Brand-spanking new

I like to explore. And what I most enjoy exploring is a new metaphysics. By that, I mean a totally new way of looking at the universe. A completely new way of regarding reality. I'll build it up from basic principles.

Let me do that playfully and half-seriously. I won't try to prove it scientifically (partly because it's only possible to disprove a hypothesis). Instead, I'll complete my construct and only then cast a critical eye upon my creation.

There are three things that I'll use as materials, or maybe tools, for this project.

1. An alternative to Atomic Theory

2. The notion that time does not exist

3. The idea that everything is one

What sort of philosophy would you end up with, and would it even be moral or ethical?

Sliver me timbers!

No theory can ever be proven. All that you can do is submit it to scrutiny and see if it breaks down. If it doesn't, it's worth hanging onto. If it does, you'd then replace it with something better. Now, I'm not saying that Atomic theory is wrong - just that it is incomplete, an approximation. It may need complementation.

Atomic theory originated in ancient Greece/India. It forms the backbone of our physical sciences. It has without doubt led us to manipulate the external world in all sorts of useful ways - employing Physics and Chemistry - but it hasn't helped us to understand ourselves on a deeper level. It hasn't done much to explain our essential nature. It suggests nothing about the meaning of life, for instance.

I'd like to conjure up the Sliver Model to sit alongside the Atomic Model. It has the potential, I suspect, to have a very great impact. Not on Science, necessarily, but on society. In a metaphysical sense. So I invite the reader to test it out and try it on for size.

Since my model isn't the sort of thing that can be constructed and shown in operation (like a hovercraft or helicopter), I’ll start with a range of analogies. I'll then consider my model's implications. And then, hopefully, I’ll meld those implications into a coherent, consistent, and all-encompassing world view.

My aim here is to realize the world from my own point of view. I'll blog about it to refine my ideas (and hang onto them lest one day my thinking grows dim).

Useful analogies

The Sliver Model is a very large concept.  It requires a lot of unpacking. In the next set of posts, I need to sketch it out with a number of useful analogies:

Chop Sliver, Flatland, My Big TOE, Digital gallery, Tic-tac-toe, Chess Plus, Hologram Heaven, 2-D Film-plane, Monkey Novel, The Whole Universe Catalog, Brain Tree, The One-electron Universe, Billiard Balls and Consciousness Clouds. 

That will do for a start. 

Chop sliver

The atomic model is what you get when you chop matter up until you can't go any further. The piece you are left with is defined as an atom. In a nutshell, that's the gist. Yes, it is possible to go further, but the resulting fragments will have different properties, so they are regarded as sub-atomic.

An improved rule is to go down to the smallest piece that still retains the same properties as the original substance. 

Usually, theorists get around that by starting out with a pure element. Therefore, gold gets reduced to atoms of gold, and sulphur (or sulfur) reduces to individual atoms too (even if they are arranged in rings).

But that's cheating, no? 

Because what do you do when you break down crystals (of ions e.g. NaCl), or the diamond form of carbon? What do you do with molecular and organic substances? How do you deal with cells or live organisms? 

If you require the smallest-sized bit to retain the same properties as the original, you may end up with something quite large. It may even need to be as large as the original object, in fact. So how do we cut it up?

Enter the Sliver Model.  

This model addresses that issue. Just as the atomic model does, the sliver model breaks the world down as far as possible. You end up with the smallest-sized piece conceivable, but you use a different blade. 

Think, if you will, in terms of the cross-section of a 3-D object. That's roughly the approach I suggest, except that one works in a different dimension. You see, with the sliver model you slice up the world in terms of time. That's the knife we'll wield to carve our infinitesimal universe.

Flatland

A century ago Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play Edwin Abbot Abbot published Flatland, a "Romance of Many Dimensions". The book in part is a satirical commentary on Victorian culture, but it also comprises an interesting thought experiment.

The book explores how reality might be perceived from the perspective of one, two, or three dimensions. It gives us a fascinating intellectual experience.

Similarly, I anticipate that The Infinitesimal Universe may challenge the consensus view of reality. It may rock that canon as powerfully as the Theory of Relativity rocked the Newtonian world. Therefore, in case the Sliver Model is initially too great a leap to make, it may prepare you to peruse Abbot's Flatland first. 

The book starts out:

FLATLAND
PART 1
THIS WORLD
SECTION 1  Of the Nature of Flatland

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows--only hard with luminous edges--and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them.  On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another.  Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.

Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.

But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.

My Big TOE

During the latter part of his life, Albert Einstein was trying to tie all his work together with a grand, all encompassing framework of physics, or T.O.E. (Theory of Everything). He never managed that. Others too have had a go. Personally, I've attempted it twice.

My first effort, completed in 2012, took the thought-experiment route. I asked myself a series of 'what-if' questions. That led to Will? I Am! - my theo-ry of everythink. However, that endeavor didn't fully satisfy me. I wanted to develop my ideas further.  

It isn't necessary to go through what I wrote then. You may skip it with no negative consequences. But, just as with Flatland, it may help get you into the right frame of mind. It may throw some light upon the evolution of my metaphysics.

So if you'd care to take a little detour . . .

If not, all you need to know is that I came up with a couple of conclusions (which I've already mentioned). I decided to accept that: 

1. All is one
2. Time does not exist

Now, these notions may seem fairly humdrum. People have paid lip service to either or both of them. However, no one - as far I can tell - has fully considered all of their ramifications. Consequently, I have taken it upon myself to fashion a self-consistent and coherent worldview based on those two axioms. They, together with the Sliver Model, I amalgamate into my latest big TOE.

Digital gallery

Before the invention of digital photography, I was already dabbling with pixels (picture elements). In the early 1970s, digitization was largely limited to newspaper illustrations and black and white TV images.

I learned how dots could create a picture (Richard Feyman explains). By manipulating the size of the dots, you can create a grey-shade gradient. The finer the resolution, the more real the image appears.

If you ruled lines across a photograph to create a grid, you could reproduce the image with an array of blanks, full stops, colons, slashes, zeroes, hashtags, and the @ sign using a typewriter. 

In the 1980s, I purchased one of the first computerized photo-editing workstations. I would scan and digitize photographs and produce a kits with the instructions and materials to stitch needlepoint tapestries of family photos. 

To cut a long story short, I also created a range of kits of famous individuals (Sergeant Pepper's Pick of People's Patterns). They were small, just 50 stitches by 70, and used a range of 16 shades of sepia wool. They looked just like their subjects.

It was incredible that anyone at all could 'fit' into my frame. I could create anyone in the world with just a few shades of wool and a bit of canvas. I could reproduce all of the people who ever lived and ever would live with only 3500 stitches! Moreover, I could capture them at every age, and with every facial expression, wearing every type of accessory, and sporting every kind of hairstyle! How the heck was that possible?

Let's do the maths (or as the Americans say, 'math').

In the first position of the grid, you have a choice of 16 shades to stitch. For the second position, there are also 16. So that's 16 times 16, or 256. By extension, the total number of permutation of a 50 by 70 stitch pattern is 16 to the power of 3500.

That is not 16 multiplied by 3500 (which would be 56 thousand), but 16 to the power of 3500. That's a really huge number. Most calculators won't handle the answer. They'll likely spit the word 'Infinity' back at you!

Which is wrong. The number of permutations is certainly large, but no number is infinite.

So imagine that set of tapestries. Most of the images would appear to be nothing at all. They'd just consist of noise, nonsense, a snowy screen. Only an infinitesimally small fraction of images would resemble anything at all. Nevertheless, that small fraction would include every Tom, Dick, and Harry - and every other name - from any angle, at any distance, with any combination of earrings,  tattoos, piercings, and facial expressions.

Crazy!

Now, collect those images and house them in some gigantic gallery floating up in space (because there wouldn't be the room on Earth). Would the stars be far enough apart, I wonder?

Having housed them all - a good day's work - let's depart from the  Douglas Adams Gallery at the centre of the galaxy. As we speed away in our rocket, it appears to diminish in size until it's merely a dot. 

Hold onto that image, as we'll return to it before long.

Tic-tac-toe

Consider the game of noughts and crosses (or tic-tac-toe, if you like).

Two players take turns marking a grid with Xs and Os. The first to get three in a row - vertically, horizontally, or diagonally - wins.

For the first move, there are 9 nine places to choose from. Next, there is a choice of 8. This reduces to 7, 6, and so on until one person wins (or the grid is filled). 

You can easily calculate how many ways there are of populating the 3-by-3 grid with Xs, Os, and empty spaces. Each position has the possibility of being occupied by an X, an O, or a blank, so the total number is 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3, or 3 to the power of 9. 

That works out to be 19,683 permutations. They include every possible legal and illegal arrangement.

The above position could never arise in an actual game. For any particular arrangement to be able to occur, it must have as many (or 1 more) X's than O's (if the first player starts with X). Therefore, the set of arrangements that could occur in a game is a much smaller subset of the total set of 19,683 permutations. 

This sort of thing - game complexity - interests a certain type of person. It need not occupy us now, but for the purposes of future discussion please keep it in mind. 

Fischer Random

Chess is a little more complicated than tic tac toe. Its grid - the chessboard - is larger: 8 by 8, not 3 by 3. But two players still make moves in turn. And each square - each space in the grid - may be occupied by various pieces.

The number of their possible arrangements approaches the limit of what most calculators can manage. Each square could be vacant or contain a black or white king, queen, bishop, knight, rook or pawn. Thirteen to the power of 64 approximates to 2 followed by 71 zeroes. 

Just as for tic-tac-toe, there's only a small subset of possible positions that could conceivably occur. However, other types of chess have been invented. For example,  Fischer Random Chess (also known as Chess960) generates different (yet intersecting) subsets. Differing starting scenarios give rise to 960 different versions of the game. 

But whichever version of chess one elects to play, all possible moves are contained in that aforementioned superset of 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 permutations. It includes every intermediate state of play of every game that has ever been played, every game that will ever be played, and every possible position, legal or not.

Hologram heaven

Let's return to our digital gallery. At the moment, it houses every 50 by 70-stitch, 16-shade image possible. The gallery captures every conceivable face, wearing every expression imaginable. We have the whole family album of humanity, as it were.

Bumping it up a notch, we could increase the number of pixels by upgrading to a better camera. We would be able to take larger pictures, with better definition and resolution. Let's go for a thousand pixels each way, or even a million.

We could also introduce colour! Instead of restricting ourselves to monochrome, we could go full Kodachrome. We'll bring in an RGB (red, green, blue) palette. Of course the amount of information - the number of permutations - would increase exponentially, but that's okay. Our gallery is ginormous.

As a result, we'd capture whole bodies as well as faces. And not only of people posed seated. We could have groups of people interacting, engaging in every conceivable activity - fishing, walking, cavorting - you name it.

You would feature there too - in fact, we would have you doing everything that you could possibly do, with every person or group, at any age, and in any environment. The gallery would contain it all. Every life that you could live. You are in essence just a subset of the universal set. 

Imagine. Housed within the gallery there exist images of you having sex with everyone who ever lived, any combination of them, from every angle, in any position. The mind boggles, does it not?

That’s one hell of a thought experiment!

But wait, we're not done yet.

You see, there's no reason to limit ourselves to two dimensions. At the very least, we ought to extend it to three. Let's digitize in 3-D. In principle, we ought to be able to complete a plan, or pattern, for three-dimensional snapshots. With every (x, y, z) coordinate defined, we'd generate virtual holograms.

The 2-D film-plane

Time for a movie. Another analogy I'd like to introduce comes from the cinema - specifically, the concept of frames.

Camera film - the sort of thing Kodak sold before it went out of business - resembled a strip of hard plastic. It consisted of a series of stills that you could spool onto a reel. If you viewed them at speed, say 24 per second, you created the illusion of motion. Hence: 'moving pictures' or 'movie'.

If you decrease the rate - as for a cheaply-produced cartoon - the illusion suffers; the action becomes jerky. To improve the effect, you increasing the frame rate.

Since a movie is linear, it has a start and an end (with an occasional unintended break when the celluloid melts). But what if the filmstrip had two dimensions? What if it was a film-plane? What if your projector were able to spool or scroll the film sideways or diagonally? 

You would potentially be able to select from a set of alternate stories.

An even better, more up-to-date analogy is Google Earth. Here, you have a gallery of film frames that you get to transverse and follow the roads where they branch and intersect. 

Come to think of it, any virtual reality game would do the trick also.

Monkey novel

In English, there are 26 letters (to which one might add a handful of punctuation marks, capital letters etc.). But for now, let's restrict ourselves to 26. This lets us calculate various things.

There could exist, therefore, at max:

• 26 one-letter 'words'
• 26 by 26 two-letter words
• 26 to the power of 100 one-hundred-letter emails
• And as for books, there would be 26 to the power of a million (assuming 200,000 words averaging five letters per word).

You know the one about the monkeys and the typewriters, don't you? (If not.)The permutations that a bunch of simians would create are mostly going to consist of gibberish. They wouldn't make sense. They deserve to be tossed into the wastepaper basket. 

Nevertheless, just as for our hologram gallery, the set of 26 to the power of 1,000,000 permutations would include every book or piece of text ever written (by every author, not just William Shakespeare). They'd tell every story ever told, every history, every narrative in every alternate universe. Everything that anyone could live, imagine or dream.

The Whole Universe Catalog

We've returned to the Douglas Adams Gallery to take a better look at its contents - those holographic stills, or slivers that we previously considered. Together, they comprise a very large set. The universal set, in fact.  

Each element (elements of a set, not physical elements composed of identical atoms) is not 50 by 70 stitches, not even a million pixels, but the size of the universe. They're chronological atoms, if you like. They are the result of dicing up the universe with the scalpel of time.  

Each sliver has practically no duration. Its 'thickness' is that of one point's worth of time, just as in Euclidian geometry a line is one point across, and a plane is one point thick .

Now try a thought experiment. (It will only take one <ahem> moment.)

Shut your eyes and take a breath. Breathe slowly in and breathe out. At that point where the air ceases moving, imagine the click of a camera shutter. Visualize that moment digitized into a 3-D array of numbers. 

At a quick enough shutter speed - the crest of the shortest wave possible - you’d capture every atom, electron, particle right where it was (ignore the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). Every position of the universe would be filled in—or left empty—with the RGB equivalent of exactly what existed there. 

These are the items contained in the Douglas Adams Gallery. Its inventory has no option but to contain every possible (and impossible) status points of this or any other universe, in the past, in the future, both dreamt and imagined.

Now, storing all that information away unsystematically would not be useful. Therefore, we should explore the relationship between those slivers. What filing system would maximize the gallery's utility? 

So, our next job is to consider how slivers should best be organized. What possible relationships exist between them? Can we classify and arrange them in some sort of Periodic Table?

Grasp the Sliver Model

A model is only a model which is to say that it is only an analogy; it cannot explain or illustrate every aspect of the real thing. It represents certain features only. Wherever it falls short, we modify the model or use another. Thus, different analogies deal with different facets. A group of models enable us to cover greater ground, which is why several are used here.

The Atomic Model is supposed to, but fails to, divide matter up into units that still retain the same properties of the original material - not unless the matter in question consists of a pure element. The Sliver Model succeeds in this respect. Its particles retain the properties of the original.

Slivers are infinitely small yet, paradoxically, they are the same size as the universe. We have no choice but to work on that scale - the reason being everything is one (the first of the two axioms accepted as given). To deal with anything smaller would involve an unnatural simplification. Those smaller pieces would be artifacts. The problem, then, is how to divide the universe into infinitesimally small pieces, without actually dismantling it.

We do that, not in terms of any physical dimension, but in the dimension of time.

Now then, the Atomic Model has brought up what appears to be a conundrum: is matter particulate or is it wavelike? I would suggest that it doesn't matter; both involve the notion of granularity. Whichever way you look at it, he universe is granular. It has an off/on, yes/no aspect. 

I postulate that there is a 'bottom-end' granularity below which one can't get. I suggest that there's a lower limit in terms of time that I wish to incorporate into the Sliver Model.

Think of the sliver as an instantaneous instant. The crest of a wave would be that instant. And the trough of the wave (or possibly its zero-amplitude point) is the interval between instants. Nothing exists there! The universe switches on-and-off continually.

So, take the entire universe. For the sake of convenience, think of it in terms of three dimensions. Take a snapshot of the whole. Improve its resolution until the digital representation is as good as the original; it will therefore contain all of its information. That, essentially, is the starting point of my Sliver Model.

A sliver is an 'existence element'. It is the universe as it exists in its entirety, whole, un-pieced, for the briefest instant possible, an instant so brief that it cannot be said to have any duration.

Take that digital picture. Reduce it to a number - or a GPS matrix of numbers - each position in the matrix corresponding to every possible physical position in the universe, with a numerical value that stands for what you could find there (empty space, a photon, electron, whatever). 

Next, file away that 3-D hologram in the gallery. Do that for every possible permutation, each sliver, of the universe. Now we have something meaty to work with!

Stamp catalog

A catalog is simply an ordered list. For example, a stamp catalog lists postage stamps according to country, date of issue, face value, and the price you pay for a mint or a used copy. This ordering is useful for the philatelist. It helps her to build up a collection and to gain a familiarity with the subject.

For the Sliver Model, a useful catalog would lead to the development of an associated Sliver Theory. First, we need to think how to methodically arrange slivers to facilitate that end.

Just as a 2-dimensional organization of elements - the Periodic Table - has been developed to advance the atomic model, a nicely organized catalogue should prove very useful here. 

Fold here

Set up a Cartesian plane. On a sheet of paper mark two axes that cross at right angles - done. Excellent, except that paper and pencil aren't perfect.

If you successively fold a sheet of paper in half, it becomes impossible after 6 or 7 foldings (even if you start with something as large a sheet of a newspaper or as thin as tissue). Also, you can't draw a perfect line with a pencil as that line will always have a measurable width. That goes for points too. 

There cannot exist a single point; it will always be a dot. And all dots will have a measurable diameter. Geometrically, circles may only have six neighbors, no matter how small you make them. It's only at the infinite limit that a discontinuity arises and you suddenly find that a point may be in contact with an infinite number of surrounding neighbors.

A couple concepts

Two concepts are helpful at this point. The first, is that all the information needed to specify a sliver may be reduced to a single number. The second, is that between zero and one there is an infinite number of numbers (by using decimals). Therefore, it should be possible to reduce all the information needed to reproduce a particular sliver to a single number. 

Take the above tic-tac-toe sliver, for instance. If X is a 2, O is 1, and a space is represented by zero, then, reading from left to right, top to bottom, the information needed to define the sliver would be 102221100. A single number, therefore, is enough to encode the whole diagram.

Now, if we place a decimal point in front of it, we 'squeeze' into something manageable: into a number greater than zero and less than one. And we can manage that for every possible sliver. 

That is the first of this post's concepts: the information needed to specify a sliver can be reduced to a single piece of information. The second, is that we may represent that number by a point on a Cartesian plane.

Getting back to our original sliver. We could change one of its pixels. Now, if you change a single pixel of that sliver, you produce a 'neighboring sliver'. Such a pair of slivers would be neighbors on the Cartesian plane. If you change any pixel in the universe, that set of slivers would all fit, as points, about the original point (because there is an infinite number of points around it, more than enough to be able to plot every one-pixel-different slivers).

In turn, each of those slivers may be surrounded by the one-pixel-different-from-it slivers. So on and so on. Dare I use the term 'ad infinitum'? That's how to envisage the Sliver Catalog on paper.

Brain-tree future

 

The brain is said to be the most complex object in the universe (although we haven't been everywhere in the universe). Nevertheless, the brain is certainly complicated organ. I won't dwell on the number of neurons it has, nor the number of connections each has with its neighbors. (That can be your homework.) For the moment, I just want to use the brain as an(other) analogy.

Previously, we plotted the sliver gallery catalogue on a 2-dimensional plane. Now, imagine it in the shape of a brain. Imagine slivers as neurons. And then, try to imagine what a nerve impulse, a chain of neurons firing, would represent.

Firstly, the process is over in a flash. Let's imagine it takes no time at all, is virtually instantaneous. The electrical impulse might be thought of happening at once, but in sequence.

Might the reality we experience consist of a set of such neuron-slivers? We seem to flit from one to the next (very rapidly) and infer the passage of time from that. The slivers would need to be 'permissible' i.e. neighbors in the sense that they follow the physical rules of the universe.

Extend the analogy: from gallery to brain to tree. As a nerve impulse travels the gallery, selecting from a range of permissible extant slivers, it is not, in fact, bringing into existence the future, but bringing into focus, or choosing, one of a multiplicity of all possible futures. There is a branching out from every instant.

The trunk forms branches, sub-branches, twigs, and leaves. Reality radiates from every sliver. At most, one path can lead to it, but many do follow.  

Philosophical enquiry

With the Atomic Model we may usefully study the relationships between and within atoms. It allows scientists the opportunity to understand and gain a measure of control over electrical, gravitonic, nucleonic, and nuclear forces. And so Science advances.

The Sliver Model, on the other hand, could advance our understanding of the metaphysical universe if we consider the relationships between its components, and help us make progress in a metaphysical sense.

 Therefore it may be constructive to pose questions such as the following:

1. Is there evidence for slivers?
2. What is the periodic table equivalent for slivers?
3. Do slivers obey the laws of nature?
4. How would the universe work from a Sliver Model perspective?
5. What's time then?
6. What is now?
7. Why does time seem one-way?
8. What is the past, and where has it gone?
9. What is the future?
10. What is consciousness with respect to the Sliver Model?
11. Where does consciousness reside?
12. What is life?
13. What is birth?
14. What is death?
15. What is memory?
16. What is thought?
17. What happens when we concentrate?
18. What are planning and premonition?
19. What does free will consist of?
20. What really occurs when things happen?
21. What does it mean to take action?
22. What is the significance of childhood?
23. What are growth and aging?
24. What happens when we sleep?
25. What are dreams?
26. What happens when we meditate?
27. What narrative can be built around the Sliver Model?
28. Do we share a history?
29. Who am I?
30. Who is Pete Townshend?
31. Who are you?
32. Are humans special?
33. What about God, then?
34. What's the difference between good and evil?
35. What is the meaning of life?
36. What is the purpose of life?
37. What's our mission?
38. What does Sliver Theory say about religion?
39. How about the Big Bang?

Concrete evidence?

We cannot see atoms, yet we are convinced by all sorts of evidence that they exist. But how about slivers? Is there any evidence that they are real?

A sliver - in terms of its physical dimensions - is the size of the universe. That would seem to be sufficient to observe. And yet, according to definition, they do not exist for any measure of time. How then can slivers be thought of as be real?

Gurus and guides of every creed recommends their adherents to 'be here now', to be 'mindful', 'present', and to 'live in the moment'. We are always, at least we ought to be, surfing the crest of the present moment. It is the crux of our being, to live in the here-and-now.

No matter what the clock shows, it's always the present moment. We occupy no other space in time. We can't experience the past; it's gone. And the future never arrives; no sooner is it here than it disappears in its turn. The future morphs instantly into the past.

The present is the current sliver occupied. It carries our consciousness the way that a function carries its derivative. Therefore, all of us experience a sliver's reality, subjectively, as the eternal present.

The periodic table equivalent for slivers

Atoms fall naturally into groups. Slivers may be classified into groups, or subsets, too. Atoms react to one another and form bonds. Is there a connection between slivers?

The first thing that to realize is that, whereas there are only about 100 different atoms, there are umpteen different slivers. In fact, every sliver is unique, so how could they be grouped? It would seem to be impossible.

Although we cannot form groups composed of identical slivers, it would be possible to form sets of slivers based on having certain relationships with other sets. These would be determined by terms such as order, proximity, adjacency, entropy, encompassment, game theory, and directionality. 

To begin, most slivers consist of nonsense, of course. There's no order to them. They consist of a random arrangement of black-white-and-greys like the TV screen image you used to get in the day that programming was not 24/7. Only an infinitesimal subset of slivers obtained by randomly filling every possible location in a 3-D universe results in something stable and functional. Obviously, therefore, the largest group of slivers might well be named 'White noise'.

Even though the remaining slivers constitute an infinitesimal group, it is important to realize that they are still infinite in number. Inconceivably so. And it is this set that we are interested in, and need to subdivide and examine. 

Slivers and the laws of nature

 

Our universe exists only by the merest chance, say some. They cite the fact that various physical constants need to be just so for it to exist and continue the way that it does. These include the speed of light, the charges of nuclear particles, and the ratios of the four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and both weak and strong nuclear forces. In This article considers the idea that a universe only pops into existence when its physical constants are such that they might be observed!

Let's examine that idea using the Chess Plus analogy. 

If we use chess moves to represent slivers, then the rules of the game, or its laws, allow you to divide into two sets all slivers: those that follow the rules and those that don't. 

For every chess position, if it is to be legally possible, there are rules that must be obeyed. There is the initial positioning of the pawns and pieces, of which there are specified numbers of each. Each has a prescribed way of moving. There are thus pathways to go from one permissible position to another. So for example, because of the way that pawns move, it is impossible to play a game backward just as, according to the rules of our universe, we can't go backward in time.

All 'impossible' positions - such as a pawn on the first rank, or two same-colored bishops on the same-color squares (unless a pawn has been promoted) or even two pieces on the same square could never arise during play. They would not 'pop up' in the chess universe.

A physical law then, or group of laws, defines a certain set of linked slivers. It, or they, specify a particular universe. And that universe is closed to other slivers. As far as the denizens of that universe are concerned, they do not exist. There is no connection, because the sets simply do not intersect.

The universe from a Sliver Model perspective

The Sliver Model proposes that reality consists of a set - a subset of the entire set of slivers housed in the gallery - of timeless instants. There can be multiple realities, therefore. The slivers within each such subset link up sequentially with each other (the set has order). They are 'flipped' through, according to principles of relativity, gravity, thermodynamics and the like. 

Using the tic-tac-toe analogy, reality may be thought of as a game. The game is played according to rules.  In tic-tac-toe the players take turns. They mark one grid position at a time, starting with X. They continue until the grid is full, or until one of the players has three in a line. The universe that we inhabit is a game that follows its own rules.

Our universe is constructed according to various physical constants: the speed of light, the gravitational constant and so on, as well as relationships alluded to by equations such as e = mc squared. Therefore, if two adjacent slivers (differing by one pixel) are compared, and the difference requires that a photon move faster than the speed of light, then those two slivers may not exist as part of the same universe. They can not be in that same subset (as prescribed by the rules of the game) of slivers. It must be possible to 'get from' one sliver to another within the rules for those slivers to be a part of the same universe.

To understand this better, let's consider the concepts: proximity and directionality.

Proximity involves what we think of as time. The number of discrete steps it would take to get from one sliver to another, following the rules, is a measure of how far they lie apart in time. For example, to go from a tic-tac-toe grid with one X and one O to a game position where there are three of each would involve 4 moves.

Directionality involves what we perceive as time's flow from the future to the past. In the previous tic-tac-toe example, the first position of play can only precede the second. It cannot follow it. In that game, and in that universe, according to the rules, you can't go backward in time. Eggs may not be unscrambled.

According to whichever rules you focus upon, corresponding universes arise through self-selection. That subset of slivers projects itself from within the superset of all possible slivers. That's what's happening (what happening consists of).

The nature of time

Time is a human artifact (or so I propose). It may merely be an illusion.

Two conditions are required to give rise to its illusion: motion (or change, or difference) and memory.

If an object were not to change, if it remained absolutely the same, if it didn't move, grow, age, or crumble in any way (and if you as the observer remained constant too) one would not feel the passage of time. (And is that not the truth: atoms never age. (They do not show the wear and tear of billions of years.)

In addition, you would need a sense of memory to sense the passage of time. Memory compares the current situation with that of the past. Therefore, if all that you perceived consisted of the present, then time as a concept could not arise either

When you flip through a series of stills, such as what occurs when you screen a strip of film, then time will seem to pass. But it does so only because each still is a little different from the one before, plus the fact that you retain the image in your short-term visual memory. Therefore, I propose that time is a human artifact, the illusion you get when you flip rapidly through a set of slivers.

Roll 'em!

Where are we now?

 

Each sliver is a discrete 'now'. It exists as it is, in its own here-and-now. Therefore, if indeed the concept of time is bogus, the phenomenon of each sliver existing 'at once' as it were, would lead one to think of them as simultaneous.  

If everything is 'now', then there's no past nor future. Everything would exist without change - be perpetual. Every sliver would exist in the same 'time' (and possibly in the same space too). It would simply just 'be'.

 

 

The directionality of time

Time seems to go one-way. No one seriously imagines that it is possible to travel back in time, or that an egg can ever unscramble itself. Whether or not time exists, the phenomenon of its direction needs addressing.

For a given set of slivers, what determines the order in which they 'flip'? Who or what decides? It must depend upon entropy. The laws of thermodynamics surely come into play. 

Let's look for a simple explanation.

Start with the (unobservable) observation that most slivers consist of nonsense. (In the same way that you don't often produce readable text when you randomly hit a million keys on your keyboard.) There are only a very few slivers that comprise recognizable 3-D images. Therefore, there's an inherent value or meaningfulness of the sliver depending upon how well its pixels pattern. The more highly organized they are, or how concentrated, the higher that value. 

Slivers flip in the order from high to low complexity. That's simply their nature; they flow 'downhill' as it were. 

So there's also an endpoint beyond which they cannot flow. The end of time consists of diffuse, equally distributed noise, gas, particles, or electromagnetic radiation, however you choose to regard it. It's a true nothingness.

And so at the beginning, at the start of every sequence, Eve, the first sliver could have consisted of absolutely everything inconceivably concentrated into a single point. That's where the big bang may have broken out from.

What is the past, and where has it gone?

 

The far past is easy to dismiss. It has well and truly gone. It's history. It is an ex-parrot! Those particles have been dispersed, and we are the stardust of ancient, expired stars.

 Closer to home, but still gone, are the great-grandparents (of most of us). Where they lived, what they ate, how they lived - none of that remains. If we're lucky, we possess photographs and perhaps the odd memento. But the 'stuff' that they were made of? The happenings that filled their conscious brains with concern? Those are lost in time and space - at least according to our understanding of time - the past-present-and-future model. The one where atoms flit and float.

But does that make sense?

It is easy to discount the past of billions, millions, thousands, and hundreds of years ago. But what about last year? What about last week? Where has yesterday's newspaper gone? Where is the previous second? Does your present person disappear and become non-existent the next instant? 

If the present is all that exists, how long does it last? No time at all, according to Sliver Theory, since a sliver is merely a snapshot with no duration whatsoever. 

I propose that every sliver is as real, or as important, as each other. This is so whenever and wherever they occur. They are all equally real in the same way that every atom is identical. Just because the past is inaccessible does not mean that it's not there.

Therefore, the past has not gone. What it consists of is the single set of slivers that link in a chain leading up to the present which can be flipped through, in one direction, according to entropy gradient, self-selected by natural physical laws to occupy that defined universe.

For any sliver, there is only one path - or past - that leads up to it. Think of a dandelion lying on its side. I'll explain later why I doubt that there can be a convergence.

That being so, it does no good to disown the past. The past is important because there's no way to arrive at where we are now except by going through it.

What is the future?

 

Just as the past exists (as a series of now-slivers) so does the future. Futures, rather. Whereas there is only one past (for a particular present) there are multiple futures that lead out of it - the dandelion model. An infinite number of them lead out from any instant. Not only are they possible, but they are also actual. They all exist equally. Deciding on any particular future path does not nullify the rest.

The present sliver relates to the next one downstream - in the direction of less entropy - by a change in pixels such that the next slivers constitute a pathway according to physical laws. They must be slivers that could happen. That is, mass and energy must be conserved, there may be no faster-than-light movement. The set of futures self-select. And so forth, on to the next sliver.

Futures radiate about each successive sliver like a dandelion's structure. If time does not exist, then this has implications as regards the future. For instance, you do not 'create' or 'bring about' a particular future. That would imply change, and that would suggest that such a thing as time exists. Rather, all possible futures must already exist. All we do by choosing is to activate a certain stream.

What would consciousness consist of?

Consciousness and quantum mechanics go together. That notion tends to mess with people's heads. It's a difficult thing to wrap one's head around. It is counter-intuitive, especially to those accustomed to viewing reality through a hard-headed lens. This consciousness/real-world conundrum is truly a "prickles and goo" situation (according to the late Alan Watts).

Nevertheless, there's nothing incompatible between consciousness and physics. Here's why:

If you accept that charged particles attract and repel - that bonds exist - if you are comfortable with the laws that govern the dance of celestial bodies, and if you trust in the form and function of our proteins - their primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary natures - then you are, in effect, declaring the belief that matter knows what it's doing! 'Knows' as in consciously aware.

On the micro-level, if a charged particle experiences a certain pull or a push from another particle dependant on direction and distance, it follows that at some level it is aware. Not only is it aware of another particle, but it is also simultaneously aware of every charged particle in the universe! Every bit of matter via electrical, gravitational, and nuclear forces, has a measurable relationship with every other existent particle.

This reasoning applies to groups of particles too - molecules, proteins, cells, organelles and upwards. All that changes is the quality of consciousness. We recognize it more and more as living.

At some primitive level, therefore, consciousness exists. What I am going to postulate is that there is a sort of centre of consciousness analogous to the centre of mass, that exists for any physical system. A point of focus, as it were. 

Now, our second axiom states that all is one. So, getting back to our discussion of slivers, a particular sliver may only be associated with one centre of consciousness - one that reaches across its entire universe. That's a big bite to swallow, is it not? What I'm saying is that in the same way that a physical conglomerate balances or revolves about its centre of mass, there may exist an overall focus of overall consciousness for every sliver. But I struggle with that idea. It is easier to imagine that each sliver contains numerous localized foci, but I'm certain that a more comfortable idea is necessarily more accurate. 

Consciousness would therefore arise spontaneously for each sufficiently complex assemblage of component parts. It squeezes out where it can. For now, I'll finish by declaring - rightly or wrongly - that the essence of consciousness is the (possibly localized) matrix of forces encapsulated by a single sliver.

Where is consciousness, or should that read 'are'?

It seems that we exist inside our head, behind our eyes smack at the centre of the universe. That's true for me, and I suppose that it is true for you too. I've read the same thing described by other people, so I must accept that the illusion of centrality - if illusion it is - is universal.

Some may regard that phenomenon as grandiosity, ego, self-delusion or insanity. I don't. I believe it is the natural consequence that results from the proposition that each sliver of the universe has a central point about which consciousness - the sum total of all of the electrical, magnetic, nuclear and gravitational forces - focus. Something like the centre of mass.

Since "all is one", then there cannot be more than one focus of consciousness associated with any given moment. I cannot see how that would be possible without violating that principle, because where would the boundary between multiple consciousnesses lie? And if there were boundaries, then how would it be possible to claim that "all is one"?

I realize that this seems to imply that beings other than myself do not exist, but take heart. I'm not done yet.

What is life?

Take consciousness and extend it across a series of slivers. That's life the way that I regard it. If you ask me, I'd say that a single life is a consciousness centre shared by a set of slivers arranged in an entropic sequence. You can think of it as linear. You might also think of it as a line passing through a consciousness cloud. Since these are not easy things to imagine, let me offer some help.

To begin, our consciousness seems to reside at a physical location - behind and between our eyes; that's our common perception. Whether or not that is so in reality, I don't know. But for the sake of thought experimentation, I think it's a useful concept. Let's run with the notion.

All is one, and so, in a sense, there's just one life. But at the same time, we experience multiplicity. How to reconcile oneself to that? Perhaps it's like a river forming whirlpools at different locations. Each is a swirling centre within the whole. Seen like that, the ideas of oneness and multiplicity would not exclude one another.

Now take a look at a sliver. It has a centre of consciousness. That centre is part of the pattern. Let's mark it with a radio-active pixel. 

Next, take that same sliver but mark a different pixel in another position. In fact, reproduce that sliver as many times as it has pixels, with each pixel radio-activated in turn. Now you have the entire set of centres of consciousness. At each centre exists as much of a life that can fit there. Consciousness expresses itself at that point to the degree that the environment about that point is able to support consciousness.

Lives run downhill. They all end. They flow according to entropy.

A life can proceed in different directions; the future's not fixed. But it can only originate from one linearity.

A life extends until the environment can no longer maintain the continuing equilibrium that supports that consciousness 'entity' - until there are no more next-step slivers that support that centre. The whirlpool then dies out. 

How does life proceed?

 

You don't deal with terms such as birth and conception with the Sliver Model. Instead, you regard the beginning of life, evolution, and the development of consciousness in another light. Begin by examining the nature of particles, or pixels if you prefer.

Every atom, ion, and subatomic particle is 'conscious of' every other particle by virtue of mass, charge, and relative distance. That's my simplistic understanding. In addition, localized groupings of these particles (such as molecules and carbon chain arrangements) share overall qualities too. From the inorganic up to the organic, there's an overall consciousness of every structure also. Consider the functionality of proteins (with their primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary ways of behaving), enzymes, DNA, viruses, and cells. 

My idea is that this 'group consciousness' has no size limit and that any material conglomerate has an associated with overall consciousness. Even the entire universe-sized sliver. Perhaps there is a set of slivers identical in every way except that each has a different place where the overall consciousness exudes.

But in terms of a life-entity proceeding, the consciousness would exude through or from a set of slivers from the identical position. Then the rest of the sliver would vary. Now, flip through an adjoining set of slivers in an entropy-decreasing direction while following the physical rules of that universe (conservation of mass, reaction/opposite reaction etc) and there you have how life proceeds.

What is death?

 

Death is a dead end. It's an edge or an outline. It's the point beyond which you can't go.

In each set of linked slivers, there's one sliver that could be thought of as death.

Actually, though, there's no such thing. You cannot subjectively perceive death. It may only objectively be observed by or for others.

Death is but the loss of equilibrium.

Begin with the concept of the art gallery at the centre of the universe. To those of us living, most of the objects on display are simply gibberish. They consist of white noise (to our ears at least). They do no make sense. But that's only according to our bias. As living beings, we expect to see life go on in a steady state of equilibrium. We are prejudiced in the way that we view our living world.

When slivers flow according to the laws that support the world as we know it, then we are content. Living within the boundaries of those rules, we thrive.

Other sliver combinations make no sense to us. They lead us nowhere.

However, anything can happen. Everything does, in fact, happen (it already has). Or, to put it differently, so that we don't invoke a sense of time, everything that could exist does.

From this instant, everything that could happen to you has already occurred. Those possible futures all exist. You could be dead the very next instant according to an infinite variety of aneurysms, accidents, crimes, and karmas. There are probably more ways for you to die at any instant than there are ways to continue living. But here's the trick: you are not aware of them. You cannot be aware of them, because in those states of death you are not who you would have to be so as to be self-aware of that condition!

And so you continue, one knife-edged future (out of a multitude) after another, unaware of having narrowly escaped any number of deaths. You are also unaware of the multiplicity of other pathways that you could have taken.