I get into those lines of thinking, minus the god(s) sometimes. It's pretty normal for anyone introspective.
The answer I finally decided on is pretty much as follows:
"You are something the whole universe is doing, just as a wave is something the whole ocean is doing"
Longer deterministic rant:
The only thing that you can absolutely know is that you are conscious. You cannot "know" about why, or how, or anything else.
You can, however, empirically derive from observation, logic, and inference. Based on inductive logic, we know that we have been able to examine observable phenomena and the relationships between them, and make testable predictions which make us more confident that these observations and relationships are "real" and accurately described by our models.
Our current assumption is that we live in a (theoretically) deterministic universe. As in, if we were able to know EVERYTHING about every single piece of matter, dark matter, antimatter, (etc), every single force in an absolute way, we could derive knowledge of every single interaction, every single atomic collision, every single missed exam on a Monday morning in Seattle by someone's future mother, and know exactly what that would result in.
While some things may have happened seemingly "by chance", there was a physical REASON inherent in the make-up and forces of the universe why *that* electron existed 45.643% here, and the rest in three other places, in that moment, and thus causing X, Y, and Z to happen.
Given such knowledge and computationally predictive power, I could take knowledge of you, in the complete sense--everything about you, atoms and the forces that hold them together and all--and trace back. I would trace every interaction back, and we could record this, all the way back to the big bang, and perhaps further if knowledge of the pre-universe is possible, and then you would know exactly who you are and why you came to be where and when you did.
While no known member of humanity, nor the collective whole, is able to absolutely "know" any of this with the observational and computational limitations we have currently, it is my theory that it is possible, and it is a mostly-unsaid assumption made by scientists that this is the nature of the universe. Otherwise we wouldn't waste our times trying to puzzle it out.
You can see how this is essentially the long version of the quote at the top, you are a function of the universe, the universe is a function of you.
Is it normal to feel this way about the world?
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I get into those lines of thinking, minus the god(s) sometimes. It's pretty normal for anyone introspective.
The answer I finally decided on is pretty much as follows:
"You are something the whole universe is doing, just as a wave is something the whole ocean is doing"
Longer deterministic rant:
The only thing that you can absolutely know is that you are conscious. You cannot "know" about why, or how, or anything else.
You can, however, empirically derive from observation, logic, and inference. Based on inductive logic, we know that we have been able to examine observable phenomena and the relationships between them, and make testable predictions which make us more confident that these observations and relationships are "real" and accurately described by our models.
Our current assumption is that we live in a (theoretically) deterministic universe. As in, if we were able to know EVERYTHING about every single piece of matter, dark matter, antimatter, (etc), every single force in an absolute way, we could derive knowledge of every single interaction, every single atomic collision, every single missed exam on a Monday morning in Seattle by someone's future mother, and know exactly what that would result in.
While some things may have happened seemingly "by chance", there was a physical REASON inherent in the make-up and forces of the universe why *that* electron existed 45.643% here, and the rest in three other places, in that moment, and thus causing X, Y, and Z to happen.
Given such knowledge and computationally predictive power, I could take knowledge of you, in the complete sense--everything about you, atoms and the forces that hold them together and all--and trace back. I would trace every interaction back, and we could record this, all the way back to the big bang, and perhaps further if knowledge of the pre-universe is possible, and then you would know exactly who you are and why you came to be where and when you did.
While no known member of humanity, nor the collective whole, is able to absolutely "know" any of this with the observational and computational limitations we have currently, it is my theory that it is possible, and it is a mostly-unsaid assumption made by scientists that this is the nature of the universe. Otherwise we wouldn't waste our times trying to puzzle it out.
You can see how this is essentially the long version of the quote at the top, you are a function of the universe, the universe is a function of you.