level dimension contains all the possible permutations of the dimension below it. That’s why we call it a “dimension”. So therefore the 6th dimension contains all the possible 5th dimensions and the 5th dimension contains all the possible 4th dimensions and so on. Got that? Good. Now let’s break this down even further.
To make this concept even better to understand, let me use a pragmatic application:
You are an engineer. Your path to becoming an engineer was predestinated from before you were born through a sequence of cause and effect. You are currently living in one of the many possible 4th dimensions of some fifth dimensional plane. In another 4th dimensional timeline, you are an engineer working for some company ‘X’ instead of the one you work for now. In yet another, you are a self employed billionaire who discovered how to harness dark-matter as a replacement fuel source. In yet another 4th dimensional timeline, you are married to someone else. In yet another, you are not married at all, and so on.
However, the key components of your personality remain relatively the same along each 4D timeline. It’s just that the circumstances differ. Each alternate timeline represents a 4th dimensional curvature inside the same fifth dimension. If you wanted to travel to an alternate timeline where you are a billionaire engineer, you’d have to fold space/time to that point in history where you discovered anti-matter as a fuel source and trigger the necessary events that would cause you to divert into the other 4D plane where you became rich.
But what if you wanted to become a rock star instead of an engineer? No matter how you fold space/time along your current 5th dimension, you will never find a 4D timeline where you are a rockstar. Why is this the case? Because the sequence of events that led to you becoming an engineer is based on a large number of non-interactive variables. These non interactive variables are sequences of cause and effect which happened before your time, which inexorably produced the current timeslice in which you currently exist - like the set of genes that were passed to you from your parents. To change that, you’d have to cause your parents to marry other people. To do that, you’d have to change their gene stock (such that they would be attracted to other folks). To do that, you’d have to change your grandparent’s gene stock (for the same reason), which would mean changing your great grand parent’s gene stock… all the way back to Adam and Eve.
After an exhaustive recursion through your family tree, you’ll realise that you’re back at the beginning of the human race, and even then, there are unseen variables that would cause it to procreate in such a way that you are born exactly the way you are now, some 1.6 million years later. Therefore, this 5th dimension will never produce an alternate reality where you become a rock star. You’ll have to find another 5th dimension where the chain of cause an effect from the very beginning produces a set of 4th dimensional timelines at this point where you could possibly become a rock star.
To find this 5th dimension, you’ll have to go to a higher level dimension which contains every possible 5th dimension and search for one of them in which you become a rock star along one of it’s 4th dimensional alternate timelines. This higher level domain contains every possible 5th dimension there could ever be. Therefore, it contains every possible alternate beginning and alternate end for every possible object in the universe. THAT’S the 6th dimension.
The same set of rules apply to the 7th dimension (alternate endings of the current universe), the 8th dimension (every possible alternate beginning and end of this universe), the 9th dimension (every possible permutation of any universe) and the 10th (a fold which recursively encompasses every dimensional plane below).
Dimensions 5 - 10 are called SPATIAL dimensions, because they embody the mathematical laws of recursive containment of space. Just like an amoeba is inside an incredibly larger space to itself, we are like that amoeba, in an incredibly larger space to ourselves. We, like the amoeba, are inside a much larger universe that we can neither taste, touch, see, hear or smell. What we’re looking at when we open our eyes is only a snapshot of the 4th dimensional timeline in which we currently reside in 3-dimensional space. We call that snapshot “now”.
On The Numinous God
He rocks. I like Him.
May 17, 2008 at 6:13 am
alamanach
You keep using the word “dimension”, but really I think you just mean alternate universes. Why must the alternates that depend on events predating my birth be perpendicular to alternates that depend on events following my birth?
May 17, 2008 at 10:12 am
xenlogic
“You keep using the word ‘dimension’, but really I think you just mean alternate universes.“
- No, I really mean dimensions. Alternate universes are recursively contained in layered dimensions. Dimensions are what make alternate universes possible, not the other way around.
The definition of “dimension” in this context is intrinsically recursive: A dimension is a plane of reality where the rules functionally contain all of the rules of the dimension below it, while adding new ones which significantly alter the laws applied to the one below. The 6th dimension contains every possible origin and end of every object. The 5th dimension only contains one origin of every object with every possible end of those objects. The 4th dimension contains only one beginning and one end of every object. If you were to plot a graph with the number of possibilities from each dimension, it wouldn’t be a straight diagonal line going up. Rather, it would be a curve arching upwards as it passes over each higher dimension. This is because the number of quantum possibilities increases exponentially over each dimension. This is how we know that dimensions are recursive.
“Why must the alternates that depend on events predating my birth be perpendicular to alternates that depend on events following my birth?“
- They are not perpendicular. They are PARALLEL. They have to be parallel, because the chain of cause and effect predating your birth will ALWAYS produce the you that you currently know in any alternate 4D path in the 5th dimension in which we currently reside. If you want to visit a 4D alternate where you are effectively a different person, then the chain of cause and effect predating your birth will have to be different. You will not find that chain in this 5th dimension because all chains of cause and effect are inextricably bound to the rest of the universe.
Why is it bound to the rest of the universe? Simple: Every element in the universe is inextricably bound to every other element vis-a-vis cause and effect. Changing one of those elements even in a seemingly innocuous manner creates a ripple effect throughout the rest of the universe that Chaoticians refer to as “The Butterfly Effect”. For example: If you travel back in time 4 million years and kill a mosquito before it dies in the natural path it did in THIS 4D timeline, it would have a radically different effect on the rest of the universe 4 million years later - ultimately changing our circumstances today and thus altering which 4D timeline we exist in.
It is because of this inextricable binding effect that all elements of the universe have on each other, why the beginning is so important to the core elements of your present. If you wanted to change those core elements, you’ll need a different beginning. If you need a different beginning, you’ll need a different 5th dimension. If you need a different 5th dimension, you’ll need to go fishing in the 6th.
There’s an interesting discussion at a similar blog which discusses this issue from a slightly different, but comparable perspective. The issue there is: “If God created the universe, does he sit outside it?“? I’m going over there to comment right now.
May 17, 2008 at 5:26 pm
alamanach
Dude, what you are describing are not dimensions. Not spatial ones, anyway. I don’t have a problem with the picture you are painting, but you are misusing the word “dimension”.
Suppose I were a 1D creature, and I lived in 2D spacetime. My entire existence would fit within some 2D square of finite size. There may be numerous alternate lifetimes (in which I was a rich 1D engineer, a poor 1D engineer, married to someone else, etc.) and all of these lifetimes would be 2D objects. You say they exist in parallel; we stack these 2D squares to get a 3D cube.
Elsewhen, I have different DNA, and live multiple lives as a 1D rock star. These, too, are 2D lives, and could be collected into a separate 3D cube. Plainly, there is no reason why these two 3D cubes could not coexist in the same 3D space. Our ordinary, present-day 3D space that we occupy right now has millions of 3D cubes in it. You could tuck a cube away in the fourth dimension, but there is no reason to do so.
May 17, 2008 at 6:23 pm
xenlogic
Ahh…
Now I see why you’re getting confused. Listen, 2D & 3D realms are perpendicular. 3D & 4D realms are perpendicular. 4D & 5D realms are perpendicular - and up to 5D, they all can be “stacked” on top of each other to make newer dimensions as you said. But after 5D, they are parallel. That’s the difference between a spatial and a physical dimension.
You’re thinking of the term “dimension” as a physical space and trying to apply that to the spatial realms above that. The definition of a dimension is not bound to the physical confines of realms we can see. When we think of parallel universes, you can’t get to those places without going through some higher level spatial dimension. In fact, that’s why they’re called “parallel universes” and not perpendicular ones - it’s because they are quite literally stacked “sideways” to each other. None of them has a timeline that would lead to each other. If they did, they would be perpendicular to each other and not parallel. That’s why 4D is perpendicular to 5D and not parallel, because all 4D timelines come from the same chain of cause and effect within a 5D.
Let’s say there’s a parallel universe where you’re a rock star instead of an engineer. To get there, we need quantum tunnelling (that’s how we travel across dimensions). In this operation, we need to build a machine to determine which dimensions our ship needs to step through to get to the dimension where you are a rock star. This machine would have a cpu core that would calculate mathematically whether we need to step perpendicularly (time travel to an alternate 4D path in the 5th) or parallel (anything above 5D). Now depending on the nature of the parallel universe we want to get to, the machine would have to calculate how far sideways we’d need to step in order to get where we want to go.
I admit though, that theoretical physics has altered to some extent the way we use some of the words we’re naturally familiar with in other contexts. Remember what I said earlier about us as an Amoeba? This is a similar situation. We’re trying to use words we already know from other contexts to explain something that our language has no referrant for. This is “new” to human epistemology. Examine the definition of the word dimension and look at the third entry. You will see that the word isn’t limited to use in physical measures of space.
May 17, 2008 at 9:19 pm
alamanach
xenlogic, with all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about. I am glad you linked to that dictionary definition, because I think it sets things out rather nicely. As it explains, physical quantities such as mass, length, and time can be looked at dimensionally; dimensions need not be just space.
Mass, length, and time are fundamental quantities*. They cannot be broken down into something else. Other physical properties are combinations of these three**; density is a combination of mass and length (m*l^3). Speed is a combination of length and time (l/t). Energy combines all three (1/2m(l/t)^2). And so on. The upshot of this is that mass, length, and time are independent variables. We can plot them on x-y-z axes, and the value of one is completely independedent of the others. Because they are independent, you have to have all three values to know the state of a system. Knowing only mass and time, you would not be able to derive (figure out) length.
When we use mass, length, and time (or any other set of independent variables) to calculate and track derived values (like, say, momentum), we say we have a vector space. A vector space is a mathematical structure. The x-y-z coordinates we are all familiar with are a vector space.
Those derived values we track in vector space are called vectors. A point in the x-y-z space with coordinates (2,3,4) can be interpreted as a vector; we imagine an arrow starting at the origin and extending to that point (2,3,4). This vector (arrow) is the sum of three other, component vectors: (2,0,0), (0,3,0), (0,0,4), and we can calculate its length (about 5.4 units). Like this vector, all vectors have a magnitude (a size) and a direction. Parallel vector of the same magnitude are equal; they don’t all have to originate at (0,0,0), or even at the same point. Parallel vectors of equal magnitude are the same vector. (Parallel vectors of unequal magnitudes are simply multiples of the same thing. In actual practice, we really like when they come out parallel, because adjusting the magnitude is usually trivial.***)
The independent variables that make up a vector space (like the x-y-z axes) are mutually perpendicular. They have to be; if they were anything less than perpendicular, then one axis would be a component of the other, and the variables would not be truly independent. The axes of a vector space are not limited to three. You can have as many axes as there are independent variables in your system.
Now, to quote Bill Cosby, I told you all that so I could tell you this: there is no such thing as one dimension that is parallel to another dimension. It doesn’t matter whether our dimensions represent space, physical properties, computer inputs, or what have you. Either they are perpendicular, or they are components of each other (not independent), or they are the exact same thing. When you say that “after 5D they are parallel”, your statement amounts to the same thing that I said in the first place: “Your dimensions six through eight do not involve anything that wouldn’t fit in your fifth dimension.”****
*I am describing the SI system. There are other, equivalent systems with different fundamental properties.
**There are actually a few other fundamental properties besides these three.
***Depending on the application, of course. But for any application I can think of right now, this is true.
****And to quote Al Yankovic, “I do vector calculus just for fun.” http://alamanach.com/program-for-creating-orthogonal-matrices/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw
May 17, 2008 at 9:31 pm
xenlogic
With all due Respect Mater Al, I still don’t think you follow me. I think we may have to agree to disagree on this one because we’re going around in circles.
The issue you’re having is related to definition and still you’re limiting the definition to physical quantification. The context in which I’m using it is buried deep in quantum physics and I can’t think of any other way to explain it to you. Did you watch the BBC Horizon Video at the end of the post? Try going through that video (all 5 parts). All combined it’s about an hour in length. You will see exactly the same material there as I’ve posited here. If you have a problem with the usage of the word, you may need to take up that one with the physicists. I’m not inventing any ideas here. This material pre-dated my birth.
Cheers!
May 18, 2008 at 6:49 am
alamanach
OK, OK, it was painful, but I watched it. As I have said, I don’t have a problem with the basic picture of the “multiverse” that you are describing. And in some ways, what you are describing resembles the 11-dimensional M-branes that the physicists in the video are talking about. But you are often using the word “dimension” to describe things that are actually parallel universes. (I am not limiting the word to physical quantifications, I am limiting the word to what it actually means.) Watch the show again and you will see that they do not once put the words “parallel dimension” together. They don’t do it because there is no such thing as a parallel dimension. There are (theoretically) parallel universes, and we have to posit one or more higher dimensions to explain where these universes are in relation to each other.
By the way, notice what they said about most of these higher dimensions being tiny, “a trillionth of a millimeter”. The only reason string theory hypothesized these dimensions to begin with was to give the string a sufficient number of vibrational modes. It would not be possible to fit entire universes in these tiny dimensions the way you are describing, there is not enough space.
Some more suggested reading for you: “Hyperspace” by Michio Kaku (the ice skating physicist you saw in the video), and “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene. Both books explain string, superstrings, branes, higher dimensions, parallel universes, and so on, and without the nauseating cuteness of a BBC programme.
May 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm
xenlogic
“…and without the nauseating cuteness of a BBC programme.”
- ROTFLMAO!!! I keeled over laughing when I read that last line. Man, that was HILARIOUS!
LOL!!!
May 19, 2008 at 5:16 pm
alamanach
Thinking over that program, I notice that the conception of the Big Bang that they put forward is different from scenarios I had heard before. Classicly, the laws of physics break down as we move backward in time toward the Big Bang, and all matter in the universe collapses into a singularity. But in this new version, the Big Bang is just a routine collision between two branes. The “universe” as we have always known it is just a miniscule part of an 11-dimensional collection of countless branes, all floating around and bouncing off one another. The real universe is much larger, and radically different from what we had supposed; it is not these stars and galaxies and stuff, it is really these branes.
That means the universe predates the Big Bang. If the universe predates the Big Bang, then maybe it has no beginning. The universe could be eternal after all.
May 19, 2008 at 8:26 pm
xenlogic
Nah. The universe starts with the big bang. We define the universe as all the knowable, ostensible phenomena. Before that, we’re talking about a realm where the Numinous God thrives - where the laws of physics don’t apply. That realm could not be considered a part of our universe for the same reason.
The only way that could work is if you simply define the universe as all energy. In that case, we could say that the “universe” is eternal since all energy will eventually return its source when the physical realm that was spawned eventually collapses as one giant black hole.
Note that the laws of physics also break down inside a black hole. Hint, hint.
May 20, 2008 at 11:01 am
alamanach
But the laws of physics work just fine in this 11th-D brane-space. They may be laws different from what we presently know, but what physicists are describing in the video is still a knowable, rational, self-consistent world. To say that our 4D space is the universe and the rest is just some weird beyond is prejudicial. Our 4D space is a piece of this much larger system. If that larger system has no beginning, what happens to the metaphysical system you have laid out in this post?
May 21, 2008 at 11:20 am
xenlogic
“But the laws of physics work just fine in this 11th-D brane-space.”
Sez who? You do remember that the laws of physics break down towards the singularity event, right? This is because they don’t apply to any system outside of this universe! Everytime a set of branes collide, they spawn a new big bang and thus a new realm with its own laws of physics, etc. When the little people who evolve out of that new realm rationalise the origin of their universe, their laws of physics will likewise break down towards that singularity event too. There’s a very good reason for this:
There are no laws of physics defined for this 11D universe that we can reasonably wrap our minds around. If that were the cause, then they wouldn’t “break down” as they approach a singularity event, the center of a black hole or the nexus of a space-time bridge (wormhole) in our own physical realm. We’re still Amoeba’s trying to put a wrangle on the things we THINK we know. If our understanding of physics was solid, then the laws of physics which we invented wouldn’t break down across any vertex of reality. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still seeing the world as being “flat” from a metaphorical point of view.
As you said before, this 11D realm is impossibly thin (and as stipulated in the documentaries) it lies impossibly close to all matter. This 11D realm is where physicists believe that electrons (and other sub-atomic “particles”) flit in and out of existence to. Do you remember that opening sequence of that “nauseatingly cute” BBC programme? That’s where this whole thing started my friend.
I don’t think mankind will exist long enough to completely wrap our heads around the 11D, and thus I disagree that it contains laws of physics that are knowable. If that were the case, then theoretically, we should be able to create our our universe and become Gods of the new age - right? Not even that super-cyclotron they’re building in Europe to finally solve the ultimate question will make us any wiser. That’s a stab in the dark. Even if they were able to spawn a “new universe” from that experiment, they would never be able to control it.
There’s no referrant in human epistemology that would allow us to completely grasp the definition of what 11D really is. We just know it’s there and that’s as far as human understanding will go.
May 21, 2008 at 4:21 pm
alamanach
“If that were the case, then theoretically, we should be able to create our our universe and become Gods of the new age - right?” Um, yes, and they raised exactly that possibility in the video. They also pointed out that this 11th dimension, unlike dimensions 5-10, is something large-scale, not microscopic. The reason we do not fall out of our 4D world into this 11th dimension (a spatial dimension) is that the 4D world is all of one single, continuous object. They posit that the universe as we know it is the result of a collision between two branes (you could think of them like lumpy, shaky soap bubbles) contributing different elements to our material, physical world. Gravity comes from one of the branes, and other forces from the other.
“There’s no referrant in human epistemology that would allow us to completely grasp the definition of what 11D really is. We just know it’s there and that’s as far as human understanding will go.” This is untrue. We can develop a very clear understanding of 11D, as demonstrated in the Rudy Rucker book I already mentioned. We can understand higher dimensions by studying the relationship between lower-dimensional systems. We are video-heavy on this topic, so let me offer some videos that explain what I mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8oiwnNlyE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KT4M7kiSw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXKe0SiATwQ
(And a clip only tangentially related, but which you’ll enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpyGhABXRA)
The tesseract hardly scratches the surface of what we already understand about a fourth spatial dimension. Study 4D geometery long enough, and practice hard enough, and you will eventually be able “visualize” 4D objects well enough to work with them in your mind. (Some people say it is impossible to imagine a 4D object, these people are wrong. It takes a lot of training, but your imagination will eventually adapt to the idea.)
Now, the 11th dimension, as described in the BBC video, acts as a fourth spatial dimension. (1-3 are ordinary space, 4 is time, 5-10 are microscopic.) We can model this by imagining ourselves to be Flatlanders: 1-2 are ordinary space, 3 is time, etc. Our 2D space could be wraped around into a 3D bubble shape, and we live strictly on the surface of the bubble. If the world we know is actually the result of a collision of two such bubbles, the rippled, bumpy surface of intersection between them, then it is easy to see that the bubbles that make up our universe predate the Big Bang, that in the larger picture, the Big Bang is actually a pretty trivial point in time, and that the universe could be some vast eternal swarm of bubbles, a swarm without beginning and without end.
There is nothing, in principle, unknowable about this system of bubbles. Would its physics be wildly different from the everyday physics we currently know? Sure, just as quantum physics is wildly different from classical physics. That hasn’t prevented us from figuring out quantum physics.
Your turn.
May 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm
xenlogic
“Um, yes, and they raised exactly that possibility in the video.“
- I know - they raised it as a possibility (much in the same way Star Trek raises the possibility of travelling faster than light.) I agree with everything else in this first paragraph. You’re preaching to the choir here.
“We can develop a very clear understanding of 11D“
- So basically you’re saying that it is possible that humans can become like God? The videos were pretty good. Did you also note how Carl Sagan sounds a lot like Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith? Good stuff.
“Study 4D geometery long enough, and practice hard enough, and you will eventually be able “visualize” 4D objects well enough to work with them in your mind.“
- I wouldn’t compare 4D geometry to 11D. It’s not the same thing. 11D is on a completely different scale. You’re comparing a bicycle to a BMW here. By the same context, you could go ask an Amoeba to build a starship with a sublight engine. I’m not sure I’m expressing the sheer immensity of comprehension required for 11D here.
“There is nothing, in principle, unknowable about this system of bubbles.“
- And how would you explain why physics breaks down when it crosses the starting point of the universe?
“That hasn’t prevented us from figuring out quantum physics.“
- Discovered? No sir. We INVENTED the ideas of quantum physics. We have only a very vague idea that they might be correct. Until we build ourselves a starship and literally GO out there, we’re doing nothing more than guessing - creatively. Tomorrow they’ll find out something else about our universe that’ll turn everything else we know and believe upside down and out the door. It happens all the time. This is why our physics breaks down when it gets to the singularity event. That’s because our physics is based on “guesses” - incomplete guesses based on a system of reality which is based on an idea for which the human mind has no referrant.
Your move, Master Amoeba
May 22, 2008 at 6:40 am
alamanach
“So basically you’re saying that it is possible that humans can become like God? ”
That’s a separate question from whether or not we can understand 11 dimensions. There is nothing magical about 11. Dave Hilbert, one of the great mathematicians of the twentieth century, conjectured what a space of infinite dimensions would be like, and he did useful work in exploring this hypothetical “Hilbert Space”. If we can make some sense of infinite dimensions, and we can make sense of 1, 2, 3, and 4 dimensions, then we can make some sense of 11 dimensions. It’s not a great stretch.
“I wouldn’t compare 4D geometry to 11D. It’s not the same thing.” Do not let the labels confuse you. The 11-dimensional system described in the video, due to dimensions 5-10 being microscopic, effectively amounts to a 4D spatial system with an additional dimension of time. If you like, we could say dimensions 1-4 are space, 5 is time, and 6-11 are microscopic.
When we say “11th dimension”, that’s just a label to indicate a particular direction. Up and down could be the 11th dimension, if we wanted it to be. (or right and left, or forward and backward.) When we say “11 dimensions”, on the other hand, that indicates the total number of dimensions, and the geometrical complexity, of our system.
So, when I talk about tessaracts and stuff, I am describing a 4-dimensional space, but not necessarily “the fourth dimension”. I am describing a 4-dimensional space, but it is a space composed of (to use the BBC video’s notation) dimensions 1, 2, 3, and 11.
“And how would you explain why physics breaks down when it crosses the starting point of the universe?” Because physics isn’t accounting for what’s going on in dimension #11. Imagine what A. Square, resident of Flatland, would have to go through if he tried to mathematically model the apple’s movement through 2D space without recourse to a third dimension. That apple appeared in thin air, grew in size, then shrank back and disappeared without a trace. Looking at it strictly in two dimensions, this is a blunt violation of the first law of thermodynamics. That violation can be easily resolved by adding a third dimension, from which the apple came and to which it returned. Similarly, activity in the 11th dimension might resolve the singularity that turns up at the Big Bang.
“We have only a very vague idea that they might be correct.” That is true of all science. As Abraham Kaplan astutely pointed out, we do not value scientific theories because they are true (they never are), we value them because they are useful.
May 22, 2008 at 7:44 pm
xenlogic
“There is nothing magical about 11”
- I concur, but isn’t the 11th Dimension ‘magical’? What rules here apply there?
“If we can make some sense of infinite dimensions, and we can make sense of 1, 2, 3, and 4 dimensions, then we can make some sense of 11 dimensions. It’s not a great stretch.”
- I disagree. We can make sense of 1 - 4 because we can ostensibly prove them. We cannot ostensibly prove 11D, we only theoretically approximate 11thD in math to make our equations work. Until somebody builds a real flux capacitor, we’re pretty much stuck in this dimension. Even if someone builds one of those things, they may try to traverse the 11th D and become inexorably struck from history. (I’m kidding) I’m still not convinced that the 11th D is a dimension we can approximate into human epistemology. You’re talking about ascendence evolution and I don’t think Humans will ever get that far.
I’m not having a problem with definitions or understanding what you’re trying to elucidate here. I’m having a problem with the notion that you think humans have the capacity to thoroughly grasp the 11th D. If we could do that for real, then whence becomes the necessity of God? Or is God contextually irrelevant?
“Because physics isn’t accounting for what’s going on in dimension #11”
- Very Good answer. That’s exactly my point. When you answer the magic question I posited earlier, then we’ll come full circle and wrap this baby up.
“…we do not value scientific theories because they are true (they never are), we value them because they are useful.”
- That’s a very good line. I think I’ll write that one down. I’m really enjoying this discussion. I think you’re the best debater I’ve encountered in a long looong time.
May 23, 2008 at 3:22 am
alamanach
“I concur, but isn’t the 11th Dimension ‘magical’?” In the scenario you described in your original post, yes. You recognize the existence of an unknowable, numinous God, and the 11th Dimension is where you’ve chosen to put Him. But in M-theory, no, there’s nothing magical about it at all. Personally, I would not try to put God anywhere so clumsy as a higher dimension of space; this is the same God that invented space, and dimensions, and math, and logic. He is going to be beyond any such things.
“We can make sense of 1 - 4 because we can ostensibly prove them. We cannot ostensibly prove 11D, we only theoretically approximate 11thD in math to make our equations work.” That is true, assuming the numinous-God stuff you are positing about the 11th Dimension. This comes down to the difference between the 11th Dimension as a mathematically intelligible space, and the 11th Dimension as a realm of phenomena unknowable to our minds. It is the phenomena that are unknowable, not the space these phenomena are occupying.
Now I have two questions for you: In your view of things, why is God, the unknowable and impersonal, in the 11th Dimension and not somewhere else? Why must he necessrily be there?
And if God is an impersonal force of nature, an unconscious cosmic impetus from which is coming all things, then why would it ever be that “God… takes on a human form when dealing with humans for ease of relation”? If God is not a person, not conscious, then why make effort to relate to humans?
May 23, 2008 at 9:46 am
xenlogic
“He is going to be beyond any such things.”
- Hence magical, and thus my point.
“It is the phenomena that are unknowable, not the space these phenomena are occupying.”
- That line feels a lot like copping out (I could be wrong, but I doubt it) or self contradictory at least. When I refer to the 11th D, what exactly do you think I was referring to?
“In your view of things, why is God, the unknowable and impersonal, in the 11th Dimension and not somewhere else? Why must he necessrily be there?”
- Because that is the highest, most pervasive, most all encompassing domain and there is nowhere else to go - Hence my earlier points. That’s the only place God could be if there is any such thing. It functionally complements our standard definition of omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
“If God is not a person, not conscious, then why make effort to relate to humans?”
- That’s like asking why dogs chase cars. Dogs can’t drive cars. But they chase them anyway simply because they can. That’s just it and there’s nothing more to it. The same explanation can be had of the Numinous God. A better explanation would be that “because God is Sovereign and can do anything he bloody well pleases“. In fact, an even better question would be:
“Why would God create a world where evil exists?”
If you can answer that question satisfactorily, then you will have proven my point once again. I’m awaiting your response with bated
breathkeyboard…:DMay 23, 2008 at 1:08 pm
alamanach
OK, so you are saying that God exists in 11 dimensions, while created reality only occupies 10 dimensions. I think that must be what you are really trying to say, because there is nothing inherently “highest, most pervasive, most all encompassing” about one dimension over another. The 11th dimension is simply a direction, like up & down, or right & left, or future & past. But from the perspective of any 11-dimensional object or creature, a 10-dimensional object or creature will appear perfectly “flat”, and all its insides and outsides will be visible simultaneously. It is not the dimension per se that is anything special, just the fact that one object possesses a 1D advantage over some other object.
We have analogues of this in the lower dimensions: you, being a 3D being, would have powers like unto a god from the perspective of the 2D Flatlanders. You possess these powers not because of some magic that will be forever unknowable to the Flatlanders, but simply because you have the ability to be perpendicular to everything in their world simultaneously. Perpendicularity yields some incredible abilities, but you, me, and A. Square are already familiar with what perpendicularity is. The Flatlanders could work out the math and come to see that you are not a god, you are just good old xenlogic. The “dimension” you live in is perfectly knowable. (And is xenlogic himself knowable? That is another question, one that would plunge the Flatlanders into consciousness research, psychology, neuroscience, etc.)
Now, I put “dimension” in quotes because you do not live in just one dimension, you live in 3 (4 if we include time, but let’s keep this simple). Two of those dimension are already shared with you by the Flatlanders. The third they might find a little weird, but it is nothing they could not mathematically model.
Not only could they model it, they could exist in it. If we rotate Flatland 90 degrees, then Flatland will occupy dimensions 1 and 3, whereas before they occupied 1 and 2. From this, you can see that there is nothing especially “higher” or “pervasive” about the third dimension; the dimension itself is no different from dimensions 1 and 2. It is because you occupy more dimensions than the Flatlanders that you possess some special powers over them, not because you “live in the third dimension”. (Strictly speaking, you don’t live there; only a line could live there. You have volume, and so live in dimensions 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously.)
Now, I don’t know about you, but the unknowability of the numinous God is not something that I ascribe to His possessing more dimensions than creation. First of all, an extra-dimensional object or being would be as knowable to us as any other mathematically sophisticated phenomenon. Secondly, if that was all He was, then his powers would be limited by the laws of geometry, laws He Himself invented. You and I both agree that this God would be beyond geometry, and math, and even logic. So I do not think he is “in the eleventh dimension”, or occupying eleven dimension, or however we want to put it. We would not be amoeba in the face of such a God, He would be something we could basically understand. If you read the books that I recommended (”Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension” by Rudy Rucker, “Hyperspace” by Michio Kaku, and “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene), you will have a very strong grasp of how all this higher-dimensional stuff works. The Rucker book is especially good, it is also short and lively. I strongly encourage you to read it.
Hopefully, that clears up some of what I mean about the differences between phenomena and the space they inhabit.
You say God can do anything he bloody well pleases. How does that make sense if he is not a person? (Keep in mind, “person” does not mean “human”.) Can a cosmic force have a will? If it has a will, is it a free will? If it is not a free will, then how can we speak of things pleasing it? If it is a free will, then is this force conscious of its will? If this force is conscious, then must it not be a person?
(btw, I will be travelling soon, and might not be able to respond for a week or so.)
May 23, 2008 at 2:48 pm
xenlogic
Sir Al,
I realise more and more that we already agree on the basic premise of the subject matter, so I won’t regurgitate that part. I think we’re both preaching to the choir here, so let me only highlight those parts that I think are worth mentioning towards the point I was making earlier:
“First of all, an extra-dimensional object or being would be as knowable to us as any other mathematically sophisticated phenomenon.”
- Always playing on Semantics eh? OK! Let’s use other words: We’d be able to recognise it (I don’t dispute that), but to fully know all of what it is? THAT is what I doubt.
“The Rucker book is especially good, it is also short and lively. I strongly encourage you to read it.”
- Beelining for Amazon…
“How does that make sense if he is not a person?”
- EXACTLY my point. Are you getting it yet? Do you remember me saying earlier on that Human languages will always fail to describe what God truly is because there’s no referrant in human epistemology for it? THAT is what I’m getting at. You’re asking two questions about God which are inextricably bound to human epistemology because we’re trying to rationalise God using HUMAN LANGUAGE. That is the source of every descriptive fallacy of God.
God is a numinous being. He can be a personality and a force of nature and both things (however illogically) at the same time. It is illogical to humans because we (like an Amoeba studying fractal equations) simply do not have a referrant in our entire knowledge arena to describe what God truly is.
We’d be better off saying that God is magic and leaving it at that!
May 23, 2008 at 3:45 pm
alamanach
“I realise more and more that we already agree on the basic premise of the subject matter, so I won’t regurgitate that part.” Good, because I’ve said from the beginning I didn’t have a real problem with your basic picture– it’s just some of the details in the explaining that needed some attention.
“We’d be able to recognise it (I don’t dispute that), but to fully know all of what it is? THAT is what I doubt.” And the Flatlanders, in their research into human consciousness, would discover that that, too, is rich in paradox, and that xenlogic himself may be ultimately unknowable. But that is a discussion for another time. I do believe we’ve put this one to bed…
May 23, 2008 at 8:02 pm
xenlogic
I concur, doctor. GG.
May 28, 2008 at 7:18 am
frowsy
frowsy says : I absolutely agree with this !
September 6, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Richard
Does omnipotence result in omniscient?
What makes God omniscient?
September 6, 2008 at 9:47 pm
xenlogic
If God is the creator of all things, then God created all knowledge. If All knowledge comes from God, then God is omniscient.