Does Your Mind Create The Universe? | Answers With Joe

this video supported by curiosity stream have you ever had a dream that was so real so rich in detail that when you woke up you were kind of confused about reality I kind of dream one time that I was on a pirate ship it was a dream people now in case you're wondering no I've never been on a pirate ship I don't really know what that's like but the details were so vivid in this dream like the smell of the ocean water the spray of the water in the air the way the the light scattered through the sails and of course this this hair stuck on this weathered and splintered railing that had been worn down by years of abuse and sword fights probably yeah my brain just made all that up now I've talked before about how our brains are just wired for consciousness it's this default mode is to create a conscious experience it literally can't not do it and when it doesn't have any sensory input to make any kind of conscious experience out of like when you're sleeping it just makes something up something every bit as real as your regular waking conscious experience so in many ways our brains do create reality as we experience it but some people have taken this idea further much much further they suggest that consciousness doesn't just create an experience of reality that it creates actual physical reality itself welcome to the weird and controversial world of biocentrism before science was a thing before science was the method we use to understand our world it was philosophers who created our view of reality they made observations and use logic and reason to come up with ideas ideas that for better or worse shape the thinking of cultures for centuries then science came around and proved that most of these ideas were wrong I'm looking at you Aristotle we constructed a physical mechanistic view of the universe made up of some physics and chemistry and some fundamental forces we had a pretty good handle on this thing then we got inside the atom and we realized we had to rethink a lot of stuff we learned through tests like the double slit experiment that particles actually behave waves until you measure them and the act of measuring them causes the wave form to collapse and for the particle to exist in real 3d space if you measure the particle by letting it hit the wall then it will act like a wave until it hits the wall basically creating an interference pattern like ways would do but if you measure it at the slit as it passes through the slit then it will go down to a particle and behave as a particle creating two lines on the wall behind it somehow the act of measuring the act of observation causes the particle to behave like a particle why this happens is one of the most pervasive mysteries in all of science there have been countless explanations each one has an experiment that proves it and one that disproves it but one of the ideas is that it's our consciousness itself that causes the wave form to collapse that somehow subatomic particles and even whole atoms in some experiments require human consciousness for it to snap into reality now obviously this starts to head down some philosophical rabbit holes with some people saying that you know consciousness might be an intrinsic quality of the universe maybe even a fundamental force of the universe with others going to the extreme of actually saying that our consciousness creates the universe and it's at this end where you find biocentrism now I don't know whether or not consciousness creates the universe but I feel pretty sure that what I just said created some all-caps comments down below so before you guys get too far into it tizzy let's get that whoo-whoo alarm out of the way this is to put it lightly not accepted mainstream science and I have my own opinions about it I'll talk about that a little bit later but for now let's just let's just talk about it let's just put it out there let's follow its assertion see where it leads and and then discuss and this video could also kind of serve as a book review I actually did read the book that this idea is based off of I've been reading this for a while I want to make sure and get it all down so yeah I've been planning this video for some time now so the guy behind biocentrism and the author of this book is the guy named Robert Lanza who was actually a bit of a pioneer in stem-cell research his team was the first to clone early stage human embryos and the first to create stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer something I actually talked about in my cloning video this is a big deal the ability to create stem cells open the door to therapies for all kinds of different conditions and save countless lie and we're just crashing the surface in over the years he was mentored by people like BF Skinner and Jonas Salk the guy who cured polio so he's definitely got some bona fides in the world of stem cell therapy and research so he's not just known for biocentrism he's also known for his his work with stem cells as well do his stem cell bona fides give him any kind of authority on this subject matter you can discuss that in the comments but the basic gist of biocentrism is as i said before if consciousness causes the particles waveform to collapse and appear in real 3d space then consciousness actually creates the universe so the book breaks down biocentrism into seven core principles and they are as follows first principle what we perceive as reality as a process affected by our consciousness an external reality if it existed would by definition have to exist in space but this is meaningless because space and time are not absolute realities but rather are tools of the human and animal mind they talk about how relativity shows that time and space can speed up slow down and contract and whatnot relative to the observer depending on how fast that observer is traveling the same observer that collapses waveforms so their argument is that since time and space are subjective they are constructs of our own minds second principle our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined there are different sizes that same coin and cannot be divorced from one another now this is basically what I was saying earlier that our brain actually constructs the conscious experience that we perceive this takes a little bit further and says that it not only just collects sensory information it actually creates the thing it's sensing third principle the behavior of subatomic particles indeed all particles and objects are inextricably linked to the presence of an observer without the presence of a conscious observer they best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves again basically what I was saying earlier about the wave form collapsing fourth principle without consciousness matter exists in an undetermined state of probability in a universe that could have preceded consciousness existed in a probability state in the chapter on this article they basically talk really in-depth about the double slit experiment and all the different variations of the double slit experiment that followed that sort of proved the whole observer effect and they basically expand this phenomenon from particles and subatomic particles into the macro world and show that it's working at that level as well you know again reinforcing the idea that consciousness creates the universe and the other way around fifth principle the structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism the universe is fine-tuned for life which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe and not the other way around the universe is simply the complete spatio temporal logic of the self here they look at the fundamental constants of the universe and talking about how it kind of is like a Goldilocks zone that makes life possible the Boltzmann constant that fine-structure constant the speed of light the particular masses of the different particles of the atom there are dozens of different fundamental constants if they have been just a little bit different just ever so slightly different the entire universe as we know it would not exist so they make the argument that through these constants the universe is fine-tuned for life which would make sense if life and consciousness was what created the universe in the first place there's some paradoxes going on here but let's just go with it for now six principle time does not have a real existence outside of animal stands perception it's the process by which we perceive changes in the universe you hear they'll talk about how time is actually symmetrical and most physics that whatever forces are working on an object it would work the same either going either way in time then he brings up xenos arrow paradox and how the different trajectories of the arrow or only probability States until it hits the target and then you know it can be measured and they use relativity to show that time change is dependent on the speed of the observer basically meaning it's just a tool we use in our minds to measure entropy and the seventh principle space like time is not an object or a thing space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality we carry space and time around with us like Turtles with shells thus there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life here they talk about quantum entanglement and the ability for particles to share information over vast distances instantaneously kind of shows that space is just sort of a construct and also how with relativity the faster you get to the speed of light the more space compresses to the point that if you're actually traveling the speed of light the universe would be flat so they proposed these seven principles of biocentrism and then spend a couple of chapters talking about what this means to our lives and what this means to our deaths they kind of mentioned that if you know we create reality then we can never not really be a part of that real they talk about the conservation of energy and how energy is never goes away it just kind of transforms and so if you have this consciousness that creates the universe and that consciousness can't really die there's actually a whole of the book that dives into those subjects called beyond biocentrism I have not read that one yet but yeah it goes there something they didn't talk about in the book but I thought was an interesting take on it is how this could play into simulation theory you know the universe was a simulation created in a giant computer one of the ways that the computer could save memory and energy was to only render things when they're being looked at you know in the first-person computer game the game doesn't render the entire you know world in that game at the same time it just renders what's on screen what's in front of the player so in essence this would work the same way like right now I'm upstairs and downstairs there's nobody in my kitchen so according to biocentrism at this moment my kitchen doesn't exist but if say I left the kitchen sink running then the probability waveform would contain the possibility of that sink overflowing and when I went downstairs and looked at my kitchen the probability wave would collapse and I would see the sink overflowing and then I would curse now that of course strains believability but in fairness that's only because it runs counter to our entire experience of life now on the surface this whole idea sounds crazy but if you dig a little bit deeper it still sounds crazy but defenders about centrism would argue that it's all based on very verifiable a repeated quantum experiments and behavior in the quantum world you know things in the quantum world are crazy they do run counter to our everyday experience in life and if all of our years of sciencing have taught us anything is that just because something appears a certain way doesn't mean that it actually is a certain way but I can't feel the biocentrism is sort of an example of reductio ad absurdum you know ironically he mentioned Zeno's paradox in his book which is the classic example of reductio ad absurdum which I talked about in a video that I did on Zeno's paradox which is why I know what that term means at all in logic reductio ad absurdum is a way of disproving a statement by showing that it neva tably leads to an absurd or ridiculous conclusion I feel like this sort of takes facts like the wave-particle duality and then just extends it further and further like you know if this is true then that must be true in it that's true then this must be true over and over again until you get to you know a fairly absurd conclusion you know one of the main criticisms of biocentrism is that it's unfalsifiable you know you you can't prove that something doesn't exist if you're not allowed to observe the thing to show whether or not it exists you know take my example about the kitchen that I just said a second ago right now I can't prove that my kitchen exists you know I could put a camera down there but that would be observation I could call someone to go look at it but again observation or if I set my dog down to the kitchen would that count is it just human consciousness could it be any consciousness animal plant bacteria you know when speaking of the observer effect there are many different interpretations of the observer effect and this just kind of takes one of them and just runs with it like Forrest Gump with depression you know someone once described to me the observer effect this way they say basically if you looked at a baseball in flight you know there would be photons bouncing off of that ball from the Sun that would have to be photons for you to be able to see it and those photons in part a bit of momentum onto the ball now it's so small compared to the ball then it's immeasurable but it does exist as I just get smaller though the force of those photons becomes larger relative to the size of that object until you get down to about the size of an atom and at that point if you've bounced a photon off of it it would actually change its state you know so you have to ask what constitutes an observation is it the light bouncing off of the particle is it the light entering the camera or the sensor is it when it gets impacted into computer memory is it when the computer processes it and puts it up on the display is it when the photons from the display hit my eyes is it from when my brain processes that visually and in my you know cortex where does this actually happen we don't really know another criticism state that this is basically trying to take the physics of the quantum world and impart them on to the macro world you know the duality of physics having a different set of physics for the quantum world versus the you know macro world has always been this thorn in the side of physicists everywhere and so to just kind of casually suppose that quantum reality is actually going on in macro reality even though it goes against all of our observations to the contrary is problematic to me and my final quibble is when they argue that the universe is fine-tuned for life I don't know how you can say that when 99.99999 infinity percent of the universe would kill us immediately in fact there's only one planet in the entire universe that we know of the supports life right now you know until we find life in other places and spread out throughout the entire universe that claim is spurious at best to me of course that misses the crux of the argument which is basically that at the fundamental constants and forces of the universe had been a little bit different then life would not be allowed to exist but if they were different and it created a different universe it might create a different kind of life life that would then look around and say hey this was created just for us it's like looking at a glove and saying wow our hands were made perfectly to fit these gloves science has always questioned and challenged our privileged position in the universe but this puts us right back in the center of the universe not just as its purpose but as its creator so do I find it interesting yes I find it interesting I'm not gonna say whether or not I think it's right or wrong you guys can debate that down in the comments I will say I'm having a little bit of trouble taking it all too seriously but I do find it interesting now obviously this is a subject that you're passionate about and you feel like I misinterpreted some of the things in the book and you want to correct me please go ahead and do so in the comments if you think it's a bunch of gobbledygook then you can talk about that as well and while you're at it tell me what a gobbledygook is and if you think the subject is totally below me and I should be ashamed for even talking about it then you know shut up and if you like topics like this and you want to dive a little bit deeper there are a couple of series that I could recommend you check out on curiosity stream the first is a video called consciousness it's an interview between Deepak Chopra and Stuart Hameroff who with Roger Penrose created the Orrico art theory of consciousness that basically argues that our brains process consciousness at the quantum scale this gets a little metaphysical but they go deep in a interesting topics regarding non consciousness and how that could work within our current scientific understanding or if that's - woowoo for you you can check out a series called sex death in the meaning of life here famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins takes is much more grounded approach and applies it to similar concepts and and creates a compelling view of life our world in our place in it and these are just two of thousands of videos that you can find on curiosity stream which I have called the Netflix of science documentaries I stand by that statement there are documentaries covering futurism space cosmology nature biology and medicine basically anything that makes your nerd senses tingle and if you want free access for one month you can sign up at curiosity stream comm / Joe Scott seriously if you haven't checked out curiosity stream definitely go check it out especially if you like this channel you'll absolutely love it you can get one month for free and it does support the channel so yeah wins all around alright big thanks to curiosity stream for supporting this channel and a huge shout out to my answer files on patreon that are doing awesome things talking to each other we got a thing going guys that's really cool we've got some cool people I want to shout out real quick I gotta murder some names here we got Jacob Mae Nicole Tom money yuck I'm going with it Quentin King Pierre Scott Wayne Price Thomas O'Dwyer Damian Christopher Lee Jeffrey Lee Hinton Connor Y guard Patrick Aucoin Dominican Juan Chris meet Sima Wesley Smith Gillis into May nailed it Samuel Decker Jaime 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Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 590,171

Rating: 4.9093485 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, biocentrism, robert lanza, consciousness, theory of everything, origin of the universe, simulation theory, alternative science, biocentrism debunked, double slit experiment, wave particle duality, quantum theory, quantum entanglement, relativity

Id: CCGg543DZNQ

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/enceladusgeyser]

This is a great topic for this sub. My wife recently had her first LSD experience, and when we came down, her biggest question to me was if the things that she saw were real. I told her that our perception of reality is just that, a state of beliefs in our mind. Perhaps reality is more complicated and our mind filters out this, such that we have something easier to process.