Quantum Evolution

Quantum Evolution (Not to be confused with Quantum Evolution as attributed to George Gaylord Simpson).

A million trials to yield one enlightened soul.
A million sperm to yield one person.
A million species to yield one human.
A million chemical reactions to yield one primitive cell.
A million collisions to yield one organic molecule.
A million suns to yield one earth.
A million galaxies to yield one sun.
And a million universes to yield one galaxy.

Everything in existence is a development process. Does this need stop at the level of the universe?

A moment ago you might have been an ape-like carnivore about to tear a limb off a rodent. But you thought better of it, allowed the creature to go free and looked to the sky in hope of a better way. In that moment the whole of creation was redesigned for you. Electron mass increased imperceptibly and seven more elements appeared in the periodic table. The course of natural history changed to the extent that you are now sitting at a desk typing at a PC. Dare you look to the sky again? I recommend it.

'Nonesense!' I hear the shout go up. 'I was making this cup of coffee a minute ago'. But that is the memory your Eidelon possesses and it will be entirely consistent with the course of events appropriate to the universe you currently occupy. But it is a universe of your own choosing.

I once thought these migrations through the space we might call 'Everett Space' - the coordinate set which maps out all the alternative histories of existence - happened only at death. But I suspect it happens on a continuous basis. I concur with CTF insofar as I believe birth and death are the same point in time on an essentially cyclic life. This, I believe follows from my belief that time is circular.

'Alas no' say the 'big rip' cosmologists! 'The universe will expand forever' they say. But haven't we heard that before? We once stood on the earth and wondered if it was bounded, or whether it went on forever, or even whether there was some barrier beyond which we were prohibited to travel. Cosmologists asked similar questions before arriving at the same conclusion as the ancients - the universe is circular, much like the earth. So, whatever space the universe is expanding into, do we not suspect that to be circular too? Yeah, its big. But our imaginations have already been overwhelmed and stretched beyond their limits by the earth and the cosmos. It is really only a small stretch to suspect that the hyperspace the universe occupies is circular too.

If we imagine the 'big bang' happening at the North Pole of the 'ominverse', our universe is then a tsunami descending down the lattitudes. It may have only reached Finland before it is spread so thin that it is little more than a cold, gaseous soup. But that doesn't mean it cannot collapse back to the North Pole or, if it has sufficient momentum, pass beyond the ominversal equator and collapse at the ominversal South Pole. The result in either case will be another big bang.

And I'm not impressed by arguments that put time on a time axis! That is Modus Fallacis gone to extremes!

What does this mean to us? Well, it means that less than a millimetre away on some 'Everett Axis' is a universe and life where we are creatures much closer to perfection - perhaps angels in some religious traditions. In this alternative world many of the pathologies we suffer are gone or greatly abated. That is the nature of evolution - an evolution that is going on in many more dimensions than just time. There is evidence of this - the Anthropological Principle which points out how uniquely suited conditions are in the cosmos for our living existence. Either this is an amazing coincidence, or it is because we have engineered these conditions ourselves.

That is not really proof I know. It MAY just be coincidence, in the same way that it is merely coincidence that the universal clock finger is pointing at that near-singularity of time that is my lifetime in the history of the universe. If you find a resonance with these ideas, then welcome! If not, then you should be considering yourself incredibly lucky to ever have existed at all.

I call this 'Quantum Evolution' because I see the multiverse (all alternative universes) as a set of
probabilities. As individuals we 'collapse the wavefunction' in our individual ways and crystallise these probabilities into our personal existences. It doesn't necessarily mean there are many worlds or many 'copies' of us. Just that there are as many personal universes as people (or at least conscious entities - I haven't ruled out animals participating in this - they may be in this development process too but some way behind us - or possibly ahead of us, depending on your point of view).

I wrote this in a rather strange state of mind following a spell of panic attacks. It is far from
scientifically rigourous. In fact, I'm quite expecting it to be used as evidence that I have a psychosis of sorts. I hope none of this cuts across anyone's religious beliefs. In fact, I'm rather hoping it validates all of them. I have a view that the ancients were basically right in their conclusions and that we need to find expression of their ideas in modern (i.e. scientific) language.