What is the universe really?

The universe is everything of which we all belong. As soon as you join a gang, a religion, a political party,a union then you are in fact dividing the whole and run the risk of being isolated away from the whole,inside your bubble with your nightmares forever.
You must stay free and independent,just like the universe.

reply to post by coruptedsector2

There is definitely something to all this. People who say that the evidence used to assert that the universe on a macro scale looks similar to neurons in the brain cannot be taken seriously because it was simulated on a computer are ignoring the fact that countless lines of evidence show how our universe resembles a fractal on many levels (small/large). Sure, if this was an isolated case, it would be easy to disregard, but it's not.

Conventional scientific thought - as i understand it - states that this fractal nature is NOT present in the extremely small or extremely large. But, apparently, we keep finding examples of its fractal nature.

Somehow, patterns repeat from one thing to another, small and large, but why?

I have not even begun this journey. I will die long before I even take my first steps. I firmly believe that our universe, in its complexity, goes on and on. We can't live long enough to know it all.

I also think there's a lot of truth in history written down in different texts. I think people who go through all of our historical books will gain more profound knowledge than the rest of us.

So we know because of mathematics and observation that our universe has rules. We see these physical phenomenon and then we mathematically characterize them and the formulas for them are consistent. These rules tend to be pervasive in that you can find them in varying places in time/space. Gravity, for example, will affect things large and small both near and far. But these rules may not be all-pervasive. For example, we have found a divide between the classical and quantum worlds. The quantum world seems to follow different rules.

It makes sense that since these rules are pervasive that patterns will repeat. The way that an object responds to gravity, for example, will tend to be repeated despite different amounts of gravity and even different materials and shapes. Could this somehow explain fractals, in part? I am unsure. I do not know enough about them to say.

One idea I've had is that something in nature is repeated instantaneously via quantum teleportation or entanglement. It would be outside our control, but nonetheless we would see it. In this way, the universe could appear to be bigger than it really is since it's repeating itself. For example, two particles that're entangled yet separated by a vast distance will share properties with each other rather than acting as completely separate particles. It's almost as though a part of them inhabits the same place. Perhaps this is an example of the universe conserving its own space/time somehow? Like it's being stretched and compensating?

I liked the comment that somebody made when they said that we do not know whether we're at the bottom or at the top of living organisms. Since we do not know, we could be terribly wrong. If we're at the bottom then it might turn out that most living organisms are far larger than us. And vice versa. Afterall, we haven't yet explored our solar system completely for life. And this is just 1 star in hte estimated 200+ sextillion stars in the observable universe. We'd be fools to think we understand life so much that we can classify ourselves as big or small. To me, that's restrictive thinking.

Lastly, I want to say a few words about how fractals are used in computer programming. In my limited experience, I've used something like fractals to generate random terrain. This is the extremely introductory thing that a child could do with minimal knowledge about programming and some internet knowledge. WHY use this to generate terrain? Because insofar as terrain generation is concerned this method is simple and reasonably quick. Fundamentally, this is imperfectly modeling nature in its simplest forms. The result is a pattern that has a likeness to its real world counterpart. To get even closer you must use more complex methods that combine fractals and roaming algorithms that integrate erosion and other features. Roaming algorithms are expensive in terms of processing requirments, so if they're used it's usually only in pre-generation. I would say that once we've identified the fundamentals of a pattern mathematically, we tend to use fractals almost exclusively. However, once things - that're desired - are too complex to model on these terms, programmers tend to pre-generate it with the use of roaming algorithms. The highest quality is achieved this way.

I've tried thinking about this topic a few times, but I always hit a mental block. The best I can describe it is that once a person can mathematically describe all complex behavior, including intelligence, in its most simplified form, one can begin to use fractals to model a whole universe. However, I do not foresee how things as complex as intelligence could ever be modeled mathematically, considering how complex interactions are. I know that we can model terrain with simple mathematical expressions and that we can even include the dimension of time in procedural generation, but I fail to see how this could work for something as complex as intelligence.

What I'm saying is that the universe could be just a whole lot of mathematical principles wrapped up in an unfathomable yarn of goobledegook and EVERYTHING is preordained, but it could also be using something like a roaming algorithm. In this way, the universe is not playing out like a record or an equation, but is instead uncertain of its own future and it exists in a limited fashion, processing things from one moment to hte next, maybe forever.

Here's an article I just googled:
www.wired.com - Earth’s Most Stunning Natural Fractal Patterns...

reply to post by jonnywhite


I had no knowledge of fractals before this post, and your reply just makes me want to expand on this idea even more, but I guess I will have to wait until I get enough knowledge to help me prove my theory.