...fails entirely to interest.
Why?
Anthropic principle.
Not in the trivial "Intelligent life may be a hell of a lot less likely than we think" sense, although that's a perfectly valid proposition as well.
But in the sense that "Some of the conditions of the universe we think to be universal and independent of our existence may exist solely for us."
For example, time. Is time as we understand it a universal concept? Our existence in time can be conceptualized as a pattern propagating through four dimensional space; assuming this is a valid model, should we expect similar patterns to be propagating in a direction orthogonal to our own, never even minding parallel?
How do brains work? I'm not the only person considering the brain as a quantum computer. Although the people trying to show Einstein-Bose condensate in the brain clearly don't understand the implications of this - the Einstein-Bose condensate would merely be the point where matter no longer has enough energy to wiggle in fivespace, and crystallizes; it looks like a smear because we're perceiving matter which in a threespace brain model is overlapping (even though in the fivespace our brains and eyes occupy it doesn't). More specifically, if the brain is a quantum computer, it must occupy a certain amount of fivespace. (Which suggests we have anatomy in fivespace we're not even aware of.) Why should we expect aliens which happen to exist orthogonal to us, and more parallel to us, to also occupy the same fivespace as us?
We tend to assume the universe is, and we happen to exist within it. The universe cannot be separated from the observer.
If the pattern propagating through four-space turned, then what would it look like to the observer?
ReplyDeleteShouldn't some of the past re-appear, while some of the future arrive early? Then, wouldn't the past parts stick around even longer, while the future parts rapidly changed into previously-unobservable parts of the universe?
Depends on how and why it turned, and to what extent.
ReplyDeleteIf the whole of the pattern merely turned, and didn't intersect any other patterns in a discontinuous way, I suspect it would be invisible to the observer through direct means. (Although there might be regional fluctuations in properties such as gravitational force, as a result of wrinkling - imagine a line propagating through a plane which is curving in the third dimension.)
A more likely cause of recurrence and pattern fragmentation would be pieces of the pattern being reoriented, presumably by patterns intersecting them. (I ponder the implications of orthogonal predators and what fifth-dimensional injury would look like. What happens to a quantum computer when a slice of it is ripped out?)