Reality – Harmonia Philosophica

Knowledge. Destruction.

Photo by **Spiros Kakos** from **Pexels**

Powerful DNA-sequencing techniques have spurred an avalanche of discoveries about ancient humans, but each one comes at a price: the partial destruction of the specimens from which the DNA was taken. Anthropologists Keolu Fox and John Hawks call for researchers to think harder about safeguarding. “Unless some ground rules are established, future scientists, armed with better, potentially less-invasive methods for extracting DNA from ancient samples could well look back on this era as a time of heedless destruction, fuelled by the relentless pressure to publish,” says Fox and Hawks. (1)

We should not be alarmed or surprised though.

Knowledge IS destruction.

Every time we understand something, we dissolve it into pieces.

Every time we get to know something, we forget something else.

The cosmos was once at our fingertips.

Until we tried to touch it.

And it became real…

Emulating… Existing…

For the first time, physicists have built a two-dimensional experimental system that allows them to study the physical properties of materials that were theorized to exist only in four-dimensional space. An international team of researchers from Penn State, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Holon Institute of Technology in Israel have demonstrated that the behavior of particles of light can be made to match predictions about the four-dimensional version of the “quantum Hall effect” – a phenomenon that has been at the root of three Nobel Prizes in physics – in a two-dimensional array of “waveguides”.

A paper describing the research appeared on January 4, 2018 in the journal Nature along with a paper from a separate group from Germany that shows that a similar mechanism can be used to make a gas of ultracold atoms exhibit four-dimensional quantum Hall physics as well.

“When it was theorized that the quantum Hall effect could be observed in four-dimensional space”, said Mikael Rechtsman, assistant professor of physics and an author of the paper, “it was considered to be of purely theoretical interest because the real world consists of only three spatial dimensions; it was more or less a curiosity. But, we have now shown that four-dimensional quantum Hall physics can be emulated using photons – particles of light – flowing through an intricately structured piece of glass – a waveguide array”. (1)

We can emulate anything.

Not only things which exist but also things which do not.

Not only things which do not exist but also things which cannot exist.

Three dimensions… Four dimensions…

Existing… Not existing…

Under the proper circumstances, anything can exist. And, thus, anything can be emulated. Are some things more “real” than others? An emulation cannot answer that. Science cannot answer that question either; it is based on hypotheses and emulations, so how can it question its own self? For science anything could potentially exist. And a scientific model could be created for anything. There is nothing fundamental ruling out the possibility of something existing. This is a very important and powerful key foundation pillar of science and we always tend to forget it.

Existence cannot be limited.

Its potential is always there.

In unicorns. (they exist by the way – see here)

In parallel universes. (see quantum mechanics)

In love… In evil…

What will be, already is.

It is up to you.

Choose wisely.

There is only a limited number of things you can emulate…

Building memories…

You are more likely to remember something if you read it out loud, a study from the University of Waterloo has found.

A recent Waterloo study found that speaking text aloud helps to get words into long-term memory. Dubbed the “production effect,” the study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself that has the most beneficial impact on memory.

“This study confirms that learning and memory benefit from active involvement,” said Colin M. MacLeod, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, who co-authored the study with the lead author, post-doctoral fellow Noah Forrin. “When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable”. (1)

But it’s not because you are more involved that you remember something better.

It is that you actually make it more real by getting more involved.

There is nothing to remember.

You shape reality every time you think about it.

But the memory stays inherently the same.

Changing costumes, putting on makeup, but…

It is still the same…

A dark face looking back…

Begging for attention since the day you were born…

Try to visualize yourself when you remember nothing.

It is only then that this person is you…

Blinking brain.

When your attention shifts from one place to another, your brain blinks. The blinks are momentary unconscious gaps in visual perception and came as a surprise to the team of Vanderbilt psychologists who discovered the phenomenon while studying the benefits of attention.

“Attention is beneficial because it increases our ability to detect visual signals even when we are looking in a different direction”, said Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Maier, who directed the study. “The ‘mind’s eye blinks’ that occur every time your attention shifts are the sensory processing costs that we pay for this capability”.

Details of their study were described in a paper titled “Spiking suppression precedes cued attentional enhancement of neural responses in primary visual cortex” published online Nov. 23, 2017 by the journal Cerebral Cortex.

“There have been several behavior studies in the past that have suggested there is a cost to paying attention. But our study is the first to demonstrate a sensory brain mechanism underlying this phenomenon”, said first author Michele Cox, who is a psychology doctoral student at Vanderbilt. (1)

Short islands of unconsciousness in an ocean of consciousness…

We want to pay attention, but we stop looking when turning around.

Walk into the room.

See the chair.

Now turn around.

Is the chair still there?

You know it is. You feel it is. But it is not.

There is nothing behind you anymore.

Everything is where it was in the first place.

Inside you.

Sit down.

Carefully…

Phantom reality… Affecting reality…

In breakthrough research led by neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his team at EPFL, Switzerland, the scientists show that phantom body pain can be reduced in paraplegics by creating a bodily illusion with the help of virtual reality. The results are published in Neurology.

“We managed to provoke an illusion: the illusion that the subject’s legs were being lightly tapped, when in fact the subject was actually being tapped on the back, above the spinal cord lesion,” explains Blanke, lead author of the study and holder of the Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics. “When we did this, the subjects also reported that their pain had diminished”. (1)

Illusions in the mirror.

Affecting the reflection…

And yet the reflection is real.

Just don’t disturb the water…