Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts

The Garden of Forking Paths




There is this theory in quantum mechanics called the "many-worlds" interpretation. To my (limited) understanding--not to attempt to claim that I know practically anything about quantum mechanics--it theorizes that there is no "waveform collapse" when two potential futures are reconciled. Instead of one reality, and only one reality, progressing continuously through each and every decision in your life (and everyone’s lives), one world line path becomes two (or more) at every possibility point, separating into alternate, parallel universes, and this branching happens every time a choice is made. While this description may not be the one a trained quantum physicist would try and explain to you, I’ve gotten the impression that this is the general idea when applied to the everyday world around us. So I’ll just run with that; whether or not this understanding is technically accurate and true, it’s incredibly interesting nonetheless.

The most striking disturbance I have with this idea is…what exactly determines when a timeline branches? Does this occur at any conscious decision? Or just those that exceed some somehow-determined boundary of significance? If it's the former there would of course be a truly unfathomable number of such universes, infinite in all practical meaning. And even with the latter, unless the boundary was extremely high, there would be an enormous number of realities still, perhaps virtually infinite as well. There must either be a line or not, and if so, then where is it and how is it determined? And then I wonder, is there a branch for every possible decision one could have made? For instance, if I am asked to pick a number between one and ten, and I pick five, is there a branch for each other answer I could have given, or only one for considering a true-false scenario (I either picked five or didn't play the game)? Technically I could have said anything--one, zero, ten, fifty, rhinoceros… I might not even have spoken a response; maybe I nodded or decided to dance. The Universe shouldn’t know whether or not some potential answer was actually valid within the scope of the question, so I'm intrigued to wonder whether the branching is only done when a choice is made or not made, or if there truly is a branch for every possibility.

My other most striking concern with the theory is that none of this is tangible in any way. Even if one exists in five hundred billion parallel universes, all branched from various moments in one's own and in others' universes, it will go completely and utterly unrealized by each. So does it even matter? Does something you can't possibly hope to demonstrably verify have any meaning whatsoever? While the thoughts of all this bring me some comfort, thinking that there might possibly be versions of myself who made so many of the “right” decisions in life which I only later came to realize in this reality, the impossibility of confirmation prevents most of the comfort I wish I could feel. The excitement mostly fizzles out when I grasp that no possible branching can actually provide any true objective meaning.

Still, I can't help but imagine what this all can imply in the mind, if nothing else, at least at the most significant turning points of my life. I suppose inspiration for self-reflection is worth something, if this theory provides us nothing else to glean. Because there is a garden in your mind, a rich, fertile ground from which any combination of possible thoughts can be planted and grown to whatever lengths and however many branchings you might take them to. All it takes is a thought, a seed, and then some consideration, some nourishment, and your mind is free to wander to your flooded heart’s content, if you just let it bloom. Enjoy the fruits of imagination.

Perhaps the most significant factor of all for the ways in which a person’s world lines might have branched furthest is in the environment one grows up with. Every time my family moved (my mother was active duty Air Force) was certainly a very significant "choice-point." I was born in Maryland and then lived in Washington D.C., Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, and then Missouri again. Any one of these could have ended up being my family's permanent residence under other circumstances. If there is an alternate universe for each of these possibilities, in which I've grown up in a completely different environment, surrounded by utterly unfamiliar landscapes and cityscapes and circles of friends and acquaintances, they would of course have progressed in radically different ways from this one and from each other. I would have grown up with strange people and likely done things I never even dreamed of in this reality. In an alternate universe there could be a version of myself, doing whatever it is he might do, who has lived in Maryland his whole life, who never moved away in the first place. He’s been there all his life. How bizarre that idea is! I mean, I’m trying to imagine and I just don't know…I am utterly biased towards the life I have actually led. It's very difficult to imagine a life that progressed completely differently since a point before I was even two years old. But it could exist, and how interesting would it be to meet him? I wonder what he’s made of his life up to now, what friends he’s chosen, what pursuits he’s held on to, what successes he’s enjoyed, what failures he’s endured and learned from. I wonder what he’s like, how good of a person he is. I wonder if we would be best friends.

This also means that there could be a version of me who never moved from Cheyenne, Wyoming so many years ago. Cheyenne, where I grew up during my most formative years and have retained, even to this day, some of the most powerful friendly bonds I’ve ever made. This is the thought that hits home most of all--that in some unreachable parallel universe may be a version of me who didn't miss out on the Cheyenne life during all these long years since my family moved away. He was there all along, oblivious to the suffering of the “me” who wasn't. Of course, this version wouldn’t have it all good. He would never have met so many of the incredible friends I’ve made since my family moved to Kansas City. For all the memories that I could possibly imagine might have had the chance to have been made if I had been there in Cheyenne all along, there are a comparable number of experiences that I actually did make here where I’ve been. Of course there are pros and cons at every point, which I guess is why I am so struck by this whole idea, but it’s so completely fascinating regardless. This is not regret or despair, but awe and wonder at simple possibilities my mind can fathom.
I just wish I could communicate with him, if he somehow truly exists in some parallel realm. I wish I could ask this incarnation of me how those… wow, eight years, now, as of summer 2012, have been. Were they as wonderful and blissful and full of nonstop joy and appreciation as they've played out in my head countless times? Did the friendships last and stand the test of time even better than they have through my occasional visits? Are we having the time of our lives together anywhere near like we’ve had in so many of my dreams manifested in the deepest sleep? Am I on a bright career path? Did I fall in love? Has it lasted? Am I better off?

I would ask him about all my friends over there. How did things go when I was around all along, as opposed to only briefly during some select summer or winter vacations? Are things as great as I have always imagined they would have been, or have I perhaps been over-projecting my guilt of leaving? Is everyone still good friends with each other? Did I help to provide some sort of social adhesive to people who otherwise would have drifted apart? Do we all still have as much fun in this world as we have when I come to visit from my own? Or are things largely the same, on the grand scale of things, minimally affected by whether I’m actually there or not? It wouldn’t even truly matter what the realities may be, because they are all ruthlessly interesting regardless, no matter how much positive influence I might be projecting into such a reality where I might have actually had a role to play in its overall “success.” Of course I want to have had, and may see myself as having, such an impact. But actually knowing the full truth is its own joy altogether.

I would then ask him about Dave, unquestionably the deepest, most profound, intertwined and enjoyable friendship I have ever had. How is Dave? What is he like, having had me there all this time? As things are, Dave and I have taken, in some ways, very different paths since we parted ways in 2004. There are some things that we don't quite see eye to eye on now, but many, many that we still do… but these differences are trivial, and the floodgates inevitably open so wide when we reunite. And all the long years and all the daunting miles that have haunted our separation are swept away as all the memories and all the connections we have ever formed come flooding back in like a raging river, unstoppable and undeniable. Then it's almost as if those years and miles were never even in the way to begin with, and we can enjoy the shared glory of our friendship for whatever time we have. At best, usually, I get this for two weeks of each year. But how different might it have been if we had remained neighbors perpetually? How much positive influence might I have had for him and him for me? It's difficult to say, to say the obvious. I get chilled just putting serious thought to it. My mind gets a bit cloudy; there are far too many variables. But I imagine, with all the honesty I can muster, that it would be an incredibly beautiful thing, for each of us and in each other. I feel like it would outshine any downside to having remained there all along by enormous degree. Such is this single connection.

So it ends up being a little awkward, this longing to be in both places at once. If it were somehow possible to combine the best of both worlds it would solve so much. If only I could just cut Cheyenne out of the earth (people, power, plumbing, everything) and fly it over to Missouri and lay it down in some nearby open area, some already-prepared jigsaw puzzle piece of an empty space to drop it in. If I could incorporate the friends from both sides into my current everyday life, if I could have all of my deepest friendships right here, each and every one of them within the reasonable means of each and every other one of them to connect with, I would be hard-pressed to desire anything else in this world.

And then I wonder what if each romantic relationship had not ended? This is another huge significance, assuming that each relationship was aimed at the long run, if it had gotten far enough to be established as such, as they should be. Inside alternate branching realities, based on different sums of decisions and factors, each case could have progressed onto some wildly different path. So perhaps these are still going strong in some alternate universes, where whatever it is that messed them up was somehow avoided by some pivotal decision unrealized in this one. The ability to observe the results would be most interesting in these cases, as well. How far would they have gone by now? Would there be a marriage on the way? Might I have a family yet? Could things have been worked out effectively, or was it doomed no matter what? Was the outcome I’m familiar with inevitable? These curiosities are impossible to determine, ultimately, sitting here surrounded by the perpetual flow of a single course of history… and that frustrates me. Unknowns are so frustrating, and I now realize this is one of the reasons why this whole theory is so captivating to my mind. It provides for me a means to ponder on what could possibly have gone differently, and produce an outcome entirely separate from the one which I’m so fundamentally familiar with. It doesn’t need to imply that you wish this imagined outcome to have been the case, it only means that the alternative is interesting in that it never came to be but you know it had even the slightest chance to. Because the willful mind is such an incredibly wondrous thing, providing for us the limitless possibilities to imagine countless realities as suits our whim, and consider what certain outcomes might have come about given alternate circumstances. And perhaps we might even learn something useful for this objective reality which we actually have control over.

What if my father had not left ten years ago? That would be another extremely different reality, another one I can hardly comprehend--the impact would be huge and profound. It’s amazing how some things become so normalized, so ingrained into our minds simply because it’s all we know, because we can only experience one single timespan, because that’s how the world around us works, apparently. It becomes hard to imagine things any other way. And when you try, you get this vague idea that it would have been so nice, but…getting more than that out of it seems difficult. It's hazy, like there is some general sense of how things would be, but... the data is just simply insufficient. There are far too many variables, again. You can only wonder, and imagine what that version of you is experiencing in the world that you project for them in your mind.

And what if I had picked a different college, or a different degree program, or not moved out with my brother several years ago, or even not written this? There are so many possibilities for things to have gone differently. And of course there would be unfavorable parallel universes, as well. There would be one in which I dropped out of high school (since the thought crossed my mind), or never went to college, or never bought my current vehicle, or never had that very first conversation with Dave, or for that matter any other person who’s ever been in my life.

The fascinating thing is that any, or, really, all, of these twists and turns throughout the garden of forking paths might be true realities of other representations of me. And of you, and of everyone, with some details changed. I suppose this is why they say the past is so dangerous. Not completely, of course--everything can be seen favorably, at least constructively, in some way. The good memories are, of course, positive reinforcements, and the more the better. The bad ones, however, are useful in their own ways—they can be warnings, lessons, and points of comparison. They can be things to avoid, experience to pass on. Optimism is a very, very powerful thing.

So it's all a profoundly interesting thought experiment, really, this little introspective here. It’s a daydream session, a trip down nostalgia lane with a fun twist. I'm sure everybody is aware of various moments where their lives took a decisive turn in some direction. Does it interest others that those choices might have spawned their own realities? Even if you can only ever attempt to imagine their implications, this can still provide some valuable insight for you if you can relate to it effectively. And hopefully you can shape those insights into positive applications for what you actually do have knowledge and control over.

I'll say this: if I could somehow verify that these alternate realities do indeed exist, and if I could somehow determine their locations in space-time, I would do everything in my power to tear a wormhole in the fabric of space-time right here in front of me with my bare hands. I would figure out how to navigate myself through them in any direction that I choose and give myself free reign to visit some of these other possibilities. Just to see for myself. I wonder how some of those other realities have turned out. And even if I come across a particularly beautiful one, I'll come back, for sure…

at least to say goodbye.



Posted by Unknown | at 10:15 PM | 4 comments

Defining Our Past And Shaping Our Future



 




The world seems to be advancing technologically so rapidly that even some of the devices which were at the pinnacle of consumer luxury a couple decades ago are now some of the most rudimentary and perhaps sometimes not even recognizable by the younger generations. I myself am relatively young at 24, and yet I've had the opportunity to witness the incredible advancements of quite a few branches of technology in my time so far. There must have been a time when record players, to give a simple example, were such amazing devices, and then cassette players became so much smaller and portable, and then CDs offered so much more space and quality, and then the digital era offered even better quality and eliminated the frustrations of skips and scratches and misplacing and limited storage. I remember listening to cassette tapes as a kid, and buying my very first CDs as a young teenager, and then buying my very first mp3 player a few years later, and being so utterly fascinated at every step along the way.

The first mp3 player I ever bought, sometime around 2004, seemed so wildly incredible at the time. For the hefty price of $70 or so I could fit 40-some songs on a 128 megabyte device, which was more than twice what I had grown so accustomed to fitting on a mix CD. And on top of that there was no concern over tracks skipping on a jog, or ever having to buy new blank CDs when I wanted to make a new mix. This was the most profound appreciation of mine at the time; I didn't need piles of mix CDs anymore. I didn't need to toss a disc every time I wanted even one single new song to be included on the current mix. The digital contents could simply be updated. And now, for the same price or less, you can easily get 8 gigabytes of space or more and the capacity for thousands upon thousands of songs and any combination of separate playlists. The sum of the contents of dozens and dozens of mix CDs can be enjoyed by a few touches on a handheld digital media player with sufficient size.

Similarly, video media has gone from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray (not even considering all of the varieties of digital file types able to be shared online) with the quality and cost improving all along the way. Of course, when a new format and new devices to play them with are developed, across all medias, the prices start higher, but they quickly decline and before long a device vastly more powerful than the one you purchased several years before is even cheaper. Today I could buy an mp3 player with 16 times the storage capacity than that first one I ever purchased for a mere ten dollars. And you would probably face difficulty in even finding a place that will take your old VHS tapes or even DVDs from you for a fraction of what you paid for them back in the day. Their demand has almost entirely vanished, for good reason, in the wake of so much vast improvement.

This digital age has certainly disrupted things, and not only in the music and video industries. The high technologies of even a few decades ago not only lose their popular use and their monetary value, but you can hardly even give them away sometimes. They just become so utterly outdated by the perpetual advancement of newer devices and ideas, and eventually only the vintage or nostalgia-seeking collectors see any use whatsoever in their ownership. But they will always serve as healthy reminders of how far we've come, and tantalizing hints at where we're still going.

Not too long ago I bought a shiny new printer. And the other day I needed to scan a document so that I could attach it to an email. And so I did; I put the paper on the tray, pressed the scan button, and selected its destination. And it struck me right then, considering for the first time this option that was now available to me to send it directly into a folder on my PC, how absolutely incredible technology is. This was all done wirelessly--the printer has no tangible link with my computer. And yet, when I place a piece of paper onto its tray and command it to scan it for me, suddenly an exact digitized replica of it exists as parts of the 1s and 0s navigable within the depths of my computer. And I can send this data to anyone else on the planet if I wanted to, and they could have it, see it, even print it out for themselves, and no physical link was ever made between us. It's like exactly how magic would be if magic were a real thing, but this is real and we can understand it and we can manipulate it to our will.

Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think this holds some deep insights, considering so much of what we have at our disposal in today's world that would probably send a person from a thousand years ago screaming away in terror and condemning us as demons. Who could have thought, at the time, that we'd be able to almost effortlessly communicate with people anywhere else on the planet without even any physical link? Or even see them on video monitors? Or fly across the oceans? Or film movies? Or cover so much of the planet with artificial light? Or find the answers to so many questions with just a few keystrokes into an online search engine? Sometimes I wonder if the entire concept of magic has really been all along just the inexorable progression of our thoughts and understandings of the world transformed into the fanciful dreams of what we wish we had the power to do.

And then the day comes when we do have that power. Have you noticed how so many things are becoming more and more automated and touch-free?  Oftentimes doors will open for you as you approach, lights will turn themselves on as you enter a room, toilets will flush for you as you leave, faucets and soap dispensers and hand dryers will dispense for you as you place your hands under them, and devices will even operate by spoken command and turn themselves off after an idle period. Increasingly often you don’t even have to touch a doorknob, or a light switch, or a toilet or faucet handle, or a paper towel dispenser (or even a paper towel). You can walk into a bathroom, use the facilities (well, a guy, at least), wash and dry your hands, and leave, all without ever touching anything.

You don't even have to touch your hard-earned cash anymore. I handle cash less and less often even as I continue to make more money and purchase more things. I rarely have more than twenty dollars in hard cash in my wallet; more often than not I have none at all. It strikes me sometimes that this is a really incredible thing, this ability to accumulate and spend money without ever actually touching the tangible pieces of paper and cotton and linen we’re so used to thinking of it as.

Like most, I imagine, I work a job and have funds automatically deposited to a bank account with every paycheck. I never actually see it. I don’t bring a check to a bank, and my wallet doesn’t grow fat with bills. The money just shows up as if a fundamental part of my being. So long as I utilize only that amount of money, debit purchases are like the simple returns on that labor, to be acquired at will. Each time it deposits it’s like I just became worth that many more dollars, and it’s almost as if I can just walk into places and visit websites and help myself to my desires, as if my presence holds an intrinsic worth only requiring verification by a small piece of plastic and a few numbers. With the simple swipe of a card I can walk out with a cart full of food, or appliances, or video games, or any combination of things I wish to own, or even have them delivered to me. And that little piece of plastic, that card which represents my monetary worth, doesn’t change. It remains safely in my wallet and yet represents so much of what is laid before me to enjoy. I only have to go out and acquire it. Sometimes it feels like I’m not actually purchasing something, I’m just going and grabbing a thing that I want and it’s now mine and later I go and perform some tasks that I enjoy doing and the cycle repeats and the world is just mine to appreciate as I please.

Social media has become a truly massive force in the world. In a few seconds you can create a profile on any of several major websites, add some  pictures and some interests and some history, and continuously present yourself to the world through public postings. Some reports say that as much as 25% of all Internet page views are on social media sites alone. You've probably heard some of the generic complaints such as "people used to actually know their neighbors" and yet today's society has been shaped so that you can know any number of people all over the world. Of course there is some concern over still maintaining actual physical relationships with people, but sometimes it seems as if the simple new wave of potential is making it seem like so much of the physical is gone. Such a phenomenon has never been known before, so it's no surprise that the controversies abound. I don't believe this is the case; I still see people hanging out outside with each other all the time. I still spend as much time as I can get with my dear friends around town. I still cherish face-to-face communication more than any other, and I can only assume that this is generally the case universally. It's just that we have so many more opportunities now. If not for social media I would have lost the majority of the connections I've been able to maintain despite the major moves I, and others, have made. Never before has a person from, say, the U.S. been able to randomly become acquainted with a person from, say, Australia, and share thoughts and feelings with each other without ever having actually been closer to each other than a few thousand miles. A healthy mix of digital and physical communication is arguably more valuable than any other combination has ever been. You can even share your physical relationships with your digital ones, and vice versa. You can connect with more people around the planet than you can likely even comprehend. Thus cultural hurdles are so much more easily avoided. The world seems like a much more fitting, opportunistic, shared place when people have social access to others around the globe. I don't see how that's a bad thing if you look past the minor issues.

If you're curious about something, you can find almost anything to your heart's desire with a brief Google search. The amount of information available to us just sort of "floating" around on the internet (also in textbooks and the like) is truly staggering. A person can get at least a basic understanding of such topics that took the prodigious minds of Newton, Darwin, Bohr, Einstein, and the like an entire lifetime to puzzle out…using nothing but a keyboard and a few keystrokes, and/or some page turning, and some reading. As a certain telescope manufacturer, Meade, proclaims on their website, with even a cheap telescope and the knowledge of how to find certain celestial objects one "will see more objects in one night than Galileo saw in a lifetime."

For so much of history a person's skill set has been almost exclusively utilized for monetary gain. That was how you made your living. But today, with this tremendous advent of social connectivity through the internet most of all, people are willing to share their expertise on a subject, with their own precious time and resources, for no other gain than the near-selfless enjoyment of doing just that. Of course, some gain fame and fortunes still, but so many remain virtually anonymous despite their thorough investigations into insightful questions or the development of popular apps or wiki articles or software or independent music or film or artwork or writing or general advice or practically anything one could desire to seek out. There seems to be a profound movement in the use of spare time and skills for the betterment of the general public even if this means that the contributor does not receive specific recognition. Perhaps such people just simply treasure the enjoyment of doing something worthwhile even if it's not relevant to their personal career. I find this incredibly beautiful.

And there are always still people out there making discoveries, even at this very moment, and our descendents will, in turn, be able to seek out and understand their contributions in the same way (probably even more efficiently) that we are entitled today. You don't have to be an employed astrophysicist, or personally know  someone who is, to share in the current times of such a field. Each generation has the advantage over the previous of having access to the accumulation of all of recorded history in their grasp, and today more than ever (and tomorrow even more so) this unimaginably deep well of knowledge, this collection of our incessant desire to understand the deepest workings of the world around us, can only continue to provide us with more understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions, which in turn leads to more insightful answers, which in turn leads to more understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions…

The world is certainly changing, shaping, progressing ever-onward. We have at our disposal things that were probably never even dreamed about in the wildest fantasies of our distant ancestors… feats that they may have never even imagined the grandest wizard could perform. The boundaries of our knowledge are, at every new moment, always pushing the frontiers of our thoughts in new directions. The most fantastic, magical ideas in the minds of those living today could very well be the simple play-things of the children of a few generations to come. This all just makes me so prideful to be here—part of humanity. I look forward to every other new advancement, every improvement on our quality of life, for as long as I can enjoy them. The best is yet to come. It's going to be so fascinating.


Posted by Unknown | at 12:28 AM | 13 comments

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