Juvenescence for the Brain

After graduating from Georgia Tech on Saturday, a few friends and I got together for some liquid celebration. At one point the conversation drifted toward physics and reality.

One point of discussion involved the fundamental issue in our understanding of physics – that, of course, being the wide gap between quantum and Newtonian physics! Sure, Einstein can explain the workings of an atom (to a degree), and Newton shows us what happens when two cars smash together – but the two systems are incompatible. Physicists around the world tackle this problem everyday, with limited (or no) success.

It’s certainly exciting to think that we may someday hold a formula explaining reality in its entirety, after we’ve consolidated the multiple theories. But what then? What reassurance do we have that this miracle theory applies to anything more than our infinitesimal speck of a neighborhood? How can we know that these physical laws we observe are more than a one-off snapshot of some greater, invisible set of rules – a set of rules that manifests itself in entirely different ways for other universes?

If that were the case, it would certainly be a massive, existential blow to our egos (especially those of physicists)!

But it wouldn’t be surprising. After all, even the most rudimentary thinker has already realized that their understanding, however great, is nothing compared to the whole of reality. No amount of study and investigation can yield a body of knowledge that approaches even 0.00001% of all that there is to know! That’s certainly a very sobering realization. Yet at the same time it’s a very empowering realization, as it makes you aware of the fascinatingly unique position that we, humans, have in all of this. The fact that we’re able to comprehend our pathetic intellectual faculties means that they are not so pathetic after all!

I came upon a stunning realization during this talk, which I related to the others present. It may come as a bit of a surprise, as it too threatens our most basic notions of reality… Get ready.

You see that computer in front of you? Well, it doesn’t exist. Your bed, and your house, and your family… hell, even the city you live in! None of them exist. At least not to me.

Why? Because anything that we perceive to be real, anything that we can see, touch, feel, smell, and hear – they only exist insofar as our mental perception of them. That is to say, things only exist once they’ve been processed by our senses. Anything that we perceive to be material and solid is merely that, a perception, and nothing more.

In that sense, even though you and I might enjoy a beautiful sunset together – we are really watching two completely different scenes! That sunset (which I assume exists, because it seems like it does) has been filtered through my sensory organs to create a ’sunset’ in my brain. And that, for me, is the only real sunset. Not the actual collection of reddish-purple light on the horizon, and certainly not your understanding of the sunset.

Let that soak in for a moment.

You really have no way to prove that we are even viewing the same phenomena. This concept is related to that which schoolchildren often discuss – that we can’t really know whether I see the same “yellow” or “green” as you do. If I perceive a certain color differently, there’s no way of finding out, because even though my cognitive image of that color differs from yours, I was taught the same word for it! My yellow might very well appear, in my brain, identical to what you think is the color green!

Of course, although that example is convenient for describing this concept to children, I feel it’s flawed for a number of reasons – foremost being that color’s psychological effects on us go far beyond its visual appearance. It’s very unlikely that red would affect us in similar ways (as it does) if I were actually seeing blue instead.

But I stray from the main gist here… All I want you to take from this is the knowledge that everything you’ve ever considered to be real is merely a construct of your senses. If there are 6 billion people living on Earth, then there are also 6 billion Earths – each one a unique manifestation of what-we-assume-t0-be-reality in each of those people’s minds. This is no new concept in philosophy, but when you really start to think about it – it has all kinds of implications for everyday life. No wonder people don’t get along much of time, if we’re truly seeing completely different realities!

I’m going to go have a beer, mostly to repair my sense of existence. DC out.