I guess I didn’t get where you were going with the camera analogy Abra.

Here’s how I see it…

The 1-bit, 1-pixel camera can also take a picture of anything at all. The only difference that resolution makes is in how accurately the image represents the reality. I could be said that a 1-bit, 1-pixel camera records an exact image of reality. That is, what comes in through the lens and hits the recording media (the CCD) is the reality. It’s just that the camera is only capable of recording a certain amount of detail. So the issue seems to revolve around the simple fact of the camera being able to take a picture at all, regardless of the resolution.

So maybe you’re relating the “degree of resolution” of a camera to the “degree of orderliness” of a system. That is, just as the camera is only able to represent a certain degree of resolution according to it’s ability to differentiate colors and relative locations (i.e. pixels), any observer of a system is only able to assign a degree of order to that system according to it’s ability to differentiate the components of the system.

???

I can't quite get my eyes to focus that far apart. I can only get them to go about 80% of the way. If the picture were about 20%-25% smaller, I think I could do it. Do you have reduced size images avalable?

You know, now that I think about it, the use of the term "particle" is a bit misleading. It is actually a "point", not a particle. It would really be more precise to say that "a point in space manifests as a particle" - which really only means "a particle manifests at a point in space.

Bohm had a lot to say about this whole idea of how and why modern physics fails. It's sort of "inside out". Instead of trying to figure out how separate parts make up a whole, Bohm is saying that we should be trying to figure out how a whole becomes divided into parts.

As Abra said, the whole foundation of QM is that things are separate and discrete, not continuous. But the question is, what separates them? What is "the separator"? The fact of non-locality all by itself indicates that they are not truly separate. (That pesky "instantanous connection".) And all Bohm is saying is that that apparent separation is an illusion, as demonstrated by the observed "instantaneous connection".

And there is an intereseting correlation to the dividing of a holographic plate...

If you divide a holographic plate in two, the entire image is visible in both pieces.

Now if you continue to divide it, the entire picture is still visible in every piece, but what happens is the image starts to become "grainy". And the smaller the pieces, the granier the picture. This is analogous to the resolution of a digital picture. The fewer pixels available, the granier the picture.

And that aligns well with the same concept of particles "manifesting as" other particles. The picture becomes granier because there are fewer particles/pixels to make up the entire picture. So each particle "chooses" which one it will manifest as acording to it's connections with the other particles - which could be described as "a built-in averaging algorithm" just like what is used in reducing digital images.

In terms of modern QM, the graniness eventually get's down to "one pixel" at the level of Planck's Constant.

(Interesting side note: One article I read described the size of a "quanta of time" as Planck's Constant divided by the speed of light - much smaller grain than we could hope to discern in the forseable future - if ever.)

Regarding the information storge capabilities of matter…

The Holographic Universe concept doesn’t really say that each and every particle actually contains all the information for all other particles. That is just an oversimplified analogy used to describe it in layman’s terms.

Like quantum non-locality. We don’t think of the two particles as both containing all the information about each other. We simply observe that whatever affects one particle affects the other particle as well – only in the opposite direction. (I like to think of the connection as being reciprocal as well as instantaneous.)

So if we look at it as every particle “having an instantaneous, reciprocal connection to” every other particle, instead of every particle “containing all information about” every other particle, it becomes more palatable from a quantum mechanics perspective, without changing it’s fundamental holographic nature – i.e. any particle can “manifest as” any other particle through it’s instantaeous, reciprocal connection to that other particle.

It's as if the two particles "switch places".

Anyway, that’s my view.

A little more online reasearch reveals the Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft is credited with first proposing "The Holographic Principle" in 1992.

His proposals are largely based on what we know about Black Holes. (Much of the stuff I was able to find on this "Black Hole connection" was over my head, but there are some interesting tidbits to be had from what I was able to understand.)

So "The Holographic Principle" appears to be a fairly well reasoned theory by a Nobel Prize winning physicist.

And as with any "popcultural" interpretation of esoteric scientific theories, it is prone to oversimplification amd misinterpretation.

Here’s a slightly more “layman’s view” of the theory of …

The Holographic Universe

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect's experiment is related to the EPR Experiment, a consicousness experiment which had been devised by Albert Einstein, and his colleagues, Poldlsky and Rosen, in order to disprove Quantum Mechanics on the basis of the Pauli Exclusion Principle contradicting Special Relativity.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

This fundamental connectedness would correlate with The Fifth Element, and its mathematical proof of all aspects of the universe being energetically connected - Hal Puthoff's assertion in his work on Zero-Point Energy of all charges in the universe being connected and that further mass is in all likelihood an illusion as well -- and both of these modern day theories of physics being in accordance with ancient traditions and philosophies, which claim the same connectedness of the diverse parts of the universe.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them.

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment.

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.



(Excerpted from http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html)

As I see it, the problem is that, unlike “energy”, “order” is inherently subjective. There is no machine or device that can “detect order”.

Yes, there are things like “pattern recognition” software that can nominally “recognize order”. But even in those cases, the parameters of “order” are dependent on the programmer.

So it’s not so much that “measurement requires an observer” as it is “order requires a viewpoint”.

No doubt about that at all. That is inherent in the “What if?”. It’s simply the difference between deductive and inductive logic.

I think “viewpoint” is the key here.

That is, there are an infinite number of possible “locations from which to take a picture”.

So even with a single particle being photographed using a 1-bit camera, there are still an infinite number of “different” photographs that could be taken.

But the particle is not different. It’s the same particle being photographed. And the pictures are not different. They are all exactly the same.

So what really is the “difference”?

The only difference is the relationship of the camera to the particle – i.e. the viewpoint.

In other words, what makes the pictures different has nothing whatsoever to do with either the particle or the camera.

Without differing viewpoints, there would be no difference at all.

This points to a sort of “non-local, complementarity” relationship between viewpoint and picture (i.e. observer and observed) , which is what (I think) the whole theory is about.

I’m not sure if we are talking about the same premise.

If the premise you’re talking about is “That there is no such thing as disorder, at all, ever?” Then I don’t think we are. At least, I wouldn’t state it that way.

I would state it this way: “Order is always relative.”

In other words, order, by it’s very definition, is all about the relationships between components.

But that’s not all of it.

There must also be a third party (call it “the observer”) to assign the quality of order to those relationships.

Look at it this way: If there is only one observer and one object, the property of “order” cannot be applied at all. And if there are two objects, but no observer, then there is nothing to assign the property of “order”. Thus, order is a function of the observer, not an inherent property of the system itself.

So the way I see it, the “deeper order of existence”, is not so much an “orderly system” as it is a viewpoint of systems.

And that viewpoint is “I”. (Bohm and Hubbard use the Greek symbol “theta” to represent it.)

In Bohm’s parlance, it could be labeled “that which unfolds things” – or “that which causes things to unfold”.)

Yes, I agree. The offhand dismissal of contrary viewpoints (i.e. “my viewpoint is right and anything contrary to it is wrong”) always leads to problems.

And interestingly enough, I see this theory as being the resolution to that problem. It really says that all viewpoints are true because ultimate truth is the aggregate of all viewpoints.

This is all very difficult to put into English. It all sounds to esoteric. But it is really no different from the “complementarity” we see in QM - how can a single thing have two apparently contradictory properties at the same time? The only logical explanation is that either 1) there are really two things and not one, or 2) the properties are not truly contradictory. And since we have already decided that there is only one thing, all that’s left is that the two properties are not truly contradictory. Which leads directly to the conclusion of a “deeper order of existence” where “the observer” is the source of the contradiction.

That needs a lot more context for me to grasp. Too much information with too few reference points that I understand.

Regarding the "zero with a line through it". If you mean a horizontal line as opposed to a diagonal or vertical line, then that is the greek symbol "theta". And it is interesting to note that it is used here in virtually the exactly the same way it is used in Scientology - a symbol for the "I" or "self". And I gotta say I'm seeing some very intersting parallels between what you've described about Bohm's theory, and the theories on which Scientology is based.

Just an observation.

So if I understand correctly, the structure of the mind and the spacetime environment are such that they need to be “held together” but the structure of the unified field has no such requirement – it holds itself together?

What I’m getting at is, if the “I” creates this field to hold all this stuff together and the field itself does not need to be held together, than why does it not just create the mind so that it holds together all by itself, just as the field does?

But we may be just stumbling over semantics here.

If we compare the mind/field relationship to a computer/case relationship, then I can see what you mean.

Then the only real difference would be a semantic one - whether one considers the case to be an integral part of the computer (case+contents=computer/mind), or separate from the computer (case=field, contents=mind). Does that make sense?

Yeah, 25-year-old special effects always look pretty lame.

Never watched "Lost". I've heard it was pretty good though.

And I never got into the original "V" so I didn't really have anything to compare the new one with other than vague recollections of the overall theme.

Yes, I agree with that much.

I just don't see any necessity for postulating an extra "container" (i.e. "unified field") for anything. As I see it, all three of those things (body,mind, "I") can stand just exactly as described without any additional dependency.

Only a couple times. It had the same basic "cool factors". But this new one has better special effects, so it's at least that much better.

BOY am I glad to see someone else recognizing this.

I started a thread a year or more ago ("Self-centric.vs.Other-centric", if anyone remembers) that attempted to show exatcly this: "Scientists are attempting to start with imaginary strings, and then work backwards to figure out what THEY ARE. "

But scientists also seem to have a death grip on the idea that "perception/observation is unreliable". So why do they base everything they do on perception/observation??? It truly is ludicrous. The absolute best they can ever come up with is "agreement".

So there doesn't seem to be any better starting point than "I", because if "I" is false, then nothing can considered to be true - simply because "I" is what determines truth or falsehood.

(And yes, Jeannie has pushed the idea more than I have. I have just been more more inclined to try to avoid the ridicule that seems to come with expressing sich a viewpoint.)

So here's to you "sticking to your guns" Jeannie!

And thanks to you Abra!

Yeah, all the CGI in general is cool, as well as the basic concept of "aliens from outer space". Without those two, it would be just another run-of-the-mill spy story/soap opera.

I’m just coming to realize that what you call “the unified field” is what I call “the mind”. I guess the difference between us is that I consider the mind to be attached to/dependent on “I”, not “body” – and “the spacetime system” (including body) to be the projection projected by the mind.

But in any case, it’s always good to gain more understanding of other’s views, as I have of yours.

Thank you.

Yes, “falsifiability” is an important factor in the philosophy of science.

But we can’t lose sight of the fact that falsifiability is only a logical construct, and as such, it is only applicable within that context.

If something is observed, then logic itself is irrelevant.

And I don’t see any reason why it cannot be observed. The PEAR experiments seem to point in that direction.

So I don’t see the “convenience” of the premise as really being a detriment. It’s simply a “What if?” And the whole purpose of such a “What if?” is convenience. That’s what philosophy, combined with Occam’s Razor, is all about.

It occurs to me that we have similar situations right here on earth.

Some people believe that we have "corrupted" some primitive societies by the simple act of introducing them to advanced technology that is effectively centuries past their own, effectively "destroying their culture".

It could be that such is the "political climate" with intra/inter-galactice ETIs.

One might compare it to the "experience is the best teacher" philosophy - "leave them alone and let them find out their own path".