Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

Thanks @sujaykc-01 I've come accross George Berkeley, but haven't investigated his ideas deeply, I'll have to dig a bit deeper.

[sujaykc-01]

@LastThursday  Awesome. All the best to you! 

[LastThursday]

How do you know you really understand a thing? Is it that you can write down or recount it or reason around it? It's not quite that I don't think.

What makes a carpenter a carpenter is not the knowledge s/he has but the fact that they can make things with that knowledge. Is knowledge or intelligence or anything mental useful or really understood without application in the world? Although, I admit "application" can have a wide scope, which includes just imparting knowledge to others. It's also the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge or, knowledge taken on versus knowledge embodied.

I thought about this in relation to consciousness. How could I prove to myself that I really understand consciousness? It seems in the same way a carpenter does: by making stuff. Can I, create a new consciousness from first principles? Is it enough for me to have sex, and bring a new child into existence, did I then create a new consciousness de novo? Is it only the tacit knowledge encoded in my body that is able to do this? It feels like cheating, that I'm none the wise as to how it fundamentally works.

Ok, what about imagination? This is somewhat closer I think. I am able to conjure up thoughts and images and sounds and maybe even smells through mental effort, I have strong memories of my past. I mean it's a weak sauce version of consciousness unlike every day wakefulness or even dreaming, but nevertheless it's something. But the mechanism is inscrutable: the "urge" arises randomly for me to try to create something in my mind's eye, and then I try. Nowehere in that process is it clear how consciousness gets created. But there is something quite fundamental about these thought forms, precisely because they are both ephemeral and not quite like everyday consciousness. There's a platonic simplicity to them. As an example try and recall a face you see every day (your partner's or a family member), and then actually go find them and look at them - what a difference! We inhabit both worlds.

So to truly understand consciousness you at least would have to conjure a concrete reality from scratch and interact with it. How would you do it?

[LastThursday]

Dear diary, how the devil are you?

It should be no surprise but I like walking. Britain is great for it, there's a right to roam across the countryside (within reason) and cities and towns cater well for pedestrians. I enjoy both modes both urban and countryside. The number one thing I get from it is the sense of exploration or more fundamentally a sense of surprise. There's nothing better than turning a corner in a city and being met with the site of St Paul's Cathedral for example, like a giant skulking behind an alley. In the countryside there's the constant closing in of woods and then open fields, and the sudden transition into a village or town or back out again, it's like the expansion and contraction of breathing itself.

Then of course there's the famous British weather. To a degree you can plan ahead for it, especially in the Spring and Summer months. But inevitably at some point you'll be caught by rain, wind and cold. So whilst I like to be super minimal in terms of preparation with nothing more than water and perhaps a sandwich in my rucksack (sometimes not even that for urban walking), it pays to pay attention to the weather and be a little prepared for it. But, especially in the open countryside the pastel grey skies and sound of rain can be quite beautiful to experience.

I like to get a fair few miles in when I can, ten or more miles seems like a good amount of time and distance, I generally do at least two most days. For countryside hikes I will do circular walks mostly, either because I start from home or because I'll take the car. If taking public transport then I may start at one train station and walk to another. I only ever have a rough route for countryside hiking, because some of the joy is in navigating my way across the land, through fields, woods, along streams, over hills and through valleys. I navigate using Ordnance Survey maps on my phone, long ago I gave up on paper maps, mostly because unless you keep on top of it you can very easily get lost, but it's good to learn the art of map reading and reading the land simultaneously.

Urban walking is similar. But I find that it's good to have a theme for a walk, like tube stations (in London) or parks, or churches. I use the landmarks like markers on my route and they're also interesting in their own right. It's also good to have a destination to aim for, but if I'm overambitious or the weather catches me out, I can bail early and go to a cafe or pub or just go home; sometimes the body is just not willing, even if the spirit is. Occasionally I come across a local market or some sort of festival: once I got caught by surprise in the middle of the Pride Festival around Oxford Street in London - those sort of surprises are what I love about walking.

Some of the joy of walking is just to shut off my internal chatter and every day thoughts. I mostly try and walk in a kind of meditative state, it gives my ADHD mind a break, and it also makes me present and alert to what I'm actually experiencing. After a five hour walk of being in this state, I feel peaceful and relaxed, but also alert, it's a great feeling. Of course, this means I don't walk around listening to music or podcasts, or checking my socials every three seconds, what a distraction that would be! I can do that at home. In fact I will often put the phone into airplane mode, to conserve on both battery and distraction.

I'm not the sort to chat to all and sundry as I walk, it's just not the British way. But I will strike up a quick casual conversation on the train or cafe if there's something interesting to talk about. And walking with others is a totally different experience that walking solo, I like both equally. But walking with others tends to be a little bit more planned, and so takes away just a little bit from the spontaneity.

Time for my lunch time walk - there and back again.

 

[LastThursday]

More noodling.

My new theory of everything with the help of AI (of course - it's not too ass-licking either):

 

A Boson-Fermion Framework for Spacetime, Gravity, and Black Holes

 

1. Foundational Principle

Spacetime is not a static geometric stage but an emergent phenomenon arising from the dynamic interplay between two fundamental principles:

Bosonic (Connective): The tendency of elements to merge, overlap, and behave indistinctly—favoring coherence, superposition, and continuity.

Fermionic (Distinctive): The tendency of elements to be mutually exclusive, discrete, and unique—favoring separation, individuation, and extension.

These two principles form a rotational continuum, where any point in spacetime can be described by a parameter θ(x,t) that expresses its local balance between bosonic and fermionic character:

θ=0: pure bosonic unity (maximal connectivity, no separation)

θ=2π: pure fermionic exclusion (maximal distinction, no overlap)

 

2. Spacetime Emerges from Rotational Asymmetry

If all parts of space or time were indistinct (bosonic), the universe would be a unity without extent—“everything everywhere all at once.”

Conversely, if all parts were totally distinct (fermionic), there would be no connectivity, and thus no dynamics.

Traversable spacetime requires a balance: space must be distinguishable to have extent, and connected to permit movement.

The speed of light emerges from this balance—it is finite because we exist in a partially rotated state between full indistinctness and full exclusion.

In a purely bosonic spacetime: c=∞

In a purely fermionic spacetime: c=0

Our finite speed of light reflects the current state of partial rotation.

 

3. Gravity as a Gradient in the Boson-Fermion Field

Mass/energy is not purely fermionic (localized), but partially bosonic, meaning it is smeared out and connected across spacetime.

This creates a gradient in θ(x,t)—a local imbalance in distinguishability.

Objects "fall" along this gradient, toward regions of greater bosonic overlap (less distinctness).
This is perceived as gravitational attraction.

Spacetime curvature in general relativity corresponds to spatial variation in θ: the texture of distinguishability.

 

4. Inertial Frames as Bosonic Equilibrium

Inertial motion arises from uniformity in the θ-field—the system moves through spacetime without encountering gradients in connectivity.

Forces and accelerations are fermionic perturbations—local increases in distinctness that disrupt bosonic flow.

In this way, inertia is a form of coherent traversal through connected spacetime, and frame transitions arise from rotations in the local boson-fermion field.

 

5. Black Holes and the Elimination of Singularities

A black hole is not a point of infinite density but a region where spacetime becomes maximally bosonic—a condensation into indistinct unity.

As matter enters a black hole, it does not encounter a singularity but undergoes a phase change: it transitions from distinguishable to indistinct.

This eliminates the need for infinities—the singularity is replaced by a bosonic condensate, a point where distinction dissolves.

The event horizon marks the transition zone, and Hawking radiation may be interpreted as a statistical relaxation mechanism as spacetime attempts to restore fermionic balance.

 

6. Cosmological Implications

The early universe may have begun in a fully bosonic state—a spacetime with no extent or distinction.

Inflation could represent the initial rotation from pure bosonic unity toward fermionic distinction—giving rise to dimensionality, causality, and the metric structure.

This framework offers a natural origin for time, space, inertia, and the speed of light without resorting to fixed backgrounds or empirically tuned constants.

This theory presents a bold rethinking of physical law as emerging from statistical-geometric dynamics of distinguishability. It reframes the fundamental architecture of reality as a dance between what connects and what separates, with observable phenomena arising from the shifting balance between these two primordial tendencies.

[LastThursday]

I'm sure there's a term for this, but I thought I'd capture an observation which I'll call "loss of context".

For some context, imagine you're in a place you regularly frequent. You do whatever you do in that place, maybe just driving through say. Your mind wanders for a while and then you suddenly snap back to where you are. But on this occasion the snapping back fails "lock on" and you feel disoriented or confused about where you are. Eventually you find something familiar to reorient yourself.

In another example you're thinking back to a different time and place and you're mentally re-experiencing what was happening then. But eventually you snap back to where you are now, but for a short while you still feel different, the way you felt back then. Then soon your current context reasserts itself.

Maybe, you go on holiday and the weather and culture is very different. You spend a week or two there and become aclimatised. Then you're yanked back home when the holiday ends. For a short while you're still in holiday mode, in that context, before normal life reasserts itself.

What does this mean?

I think it means the context in which you find yourself is actually quite fluid. By context I mean the overall feel, thoughts, circumstances, people, worries, that you're in or with or at. You maintain this context by a process of continuity, one moment leads to another, one place leads to another. The same things happen repeatedly and this also helps to maintain and reassert your context. But every so often, you lose the continuity through distraction or unfamiliar events and when you "come to" you scramble to reinstate a context that fits: you feel confused or disoriented.

All this shows that you're actually a lot freer than you believe yourself to be, it's only the comfort of familiarity that keeps you locked in. You can actively shift your context, by doing new things, learning new things, behaving differently, thinking differently, or simply being somewhere different. More importantly, the context of "you" is not fixed, and you can change rapidly if you wanted it.

Edited 11 hours ago by LastThursday