Weird beliefs about life/the universe you have?

[VintageDarling]

Does anyone else have any weird beliefs about life/the universe that they know are not true/scientifically valid yet can't shake?

I have this belief that time is not linear and that everything is happening "now". I believe 3 year old me was at nursery today, 11 year old me was at school today, 20 year old me was at university today, etc just in some kind of alternate universe. It's a belief I've had for as long as I can remember. I remember when I was around 10 I really believed that I wasn't going to get any older and that the current me would just cycle through this phase of my life/age again. Obviously I know it's not true but it's a belief I can't fully shake and it still clouds my perspective on life. For example, today I walked past my old primary school and admired the blossom trees outside and I wonder if my child self looked up at them and admired them "today", too.

Love this thread! I often wonder whether we are all just atoms or particles. So instead of us being the human we are just one miniscule part of another being.
I am also obsessed with space and do not believe for one second that Earth is only planet with life. I 100% believe there are infinate galaxies out there all with their own version of earth that has life form.

I listened to a radio show with professor Brian Cox and time isn't actually linear, so you're right there!

@VintageDarling

Does anyone else have any weird beliefs about life/the universe that they know are not true/scientifically valid yet can't shake?

I have this belief that time is not linear and that everything is happening "now". I believe 3 year old me was at nursery today, 11 year old me was at school today, 20 year old me was at university today, etc just in some kind of alternate universe. It's a belief I've had for as long as I can remember. I remember when I was around 10 I really believed that I wasn't going to get any older and that the current me would just cycle through this phase of my life/age again. Obviously I know it's not true but it's a belief I can't fully shake and it still clouds my perspective on life. For example, today I walked past my old primary school and admired the blossom trees outside and I wonder if my child self looked up at them and admired them "today", too.

This isn't an unscientific belief. Space and time are not linear and the understanding we have at this point is that exactly what you describe is the most likely reality. In fact there are probably multiple "you"s in different universes of different ages all existing simultaneously along with every other possible iteration of events where you don't exist at all.

I think aliens exist - how could we possibly be the only ones floating about in all that space?!

It's almost mathematically certain that they do. Also the prospect of them not existing is quite frightening.

waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

That the world we see around is is just an 'interface' that we are adapted to understand. That everything is really just a swirl of atoms and binary code, but our perception allows us to see the world in a certain coherent way. With different adaptations to our perception, we would see things entirely differently.

This is almost the case. Most objects that you "see" are 95% empty space but appear solid. Magenta is a colour invented by your mind that should look green, etc. Many people seem to think their sensory experience of the world is them perceiving it directly and that's totally false. Your brain receives sensory data and "creates" the world that you experience as "reality".

@MyOctopusFeature

A few things.

I believe in the Gaia theory. That the world is a single connected life form.

I believe in ghosts in the sense they exist but do not have agency. They are merely recordings of past people and events that are played back against charged atmosphere, but are probably limited to about 400 or 500 years.

I believe other life can probably see us but we cannot perceive it because we are three dimensional and they are four dimensional, so in the same way that if we were two dimensional, ie flat, we could not comprehend a three dimensional life form because we could not look up at it.

There's a really interesting thought experiment I remember reading years ago about how a 4 or 5 dimensional life form or shape would appear in a 3 dimensional space. It takes some mental practice (for me, anyway!) to be able to visualise. But yes - we only see what's within our boundaries and learned perception and time scales etc etc.

I definitely believe in the theory that the aliens people claim to have seen on earth are humans from the future. The way the bodies have evolved, with massive brains and eyes, and slender bodies. It's creepy but makes sense in a way.

On ghosts and spirits though... why are ghosts only human? What about all the spirits of cats, horses, wasps etc? There wouldn't be enough space on the planet if they were all hanging about here centuries after they'd died.

The thing about the four dimensional life forms has really got me thinking now. Fascinating! Guess I won't be getting any sleep tonight!

I 'believe' (well sort of, I also know it's bollocks) that the reason we haven't met aliens is that no civilization reaches the point of interstellar flight without destroying itself. It's built into the system because the level of energy required and the competitive nature of any animal that wants it, means certain destruction.

Or not.

It's also very plausible that life on Earth began due to microscopic life forms landing here on an asteroid. Which would mean that we're all effectively aliens.

@MrsTerryPratchett

I 'believe' (well sort of, I also know it's bollocks) that the reason we haven't met aliens is that no civilization reaches the point of interstellar flight without destroying itself. It's built into the system because the level of energy required and the competitive nature of any animal that wants it, means certain destruction.

Or not.

See my post below about the Fermi paradox!

I often think that sensory perception is completely individual, as there is no way of knowing if person sees a colour or tastes a flavour exactly the same as another. Everything is relative. We are told sugar is sweet, so we name that flavour 'sweet' but it could be different to everyone and we'd never know! Two people looking at a picture with a yellow sun may see completely different colours but we describe it as yellow.

I spent a long time wondering about groundhog-day style time loops. I get deja vu a lot, very often, so I thought a lot about being in an endless time loop doing the same thing over and over, be it a day or longer or shorter. It always resets with everything the same so it could be eternity carrying out the same actions over and over. It falls apart when you think properly about the physics and logistics, and to be honest the reasons- why would this occur! But that was my belief for many years! The deja vu just being a weird memory of this same instance happening thousands of times over and over.

I also wonder about time travel. The popular trope is, invent time travel, go back, kill Hitler. It's been done over on tv and in books. But maybe it happened, but caused a knock-on effect with certain people living or dying or meeting and having kids ending up in a much worse way for humanity. So they had to go back and save him, or some other historical bad guy. Or maybe there was someone far, far worse who potentially wiped out humanity or started world war 3 and the current state of history was the best possibly outcome!

I often find myself thinking in science fiction, then finding people have made my dumb ideas into far more entertaining tv or film!

@GoldilocksAndTheThreePears

I often think that sensory perception is completely individual, as there is no way of knowing if person sees a colour or tastes a flavour exactly the same as another. Everything is relative. We are told sugar is sweet, so we name that flavour 'sweet' but it could be different to everyone and we'd never know! Two people looking at a picture with a yellow sun may see completely different colours but we describe it as yellow.

I spent a long time wondering about groundhog-day style time loops. I get deja vu a lot, very often, so I thought a lot about being in an endless time loop doing the same thing over and over, be it a day or longer or shorter. It always resets with everything the same so it could be eternity carrying out the same actions over and over. It falls apart when you think properly about the physics and logistics, and to be honest the reasons- why would this occur! But that was my belief for many years! The deja vu just being a weird memory of this same instance happening thousands of times over and over.

I also wonder about time travel. The popular trope is, invent time travel, go back, kill Hitler. It's been done over on tv and in books. But maybe it happened, but caused a knock-on effect with certain people living or dying or meeting and having kids ending up in a much worse way for humanity. So they had to go back and save him, or some other historical bad guy. Or maybe there was someone far, far worse who potentially wiped out humanity or started world war 3 and the current state of history was the best possibly outcome!

I often find myself thinking in science fiction, then finding people have made my dumb ideas into far more entertaining tv or film!

The butterfly flaps its wings and then...

Back to the Future was epic for exploring these ideas in a way that more people would be interested in, although silly in many ways.

I think our consciousness is actually situated outside our body. That all our experiences, observations and emotional reactions are telepathically sent out to our consciousness which is actually a collective consciousness pool of knowledge from every living thing. We are all one but are born into individual bodies so the 'oneness' Gaia can assess itself objectively. When we die this part of our consciousness remains.
From being really young I've had this sense of life being like a solitary journey but one day you will die and return to the collective consciousness.

@tenredthings

I think our consciousness is actually situated outside our body. That all our experiences, observations and emotional reactions are telepathically sent out to our consciousness which is actually a collective consciousness pool of knowledge from every living thing. We are all one but are born into individual bodies so the 'oneness' Gaia can assess itself objectively. When we die this part of our consciousness remains. From being really young I've had this sense of life being like a solitary journey but one day you will die and return to the collective consciousness.

Interested in how you perceive this idea working. Which aspects of the collective are separated out to make a specific individual person, and why? How do these differ in terms of the elements of the collective consciousness that are separated off become ants, for example, or plants, or squirrels, or humans?

So so interesting.... Placemaking

Little placemark...

I think there is something in the fact that the solar system and galaxy (and universe) are on a 2 dimensional single plane.

This does not make logical sence to me.

If we start from a Big Bang, basic physics (as we understand it) would say debris spins out in all 3 dimensional ways. ie, a sphere not a plate.

Why are celestial bodies plates not balls? In think the fact that they are not 3 dimensional must mean something. I don't know what tho.

Oooh brilliant thread OP!

FWIW there's plenty of current excitement in physics over what you describe, more or less.

The ideas around parallel universes/ and your thing about time not being linear but kind of all there at once, and you could dip in and out has been written about in a relatively accessible way. If you're interested I could recommend some books? Or DM them.

Physicists have been mulling this over forever. It's a totally accepted way of looking at time although not proven- plenty of theories though. The fact you feel like that in yourself is interesting and you might enjoy reading some stuff where through s long time the concept of time has been ??? is it linear. Given that you feel that yourself.

(I studied physics and despite the possible stereotypes, feelings like yours are what gets them thinking... Is time linear? Etc etc)

Sorry got on a mission there with that post!

Arrgh read the rest of your post. Yes of course! There's jokey stuff about that as well eg Douglas Adams. Some words on earth got said. Went through space and landed somewhere big insult. They built a massive space fleet and headed to earth to give us what for. when zoomed in whole fleet eaten by a small dog. Scale issues.

Have you read Douglas Adams?

Bellropes your ideas as well have scientific backing.

See my post below about the Fermi paradox!

Cheers @BabelGiraffe

Balls I just lost s great long post about how we perceive things and aphantasia and synatheasthia and stuff.

Boiled down. We could all be experiencing everything in totally different ways but we've learnt what to call it.

And that the ways we are supposed to think are really not right for loads of people but how do they know they're different? There is no way of telling. No language.

And that now they think babies are born with all senses open, and learning cuts them off from each other. And synatheasthia is not an abnormality but a bit that is still open.

And I think many people have some synatheasthia but have no way of knowing and no words to describe it if they did know.

OP, you would enjoy a book called The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. It’s interesting that your instinctive feeling is that time is not linear, while for most people this is counterintuitive but is in fact likely true to some extent. Causality exists, but time is local, not universal, and it’s essentially meaningless in a way to say that something is happening at the same time as something else.

MamaWeasel, your thinking is very Einsteinian! In one frame of reference, it is the houses and road that are moving and not you. As are the planet, and the stars and the galaxy...You’ve invented the theory of relativity 🙂

A couple of quotes I like re the world being far more than we can know about (like the cat on algebra book referenced upthread), and we are part of one consciousness.

'We are imprisoned in some kind of work of art.' Terence McKenna

'If patterns of 1 and 0 were like patterns of humans lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of 1s and 0s, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?' Thomas Pynchon