Comments on: SFictional Higher Realities

By: Rudy

Rudy — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:24:59 +0000

Eo, I like the quantum computation angle. It’s a little like (6). Maybe you can obliviously merge into the single universal wave function that’s being computed by the entire universe everywhere and everywhen. Ah that feels good. And when youy snap back out you don’t exactly remember that Big Aha. But you have intutions about it, and maybe you’ve nudged it in some direction. Another angle here is that, there might be two main ways of “snapping back,” and in one of these mode you’re in our regular world, and in the other mode, you’re in the subtle world.

The subtle beings are more or less transparent, but perhaps with practice we can see them a little bit, if only from the corners of our eyes.

Or maybe we see the subtle beings like we see a face in a pile of leaves…as evanescent constellations of light-shadow patterns that merge into the form of another being.

By: eo

eo — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 03:06:43 +0000

How about the idea that the ‘higher dimension’ is quantum computational? We each have in our brains a quantum computational engine that we can learn to access, and this allows us to connect to all things, read minds, create invisibility cloaks, walk through walls, and perhaps teleport — but only at the speed of light.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:54:38 +0000

Thanks, Joseph, that’s a nice idea. And thanks for grouping my with Dick and Sheckley. The so-called subtle world might be one in which the (somewhat subjective and arbitrary after all) collections viewed as objects are distinct from the collections we ourselves view as objects.

This brings to mind a half-remembered notion from quantum mechanics, having to do with the fundamental reality being a wave function in infinite dimensional Hilbert space. But there are endlessly many ways to set up the axes in this space, and each setup would be experienced as a different flavor of reality.

By: Joseph Zizys

Joseph Zizys — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:11:12 +0000

A variation on your number 5 might be that rather than quantum phase or fairies, the overlay might simply be over different aggregates to those we usually ascribe “thingness” to. So perhaps there is an entity that consists of your left shoe, the wall down the left side of the ally behind the theatre and a blade of grass a few miles away. A whole different regime applies to this overlay, it has a perfectly consistent physics and a reasonable philosophy that connects its aggregates into things, and in fact the entities from that “angle” struggle to see what could possibly make an aggregate like a locally clustered bunch of water and calcium etc into a “person”, it simply does not flow intuitively from their physics.

You could maybe have schizophrenics or something who intuit “significance” in sites and things that turn out to be entities from the overlay. Likewise, the relation could be reciprocal; only “insane” entities from the overlay can sense the coherence of entities in our “angle”.

anyway, long time reader, first time poster, you, along with PKD and Robert Sheckley are the most formative and influential sci fi writers on my life, and I appreciate what you do and your photography rocks.

Yours

Joe.

By: woh3

woh3 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 03:48:59 +0000

Nice post, with fascinating choices.

By: yamma

yamma — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 03:13:54 +0000

Best text & image coordination yet! Really fun!