Thread: The Holographic universe

The Holographic Principle is not really a "theory". It's certainly not a scientific theory in the sense that there is zero experimental confirmation of it as far as I know. It was first advanced by Gerard T'hooft and is also championed by Leonard Susskind. It's a "stringy" sort of idea and is widely expected to end up being one of the postulates of "M-Theory".

The idea is that all the information about a physical system can be viewed as living on a horizon surrounding it. It stems from the work of Bekenstein and Hawking showing that the information content of a black hole should be proportional to its surface area and not its volume.

Contrast this with the notion that Quantum physics is really about physical information and how it flows from one part of the universe (the system under consideration) to the other (the observer).

On the whole, and from my limited knowledge, I like it very much. On the other hand, it's just physics. It's a physical principle and there's no reason to read anything more into it than that as so many people seem want to do.

You provided nothing of relevance.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

The Holographic Principle is not really a "theory". It's certainly not a scientific theory in the sense that there is zero experimental confirmation of it as far as I know. It was first advanced by Gerard T'hooft and is also championed by Leonard Susskind. It's a "stringy" sort of idea and is widely expected to end up being one of the postulates of "M-Theory".

The idea is that all the information about a physical system can be viewed as living on a horizon surrounding it. It stems from the work of Bekenstein and Hawking showing that the information content of a black hole should be proportional to it's surface area and not it's volume.

Contrast this with the notion that Quantum physics is really about physical information and how it flows from one part of the universe (the system under consideration) to the other (the observer).

On the whole, and from my limited knowledge, I like it very much. On the other hand, it's just physics. It's a physical principle and there's no reason to read anything more into it than that as so many people seem want to do.

Sounds eerily like the divergence theorem?

And I second what you said about people reading into (and way beyond) it. I guess it's because it has a cool name, kinda how like people try to use the theories of relativity to support moral relativism or some nonsense. It's just a bunch of math... it makes no metaphysical difference if the information of the universe is 3D or 2D or whatever; and we have known for centuries that reality is in many ways not ostensibly how we see it, yet for some reason people jump on this theory as if it supports some novel idea about the universe being an illusion or something.

The three dimensional universe may be an illusion. As you point out, there's no doubt that the world as we percieve it is an illusion. But the holographic principle (as near as I know) just says that reality is "somewhere else".

For all we know, it's nothing but our own neural circuitry that allows us to even percieve 3 dimensions. That doesn't make the universe any less real.

Originally Posted by Xei

And I second what you said about people reading into (and way beyond) it. I guess it's because it has a cool name, kinda how like people try to use the theories of relativity to support moral relativism or some nonsense.

Or that Quantum Physics shows that we can alter reality with our mind (looking at you OP).

I'm glad that you guys actually understand the full concept of the holographic universe idea, and not just one specific version of it.
I feel strongly towards the idea.
It seems to me, based off of the evidence that we see, that as it turns out, the idea that we would be able to perceive the universe exactly as it truly is, using only these few senses that we have evolved on this planet, is much less likely than the possibility that we perceive only what we need to in order to survive. We evolved those senses that helped us survive in the explicate world that we perceive, and it is likely, I think, that this perception is but a representation of what is truly around us.

I have considered the possibility that all actions in the universe are really just representions, interpretations, or reactions of events that could be taking place on a microscopic level, on a super...scopic (??shrug) level, or on extradimensional planes, or some other possibility. I also believe that most likely BOTH (or all) realities are equally valid, and exist simutaneously as merely different perspectives of the same reality.
This is why I continually ask people, "Is there an infinite number of atoms, or is there an infinite number of ways to view the same atom?"

In conclusion, I think the secret of the universe is pizza.

Originally Posted by sloth

I'm glad that you guys actually understand the full concept of the holographic universe idea, and not just one specific version of it.
I feel strongly towards the idea.
It seems to me, based off of the evidence that we see, that as it turns out, the idea that we would be able to perceive the universe exactly as it truly is, using only these few senses that we have evolved on this planet, is much less likely than the possibility that we perceive only what we need to in order to survive. We evolved those senses that helped us survive in the explicate world that we perceive, and it is likely, I think, that this perception is but a representation of what is truly around us.

It's not likely. It's a fact. Think IR, UV, X-ray etc.

Originally Posted by sloth

I have considered the possibility that all actions in the universe are really just representions, interpretations, or reactions of events that could be taking place on a microscopic level, on a super...scopic (??shrug) level, or on extradimensional planes, or some other possibility. I also believe that most likely BOTH (or all) realities are equally valid, and exist simutaneously as merely different perspectives of the same reality.
This is why I continually ask people, "Is there an infinite number of atoms, or is there an infinite number of ways to view the same atom?"

In conclusion, I think the secret of the universe is pizza.

Please explain.

Originally Posted by sloth

I'm glad that you guys actually understand the full concept of the holographic universe idea, and not just one specific version of it.
I feel strongly towards the idea.
It seems to me, based off of the evidence that we see, that as it turns out, the idea that we would be able to perceive the universe exactly as it truly is, using only these few senses that we have evolved on this planet, is much less likely than the possibility that we perceive only what we need to in order to survive. We evolved those senses that helped us survive in the explicate world that we perceive, and it is likely, I think, that this perception is but a representation of what is truly around us.

Is it me or you made the exact conflation my post was about? :\

The holographic principle is a hypothesis of physics. It is not the philosophical idea that reality is not as humans perceive it. When you say you understand 'the full concept of the holographic universe and not specific versions', what you've actually done is confused the holographic principle with an epistemological theory, because of its name; as if you can only fully study beech trees by having a picnic by the sea.

Science established long ago that reality is not as we perceive it. A century ago, for example, we started to learn that solid objects are actually clouds of specks taking up virtually no space at all.

Originally Posted by Xei

Is it me or you made the exact conflation my post was about? :\

The holographic principle is a hypothesis of physics. It is not the philosophical idea that reality is not as humans perceive it. When you say you understand 'the full concept of the holographic universe and not specific versions', what you've actually done is confused the holographic principle with an epistemological theory, because of its name; as if you can only fully study beech trees by having a picnic by the sea.

Science established long ago that reality is not as we perceive it. A century ago, for example, we started to learn that solid objects are actually clouds of specks taking up virtually no space at all.

I did not state that the holographic universe principle was the philosophical idea that reality is not as humans perceive it. I can see how this could be taken from my post, though. I referenced this idea, because I think it is important to the subject, even if it is not in by itself, the whole of the subject.
Sorry for the confusion.

Pizza bless you.

i had a non lucid dream where a character i was chatting with on an arcade game like computer told me that :"this is not reality it is only a copy of the real one " and i was thinking of the holographic theory of existance
and i believe in that theory because god created the universe so as he could have wel created a well establised illusion

I was under the impression that the Cartesian theater idea of the mind was as outdated as the rest of his ideas. The idea that perception is representation seems self-evident but consider the idea that if reality is represented in your mind then what is representing the representation?

"The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one." -Erwin Schrodinger

Originally Posted by wana

because god created the universe

mr-bill-ohh-nooo-magnet-c11751410jpeg.jpg

Originally Posted by stormcrow

I was under the impression that the Cartesian theater idea of the mind was as outdated as the rest of his ideas. The idea that perception is representation seems self-evident but consider the idea that if reality is represented in your mind then what is representing the representation?

IT is.

Originally Posted by tommo

Please explain.

I'm sorry. Explain what part, tom?
The part about pizza? ...orr...

Originally Posted by sloth

IT is.

I will respond to your response with an equally vague response: Is there a little man in your head? (and a little man in his head?)

Originally Posted by stormcrow

I was under the impression that the Cartesian theater idea of the mind was as outdated as the rest of his ideas. The idea that perception is representation seems self-evident but consider the idea that if reality is represented in your mind then what is representing the representation?

"The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one." -Erwin Schrodinger

I think he's saying that the universe and brain are one. The brain is just perceiving certain aspects of the universe.
If you try to go further than that, it is a never ending "so what is....". As sloth said, and then you basically responded with.
There is no need to ask "What is representing the representation?".

Explain -

I have considered the possibility that all actions in the universe are really just representions, interpretations, or reactions of events that could be taking place on a microscopic level, on a super...scopic (??shrug) level, or on extradimensional planes, or some other possibility. I also believe that most likely BOTH (or all) realities are equally valid, and exist simutaneously as merely different perspectives of the same reality.
This is why I continually ask people, "Is there an infinite number of atoms, or is there an infinite number of ways to view the same atom?"

All that shiz

Imagine pulling your left eye out of it's socket (assuming the optic nerve was still attached) and holding it directly in front of your right eye. What would you see?

Originally Posted by Seroquel

Imagine pulling your left eye out of it's socket (assuming the optic nerve was still attached) and holding it directly in front of your right eye. What would you see?

Hehe I used to imagine this sort of thing when I was a kid.

Don't get the relevance to the thread though really. You would see your right and left eye. It would just be really trippy seeing it lol

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

The Holographic Principle is not really a "theory". It's certainly not a scientific theory in the sense that there is zero experimental confirmation of it as far as I know. It was first advanced by Gerard T'hooft and is also championed by Leonard Susskind. It's a "stringy" sort of idea and is widely expected to end up being one of the postulates of "M-Theory".

The idea is that all the information about a physical system can be viewed as living on a horizon surrounding it. It stems from the work of Bekenstein and Hawking showing that the information content of a black hole should be proportional to its surface area and not its volume.

Uhm, not really..? The holographic theory usually refers to the holonomic brain theory that was originated by Karl Pribram and developed by him and David Bohm.

edit: oh wait, gotta read something

Ok, I see. At least I was thinking about the stuff from Pribram and Bohm.

Originally Posted by dajo

Uhm, not really..? The holographic theory usually refers to the holonomic brain theory that was originated by Karl Pribram and developed by him and David Bohm.

edit: oh wait, gotta read something

Ok, I see. At least I was thinking about the stuff from Pribram and Bohm.

Pribram and Bohm came up with the Holographic universe theory (which is not a theory as has been mentioned before) which says the universe is a hologram and uses this to "explain" paranormal anomalies....
The holographic principle is similar but a is distinct because it attempts to explain physical phenonema like the black hole information paradox and other holes in string theory. Neither theories have much evidence.

I'm really not sure how to best describe it, due to two factors: You must think, sort of, extradimensionally. Also, I could not tell you the exact nature of the beast. I don't believe that is possible.
The best I could do would be to deliver analogies, though even those would be three dimensional and obscure.
When you look at a cathode ray tube television, you are seeing an image of an event. This image is not regulated or controlled at the surface level that we see. The image itself is generated at the back of the television, and is much smaller than what you see. It is a representation, or result of events taking place in the back of the television. To go even further, it is also a representation of events that occured at another place and time.
A holographic film creates a three dimensional image of an object, but the TRUE image is two dimensional, and is made from interference patterns. You are seeing a representation of an image that is controlled by process that, in our perception, has little resemblance.
Your Portal 2 game has portals and bots and GLaDos, but that isn't what is really going on. Electrical impulses represent ones and zeroes which represent characters which represent instructions for the machine to follow.

I believe it is quite possible that our perception of the universe is the representation of processes that are completely, at least in our perception, unresembling that which we do see.
This raises the question: What is the TRUE reality? The television screen, or the bulb? The hologram, or the holographic film? The video game or the electrical impulses? The universe the way we see it, or something else?
I believe BOTH are equally valid. There is no one true, definite, and ultimate universal perspective that we know of. If there was, there would be no law of relativity.

Is our perception of the SIZE of the universe correct? Is the universe truly "large"? Who is to say? Humans? Humans are kind of bias in that area, seeing as how we are a particular size. Are atoms small? Who can decide upon such a truth?

So, it seems conceivable (albeit unsupported and pretty far out, but a good example of what I am saying) that the atom (or something... I use atom because it is something we are aware of, and it's easy to say) IS the universe, existing in an infinite number of different ways, having an infinite number of different ways in which it represents itself. As things happen within the atom, that are too small for us to truly see, and as things change within the atom, it could directly impact, reflect, control, or BE ONE AND THE SAME with those changes and events that occur in the universe.
Man.. This is really hard to verbalize.
As atoms connect with one another, as does the universe connect with other universes, realities, or dimensions.
Again, I only use the WORD atom, because it is an easily identifiable word, and it is ONE of the basic building blocks of existence. I'm not saying that it necessarily HAS to be an atom. It could be a quark, since atoms are made of quarks, or it could be the plank scale itself, or it could be a dildo. I have even considered the possibility that IT is EVERYTHING. Every object could be a representation of the universe; Every atom; Every thought; Every song; Every dildo. Perhaps love is the force that holds all of this together.

So you can see how it is possible that it all boils down to pizza. Pizza most certainly is the secret of our existence.

*edit (Lol I didnt' mean to write an essay on this, I just love the topic)

I thought that the title of this thread was refering to the book "The Holographic Universe", in which case I just read it a few weeks ago. Like someone else said, this book is about the theory created by Pribram and Bohm (Holonomic Brain Theory) and not the black hole entropy theory created by Susskin.

I VERY HIGHLY recommend the book, it uses the properties of holograms to explain quantum mechanics as well as nearly every type of psychic phenomenon known. The theory is quite a workout for the imagination. In a nutshell it states that reality is generated holographically by means of interference patterns and the conscious mind is not generated by the body but is a illusion created by consciousness (as a lucid dreamer this makes a lot of sense) that resides in the "implicate order". "Implicate order" is what Bohm refers to as the place where everything in reality originates and gets "projected" down from. A awesome example he used was to imagine two cameras in different positions watching a fish in a aquarium. If you watch the video from the cameras a while you will realize that while separate the two images directly effect each other (instantaneously). You may guess that FTL communication is going on between the two but what is really happening is that they are the same thing, being projected two different ways. He says the same thing happens with Quantum Entanglement.

The other thing that I can personally attest to in the book is synchronicities, whenever something happens that seems extraordinarily unlikely but happens anyway. For example, whenever you think about someone for no apparent reason and then that person calls a few minutes later.

A great example of this actually happened to me today. My mom and niece were going to Walmart to get some groceries and some new pillows. I NEVER go to Walmart because I disagree with their monopoly and all that- but I decided to go and pick out a pillow that would be comfortable. This is the first time i've gone to Wal-Mart all summer. My mom had been asking about getting some tomatoes from a friends mom and we walked right past her in the Walmart. I hadn't got a job this summer and she said that she needed help on her farm. So after thinking about her for a few days, there she was out of nowhere and the situation landed me a job.

An example from the book about this said that imagine you have a dream about having dinner with your boss and his wife. You ask the waiter what the special is and he says something particularly nasty. You don't understand but after you wake up you see that "Oh, my feelings about my boss manifested through a dream symbol without me knowing how because it was all in my brain." Likewise, things we think or believe often manifest in waking life because locality is actually an illusion, it is all contained in a higher dimensional construct. (I think it is fitting to mention here that the structure of neurons in the brain and superclusters of galaxies are exactlly the same).

But, none of this has been experimentally proven. Science has a rigid perspective on what it wants to find versus what is apparent through experimentation. The war between spirtuality and science is in full swing and I think something big is going to happen soon.
Recently, a gravitational wave detector in Germany picked up a unexpected "grainy" background noise that couldn't be explained. Some physists believe it actually found proof of The Holographic Theory. I sure hope so!

link to article:
Holographic Universe: Discovery Could Herald New Era In Fundamental Physics

I'm sorry. You and Dajo are both confused. The thread was posted in the

Science & Mathematics

forum. Hence it must be talking about the scientific work of 't Hooft and Susskind and not the fringe, (as of yet) psuedo-science of Bohm and Pribram.

If OP had the latter in mind, then this should probably be moved to SB or "Inner Sanctum".

Is the Universe a Holographic Reality? - Global One TV

I found this article and it put the topic in a good light for me.

One thing this article includes is how thinking of reality as a hologram may have practical implications. It's all well and good to say 'yeah, this could be the way reality is but it it doesn't really matter'. A lot of it is speculative, but I found it to be very interesting and well-reasoned. It actually sounds a lot like Sloth's "one atom" example... that every aspect of the universe is inherent in every particle:

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly. Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

This part is cool:

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

Could you imagine if we could watch the past without affecting it? Here's a question. If we could interact with the "superholographic level", would trifles such as, oh let's say perfecting the historical record, be as trivial as finding out what really happened between your wife and the milkman? I tend to think that perfecting the pre-historical record would make fixing the historical record seem trivial. But god-like powers would make fixing the pre-historical record seem trivial, huh?

One more area that the article gets into is experience under LSD. I've always found it interesting how accounts of hallucinogenic drug users line up about their perception that all life is interconnected. This plays right into the holographic model, albeit very speculatively. There is also a suggestion of "reality by consensus" that I thought was amusing.

Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not there" because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

I suspect the OP is talking about the "holographic universe" put forward by Michael Talbot based on his interpretation of Bohm and Pribram (I'm mainly familiar with it from Itzhak Bentov's Stalking the Wild Pendulum, recommended for anyone with an interest in the subject), and popularized in the '70s Transcendental Meditation movement. It's really an extended metaphor borrowing language and imagery from science, a (useful, I think) way of thinking about time and space, not a description of physical properties of time and space. It probably should have been placed in the main ED forum and the OP probably should have been more specific.

I'd say go ahead and explore it if it resonates with you, but don't get too hung up on it.

Originally Posted by IndieAnthias

This part is cool:

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

Could you imagine if we could watch the past without affecting it? Here's a question. If we could interact with the "superholographic level", would trifles such as, oh let's say perfecting the historical record, be as trivial as finding out what really happened between your wife and the milkman? I tend to think that perfecting the pre-historical record would make fixing the historical record seem trivial. But god-like powers would make fixing the pre-historical record seem trivial, huh?

You might enjoy Orson Scott Card's novel Pastwatch (easily his best work, IMO).

My own take on this notion of drawing specific, historical information out of the a-temporal (aka eternal) 'level' or 'side' of our existence is that it's an attempt to get a dissected frog to catch flies. To consider the holographic universe in any depth, one must set aside the notion that happening (undergoing the formality of actually occurring in our linear experience of the universe) has some privileged status. The unchanging, a-temporal totality of being includes not only all happenings, but all possibilities. The appearance of specific events taking place in an ordered chain of causality is strictly a manifestation of consciousness. So, even if we could mine eternity for detailed information, even first-hand vision of a past, it wouldn't necessarily be our past (what most of us ordinarily consider the past).

Bentov represents holographic time graphically as a torus (donut, for the geometrically challenged) centered on a singularity:

The events of our history (and future) trace a single line emerging up and out from the singularity, falling back, and eventually returning into the singularity. The whole torus is always there, and in some sense the totality is accessible from any point or area of the surface, but the illusion of the present, of separate forms and unfolding events, is just the reflection from one small facet of the always present, unchanging totality.

Yeah, not exactly Sci/Math material Still, I wouldn't say it's quite Inner Sanctum fodder, either, until you bring in the stuff about achieving a resonant frequency with the interference pattern of the universe through Transcendental Meditation

Originally Posted by WhatsReal

I have been learning alot about this topic and really just wanted to get a thumbs up or down depending on your beliefs of this being true or not just to see what most of you think.

I am finding myself really starting to believe this is actually what's going on. It seems crazy to most of the people I talk to but I'm finding it to be the first theory I can actually say yes to. Quantum physics and the double slit has already shown us that we are manipulating our reality simply by observing it. This can only mean we are not truly getting the full scope of reality. We are seeing an edited version of the "world" around us. Is all this just an illusion?

Please give me some feedback of your thoughts regarding quantum machanics or the holographic universe.

Thanx

I don't think you know what you're talking about. I would bet every penny to my name that if they called the hypothesis the "Trout Principle", your "understanding" of it would be completely different. Because you probably know absolutely nothing beyond the name they gave it.