Tal, a conversation with an alien Read online

  --He stopped to take a drink and let me think a bit. As I disengaged from the narrative I heard the sirens of several police or ambulances, they passed in a few seconds and were gone.

  But is Tal observing all the games at once, or just continuously switching his attention from game to game?

  When you observe your thoughts, you are observing conscious thoughts. These thoughts come one at a time, so humans tend to think that this is their entire mind. Yet their subconscious mind is always working, performing many tasks simultaneously. Though Tal may be consciously observing one game at a time, his subconscious mind is still solving problems in the other games. Think of the times you forget some name or fact, and once you stop thinking about it, it will suddenly pop out of your subconscious. Many scientists and artists who are stumped by a tricky problem will focus their mind on something else. After a good night's sleep, or a brisk walk, the answer will come to them; usually quite unexpectedly. My mind is less separated and more developed than yours. I do retain multiple streams of consciousness at the same time. I can make multiple plans, observe multiple possibilities, make multiple, what you would consider, rational conscious decisions, simultaneously. I can observe many worlds and therefore can observe many thoughts. Imagine that fork in the road again. When you come to the fork, once you have followed one path, the other path falls away. You cannot observe the other path, though you could use your mind to imagine what it might look like. I am actually able to observe both paths, and then the next branching of those paths, and the next. As the paths diverge farther from each other, they take on very different qualities. The paths that take on the most interesting qualities are the ones which I am attracted to. This is similar to how some Grandmasters approach the challenge of playing a simul. No matter how brilliant, every GM has some limit to his mental resources. Therefore, while he is considering the various chess positions, he cannot dwell upon all of the specific games equally, as he will be wasting valuable time and energy. Hence, while playing each game he will choose to play moves that lead to exciting positions. In games where he has easily won, a GM will pay little attention, just for a few moments, and win quickly. In games that are going badly, a GM will tend to let them end quickly, instead of wasting too much energy trying to save a lost position. Most of the GM's attention goes to the interesting close games.

  So you do not change your future, you choose your future.

  That is right. And here we have a few things in common. Just like humans, I also prefer certain possibilities or outcomes over others. To me, to paraphrase another famous literary line; all the worlds are equal, but some are more equal than others. Thus I choose which worlds to observe more closely.

  Can you actually see all possible variations?

  No, that would mean processing an infinite amount of information. Then I would not need to choose, I could just sit back and observe everything.

  Like an all powerful God.

  Yes, but like you, I am limited in what information I can gather, and how much I can observe. Very likely and unlikely variations branch out from every moment in the multiverse. I easily observe the most likely variations, but the very unlikely ones are harder to see. Granted my mind is very powerful, so I can observe some very unlikely outcomes. Still it is an infinitesimally small part of what is possible. You can compare my ability to see different variations with your ability to see objects in space. You have very sensitive eyes that can certainly observe many objects in your world. Yet you cannot see everything. In the grand scheme of things, your eyesight is very limited. Large objects reflect a lot of light, so they are easy to see. Small objects that reflect less are much harder to see. As objects get smaller, they slowly fade from your vision, or they melt together to create one seamless object. You can't differentiate the parts, even though they are separate. Can you see the various dust particles, pollen, or bacteria floating between us in this room? Can you see the individual cells in your skin? To see these details you need special tools.

  Like a microscope.

  Yes. You can use tools to enhance your ability to observe.

  Do you use such tools to observe very unlikely variations?

  Yes, there are tools that can enhance my observation of unlikely universe variations. And like your microscopes, when you use tools to focus in on the little picture, you lose the ability to see the big picture. Sometimes this can cause problems.

  Is this what happened with you and the earthquake?

  A very astute conclusion. Yes, while I was focused on fixing one very unlikely problem another unlikely one occurred. But it was an interesting possibility, and I did what I could to salvage it. So far it is going pretty well.

  If you see these possibilities simultaneously, how many can you actually see and how can you tell them apart?

  This is a difficult aspect to describe. When I look at you, versus a variation of you in another universe, I do not see exactly the same thing. Probably the easiest way to get some idea of my ability to discern many worlds would be to compare it with your very developed ability to discern differences in light frequency. In other words, your ability to see color. Color is not a dimension, it is a quality, but it does help distinguish similar objects and it adds informational content to an object. If you are curious as to how many world variations I can see, just think of the elegant, though pretty primitive human eye. Did you know it can see about ten million shades of color? That means that an object, like this chair, can be distinguished from millions of others just like it. Millions of chairs could be identical in shape and texture, and all outward appearance, yet you could still distinguish them all from each other. Some are going to be very similar, for instance two chairs in shades of blue, and some will be very different like a red chair and a green chair. A colorblind person might just see a million copies of the same chair. You could not even describe this distinction to a colorblind person. You could only say that each color is different, and that some chairs are more similar than others. On a planet of colorblind people, they would not even believe you. Nevertheless, you could prove that the distinction exists, because no matter how a colorblind person shuffles what he believes to be identical chairs around, you could still identify any specific chair.

  So you see this world, say in a shade of blue, while a very different world could be red.

  Well I am really stretching the analogy. Universes are not the same as colors, they define a dimension of the multiverse.

  I know you have said this is an extra dimension, and I understand that space and time are dimensions. But why do universe variations represent another dimension?

  Unlike color, each universe occupies its own coordinate in the multiverse. Thus knowing the coordinate of your universe variation is necessary for knowing your actual location within the multiverse.

  I don't see the need for an extra coordinate. Didn't I meet you at the Empire State Building with just the four dimensions of space-time we used earlier?

  At our hypothetical meeting at the Empire State Building, we had sufficient information to meet because we assumed one thing; we were starting and ending in the same universe, the same universe variation in the multiverse.

  --I must have been looking confused again because he stopped for a moment and gave me a warm smile, perhaps like father to a child who is having trouble stacking his blocks.

  Let's imagine for a moment that you were to meet Charlie Brown at the Empire State Building. Since he would be moving around on a flat earth, he would only understand the street and avenue part of the address you provide to him. Since there is no up and down dimension in his world, he would assume it is the ground floor. If you told him to meet you on the tenth floor, he would have no idea what you are talking about. He could only meet you in the lobby. Thus in your case, you did not need a multiverse coordinate, since you only experience one multiverse variation. Your mind automatically makes the seamless assumption of one variation, but for me it is very different.

  How?

  You
can think of this moment as a massive crossroads, where all possible events leading to this variation and all possible events leading from this variation intersect. Lets go back to the time that you read my note telling you to meet me at the Empire State Building tomorrow. At the moment of reading, you are standing at that crossroads. From that moment, countless variations of you will begin to branch off into different universes. As you head home, you may notice a shiny billboard advertising a new movie and decide to go see it. While another you, too lost in thought, doesn't see the billboard and goes home to bed. Another you, on his way home to bed, takes a slightly different path and accidentally bumps into an old friend heading the opposite direction and decides to go out for some coffee. By the time I meet you at the Empire State Building the next day, I will need to decide which of the many you's waiting for me is the one I want to talk to. If I want to discuss the new movie with you, I will have to go to a different coordinate in the multiverse than if I want to talk to you about how good your coffee was. I don't need to tell you anything about this coordinate, since you are oblivious to it. But, if I wanted to invite a friend of my race to join us to discuss the movie, I will need to tell him the exact Empire State Building coordinate in space, time, and the universe variation in which we are to meet the you who watched the movie. Otherwise, my friend could show up at the Empire State Building and meet you at the correct time, but have nothing to talk about, since that variation of you went to bed and didn't even see the movie.

  It is hard for me to believe I am completely oblivious to all of these other worlds, all of these other variations of myself.

  It would be more accurate to say that your conscious mind makes you feel completely oblivious.

  Consciousness

  What do you mean?

  Human mental function; how humans observe and interact with the world around them is a vast topic. Vast enough that we would need a lot of time and several crates of juice to deal with even the basics, and we are running short of both. Most of the really interesting concepts are too advanced for your current level of science. The actions of electrons and photons are relatively easy for your scientists to understand. The actions of humans; much more complicated. Your scientists have focused intensely on understanding the universe surrounding you, how it interacts with the universe inside of you is still mostly a mystery. The experiments currently being performed attempting to understand human brain function are crude and just the tip of a massive iceberg.

  Certainly you could explain some of it, I know we have made progress.

  Sure, but up until now, I have made my points with well established scientific theories. To explain consciousness I will need to site some pretty recent, and controversial brain research you are probably not aware of, so you will have to believe me. And if your faith is not strong enough, you can reinforce it by reading some papers in journals or on the internet. That is, if you have faith in what you read on the internet.

  That's fine, if there is something I don't know, I can verify it.

  --He took a sip of juice, and I noticed that it was raining very hard now. I also noticed blue and red lights illuminating the space outside my window. I assumed it was an ambulance or fire truck parked below, though I did not hear a siren. The power had not returned. The outside lights drew my attention and I looked out the window. Tal got up and walked to it. He looked outside, seemed to contemplate something, returned to his chair, grabbed another bottle of juice and continued.

  Your mind, from a very complicated and chaotic universe of vibrating probability fields, creates a seamless, simple world for you to interact with. The universe is constantly bombarding your physical body, your skin, eyes, ears, all your sense organs, with stimuli. Your mind makes sense of these stimuli in the context of the paradigm you were raised in. In your current paradigm, the perceived order of this process is usually explained like this: Your sense organs receive information from the outside world. Your brain then processes that information. Then there manifests a conscious decision in your mind to act based on this information. Finally, the signal for that action is sent from your brain to the parts of your body that will do the action.

  That is correct. I receive information, process it, and make an informed, logical decision with my conscious mind. I gather all the pertinent information and make a choice of action.

  Humans have an interesting ability that many animals do not have. They are able to observe their own thoughts. Who do you associate with when you are thinking? Is it the voice inside your head that seems to guide your thoughts? Is that you?

  Yes, I suppose so.

  Then who is it that observes that voice, listens to it and then commands it to be quiet when you are trying to sleep or concentrate on something else?

  I suppose that is also me. Another voice appears that tells that voice to be quiet.

  And who is it that is observing the conversation between these two voices?

  --I had no answer to this question. He gave me a little smile and continued.

  It is still you. Under these layers of thoughts and feeling, there is observation. It is like a very deep well. How deep do you have to dive to get to the bottom, to the final observer? Thus whenever a thought consciously manifests, there is an internal observer of that thought. What you observe when you observe your thoughts is what you call your conscious mind. The illusion created by your conscious mind is that it is the generator of most of your actions and decisions. You believe this because the conscious mind is the part of your mind that you can actually feel working. The conscious thoughts that drive your actions seem consistent, thought out, and logical.

  Why do you say this is an illusion?

  For a very long time, before you could even call yourselves human, your ancestors were aware that the physical world interacts with your mental world. Shamans used plants, herbs, the slime on frogs, to create many different states of mind. They could change your mood or even make you see and experience things you would never think possible. Your medical system and its shamans, your doctors, are the masters of this knowledge. They prescribe pills of various kinds to take care of just about any mental or physical malady you might have. These chemicals, herbs, and frogs change the physical and chemical makeup of your brain, and hence change your mental thoughts and thus your actions. So your mental state, your thoughts, your conscious and subconscious activity is linked to the physical state of your body and brain. Though your mental thoughts may seem disembodied to you, they have their representation in the physical world. The perceived link between your world and your thoughts has varied greatly from paradigm to paradigm. Up until recently, in your paradigm, scientists believed the brain was a physical machine run by an unphysical soul.

  The ghost in the machine as some philosophers refer to it.

  Correct, the brain was just a meat machine, processing thoughts made by the ghost; the soul or spirit, whatever you want to call it. More recently, scientists understood the brain to be at least a co-generator of actions and thoughts. Scientists observed how brain damage can alter behavior in a person and how repetitive patterns become set in a brain over time. Hence they believed that all thought functions were relegated to separate places in the brain. They also believed that once reaching adulthood, the brain was like a machine set in its tidy little compartments and patterns. As you aged the machine began to break down and was less effective. Only very recently has it become commonly understood that the brain is an extremely complex and dynamic structure of networks. It continuously recreates itself and evolves with a changing environment. This was impossible for scientists of the past to realize because the brain's acting constituents: the neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, and countless other parts are too small to observe without understanding science at the quantum level. Now that your scientists are better able to observe brain function, with tools such as EEG, MRI and fMRI and PET scans, they are finally shedding some limited light on how your brain works.

  I have read about the plasticity of
the brain, the fact that we can learn new skills and adapt to various situations even in old age or after brain damage. That the brain can rewire itself.

  You could say rewire, if wires grew stronger with each use and weaker with neglect. Perhaps brain connections are more like paths diverging through a rich forest that grow more distinct as they are used, or become overgrown and lost when they are not. Generally, most people take the path of least resistance. So do brain signals. Humans tend to think that what they see and feel is all there is, and this is how they understand their mind. You have thoughts that you can feel and observe, your conscious thoughts, and thoughts you cannot feel or observe, your subconscious thoughts. Most humans think that their subconscious mind controls their basic bodily actions, heart beat, digestion, etcetera, and your conscious mind makes all the real life decisions. You feel in full conscious control of how you interact with your world. When you turn the page of a book, move these chess pieces, or walk down the street, the act of doing these things seems like a conscious one. In reality, the vast majority of your actions and the vast majority of your decisions are made subconsciously, with no conscious input from you.

  Some actions I would say are semi-conscious, I don't really think about them, but my conscious mind guides what my subconscious does.

  What your conscious mind actually does is make sense of your decisions and actions after they have occurred. The conscious mind analyzes your decisions, observations, actions, and tries to make sense of them in a way that fits into your current emotional and intellectual state. In essence, your conscious mind attempts to recreate a mental universe where, at least at the time, your decisions and actions all had a very good reason. Any emotion or sensation that you have manifests as chemical and electrical signals in your brain, in the physical world. The unique physical composition of your brain and its method of processing information is what guides many of the decisions in your life. The illusion comes from a feeling that your conscious intention, your ghost, comes first, and the physical reaction comes after.