INTRO:

We understand that the basic stuff that makes up other stuff displays odd behavior on very small scales. Particles behave like waves, waves behave like particles and a lot of how and when they do this depends on whether or not they are being observed. There is also the concept of the probabilistic nature of things. Until something is "observed" it is merely a wave function's distribution of probabilities over time. For some, these things MIGHT be somewhat easy to grasp, but for me personally the concept of the "observer" has bothered me.

OBSERVATION AND OBSERVERS:

What exactly is an "observer". Why are they special and what constitutes an observer anyways? These are the pesky thoughts that invade my brain and motivated me to contemplate this further. I wanted a way to visualize the interaction between this observer entity and its reality without being overly complex.

So let's imagine an impossibly still lake that is infinitely large, spanning forever in every direction. This will be our analog for space-time. Now imagine that a perturbance has propagated a wave In this lake. The perturbance itself and the reason for it are irrelevant for now, but the main concept here is that this wave serves as the analog for the wave function that is our reality. Propagating outward in all directions into infinity. This wave function can be thought to contain all the information that describes what reality is like for any point in the water at anytime. The water itself is the physical "stuff" that is manipulated and influenced by the wave.

Now imagine that you are a scientist that has a hover board and you are levitating directly above the wave being propagated in this lake. As you do nothing and simply hover the only way a specific point in the wave at a certain time can be described is by the general wave function. At this point it is only a distribution of probabilities. But now let's say you take out an impossibly fast camera and point it at a spot in the wave. You snap a photo. This effectively has collapsed the probability function into an easily defined point, relative to yourself (the observer). Now you can make all kind of statements about not only exactly where and when this point occurred, but also about the specific nature of the waters state at that point. We have collapsed a wave function into a point and thus our "reality" as we perceive it is generated, or at least we have all of data needed to do so.

Of course it is very important to remember that all of this is relative to yourself, the observer. On a macroscopic level you have not altered the wave function. The mere act of measuring the wave-function does not negate the wave function, it simply provides the observer the additional information needed to make statements about their current existence. It does not in any way prevent other scientists hovering about the the lake from taking their own pictures and seeing different "progressions of reality"

To extend the analogy of the lake to our own existence, imagine that you are moving forward across the lake following the propagation front of the ripple wave. As you do this you point your ultra fast camera downward and continuously snap pictures of the wave. If you were to look at all of these photo in order you have essentially mapped out your life as points in time over a wave function!

For me this though experiment helped me wrap my head around the nature of observers and how we interact with the wave function. It would seem that at the smallest level everything is simply data, and it is our existence is derived from the fact the for whatever reason we are constrained to 4D cross-sections of reality, and therefore we must necessarily "observe" the wave-function and experience it in such a way. I realized that there is nothing special about observers. They are a special or unique construct, but merely a projection of map of points in time in a constrained set of dimensions. We as observers are not "generating" reality per se, but effectively receiving sufficient data to secure reality into a specific state at a specific time.

EVERYTHING IS DATA:

A key takeaway from my thoughts was the idea that at the end of the day the true nature of the universe is that is simply data. Really simply data. In fact it is essentially binary. This is due to the fact that when you think about it, all physical matter can be described in its most basic form as being in one of two states. With particle spin it can be one way or the other but not both. With specific position in time, it can be position X or position Y, but not both X and Y. The hang up is that UNTIL you actually "exist" or "observe" that period in time you can never know for sure which one it is.

I think this is where it gets very interesting. Lets go back the our wave being propagated in the lake of infinity. What was the perturbance that caused the wave-function to be generated in first place? Things are going to get weird.

String theory tells us that on the smallest of scales (Planck length) fundamental particles are in fact one dimensional string that vibrate/oscillate. The exact nature of the oscillations and its interactions with other strings determine the kind of fundamental particle it appears as on larger more macroscopic scales. Great, but what exactly are the strings? In a word: data. It is simply information, more specifically a kind of algorithm that describes how the very nature of existence itself should manifest. More simply put its how existence should manifest when observed (considered) from different dimensional cross sections. For humans it is the consideration of the 4D construction of reality that generates what we perceive as our "universe" and the reality in it.

So we have the strings which are the information needed to create the stuff that makes up everything, but what about the strings? Where did they come from. There seems to a "master wave-function" or source code that provides the information that describes how the strings them-selves should behave. And this is where is get really odd.

The wave on our infinite lake, having no friction or resistance will propagate forever. However, the further it gets from the source the more disperse it gets, until it reaches a point where even though the "parts of the wave" are still moving the water molecules making up the wave are so far apart that to any observer at any distance the wave is not visible. Let go out to an area of the lake where we observe one of these disperse, isolated particles. This is where isolated strings exist that have no other strings near them to interact with. They still follow the trajectory from its origin, but it simply remains a string.

A string as we said is an oscillation of data that can described most simply as on or off in this context, high or low. In isolation time and location are irrelevant for this string. Now being an ideal binary bit at this point, it hypothetically has all of the "language" it needs to, in theory, write any of the aforementioned algorithms. This includes a "source" code that it self will create strings, which defines the nature of another whole universe. This appears on the lake as a spontaneous pulse that propagates an entirely new wave on the infinite lake.

FATE OF REALITY:

What does it all mean? What is our fate? It seems that our universe, our reality, like the wave on our lake will eventually dissipate. The strings that were formed from a source pulse all still exist, no data is lost, but it is too isolated to interact with other strings from the same pulse. That means that our pulse will no longer be able to provide enough information to create a reality to observe. But from this death, isolated strings will at some point (time scale is irrelevant here) spontaneously generate a source pulse to begin the cycle anew.

BIG PICTURE:

In my visualization, the conclusion that I have drawn for myself is that simple binary data is the root of all existence. Unfortunately there is still a major hole in my picture that I have not yet mentally reconciled. If in fact reality and the universe is just an algorithm, a program that runs which defines how it evolves over time, than what is the code running on? In other words what is the operating system or what is the hardware underlying all of this that hosts the code. I feel that answer again is a self reference. It becomes a question of the chicken or the egg. The code creates the operating system which creates the code. Again an oscillation between two states that creates a beautiful self referencing fractal of itself. All that is left to wonder is why?

INTRO:

We understand that the basic stuff that makes up other stuff displays odd behavior on very small scales. Particles behave like waves, waves behave like particles and a lot of how and when they do this depends on whether or not they are being observed. There is also the concept of the probabilistic nature of things. Until something is "observed" it is merely a wave function's distribution of probabilities over time. For some, these things MIGHT be somewhat easy to grasp, but for me personally the concept of the "observer" has bothered me.

OBSERVATION AND OBSERVERS:

What exactly is an "observer". Why are they special and what constitutes an observer anyways? These are the pesky thoughts that invade my brain and motivated me to contemplate this further. I wanted a way to visualize the interaction between this observer entity and its reality without being overly complex.

So let's imagine an impossibly still lake that is infinitely large, spanning forever in every direction. This will be our analog for space-time. Now imagine that a perturbance has propagated a wave In this lake. The perturbance itself and the reason for it are irrelevant for now, but the main concept here is that this wave serves as the analog for the wave function that is our reality. Propagating outward in all directions into infinity. This wave function can be thought to contain all the information that describes what reality is like for any point in the water at anytime. The water itself is the physical "stuff" that is manipulated and influenced by the wave.

Now imagine that you are a scientist that has a hover board and you are levitating directly above the wave being propagated in this lake. As you do nothing and simply hover the only way a specific point in the wave at a certain time can be described is by the general wave function. At this point it is only a distribution of probabilities. But now let's say you take out an impossibly fast camera and point it at a spot in the wave. You snap a photo. This effectively has collapsed the probability function into an easily defined point, relative to yourself (the observer). Now you can make all kind of statements about not only exactly where and when this point occurred, but also about the specific nature of the waters state at that point. We have collapsed a wave function into a point and thus our "reality" as we perceive it is generated, or at least we have all of data needed to do so.

Of course it is very important to remember that all of this is relative to yourself, the observer. On a macroscopic level you have not altered the wave function. The mere act of measuring the wave-function does not negate the wave function, it simply provides the observer the additional information needed to make statements about their current existence. It does not in any way prevent other scientists hovering about the the lake from taking their own pictures and seeing different "progressions of reality"

To extend the analogy of the lake to our own existence, imagine that you are moving forward across the lake following the propagation front of the ripple wave. As you do this you point your ultra fast camera downward and continuously snap pictures of the wave. If you were to look at all of these photo in order you have essentially mapped out your life as points in time over a wave function!

For me this though experiment helped me wrap my head around the nature of observers and how we interact with the wave function. It would seem that at the smallest level everything is simply data, and it is our existence is derived from the fact the for whatever reason we are constrained to 4D cross-sections of reality, and therefore we must necessarily "observe" the wave-function and experience it in such a way. I realized that there is nothing special about observers. They are a special or unique construct, but merely a projection of map of points in time in a constrained set of dimensions. We as observers are not "generating" reality per se, but effectively receiving sufficient data to secure reality into a specific state at a specific time.

EVERYTHING IS DATA:

A key takeaway from my thoughts was the idea that at the end of the day the true nature of the universe is that is simply data. Really simply data. In fact it is essentially binary. This is due to the fact that when you think about it, all physical matter can be described in its most basic form as being in one of two states. With particle spin it can be one way or the other but not both. With specific position in time, it can be position X or position Y, but not both X and Y. The hang up is that UNTIL you actually "exist" or "observe" that period in time you can never know for sure which one it is.

I think this is where it gets very interesting. Lets go back the our wave being propagated in the lake of infinity. What was the perturbance that caused the wave-function to be generated in first place? Things are going to get weird.

String theory tells us that on the smallest of scales (Planck length) fundamental particles are in fact one dimensional string that vibrate/oscillate. The exact nature of the oscillations and its interactions with other strings determine the kind of fundamental particle it appears as on larger more macroscopic scales. Great, but what exactly are the strings? In a word: data. It is simply information, more specifically a kind of algorithm that describes how the very nature of existence itself should manifest. More simply put its how existence should manifest when observed (considered) from different dimensional cross sections. For humans it is the consideration of the 4D construction of reality that generates what we perceive as our "universe" and the reality in it.

So we have the strings which are the information needed to create the stuff that makes up everything, but what about the strings? Where did they come from. There seems to a "master wave-function" or source code that provides the information that describes how the strings them-selves should behave. And this is where is get really odd.

The wave on our infinite lake, having no friction or resistance will propagate forever. However, the further it gets from the source the more disperse it gets, until it reaches a point where even though the "parts of the wave" are still moving the water molecules making up the wave are so far apart that to any observer at any distance the wave is not visible. Let go out to an area of the lake where we observe one of these disperse, isolated particles. This is where isolated strings exist that have no other strings near them to interact with. They still follow the trajectory from its origin, but it simply remains a string.

A string as we said is an oscillation of data that can described most simply as on or off in this context, high or low. In isolation time and location are irrelevant for this string. Now being an ideal binary bit at this point, it hypothetically has all of the "language" it needs to, in theory, write any of the aforementioned algorithms. This includes a "source" code that it self will create strings, which defines the nature of another whole universe. This appears on the lake as a spontaneous pulse that propagates an entirely new wave on the infinite lake.

FATE OF REALITY:

What does it all mean? What is our fate? It seems that our universe, our reality, like the wave on our lake will eventually dissipate. The strings that were formed from a source pulse all still exist, no data is lost, but it is too isolated to interact with other strings from the same pulse. That means that our pulse will no longer be able to provide enough information to create a reality to observe. But from this death, isolated strings will at some point (time scale is irrelevant here) spontaneously generate a source pulse to begin the cycle anew.

BIG PICTURE:

In my visualization, the conclusion that I have drawn for myself is that simple binary data is the root of all existence. Unfortunately there is still a major hole in my picture that I have not yet mentally reconciled. If in fact reality and the universe is just an algorithm, a program that runs which defines how it evolves over time, than what is the code running on? In other words what is the operating system or what is the hardware underlying all of this that hosts the code. I feel that answer again is a self reference. It becomes a question of the chicken or the egg. The code creates the operating system which creates the code. Again an oscillation between two states that creates a beautiful self referencing fractal of itself. All that is left to wonder is why?