Time in Either Direction

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0j8oYNFFbw

Imagining the Tenth Dimension was launched at the end of June 2006. As we approach the second anniversary of this project, I continue to be amazed at the new connections that are appearing between my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed, and the scientific mainstream. That would not be possible without experts like Sean M. Carroll out there, doing the heavy lifting, processing the heavy math, coming up with new leading edge theories that, like my own project, are designed to help us all towards a deeper understanding of the concept of timelessness. Sean M. Carroll, senior research associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology said the following in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American, in his article entitled "The Cosmic Origins of Time's Arrow".

Among the unnatural aspects of the universe, one stands out: time asymmetry. The microscopic laws of physics that underlie the behavior of the universe do not distinguish between past and future... The arrow of time is arguably the most blatant feature of the universe that cosmologists are currently at an utter loss to explain.

Since the idea of time-reversal symmetry, and the idea that time is a direction, not a dimension, are both central to my way of visualizing reality, I loved this article. Here's a couple of quotes from the notes attached to illustrations in that article:

Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric. Time may run backward in other universes.

In my book there is a chapter called "The Flow of Time" which discusses these ideas. In one section of that chapter, the reader is taken through a fanciful thought experiment of what it would be like to meet a creature created from the chemical processes which can logically flow in the opposite direction to our own arrow of time. Also from the illustration text:

The universe began empty and will end up empty--the appearance of stars and galaxies is a temporary deviation from its usual equilibrium condition.

Beginning and Ending with Zero
This is the simple and elegant truth that both Gevin Giorbran and I have been trying to get people to see for years: the natural equilibrium state before and after the universe begins and ends is the same state - in my model, it is that place where the zero and the ten are congruent - the omniverse, the indeterminate quantum fabric which is the ever-present background to any observed reality. In Gevin's model, he called this the Set Of All Possible States: same concept. The equilibrium condition that Dr. Carroll's article refers to here can also be thought of as symmetry order, the underlying place where everything balances out, another subject which regular readers of my blog or my book will know is central to this way of visualizing reality. As the first of my 26 songs attached to this project says: ultimately, Everything Fits Together.

In that same Scientific American article, Sean Carroll also said this:

According to the rules of quantum mechanics, the total number of microstates in a system never changes.

In other words, no matter what we are trying to imagine for the background to our reality, there is a place outside of time, outside of space, outside of probability, where all possible states for our universe or any other possible universe exist simultaneously, another central concept to both my and Gevin's projects. Dr. Carroll:

Indeed, as far as entropy is concerned, it would be even more likely for the universe to fluctuate straight into the configuration we see today, bypassing the past 14 billion years of cosmic evolution.

This is a recurring theme to Dr. Carroll's article: what cosmologists are wrestling with is how unlikely our own universe and its unique arrow of time is, and that in fact the low entropy/high order "beginning" to our universe that we think of as the big bang is even more unlikely than the current "now" we are in. Saying that there is an even more highly ordered state before the big bang merely pushes the problem back further and further - unless we can acknowledge what Dr. Carroll (and I) have been saying: there is ultimately a place of equilibrium where all of these states exist simultaneously, and that is the same state before and after our (or any other universe) exists. In fact, where you place the starting point within the omniverse really doesn't matter: but that starting point then sets a probabilistic set of processes in motion that represent the return to the natural balance of that equilibrium state, one planck length at a time.

Time as a return to equilibrium
Time can flow in either direction. It can appear to be moving towards more entropy (as it does in our universe) or it can appear to be moving towards less entropy in other possible universes. The important wrinkles which David Bohm's implicate order added, and which Gevin Giorbran so eloquently built upon, is this: there are two kinds of order, and they are called grouping order and symmetry order. Because we see our universe heading towards high entropy, what we think of as the arbitrary starting point for our own universe (as per Sean Carroll's ideas above) can be thought of as an expression of the maximum grouping order for that data, and what we think of as the ending point for own universe is really an expression of the maximum symmetry order. In my book I advanced a similarly fanciful idea:

But why stop there? It could also be possible then that the universe didn’t actually exist until one second ago, which is when the observer turned their attention upon our universe and collapsed the probability wave function into what we now perceive as our reality, complete with a history which each of us believes we remember. Whether the observer came into existence 13.7 billion years ago or one second ago, the result will be the same: out of all the possible timelines which could have existed prior to this moment, through the act of observation we are now experiencing one of them as our own present, and our own history.

So. The probabilistic line of time we are moving on is just a move from one kind of order to the other, and a return to the natural equilibrium that exists within timelessness. Amazingly, this means that another universe built from a subset of the multiverse that starts with high symmetry order would experience time as a move to lower, not higher entropy. Everything about that universe would be a paring down of choices, rather than the constantly expanding bush-like branching structure that we experience as we travel down our own "line of time"... it would be as if eggs could unscramble themselves and exploded bombs could reassemble themselves in that universe. As I've quoted many times, quantum physicists like Seth Lloyd say we can think of our big bang as the first yes/no that separates our universe out from all other possible universes. In the "reverse-time universe" which Dr. Carroll refers to in this article, one would find their universe moving towards that most basic yes/no state of the highest grouping order, and the lowest entropy. Isn't that an amazing thought?

My song "Big Bang to Entropy" talks about these ideas as well: that we move from, and we move towards, the very same equilibrium state, and that there is a way to think of our universe and all of its probabilistic states as a single entity once we move beyond the concept of time.


A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-atlgyfQkOc

Enjoy the journey,


Rob Bryanton

Next: Being More Fifth-Dimensional

Disorders of the Mind

In blog entries like The Geometry of Music, Information Equals Reality, and Music and the Dance of Creativity we have talked about creativity as patterns of information that are shared across time and space. The above painting, by Canadian artist Anne Adams, is a visual interpretation of Ravel's Bolero. It's called "Unravelling Bolero". Here's some excerpts from the surprising information about this painting revealed in a recent article in New Scientist magazine:

Boléro: 'Beautiful symptom of a terrible disease'
by Peter Aldhous

Some paintings are meant to be appreciated in silence – but not this one. It is called Unravelling Boléro, by Canadian artist Anne Adams, and is a bar-by-bar representation of the popular classical piece Boléro by Maurice Ravel. The painting also provides a scientific window into the creative mind.

When Adams completed Unravelling Boléro in 1994, her brain was starting to be affected by a neurodegenerative condition called primary progressive aphasia. It later robbed Adams of speech, and eventually took her life.

In its early stages, however, the condition seemed to unleash a flowering of neural development in a brain area that integrated information from different senses. In part, Unravelling Boléro may be a beautiful symptom of a terrible disease.

Repetitive patterns
This is the view of a group of neurologists led by William Seeley and Bruce Miller of the University of California, San Francisco.

And here's the jaw-dropper: Ravel is thought to have suffered from the same condition, which may have drawn him towards repetitive patterns such as the themes that cycle through Boléro. Adams was unaware of this, and of her own condition, while working on her painting.

Music in the detail
In Unravelling Boléro, each of the vertical figures represents a bar of music, with its height corresponding to volume, and the colour representing the pitch of Adams' favourite note within the bar.

Like the music, the theme repeats and builds until a change of colour to orange and pink, representing the key change that precedes Boléro's dramatic conclusion. "Every last detail has some meaning," says Seeley.

With Imagining the Tenth Dimension, one of the questions I've asked is whether other "unusual" brain states, induced by music, trance, hallucinogens or other disruptions to what we think of as "normal" function might be giving us glimpses into the behind-the-scenes processing that our brains could be doing as we navigate through our fifth-dimensional probability space, unaware of the gyrations and connections that are happening from the dimensions above while we travel down what feels like a straight "line of time". Blog entries like Flatlanders On a Line and Time is a Direction are related to this.

Lately I've been reading a book by David Jay Brown called "Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse", a collection of interviews with deep thinkers and big dreamers like Ray Kurzweil, Bruce Sterling, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, Edgar Mitchell, Robert Anton Wilson, and many more. I'm sure I'll be continuing to quote from this book other times in upcoming entries. Since so many of these experts in their fields are promoting ideas that can so easily be integrated into my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed from the background state of the omniverse, I believe David Jay Brown's book works as a great companion piece to my own project .

Dr. Clifford Pickover, for instance, has some interesting comments in Conversations about DMT and a brain condition known as "temporal lobe epilepsy":

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) can produce profound religious experiences. Some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that the mystical religious experiences of many of the great prophets were induced by TLE. This is not to demean religious experiences, because all experiences are mediated by our brain states. Perhaps TLE is a doorway to valid dimensions of reality. In my books Strange Brains and Genius and The Paradox of God, I discuss several nuns with TLE who "apprehended" God in TLE seizures and who described the experiences in glowing words.

More recently at my weblog RealityCarnival.com, I published an article going much further... My controversial premise is that DMT in the pineal glands of biblical prophets gave God to humanity and let ordinary humans perceive parallel universes. As we discussed, the molecule DMT is a psychoactive chemical that causes intense visions and can induce its users to quickly enter a completely different "environment" that some have likened to an alien or parallel universe. DMT is also naturally produced in small quantities in the pineal gland in the human brain.

In my song, "From the Corner of My Eye", I explored some of these same themes. The second verse and chorus tie in nicely to what we're talking about here:

In a corner of my mind, I questioned
How could there be more than this world of ours
Just a trick of vision
Disorder of the mind?
A pattern of tiny twirling stars
At the corner of my eye

From the corner of my eye
I saw the dance and spin
Of other worlds within
Such a mystery
From the corner of my eye
Hidden in the folds
Those other worlds untold
How can it be

Here, to close this entry then, is a video of Ron Scott singing that song.

A direct link to the above video can be found at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyP5jxFe5Po

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Update: here's a youtube video of a TedTalks presentation by Vilayanur Ramachandran about situations of damage to the brain which might be showing us how things are connected together within our minds. I was introduced to this by a twine.com bookmark created by Ishan Shapiro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k

Next: Time in Either Direction

Seeing the Big Picture Part 3

Michel Fournier had to postpone his record-breaking freefall parachute drop again today because of a problem that developed with his oxygen supply. A newswire story is here.

In my blog entry Your Fifth-Dimensional Self, I talked about one of the recurring themes from this project:

...we all are attracted to the occasional story of someone who has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds: and that's true whether we're talking about achievements through hard work and determination, or lucky lottery winners, or the indomitable spirit of a person who has made the best of a difficult situation.

In a blog entry about one of the 26 songs attached to this project ("Senseless Violence"), I quoted the following from my book:

Everyone remembers what they were doing the moment they saw the World Trade Center towers collapse. Everyone remembers the day they won a big prize or the day they saw a loved one die. And even with perfect strangers, we are drawn to the moments we recognize as being important cusps in that person’s life. This is why it is human nature to want to drive slowly by the car accident, trying to catch a glimpse of what happened, or why we all will look at the newspaper picture of the latest lottery winner. No matter whether the event was good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate, we all have a tendency to think “what if that had been me?”

And, in a blog entry about The End of the World, I talked about how this way of visualizing reality first started to be formed in my mind:

...as a child, I was trying to explain to myself why some moments in our lives seem so heavily significant, so deeply ingrained in our memories, while other moments quickly fade. I came to the conclusion that it was because those moments were when important “cusps” occurred: moments when our possible future paths diverged significantly.

Coincidentally, the idea of "cusps" has turned out to be a recurring theme for the blog entries I've created this month: Everyone Has a Story, Anime, Gaming and Cusps, Collective Intelligence, Cognitive Surplus, Chaos... all have dealt with that concept from slightly different angles.

Where am I going with this? That's what I love about the Michel Fournier story: here is a man who, regardless of the outcome, has created a new and important cusp for his life, and for our consensual reality, by attempting to do something no one else in the world has done before.

I hope that he is enjoying the journey.

Rob Bryanton


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydru-VYfybU

UPDATE: Unbelievably, Michel's attempt came to an end a few hours later when the helium balloon came loose from its tethers and ascended skyward without him. What a disappointment! A news story with a video clip embedded is here.


This is a continuation from Seeing the Big Picture, and Seeing the Big Picture Part 2.
Coming up next: Disorders of the Mind

Seeing the Big Picture Part 2

This is an update to my last blog entry about Michel Fournier, the French parachutist who plans to set the world record for skydiving by freefalling from 40 kilometres up!

After some earlier concerns about weather conditions, the team have decided to go ahead with the jump this morning. Here is a Canadian Press article which will be of historical interest in a few hours when we find out how Michel fared with this unusual and dangerous task. I will post a Part 3 to this entry when we know more.

Rob

Update: A few hours after this post, the team decided that wind conditions were not quite what they needed, so the jump has been postponed again until tomorrow. A newswire story about the decision is here.

Next: Seeing the Big Picture Part 3

Seeing the Big Picture - from 40 kilometres up!

Back in my entry The Wii World, I talked about the unusual Canadian province I was born in and am proud to call my home: Saskatchewan. Everyone should feel a certain pride about the place they come from because, after all, every place is unique. Saskatchewan's claims to fame include first left-wing socialist government in North America, birthplace of medicare, pioneers in the use of psychoactive drugs to treat mental disorders, pioneers in fibreoptics, first adopters of on-demand hi-def TV over phone lines, and so on.

In the next few days, a 64-year-old skydiver by the name of Michel Fournier plans to use Saskatchewan as his base to break four different world records for skydiving. From near the town of North Battleford, he plans to use a balloon to climb to the edge of the stratosphere, 40 kilometres up, and break the records for highest altitude freefall, highest altitude human balloon flight, the time record for longest freefall (the plunge will take about 10 minutes) and the speed record for the fastest freefall. A news story about his plans is here, and his website which includes a countdown clock to the moment he plans to jump is here.

What will Michel see as he steps out from his pressurized capsule and prepares to leap back to earth? I hope that he will be able to take a moment to appreciate the vista that will stretch before him, something that no human being before him has been able to witness without actually climbing to space on a rocket. I'm reminded of Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, sixth man to walk on the moon, who has quite famously become a proponent of the more "out there" ideas of how Everything Fits Together, which would seem to have strong connections to the ideas we have explored with this project. Here's a quote from his book, The Way of the Explorer, where he describes what he experienced as he looked out the window of his spacecraft during his flight back to earth:

It was all there, suspended in the cosmos on that fragile little sphere. What I experienced was a grand epiphany accompanied by exhilaration, an event I would later refer to in terms that could not be more foreign to my upbringing in west Texas, and later, New Mexico. From that moment on, my life would take a radically different course.

What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. I actually felt what has been described as an ecstasy of unity.... I perceived the universe as in some way conscious. The thought was so large it seemed inexpressible, and to a large degree it still is.

Seeing the big picture is what Imagining the Tenth Dimension is all about. And to French skydiver Michel Fournier, let me say "bonne chance".

Enjoying the journey,

Rob Bryanton

This entry continues here.

You Are a Point

You are a point of indeterminate size
Moving through probability space
Participating in a consensual reality
Of combined choice, chance, and circumstance

You are on a line which extends to infinity:
Infinity in either direction

And when you add all the possible values together
For what that line could be
All the positive values extending to infinity
All the negative values extending to infinity
It all balances out (positive x plus negative x equals zero)

Symmetrical no matter where you are on the line
It all sums up as the point of indeterminate size

Everything fits together in the implicate order
Of the zero that we are headed towards:
And the zero from before we began.
Indeterminacy, all possible states, viewed as a singularity

The Omniverse


Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Related blogs:
The Omniverse
John Wheeler and Digital Physics
Time is a Direction
Gevin Giorbran - Gone But Not Forgotten

Next: Seeing the Big Picture - from 40 Kilometres Up!

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - May report

The April 08 version of this list is here.
The June 08 version of this list is here.The July 08 version of this list is here.

There's a really interesting website I recently came across called "TOEQuest - a Quest for a Theory of Everything". Lots of lively discussion, check it out.

Back in my blog entry "The Omniverse" I suggested that perhaps a better name for my project would have been "Imagining the Omniverse": after all, by the time you've worked through my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed one layer at a time, you arrive at the Godelian concept of being "outside the system". In that sense, Imagining the Tenth Dimension is yet another Theory of Everything, but I hesitate to use the word "theory" since to some that term implies a certain rigor of thesis/argument/proof. Since I'm not a physicist and I'm not pretending to be one, what we're really talking about here is better thought of as a visualization tool rather than a formulated "theory of reality". As I said in "The Fifth Dimension Isn't Magic", does that mean that this visualization tool is more akin to Garrett's Lisi's E8 rotation? Again, I'm not claiming that my intuitive way of imagining the construction of the dimensions is backed by a set of complex mathematics in the way that string theory or Lisi's innovative ideas are. Nonetheless, I believe there is a connection: Mr. Lisi tells us that the eight dimensions of E8 are not spatial dimensions, they are just a way for us to see the relationship between the different subatomic building blocks and forces that make up the reality we are witness to.



For those who are unwilling or unable to believe that the extra dimensions actually exist, I think this same reasoning could be used to see how my visualization tool still has a certain relevance: since our physical reality only exists at this very instant as a particular reference frame in spacetime, everything else about our reality requires us to make a certain leap of faith, to accept evidence through inference, and so on. So, to those who say extra dimensions defy the rule of Occam's Razor by making things more complicated than need be, I say I can accept that as a viewpoint. If you choose not to believe Kaluza was right about the fifth dimension, there are still things to be gained from this way of visualizing reality that don't require you to believe that the extra dimensions are anything more than a filing system, a way of seeing how other different-initial-conditions universes could co-exist with our own within the fourth dimension and yet be inaccessible/decoherent to the one we exist within.

As of May 21st, 2008, here are the blogs that have seen the most visits in the last 30 days. For both of the following lists, the number in brackets is the position that blog held in the report for the previous month.

1. Time is a Direction (6)
2. The Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea (new)
3. Tenth Dimension Polls Archive 1 to 10 (3)
4. The Flipbook Universe (new)
5. Your Fifth-Dimensional Self (new)
6. Flatlanders on a Line (new)
7. The Geometry of Music (new)
8. The Omniverse (5)
9. Crossing Your Arms to Change Your Trajectory (new)
10. Anime, Gaming and Cusps (new)

And as of May 21st, 2008, here are the ten Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time.

1. Time is a Direction (new)
2. The Google Suggestions Time Capsule Project (3)
3. Tenth Dimension Polls Archive 1 to 10 (new)
4. Tenth Dimension TagCrowd (5)
5. Infinity and the Boltzmann Brains (6)
6. Google, Memes and Randomness (4)
7. Hypercubes and Plato's Cave (1)
8. Visualizations (new)
9. 26 songs (2)
10. The Omniverse (new)

By the way, if you are new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next, a more poetic entry: "You Are the Point"

New book reviews at Amazon

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5eEz-KIMes

I've said before that one of the trickiest things about promoting Imagining the Tenth Dimension is that its ideas cover such a broad range - if you read the compilation I've made of reviews of the book, you will see many different opinions about what is good and bad about my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed from the background information of the omniverse. Over at Amazon you will see that the majority of the reviews are positive, but that there are definitely some fanatically negative reviews by people who bought a book called "Imagining" the Tenth Dimension, "A New of Thinking" About Time and Space, and which includes in its description that it is "not about mainstream physics", and you will see that these reviewers nonetheless angrily complained that the book doesn't portray the currently established thinking of mainstream physics. You will also see that, negativity being what it is, that more people curious about the book found those negative reviews to be helpful.

For students wanting to learn about the more mainstream approaches there are lists of books which I've promoted from the beginning of this project: one of those lists is found in the Preamble section of the Tenth Dimension website.

It also seems clear that my project's willingness to embrace some of the more metaphysical/spiritual tangents that are possible from this way of visualizing reality can raise the hackles of those who have been taught that their science should be completely atheistic. Here are three new reviews of my book, published at Amazon.com a a few weeks ago which I think add nicely to this discussion:

Mapping a framework for the big picture, May 6, 2008

By Richard Ruff (McMahons Creek, Australia)

Higher dimensions, many worlds, parallel universes, multidimensionality, non-locality - these and similar terms are variously invoked in relativity, quantum mechanics, mathematics, religion, science fiction, paranormal phenomena, telepathy, meditation and drug experiences. Higher dimensions range from being complex mathematical constructs to non-quantifiable experiential phenomena. But for the average person (and most likely, many professional scientists), there is a need to know the answer to the type of query once posed by Woody Allen: "There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?" That is, we want to know what are the characteristics of the higher dimensions, how do they differ, what are the implications of their existence, is there a logic to the definition of such dimensions? These types of questions have nagged at me for over thirty years. Everything I read only nibbled at the edges or indulged in esoterica.

Then I stumbled onto Rob Bryanton's Imagining the Tenth Dimension: A New Way of Thinking About Time and Space. In an easily readable style he has boldly taken us past the fourth dimension through to the tenth employing an understandable logic based on geometric considerations. There is no mind-boggling mathematics and there is a distinct absence of the crank/crackpot style; each step along the way is carefully developed in a sequential manner accompanied by readily understandable diagrams. Again, without being too technical, he correlates properties of the unfolding dimensions with predictions and outcomes of modern physics, especially quantum mechanics. Philosophical implications are explored along the way.
Imagining the Tenth Dimension: A New Way of Thinking About Time and Space has at long last provided a framework in which the bigger picture, for me at least, makes intuitive and scientific sense. Stick with the logic and you too should be rewarded with an "Ahah!" experience. I felt the dots were joined and the gaps filled in my own personal ponderings on higher dimensions and the sense of satisfaction was not just restricted to the scientific side of me. My background is in the physical sciences and having read the book twice, I am yet to find any weaknesses in the proposals.

For the more mathematically and physics-minded amongst you, the challenge is to subject Rob Bryanton's ideas to scrutiny - he has an excellent blog site for such feedback and discussion.

You will not be disappointed !!!!, April 30, 2008

By David Levy (USA) Imagining the Tenth Dimension is a wonderful book that helped me thinking "outside of the box" and taught me many complex concepts in a fun and easy to understand way. Bryanton's way of thinking is easy to follow and his explanations make a lot of sense to scientists, philosophers and to the average reader alike. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about some of the most complex concepts in modern science in a fun and revolutionary way. You will not be disappointed. Imagining the Different Possibilities in Life, April 28, 2008 By C. Leonard This book is excellent for a reader looking to expand their horizon on something more than what is in front of them. It gives you an opportunity to think of all the possibilities you have in life. I read this book on a volunteering trip, realizing if I wasn't volunteering I could be doing many different things than what I was doing at that time. Another thing, reading this book requires an open mind. You can stand close to your beliefs, but this book offers an insight on some intriguing subjects. 4 out of 5 because, I personally know life is definite until our parting. So pick up Imagining the Tenth Dimension and discover a few new perspectives on the way dimensions are viewed.

I'm grateful to reviewers like C. Leonard, David Levy, and Richard Ruff who have taken time out of their busy lives to share their thoughts on this project. And I would invite anyone who is new to what I'm trying to do here to spend some time with the Tenth Dimension FAQ, where you will find lots of links to some of the most commonly asked questions. The Tenth Dimension Forum also is a good place for lively discussions about the nature of reality and our place within the universe, and the Tenth Dimension Chat window usually has streaming video and live chat for people wanting to participate in discussions and watch videos about the large cloud of ideas that surround this project.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs, the May Report

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Songs

As part of this way of visualizing reality, I wrote 26 songs. For 26 days in February '08 I published a blog with discussion, videos, and lyrics for each individual song. Now that visitors have had some time to view those blogs, some entries have become more popular than others - whether that's because of the discussion, the videos, or the lyrical content for any one of these songs is hard to say, but it seems easy to conclude that different entries have been viewed more for different combinations of reasons (naturally!).

Since my goal with this project was just to see my ideas getting out into the world, I'm completely fine with the fact that some ideas seem to have gained more traction than others: in our world of connected memes and shared experience, this is what it's all about. Here, then, as picked by you, the readers of this blog, are the top ten blog entries for specific songs that are part of this project:

1. Song 22 of 26 - Insidious Trends
2. Song 23 of 26 - Secret Societies
3. Song 8 of 26 - Big Bang to Entropy
4. Song 1 of 26 - Everything Fits Together
5. Song 2 of 26 - Seven Levels
6. Song 5 of 26 - Automatic
7. Song 25 of 26 - What I Feel For You
8. Song 4 of 26 - The Unseen Eye
9. Song 11 of 26 - The Anthropic Viewpoint
10. Song 17 of 26 - Change and Renewal

A blog entry that lists all 26 songs and shows 1 video for each is here.

Over at revver.com it's a somewhat different collection of songs which have bubbled up to become the most viewed, and again I'm left to guess as to whether it's the video presentation or the song that has made certain songs see more repeat views than others. Here are the top ten songs as posted at revver:

1. Everything Fits Together
2. Secret Societies
3. The Anthropic Viewpoint
4. The Unseen Eye
5. What I Feel For You
6. Turquoise and White
7. Seven Levels
8. The End of the World
9. Thankful
10. Addictive Personality

And finally, here's the most viewed tenth dimension song video at revver. The video editing is by Ryan Hill, and it's for my song Everything Fits Together:

A direct link to this video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcdjX72VcKI, and the entire collection of tenth dimension videos (including songs and clips from the live TV show) can be viewed at www.revver.com/u/tenthdimension/

Thanks everyone, for sharing these links and supporting this project. And as always, enjoy the journey!

Rob

P.S. - If you're interested in downloading high-quality mp3s of some of the tenth dimension songs (or a pdf of the book or a hi-res quicktime or flash of the original eleven minute visualization), please visit the tenth dimension digital store: tenthdimension.com/digital .

Next - New Reviews at Amazon

Collective Intelligence, Cognitive Surplus, Chaos

A couple of weeks ago I started a series of blogs about the Fifth Dimension, in celebration of my easy-going article published in the current issue of Urban Garden Magazine: the article is entitled "The Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea". Now, here are a couple of blog entries I'd like us to take a serious look at:

Henry Story discusses the Fifth Dimension
Henry Story discusses the 10 dimensions of reality

I recently came across the above two wonderful blog entries by Henry Story, the first of which I know I saw briefly back when they were published but at that time I was so immersed in launching my project that I didn't really do justice to his thoughtful presentations, which he wrote partly in response to my eleven minute animation. Now that I have spent some time at Henry's blog I am in awe of the leading-edge work he is doing with the Semantic Web (a concept I touched on last fall in a blog entry called E8 and the Semantic Web), meme-tracking, and other "Web 3.0" developments. Henry works at Sun, and he writes The Sun Babelfish Blog, check it out.

As it turns out, Henry found my animation through a blog posted by Nova Spivack. Nova's blog, Minding the Planet is equally awe-inspiring: and I am linking to Nova's blog entry about a chapter he wrote for a new book on the subject of Collective Intelligence. Again, rather than fill this entry with quotes from these people's writing, I invite you to read his chapter, which is an eye-opening exploration of just how fast our world is changing right now, how useful the Semantic Web is going to be in helping this change along, and how services like Twine.com (which comes from Nova's company Radar Networks) will be part of our toolset as these advances occur.

Another related idea is being promoted by Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody. Yes, "Cognitive Surplus" is one of those buzzword-memes making the rounds right now, but Clay explains the idea well. Take a look at a couple of recently-posted videos of him discussing these ideas:




Direct links to these videos are at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNCblGv0zjU


Clay makes the point part way through his presentation that it's very hard to predict the outcome of the changes that are happening now, because it's more like the complexity of predicting the weather rather than predicting (for example) gravity. I found this particularly interesting as an idea because of an upcoming blog I was working on about how the regions of chaos and sudden bifurcations to new states can be very similar to what we just tried to imagine in "Anime, Gaming, and Cusps": what comes to mind as we try to visualize a five dimensional labyrinth made of 10 directions all at right angles to each other? How could we create a map showing the cusps and tipping points, the interactions of memes, genes, and spimes that work (in concert with randomness and the patterns that spring from randomness) to create our reality? For me, this brings to mind those diagrams I was first introduced to in James Gleick's "Chaos: Making a New Science": regions of seemingly random noise that are actually complex interactions of tiny systems, interspersed with sudden jumps to new coherent states, as a map of our fifth-dimensional probability space from moment to moment. How's that for a visualization of the background layer creating our beautiful and intricate reality one planck length at a time from the fifth dimension?

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next: The Top Ten Tenth Dimension Songs

Anime, Gaming, and Cusps

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOWWafK3U4

I've been told that some of the concepts from Imagining the Tenth Dimension are reminiscent of what you can learn from Japanese anime or videogames. Since I'm a guy in my fifties, I kind of missed all that, other than second-hand inference through watching my kids play games like Legend of Zelda back in the day, but I have now watched modern anime like the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (a clip from the show starts this blog) and been fascinated to see the connections: "Melancholy" is about a teenage girl who, as it turn out, is the prime quantum observer for our world, and she is becoming disinterested in what she is observing. What happens to the rest of us in that situation? It's fun to imagine such fantastic extrapolations from the basics of quantum theory.

Reading the entry from wikipedia about Vector Prime (Transformers) is also startling for someone like me who learned to think about these ideas from the freewheeling explorations of theoretical physicists like Kaku and Greene, and not from watching cartoons:

Born from the living material of the very multiverse itself, Vector Prime was appointed the guardian of space and time by Primus, and is uniquely attuned to its flow. Within his clockwork frame hum the subtle mathematics that govern all that is, from the spin of galaxies to the movement of sub-atomic particles...
Vector Prime’s perceptions are not limited to one linear pathway in time – thanks to a temporal mechanics analyzer, he is able to observe all possible pasts, presents and futures within his sensor range, giving him the opportunity to select optimum courses of action.

Still, saying that the concepts I use in Imagining the Tenth Dimension are familiar from Japanese pop culture is not saying that these concepts are wrong, or fictional - rather, I'm saying that thinking about reality as coming from a timeless multiverse and indeterminacy has strong connections to belief systems much older than what we know from Western civilization, and this is a point that I've been making from the start of this project. There are things about this way of imagining that connect to zen buddhism, kaballah, African and Aboriginal mythologies, and on and on it goes. If we're trying to find the place where physics meets philosophy, then it shouldn't be surprising that these additional connections keep springing up.

Cusps
But while we're talking about games, there is also something very "first person 3D shooter" about what we're imagining here: as you work through one of those games, there will be paths that open up before you, and choosing one path could allow you to continue, while another path will do you in. Imagining a tree of branching choices would be something the game designers took into consideration: in other words, if there were only one way to get through to the end it would be a fourth-dimensional game (since Time is a Direction in the fourth spatial dimension), but if there were multiple paths to the end then the game could be considered to be fifth-dimensional. Whether we're talking about a life, or a universe, or a video game, those important branching moments might be called "cusps": this is an idea I explored in my blog entry "Visualizations".

We should keep in mind, too, that cusps don't have to refer to simple left/right yes/no types of decisions. A cusp moment could have a great many possible outcomes, some inconsequential, some momentous, and many of shades between the extremes, and the idea of a "bush-like branching structure" of possible outcomes is very relevant here (regular readers of this blog will recognize that I often use this 'bush-like branching structure' phrase to refer to the proof published last fall by a team of scientists at Oxford under the direction of physicist David Deutsch, indicating that the wavefunction of possible outcomes at both the quantum and the macro level from any particular moment in spacetime are mathematically equivalent).

In "Flatlanders On a Line", I talked about the set of all branching choices for a person's life or for the universe being like a labyrinth, and that if one of us in the fifth dimension could be handed a large balloon that lifted us above the walls of choice, chance, and circumstance that we had been traveling through and limited by, we would be in the sixth dimension: it would be like being handed a "map to the game". Just like Edwin Abbott's Flatlander who was lifted above his 2D plane to be able to see his world from the third dimension, from our sixth-dimensional vantage point we would be able to see all of the other possibilities that exist within state space for our universe but which are currently unavailable from our position within the fifth dimension.

90-Degree Angles
Let's be clear though: saying that a fifth dimensional probability space can be thought of as being like a 2D maze that we could find shortcuts through from the next dimension up is still very much a simplification, a way to help us visualize something that is not easily visualized. When we're in a 2D maze there are only four directions we can travel, each at right angles to the next. Imagining a fifth-dimensional labyrinth requires us to imagine that at every point in the labyrinth there are ten directions we could possibly travel, and each of those ten directions is at right angles to the next.

Now that is a mind-blowing image of roiling chaos and cusps to try to hold in your head! That's why, as we discussed in entries like Hypercubes and Plato's Cave, sometimes it's more productive to visualize the shadows of the extra dimensions rather than to wrestle with trying to imagine the unimaginable.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next: Collective Intelligence, Cognitive Surplus, Chaos

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4b7MqbpYTM

Everyone Has a Story

A direct link to the above video blog entry is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn4XcYRRyZ4


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP2mg0KpZs0

Last blog, we talked about the relationship between physical stance and a person's interface with reality. Have you ever tried Foxwalking? Have you ever tried stomping around like a sumo wrestler? As we saw last time with the arm-folding experiment, simple physical and mental tricks can have a profound effect on a person's mood, and the way they interact with their environment. For someone who is not happy with their life, this can be a tricky conversation: how much of what happens to a person is because of their own attitude, and how much is due to random circumstance and the actions of others? Here are a few paragraphs from chapter nine of my book:

Everyone has a story they tell themselves of why their life is the way it is at this present moment, and sometimes that story is not completely truthful. It’s human nature for each of us to want to put ourselves in a good light. Sometimes that means that we pass the blame on to bad luck or the malicious acts of others, when in some situations each of us should be admitting a certain amount of personal responsibility for bad things that have happened to us. From seemingly small things like “I should have exercised more” or “I shouldn’t have eaten that junk food” to much larger acts that seem to be deliberately self-defeating, there is a natural tendency for each of us to say “it’s not my fault”. Separating into fact and fiction the stories we tell ourselves for why our life is not the way we want it to be is not always easy to do.

For each of us, we will be able to remember moments of malicious, random, or foolish action that could have done us in. It’s hard to forget that moment where a large object falling or a silly risk taken might have resulted in our death if we had only been in a slightly different place and time. According to the worldview we’re exploring, all of those things did actually happen: that drunk driver you saw last year came over the hill and smashed into you head on, and now you’re dead.

And all but the most saintly of us will have moments in our own past where we know we made bad or unfortunate choices, yet we lived to fight another day. Each of us will always have a number of life-paths which could have (and in other quantum realities actually did) result in our death. So how did those of us alive at this instant end up choosing the path where we “dodged every bullet” and are here today, while others, it would appear, have chosen a path where they became another sad statistic?

In other words, if all possible timelines exist, does the person dying of cancer have another version of themselves that avoided the cancer-causing conditions and lived to a ripe old age? And if you are the person currently dying of cancer, should you be asking yourself why you chose that life path rather than another? Clearly, your average terminal cancer patient will tell you they did not choose to have cancer, and would find the suggestion completely offensive. This is a hard issue, wrapped in many conflicting emotions. A simplistic answer might be, the person dying of cancer didn’t believe or wasn’t aware they had the power to change their life-path, so they didn’t–a bitter pill to swallow, and one which fails to take into account the many accidents and diseases which a person could not possibly have known were coming, so any choice which avoided the situation would only have been dumb luck.

This gets back to our discussion of the limitations of the Binary Viewpoint. In simple terms, we can choose a path, or we can choose to not take a path, but there’s a third option as well: we can let chance or the actions of others choose a path for us. When we experience pain, injury and serious disease, these tend to eliminate all but the most basic and primal mental processes. Thoughts of higher dimensions and quantum reality (be they conscious thoughts or the subconscious processes we’ve imagined in this book) vanish when our attention focuses down to our body’s most animalistic desire for trying to find a way to get away from intense pain. We become like the fruit fly, whose role as a quantum observer is limited by its inability to imagine anything but the most simple desires for continuance.

Likewise, depression and illness will tend to close our minds to the possibilities for change that might be still available to us, just when that knowledge might be the most beneficial...

I sum it up in Boredom and Consciousness Part Two: "Are you bored? Depressed? Ill? Then of course you will tend to make different choices than if you were excited/happy/healthy. There's nothing unscientific about simple statements like these."

My song "Thankful" is about taking a moment each day to be grateful for the unlikely and amazing world we find ourselves to be in: and giving thanks is another one of those really powerful ways of changing your interface with reality.


A direct link to the above video is at http://revver.com/video/661217/thankful/

Enjoy the journey. And thank you!

Rob Bryanton

Coming up next: Anime, Gaming, and Cusps

Crossing Your Arms to Change Your Trajectory

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr5BKZPnHbc

There's a news story circulating in the last couple of days about a new study that indicates that people who fold their arms will, without even being aware of it, increase their perseverance and activate their unconscious desires to succeed. The researchers gave random selections of university students a set of problems, some of which were unsolvable. Before the study began, some of the students were instructed to sit with their arms folded, and researchers were surprised to see a strong correlation between this body stance and the number of people who kept trying to solve the unsolvable puzzles. The results of this study were published in the most recent issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

It's so simple: attitude affects outcome. As physical creatures, our physicality affects our interface with reality, our attitude. This is why simple techniques such as breathing exercises, meditations, guided visualization, regular physical activity, and even changes to physical stance like folding your arms can so easily affect a person's trajectory as they twist and turn in the fifth dimension. Here's a quote from chapter nine of my book:

Have you ever met someone who claimed they had been too busy to get a cold, so they continued working and stayed healthy? Perhaps that person also mentioned that after a month or two they took a break and suddenly the cold sent them to bed. What is the mechanism that could allow a body to avoid or at least stave off a virus for so long, while others nearby are immediately struck down with the same virus? Could this be an example of people finding a way to collapse a different quantum reality simply through their desire to do so?

Back in my blog entry Information Equals Reality, I worked through a simple visualization technique that involved nothing more complicated than sitting up straighter in your chair:

We can ... move ourselves to different trajectories within our probability space. Try this one: imagine a warm ball of energy starting at the base of your spine, gradually working its way up your back, making you sit up straighter, creating a radiant glow out through your shoulders and the top of your head that opens your eyes wider and makes you feel more alert. Do you feel it? It really is that simple to change your energy, because it's all just information. Think about this: just standing up straighter, you might say, improves your body mass index (my son the med student will say "not really", but he's the one who said this to me as a joke, and I still think it's a useful idea)!

My song Turquoise and White is also about using attitude and physicality to change our trajectory. In a blog entry about that song, I say this:

Why should meditation cause things to change about our physical reality? Why should ritualized physical activities like Tai Chi cause people to think more clearly, become more "centered"? Why should changing our physical stance, or breathing more deeply, or even just making a conscious effort to smile more be able to change so much about the mind? These ideas are all part of the larger concepts we've been exploring here: what does it mean to be a quantum observer, occupying a physical body, navigating through the information that is our reality?

In my last blog, I talked about the idea of us as flatlanders in the fifth dimension, unable to see the whole picture because there is no way for us to be lifted above our fifth dimensional plane to see the whole picture of state space for our universe. But just because we can't see the extra dimensions doesn't mean that we can't use simple tricks that affect our physicality and our mental attitude to harvest the potentials that exist within the information that becomes our reality: and that's a powerful idea. But it's also a double-edged sword, because depression, disease, and other negative loops can affect our fifth-dimensional trajectory just as easily. Next blog: Everyone Has a Story.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Some related followup entries:
Changing Your Genes
Changing Your Genes Part 2
The Placebo Effect
Magnets and Souls
Crossed Wires in the Brain
David Jay Brown and Psychedelics

Other entries about how attitude affects outcome:
Song 3 of 26 - Burn the Candle Brightly
Boredom and Consciousness Part Two
Everything Fits Together in the Zero at the End
Waveforms in the Ten Dimensions
Remembering the Future

Other entries about how physicality affects our fifth dimensional trajectory:
Music and the Dance of Creativity
Connections
Constructive Interference
Living In the Fifth Dimension
Seeing Eye to Eye

Flatlanders on a Line

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZJ4ZsogUg


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nAS2trDuck

I see that "Flatland: The Movie" is now available on DVD. This animated short is based on Edwin A. Abbott's 1884 book "Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions". Abbott's Flatlander concept is one of the starting points for my project, and calling the 2D "one-eyed Jack" creature in the tenth dimension animation a Flatlander was a deliberate tribute to Abbott's work. Let's talk about how the Flatlander idea is so powerful in the way of visualizing reality we're playing with here.

Invisible Motions
Imagine a Flatlander travelling on a line that is twisting and turning in the dimensions above. A mobius strip provides us with an easy way to visualize that, but no matter what higher dimensional shape the line is travelling through, that higher dimensional motion will be invisible to the Flatlander, who will only continue to feel like he is travelling on a line within his 2D plane.

Traditionally, the Flatlander imagery is used to help people imagine the fourth spatial dimension: "here's what 3D would be like for a 2D creature, does this help you imagine what 4D could be like for we 3D creatures?".

Realizing that our reality comes from the fifth dimension, though, shows how the Flatlander analogy is even more apt. Our reality comes from a fifth dimensional probability space: but as powerful as our set of choices from moment to moment might be, there are still parts of our reality that are no longer available to us because of what has come before, and what we are headed towards.

Waking Up
In Abbott's book, the startling moment of awakening for the 2D Flatlander is when he is lifted off of his 2D plane, and from the third dimension is able to see everything about his world at once, all of the things that were invisible to him from his limited 2D perspective.

Let's take this analogy out to the idea that time is a direction, and that our reality is twisting and turning through the fifth dimension's available choices at both the quantum and macro level. If, like the Flatlander, we could lift off of the fifth dimension, and view our spacetime tree from the sixth dimension, it would be like someone who had been travelling through a labyrinth being handed a large balloon that lifted them above the walls of choice, chance, and circumstance that they had been travelling through. From the sixth dimension they would be able to see how Everything Fits Together: all the good and bad choices, all the random circumstances and deliberate actions that had contributed to their current "now" being one way and impossible to be some other ways, would be clearly visible from the landscape of the sixth dimension.

Last blog, we talked about the fifth dimension as a logical structure, formed by underlying patterns. Like the Flatlander, we are left to imagine and theorize about those patterns: because we can never actually lift ourselves into the extra dimensions to see what we, as creatures constrained by a 3D and 7D brane, in a 4D spacetime being constantly created one planck length after another in the fifth dimension, might really look like from the extra dimensions (part of a Calabi-Yau manifold, perhaps?).

Taking Action
But we should always keep in mind that Abbott's powerful visualization of the Flatlander was intended not just as an intellectual pursuit, but as social comment as well: so, by realizing what decisions have been made, and what back-room deals have been struck, to make some realities inaccessible from our current position in the fifth dimension, we can all become more politically aware, and conscious of what good choices remain available.



Enjoy the journey,

Rob

Next: Crossing Your Arms to Change Your Trajectory

The Fifth Dimension Isn't Magic

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bk5KCEt17M

Last blog we talked about the bush-like branching structure of possible "you"s that exist within the wave function of possible outcomes for any person at any particular moment, and this was a continuation of ideas from my Urban Garden Magazine article, "The Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea".

"... if we could "see" the wave function of a person, it would look remarkably like the person himself. However the wave function also gently seeps out into space, meaning that there is a small probability that the person can be found on the moon. (In fact, the person's wave function actually spreads out throughout the universe.) "
- Theoretical Physicist Michio Kaku, from his book "Parallel Worlds", P. 152

"After more than seven decades, no one understands how or even whether the collapse of a probability wave really happens. Over the years, the assumption that the probability waves collapse has proven itself a powerful link between the probabilities that quantum theory predicts and the definite outcomes that experiments reveal. But it's an assumption fraught with conundrums. For one thing, the collapse does not emerge from the mathematics of quantum theory; it has to be put in by hand, and there is no agreed-upon or experimentally justified way to do this. For another, how is it possible that by finding an electron in your detector in New York City, you cause the electron's probability wave in the Andromeda galaxy to drop to zero instantaneously?"
- Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene, from his book "The Fabric of the Cosmos", P. 119

Back at the end of March, the cover story on New Scientist magazine was "The (Un)certainty Principle: Quantum reality isn't random, it just looks that way" (they have scribbled out the "Un" on Uncertainty to make their point). In my blog entry Hidden Variables and the Seventh Dimension I quoted some excerpts from that article.

State Space
In books by the experts such as Kaku and Greene describing the idiosyncrasies of the quantum world, one point often made is that because quantum mechanics says there is a certain amount of chance involved in our reality, it's impossible to rule out the possibility of any one of us popping out of our current location and suddenly appearing on the moon (or wherever). Such fanciful ideas are usually accompanied by a note saying the likelihood of this happening is so small that it would take longer than the life of the universe for such a thing to occur, but it's still a possibility that can't be ruled out entirely. The unlikely possibilities these experts are talking about come from State Space, or the set of all possible states for our (or any other) specific universe, and in my way of visualizing the dimensions, our universe's set of all possible states is the entirety of the sixth dimension, or a point in the seventh.

Probability Space
What we're talking about here, then, is the difference between probabilities and impossibilities. Imagining the Tenth Dimension is a visualization tool which gives people a way to see how our reality is constructed: a way to conceive of the fabric of the cosmos, which by its inherent randomness has created pockets of order and disorder. From those patterns of order, we can see how the underlying information that becomes reality might be organized into a layered hierarchy, a way of stacking one dimension upon another that has its own beautiful internal logic. Does that mean what we're thinking about here is more like a "filing system"? Sure, if that's the way you prefer to think about it. And as with any other set of information, there are many other ways to represent and catalog this data that becomes our universe (a concept from digital physics), each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

No Dice
Einstein was famously unhappy with the implications of randomness within quantum mechanics: "God does not play dice" is one of his well-known quotes. I believe that our universe is not random, it's probabilistic, and this is an important distinction. Time is a direction, not a dimension. Our fourth dimensional line of time is being selected one planck length at a time from from a fifth dimensional probability space, and the fifth dimension is where Kaluza proved and Einstein agreed our reality comes. This means that each of us is observing our own version of the wave function of the universe, and that our universe is part of the wave function of all possible universes existing within the ominiverse.

Still, it should be clear that saying "each of us is observing our own version of the universe" is not the same as saying that we can use the power of our minds, or The Secret, or our What the Bleep Rabbit Hole to change absolutely anything about our observed universe. There are only certain possibilities that exist within our current fifth dimensional probability space, and there are also things that will remain on the "you can't get there from here" list of possible outcomes for each of us. That will continue to be the case until some technology or new development allows us to observe our universe from the sixth rather than the fifth dimension.

Even though the fifth dimension is where quantum entanglement (the "spooky action at a distance" that Einstein also disliked), and other seemingly mysterious underlying connections in our daily lives come from, the fifth dimension isn't magic. It has a logic and a structure to it that explains where the world each of us witnesses comes from: and within the bush-like branching structure of possible future selves, there is still an awesome amount of hope offered to each of us by this way of visualizing reality.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Your Fifth-Dimensional Self

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG651x1xUz4

Quotes from a couple of emails received in the last few days:

Your book opened a lot of "thinking" doors for me. It really expanded my horizons... - David Levy, Florida, USA

When I stumbled (is there really such a thing?) across it via the internet I had a sensation tantamount to a quelling of unease and an allaying of confusion. After devouring the book I have had a feeling of "belonging" in the scheme of things. - Richard Ruff, McMahons Creek, Australia

And a quote from a new review of the book at Amazon.com:

This book is excellent for a reader looking to expand their horizon on something more than what is in front of them. It gives you an opportunity to think of all the possibilities you have in life. - C. Leonard

Just a few blogs ago we talked about the "Flipbook Universe" analogy. While digital physics shows how that imagery works for the really big picture of how one universe comes to be selected from out of the omniverse of all possible multiverses, it also works at a very personal level.

Your Fifth-Dimensional Self
Time is a direction in the fourth spatial dimension, a line that is knit together by choosing one possible future out of the probabilities available from instant to instant in the fifth dimension. This means that there is already a version of you in the fifth dimension that from this moment forward has made the best of every bad situation, has made every choice they know in their hearts is the right one to make, and has lived the longest and happiest version of their life.

This also means that there is already a version of you in the fifth dimension that from this moment forward has made stupid decision after stupid decision, has destroyed their future, or has suffered from bad luck and the hurtful actions of others, and as a result has died very soon from now. That version of you, by virtue of hardly lasting at all, is the version which has almost no connection to the bush-like branching structure of future selves that we're imagining here: in other words, unless your death is truly imminent and unavoidable, in the fifth dimension that version is only a tiny subset of your possible future selves from this moment forward.

Let's talk about that first version of you some more. From the moment you were conceived, there was already that one happiest, longest-living version of you, extending out in a specific spime, or as we say in the tenth dimension animation, a specific "long undulating snake" representing a particular version of your timeline viewed from the fourth dimension. That idealized target will change over the course of a person's life, and all but the purest-living and luckiest of us will already have a best-available-future-path that is not as long-lived as the one that was available back when our life started: this is not the point of our discussion. Rather, the point is that there is always a future path available from any person's "now" that will represent the optimum set of choices they could possibly make from this moment onwards.

Many Worlds, Many "You"s
In the Imagining the Tenth Dimension project, we have spent a great deal of time talking about Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation, spacetime trees and quantum probability spaces, but we have also talked about the "beautiful blossoming potential of a newborn child" and the "angels of possibility that swirl around a toddler's head" (phrases from my book): all of these discussions keep taking us back to the idea that genes, memes, and spimes are all just patterns in spacetime, and shadows of higher dimensional forms.

Meditation
In a previous blog entry about my song "Turquoise and White", we talked about the possibility that meditation allows people to connect across time and space to that optimized version of themselves. EEG studies of persons in a meditative state show suppressed activity in the parietal lobe, the part of the brain that people use to anchor themselves in time and space: this interesting connection is also discussed in previous blog entries and in my book.

How Much Control Do We Have?
Does this idea of a constantly adjusting "best" version of each of us for our available future paths offer hope to someone trapped in addiction or other negative behavior loops? Of course it does. Does this mean a starving child in Africa will become rich and powerful if only they make the right decisions? Sadly, in terms of probability, the answer is most likely to be "no", but we all are attracted to the occasional story of someone who has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds: and that's true whether we're talking about achievements through hard work and determination, or lucky lottery winners, or the indomitable spirit of a person who has made the best of a difficult situation.

As you create your one fourth-dimensional path, twisting and turning one planck length at a time in the probability space of the fifth dimension, there is a best possible you that you could be headed towards right now.

How's it going?

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Other blogs that relate to this:
Infinity and Impulse Control
Your Sixth-Dimensional Self
Tenth Dimension Polls Archive 7
Hypercubes and Plato's Cave
Song 24 of 26 - See No Future
Song 15 of 26 - What Was Done Today
Song 10 of 26 - Addictive Personality