It is the hypothesis that all observers are actually manifestations of a single observer experiencing all of time, space, and every point of view. All world lines across spacetime are parts of one single line "like a huge tangled knot" traced out by the one observer.
I'd go further and say this isn't just a hypothesis, it's the actual nature of reality. Any subjective experience is always mine and now for all observers, for all times. No subject has ever experienced or will experience reality any other way. The screen is the same no matter what movie is playing on it.
Arnold Zuboff makes a case for this in "One Self: The Logic of Experience" (Inquiry, 1990) [0]. He calls it universalism: there has only ever been one subject of experience.
One of his thought experiments: imagine a meteorite is about to wipe out all life around you right now, instantly. If this exact experience - being you, here, thinking this - is instantiated anywhere else in the universe, it will continue there without any gaps.
Hindu mystics were already exploring and articulating these non-dual concepts in great detail thousands of years ago, in the Upanishads. As Robert Jastrow would say:
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
If you subscribe the the many worlds interpretation, you can basically look at observers as existing within the space of eigenvalues of operators acting on the massively entangled wave function of their respective universe.
Christianity (Catholicism) derived this as well. John Scotus Eriugena in the 800s.
Apocatastasis
The thesis goes something like: God is timeless. Time is necessary for change. In order to experience change, God creates universes that have time and descends into these lower states of existence. This gives rise to conscious beings - they’re literally small disconnected slices of God that descended to our state of existence. When you die, you “roll up” back into God taking your lived experience with you.
He was posthumously condemned in 1225 with an order for his books to be burned.
I'm no theologian but I don't really think this coheres with standard Catholic doctrine. Typically, we say that God is being itself, pure and uncaused. All things maintain their very existence through God. We know that God has intellect because the world we reside in is intelligible. God has no need to experience change or time because he actualizes their very existence, and in order to do so, must already have perfect knowledge of it. Humans, even our souls, are created beings and are not any more a part of God than anything else that exists. Jesus was unique in that he was a hypostatic union of human nature and divine nature, and even though he was an indivisible union, these natures nevertheless remained distinct.
Edit: I wrote this response before you added that this was specific to the theology of John Scotus Eriugena.
Yes. He was posthumously condemned in 1225 with an order for his books to be burned. When his works resurfaced in the 1600s, he was added to the banned books index.
Edit: Ah, yeah, this was just one thinker. Early catholic thought is diverse and fascinating. A lot of work went into reconciling religion (and the rest of society really) with the “science” of the time. There is a lot of fun exploratory work trying to reconcile Catholicism with other philosophies, only some of which became cannon. It’s one of the reasons why the scientific revolution was so jarring for all of society - it threw thousands of years of convergent philosophy across society into a paradigm shift when we were forced to abandon things like the 4 element theory.
It's easy to imagine making all the exact same decisions as someone else, if you were born into their body and lived their experiences.
A decision is a reaction from an observer: and it requires information and feedback. Is the thing that decides special? Is it the same thing as everyone else's?
If you can imagine it, does it make it more likely? Only time tells.
Wow, dammit! That syndrome of "something you always wondered or thought only you thought already having a name" strikes again!
My intuition for all sentience between "fragments" of a single consciousness from outside the universe was that, if Free Will™ is real, then true randomness can only come from outside a system..
Glad to see a new release of Bend, fascinating cutting-edge stuff.
I had to look up "gambiarra": a Brazilian expression that means to use improvised methods to solve a problem with any avaiable material.
Totally understandable, I think you did the right thing by releasing early, even if it's still in rough shape, to get some public feedback. This forum can be a hit-or-miss, sometimes even great projects are not appreciated (and the opposite too). But I imagine some people are in the target audience who will see the project and actually explore the language, and follow along with its development.
I quite like Fahrenheit. The 0 to 100F (-17 to 37C) range perfectly encapsulates the range of outdoor temperatures I expect to encounter during the year. If the forecast is outside that range, it’s going to be miserable.
counterpoint: it doesn't matter, since you need to learn relevant boiling/freezing temperatures on both scales anyway.
As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.
Is it really better for day to day life? I am certain that it only appears so because you're used to it. I think for day to day life they're both roughly equivalent.
Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.
You can basically put a "%" after a fahrenheit temperature and read it as "percentage of a really hot day" and you'll get a pretty good idea what it feels like outside.
It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.
I moved from a cold climate to a tropical climate and let me assure you there's no human universal understanding of what's comfortably hot or cold, definitely not to the point of putting a percentage on it. I can walk around in a T-shirt and shorts at 17C (62f) while locals will be wrapping up in scarves and talking about how freezing it is. Meanwhile they'll be fairly comfortable at 35C (95f), at least if the humidity isn't high, and I'll be stuck in with the AC blasting.
So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.
The subjective experience doesn’t really matter because many places in the US will experience a 100 degree F range over an entire year. So it’s not the “comfortable range” but the actual range you’ll get in many parts of the US (whether you like it or not).
Right, but "room temperature" is pretty universal everywhere because we are going with the "average human" rather than "outliers exist and maybe feel differently"
No it's not. Room temperature in tropical countries is often 26-30C.
I work in the food industry and this whole "room temperature" thing is a major bugbear for me actually because when so much food dates markings are designed around a room temperature of ~22C, it's a big health and safety issue for people (and shops, warehouses, restaurants) who don't know that and happily store the goods up to the date marking at 30C. Deciding that room temperature ~=22C and basing worldwide food safety on that is absolutely Western centric.
Obviously people here are not stupid and don't store meat etc. past when it's gone bad. But I've often bought e.g. oils from suppliers and it's clear that it's on the edge of rancidity even though it's got a year+ to go on the date because it's been stored at "room temperature".
The US has the widest range of temperatures of any country. Locations can vary by >50°C in a 24 hour period. Extreme temperatures are familiar to Americans and their society is well-adapted to it.
Calling Fahrenheit "western centric" is nonsensical. Every other country has a narrower temperature range that fits within the US temperature range.
It doesn't map nearly as well for those of us who regularly have temperatures under -17C/0F in the winter. For me Celsius maps a LOT better to the temperatures I actually deal with year round. -17C is, accounting for wind chill, an average-ish winter day, that I'd consider pretty comfortable at this time of the year, assuminv appropriate clothing.
You can do the same thing with celsius if you live in a country with a different temperature "calendar".
I'm used to the idea that 0C is what splits the year between cold season and warm season. Obviously people from California will see it differently, for example.
So where I live it is like this:
30 or more - hot
15..30 warm
0..15 chilly
-15..0 calendar winter
-30..-15 real winter
..-30 - freezing, kinds younger than 12 don't go to school
It's just how some Americans justify this particular measurement system.
As you said: it's what you're used to. I know 100F is a very warm day, but if someone said it was 50F I wouldn't intrinsically know how warm or cold that is. My brain works in Celsius, so someone saying its 20C I understand instantly.
Similarly length in US football fields - I don't know what that is, but it's second nature to someone who did grow up using them as a measurement.
Kelvin is superior for science and engineering but doesn't arbitrarily anchor the scale to the freezing and boiling point of water in the way Celsius and Fahrenheit both do.
273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.
Using zero as the freezing point of water makes sense for everyday use, and using the boiling point for 100 degrees does follow fairly naturally from that - but plenty of other potential reference points could have worked equally well.
That said, for all the American claims of "fahrenheit is more human", 100 °C is the temperature of a hot sauna so works much better as "the highest temperature you'll encounter in day to day life" than 100 °F.
It doesn't anchor the scale to water, but it still scales the scale to water since it's still exactly 100 degrees between its boiling point and freezing point.
Curious, in this model, is there any discussion on whether the mathematical structures underlying space-time are continuous or discrete? Usually the former is assumed, but it seems your "functional" approach may be able to accommodate the latter possibility.
universe is continuous / cant be proven otherwise but any measurement or simulation of it is discrete by nature same reason pi is computed infinitely and why calculus exists and why math exists at all to try and explain continuity of nature even if all of it is perceived discretely.
The question is what exactly is continuous. The quantum fields themselves? And we have no evidence the the quantum fields are discrete quantum states themselves, but the particles they produce appear otherwise.
It's always possible that continuous maths are a side effect of this field. Of course, the causality could be revered.
if you think of universe as minecraft lattice (which is arguably best way to think of it and explain all of physics currently in existence in intuitive level) then yea, it can be like eg a spin lattice discrete at some plank length from which field perturbations as particles emerge..look up spin lattice from https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507118 so basically bringing back idea of quantum ether cuz explaining empty space with waves without some underlying structure doesn't really make sense anyway since all other waves have mediums in nature.
It is an interesting discussion you bring up but will take much more than a comment to talk about. There is a divide between mathematics and physics regarding numbers. Real numbers have supposedly infinite precision, and arbitrary size, which are not true in our physical universe. Indeed infinities have given physicists quite some headaches. It's a bit of a dark art as to where you can and cannot just use infinity willy nilly and many have expressed distaste to it. Also at some point you have to talk about computability, like are these infinite precision and magnitudes even real if nothing in the universe even gets close, what is omega to the omega, statements dream up by the utterly deranged?
I remember there being a talk or some article about this but can't find it anymore, but it is an interesting thing.
Only infinite magnitude causes problems in physics, infinite precision doesn't. Real numbers have infinite number of digits only in digital model of numbers, so their infinite size is a modelling artifact. e=1 in base e - one digit.
That's the neat part: it won't until some kind of market dominance is established and maximally exploited by the biggest players. Like during the pandemic when the biggest companies got bailed out while smaller businesses got crushed, permanently shifting the power balance. It's almost as if by collusion.
That story was so sad, reading it was like actually going through the process together with the main character.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
> Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices?
Not generally, no. Most of it is by convention coupled with the fact that no reputable journal will publish your work these days if you don't go through an IRB for certain types of work. There's also the funding angle, with most work being paid for by one of a few very large governmental bodies and each of those having stringent rules about what they do and don't permit.
Basically pursuing certain lines of research would make you unemployable thus (almost) nobody does it. Unless it looks likely to turn a profit in which case you can start a company and try your luck with VCs.
Presumably by intelligent, competent, analytical direct consideration.
The non-layman should get a pretty good idea at assessment (in this case, "where is nociception and is it there" etc.)
Allow me a relatively distant reference, for fun. Prosecution: "How do you know the patient was dead at the time?" // Doctor: "Because his brains were sitting on my table" // "And can you know for sure he was dead?" // "He could have been alive, brainless and practicing law maybe".
Which wants to mean, at least: surely there are subtle non easy questions, but still there exist thresholds of competence enabling better assessment. (And subtle doubts call for subtle defences, to be non-gratuitous.)
It is the hypothesis that all observers are actually manifestations of a single observer experiencing all of time, space, and every point of view. All world lines across spacetime are parts of one single line "like a huge tangled knot" traced out by the one observer.
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