Rodriac Diary: "The Reality Frontier ( Speculative Essay )"

 

🎯 Rodriac's Diary: Speculative Essay

🔥 The Frontier of Reality
by Rodriac Copen

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
From a certain point onwards, this essay gradually abandons established physics and deliberately enters the realm of philosophy and metaphysical speculation.

I was watching a video by Javier Santaolalla , from " Date Un Vlog ."

It was one of those videos that defies easy categorization and somehow delves into several levels: mathematical, physical, philosophical, and ontological .

It began with an analysis of Werner Heisenberg 's uncertainty principle , which doesn't simply state that our instruments are imperfect. It states something much more radical and unsettling.

In its most well-known formulation, it establishes that it is impossible to simultaneously know with arbitrary precision the position and momentum (mass × velocity ) of a particle.

So far, so good . But the interpretation of that equation is a true philosophical battleground .



Instrumental interpretation: the limit of knowledge

. One interpretation argues that uncertainty is an epistemological limit.

In other words, it tells us that reality could have perfectly defined values, but we cannot access them simultaneously.

This view was close to Albert Einstein 's position , who suspected that there were still unknown, hidden variables.

His famous phrase, " God does not play dice, " precisely expressed his rejection of a fundamentally indeterminate reality.

From this perspective, there are still major issues to be resolved for quantum mechanics and our understanding of the universe to continue advancing.

Modern experiments have ruled out many of the more intuitive versions of the hidden variables envisioned by Einstein, although alternative interpretations still exist.



Ontological interpretation: reality is indeterminate.

The traditional Copenhagen interpretation , championed by Niels Bohr and Heisenberg , goes much further.

According to this view, before measurement, certain properties simply do not possess a definite value.

It's not that the particle has an unknown position, but rather that it has no definite position at all.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation , reality can be described as a set of probabilities that collapse when a measurement occurs.

If this interpretation is correct, uncertainty is not a human limitation, but a constitutive feature of the universe.



Are we facing a "frontier of physics"?

Of course, I could be wrong. You have to remember that I'm just a writer who loves science, and from here on out...My opinions may not be shared by researchers .  But I think the answer

to the question of whether we have reached a strict limit of science.

It doesn't seem to be a technological frontier; there are still many things to discover. And the consequences and possibilities of these mysteries that surround us probably imply that science as we know it will continue to advance a great distance. But... as when we approach a frontier, we begin to realize that the paradigms we work with may, at some point, lead us to a limitation. 

However advanced our instruments may be, the uncertainty principle still exists.

This doesn't seem to be a gap in the theory because it has been experimentally verified countless times.

However, it could be a conceptual frontier.

Because classical physics was built on a very intuitive idea:

• Things exist.
• They have defined properties.
• They evolve causally.

But quantum mechanics partially broke those three assumptions.

And that's why many philosophers consider the uncertainty principle to mark the limit where classical intuition fails.



A deeper interpretation:

Some physicists and philosophers have suggested something even stranger.

Perhaps the error lies in imagining that reality is made up of "objects" with properties.

Perhaps what is fundamental is not the objects themselves, but the relationships, information, or possibilities established between them .

In that view, a particle is not a tiny element that has position and velocity.

And it becomes necessary to see it as a set of mathematical potentialities .

From that perspective, what we call " concrete reality " emerges only when those potentialities interact with others.

In other words, reality does not arise from the individual properties of particles, but from the product of the interaction that occurs between them and, ultimately, from the possibilities that those interactions offer.



An ontological reading

: If any scientist had to draw a philosophical conclusion from all this, they would say that the uncertainty principle seems less like a technological barrier and more like a warning .

Where nature seems to say that we cannot simultaneously formulate certain questions because reality is not organized that way .

That is, perhaps the universe is not composed of perfectly defined facts waiting to be discovered by an observer, but rather of a deeper structure where some properties only acquire meaning in specific contexts of interaction .

This is interesting because it implies that the observer is not simply a spectator of the universe . They are part of the process by which some aspects of reality come to exist in a concrete way.

And it ends up opening a disquieting question: Is uncertainty a characteristic of the universe... or is it the mark that we are trying to describe a reality that ultimately works with more conceptual dimensions than our minds can represent or understand?

And this no longer belongs to experimental physics . It belongs to metaphysics . And it interests me because that is where many good science fiction stories begin .



Realities vs. Observers.

And that is why some"Thinkers" or philosophers conclude that reality exists thanks to the presence of observers. That reality is the settling of states that somehow solidify with the presence of an observer .

And that is one of the philosophical conclusions that some thinkers draw from certain interpretations of quantum mechanics. 

But we must carefully distinguish between what physics says and what philosophical interpretations of physics say .

Quantum mechanics establishes that the result of a measurement is defined when a physical interaction occurs that produces an observable result. What is not resolved is what exactly that process means.

From there, several schools of thought emerge .



The strong interpretation: consciousness creates reality

. Some thinkers took this idea very far.

They proposed that the observer's consciousness is what causes the collapse of the wave function .

In this view:

• The universe exists as a set of possibilities.
• The mind observes.
• Possibilities become facts.

This position was explored by figures such as John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner .

If correct, it would imply something extraordinary, such as that consciousness would not be a product of the universe. On the contrary, it would be a fundamental ingredient of the universe.

However, as seductive as it may seem, this theory is not the dominant interpretation among physicists today.



The moderate interpretation: a mind is not necessary for something to exist.

The predominant interpretation in scientific practice considers that consciousness is not necessary .

A physical interaction between particles is sufficient for reality to exist objectively.

For example:

• An electron strikes a plate.
• An atom absorbs a photon.
• A detector registers a signal.

The result is defined even if no conscious being is observing.

In this view, the "observer" does not strictly mean a person , but any physical system capable of interacting with another.

Under this view, reality exists independently of the individual observing it .



The philosophical question persists.

But here a fascinating question arises that makes the reality of quantum mechanics unsettling.

Imagine the universe before life existed .

If properties only become defined through interactions , then the entire cosmos would have been a gigantic network of mutual observations .

• stars interacting with atoms,
• atoms interacting with photons,
• fields interacting with particles.

Reality would be continually defined through physical relationships.

Some philosophers see a profound idea here because perhaps reality isn't made of things. Perhaps it's made of relationships .

But this path leads us precisely to the point where known physics begins to lose its footing.



And what about when there was nothing?

Before the Big Bang, there was nothing ... so... if interaction wasn't possible, how do we explain the existence of reality?

Because the very question we ask ourselves, " What was there before the Big Bang? " seems simple, but it hides several conceptual traps . The first is that, according to Albert Einstein

's general relativity , space and time are part of the universe . They aren't a stage where the universe unfolds; they are components of the universe itself. That's why many cosmologists would say that talking about "before" the Big Bang can be as problematic as talking about "north of the North Pole . " The word "before" presupposes that time already exists . But if time is born with the universe , then the question loses some of its physical meaning. However, that doesn't entirely satisfy human intuition, because we feel that something must have given rise to all of this. And then several possibilities arise . Possibility one tells us that there was no "before."

That's the most conservative view: time begins with the Big Bang.

There is no prior state. There is no "before."

The question simply has no physical referent.

Many physicists are comfortable with this answer. But many philosophers are not.

Because it leaves the question of why anything exists unresolved.

Possibility two tells us that a previous reality existed.

Some theories of quantum gravity suggest that the Big Bang might not be an absolute beginning.

Could be:

• a rebound from a previous universe;
• a phase transition;
• a quantum fluctuation of a deeper reality;
• a region within a multiverse.

These ideas do have some kind of "before."

But we don't know what it is, or if any of the possibilities are correct.

In possibility three, the observer's question becomes strange.

If properties are defined by interactions, what happens when everything is united in a single primordial state?

The honest answer is: WE DON'T KNOW.

Because our theories break down when we try to describe the universe extremely close to the initial instant .

It is precisely there that we would need a quantum theory of gravity , which we don't yet possess.

But notice the most interesting thing: quantum mechanics speaks of possibilities . And possibilities require differences, alternatives, relationships.

But if you imagine an absolutely unique state, without internal differences, without observers, without separate particles, without space, without time... then almost all the concepts we use to do physics disappear .

Because there would be no:

• distance,
• duration,
• interaction,
• causality,
• observation.

It's like trying to describe the ocean using concepts that only make sense for the waves .

And here a very old philosophical idea comes into play .

Long before quantum mechanics, philosophers like Plotinus spoke of a primordial unity .

This wasn't an object, nor a thing .

It was a reality so fundamental that ordinary categories ceased to apply to this primordial unity.

Interestingly, some contemporary physicists and philosophers have pointed out that when we go back to the cosmic origin, something similar happens :

The usual notions of:

• object,
• time,
• space,
• cause,

They seem to be starting to crumble.

If we take the question to its extreme , if we accept that line of thought for a moment, we could formulate something very radical .

Because perhaps the problem isn't who was observing before the Big Bang or that there was no interaction .

Perhaps the problem is that the distinction between observer and observed didn't yet exist .

That is, perhaps the separation between subject and object , between consciousness and reality, between particle and space, or particle and particle, is something that emerges later .

Not at the beginning.

Of course, that's not established physics ; it's philosophical speculation . Remember, I'm a writer, not a physicist.

But it's a very interesting speculation because it transforms the question .

Instead of asking, " Who was observing the universe? " or " What interacted to create reality? ", we should ask, " When did the very possibility of observers and observed things, or of interacting elements, arise? "

And that question, in a sense,is even closer to the original mystery.

Because it no longer asks what existed before the universe .

Ask how the very difference between "something" and "something else" arose .

And when you reach that level of reflection , you're traversing a territory where cosmology, metaphysics, and philosophical science fiction practically overlap .



The metaphysical leap:

Some thinkers have suggested a radical possibility: what if reality isn't a solid, independent structure ? What if it's a continuous process of actualizing possibilities ?

In that scenario, the universe would be less like a machine and more like a story that is writing itself .

The pastwould be what has already been written. And the future would bea set of possible pages yet to berevealed.

The present would be the instant when one of those possibilities becomes a fact.

It's not established physics , of course; it's metaphysics inspired by physics .



The often-forgotten problem:

There's a very interesting objection.

Assuming that reality requires conscious observers to exist, a paradox arises: Who observed the universe during the billions of years before the emergence of conscious beings?

To resolve this, some propose:

• that consciousness is a universal property ( panpsychism )
• that there is a cosmic consciousness
• that time doesn't work the way we think it does
• or that reality exists independently of us and consciousness plays no special role

None of these answers have been proven, and that's why the question remains philosophically open .

In fact, one of the most intriguing aspects of quantum mechanics is that, a hundred years after its birth, we're still discussing not so much its equations —which work extraordinarily well—but " what on earth are these equations telling us about the ultimate nature of reality ?"

And this difference between " knowing how to calculate " and " knowing what it means " is precisely where physics intersects with philosophy .



The limitations of what we know.

From the perspective of a novice in science , I feel that humankind has encountered some "brakes" imposed by the limitations of knowledge : the uncertainty principle, the origin of gravity, dark matter and dark energy, etc.

If anything is certain, it's that the very existence of this universe cannot explain itself within the laboratory that constitutes this reality and that contains us. Read this: The Limits of Science  and Can Science Prove the Existence of God ?

There is a distinct possibility that we are already at, or approaching, the limits of known science. Perhaps science must take another leap : physics, quantum mechanics, and… something more to discover ?

This intuition is shared by many scientists and philosophers of science. However, there is an important difference between facing the limits of a theory and facing the absolute limits of knowledge .

At the end of the 19th century, many physicists thought that physics was practically finished. Isaac Newton's laws and James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetism were known, and it seemed that only a few details remained to be resolved.

Then three "small problems" appeared :

• blackbody radiation,
• the photoelectric effect,
• the orbit of Mercury.

And from these problems arose relativity and quantum mechanics , two revolutions that completely changed our image of the universe .

That's why some physicists today are wondering if we are experiencing a similar situation .



The great holes in the map

. What we know today is impressive .

We can describe:

• the atoms,
• the stars,
• the galaxies,
• much of cosmic evolution.

But there are also enormous gaps:
 

Gravity

We have Albert Einstein's geometric description of gravity. We know how it works. And we have a successful description of gravity, but we still don't understand how to integrate it with quantum mechanics.

And, above all, we don't know how to coherently unite it with quantum mechanics. The so-called "quantum gravity" remains one of the biggest open problems.

 

Dark matter

Observations indicate that visible matter represents only a fraction of the material content of the universe. And while we detect it through its gravitational effects, we don't know what dark matter is.

It's like seeing footprints in the snow without ever having seen the animal that made them .

Dark energy

What's even more perplexing is that it seems to constitute the majority of the cosmos' energy content. But we don't know what it is.

The origin of the universe

The Big Bang theory describes the early evolution of the universe remarkably well.

But it doesn't necessarily answer:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• what happened "before" (if the question even makes sense),
• Why do physical constants have the values ​​they do?

So , are we at the limit?

It seems we are at a limit, but not necessarily the final limit .

Rather, we are on the edge of a paradigm. The situation is reminiscent of an explorer who has reached the edge of a known continent.

They might believe there is nothing beyond, or they might end up discovering a new ocean.



What could come next?

There are several possibilities.

A unified theory

That's the dream of many physicists: a theory that integrates:

• relativity,
• quantum mechanics,
• gravity.

Something that explains everything as manifestations of the same deep principle.

A radical conceptual shift

Perhaps the most interesting option.

Perhaps space, time, matter, and energy are not fundamental.

Perhaps they are emergent phenomena, just as temperature emerges from the movement of molecules.

Some modern approaches suggest that what might be fundamental is:

• information,
• relations,
• mathematical structures,
• quantum networks,
• or something we haven't even imagined yet.

A cognitive limit

There is a third, less popular possibility.

Perhaps certain questions exceed the cognitive capacity of our species.

And not because they are supernatural, but because our brains evolved to survive on the African savanna, not to comprehend the ultimate structure of the cosmos.

And a chimpanzee will never understand differential calculus.

Perhaps there are aspects of reality that are as far removed from our conceptual capacity as differential calculus is from a chimpanzee.

The most interesting

thing about science is that the great mysteries of our time seem to be converging . And that's fascinating .

Gravity, dark matter, dark energy, quantum information, the origin of spacetime...

They don't seem to be isolated problems, because they give the impression of being different cracks in the same wall .

And when several cracks point in the same direction, it sometimes means that behind them lies a whole undiscovered room .

For a science fiction writer like myself , that's an extraordinary idea: perhaps we are not witnessing the end of physics, but the first signs of a third great revolution , as different from quantum mechanics as quantum mechanics was from classical physics.

The most unsettling question is not whether there is something beyond current physics.

The question is whether, when it finally appears, it will still seem like "physics" to us , or whether it will be a completely new way of understanding what it means to exist.



The Non-Self-Contained Universe

. Sometimes I imagine the universe as a balloon held aloft . And within it, mathematics defines the realm of the macroscopic and the microscopic. 

But perhaps the globe of the universe (and we within it) requires interaction with the environment that contains it in order to exist . 

And perhaps the threads that hold the universe in place don't operate with the mathematics of the globe . 

They operate with a different reality . And all that we cannot explain now are the anchors of reality outside the universe that reach us. 

Think about it: 

• I have my own Writer's Universe , and I keep it alive.
• Within that universe there are entire ecosystems (Earth, humanity, Zyrbassa, etc.)
• And the beings that inhabit it (Steve, Sonja, etc.)
• The mathematics of that Universe are letters, the language I use
• The interactions of his "quantum mechanics" are the ideas generated from language
• But what cannot be investigated in that world is my thinking, which sustains that universe.

What's interesting about that image is that, although it's an almost childlike metaphor , it touches on a very profound philosophical question that remains relevant today.

And it comes from when I was a child: I imagined the universe as a suspended balloon, held up by something external. In a sense, I was formulating a question that appears time and again throughout the history of thought :

• Can a system fully explain itself? ( Read this )

It's a huge question.

If the universe contains everything that exists , then it would seem there is no "outside ." But at the same time, our intuition tells us that everything we see depends on something deeper .

A tree depends on the soil. The soil depends on the planet. The planet depends on the star. The star depends on physical laws.

And then the inevitable question arises: What do physical laws depend on?

That's where physics begins to reach its own explanatory limits.

There are theories that suggest that spacetime could emerge from more fundamental structures. Others posit that our universe could be a region within a larger reality. Some versions of inflationary cosmology speak of multiple universes. Certain interpretations of quantum gravity suggest that space and time are not fundamental, but emergent phenomena.

None of these ideas has been proven , but they all share an intuition: what we perceive as basic reality might not be the most basic thing that exists.

What's fascinating is that this metaphor I'm offering adds something more . Not only does he imagine an external world, but he imagines that the rules of the external world are different .

And that recalls an old philosophical observation .

A two-dimensional being living on a sheet of paper could discover all the laws of his flat world. However, he could never fully deduce the existence of the third dimension by observing only phenomena internal to his plane. The third dimension would manifest itself indirectly, as anomalies, shadows, or seemingly impossible events. The two-dimensional being could only partially see the traces of reality, but would lack the capacity to see reality itself. 

Perhaps we are like the chimpanzee that cannot even know what differential calculus is, much less perform it.

Many scientists would be very cautious with that analogy , but philosophically it is powerful .

Because it raises a possibility : Perhaps some of the great mysteries we observe are not "errors" in our theories , but traces of a larger structure that we can barely perceive .

Of course, there is also the simpler (and more likely) possibility : that we simply lack information and that future theories will explain these mysteries without needing to invoke anything outside the universe .

What is important is that human beings, from childhood, tend to spontaneously formulate questions that are very similar to the questions of metaphysics:

• What lies beyond?
• Who made the laws?
• Why does anything exist?
• Where is the universe supported?

Science has managed to answer many extraordinary questions , but these questions keep resurfacing generation after generation. And that's wonderful .

Perhaps because they aren't just questions about the cosmos .

Perhaps they are questions about the limits of our own capacity to understand it.

And here the image of the globe is especially suggestive: it doesn't imagine a finished and self-sufficient universe, but a universe sustained by something that cannot be seen from within . This idea has appeared, under different names, in philosophy, religion, speculative cosmology, and science fiction for centuries. Not because we know it to be true, but because it seems to arise almost naturally when the mind tries to grasp the origin of everything that exists.



Infinite Regression.

Saint Thomas Aquinas nipped this interdependence in the bud, saying "we cannot reach infinity" because he considered it impossible, hence the conclusion of the existence of a god.

But... what if there is no god , and what if panpsychism is what keeps all realities alive ?

What if there is a thought that sustains all creation? A great consciousness contemplating the universes and everything in them?

Like the thoughts of a writer, imagining all worlds, all beings, and all consciousnesses.

This resonates in several philosophical currents , both ancient and modern.

And, interestingly, you're not so far removed from some ideas that have been seriously defended by philosophers.

When Thomas Aquinas posits the necessity of a first cause, he is indeed trying to avoid infinite regress. His argument is that an infinite chain of dependencies wouldn't explain why anything exists at all. That's why he postulates an ultimate foundation: God.

But if you remove God from the equation, the question remains .

What sustains existence?

And then other possibilities emerge.

Panpsychism .

Panpsychism doesn't exactly claim that there is a single, overarching consciousness. Rather, it asserts that consciousness, or something akin to subjective experience, is a fundamental property of reality. Just as mass, energy, or electric charge exist, there would be an elementary form of experience.

Contemporary philosophers like David Chalmers have seriously explored this possibility.

In that view:

• Human beings possess complex consciousness;
• Animals possess different degrees of consciousness;
• Elementary matter would contain extremely simple forms of experience.

Idealism

What I'm describing is closer to idealism,

particularly that of George Berkeley or certain later currents.

According to radical idealism:

• Consciousness does not emerge from matter.
• Matter emerges from consciousness.
• Physical reality would be a manifestation of deeper mental processes.

The universe would literally be a mental activity.

The cosmic mind

Then there is another idea even closer to my own speculation:

that of a universal consciousness. Not necessarily a personal god, like a bearded being sitting on a cloud,

but a kind of fundamental mind of which we would all be local expressions.

This idea appears in very different philosophical traditions:

Some schools of Hinduism,
certain Neoplatonists,
some Western mystical currents,
and modern philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, in different forms

In this scenario, you and I wouldn't be separate consciousnesses. We would be "windows" through a vaster consciousness,

like individual waves emerging from the same ocean.

The novelty of my approach

There's a very interesting conceptual shift.

We usually think:

• First there is the universe.
• Then life appears.
• Then consciousness appears.

But my hypothesis reverses the order.

• First there is consciousness.
• Then the universes appear.
• Then appear the beings who believe they are separate.

In that image, the entire cosmos would be a kind of thought. Of course, not a verbal thought. Nor a narrative, but an immense creative activity.

• Galaxies would be patterns of that thought.
• Matter would be one aspect of that thought.
• And individual consciousnesses would be places where that thought becomes conscious of itself.

The Philosophical Problem:

What's fascinating is that this idea of ​​the universe cannot be easily dismissed by science. But neither can it be confirmed.

Because science studies observable regularities within the universe.

If the entire universe were the product of a deeper consciousness, that consciousness would be "outside the experimental framework."

That would make it a metaphysical, not a scientific, hypothesis.

Perhaps enough to found my own religion... haha.



The Concept of a Creator:

There was a psychiatrist, who passed away not long ago, named Michael Newton .

Newton was a hypnotherapist and developed a school of thought he called " Life Between Lives . " Through deep hypnosis sessions, he claimed that his patients described experiences of existence between reincarnations. According to his accounts, souls were not separately created entities, but rather expressions of a greater spiritual reality.

What's interesting is that his conception of a creator is quite different from the traditional image of God present in many Western religions.

In Newton's view:

• There is a Source or Higher Intelligence.
• Souls emerge from that Source.
• They retain their own individuality.
• They evolve through successive experiences.
• Finally, they remain linked to the reality from which they come.

Human beings emerge like bubbles from the source. There is no Creator separate from creation.

It is more like an ocean from which individual waves arise. Each wave has its own form, but it is always ocean water.

Interestingly, this idea has parallels with much older philosophical and spiritual currents.

For example:

• In some interpretations of Vedanta , the individual soul (Atman) is a manifestation of an absolute reality (Brahman).
• In Plotinus 's Neoplatonism , all existence emanates from "The One".
• In certain Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions, the idea appears that souls are emanations or reflections of a single divine reality.

What sets Newton apart is that he attempted to present these ideas as observations derived from his hypnosis sessions, not as philosophical speculation or religious doctrine.

And here it's important to make a crucial distinction.

From a scientific standpoint, Newton's claims are unverified. The scientific community does not consider his work to constitute evidence of reincarnation or an existence between lives. His claims are considered pseudoscience because experiences obtained under hypnosis can be influenced by suggestion, narrative construction, memory, and cultural expectations.

However, from a philosophical or literary perspective, his model is interesting because it attempts to resolve an age-old problem:

How can individuality exist without absolute separation?

That is to say:

• If only the individual exists, where does the unity of the universe come from?
• If only unity exists, where does individuality come from?

Newton's answer is that we are real individuals, but also parts of something larger.

And that idea has a rather beautiful consequence .

Instead of imagining conscious beings as isolated objects in an indifferent universe, he imagines them as local expressions of the same deep reality.

As a writer and lover of science, what attracts me to these ideas is not so much the question of reincarnation itself, but the underlying metaphysical image: the possibility that consciousness is not an accident that arose in some corner of the cosmos , but a fundamental property of reality, and that each mind is a kind of temporary fragment of something much vaster.

That intuition appears again and again in the questions I ask myself about the uncertainty principle, the limits of science, the universe contained within something larger, and consciousness as a foundation. They are variations on the same philosophical question:

Does consciousness arise within the universe, or does the universe arise within a deeper form of consciousness?

To this day, neither science nor philosophy nor religion has given a definitive answer . 

But it is one of the oldest and most persistent questions that human beings have asked. 

And probably one of the most fertile for science fiction , because it forces us to rethink what we understand by reality, identity, and existence

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