Let's start with the second possibility — the issue of scale.
Ok, so the electron exists as probability, the photons that hit it — they exist as a probability as well. This is the standard way of looking at it, the heart of the Copenhagen interpretation. But in the new interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that's we're putting together, we're going to run with a very fruity idea.
Everything's just a probability, until something observes it. When it gets observed, the probability collapses into reality. In the new interpretation, this actually is happening. So instead of seeing Schrödinger's cat as a problem, let's use it as a starting point for a second, and see where it takes us.
So, ok. Something exists as potential. Then that potential collapses into hard reality when observed.
And the first big breakthrough that this opens up is that if you take this process as literally happening, in real life, there is a way to clearly bridge the gap between the Quantum world, and our own, in a way that has never been seen before.
More than this, it opens up a new angle on actual human experience. Real life, the day-to-day. Something seismic that undercuts one of the most profound assumptions of human life.
That angle is time.
Our assumption of how time operates (and how it is understood to operate from the view of classical physics) is that it is essentially a linear progression of events strung together by cause and effect. One thing follows another. Just the basic view of time that we all share
Now, if you look at time in the abstract, cause and effect, one thing following another like tick follows tock on a clockface, nothing like probability collapsing into existence can be seen to occur.
But there is another perspective from which you can look at time. Something different, and so far, hidden.
The future is, in a very real way for us, a mass of probabilities. The future has not yet made itself manifest as reality. It exists as a sea of possibility, but it does exist. The actual future, real, here, and now, as the possibilities of things that can be.
The possibility of you going to work next Monday, or calling in sick. The probability of you reading a book tonight, or watching a film with your friends next Friday. The probability of you scratching your head in the next 20 minutes, of a meteorite hitting the Earth, of a long-lost acquaintance getting back in touch, of a relationship continuing, or being broken, or a new one starting.
These things do exist as probabilities, always, right here. They are all very real possibilities, although some are extremely unlikely. But together, they form a kind of sea of probability that we directly, and in a very real way, experience as the future.
But there's something else as well. Something we can take from our experience of time, and feed back into our understanding of the Quantum world, and make much stronger sense of both.
That thing is coherence. The coherence of the moment, of the now, of the present moment. The present moment is not divided, it has no fault lines. Everything that is happening, is happening all at once, at the same time, with no contradiction of any kind.
The present moment never breaks, it never conflicts with itself. It just is, and continues to be. And more than this — any possibility that actually becomes real can only ever do so if it is coherent with the rest of reality.
This is critical. That probability itself may be random — but how it actually becomes real is not. Any possibility that becomes real won't create a conflict inside reality. The present moment won't break, it's big enough to take it all. And if it's not coherent with the rest of reality for a possibility to become real, it doesn't become real.
So you'll never look down at the end of your garden and see a group of winged fairies dancing around a circle of mushrooms. That's not coherent with the rest of reality, with all the probabilities which have already collapsed, already become real.
And if you do see a group of fairies dancing at the bottom of your garden, what you will find on investigation is that you are either extremely drunk, or someone is playing a trick on you. One way or another, they're not real. Why? Because it's incoherent with the rest of the real.
So those possibilities never collapse, and will never collapse — because there is something that makes them impossible. And it's this — that all of reality has to make sense, it all has to happen at the same time — the now — and have no paradox, no division, no fault line.
All that becomes real must be coherent with all that already is.
And so actually, although we do have the future as probability, how it actually collapses into reality is not random. Einstein was right. God does not play dice.
Now we can take this back to the Quantum world (and start eroding the barriers between it, and our own) if we look at the seemingly random collapse of probability waves, when observed. In this new interpretation, it's not random — any electron, or decaying atom, or anything, can only move to another state that is coherent. Coherent with all the energy, the structure of the atom, the structure of reality itself.
Of course, you can always say “Well, obviously it does.” But the new interpretation states that this isn't happening by chance. That all possibilties that become real are beholden. Beholden to be coherent with all other possibilities that have ever become real.
No more magic. No more fairies. No more unicorns, or metaphysics, or supernatural things. Reality is coherent. This is rule one, the iron rule, and it never breaks. There is no division in reality. There are no paradoxes in reality. Reality is coherent, and must be, and will always be, and this will never change.
This is a very powerful perspective, and opens up a lot of new approaches to old problems. For instance — from this point of view, the quality of ‘fixity’ that physical laws have can be accounted for. Why are they the same through all time and space? Because they have to be, because reality must be coherent.
But let's stick with what we've got so far, and not get distracted. Probability, collapsing into reality, in a moment of total unity and coherence with all that is, actually is an extremely accurate description of time, as humans experience it.
It's not an accurate description of time as humans describe it.
Here we see a left/right hemisphere issue. Talking about time is a left-hemisphere thing, and the left hemisphere casts the world into linear process. This is new way of understanding why time is almost always spoken about as a linear process, a simple line, a chain of events, this, that, this, that.
But the actual experience of time — which is a right-hemisphere thing, because the right hemisphere deals with experience and the specific contour and quality of the real — is nothing like that.
The experience of time, as human beings actually experience it, on a human scale, is exactly the same as that described by the new interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It's not similar — it's the same.
What we experience is the probability of events collapsing into a single rolling moment (which we call the present) in which all things are united in a way that is absolute.
From this perspective, a very obvious and hitherto unrecognised property of the Quantum equations can be brought into a new focus.
Time. We're looking at time. And time is the thing that unites, for the first time, the Quantum world, and the world in which we live. A sea of possibilities, collapsing into the real.