Thread: If matter cant be created or destroyed, where did all this stuff come from?

At this point I can't wrap my head around the concept enough to understand how time or anything else would be affected really. If I think of a computer showing a quicktime movie from info stored on its hard drive then that brings up the idea of pausing and chapter advancing - but since this would be a natural process I doubt it would include such options. As for what kind of mechanism might 'project' everything, the only thing drifting into my head right now is light passing through a prism or a water drop and projecting a spectrum. But I know that's a meaningless thought - I'm a complete noob with no understanding of the theory. After reading about it more thoroughly I might be able to comprehend it a bit better.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

At this point I can't wrap my head around the concept enough to understand how time or anything else would be affected really. If I think of a computer showing a quicktime movie from info stored on its hard drive then that brings up the idea of pausing and chapter advancing - but since this would be a natural process I doubt it would include such options. As for what kind of mechanism might 'project' everything, the only thing drifting into my head right now is light passing through a prism or a water drop and projecting a spectrum. But I know that's a meaningless thought - I'm a complete noob with no understanding of the theory. After reading about it more thoroughly I might be able to comprehend it a bit better.

At the most basic level, the theory does not actually suggest that the universe is made of light, or anything that specific. I admit that I am no expert. I only studied a bit on it, to see if anyone else had considered the same idea that I did.
Though I admit that it is not an easy concept to visualize, I am not quite sure what aspect of it confuses you. You state that that which occurs on a computer is a natural process, and it would still be a natural process be in a holographic universe situation. If we lived life within your real player, we may not even notice when you pause our reality, because time doesn't flow for those periods.
The theory, as far as I'm concerned, is by nature very unspecific, as it is possible that we could never be able to measure the specifics of it, somewhat in the same way that we can never truly know what the universe would look like if our brains translated signal input in a completely different manner. If we tasted colors, heard imagery, and tasted sound, this would seem overwhelmingly confusing to you or I, but if we developed this way, as an infant, it is very possible that we would still be highly efficient, and would not consider that anything is "different" at all. We would perceive the universe in a completely different way, but it would still work for us, just the same.

No.. "Time or anything else" would not truly be AFFECTED in any way. Our perception of it would be different.

I'm going to TRY to do a conceptualization, but I really can't think of a good way to do this, so I can guarantee this is going to be bad.
Consider a video game; A very boring video game, in which about once per hour the computer prompts the user for a keystroke. Pressing the A button prints the letter A on his screen. Pressing the B button prints the letter B, and so on (It's like typing). Unbeknownst to the player, this video game is attached to a big tank that is driving around the city. When the user presses button A, the tank fires at position A. When the user presses button B, the tank fires at position B. At the same time, messages are sent back. If position A blows up, it sends response character A. If house B blows up, it sends response character B.
In one reality, there is a tank driving around destroying houses and killing people, but to the player, it seems like some sort of boring typing game. The player never knows the full reality of the situation, or that there even was one, and in fact, that full reality wouldn't make any difference. When the player presses A, A appears on the screen. That's all that matters. The fact that the tank is shooting at things because of this is irrelevant. Not only is it irrelevant, but in a manner of speaking, the player's reality is just as "REAL" as the tank driving around. The player could create entire novels this way.
If we wanted to take it one step even further, we could say that there is this town. In this town there are about a hundred iron mines. The laborers work all day mining iron from these mines. When a site runs out of iron on the surface, they have have to blast mine. For this, they use a big tank. About once per hour the mayor hits a button, and the tank, in response, shoots randomly at one of the 100 mines, which preps that mine, so that mining can continue.

Yeah, that example was just awful, but I've already typed it, and I'm not deleting it now.

Ok, I understand the scenario - it's not that bad really. But what you're explaining isn't the part that confuses me - what I'm wondering about are the actual physical aspects of it: how information can be stored smeared out across the surface of the universe - information in what form? And what type of mechanism would decode that information? I'm also confused about how scientists could have determined any of this. Was it all done mathematically, or based on some type of observations? (Scratch that last one - of course it can't be based on observations of the inside of a black hole or the periphery of the universe - we haven't been able to observe these things and probably never will)

And just as a quick post-script - after thinking about the conundrums of time as Sageous and I have been discussing it, I now completely agree with Xei and others who have said it just depends on your deifinition of reality. Our measurement of time is simply an extension of our measures of the space between coordinate points in the 3 dimensional imaginary grid we use to describe form mathematically (as well as the space between forms). Example - by knowing the distance between my house and the nearest fast food joint and knowing how fast I can expect to drive on the roads between here and there I can extrapolate the time it would take me to drive there. Both the distance and the time are stated in terms of completely arbitraty and imaginary abstractions we invented as measuring tools, but they both also refer to realities that we need to navigate in order to get from here to there effectively. How long it takes for a solid object to move from point A to point B is just as real as the force needed to move it - at least from our material-bound perspective, so effectively every bit as real as a fist to the face. My saying the difference between my viewpoint and Sageous' is semantic is the same as Xei's allegation that it all depends on how you define reality or existence. So I withdraw my assertion that time is definitely real - it's just a word that isn't properly defined and who's apparent meaning suggests things that it really shouldn't.