August 28, 2020 • 52 mins
Could human dreams really, in some way, predict the future? At first, it sounds like the stuff of science fiction... but the real-life answer may not be as clear-cut as the plot of a sci-fi blockbuster. Instead, it turns out that probability, bias and, perhaps, the bleeding edge of physics may all play a role in the strange phenomenon known as precognitive dreams. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they search for a scientific take on precognition in the second part of this two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Null. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is the second part of
a two part series asking whether dreams have really predicted
(00:49):
the future. We ended the earlier episode without getting to
several things facts for one, uh, science, although we're able
to put some science in the first episode, and um,
perhaps most importantly, questions that we had promised at the
beginning of the last episode. So please listened to part
(01:12):
one of have Dreams Really Predicted the Future before you
dive into part two. This is mostly crazy stuff in
the second act. So here's where it gets crazy. Mass
the quickest we've gotten crazy. I think maybe ever. I
love it. Uh. Do you want to do a little
quick recap of some of the hallmarks from our last episode? UM,
(01:35):
some of the historical figures we've got Abraham Lincoln who
seems to have predicted his own assassination and dream. Um
we have Samuel Clemens a k a. Mark Twain, who
seems to have had a premonition of his brother's demise
in the form of of of a dream where he
was laid out his brother in a in a metal
(01:55):
casket wearing a suit, a borrowed suit and also bedecked
with like a particular spray of flowers. That that that
lined up with what he saw in his dream, my
crazy dream about Bennett Moon and then that manifesting in
reality and the form of her calling into wait, wait,
don't tell me. Um what else we got? I think
(02:15):
your great aunts Ben and then her potential Obo playing
or lack of in the realm. No, no, I didn't
want to take time in the show. Uh, with my
own personal anecdotes. I always think of that scene and
it's always sunny in Philadelphia where Dennis Reynolds is his
sister in the show, is talking about her dreams and
(02:37):
he tells her stop, no one wants to hear about
anybody else's dreams. So I think that affected me because
the great the great aunts Obo Portugal, example, is just
is just made up to show the credulous, the credulous
nature of dreams. But we also talked about how dreams
(02:59):
can function as a way of problem solving. Right. Our
brains as problem solvers are sometimes more effective when our
consciousness is less involved. That's how the periodic table was formulated.
That's how um many authors discovered great works like Samuel
(03:20):
Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after he awoke from uh from
a dream. He wrote the poem in his sleep kind of.
He was also on a lot of opium at the time.
I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but the sewing
machine was also inspired by a dream. Yeah, it was
(03:42):
a weird one too, a really violent dream where I
believe the inventor was being like boiled in a pot
by cannibals and being stabbed with like spears. And in
the dream he recognized that the spears had holes in
the tips, and that's what gave him the idea for
the way you thread the needle or the whatever. I'm
not in a selling expert on a sewing machine, and
(04:03):
it actually is tied to the very tip of the needle,
and that's what allows it to kind of continue to
thread and hold on or whatever. But he what a
weird way to come to that conclusion. And just for
a couple of other examples, Albert Einstein, by his own account,
discovered the you know, hit upon some of his own
(04:25):
revelations in the world of dreams. At this point, I'd
like to recommend a fantastic book about the nature of
time by a guy who I think he was at
M I T an author named Alan Lightman. He wrote
a book called Einstein's Dreams, and it's entirely almost an
(04:48):
anthology or a series of vignettes of young Einstein working
as a sleepy patent clerk, and every time he falls
asleep he encounters another theory of time, which will also
be very very important for today's show. We The point
(05:10):
is that if you're listening today, or if you're if
you're if you're like many listeners who have written to
us over the years and said, I love turning on
this show as I fall asleep, which thank you. I
still think that's a compliment. Essentially, if you have slept
regularly over any period of significant time, then odds are
(05:33):
that your brain has done the same thing. Your brain
is attempting to solve problems for you. Some of those
I think it's a point somebody made earlier in previous episode.
Some of those may be emotional problems, you know, things
with which you are grappling, and some may be scientific things.
Some maybe like uh, like Paul McCartney waking up and
(05:56):
writing a song? Which song was that? Was it? Yesterday? Yesterday?
Which is the most covered song of all time. It's
been covered like more than three thousand times. That's pretty
cool claim to fame. But yeah, and I mentioned like
even being a musical guy, I don't really remember melodies
very much. But all of this stuff. The way dreams
work kind of depend on the way your brain works, right,
(06:18):
Like all of our brains work a little bit differently.
We process things in the waking world differently. So how
dreams function, I think is a big product of who
we are as people. Right. But what if this whole
idea of dream you know, sort of precognitive dreams, isn't
so much our brains doing a thing as it is
(06:42):
like a bigger picture thing that we're experiencing, something tied
in with physics, something tied in with a force larger
than ourselves. So how do we explain these anecdotes, right,
You know, many of which are unprovable, many of which
are one person telling you their opinion about what happened
(07:06):
to them. And how do we explain the robustly documented tales. Right?
One idea involves exactly what you're talking about, Noel, the
idea of something larger. This is the science I want
to bring to bear today. It involves the concept of
a thing known as retro causality. Strap in we're headed
(07:31):
for bad country here. M hm, Yes, causality. You've heard
this cause and effect. It's the thing that happens when
you hold a glass out in front of you and
then you drop it and it hits the ground. Why
did it do that? Well, it's because gravity exists, and
that's what happens when you drop something with mass, it
falls to the ground because of gravity. Um. By the way,
(07:55):
gravity is maybe a whole episode that we could do
just about what that really means, what it is. There's
not like gravity doesn't want us to know something, but
it's an odd phenomenon that we don't fully grasp. That
sounds weird to even say that, but it's true. Um.
But this chain of cause and effect happens in a
very predictable order, right, as long as there's not no
(08:17):
other thing coming in, Like with the glass example, there
isn't someone jumping to catch the glass, or there isn't
a string wrapped around the glass that pulls it down
and actually makes it swing or hang from another surface.
But so that's that's causing effect, right, that's causality. So
what is retro causality? The same thing, but backwards. Have
(08:40):
you ever liked a song so much that you said,
let's play it backwards? I don't know, probably not. It
would have to be you know, maybe the perfect palindrome
of a song to have that kind of symmetry. But
you're right. Retro causality backwards causation. This is a concept
of cause and effect, where and affect somehow proceeds its
(09:03):
cause in what we experience as linear A to B
to C one to two to three time, such that
we have to walk slowly through this. Later events affect
earlier events. Decisions made in the future in the lens
(09:24):
of retro causality may affect events in the past. This
means this, This could mean huge things for science if
it is ever uh proven or agreed upon. It could
explain nagging questions about many things in the physical world.
(09:45):
But to explain those things, we have to understand what
retro causality is and perhaps just as importantly, what it
is not. So yeah, I mean, it's it's literally the
idea of backwards causation, a reverse of cause and effect
fact uh preceding cause. Uh. It's a concept that is
(10:06):
is very much tied up into quantum physics and things
like string theory and you know, the idea of how
you know, maybe even a multiverse kind of situation, because
it does sort of lay out this framework of like,
how can something that happens on a certain timeline affect
things that precede it in a different timeline or earlier
(10:27):
on the same timeline. So Lisa Ziga puts it pretty
succinctly writing for fizz dot org Um. She describes retro
causality as not meaning that signals can be communicated from
the future to the past uh no um. Such signaling
would be forbidden even in a retro causal theory due
to thermodynamic reason. Instead, retro causality means that when an
(10:52):
experiment or chooses the measurement setting with which to measure
a particle. That decision can influence the properties of that
particle or another particle in the past, even before the
experiment or made their choice. Um. In other words, a
decision made in the present can influence something in the past.
(11:14):
Tough to wrap your head around. I was thinking of
different examples to the ground this. It's sort of like said, uh,
it's sort of It's it's a weird distinction, right, because
a decision made in the present should not be able
(11:35):
to alter the past from everything we know. You know
what I mean. And we can put it in whimsical
in a whimsical sense by saying, if you concentrate hard
enough in and think I never watched Police Academy for something,
(11:58):
then that would mean in retro causality that you might
end up not watching it, right, That's that's kind of
It's still that it means that you're not telling yourself
in the past to do something different, You're not communicating
with yourself. The fact that you made the decision in
(12:20):
the present means that the past is changed. Yeah, it's
an odd thing. I'm just gonna go back to Lisa's
example here, saying that the experiment or a scientist somewhere
in a lab chooses, you know, use the dial or
something to decide what wavelength they're going to be looking
(12:43):
at these particles with. Right. So the concept is that
just by making that choice to select that setting is
going to affect the way those particles exist essentially. But
I think more of what's happening here is that the
the setting to measure those particles is going to measure
(13:03):
those particles at that wavelength where at that energy level, right, Um,
Rather than the particle actually changing the properties of the
particle changing, you're just measuring different properties. So it's it's
tough for me to right maybe understand fully what what
at least is saying, just because maybe I just don't
(13:24):
have that particle physics degree in meaning to get that.
By the way, well it's related to you know, I'm
being a big glib with the I'm playing fast and
loose with the idea of any kind of comparison or
analogy that involves a human being. That's the nature of
this show. And we are going somewhere with this, fellow listeners.
(13:45):
So I want to see, Um, you're familiar with the
uncertainty principle, right, the famous experiment where the double slit experiment,
which we've talked about in the past. It's similar to that,
the idea that and observe erver effects what is being observed,
and to some degree may determine it by taking a measurement.
(14:08):
I mean, this is this is fascinating stuff. But maybe
we put this de side and keep building our case
and then come back because to your point, Knell, we
need to consider how retro causality may give us a
new perspective on quantum theory and have a real life
(14:29):
story about this too. And I can't wait to hear
it really quickly too. It is also kind of tied
up in one of my favorite scientific, uh descriptive things
of all time, Einstein's concept of spooky action at a
distance or quantum entanglement, which is the idea that objects
can be affected by other objects without being physically touched.
(14:52):
And that's sort of the basis for this, the idea
that these completely separate things in time and space can
have an effect on one and other. All right, So
let's dive deep into that. And to do so, we're
gonna have to get out our text books. You don't
have to, don't worry. We're we're gonna get ours out.
You can, you can just keep listening. We'll do that
right after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Okay,
(15:21):
we're opening our textbooks now and we're gonna talk about
quantum physics. So the one we hear about in schools
often is called the Copenhagen interpretation, and this version argues
that until a systems properties are physically measured in some way,
they can encompass essentially a myriad, a large number of
(15:44):
different values, different properties. Right, solid matter is a conspiracy.
That's kind of what the argument becomes at this level.
At a at a like, the closer and closer you
look further and further you dive down into reality, you
see that particles do not behave the way that solid
(16:08):
matter would behave. Imagine reality is a big pool table.
It's not the most creative idea, but fine, we need
to like, yes, like billiards exactly met So so the
the these every particle in the universe of this pool
table is maybe a little a little ball, a little
(16:30):
ball on the pool table, a six ball and eight ball,
a que ball, and they should be their solid matter
rolling from one definite point in space and time to
another definite point in space and time. That is not
the case at a fundamental level. Instead, these particles are
(16:54):
like this blurry, shifting cloud of possibility. You know, think
of the old descriptions of angels or divine beings that
were constantly like their faces were shifting and and all
this sort of stuff. Right, these particles, these billiard balls,
pool balls, aren't just shifting on the table there like
(17:17):
also and maybe other tables that also may exist, or
there's another there in the air, there under the floor.
Meaning we can be aware of the cloud of possibility.
We know that a cue ball could be hitting an
eight ball, We know it could be missing inn eight ball.
(17:37):
At the same time, we know it could be doing
any number of things, maybe specially scratching, right, especially scratching.
The probability is high. Uh. And the weird thing is
the spooky thing, and we do have spooky action coming
up here later in the show. The weird thing is
(18:00):
as soon as you look at that cub ball, as
soon as you focus on measuring that in some way
and seeing how it hits the eight ball, you will
only ever see that cube ball, let's say, hitting the
eight ball in one place into one of four corner pockets.
(18:21):
You'll never see those countless cube balls hitting countless eight
balls into every pocket or every direction at once. Think
of Schrodinger's cat, right, this is Schrodinger's cat as a
pool shark. Wow, you know it reminds me a video
in a way. I'm just imagining, um, someone dancing very
very fast, or dancing with lots of intensity. Right, if
(18:45):
you're watching on video, you get kind of the full picture.
But if it's just a snapshot, it's just that one
moment right in time, it just looks like somebody in
a kind of a strange position or a weird pose, right,
but you wouldn't get the full picture of what's occurring.
And when you're when you're thinking about video in general
or life in general, in the way to capture things,
(19:08):
we we can only capture images as frames essentially, right
as the really I really like this comparison that, right,
So there's no way for us to just have like
the video that you're watching now or any video you
watch online, you're seeing frames of moments, and there is
no way for us to just have to just measure
(19:29):
a constant or or a measure all moments at all
times when you're looking at something or observing something. It's
very strange to think about that. Well, and that that's
a really great example because that's on like sort of
like a micro level, but on a macro level, it's like,
think of the universe in those terms, like what would
a snapshot of the universe of all points at all,
(19:52):
like you can observable, you know, measure these things in
a person like I was doing a goofy dance when
you just saying that a minute ago, and then you
freeze and you might get a sense of like, Okay,
I'm frozen in this horrible rictus kind of pose, but
you can't understand the badasseness of my dance moves surrounding
it in the same way that you couldn't understand like
(20:14):
the totality of all possible moments happening, you know, in
time and space. You know, I mean, I think that's
really apt. Maw, that's super cool. And this is this
is strange because this touches on actually, uh, some concepts
that are present in ancient religions. This kind of implies
(20:36):
the idea maybe of destiny, the idea of some sort
of I don't know, it would be misleading to call
it predetermination. We're not we're not being calvinist here, but
in no offense to calvinist in the audience. But the
point is this cloud of possible, unobserved potential possibility, this
(20:57):
cloud of unobserved possibility exists free of a fixed position
in time or space. And shout out to one of
my favorite pieces of listener mail, ha ha ha remember
that guy, Uh the morphic residence. Yes, that's my favorite laugh.
I hope you're still listening, but yes, uh, time space
(21:21):
six and one hand. This, this idea of existing and
more than one spot at once is commonly called super position.
It only collapses into a single state or position when
the systems observed. Everyone observing, even the most accomplished physicist,
(21:41):
can never precisely predict what state will will what the
state will be when it collapses. And and some physicists
believe a very controversial idea because we have to keep
in mind, when you go far enough to the edge
of physics, you in the realm of metaphysics, philosophy, and
(22:03):
sometimes spirituality. So some physicists for a long time believed
that this collapse of superposition upon observation meant that consciousness
the mind itself, the software of the brain, not the hardware.
The presence of an observer caused right causation, caused the
(22:28):
superposition to collapse into a single point in space, time,
universe forty two, etcetera. This is weird because it implies
some very strange things about time, things that we wish
Einstein was here in our in our franchise of time
(22:49):
to to talk about and think about. Because you know,
to your earlier pointnal those quirky, quirky things about quantum mechanics,
spooky action at a distance entangled one bit of one
bit of something on one side of the universe. It's
very misleading way to describe the universe. But one bit
of something very far away uh turns left or up
(23:14):
or down in some direction, and then at the same time,
in an immensely uh far away place on the other
side of the universe, the same thing happens. These are
these are connected, right, There's like a push pull symmetry.
This is called spooky action because there's not a local
(23:36):
action that can explain it. But what if it is
evidence of time symmetry. What if at this level of reality,
instead of flowing in one direction, a two B, two
C one to two to three time flows at the
(23:56):
same speed in multiple directions. What if, um, What if
at the quantum level, time as we understand it flows
in the past, the present, the future, all possible futures,
all possible presence. What if on an extraordinarily fundamental level,
time becomes less like an arrow shot to a particular
(24:21):
destination and more like the air through which that concept
of an arrow moves. Yeah, I mean it seems like
quantum physics in general as a discipline, it seeks to
explain this kind of phenomenon. Because you know, what we
heard from Lisa Ziga at the beginning of the episode
was what retro costality is not is the concept that
(24:43):
a signal can be communicated from the future to the past.
It's more about the relationship of those two events and
less about like sending messages back and forth in time.
I just wanted to put that out there again. Now
that's it's a good thing to keep in mind. I
it's a massive tangent and I'm not going to go
down into it, but this concept beend of time flowing
(25:06):
and like in all directions equally. It reminds me of
the physical representations that UH, physicists and scientists used to
represent gravity. Um, when you know you you show like
a essentially the warp of space time right, Um, it
(25:28):
reminds me of that kind of only in the opposite
as in wherever the present is, wherever that is located,
like the moment of consciousness, of being aware. It feels
as though it's almost like in a mountaintop and then
in all directions is moving downwards and all of the
various possibilities in all directions. Um, I don't know. It's
(25:53):
not a very good image, but I'm just imagining it
in the same way we represent gravity and mass and
how that affects gravity. Like it's almost as if conscious
awareness or observation is that same thing for time. You're
reading my mind. This was something I wanted to I
was going to save till the end of the episode.
(26:15):
But I think we're we're on the edge of time
now right. As a concept, it doesn't really matter apparently
when things happen. So so what I like about this
concept I think you and I are on the same
page here is that I you're you're talking about distortion, right,
the way mass can distort gravity, right when you drop
(26:36):
a ball onto a taut sheet. Right, So I was
thinking of the same thing, and I had followed it
down the rabbit hole of information as mass observation is mass.
So perhaps a specific event in what we understand as
(26:57):
living your time, perhaps the more it is observed, the
more concrete or quote unquote heavier it becomes, and the
more it distorts, you know, that that sort of ambient
field or fertile soil of reality and time. I know.
But so that's don't worry. We're getting to dreams. We're
talking about this trippy stuff for a reason. In two
(27:20):
thousand and twelve, there was a physicist named q. Price
who claimed that if the strange things we know to
be true about quantum states reflect something real, and if
nothing restricts time to one direction, not the band, just
(27:41):
the direction of linear time, then the eight ball in
our earlier example, in that pool hall cloud of maybes
and what ifs, could theoretically roll out of the corner
pocket and knock the cue ball itself. I love is
this so much in the in the way they talk
(28:02):
and the concepts that they that they have to attempt
to distill for people like me who just don't get
it a lot of times. Well it's so interesting too,
because so much of this stuff is like, you know,
thought experiments until it becomes real. Like I mean, even
like Einstein and his whole idea of quantum entanglement and
spooky action at a distance, he sort of wrote it
(28:23):
off himself, was like, this is way too weird, and
I'm going to kind of let this go. And then
sure enough science came around a study shown that quantum
entanglement very likely is a thing, very much in the
way Einstein envisioned it. But he had to have done
it on a purely conceptual level at the time, because
it's not like it's something that could ever be tested,
especially in those days. So it really is a whole
(28:44):
different set of equipment that these folks have, you know
what I mean, that allows them to think in these
purely conceptual realms that end up kind of connecting with
reality a lot of the time. It's it's it's fabulous, agreed,
And this may seem like a tangent, but it is
an important tangent, even if it does not seem immediately
(29:05):
related to dreams. What we're saying is that as you
are listening to this episode, some of the most intelligent
people in the world are arguing over the fundamental concept
of linear time. Wow, I'm just trying to think all
of the other things I have to do today, and
(29:26):
I'm wondering if they're actually gonna come later or maybe
already did them just tomorrow. Decide that you've done them
tomorrow perfect or maybe because you are deciding that you
maybe because tomorrow you are thinking of doing these and
remembering that you have done them, that means you've already
(29:48):
done I don't you see the problem? If if, if
only it were so simple, and it absolutely isn't. And
we're gonna talk about why that is and how this
connects up with dreams after one more quick sponsor break
(30:09):
and we're back. Bell's theorem plays a big role here.
It's an idea proposed by one John Stewart Bell, the
concept that bizarre things happening in quantum physics can never
be explained by actions taking place nearby. It's like we
know that billiard balls are moving in all these different directions,
(30:30):
but we have no idea what's causing them. We don't
see the great Grand pool queue. I guess, which some
people say is God. You know what I mean that's
how that's how strange this stuff becomes the prime mover, right?
Is that another name for God in the situation? And
so this this leads us to ask, then what if
(30:51):
we're what if we're looking in the wrong realm? What
if the cause of these movements is not happening somewhere else,
somewhere nearby, but some when else? If causality, Yeah, if
causality runs backwards, it means that this particle can carry
the action of its measurement back in time too, when
(31:14):
it was originally entangled, affecting its partner, which is this other,
this thing observed in another version of time. Anyway, this
is all still considered fringe science, but the problem is real.
We do not fully understand the actions of the quantum realm.
And one of the things affecting our lack of understanding
maybe our assumption of linear time. So the big question
(31:38):
is what does this mean for dreams? Where does the
brain come in? Is the brain somehow quantum? Uh? Well,
I mean it's made up of the same things that
the poolballs are made of in our example, right, It's
all just a lot of atoms arranged very intricately in
(32:01):
there at least I hope they're intricately arranged. Um m hmm, gosh. Okay,
so we know that if if our cells are made
up of atoms, and atoms follow these laws of quantum physics, um,
even though we don't fully understand them, right, then yeah,
(32:23):
our brains are quantum What a weird thought. I'm just
gonna I'm just gonna sit here for a while and
think about that. Yes, do we I mean, you're right,
we're made of the same stuff right, The within our
bodies are the building blocks of the stars and the cosmos,
(32:44):
dirt and everything else. But do we need quantum physics
to explain this thing, this phenomenon that we call consciousness?
Right now, A lot of physicists and philosophers are gonna
say no, because science is about explaining things in the
most efficacious, accurate, and simple way. Right. We talked about
(33:09):
brevity being the soul of wit in literature and in
the creative realm, but the realm of science takes it
to another level. People like Paul for the Guard, who
is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, says there
is evidence building that says we can explain everything in
the human mind in terms of interactions of neurons, So
(33:35):
we wouldn't need to add quantum physics and and the
dilemmas inherit in in this concept would need to add
that to the engine for the engine to run and
for us to understand the process. It's like, if you
already have a working car, why would you add a
(33:57):
another engine on top of right? Why why would you
need two engines if you can already drive with just one?
Because really fast, right, Because you think linear time exists,
things can happen faster. So I mean, it's true. You're
(34:17):
right though, and this is of course a statement from
a philosopher, but we we know physicists tend to agree
that's right. And then we have David Deutsch, who is
a physicist at the University of Oxford, who says, quote,
is there any need to invoke quantum physics to explain cognition?
I don't know of one, and I'd be amazed if
(34:38):
one emerges. That's interesting. He's sort of like putting these
in two distinctly different buckets um, So you kind of
have two sides of that argument there. So if the
brain does engage in any of this quantum you know
shenaniganry Uh during what we call thought um. Then there's
a particularly popular theory about how all of this could
(35:01):
go down, and it involves something called microtubules, which are
protein tubes that make up the neurons and in our
in our brains, in our bodies um, specifically the support
structures within neurons UM. And and that is what potentially
quantum you know, physics would would enact upon um the
(35:22):
idea that microtubules can exploit quantum physics quantum effects rather
to exist in superpositions of two different shapes at the
same time. UM. So this goes back to what you
were talking about earlier with the idea of superposition. We
want to do a quick refresh on that. Well, you
can think about it quickly this way. Those neurons are
(35:47):
if if this is to be believed, all of your
neurons are simultaneously activated and not activated. If you think
about it as an io switch or something a state
of being on or off. All of your neurons are
both on and off at all times. That's what this
is essentially saying. Unless I'm getting that incorrect, it's yeah,
(36:07):
it's it's existing in multiple states that we would normally
think are mutually exclusive. Right, So each of these shapes
in this theory amounts to a tiny bit of what
you're talking about, Matt, classical information. We would consider it.
(36:29):
So this shape shifting quantum bit a cubit, Right, that's
the fundamental unit here. Uh, each of those can store
twice as much information as their classical counterparts. And then
we add entanglement to the mix. I would love to
see this explained in the format of a of a
(36:53):
YouTube cooking show. Right, So this is where someone sprinkles
in entanglement and starts during that stuff in. This is
the feature we've been talking about that allows these units,
these cupid states, to remain intertwined even when they're not
in local contact. That means that we can rapidly build
(37:16):
what's called quantum computer, something that can manipulate and store
information far more efficiently than a classical computer. Because to
your point, Matt, they do not have to they do
not have to be restricted to a one zero one
thing one at a time. So if retro causality is
(37:37):
also in play, that means that these tiny, tiny, tiny tubes,
these tubes of protein that you just described, Nol, these
pieces of neuron structure could be interacting with time in
a way that we do not understand. Fascinating, funky, an
amazing concept, also very far from proven as we as
(38:00):
we record this right now, all the quantum stuff we're
talking about is incredibly fragile. It's not it's not a
house of cards in a windy room. A more accurate
description would be like an upside down pyramid constructed out
of the idea where cards might sometime be balanced on
(38:25):
the nose of a blindfolded circus cloud with big clown
shoes writing a unicycle across a very high tight rope
for the very first time at their first day working
for the circus. The slightest change in anything will cause
a quantum state to break down, as far as we know.
And here's the other thing about your brain, you guys, Um,
(38:49):
it isn't exactly fit for this kind of quantum system,
at least from what we understand right now, right uh,
deep inside there in your head of years. You go ahead,
go ahead and feel it if you can, if you've
got a freehand. Um, that's just your skull. Remember that's
the hard part inside there. It's really warm, it's wet,
(39:10):
it's kind of gross, really um and it's just not
suitable for any kind of quantum system to really survive
for any length of time. But again, that's our understanding
of matter and how quantum systems work right now, because
it's what we have been able to achieve thus far. Yeah,
and as we're recording this, they are numerous people who
(39:32):
are chasing down the possibilities right trying to determine whether
there is a possibility of a quantum state in the
human brain. Well, one person particular note would be Matthew Fisher.
Fisher is an expert in developing quantum computers and he
believes there is more to this story. If you're interested,
(39:54):
I highly recommend reading a little bit more about his
proposed experiments because we have to remember, as mentioned in
a previous episode, science is a long conversation and it
argues with itself and there are many many things that
for one reason or another, our species rejected as nonsense,
(40:17):
only to later learn that those things are true. So
to bring it all back around precognitive dreams. There are
so many anecdotes, there's so many arguments, there's so many
fascinating experiments. I wanted to mention one that got me
involved in retroactive causality a number of years ago. You
(40:42):
guys have heard of mc sweeney's, right, yeah, so you
you've heard then of Walfen. I know I'm cheating. I
know you guys have heard about it because I wouldn't
shut up about it off air when I was very
into it. So Wolfen is sort of like a magazine
need of short films, and wolf Thin issue number seven
(41:06):
included a strange bonus, like a bonus article. There's a
bonus DVD that had a scientific experiment in retroactive causality.
And the idea was that you, without spoiling it, you
as the audience, the observer of the experiment that is
(41:30):
on this DVD, may somehow affect the results of the
experiment just by watching it. I still have it somewhere.
I'll send it to you guys if you want to,
if you want to check it out. It's it's controversial,
but you don't have to don't have to buy it,
just borrow it. But the but the idea here is
(41:54):
is that, um, we see experiments with this stuff. It's ongoing,
and we know with that people many listening in the
audience today do feel and do believe that they have
had some inexplicable encounter with reality through the world of dream. So,
if retro causality is real, if time, as we understand it,
(42:18):
flows in more than one direction at the quantum level,
and if the neurons in the human brain function in
some way like what we would call a quantum computer
or a quantum system, a lot of ifs here, And
if this system in a human brain is somehow able
(42:39):
to not even communicate information, but to influence information on
what we call the consciousness or the subconsciousness in an
understandable way, then there may just be a theoretical way
for our brains to understand time beyond the concept of
(43:01):
one second forward to the next. It took a long
time for us to get there, but we had to
lay out, we had to lay out the case. There
is actual science, and that's really what this comes comes
down to. There's already some science that appears to show
it could be true, which is, you know, fascinating hopeful
(43:21):
to me thinking that there might be a way for
us to uh see a mistake that's coming our way,
or to see, you know, to to help somebody who
may need our assistance and somehow we could be aware
of that through this connection in some way. I love.
(43:44):
I love the possibility that exists here and and just
knowing that if there's already science that's leaning, you know,
in this way, or at least hinting at this, then
it probably says that within you know, our lifetimes, we're
going to find out more and we're we we may
even be able to prove at some point that we
(44:05):
are more deeply connected to each other and to ourselves
and to everything than we already understand. Yeah, that's the mission,
right to have to in some way illuminate a bit
more of this cavernous, strange thing called the universe, reality
and life as we know it, this giant shadowy Jim Bay,
(44:29):
that we all exist in the shadowy Jim Bay. I
love that. Such a vision. No, it's such a good
visual and it's fun to say in your lighting looks
really really awesome. This is a plug to check out
the YouTube channel, which has been resurrected if you are
listening in the audio version. So I have to ask.
(44:52):
I know that the three of us have various questions
that we want to ask each other. So I have
to ask you, guys, do you believe that precognitive dreams exist.
It's tough. It's tough for me. I would have to
say yes, because I have experienced a few things where
(45:13):
either I have been given information that I did not have,
or I came to information that I was seeking within
a dream state and and it you know, maybe maybe
that is just my brain doing the de frag process
(45:33):
that we we talked about at the top of last episode,
but or maybe it is some connection that I don't
fully understand um, and it is some kind of precognitive situation. Honestly,
I would have to say I would have to say,
oh God, this is the stance I always take. I
(45:56):
want to believe it so badly that I'm leaning towards
thinking that something is there. I'm with it, man. I mean,
it's one of these things too, where it's so arrogant
of us. We don't understand this quantum physics stuff, and
we see the smartest people in the world like Einstein
kind of coming up with these concepts that can't be
tested and then maybe even abandoning them, and then later
it turns out that oh he was onto something. So
(46:18):
it's like we were we are not even gonna be
around long enough potentially to see the stuff you know
fully play out as to whether there's truth to this
or not, or the way the human mind works, or
one of the ideas that we discussed on a recent
news episode about that sense of communicativeness between like, you know, beings,
like like communicating through a look or knowing if someone
(46:40):
is uh is staring at you really hard. What was
the name of that. It was called morphic residents exactly.
I mean, that's you know, still on the fringes. But
I sent some truth to that, and I sent some
truth to this. How about you been? Uh, yeah, well
that's what I was getting to. There is no um.
(47:00):
There's one question that people keep missing when they talk
about precognitive dreams. Whether we consider ourselves skeptics, whether we
consider ourselves profits or oracles, or just people who know
there's more to the iceberg of reality than what we
see drifting above the surface. The question is this, if
(47:25):
someone has a dream and they used what happened in
the dream to better their situation, right, avoiding the car
accident that we mentioned earlier, uh, staying away from that
dropping piano, which I don't think ever really happens. I
think that's a cartoon thing. But you know what I mean.
If if they have a dream and that dream helps
(47:50):
them somehow in the waking world, does it matter if
it's precognition, Does it matter if it's coincidence. Does it
matter if it's the brain playing the probability game? I
would argue No. I would argue it's very easy to
get lost in our own personal feelings about what quote
(48:10):
unquote psychic powers are. If it's like the Turing test,
kind of like whether or not something is a robot
or a human, whatever the whatever the behind the scenes
picture is, if you're still having a good conversation, it's
still a good conversation. All that being said, without um
(48:33):
it spend too much time talking about myself here. I
come from a long history of people who are absolutely
convinced that they do have some kind of precognitive dream capacity.
And I'll probably hear from extended family members when this
(48:54):
episode comes out, and they will probably not be super
happy with me for the way that we approach this.
Maybe they'll get in touch with you prior to the
episode coming out. That's right. If you can prove precognition,
we would love to hear from you right to us
on Friday, August one, will double check our inboxes that
(49:15):
day and let you know. Does that joke even work?
I think it does work. But but this is what
this is. I think works better if you truly that
that was a joke, right, but truly if you are
experiencing us in some way right now as we were
(49:36):
as we record this on Friday August twenty one, this
is what I would say. If you have access to
a phone, give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three st d w y t K. Now,
it's really important. It's vitally important that you do this
on Friday August one. So any voicemails that come in today,
(50:01):
I'm checking them for you. I'm going to be listening
for you. Please do it brilliant. I love it. And
there's another thing we can check right now from you
social media. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter
where we are conspiracy stuff. On Twitter and Facebook also
(50:22):
travel to Here's where it Gets Crazy, which has been
universally lauded by us as the best part of Facebook.
You can find us on Instagram where we're conspiracy Stuff
show and You can also find us should you choose
as individuals on the social meds. If you would like
to find me, I am at how now Noel Brown
(50:43):
on Instagram where I post stuff from my core life
and you know, um, music production and video game stuff,
my kids cosplays all that stuff. You can find them
exclusively on Instagram and it's kind of lurk on Twitter.
If you wish to free up your stream of various
(51:03):
posts on Instagram, you can follow me Matt Frederick underscore
I heeart as you will not see anything from me.
And if you are opposed to social media, if you
are against the idea of calling people on the phone,
if you've had a bad dream about it, but you
need to tell us and more importantly your fellow listeners
(51:27):
a story about dreams, some new information about the possibility
of precognitive dreams. You can always reach us via our
good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at
I Heart radio dot com. But wait, remember YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. Stay with me YouTube dot com
(51:49):
slash conspiracy stuff. Just think it all the time, know it,
feel it and festive. Yes, all right, that's it. Stuff
(52:20):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Null. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is the second part of
a two part series asking whether dreams have really predicted
(00:49):
the future. We ended the earlier episode without getting to
several things facts for one, uh, science, although we're able
to put some science in the first episode, and um,
perhaps most importantly, questions that we had promised at the
beginning of the last episode. So please listened to part
(01:12):
one of have Dreams Really Predicted the Future before you
dive into part two. This is mostly crazy stuff in
the second act. So here's where it gets crazy. Mass
the quickest we've gotten crazy. I think maybe ever. I
love it. Uh. Do you want to do a little
quick recap of some of the hallmarks from our last episode? UM,
(01:35):
some of the historical figures we've got Abraham Lincoln who
seems to have predicted his own assassination and dream. Um
we have Samuel Clemens a k a. Mark Twain, who
seems to have had a premonition of his brother's demise
in the form of of of a dream where he
was laid out his brother in a in a metal
(01:55):
casket wearing a suit, a borrowed suit and also bedecked
with like a particular spray of flowers. That that that
lined up with what he saw in his dream, my
crazy dream about Bennett Moon and then that manifesting in
reality and the form of her calling into wait, wait,
don't tell me. Um what else we got? I think
(02:15):
your great aunts Ben and then her potential Obo playing
or lack of in the realm. No, no, I didn't
want to take time in the show. Uh, with my
own personal anecdotes. I always think of that scene and
it's always sunny in Philadelphia where Dennis Reynolds is his
sister in the show, is talking about her dreams and
(02:37):
he tells her stop, no one wants to hear about
anybody else's dreams. So I think that affected me because
the great the great aunts Obo Portugal, example, is just
is just made up to show the credulous, the credulous
nature of dreams. But we also talked about how dreams
(02:59):
can function as a way of problem solving. Right. Our
brains as problem solvers are sometimes more effective when our
consciousness is less involved. That's how the periodic table was formulated.
That's how um many authors discovered great works like Samuel
(03:20):
Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after he awoke from uh from
a dream. He wrote the poem in his sleep kind of.
He was also on a lot of opium at the time.
I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but the sewing
machine was also inspired by a dream. Yeah, it was
(03:42):
a weird one too, a really violent dream where I
believe the inventor was being like boiled in a pot
by cannibals and being stabbed with like spears. And in
the dream he recognized that the spears had holes in
the tips, and that's what gave him the idea for
the way you thread the needle or the whatever. I'm
not in a selling expert on a sewing machine, and
(04:03):
it actually is tied to the very tip of the needle,
and that's what allows it to kind of continue to
thread and hold on or whatever. But he what a
weird way to come to that conclusion. And just for
a couple of other examples, Albert Einstein, by his own account,
discovered the you know, hit upon some of his own
(04:25):
revelations in the world of dreams. At this point, I'd
like to recommend a fantastic book about the nature of
time by a guy who I think he was at
M I T an author named Alan Lightman. He wrote
a book called Einstein's Dreams, and it's entirely almost an
(04:48):
anthology or a series of vignettes of young Einstein working
as a sleepy patent clerk, and every time he falls
asleep he encounters another theory of time, which will also
be very very important for today's show. We The point
(05:10):
is that if you're listening today, or if you're if
you're if you're like many listeners who have written to
us over the years and said, I love turning on
this show as I fall asleep, which thank you. I
still think that's a compliment. Essentially, if you have slept
regularly over any period of significant time, then odds are
(05:33):
that your brain has done the same thing. Your brain
is attempting to solve problems for you. Some of those
I think it's a point somebody made earlier in previous episode.
Some of those may be emotional problems, you know, things
with which you are grappling, and some may be scientific things.
Some maybe like uh, like Paul McCartney waking up and
(05:56):
writing a song? Which song was that? Was it? Yesterday? Yesterday?
Which is the most covered song of all time. It's
been covered like more than three thousand times. That's pretty
cool claim to fame. But yeah, and I mentioned like
even being a musical guy, I don't really remember melodies
very much. But all of this stuff. The way dreams
work kind of depend on the way your brain works, right,
(06:18):
Like all of our brains work a little bit differently.
We process things in the waking world differently. So how
dreams function, I think is a big product of who
we are as people. Right. But what if this whole
idea of dream you know, sort of precognitive dreams, isn't
so much our brains doing a thing as it is
(06:42):
like a bigger picture thing that we're experiencing, something tied
in with physics, something tied in with a force larger
than ourselves. So how do we explain these anecdotes, right,
You know, many of which are unprovable, many of which
are one person telling you their opinion about what happened
(07:06):
to them. And how do we explain the robustly documented tales. Right?
One idea involves exactly what you're talking about, Noel, the
idea of something larger. This is the science I want
to bring to bear today. It involves the concept of
a thing known as retro causality. Strap in we're headed
(07:31):
for bad country here. M hm, Yes, causality. You've heard
this cause and effect. It's the thing that happens when
you hold a glass out in front of you and
then you drop it and it hits the ground. Why
did it do that? Well, it's because gravity exists, and
that's what happens when you drop something with mass, it
falls to the ground because of gravity. Um. By the way,
(07:55):
gravity is maybe a whole episode that we could do
just about what that really means, what it is. There's
not like gravity doesn't want us to know something, but
it's an odd phenomenon that we don't fully grasp. That
sounds weird to even say that, but it's true. Um.
But this chain of cause and effect happens in a
very predictable order, right, as long as there's not no
(08:17):
other thing coming in, Like with the glass example, there
isn't someone jumping to catch the glass, or there isn't
a string wrapped around the glass that pulls it down
and actually makes it swing or hang from another surface.
But so that's that's causing effect, right, that's causality. So
what is retro causality? The same thing, but backwards. Have
(08:40):
you ever liked a song so much that you said,
let's play it backwards? I don't know, probably not. It
would have to be you know, maybe the perfect palindrome
of a song to have that kind of symmetry. But
you're right. Retro causality backwards causation. This is a concept
of cause and effect, where and affect somehow proceeds its
(09:03):
cause in what we experience as linear A to B
to C one to two to three time, such that
we have to walk slowly through this. Later events affect
earlier events. Decisions made in the future in the lens
(09:24):
of retro causality may affect events in the past. This
means this, This could mean huge things for science if
it is ever uh proven or agreed upon. It could
explain nagging questions about many things in the physical world.
(09:45):
But to explain those things, we have to understand what
retro causality is and perhaps just as importantly, what it
is not. So yeah, I mean, it's it's literally the
idea of backwards causation, a reverse of cause and effect
fact uh preceding cause. Uh. It's a concept that is
(10:06):
is very much tied up into quantum physics and things
like string theory and you know, the idea of how
you know, maybe even a multiverse kind of situation, because
it does sort of lay out this framework of like,
how can something that happens on a certain timeline affect
things that precede it in a different timeline or earlier
(10:27):
on the same timeline. So Lisa Ziga puts it pretty
succinctly writing for fizz dot org Um. She describes retro
causality as not meaning that signals can be communicated from
the future to the past uh no um. Such signaling
would be forbidden even in a retro causal theory due
to thermodynamic reason. Instead, retro causality means that when an
(10:52):
experiment or chooses the measurement setting with which to measure
a particle. That decision can influence the properties of that
particle or another particle in the past, even before the
experiment or made their choice. Um. In other words, a
decision made in the present can influence something in the past.
(11:14):
Tough to wrap your head around. I was thinking of
different examples to the ground this. It's sort of like said, uh,
it's sort of It's it's a weird distinction, right, because
a decision made in the present should not be able
(11:35):
to alter the past from everything we know. You know
what I mean. And we can put it in whimsical
in a whimsical sense by saying, if you concentrate hard
enough in and think I never watched Police Academy for something,
(11:58):
then that would mean in retro causality that you might
end up not watching it, right, That's that's kind of
It's still that it means that you're not telling yourself
in the past to do something different, You're not communicating
with yourself. The fact that you made the decision in
(12:20):
the present means that the past is changed. Yeah, it's
an odd thing. I'm just gonna go back to Lisa's
example here, saying that the experiment or a scientist somewhere
in a lab chooses, you know, use the dial or
something to decide what wavelength they're going to be looking
(12:43):
at these particles with. Right. So the concept is that
just by making that choice to select that setting is
going to affect the way those particles exist essentially. But
I think more of what's happening here is that the
the setting to measure those particles is going to measure
(13:03):
those particles at that wavelength where at that energy level, right, Um,
Rather than the particle actually changing the properties of the
particle changing, you're just measuring different properties. So it's it's
tough for me to right maybe understand fully what what
at least is saying, just because maybe I just don't
(13:24):
have that particle physics degree in meaning to get that.
By the way, well it's related to you know, I'm
being a big glib with the I'm playing fast and
loose with the idea of any kind of comparison or
analogy that involves a human being. That's the nature of
this show. And we are going somewhere with this, fellow listeners.
(13:45):
So I want to see, Um, you're familiar with the
uncertainty principle, right, the famous experiment where the double slit experiment,
which we've talked about in the past. It's similar to that,
the idea that and observe erver effects what is being observed,
and to some degree may determine it by taking a measurement.
(14:08):
I mean, this is this is fascinating stuff. But maybe
we put this de side and keep building our case
and then come back because to your point, Knell, we
need to consider how retro causality may give us a
new perspective on quantum theory and have a real life
(14:29):
story about this too. And I can't wait to hear
it really quickly too. It is also kind of tied
up in one of my favorite scientific, uh descriptive things
of all time, Einstein's concept of spooky action at a
distance or quantum entanglement, which is the idea that objects
can be affected by other objects without being physically touched.
(14:52):
And that's sort of the basis for this, the idea
that these completely separate things in time and space can
have an effect on one and other. All right, So
let's dive deep into that. And to do so, we're
gonna have to get out our text books. You don't
have to, don't worry. We're we're gonna get ours out.
You can, you can just keep listening. We'll do that
right after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Okay,
(15:21):
we're opening our textbooks now and we're gonna talk about
quantum physics. So the one we hear about in schools
often is called the Copenhagen interpretation, and this version argues
that until a systems properties are physically measured in some way,
they can encompass essentially a myriad, a large number of
(15:44):
different values, different properties. Right, solid matter is a conspiracy.
That's kind of what the argument becomes at this level.
At a at a like, the closer and closer you
look further and further you dive down into reality, you
see that particles do not behave the way that solid
(16:08):
matter would behave. Imagine reality is a big pool table.
It's not the most creative idea, but fine, we need
to like, yes, like billiards exactly met So so the
the these every particle in the universe of this pool
table is maybe a little a little ball, a little
(16:30):
ball on the pool table, a six ball and eight ball,
a que ball, and they should be their solid matter
rolling from one definite point in space and time to
another definite point in space and time. That is not
the case at a fundamental level. Instead, these particles are
(16:54):
like this blurry, shifting cloud of possibility. You know, think
of the old descriptions of angels or divine beings that
were constantly like their faces were shifting and and all
this sort of stuff. Right, these particles, these billiard balls,
pool balls, aren't just shifting on the table there like
(17:17):
also and maybe other tables that also may exist, or
there's another there in the air, there under the floor.
Meaning we can be aware of the cloud of possibility.
We know that a cue ball could be hitting an
eight ball, We know it could be missing inn eight ball.
(17:37):
At the same time, we know it could be doing
any number of things, maybe specially scratching, right, especially scratching.
The probability is high. Uh. And the weird thing is
the spooky thing, and we do have spooky action coming
up here later in the show. The weird thing is
(18:00):
as soon as you look at that cub ball, as
soon as you focus on measuring that in some way
and seeing how it hits the eight ball, you will
only ever see that cube ball, let's say, hitting the
eight ball in one place into one of four corner pockets.
(18:21):
You'll never see those countless cube balls hitting countless eight
balls into every pocket or every direction at once. Think
of Schrodinger's cat, right, this is Schrodinger's cat as a
pool shark. Wow, you know it reminds me a video
in a way. I'm just imagining, um, someone dancing very
very fast, or dancing with lots of intensity. Right, if
(18:45):
you're watching on video, you get kind of the full picture.
But if it's just a snapshot, it's just that one
moment right in time, it just looks like somebody in
a kind of a strange position or a weird pose, right,
but you wouldn't get the full picture of what's occurring.
And when you're when you're thinking about video in general
or life in general, in the way to capture things,
(19:08):
we we can only capture images as frames essentially, right
as the really I really like this comparison that, right,
So there's no way for us to just have like
the video that you're watching now or any video you
watch online, you're seeing frames of moments, and there is
no way for us to just have to just measure
(19:29):
a constant or or a measure all moments at all
times when you're looking at something or observing something. It's
very strange to think about that. Well, and that that's
a really great example because that's on like sort of
like a micro level, but on a macro level, it's like,
think of the universe in those terms, like what would
a snapshot of the universe of all points at all,
(19:52):
like you can observable, you know, measure these things in
a person like I was doing a goofy dance when
you just saying that a minute ago, and then you
freeze and you might get a sense of like, Okay,
I'm frozen in this horrible rictus kind of pose, but
you can't understand the badasseness of my dance moves surrounding
it in the same way that you couldn't understand like
(20:14):
the totality of all possible moments happening, you know, in
time and space. You know, I mean, I think that's
really apt. Maw, that's super cool. And this is this
is strange because this touches on actually, uh, some concepts
that are present in ancient religions. This kind of implies
(20:36):
the idea maybe of destiny, the idea of some sort
of I don't know, it would be misleading to call
it predetermination. We're not we're not being calvinist here, but
in no offense to calvinist in the audience. But the
point is this cloud of possible, unobserved potential possibility, this
(20:57):
cloud of unobserved possibility exists free of a fixed position
in time or space. And shout out to one of
my favorite pieces of listener mail, ha ha ha remember
that guy, Uh the morphic residence. Yes, that's my favorite laugh.
I hope you're still listening, but yes, uh, time space
(21:21):
six and one hand. This, this idea of existing and
more than one spot at once is commonly called super position.
It only collapses into a single state or position when
the systems observed. Everyone observing, even the most accomplished physicist,
(21:41):
can never precisely predict what state will will what the
state will be when it collapses. And and some physicists
believe a very controversial idea because we have to keep
in mind, when you go far enough to the edge
of physics, you in the realm of metaphysics, philosophy, and
(22:03):
sometimes spirituality. So some physicists for a long time believed
that this collapse of superposition upon observation meant that consciousness
the mind itself, the software of the brain, not the hardware.
The presence of an observer caused right causation, caused the
(22:28):
superposition to collapse into a single point in space, time,
universe forty two, etcetera. This is weird because it implies
some very strange things about time, things that we wish
Einstein was here in our in our franchise of time
(22:49):
to to talk about and think about. Because you know,
to your earlier pointnal those quirky, quirky things about quantum mechanics,
spooky action at a distance entangled one bit of one
bit of something on one side of the universe. It's
very misleading way to describe the universe. But one bit
of something very far away uh turns left or up
(23:14):
or down in some direction, and then at the same time,
in an immensely uh far away place on the other
side of the universe, the same thing happens. These are
these are connected, right, There's like a push pull symmetry.
This is called spooky action because there's not a local
(23:36):
action that can explain it. But what if it is
evidence of time symmetry. What if at this level of reality,
instead of flowing in one direction, a two B, two
C one to two to three time flows at the
(23:56):
same speed in multiple directions. What if, um, What if
at the quantum level, time as we understand it flows
in the past, the present, the future, all possible futures,
all possible presence. What if on an extraordinarily fundamental level,
time becomes less like an arrow shot to a particular
(24:21):
destination and more like the air through which that concept
of an arrow moves. Yeah, I mean it seems like
quantum physics in general as a discipline, it seeks to
explain this kind of phenomenon. Because you know, what we
heard from Lisa Ziga at the beginning of the episode
was what retro costality is not is the concept that
(24:43):
a signal can be communicated from the future to the past.
It's more about the relationship of those two events and
less about like sending messages back and forth in time.
I just wanted to put that out there again. Now
that's it's a good thing to keep in mind. I
it's a massive tangent and I'm not going to go
down into it, but this concept beend of time flowing
(25:06):
and like in all directions equally. It reminds me of
the physical representations that UH, physicists and scientists used to
represent gravity. Um, when you know you you show like
a essentially the warp of space time right, Um, it
(25:28):
reminds me of that kind of only in the opposite
as in wherever the present is, wherever that is located,
like the moment of consciousness, of being aware. It feels
as though it's almost like in a mountaintop and then
in all directions is moving downwards and all of the
various possibilities in all directions. Um, I don't know. It's
(25:53):
not a very good image, but I'm just imagining it
in the same way we represent gravity and mass and
how that affects gravity. Like it's almost as if conscious
awareness or observation is that same thing for time. You're
reading my mind. This was something I wanted to I
was going to save till the end of the episode.
(26:15):
But I think we're we're on the edge of time
now right. As a concept, it doesn't really matter apparently
when things happen. So so what I like about this
concept I think you and I are on the same
page here is that I you're you're talking about distortion, right,
the way mass can distort gravity, right when you drop
(26:36):
a ball onto a taut sheet. Right, So I was
thinking of the same thing, and I had followed it
down the rabbit hole of information as mass observation is mass.
So perhaps a specific event in what we understand as
(26:57):
living your time, perhaps the more it is observed, the
more concrete or quote unquote heavier it becomes, and the
more it distorts, you know, that that sort of ambient
field or fertile soil of reality and time. I know.
But so that's don't worry. We're getting to dreams. We're
talking about this trippy stuff for a reason. In two
(27:20):
thousand and twelve, there was a physicist named q. Price
who claimed that if the strange things we know to
be true about quantum states reflect something real, and if
nothing restricts time to one direction, not the band, just
(27:41):
the direction of linear time, then the eight ball in
our earlier example, in that pool hall cloud of maybes
and what ifs, could theoretically roll out of the corner
pocket and knock the cue ball itself. I love is
this so much in the in the way they talk
(28:02):
and the concepts that they that they have to attempt
to distill for people like me who just don't get
it a lot of times. Well it's so interesting too,
because so much of this stuff is like, you know,
thought experiments until it becomes real. Like I mean, even
like Einstein and his whole idea of quantum entanglement and
spooky action at a distance, he sort of wrote it
(28:23):
off himself, was like, this is way too weird, and
I'm going to kind of let this go. And then
sure enough science came around a study shown that quantum
entanglement very likely is a thing, very much in the
way Einstein envisioned it. But he had to have done
it on a purely conceptual level at the time, because
it's not like it's something that could ever be tested,
especially in those days. So it really is a whole
(28:44):
different set of equipment that these folks have, you know
what I mean, that allows them to think in these
purely conceptual realms that end up kind of connecting with
reality a lot of the time. It's it's it's fabulous, agreed,
And this may seem like a tangent, but it is
an important tangent, even if it does not seem immediately
(29:05):
related to dreams. What we're saying is that as you
are listening to this episode, some of the most intelligent
people in the world are arguing over the fundamental concept
of linear time. Wow, I'm just trying to think all
of the other things I have to do today, and
(29:26):
I'm wondering if they're actually gonna come later or maybe
already did them just tomorrow. Decide that you've done them
tomorrow perfect or maybe because you are deciding that you
maybe because tomorrow you are thinking of doing these and
remembering that you have done them, that means you've already
(29:48):
done I don't you see the problem? If if, if
only it were so simple, and it absolutely isn't. And
we're gonna talk about why that is and how this
connects up with dreams after one more quick sponsor break
(30:09):
and we're back. Bell's theorem plays a big role here.
It's an idea proposed by one John Stewart Bell, the
concept that bizarre things happening in quantum physics can never
be explained by actions taking place nearby. It's like we
know that billiard balls are moving in all these different directions,
(30:30):
but we have no idea what's causing them. We don't
see the great Grand pool queue. I guess, which some
people say is God. You know what I mean that's
how that's how strange this stuff becomes the prime mover, right?
Is that another name for God in the situation? And
so this this leads us to ask, then what if
(30:51):
we're what if we're looking in the wrong realm? What
if the cause of these movements is not happening somewhere else,
somewhere nearby, but some when else? If causality, Yeah, if
causality runs backwards, it means that this particle can carry
the action of its measurement back in time too, when
(31:14):
it was originally entangled, affecting its partner, which is this other,
this thing observed in another version of time. Anyway, this
is all still considered fringe science, but the problem is real.
We do not fully understand the actions of the quantum realm.
And one of the things affecting our lack of understanding
maybe our assumption of linear time. So the big question
(31:38):
is what does this mean for dreams? Where does the
brain come in? Is the brain somehow quantum? Uh? Well,
I mean it's made up of the same things that
the poolballs are made of in our example, right, It's
all just a lot of atoms arranged very intricately in
(32:01):
there at least I hope they're intricately arranged. Um m hmm, gosh. Okay,
so we know that if if our cells are made
up of atoms, and atoms follow these laws of quantum physics, um,
even though we don't fully understand them, right, then yeah,
(32:23):
our brains are quantum What a weird thought. I'm just
gonna I'm just gonna sit here for a while and
think about that. Yes, do we I mean, you're right,
we're made of the same stuff right, The within our
bodies are the building blocks of the stars and the cosmos,
(32:44):
dirt and everything else. But do we need quantum physics
to explain this thing, this phenomenon that we call consciousness?
Right now, A lot of physicists and philosophers are gonna
say no, because science is about explaining things in the
most efficacious, accurate, and simple way. Right. We talked about
(33:09):
brevity being the soul of wit in literature and in
the creative realm, but the realm of science takes it
to another level. People like Paul for the Guard, who
is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, says there
is evidence building that says we can explain everything in
the human mind in terms of interactions of neurons, So
(33:35):
we wouldn't need to add quantum physics and and the
dilemmas inherit in in this concept would need to add
that to the engine for the engine to run and
for us to understand the process. It's like, if you
already have a working car, why would you add a
(33:57):
another engine on top of right? Why why would you
need two engines if you can already drive with just one?
Because really fast, right, Because you think linear time exists,
things can happen faster. So I mean, it's true. You're
(34:17):
right though, and this is of course a statement from
a philosopher, but we we know physicists tend to agree
that's right. And then we have David Deutsch, who is
a physicist at the University of Oxford, who says, quote,
is there any need to invoke quantum physics to explain cognition?
I don't know of one, and I'd be amazed if
(34:38):
one emerges. That's interesting. He's sort of like putting these
in two distinctly different buckets um, So you kind of
have two sides of that argument there. So if the
brain does engage in any of this quantum you know
shenaniganry Uh during what we call thought um. Then there's
a particularly popular theory about how all of this could
(35:01):
go down, and it involves something called microtubules, which are
protein tubes that make up the neurons and in our
in our brains, in our bodies um, specifically the support
structures within neurons UM. And and that is what potentially
quantum you know, physics would would enact upon um the
(35:22):
idea that microtubules can exploit quantum physics quantum effects rather
to exist in superpositions of two different shapes at the
same time. UM. So this goes back to what you
were talking about earlier with the idea of superposition. We
want to do a quick refresh on that. Well, you
can think about it quickly this way. Those neurons are
(35:47):
if if this is to be believed, all of your
neurons are simultaneously activated and not activated. If you think
about it as an io switch or something a state
of being on or off. All of your neurons are
both on and off at all times. That's what this
is essentially saying. Unless I'm getting that incorrect, it's yeah,
(36:07):
it's it's existing in multiple states that we would normally
think are mutually exclusive. Right, So each of these shapes
in this theory amounts to a tiny bit of what
you're talking about, Matt, classical information. We would consider it.
(36:29):
So this shape shifting quantum bit a cubit, Right, that's
the fundamental unit here. Uh, each of those can store
twice as much information as their classical counterparts. And then
we add entanglement to the mix. I would love to
see this explained in the format of a of a
(36:53):
YouTube cooking show. Right, So this is where someone sprinkles
in entanglement and starts during that stuff in. This is
the feature we've been talking about that allows these units,
these cupid states, to remain intertwined even when they're not
in local contact. That means that we can rapidly build
(37:16):
what's called quantum computer, something that can manipulate and store
information far more efficiently than a classical computer. Because to
your point, Matt, they do not have to they do
not have to be restricted to a one zero one
thing one at a time. So if retro causality is
(37:37):
also in play, that means that these tiny, tiny, tiny tubes,
these tubes of protein that you just described, Nol, these
pieces of neuron structure could be interacting with time in
a way that we do not understand. Fascinating, funky, an
amazing concept, also very far from proven as we as
(38:00):
we record this right now, all the quantum stuff we're
talking about is incredibly fragile. It's not it's not a
house of cards in a windy room. A more accurate
description would be like an upside down pyramid constructed out
of the idea where cards might sometime be balanced on
(38:25):
the nose of a blindfolded circus cloud with big clown
shoes writing a unicycle across a very high tight rope
for the very first time at their first day working
for the circus. The slightest change in anything will cause
a quantum state to break down, as far as we know.
And here's the other thing about your brain, you guys, Um,
(38:49):
it isn't exactly fit for this kind of quantum system,
at least from what we understand right now, right uh,
deep inside there in your head of years. You go ahead,
go ahead and feel it if you can, if you've
got a freehand. Um, that's just your skull. Remember that's
the hard part inside there. It's really warm, it's wet,
(39:10):
it's kind of gross, really um and it's just not
suitable for any kind of quantum system to really survive
for any length of time. But again, that's our understanding
of matter and how quantum systems work right now, because
it's what we have been able to achieve thus far. Yeah,
and as we're recording this, they are numerous people who
(39:32):
are chasing down the possibilities right trying to determine whether
there is a possibility of a quantum state in the
human brain. Well, one person particular note would be Matthew Fisher.
Fisher is an expert in developing quantum computers and he
believes there is more to this story. If you're interested,
(39:54):
I highly recommend reading a little bit more about his
proposed experiments because we have to remember, as mentioned in
a previous episode, science is a long conversation and it
argues with itself and there are many many things that
for one reason or another, our species rejected as nonsense,
(40:17):
only to later learn that those things are true. So
to bring it all back around precognitive dreams. There are
so many anecdotes, there's so many arguments, there's so many
fascinating experiments. I wanted to mention one that got me
involved in retroactive causality a number of years ago. You
(40:42):
guys have heard of mc sweeney's, right, yeah, so you
you've heard then of Walfen. I know I'm cheating. I
know you guys have heard about it because I wouldn't
shut up about it off air when I was very
into it. So Wolfen is sort of like a magazine
need of short films, and wolf Thin issue number seven
(41:06):
included a strange bonus, like a bonus article. There's a
bonus DVD that had a scientific experiment in retroactive causality.
And the idea was that you, without spoiling it, you
as the audience, the observer of the experiment that is
(41:30):
on this DVD, may somehow affect the results of the
experiment just by watching it. I still have it somewhere.
I'll send it to you guys if you want to,
if you want to check it out. It's it's controversial,
but you don't have to don't have to buy it,
just borrow it. But the but the idea here is
(41:54):
is that, um, we see experiments with this stuff. It's ongoing,
and we know with that people many listening in the
audience today do feel and do believe that they have
had some inexplicable encounter with reality through the world of dream. So,
if retro causality is real, if time, as we understand it,
(42:18):
flows in more than one direction at the quantum level,
and if the neurons in the human brain function in
some way like what we would call a quantum computer
or a quantum system, a lot of ifs here, And
if this system in a human brain is somehow able
(42:39):
to not even communicate information, but to influence information on
what we call the consciousness or the subconsciousness in an
understandable way, then there may just be a theoretical way
for our brains to understand time beyond the concept of
(43:01):
one second forward to the next. It took a long
time for us to get there, but we had to
lay out, we had to lay out the case. There
is actual science, and that's really what this comes comes
down to. There's already some science that appears to show
it could be true, which is, you know, fascinating hopeful
(43:21):
to me thinking that there might be a way for
us to uh see a mistake that's coming our way,
or to see, you know, to to help somebody who
may need our assistance and somehow we could be aware
of that through this connection in some way. I love.
(43:44):
I love the possibility that exists here and and just
knowing that if there's already science that's leaning, you know,
in this way, or at least hinting at this, then
it probably says that within you know, our lifetimes, we're
going to find out more and we're we we may
even be able to prove at some point that we
(44:05):
are more deeply connected to each other and to ourselves
and to everything than we already understand. Yeah, that's the mission,
right to have to in some way illuminate a bit
more of this cavernous, strange thing called the universe, reality
and life as we know it, this giant shadowy Jim Bay,
(44:29):
that we all exist in the shadowy Jim Bay. I
love that. Such a vision. No, it's such a good
visual and it's fun to say in your lighting looks
really really awesome. This is a plug to check out
the YouTube channel, which has been resurrected if you are
listening in the audio version. So I have to ask.
(44:52):
I know that the three of us have various questions
that we want to ask each other. So I have
to ask you, guys, do you believe that precognitive dreams exist.
It's tough. It's tough for me. I would have to
say yes, because I have experienced a few things where
(45:13):
either I have been given information that I did not have,
or I came to information that I was seeking within
a dream state and and it you know, maybe maybe
that is just my brain doing the de frag process
(45:33):
that we we talked about at the top of last episode,
but or maybe it is some connection that I don't
fully understand um, and it is some kind of precognitive situation. Honestly,
I would have to say I would have to say,
oh God, this is the stance I always take. I
(45:56):
want to believe it so badly that I'm leaning towards
thinking that something is there. I'm with it, man. I mean,
it's one of these things too, where it's so arrogant
of us. We don't understand this quantum physics stuff, and
we see the smartest people in the world like Einstein
kind of coming up with these concepts that can't be
tested and then maybe even abandoning them, and then later
it turns out that oh he was onto something. So
(46:18):
it's like we were we are not even gonna be
around long enough potentially to see the stuff you know
fully play out as to whether there's truth to this
or not, or the way the human mind works, or
one of the ideas that we discussed on a recent
news episode about that sense of communicativeness between like, you know, beings,
like like communicating through a look or knowing if someone
(46:40):
is uh is staring at you really hard. What was
the name of that. It was called morphic residents exactly.
I mean, that's you know, still on the fringes. But
I sent some truth to that, and I sent some
truth to this. How about you been? Uh, yeah, well
that's what I was getting to. There is no um.
(47:00):
There's one question that people keep missing when they talk
about precognitive dreams. Whether we consider ourselves skeptics, whether we
consider ourselves profits or oracles, or just people who know
there's more to the iceberg of reality than what we
see drifting above the surface. The question is this, if
(47:25):
someone has a dream and they used what happened in
the dream to better their situation, right, avoiding the car
accident that we mentioned earlier, uh, staying away from that
dropping piano, which I don't think ever really happens. I
think that's a cartoon thing. But you know what I mean.
If if they have a dream and that dream helps
(47:50):
them somehow in the waking world, does it matter if
it's precognition, Does it matter if it's coincidence. Does it
matter if it's the brain playing the probability game? I
would argue No. I would argue it's very easy to
get lost in our own personal feelings about what quote
(48:10):
unquote psychic powers are. If it's like the Turing test,
kind of like whether or not something is a robot
or a human, whatever the whatever the behind the scenes
picture is, if you're still having a good conversation, it's
still a good conversation. All that being said, without um
(48:33):
it spend too much time talking about myself here. I
come from a long history of people who are absolutely
convinced that they do have some kind of precognitive dream capacity.
And I'll probably hear from extended family members when this
(48:54):
episode comes out, and they will probably not be super
happy with me for the way that we approach this.
Maybe they'll get in touch with you prior to the
episode coming out. That's right. If you can prove precognition,
we would love to hear from you right to us
on Friday, August one, will double check our inboxes that
(49:15):
day and let you know. Does that joke even work?
I think it does work. But but this is what
this is. I think works better if you truly that
that was a joke, right, but truly if you are
experiencing us in some way right now as we were
(49:36):
as we record this on Friday August twenty one, this
is what I would say. If you have access to
a phone, give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three st d w y t K. Now,
it's really important. It's vitally important that you do this
on Friday August one. So any voicemails that come in today,
(50:01):
I'm checking them for you. I'm going to be listening
for you. Please do it brilliant. I love it. And
there's another thing we can check right now from you
social media. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter
where we are conspiracy stuff. On Twitter and Facebook also
(50:22):
travel to Here's where it Gets Crazy, which has been
universally lauded by us as the best part of Facebook.
You can find us on Instagram where we're conspiracy Stuff
show and You can also find us should you choose
as individuals on the social meds. If you would like
to find me, I am at how now Noel Brown
(50:43):
on Instagram where I post stuff from my core life
and you know, um, music production and video game stuff,
my kids cosplays all that stuff. You can find them
exclusively on Instagram and it's kind of lurk on Twitter.
If you wish to free up your stream of various
(51:03):
posts on Instagram, you can follow me Matt Frederick underscore
I heeart as you will not see anything from me.
And if you are opposed to social media, if you
are against the idea of calling people on the phone,
if you've had a bad dream about it, but you
need to tell us and more importantly your fellow listeners
(51:27):
a story about dreams, some new information about the possibility
of precognitive dreams. You can always reach us via our
good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at
I Heart radio dot com. But wait, remember YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. Stay with me YouTube dot com
(51:49):
slash conspiracy stuff. Just think it all the time, know it,
feel it and festive. Yes, all right, that's it. Stuff
(52:20):
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