The Universe Green Door (Abstract)
Preface
The universe within which we exist - from where and why did all this come about? Whose hand or will created it, by whose written or unwritten laws it is evolving? For what purpose do we exist in this world? What further fate awaits it? Probably, each person thought about these questions at least once in his life.
During the course of our lives, the acuteness of these issues, against the backdrop of everyday routine, either weakens, or we get content with intermediate, incomplete pictures of the universe. In particular, most of us, at a certain stage in life, take the side of a scientific, or a religious view of the world.
The scientific worldview is based upon (although it is not a universal rule) a belief in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and, in many cases, atheism. Religious worldview, in turn, often stops at faith in the creation of our world by God - while avoiding further consideration of all the circumstances of the creation of the universe, in particular, the apparent imperfection of the material world. For example, Gautama Buddha is credited with saying that questions about the origin of our world are idle. Christianity also, in its turn, contains almost no information about the circumstances of our world creation.
Further progress in understanding the universe is impossible without the synthesis of scientific and religious approaches. Scientific knowledge can be supplemented and enriched by an open recognition of the fundamental role of consciousness in the universe. Religion, in turn, by its nature does not necessarily intersect with scientific knowledge, but the expanded perspective, supplemented by science, on our world is an undoubted plus for mystically thinking people. Ultimately, the Truth about our world is common to all of us.
This book was the result of many years of reflection and discussion on the problems of the universe, taking into account the religious, scientific and philosophical experience of many other authors. At the same time, my goal was not to retell an already existing, well-known material - whether from science or religion. The main content of this book is primarily in the presentation of new ideas and hypotheses. Acquaintance with the popular science literature on physics will help the reader in understanding the material of chapters devoted to scientific topics. Similarly, a religious, mystical mindset will facilitate the perception of those chapters where the book goes into mystical questions.
The author hopes that the original hypotheses presented in this book about the nature of space and time, the driving force of evolution, the role of consciousness and platonic ideas in the formation of the world, will open up a new perspective for the reader to the key questions of the universe.
Three Secrets of the Universe
There are three riddles associated with the peculiar meaningfulness of the universe.
1. Structured Nature of the Universe
The parameters of our universe are tuned in the finest way possible, enabling the existence of stars, planets, and living organisms. This unique setting of parameters is conventionally explained through the anthropic principle. According to this principle, there are many lifeless alternative universes whose physical parameters lead to desolate worlds, in which there is nothing but radiation. We, according to the anthropic principle, were lucky to be in one of the worlds conducive to life. But, our existence is not the outcome of Divine Providence. To put it simply, in the context of the infinite number of lifeless worlds, sooner or later, one of them should have been fortunate with the physical parameters that make life possible.
2. The Phenomenon of Evolution
Darwin's theory of evolution is another instance of science's appeal to extraordinary luck. According to this theory, the emergence of the most complex living forms is due to the will of chance – a result of random, successful mutations of genetic code. However, a simple assertion of combinatorics put an end to Darwinism, namely, its statement about the allegedly creative role of random mutations. In most cases, mutations are either useless or lead to degradation: genetic defects, cancer, and so on. At the same time, the creation of new, useful functionality in the body requires the programming of kilobytes of genetic code, which is unattainable through blind sampling. It is stated that evolution accidentally stumbles upon "successful" chains of code, which, in principle, are present in large amounts, and some of them, sooner or later, end up being discovered. However, the entire problem in this regard is that the number of useless chains is immeasurably greater!
Let's consider an example of acquisition by living creatures of the ability of active flight. Active flight was evolutionarily preceded by passive flight – the so-called "gliding". The gliders, beings with the ability of passive flight, had to discover a genetic chain that would grant them the ability of active flight (in practice, the changes affect not one but a lot of genes; but, the mathematical complexity, and therefore the probability assessment, is not affected by this).
The difference between passive and active flight is immense. The latter requires appropriate changes in the skeleton and, most importantly, the brain. For an active, guided flight, the ability to coordinate the movement of the wings is required, which, in turn, requires a reconstruction of the nervous system. Moreover, in the process of evolution from passive to active flight, there are no beneficial intermediate steps! For gliders, the action of waving their limbs is of no use – this only worsens their flight, and they will not be able to fly actively anyway.
Suppose that the genetic chain providing the ability to active flight consists of only 1000 nucleotides (this is more than a conservative estimate). Thus, the evolution has to find one of the sets of genetic chains, 1000 elements in length, which transform the skeletons and brains of the gliders to meet the requirements of active flight.
We make a very conservative assumption – only one nucleotide out of four, at each step of the chain construction, fails to provide the desired result. According to combinatorial laws, the probability of randomly finding a useful coding strand of nucleotides is inversely proportional to the exponential of the number of nucleotides in such a chain.
According to our assumptions, the probability that evolution will successfully find a useful code in one attempt is as follows:
P = (3/4)1000 = 0.1125
On the other hand, the number of attempts (N) at the disposal of the evolution is expressed by a polynomial:
N = G * M * A
– where G represents the number of generations; M represents the number of population members in each generation; and A represents the number of attempts at creative mutations of the germ cell DNA.
Even if one chooses huge values for the parameters G, M, A, for example:
G = 1012 (one trillion)
M = 1015 (one quadrillion)
A = 1018 (one quintillion)
The probability of finding one of the useful genetic chains in the entire set of generations will be as follows:
P * N = 0.180
– a vanishingly small value!
It is obvious that the exponential combinatorial law easily dominates the polynomial number of attempts that Darwinian evolution has.
The billions of years that were at the disposal of the evolutionary process are thoroughly inadequate for the random creation of DNA (or its analog – RNA), not to mention the constant addition of new and new functionality. Thus, "genetic variation" and "natural selection" are incapable of explaining either the emergence of life or the further evolution of forms.
3. The Phenomenon of Consciousness
The mysterious nature of consciousness manifests itself in our ability to conduct meaningful conversation, the ability of mathematicians to find significant theorems in the boundless sea of trivial mathematical statements, and in many other forms of creativity. Computer programs, in spite of increasingly sophisticated techniques and advanced algorithms, are, in principle, incapable of solving problems that require insight. For instance, they are unable to pass the Turing test (maintaining a conversation), or even find the right move with respect to an elementary (for a human being) chess position:
(White to move)
Conclusions
Considering all the three points in the aggregate, their similarity is striking. In all three cases – the unique selection of physical constants of the universe, the ability of the evolution to code new functionality, and the faculty of the human consciousness to procure insight – we observe the same repetitive property – finding unique, useful states in an endless ocean of "junk".
We can assume that the solution to any of the three aforementioned riddles contains the answer for the remaining two. Best of all, we are familiar with the third, that is, with our own consciousness. Extrapolating the ability of our consciousness to meaningful creativity – we can conclude that the emergence of the universe in all of its complexity, as well as the phenomenon of evolution, is also explained by the creative activity of the consciousness.
Just as we write meaningful text (rather than mumbo jumbo), the evolution consciously finds useful genetic chains that are thousands-of-nucleotides long, and the universe discovers the unique laws of physics that make the existence of stars, planets, and life possible.
But, what is this consciousness about? Based on the Buddhist concept of anātman, this consciousness is one for all. The very consciousness, whose voice we perceive as our own, is responsible for the emergence of the universe, as well as for the creation and evolution of life.
This idea provides a concise explanation for the imperfection of the universe. Why is there mutual devouring among living organisms? Why is the universe so far from being the heaven that our imagination can conceive? To answer these questions, it is sufficient to look inside ourselves.
Planetary Consciousness
Now, let's move on to the slowness and imperfection of the evolution. Previously, we noted that a greater extent of consciousness in space implies its smaller coverage (stability) in time. Human consciousness expands over the neurons of the brain. This is a rather small spatial dimension, which allows our consciousness to avoid quantum collapse for a long time. During this time, being in a wave state, our consciousness comes in contact with the world of ideas, perceiving all kinds of creative thoughts and insights from there. In this way, we communicate with one another, generate our own ideas, and understand the ideas of others.
The stability of the consciousness embracing the entire planet will be immeasurably smaller than ours. I presume that most of us have watched the movie "Avatar". Our discussion here concerns similar "planetary consciousness". This consciousness, on the one hand, is present in all forms of life on the planet. However, owing to its gigantic size, its temporal stability is vanishingly small – it is subject to continuous quantum collapses.
For the planetary consciousness, a few milliseconds of time (the figure is chosen arbitrarily, but it is an exceedingly small time interval) spent without collapse is a luxury that occurs once in hundreds of years, thanks to luck. During these few milliseconds, it executes the so-called "evolutionary leaps", succeeding in discovering a more perfect design for living forms and changing the DNA of many living creatures simultaneously. This explains the phenomenon of the origination of new life forms. Then, for centuries or millennia, life is again left to itself, waiting for the next "random window" free of quantum collapses.
This idea explains the imperfection of design and the slowness of the evolution:
· Moments when the planetary consciousness does not collapse for a significant period of time are extremely rare and occur once in several centuries. This leads to the slowness of the evolutionary process.
· Even when the planetary consciousness has several milliseconds of time at its disposal, this time is not enough to find the perfect design. Like a chess player under acute pressure of time, the planetary consciousness chooses the first "acceptable" solution that comes to hand. This explains the imperfection of forms.
The key idea in this regard is that an increase in the spatial extent of consciousness is achieved by sacrificing its temporal extent. Our small brain, and, consequently, our consciousness, are small in power, but we have time at our disposal. Human engineering designs are primitive (by evolution’s standards), but they are sound nevertheless, and a more perfect iteration of the product replaces the other in a mere couple of years.
Planetary consciousness, on the other hand, has a planetary scope and phenomenal creative power, but at the cost of an acute shortage of time. When the planetary consciousness gets lucky with time, it is capable of designing a brain in a matter of few milliseconds, the complexity of which still remains beyond the reach for our understanding. But when time is limited – and it is almost always so – the evolution is forced to dwell on intermediate, flawed decisions, the shortcomings of which are obvious even for us.
To summarize, the planetary consciousness is the world champion in chess, who was given 30 seconds for the entire game. Hence, the strange combination of brilliant solutions and elementary mistakes takes places. Human consciousness, on the other hand, is a complete amateur in chess who can ponder about every move for as long as he likes.