Our Past, Present and Future Always Exist Across Space-Time

Here's an idea that you might find thought provoking:

If we could explain for a layperson exactly what mind blowing revelation that Einstein gave the world and is most famous among scientists for, it would go like this:

Einstein proved that the future literally exists now.  And he showed that the past continues to exist.  Space-time is like a loaf of bread where each slice is a different still freeze frame of the universe.  The whole loaf exists now, but we are observing our way through just one slice at a time, so it seems to us like the slices ahead of us do not exist yet.  Einstein also proved that time travel is possible (although he didn't believe likely).  He and his collaborators developed the concept of the wormhole.  There are no theoretical physicists today who would dare to say that the future does not exist now.  They will admit that reality exists all at once across all times.  It's more similar to a DVD of a movie, where you can skip to chapter 11 and it will seem as if the characters are really moving in real time and that their future and past also do not exist.  But of course, it's just a DVD, so your knowledge tells you that their future and past do exit on the DVD.  But a primitive man of 120 years ago would be convinced that he is peering through a strange window that you have shown him so you can spy on people in real time.

So what is so very profound and interesting about this discover of Einstein?

Well, now combine the ideas of Ray Kurtzweil, who believes that in less than one more generation, we will actually have the power of StarTrek technology and beyond, since that show is so old and didn't even predict key technologies we already have.  Specifically, in 40 years, Moors' law could increase computer processing capacity 3.2 million times past the level where it's at now.  Let's say a new consumer CPU today computes at 3 Ghz per second.  3.2 million times that level is just mindboggling.  Will Moors' law hold?  It doesn't matter because it can slow down and still be mindboggling.  And it's not just computer capacity that is behaving exponentially.  The exchange of information in science and the rate of new inventions and scientific discoveries are behaving similarly. 

Now, one of the most intriguing ideas of StarTrek level technology in our lifetimes is the inevitable merging of synthetic creativity, intelligence and learning with our biological intelligence, leaving evolution in the dust.

Another realistic idea is the fact that an entire human mind and awareness can conceivably be transmitted digitally from one location to the next at the speed of light and then reconstituted molecularly.  Does this seem farfetched for us?  Yes, but not as farfetched for a 20 year old nanotechnology and mathematics PhD candidate. And of course, for us it's less farfetched than it would be for our parents.  And it will be less farfetched 10 years from now, that's for sure.

So why bring this up?  Well, because once you can move a mind at the speed of light, like I'm talking about, you are literally changing that mind's position in time, not just space.  That's the mindboggling thing Einstein proved about space-time.  How about faster than light travel?  Well, there's a well known and completely unexplained phenomena in physics experiments called particle coupling.  Basically what happens is that a particle that is coupled with its partner behaves in tandem with that partner, regardless of the distance between them.  I'll use a macro scale example to make it more simple.  Let's say that my watch is a particle and I synchronize it with your watch.  Now let's say that I move your watch to the next galaxy and I change the time on my watch from, say, 12 pm to 3 pm.  According to well confirmed experiments, your watch would simultaneously change to 3 pm.  This doesn't occur at the speed of light, though, it's instant!  It's as though the two watches are communicating instantly, like they're the same watch.  The most well agreed upon theories on how this could be possible say that space-time is not as "local" as we are led to believe by our senses and logic.   As a side analogy, remember the movie The Matrix?  When Neo was fighting  Morpheous in the training simulator at a distance of two feet away from the fists of Morpheous, how much actual space was there?  Of course zero.  It didn’t' exist.  Or did it?  Was anything there at all?  Of course there was.  There was the INFORMATION of two feet between Neo's face and Morpheous' fist.  And that information is completely 100% real.  In fact, some physicists, like MIT professor Max Tegmark believe that the universe is actually made of information, i.e., mathematics, and that there is no magic stuff of "energy" or "space".   He says mathematics doesn't describe space and energy.  It is space and energy.  This is our belief too, and it's held by many other heavy weights besides Prof Tegmark.

Your future literally exists now.  You don't know how to access it and neither do we.  But there is a hyper-intelligence-augmented or at least wiser and older version of you that literally exists in the universe across this space-time continuum of Einstein, if you don't die tomorrow. 

We believe that the undiscovered solution to what really lies at the heart of quantum physics and the true fabric of reality will reveal a completely scientific explanation for well documented phenomena of remote viewing (the CIA admitted to using it), telepathy, the 100th Monkey Effect phenomena, etc.  The published studies on this stuff in well respected journals is voluminous.  These studies verify the existence of psychic phenomena but of course don't offer any explanations on how it could possibly work.  That is the job of quantum physics.  But physicists need not attack the problem of explaining the phenomena directly.  Our species simply needs to discover exactly what the deepest fabric of realty really is and how it works.  The answer to some of these seemingly spooky questions will simply come out in the process and will no longer be voodoo.

Here's a provocative question:  If it turns out that the universe is made of information and not some magic "stuff" of space or energy, then can information be destroyed?  It turns out that information cannot be destroyed.  For example, the original 1950's broadcasts of I Love Lucy are still transmitting in 100% original fidelity about 50 light years away from us now.  As discussed, the future and the past exist concurrently with what we call the present.  So those units of space-time cannot be destroyed.  Now, here in what you call your present, there's a high level set of dynamic information that we call "the mind of (insert your name - yes you, the reader)".  That information group is what you call your consciousness.  But how does your consciousness at this instant right now connect through space-time to your consciousness two minutes or two decades from now?  Space-time is connected, that's not voodoo science.  But is there a coherent system of consciousness of You that exists across space-time and is made in part from some of the dynamic systems that you continue to call your "now" then a moment later you call your "past"?  It is logical that there could be a synthesis of these different "nows" in the information-sphere of space-time?   And if "networked" higher aspect of your consciousness could exist over multiple units of space-time as a sort of super-consciousness, what would it be like?  Is it smarter than the one you're familiar with?  Do you inter-resonate with it all the time?  And does its existence require the existence of the You in a physical body?  Does it continue to exist in space-time like those broadcasts of I Love Lucy?  And if so, does it continue to self-organize with new emergent behaviors just the way your littler dynamic system of consciousness does down here on chapter 11 of the DVD of space-time?   

Discovering the substructure of reality and the link to consciousness

We recently attended a conference called, "Towards a Science of Consciousness", that was filled with physicists and consciousness researchers.  There's a nut to crack at the crossroad of quantum theory and consciousness. We've reached the point where retro-causality and premonition studies at ivy league universities have pretty much proven that these two things exist as an established phenomena.  It was amazing to see all these heavyweights from major Universities at the conference talking about how this is a proven fact and trying to grapple with the explanation of how and the implications.  An undiscovered "revised quantum physics" was evoked over and over as an explanation.

A study example would be one where a quantum random number generator picks an image for a subject. The images vary, but three examples of the types would be a baby, a snake and a nude person.  Each would cause the subject's body to undergo a particular physiological response. It was found that, let's say, four full seconds prior to the computer randomly choosing an image, that the subject's body would display the particular physiological response associated with that image. So apparently, the human mind is continuously scanning information forward in time to process its next choices of observation and action.  The studies show that the effect does not drop off with time.  So it doesn't matter if it's four minutes or four weeks.  Plus, the mind is continuously interacting in a weird causal way with the physical environment.  Take another example, the double slit experiment.  There are other experiments they talked about at the conference that prove the phenomena of the mind constantly impacting the environment in weird ways not explained yet by traditional models.

We will imply that if our species discovers the true geometric mathematics of the interface between consciousness and reality at the very smallest Planck scale substructure of space time, it will change everything.  It will give us godlike control over spacetime and matter.  And this will free the species from the old habit of competition over resources and will help us break free of the limitations caused by our survival of the fittest competitive roots. 

So what will we do all day when we have such control over physical reality? Perhaps people will invest their time into a new form of dogma free spiritual exploration that is based on the science around the uncovering of the fabric of reality.  And then there'd probably be more people using artistic self expression since they'd have the time.  And then of course, people will have more time for the pure pursuit of knowledge just for the fun of discovery.     And the pursuit of knowledge will be combined with creativity and will follow the exponential rate that we see now.  So obviously, it's already started even before discovering the substructure of reality and the link to consciousness. 

Here's the kicker…

If the eclipse experiments and other tests of special relativity are correct, then it's a proven phenomena that this singularity of discovering the fabric of reality itself actually exists just forward somewhere in space-time.  It could be a year or it could be much longer.  But it literally exists, concurrent with this area of space-time.  One thing that quantum mechanics proves experimentally is non-locality being part of the core of reality.  So from what we know from these two incomplete but powerful theories (special relativity and QM) is that there's no law we know of to prevent exchange of information with your future.  Non-local effects are not mediated by photons and there's no issue with the speed of light.  In particle physics, the non local phenomena are instantaneous.  And if it's a big event in the road ahead of us in space-time, like the species going through a singularity, then our minds should start picking up on fuzzy intuitions about that event more and more as we approach it.

Exponential and Punctuated Evolution

This brief essay connects exponential technology growth to the coming changes in the level of bigotry in the world. We propose that the reason exponential technology is able to exist is because the human mind is capable of massive and overnight belief mutation. In fact, each evolutionary ratchet forward of technology requires a slight belief modification. And so far, there appears to be no upward bound on the rate of belief change that the human mind is capable of.

We sometimes talk about the possibility that the world can be a much better place in a short period of time. Some people believe serious deep rooted social change happens only gradually, as new generations of more tolerant young people take over the dashboard of government and business control.

While that slower process plays a major role in how society evolves, there are two other important factors:

Exponential Factors - With ever increasing frequency, our society is interacting in a feedback loop with our technology. Policy makers and public office candidates can take opinion polls in hours and respond to that data with modified policy proposals. We can organize political revolutions via the Internet in days, such as we saw in Egypt. Raw and uncensored news flows around the neural network of the World Wide Web so fast now that those in power often consider taking a fresh new approach… honesty, equity and transparency. Sure, if you're convinced that things generally stay the same or change very slowly, you can say that such positive behavior changes don't run deep and that we're merely seeing old behaviors dressed up in new clothes as selfish and bigoted people shift their behavior to avoid losing control. That's surely true in many cases. But something else is happening. Social scientists are now seeing evidence that social programming, such as learned prejudice towards gay people, is much more plastic and able to rapidly adapt than older social theories predict.

Punctuation Events - Of course, we know that biological evolution interacts with itself in feedback loops, two of which are long and short cycle loops. The long cycle loop is slow. As life competes for limited resources, it relies on genetic mutations to better adapt each new genus and species to slow growth environmental change, such as climate patterns, ocean water levels, salinity levels, tectonic plate movement, etc. The new genuses and species then act upon the slow evolutionary processes to further guide new mutations, ergo a "feedback loop". The short cycle feedback loop comes from abrupt "out of nowhere" environmental change, i.e., "punctuation events". For example, an asteroid impact can dramatically change the Co2 level of the atmosphere within 24 hours. Life rapidly responds, with certain species showing a higher propensity to adapt and change behavior without the need for genetic mutation. The rapid "overnight" behavior mutations in these groups allows members to survive. In other words, successful survivors of "punctuation event" environmental change tend to have more plasticity in their behavior patterns. There are many examples of this in nature. But humans are by far the most successful species at rapid behavior mutation (e.g., ice skating) without the need for physiological genetic adaptation/modification. We're literally built to change our behaviors and our minds… quickly. Yes, we're correlating behavior mutation to belief mutation.

We propose that the exponential growth of human technology itself will be viewed by future historians as the most significant punctuation event guiding belief mutation in human history. This exponential technology "thing" has a life of its own in many ways. For example, stock markets, fashion waves and the changing body of scientific knowledge in rapidly morphing fields, such as genetics, are examples of evolving systems that have a dynamical pattern, but which is not easily predicted. These emergent systems tend to be fairly autonomous and free of central control from any person or group. At an increasing rate, this emergent informational "life form" is relying upon and exploiting our natural evolutionary ability to rapidly change… i.e., our powerful survival skill of behavior and belief plasticity. Beliefs quickly come to mirror behaviors just as behaviors come to mirror beliefs. And every set of behaviors has a set of beliefs associated with it. So an individual or a society's belief plasticity and behavior plasticity both reinforce and mirror one another. Obviously, the rate of belief plasticity in such a system determines the rate of behavior evolution.

As an example of rapid dogma change, consider this quote from a May 20, 2012 article by the executive editor of Bloomberg News, Albert Hunt:

"…public opinion is moving inexorably toward greater tolerance. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll is instructive: In the middle of the 2004 presidential election, the public, by better than a 2- to-1 margin, opposed same-sex marriages. This year, in the same poll, on the same question, a plurality favored it."

Think carefully about that. The gay marriage issue is something emotionally rooted into the mesh of supposedly fast held American beliefs, most generally emanating from learned religious dogma. So then how is it that an issue so influenced by religion and so deeply "learned" can undergo such a dramatic public belief shift in just a few years? This is a brilliant scientifically controlled example of how humans are far more comfortable and capable of changing their deeply held beliefs than we give ourselves credit for.

So what's another way to think about all this? We like to talk about how our understanding of the universe is exponentially changing, along with our resulting technologies. But how about playing with words and wondering, "Could the human species be embarking upon an evolutionary punctuation event with regard to social tolerance? In less than one generation, will we witness an exponential rate of change of bigotry and intolerance, such that hateful views towards gay marriage in, say, five years will be as rare as it is today for people to believe that slavery or forcing African Americans to sit at the back of the bus is ethical?"

If you too conclude that the human skill of belief plasticity is the engine allowing exponential technology growth to exist (advances in science require rapid belief change), then you might also conclude that our new global network of minds connected via the Internet currently has us "locked and loaded" for a massive paradigm shift to be communicated… a large scale belief mutation. If in fact tolerance, service to others and equality were more advantageous for society and its emergent systems of behavior (such as technology) than survival of the fittest based competition for limited resources, then it's only a matter of time before a "best practices" paradigm shift of global behavior takes root via simple evolution. And when it does, it's fair to expect it to occur with blinding speed, due to the increasing tendency towards rapid change of all systems, which we have been exhibiting globally as of late. And those best practice behavior changes will be mirrored by belief changes and vice versa. So what about the ideas of emerging abundance, as outlined in Peter Diamandis' book, Abundance? How would that influence this evolutionary shift in beliefs? Clearly, this is a second contributing factor to the best practices paradigm shift we're talking about. Let us argue for inevitability. We propose that even without technology enabled abundance of resources, our species is capable of (and the system would inevitably evolve to) a shift to a less selfish and more tolerant society. It better ensures survival. But considering the fact that abundance is also virtually inevitable, such a paradigm shift of beliefs towards kindness and tolerance is a slam dunk.

The World is Changing Right Before our Eyes

One thing is for sure, the rate of change itself is changing, and in many cases exponentially. In such a state of unprecedented change, it's difficult to predict what will happen using old paradigms and previous patterns of behavior or current systems, economies and rules. One of the most serious unprecedented changes is the virtual democratization and cost elimination of communication via the Internet. Never before have so many conversations and exchanges of information taken place on such a delocalized level. It is this collective and free world conversation at the level of the poor and the average income person that is empowering. And we've only seen the beginning of where this is taking us. It will make it increasingly difficult for those in power to manipulate people. Anything is possible. But there are some wildcards due to the unprecedented nature of this change. Optimism and proactive choices are important, we think.

There is a book called Abundance by Peter Diamandis, who started Singularity University. Here's a two minute video about it by a fan of the book.

And here's a 16 minute TED talk by Peter Diamandis on the book:

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html


Singularity University is about the optimism we can look to as the human species goes through this exponential change event that we're just heading into now. Things that are costly today, will be made less scarce and therefore less costly due to exponential technologies. Energy is one great example. If our group doesn't make contributions there, others will. If a widespread easy to adopt low cost energy technology becomes free to all, then massive redistributions of power and wealth to all people can occur. This is exactly happening with information, which used to be for the wealthy who could afford it. Now it's virtually free. One by one, future technologies, such as nano-technology, will render things which used to be costly to the point where they're virtually free or orders of magnitude cheaper. And in such a new world, things such as cheap Chinese manual labor or high US wealth will become less important than they are now. The playing field of what is important will change dramatically.

What is happening right now with the human species is a grand and uncontrollable experiment that no one knows the outcome of and no one can control. Rich old men in cigar filled rooms will not control the future that we see.