Subjective Truth

Prologue

(For those who can read Cantonese, you may wish to read the following essay first to purge your mind from the notion that the past is static and already determined…)

• 時間，係現代文明嘅產物

With that out of the way, let us begin.

Science as a religion of “objective truth”

Modern science as practiced by most, is a religion in “objective reductive truth”. The basic premise being that by only leveraging hypotheses being falsifiable by reproducible[1] experiments, we can arrive at all truths knowable to humans. Wiser people would rightly say that scientific knowledge is not necessary all knowledge, but, for most people, being “unscientific” is about as good as being plainly false.

What this doctrine leaves out is the possibility of “subjective truth”, the kind of undeniable truth experienced by individuals personally, but is difficult to convey, difficult to reproduce reliably, and difficult to break down into smaller parts.

Down the rabbit hole

I’m not here to reject “objective truth”, but for the sake of illustration, let us take concept of “subjective truth” to the extreme. From the perspective of the subjective experience, all that exists is all that I can perceive and know at this moment. In this way, the past and present is much more fluid than what classical science tells us. Let’s say I am given a wrapped gift in a box. Classical science tells me that whatever is in the box is already determined when the gift was put in the box. But a purely subjective interpretation of reality tells me that until I open the box and see the contents, the contents are not yet determined (unless I somehow had information about it from elsewhere). To some, this sounds like I’m copying a script from quantum physics; to others, it sounds like pure madness.

But this is only because we are “indoctrinated” from a young age that the universe operates objectively, where in theory if there is an omniscience being, looking at the whole universe “at a distance”, they could know all the states of the universe[2]. This omniscience being knows with 100% certainty what is inside all your boxes – it’s only you that[3] don’t know what’s inside.

But is this interpretation of reality really the only correct one? It is a question beyond the realm of experimental science. You could, in vain, try to set up an experiment where the recipient does not know the contents, and observe the results upon opening it. Unsurprisingly, the subjects see what you put in. Nothing funny happens. To the firm believer in objective truth, this experiment confirms that subjective reality is a stupid idea, because no matter how hard you tell the subjects to think about the box, they will not change its contents. Yet, to the believer of “subjective truth”, this is a flawed experiment from the beginning. When the experiment starts, the subjects of the experiment does not know which universe they are in – whether they are in the universe where a book was put into the box, or whether he is in the universe where a shoe was put into the box, etc. In fact, there are an unlimited possible universes they might be in, and they do not discover which one until they open the box. Under this interpretation, it does not matter that the staff conducting the experiment “actually” put in a book – because whichever universe the subjects end up in, the objective result will be consistent with the objective interpretation. The question is just whether, before the box was opened by the subject, for the subject personally, was there an unlimited number of possibilities?

And if this sounds like I’m just parroting the “many worlds”, “Copenhagen”, etc. interpretations of quantum physics, it’s because fundamentally the question is the same. The various interpretations of quantum physics are forced upon unwitting believers of objective truth, because quantum laws break the assumption required by the objective truth interpretation: firstly, by forbidding in principle a 100% objective observer that does not influence the experiment variables, and secondly, by making it impossible even in principle to know the “true state” of the whole universe[4]. But, as quantum physicists say, once you make quantum particles interact with other stuff, they act classically as a whole – which is basically damage control to avoid the subjective interpretations getting too out of hand.

But if one is willing to entertain the idea of taking the subjective interpretation to the extreme, you will realize that, when you receive a gift in a box, and you honestly have no information of what it contains, it truly is the same box of Schrödinger fame – before you open it, it is just a probability wave function. The believer of objective truth will tell you firmly that the contents is already predetermined because from the objective perspective it is possible in theory[5] to trace the information from all the interacting particles between you and the box to reconstruct its true contents. But from the perspective of the extreme subjective interpretation, the answer is “I really don’t fxcking know what’s inside, and I don’t have an omniscience being to tell me!” . In this sense, while mainstream scientists have accepted that there’s probably no omniscience being that can read quantum states, they still hold onto the belief that, in theory there exists some omniscience being that can read “classical states”.

So what?

The extreme subjective interpretation of reality is not very helpful for doing science for obvious reasons[6]. Also, the subjective interpretation doesn’t by itself predict outcomes that are different from the classical objective interpretation (at least not those verifiable by somebody other than the subject!), so limiting the weird subjective interpretations to particles that are not entangled with the “main” world seems to make sense for scientists.

But what this subjective interpretation could be somewhat useful for, is to help individuals seeking personal enlightenment try to make sense of the confusing (and often unreliable) fantastical claims from ancient traditions, religious institutions, and spiritual teachers (either alive or dead). At least in some cases, adopting the subjective interpretation could open up the possibility of reconciling the natural laws discovered by modern science and those fantastical claims that are often called “unscientific”.

For example, the claims about the mind being capable of bending reality, while incompatible with the purely objective interpretation of main stream modern science, can potentially be compatible with the extreme subjective interpretation I outlined above.[7]

The bombshell

Can one really affect the likelihood of receiving a book instead of a pair of shoes by some mental trick? Definitely not if you believe the objective interpretation, but it’s quite possible for the subjective one. As long as we believe in a “many worlds” interpretation of subjective reality, where it is not predetermined which universe the subject is in until they receive information about it, then the subjective interpretation can be consistent with objective observations in the classical, scientific sense.

In fact, if we postulate:

1. objective laws of physics be maintained, and
2. in a subjective interpretation of reality, honest belief and knowledge are indistinguishable until the objective truth is revealed to the subject,

then we can deduce as a corollary that, as a matter of subjective experience, the mind can affect the “probability wave” of the universes being presented to you, and it is not only consistent with objective natural laws, but that it is the only rational conclusion if objective natural laws are to be maintained.

It may be useful to explain with an example. If I know, as a matter of fact, that I am going to get a book as a gift from my classmate, because I installed spy cameras in his apartment and saw him putting a book in the gift box, then of course I will get a book (with high probability – it is not 100%, “surprises”, “accidents” or “mistakes” still happen). Because, otherwise, objective observations will be inconsistent (i.e. there’s no way for you to indirectly “observe” a book being put in the box, and then pulling out a shoe from it, as it violates objective causality).

Now that we established that knowledge (of the somewhat-“objective” truth) can affect the “probability wave function” of the contents in the box, then, by applying assumption #2 above, “mere” belief can substitute for “knowledge”. So, as long as I somehow strongly (and honestly) believe there is a book in the gift box, then there is an equally high probability that it contains a book as in the prior example (knowledge of a book). In fact, here in the subjective interpretation, knowledge and honest belief are qualitatively the same thing, so although I described the two as though they were different scenarios, it is the same thing only described twice for the purposes of illustration.

In conclusion, it seems that, by taking an extreme subjective interpretation of reality, together with some rather axiomatic assumptions, we can deduce that one’s subjective mental state, through some mysterious means, not only can affect the outcome of an event, but it is inevitable that it does.

But is this “real”? If you understood the arguments above and applied the concepts into this meta-thought-experiment, you will understand that there will probably be no way to objectively measure this phenomenon. It may even be the case that, if you tried to do the experiment, it will just confirm what you believed… (since the results of the experiment is another gift box!)

Aftershocks (free speculations, consume with a grain of salt)

• I wonder whether the popular fascination with interpretations of quantum physics are in effect, an intuition that such apparently absurd conclusions can be reached. Given that the deduction steps are simple, it’s quite obvious that people in the past must have known this (and from historical records they did), and perhaps since they did not live in a time where the objective interpretation was dogmatic truth, they found no reason to attempt to prove their case as I did.

• It seems that, paradoxically, a belief in “God” (an omniscience being) would reinforce objective interpretations of reality, and hence reduce the scope or possibility of human-made miracles. I wonder whether learned people already knew this. It does seem that, according to legends, that magic use apparently declined upon the spread of institutionalized, monotheist religions where humans handed spiritual power to one single deity (that is external to humans and our physical world).

• The alleged phenomena of relatively potent psychic powers of children (remembering a past life, premonition, etc.) might have a basis in their ignorance of how the objective world works. Of course, this doesn’t explain why Santa Claus hasn’t manifested itself yet…

• Those who actually understand the power of subjective reality but not trained in leveraging its power will be grateful that objective laws of the universe are much much much more stable than they could otherwise be…

• (however, indoctrination of objective interpretations of reality might have the side effect of making people believe otherwise – and since it degrades their “belief in their beliefs”, it may actually affect their ability to mentally affect what they receive in gifts…)

• Indoctrination by classical science of objective interpretations (as the only true interpretation) of reality may mislead people doubting the validity of “beliefs” (as opposed to “knowledge”) – and since it degrades their “belief in their beliefs”, it may actually affect their ability to mentally affect what they receive in gifts…

Epilogue

I did not start out writing this essay with the conclusion in mind. I only had a clear picture of where the essay was supposed to go up till the “Down the rabbit hole” part. The “implications” part was improvised (and subsequently rewritten to make the reasoning less messy).

Footnotes

1. at least in theory
2. with a linear timeline
3. as a surprised recipient of a gift
4. or for that matter, even a single particle
5. for some actually non-existent(?) omniscience observer!
6. FWIW, while I dislike the more extreme fanatics of scientific dogma, generally doing science is good
7. But note that it doesn’t really have anything to do with quantum physics specifically, although the indirect connection should be quite clear by now.