The holographic universe

As a kid I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Recently I've been watching some of the episodes on time and reality again, and some are really well writen and have stuck with me since the first time I saw them. One of them reminded me of a subject that's tied into a lot of the Buddhist thought I've studied: it's an episode called "Ship in a Bottle," and almost all of it takes place on a holodeck, a large, empty room in which a holographic world is created and people use for recreation.

The basic storyline is that a holographic character is designed to be very advanced and actually gains consciousness and self-awareness. This character gains access to the holodeck controls and creates the entire ship as a holographic program so that he can trick Captain Picard into giving him his authorization which gives him control of the real ship. In the end, Picard and two other crewmates realize what is going on (they have been on the holodeck the whole time), create another holographic representation of the ship, and the holo-character is stored in a chip still under the impression that he was able to cross over to the real world (yeah I know it's complicated in text). The program is set to run indefinitely in the chip.

When Picard tells the others about what happened, he has a great line:
"For all we know, this might just be an elaborate simulation running inside a little device sitting on someone's table."

All but Lt. Barclay leave the room. He says "computer, end program!" but nothing happens.


The point is, it's easy for us to think this world is "real," and we live according to this assumption and thereby limit ourselves and suffer; we are trapped in a web of meaning we have created ourselves. But it is all illusory - the meaning we project exists only conventionally. It's like thinking that a dream is real while it is happening - and don't most people do this? React to things as if they have inherent existence, or are not lucid as we might call it?

Here's a video I just found on the subject:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arch&plindex=1

If anybody knows of a better video on this, please mention it - i just looked for something called "holographic universe" and posted it here for a reference.

The vid is an apologetic for Islam.

Here's the last thread on it:
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...aphic+universe

look at my sig sums its up pretty good

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pj

The vid is an apologetic for Islam.

Here's the last thread on it:
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...aphic+universe

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No way! Haha.
Like I said, I just gave the first decent looking reference. I know there are books about it - maybe those are worth looking into...

This is what the Principia Discordia has to say on the subject,

"With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about- reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids.

A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.

DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE.

The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION.

The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Reality is the original Rorschach."

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4590/readingjp1.jpg
Got bored with the cam, one day, at work. Hahaha.

I definitely recommend picking up that book The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, if you're interested in the subject.

Also, you should look into physicist David Bohm and his theory of the Implicate and Explicate Order (which most of the Holographic Universe concept is based off of). Amazing stuff and (in theory) scientifically sound. His views really make you stop and question a lot, even if you may not completely agree with them.