In OPH, 3+1D de-Sitter space emerges as the conformal group of the S² screen supplies the 3+1D Lorentz symmetry, while modular flow and generalized entropy stationarity project boundary data inward to construct temporal and radial bulk dimensions. Each observer experiences a 3+1D universe.
I've been looking at what is called Observer-Patch Holography. Any reader of this blog will realise that every now and again I dip my toe into what's going on in science, because it can illuminate what I'm trying to think about in refreshing, if often challenging ways. OPH as it is known, is a recent development in the struggle to find a unifying theory, that will explain how everything fits together and works as it does. OPH proposes that gravity, particles and quantum mechanics all emerge from the same idea. That is that no single observer sees everything. Wow, this seems totally counter intuitive but at the same time somehow obvious. I have been hosting workshops whereby I get two people to work together in order to take their individual responses to visualising an interoceptual experience and to see how between them they can push the various visual elements they have invented around and adjust them, so that what they come up with communicates something to both of them. This is a basic process that explores how one person's subjective experience, can when overlapped with another's, gradually become something that can be communicated to someone else. I. e. what was an invisible subjective experience, eventually become part of someone else's reality.
Two people developing a cooperative image during a visualising interoception workshop
OPH proposes that reality is a structure that any consistent set of observers must produce. But no one observer can see everything, therefore reality has to survive agreement across overlaps. I'm no mathematician, so I don't understand the underlying equations, however it seems as if you give each observer a holographic like screen into which is embedded their view of what is happening and as well as this you determine some sort of locality or co-ordinates within which this observer is observing, then you can develop a series of equations that embody that from one standpoint reality. Then imagine other observers' realities also being similarly fixed into being by a set of equations and adding into this the idea that you can overlap all of these realities. This overlapping is what makes one observer's subjective reality, into a reality that is everybody's objective reality. This is as if the observer aspect of quantum theory, becomes central to the theory, instead of it being a bit of a problem. This article, Observers are all you need is a useful read if you want to get a proper scientific understanding of the idea.
Each observer's reality will overlap with another's
What I like about this is that my reality overlaps with yours and that we are all embedded into the unthinkably vast holographic screen S2.
OPH tries to explain several of physics’ deepest open questions as symptoms of the same underlying architecture. For instance; general relativity predicts that spacetime must have a boundary in the past, something we usually call the big bang. Some proposals replace the Big Bang with a “bounce” from a previous contracting phase. Others suggest the universe emerged from quantum fluctuations in “nothing.” None is established. The assumption is that spacetime is fundamental, so asking “what happened at t = 0?” is the fundamental question. However, OPH reframes the question entirely. spacetime is now emergent, it is reconstructed from the consistency of overlapping observer descriptions. So instead of an idea of a single point in time when everything began, we need to think of zooming into a digital photo. At some point you hit pixels. You can’t zoom into the underlying structure any further, not because there’s a “wall,” but because the structure doesn’t support a finer resolution. The image doesn’t have a “beginning” at the pixel level. It just doesn’t have sub-pixel information. The holographic screen has limits, a finite capacity (about 10¹²² states). In OPH, time is relational, defined by how observer patches correlate. At the “earliest” times, OPH theorists believe that patches become maximally mixed. There’s no meaningful “before” because there’s no information to distinguish earlier from later.
I have posted before on the hard problem of consciousness and how I think drawing might help us to think about it. There is an OPH answer to this question too. I like so many other people before me I have asked the question 'why is there a something that is the feeling tone that is me?' Subjective experience, is questionable, but I have it, so I believe in it. Physics and science describe matter and forces, but not experience, which is where I always felt art came in.
In physics equations describe objective states of the universe. Observers are incidental. But experience is inherently first-person. You can describe every neuron firing in my brain, map every chemical reaction and still not explain why there’s a “what it’s like” to be me feeling. However, in OPH, the fundamental elements of the universe aren’t objective states, they’re 'observer patches', local, partial, subjective descriptions made by observers. Subjectivity isn’t something that emerges from physics. It’s what physics is built out of. OPH starts with subjects (observers with partial descriptions) and derives the appearance of an objective world from the consistency of their overlapping perspectives. Stuff like atoms and gluons are what my perspective, your perspective and others agree on. Essentially, you get the appearance of matter from the consistency of minds. Observers are therefore the foundation of everything.
I do worry that OPH begins with an idea about screens though. I suspect this is a reaction to their every present nature in our times. But it's an interesting enough idea to follow, so bare with me. OPH uses a holographic screen, that has a topology S^2. My understanding of the associated expressions with grouping symbols is that S1 is a circle, S2 is a standard sphere, and S3 exists in 4D space. The particular topology is important because it enables someone to use the geometry of motion using variables like displacement, time, velocity and acceleration to analyse position over time, in this case the kinematics of a 3+1 dimensional Lorentzian spacetime. The holographic screen has a finite-capacity that has within it overlapping observer patches. So if the physics we use is derived from this, it explains why the ordinary physics we already use turns out to be the natural thing to see. For instance; in OPH, particles are stable excitation patterns in the overlap and transport of data. If a transport propagates coherently across patches, and can be read consistently by many observers, that’s is exactly the sort of thing we call a particle. OPH equations give us photons, gluons and even gravitons, as well as more detailed mass outputs.
In OPH, particles are stable transport obstructions across patch overlaps
In OPH, all particle masses are derived from a single constant P ≡ a_cell/ℓ_P², the shared dimensionless “pixel-area” constant that converts the holographic screen’s regulated microphysics into absolute lab units. Once P has been fixed, everything comes from it.
The researchers behind the development of OPH ask us to metaphorically, think of P as a “simulation setting”. The only way of determining this setting is by reverse-engineering its value from certain properties of reality.
The architecture of OPH is based on a finite octahedral cellulation of the holographic screen. Overlapping patches communicate via a specialised synchronisation API, (mechanisms that enable two software components to communicate with each other using a set of definitions and protocols) which extracts shared readout packets to detect mismatch syndromes. When discrepancies are found, a dedicated repair loop executes local corrections to the registers, ensuring that the disparate observer perspectives remain unified and physically consistent. This again reminds me of my interoception workshops, whereby either myself or another person in the workshop helps with the communication between two other people trying to establish a shared idea of what might constitute for instance, the shape and colour of a particular type of pain.
The researchers behind OPH have arrived at the strange loop hypothesis, whereby human consciousness is arrived at because the complexity of active symbols in the brain inevitably leads to self-reference. It goes like this, reality is a timeless structure that closes on itself; physical evolution gives rise to complex structure. Complex structure gives rise to minds. Minds give rise to ideas. Among those ideas comes an understanding of the structure of reality itself. This understanding is not external to the universe; it is one of the ways the universe becomes what it is. Physics gives rise to chemistry, chemistry to biology, biology to minds, minds to ideas and ideas are what we create physics from. In an OPH reality, everything is self-referential and the strange loop hypothesis is used to explain its own creation.
Escher visualises the strange loop hypothesis
OPH theorists believe that a consistent reality would be a self-referential, observer-bearing, timelessly consistent reality that closes on itself, eliminating the need for an external creator. Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that "God is dead", signified that Christian, metaphysical and absolute moral foundations had become unbelievable due to scientific, rational thought; something he believed would lead to a profound moral disorientation. However when I see images of evangelical nationalists and their tattoos that serve to signify their allegiance to Christian values, I sometimes feel that it is the God fearing that are destroying any moral world order we once had.
Reference: https://floatingpragma.io/oph/
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