A model for reality beyond spacetime

Up until this century, physics research has been focused only on the rules that govern what we call ‘spacetime’ or the system seemingly around us in which light has a finite speed and everything is bounded by planck’s constant.

However I argue that there are models that we can use to imagine systems beyond or outside of this local ‘bubble’ of spacetime. There are structures and patterns that exist outside of spacetime. I was inspired to write my own thoughts about this after having listened to this incredible interview of Professor Donald Hoffman.

What I took from this interview:

• The only thing we absolutely know for SURE is real is our own minds. Our consciousness is real because we are experiencing it. However, our 5 senses could just be a very poor estimation or approximation of the ‘reality’ that our minds are currently dipped inside of.
• We are a collective of minds which can communicate, love, and compete against one another in a variety of ways
• We know how to create more new minds: by way of sexual reproduction. However there may be other (so-far undiscovered) ways to do this.
• It seems that different ‘living beings’ [as we call them] have minds with different depths of ‘consciousness’ in that they express consciousness more strongly (humans) or more weakly (insects and plants).
• There are repeating patterns and structures around us that transcend spacetime: Biological Evolution, financial markets booming and crashing, feast and famine, the ebbs and flows of entropy being expressed on otherwise lifeless matter.

A new model: The Mind as the most fundamental Primitive for Physics

Classical physics calls for a reductionist approach to try and find the most fundamental primitives for physics: keep zooming in further and further, smaller and smaller to discover what ‘makes up’ spacetime matter. Eventually we discovered subatomic particles, quarks, then strings. There is no going deeper than that.

However, I argue that trying to go deeper like that is a complete waste of time: especially if we have no idea how our own minds work. By focusing research on our minds and how they give rise to consciousness, we could discover why ‘spooky action at a distance’ happens: why observing waves seems to change them in quantum mechanics experiments. We could also discover structures and patterns completely outside of space time that are giving rise to the most fundamental components of matter and energy as we understand it.

Of course, nobody is being forced to use this model, it is simply a different lens to use. In my opinion this lens will be very important for science in the coming decades.