Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: Happy New Year, Happy New Year, Happy New Year. No,
Speaker 2: happy New Year, Happy New Year, Tennessee. Happy New Year you,
Speaker 2: fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 1: Yay happen yeay? What kind of fireworks do you got
Speaker 1: going on right now?
Speaker 3: How is your dog, Dylan? That was a good woo man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Please stop your fireworks at a respectable
Speaker 1: hour for the dog's sake.
Speaker 4: How are your dogs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How you DAGs?
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna do fireworks, please respect everybody else's
Speaker 1: dogs and do your fireworks indoors. Just kidding like an American.
Speaker 2: So uh, this is uh the second chapter of our
Speaker 2: classic series on dreams and predicting the future. Now as
Speaker 2: we know, we talked about this in a recent weekly
Speaker 2: Strange News segment. There's a lot humans are learning about
Speaker 2: the concept of linear or experienced time, and when we
Speaker 2: first got into this idea of dreams predicting the future,
Speaker 2: we got a lot of feedback, a lot of correspondence,
Speaker 2: and we got a lot of people, I think surprisingly, gents,
Speaker 2: we had a lot of people calling in to confirm
Speaker 2: our findings, which was the most fascinating part about this
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 5: So why don't we just jump right in to part
Speaker 5: two of Have Dreams Really Predicted the Future?
Speaker 3: Already in progress or you know at the beginning.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know? A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Reading.
Speaker 1: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 1: my name is Noel.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 2: our super producer Paul, Mission control decand most importantly, you
Speaker 2: are you. You are here and that makes this stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know. This is the second
Speaker 2: part of a two part series asking whether dreams have
Speaker 2: really predicted the future. We ended the earlier episode without
Speaker 2: getting to several things facts for one, science, although we're
Speaker 2: able to put some science in the first episode, and
Speaker 2: perhaps most importantly, questions that we had promised at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the last episode. So please listen to part
Speaker 2: one of Have Dreams Really Predicted the Future before you
Speaker 2: dive into part two. This is mostly crazy stuff in
Speaker 2: the second act, So here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: Oh man, as the quickest we've gotten crazy. I think
Speaker 3: maybe ever? I love it?
Speaker 5: Do you want to do you a little quick recap
Speaker 5: of some of the hallmarks from our last episode.
Speaker 3: Some of the historical figures.
Speaker 5: We've got Abraham Lincoln, who seems to have predicted his
Speaker 5: own assassination and dream. We have Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain,
Speaker 5: who seems to have had a premonition of his brother's
Speaker 5: demise in the form of a dream where he was
Speaker 5: laid out his brother in a metal casket wearing a suit,
Speaker 5: a borrowed suit and also bedecked with like a particular
Speaker 5: spray of flowers that lined up with what he saw
Speaker 5: in his dream, my crazy dream about Bennett Moon and
Speaker 5: then that manifesting in reality in the form of her
Speaker 5: calling in to wait, wait, don't tell me what else
Speaker 5: we got. I think your great aunt's ben and in
Speaker 5: her potential obo playing or lack of in the room.
Speaker 2: No, no, I didn't want to take time in the
Speaker 2: show with my own personal anecdotes. I always think of
Speaker 2: that scene and as always sunny in Philadelphia, where Dennis
Speaker 2: Reynolds is his sister in the show, is talking about
Speaker 2: her dreams and he tells her stop. No one wants
Speaker 2: to hear about anybody else's dreams. So I think that
Speaker 2: affected me because the Great aunt Obo Portugal example is
Speaker 2: just is just made up to show the credulous, the
Speaker 2: credulous nature of dreams. But we also talked about how
Speaker 2: dreams can function as a way of problem solving.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Our brains as problem solvers are sometimes more effective when
Speaker 2: our consciousness is less involved. That's how the periodic table
Speaker 2: was formulated. That's how many authors discover great works like
Speaker 2: Samuel Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after he he awoke from
Speaker 2: a dream. He wrote the poem in his sleep, kind of.
Speaker 2: He was also on a lot of opium at the time.
Speaker 2: I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but the sewing
Speaker 2: machine was also inspired by a dream.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a weird one too, a really violent
Speaker 5: dream where I believe the inventor was being boiled in
Speaker 5: a pot by cannibals and being stabbed with like spears.
Speaker 5: And in the dream he recognized that the spears had
Speaker 5: holes in the tips, and that's what gave him the
Speaker 5: idea for the way you thread the needle or the whatever.
Speaker 5: I'm not in a sewing expert on a sewing machine,
Speaker 5: it actually is tied to the very tip of the
Speaker 5: needle and that's what allows it to kind of continue
Speaker 5: to thread and.
Speaker 3: Hold on or whatever. But he what a weird way
Speaker 3: to come to that conclusion.
Speaker 2: Seriously, and just for a couple of other examples, Albert Einstein,
Speaker 2: by his own account, discovered the or you know, hit
Speaker 2: upon some of his own revelations in the world of dreams.
Speaker 2: At this point, I'd like to recommend a fantastic book
Speaker 2: about the nature of time by a guy who I
Speaker 2: think he was an m I T an author named
Speaker 2: Alan Leitman. He wrote a book called Einstein's Dreams, and
Speaker 2: it's entirely almost an anthology or a series of vignettes
Speaker 2: of young Einstein working as a sleepy patent clerk, and
Speaker 2: every time he falls asleep he encounters another theory of time,
Speaker 2: which will also be very very important for today's show.
Speaker 2: The point is that if you're listening today, or if
Speaker 2: you're if you're if you're like many listeners who have
Speaker 2: written to us over the years and said, I love
Speaker 2: turning on this show as I fall asleep, which thank you,
Speaker 2: I still think that's a compliment. Essentially, if you have
Speaker 2: slept regularly over any period of significant time, then odds
Speaker 2: are that your brain has done the same thing. Your
Speaker 2: brain is attempting to solve problems for you. Some of
Speaker 2: those I think it's a point somebody made earlier in
Speaker 2: previous episode. Some of those may be emotional problems, you know,
Speaker 2: things with which you are grappling, and some may be
Speaker 2: scientific things. Some may be like Paul McCartney waking up
Speaker 2: and writing a song. Which song was that?
Speaker 3: Was it? Yesterday was Yesterday?
Speaker 5: Which is the most covered song of all time. It's
Speaker 5: been covered like more than three thousand times. That's a
Speaker 5: pretty cool claim to fame. But yeah, and I mentioned
Speaker 5: like even being a musical guy, I don't really remember
Speaker 5: melodies very much. But all of this stuff. The way
Speaker 5: dreams work kind of depend on the way your brain works, right,
Speaker 5: Like all of our brains work a little bit differently.
Speaker 5: We process things in the waking world differently. So how
Speaker 5: dreams function, I think is a big product of who
Speaker 5: we are as people.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: But what if this whole idea of dream you know,
Speaker 5: sort of precognitive dreams, isn't so much our brains doing
Speaker 5: a thing as it is like a bigger picture thing
Speaker 5: that we're experiencing, something tied in with physics, something tied
Speaker 5: in with a force larger than ourselves.
Speaker 2: So how do we explain these anecdotes right? You know,
Speaker 2: many of which are unprovable, many of which are one
Speaker 2: person telling you their opinion about what happened to them.
Speaker 2: And how do we explain the robustly documented tales.
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: One idea involves exactly what you're talking about, nol, the
Speaker 2: idea of something larger. This is the science I want
Speaker 2: to bring to bear today. It involves the concept of
Speaker 2: a thing known as retro causality. Strap in. We're headed
Speaker 2: for back country here.
Speaker 1: M Yes, causality. You've heard this cause and effect. It's
Speaker 1: the thing that happens when you hold a glass out
Speaker 1: in front of you and then you drop it and
Speaker 1: it hits the ground. Why did it do that? Well,
Speaker 1: it's because gravity exists, and that's what happens when you
Speaker 1: drop something with mass, it falls to the ground because
Speaker 1: of gravity. By the way, gravity is maybe a whole
Speaker 1: episode that we could do just about what that really means,
Speaker 1: what it is. It's not like gravity doesn't want us
Speaker 1: to know something, but it's an odd phenomenon that we
Speaker 1: don't fully grasp. It sounds weird to even say that,
Speaker 1: but it's true. But This chain of cause and effect
Speaker 1: happens in a very predictable order, right, as long as
Speaker 1: there's no other thing coming in, Like with the glass example,
Speaker 1: there isn't someone jumping to catch the glass, or there
Speaker 1: isn't a string wrapped around the glass that pulls it
Speaker 1: down and actually makes it swing or hang from another surface.
Speaker 1: But so that's cause and effect, right, that's causality. So
Speaker 1: what is retro causality?
Speaker 2: The same thing, but backwards. If you ever liked a
Speaker 2: song so much that you said, let's play it backwards,
Speaker 2: I don't know, probably not. It would have to be
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the perfect palindrome of a song to
Speaker 2: have that kind of symmetry. But you're right. Retro causality
Speaker 2: backwards causation. This is a concept of cause and effect
Speaker 2: where an effect somehow precedes its cause in what we
Speaker 2: experience as linear A to B two C one to
Speaker 2: two to three time, such that we have to walk
Speaker 2: slowly through this. Later events affect earlier events. Decisions made
Speaker 2: in the future in the lens of retro causality may
Speaker 2: affect events in the past. This means this could be
Speaker 2: huge things for science if it is ever proven or
Speaker 2: agreed upon. It could explain nagging questions about many things
Speaker 2: in the physical world. But to explain those things, we
Speaker 2: have to understand what retro causality is, and perhaps just
Speaker 2: as importantly, what it is not.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, it's literally the idea of backwards causation,
Speaker 5: a reverse of cause and effect, effect preceding cause. It's
Speaker 5: a concept that is very much tied up into quantum
Speaker 5: physics and things like string theory and you know, the
Speaker 5: idea of how you know, maybe even a multiverse kind
Speaker 5: of situation, because it does sort of lay out this
Speaker 5: framework of like, how can something that happens on a
Speaker 5: certain timeline effect things that precede it in a different
Speaker 5: timeline or earlier on the same timeline. So Lisa Zeyga
Speaker 5: puts it pretty succinctly writing for fizz dot Org.
Speaker 3: She describes retrocausality as not.
Speaker 5: Meaning that signals can be communicated from the future to
Speaker 5: the past. No such signaling would be forbidden even in
Speaker 5: a retrocausal theory due to thermodynamic reason. Instead, retrocausality means
Speaker 5: that when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which
Speaker 5: to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties
Speaker 5: of that particle or another particle in the past, even
Speaker 5: before the experimenter.
Speaker 3: Made their choice.
Speaker 5: In other words, a decision made in the present can
Speaker 5: influence something in the past.
Speaker 1: That is tough to wrap your head around.
Speaker 2: I was thinking at different examples to ground this. It's
Speaker 2: sort of like said, it's sort of it's a weird distinction, right,
Speaker 2: because a decision made in the present should not be
Speaker 2: able to alter the past from everything we know. You
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And we can put it in
Speaker 2: a whimsical in a whimsical sense by saying, if you
Speaker 2: concentrate hard enough in twenty twenty and think I never
Speaker 2: watched Police Academy for something, then that would mean in
Speaker 2: retrocausality that you might end up not watching it, right,
Speaker 2: that's kind of It's still it means that you're not
Speaker 2: telling yourself in the past to do something different. You're
Speaker 2: not communicating with yourself. The fact that you made the
Speaker 2: decision in the present means that the past is changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an odd thing. I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: back to Lisa's example here, saying that the experimenter, a
Speaker 1: scientist somewhere in a lab chooses, you know, use a
Speaker 1: dial or something to decide what wavelength they're going to
Speaker 1: be looking at these particles with.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the concept is that just by making that choice
Speaker 1: to select that setting is going to affect the way
Speaker 1: those particles exist essentially. But I think more of what's
Speaker 1: happening here is that the setting to measure those particles
Speaker 1: is going to measure those particles at that wavelength or
Speaker 1: at that energy level, right, Rather than the particle actually
Speaker 1: changing the properties of the particle changing, you're just measuring
Speaker 1: different properties. So it's tough for me to maybe understand
Speaker 1: fully what Lisa is saying, just because I maybe I
Speaker 1: just don't have that particle physics degree meaning to get that.
Speaker 2: By the way, well it's related to you know, I'm
Speaker 2: being a big glib with the I'm playing fast and
Speaker 2: loose with the idea of any kind of comparison or
Speaker 2: analogy that involves a human being. That's the nature of
Speaker 2: this show, and we are going somewhere with this, fellow listeners.
Speaker 2: So I want to say, you're familiar with the uncertainty principle, right,
Speaker 2: the famous experiment where the double slit experiment, which we
Speaker 2: have talked about in the past. It's similar to that
Speaker 2: the idea that an observer affects what is being observed
Speaker 2: and to some degree may determine it by taking a measurement.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is fascinating stuff. But maybe
Speaker 2: we put this aside and keep building our case and
Speaker 2: then come back because to your point, Noel, we need
Speaker 2: to consider how retro causality may give us a new
Speaker 2: perspective on quantum theory. And ever a real life story
Speaker 2: about this too.
Speaker 5: Oh, I can't wait to hear it really quickly too.
Speaker 5: It is also kind of tied up in one of
Speaker 5: my favorite scientific descriptive things of all time, Einstein's concept
Speaker 5: of spooky action at a distance or quantum entanglement, which
Speaker 5: is the idea that objects can be affected by other
Speaker 5: objects without being physically touched. And that's sort of the
Speaker 5: basis for this, the idea that these completely separate things
Speaker 5: in time and space can have an effect on one another.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's dive deep into that. And to
Speaker 1: do so, we're gonna have to get out our textbooks.
Speaker 1: You don't have to, don't worry, we're gonna get ours out.
Speaker 1: You can. You can just keep listening, and we'll do that.
Speaker 1: Right after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're opening our textbooks now and going to talk about
Speaker 1: quantum physics. So the one we hear about in schools
Speaker 1: often is called the Copenhagen interpretation, and this version argues
Speaker 1: that until a system's properties are physically measured in some way,
Speaker 1: they can encompass essentially a myriad, a large number of
Speaker 1: different values, different properties.
Speaker 2: Right, solid matter is a conspiracy. That's kind of what
Speaker 2: the argument becomes at this level.
Speaker 1: At a.
Speaker 2: Like the closer and closer you look further and further
Speaker 2: you dive down into reality, you see that particles do
Speaker 2: not behave the way that solid matter would behave. Imagine
Speaker 2: reality is a big pool table. It's not the most
Speaker 2: creative idea, but fine.
Speaker 1: We need to like like billiards.
Speaker 2: Yes, like billiards exactly, Matt. So, So the the the
Speaker 2: every particle in the universe of this pool table is
Speaker 2: maybe a little ball, a little ball on the pool table,
Speaker 2: a six ball, and eight ball, a que ball, and
Speaker 2: they should be their solid matter rolling from one definite
Speaker 2: point in space and time to another definite point in
Speaker 2: space and time. That is not the case at a
Speaker 2: fundamental level. Instead, these particles are like this blurry, shifting
Speaker 2: cloud of possibility. You know, think of the old descriptions
Speaker 2: of angels or divine beings that were constantly like their faces.
Speaker 2: We're shifting and all this sort of stuff. Right, These particles,
Speaker 2: these billiard balls, pool balls, aren't just shifting on the table.
Speaker 2: They're like also in maybe other tables that also may exist,
Speaker 2: or there's another there in the air. They're under the floor,
Speaker 2: meaning we can be aware of the cloud of possibility.
Speaker 2: We know that a cueball could be hitting an eight ball,
Speaker 2: we know it could be missing an eight ball. At
Speaker 2: the same time, we know it could be doing any
Speaker 2: number of things, maybe especially scratching, right, especially scratching. The
Speaker 2: probability is high. Uh. And the weird thing is the
Speaker 2: spooky thing, and we do have spooky action coming up
Speaker 2: here later in the show. The weird thing is that
Speaker 2: as soon as you look at that cueball, as soon
Speaker 2: as you focus on measuring that in some way and
Speaker 2: seeing how it hits the eight ball, you will only
Speaker 2: ever see that cueball, let's say, hitting the eight ball
Speaker 2: in one place into one of four corner pockets. You'll
Speaker 2: never see those countless cueballs hitting countless eight balls into
Speaker 2: every pocket or every direction at once. Think of Schrodinger's cat, right,
Speaker 2: this is Schrodinger's cat as a pool shark.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know it reminds me of video in a way.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining someone dancing very very fast, or dancing
Speaker 1: with lots of intensity. Right. If you're watching it on video,
Speaker 1: you get kind of the full picture. But if it's
Speaker 1: just a snapshot or just that one moment right in time,
Speaker 1: it just looks like somebody in kind of a strange
Speaker 1: position or a weird pose, right, But you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: the full picture of what's occurring. And when you're when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about video in general or life in general,
Speaker 1: and the way to capture things, we can only capture
Speaker 1: images as frames essentially, right, as the.
Speaker 2: I really like this comparison met.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's no way for us to just have,
Speaker 1: like the video that you're watching now or any video
Speaker 1: you watch online, you're seeing frames of moments, and there
Speaker 1: is no way for us to just have to just
Speaker 1: measure a constant or measure all moments at all times
Speaker 1: when you're looking at something or observing something. It's very
Speaker 1: strange to think about that.
Speaker 5: Well, And that's a really great example because that's on
Speaker 5: like sort of like a micro level, but on a
Speaker 5: macro level. It's like, think of the universe in those terms,
Speaker 5: like what would a snapshot of the universe of all
Speaker 5: points at all, Like you can observably, you know, measure
Speaker 5: these things in a person like I was doing a
Speaker 5: goofy dance when you're saying that a minute ago, and
Speaker 5: then you freeze and you might get a sense of like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm frozen in this horrible rictus kind of pose, but
Speaker 5: you can't understand the badassness of my dance moves surrounding
Speaker 5: it in the same way that you couldn't understand like
Speaker 5: the totality of all possible moments happening, you know, in
Speaker 5: time and space, you know what I mean. I think
Speaker 5: that's really app math. That's super cool.
Speaker 2: And this is strange because this touches on actually some
Speaker 2: concepts that are present in ancient religions. This kind of
Speaker 2: implies the idea maybe of destiny, the idea of some
Speaker 2: sort of I don't know, it would be misleading to
Speaker 2: call it predetermination. We're not being calvinist here, but and
Speaker 2: no offense to calvinist in the audience. But the point
Speaker 2: is this cloud of possible unobserved potential possibility. This cloud
Speaker 2: of unobserved possibility exists free of a fixed position in
Speaker 2: time or space. And shout out to one of my
Speaker 2: favorite pieces of listener mail. Ha ha ha remember that guy,
Speaker 2: the morphic resonance. Yes, yes, that's my favorite laugh. I
Speaker 2: hope you are still listening, but yes, time space six.
Speaker 2: On one hand, this idea of existing in more than
Speaker 2: one spot at once is commonly called superposition. It only
Speaker 2: collapses into a single state or position when the systems observed.
Speaker 2: Everyone observing, even the most accomplished physicist, can never precisely
Speaker 2: predict what state what the state will be when it collapses,
Speaker 2: and some physicists believe a very controversial idea because we
Speaker 2: have to keep in mind, when you go far enough
Speaker 2: to the edge of physics, you are in the realm
Speaker 2: of metaphysics, philosophy, and sometimes spirituality. So some physicists for
Speaker 2: a long time believed that this collapse of super position
Speaker 2: upon observation meant that consciousness, the mind itself, the software
Speaker 2: of the brain, not the hardware. The presence of an
Speaker 2: observer caused right causation caused the superposition to collapse into
Speaker 2: a single point in space, time, the universe forty two,
Speaker 2: et cetera. This is weird because it implies some very
Speaker 2: strange things about time, things that we wish Einstein was
Speaker 2: here in our franchise of time to talk about and
Speaker 2: think about, because you know, to your earlier point. Now
Speaker 2: those quirky, quirky things about quantum mechanics, spooky action at
Speaker 2: a distance, entanglement, one bit of one bit of something
Speaker 2: on one side of the universe. It's a very misleading
Speaker 2: way to describe the universe. But one bit of something
Speaker 2: very far away turns left or up or down in
Speaker 2: some direction, and then at the same time, in an
Speaker 2: immensely far away place on the other side of the universe,
Speaker 2: the same thing happens. These are connected, right, There's like
Speaker 2: a push pull symmetry. This is called spooky action because
Speaker 2: there's not a local action that can explain it. But
Speaker 2: what if it is evidence of time symmetry. What if
Speaker 2: at this level of reality, instead of flowing in one
Speaker 2: direction A to B, two C one to two to three,
Speaker 2: time flows at the same speed in multiple directions. What
Speaker 2: if what if at the quantum level, time as we
Speaker 2: understand it flows in the past, the present, the future,
Speaker 2: all possible futures, all possible presence. What if on an
Speaker 2: extraordinarily fundamental level, time becomes less like an arrow shot
Speaker 2: to a particular destination and more like the air through
Speaker 2: which that concept of an arrow moves.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it seems like quantum physics in general
Speaker 5: as a discipline, it seeks to explain this kind of phenomenon.
Speaker 5: Because you know, what we heard from Lisa Zeiga at
Speaker 5: the beginning of the episode was what retro causality is
Speaker 5: not is the concept that a signal can be communicated
Speaker 5: from the future to the past. It's more about the
Speaker 5: relationship of those two events and less about like sending
Speaker 5: messages back and forth in time. Just wanted to put
Speaker 5: that out there again.
Speaker 1: Now, it's a good thing to keep in mind, but
Speaker 1: it's a massive tangent and I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: down into it. But this concept been of time flowing
Speaker 1: and like in all directions equally. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: the physical representations that physicists and scientists used to represent gravity.
Speaker 1: When you know, you show like a essentially the warp
Speaker 1: of space time, right, it reminds me of that kind
Speaker 1: of only in the opposite as in wherever the present is,
Speaker 1: wherever that is located, like the moment of consciousness, of
Speaker 1: being aware. It feels as though it's almost like in
Speaker 1: a mountaintop, and then in all directions is moving downwards
Speaker 1: and all of the various possibilities in all directions. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not a very good image, but I'm
Speaker 1: just imagining it in the same way we represent gravity
Speaker 1: and mass and how that affects gravity. Like it's almost
Speaker 1: as if conscious awareness or observation is that same thing
Speaker 1: for time.
Speaker 2: You're reading my mind. This was something I wanted to
Speaker 2: I was going to save till the end of the episode.
Speaker 2: But I think we're we're on the edge of time.
Speaker 3: Now, right.
Speaker 2: As a concept, it doesn't really matter apparently when things happen. So,
Speaker 2: so what I like about this concept, and I think
Speaker 2: you and I are on the same page here, is
Speaker 2: that you're talking about distortion, right, the way mass can
Speaker 2: distort gravity, right when you drop a ball onto a
Speaker 2: taut sheet.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking of the same thing, and I
Speaker 2: had followed it down the rabbit hole of information as
Speaker 2: mass observation is mass. So perhaps a specific event in
Speaker 2: what we understand as lindear your time. Perhaps the more
Speaker 2: it is observed, the more concrete or quote unquote heavier
Speaker 2: it becomes, and the more it distorts, you know, that
Speaker 2: sort of ambient field or fertile soil of reality and time.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: But so that's don't worry. We're getting to dreams. We're
Speaker 2: talking about this trippy stuff where reason. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: there was a physicist named Q. Price who claimed that
Speaker 2: if the strange things we know to be true about
Speaker 2: quantum states reflect something real, and if nothing restricts time
Speaker 2: to one direction, not the band, just the direction of
Speaker 2: linear time, then the eight ball in our earlier example,
Speaker 2: in that pool hall cloud of maybe some what ifs
Speaker 2: could theoretically roll out of the corner pocket and knock
Speaker 2: the cue ball itself.
Speaker 1: I love physicists so much in the way they talk
Speaker 1: and the concepts that they that they have to attempt
Speaker 1: to distill for people like me who just don't get
Speaker 1: it a lot of times.
Speaker 5: Well, it's so interesting too, because so much of this
Speaker 5: stuff is like, you know, thought experiments until it becomes real.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, even like Einstein and.
Speaker 5: His whole idea of quantum entanglement and spooky action at
Speaker 5: a distance. He sort of wrote it off himself, like
Speaker 5: this is way too weird and I'm gonna kind of
Speaker 5: let this go. And then sure enough, science came around
Speaker 5: and a study shown that quantum entanglement very likely is
Speaker 5: a thing, very much in the way Einstein envisioned it.
Speaker 5: But he had to have done it on a purely
Speaker 5: conceptual level at the time, because it's not like it's
Speaker 5: something that could ever be tested, especially in those days.
Speaker 5: So it really is a whole different set of equipment
Speaker 5: that these folks have, you know what I mean, that
Speaker 5: allows them to think in these purely conceptual realms that
Speaker 5: end up kind of connecting with reality a lot of
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 2: It's fabulous, agreed, And this may seem like a tangent,
Speaker 2: but it is an important tangent, even if it does
Speaker 2: not seem immediately related to dreams. What we're saying is
Speaker 2: that as you are listening to this episode, some of
Speaker 2: the most intelligent people in the world are arguing over
Speaker 2: the fundamental concept of linear time.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm just trying to think all the other things
Speaker 1: I have to do today, and I'm wondering if they're
Speaker 1: actually going to come later or maybe already did them
Speaker 1: just tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Decide that you've done them tomorrow perfect or maybe because
Speaker 2: you are deciding that you maybe because tomorrow you are
Speaker 2: thinking of doing these and remembering that you have done them,
Speaker 2: that means you've already done I don't know, you see,
Speaker 2: I see the problem.
Speaker 5: If only it were so simple, and it absolutely is it.
Speaker 5: And we're going to talk about why that is and
Speaker 5: how this connects up with dreams after one more quick sponsor.
Speaker 2: Break and we're back. Bell's theorem it plays a big
Speaker 2: role here. It's an idea proposed by one John Stuart Bell,
Speaker 2: the concept that bizarre things happening in quantum physics can
Speaker 2: never be explained by actions taking place nearby. It's like
Speaker 2: we know that billiard balls are moving in all these
Speaker 2: different directions, but we have no idea what's causing them.
Speaker 2: We don't see the great grand pool queue. I guess
Speaker 2: which some people say is God? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: That's how that's how strange this stuff becomes.
Speaker 3: The prime mover? Right? Is that another name for a
Speaker 3: god in the situation?
Speaker 1: M h.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 2: This this leads us to ask, then what if we're
Speaker 2: what if we're looking in the wrong realm? What if
Speaker 2: the cause of these movements is not happening somewhere else,
Speaker 2: somewhere nearby, but some when else. If causality, yep, if
Speaker 2: causality runs backwards, it means that this particle can carry
Speaker 2: the action of its measurement back in time to when
Speaker 2: it was originally entangled, affecting its partner, which is this other,
Speaker 2: this thing observed in another version of time. Anyway, this
Speaker 2: is all still considered fringe science, but the problem is real.
Speaker 2: We do not fully understand the actions of the quantum realm,
Speaker 2: and one of the things affecting our lack of understanding
Speaker 2: may be our assumption of linear time. So the big
Speaker 2: question is what does this mean for dreams? Where does
Speaker 2: the brain come in? Is the brain somehow quantum?
Speaker 1: Uh? Well, I mean it's made up of the same
Speaker 1: things that the pool balls are made of in our example, right,
Speaker 1: It's all just a lot of atoms arranged very intricately
Speaker 1: in there, at least I hope they're intricately arranged. Hmm. Gosh, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we know that if our cells are made up
Speaker 1: of atoms, and atoms follow these laws of quantum physics,
Speaker 1: even though we don't fully understand them, right, then yeah,
Speaker 1: our brains are quantum What a weird thought. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna I'm just gonna sit here for a while and
Speaker 1: think about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, do we I mean, you're right, We're made of
Speaker 2: the same stuff right within our bodies are the building
Speaker 2: blocks of the stars and the cosmos, dirt and everything else.
Speaker 2: But do we need quantum physics to explain this thing,
Speaker 2: this phenomenon that we call consciousness? Right now, A lot
Speaker 2: of physicists and philosophers are gonna say no, because science
Speaker 2: is about explaining things in the most efficacious, accurate, and
Speaker 2: simple way. Right We talked about brevity being the soul
Speaker 2: of wit in literature and in the creative realm, but
Speaker 2: the realm of science takes it to another level. People
Speaker 2: like Paul the Guard, who is a philosopher at the
Speaker 2: University of Waterloo. It says there is evidence building. It
Speaker 2: says we can explain everything in the human mind in
Speaker 2: terms of interactions of neurons, So we wouldn't need to
Speaker 2: add quantum physics and the dilemmas inherent in this concept
Speaker 2: would need to add that to the engine for the
Speaker 2: engine to run and for us to understand the process.
Speaker 2: It's like if you already have a working car, why
Speaker 2: would you add another engine on top of it? Right?
Speaker 2: Why would you need two engines if you can already
Speaker 2: drive with just one?
Speaker 1: Because you want to go really fast?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Because you think linear time exists, things can happen faster.
Speaker 2: So I mean it's true. You're right though, and this
Speaker 2: is of course a statement from a philosopher, but we
Speaker 2: know physicists tend to that's right.
Speaker 5: And then we have David Deutsch, who is a physicist
Speaker 5: at the University of Oxford, who says, quote, is there
Speaker 5: any need to invoke quantum physics to explain cognition? I
Speaker 5: don't know of one, and I'd be amazed if one emerges.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 5: He's sort of like putting these in two distinctly different buckets,
Speaker 5: So you kind of have two sides of that argument there.
Speaker 5: So if the brain does engage in any of this
Speaker 5: quantum you know, shenaniganry during what we call thought, then
Speaker 5: there's a particularly popular theory about how all of this
Speaker 5: could go down, and it involves something called microtubules, which
Speaker 5: are protein tubes that make up the.
Speaker 3: Neurons in our in our brains, in our bodies.
Speaker 5: Specifically, these support structures within neurons, and that is what
Speaker 5: potentially quantum you know, physics would would enact upon the
Speaker 5: idea that microtube can exploit quantum physics quantum effects rather
Speaker 5: to exist in superpositions of two different shapes at the
Speaker 5: same time. So this goes back to what you were
Speaker 5: talking about earlier with the idea of superposition.
Speaker 3: We want to do a quick refresh on that.
Speaker 1: Well, you can think about it quickly this way. Those
Speaker 1: neurons are, if this is to be believed, all of
Speaker 1: your neurons are simultaneously activated and not activated. If you
Speaker 1: think about it as an io switch or something a
Speaker 1: state of being on or off. All of your neurons
Speaker 1: are both on and off at all times. That's what
Speaker 1: this is essentially saying. Unless I'm getting that incorrect.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's existing in multiple states that we would
Speaker 2: normally think are mutually exclusive. Right, So each of these
Speaker 2: shapes in this theory amounts to a tiny bit of
Speaker 2: what you're talking about, Matt, classical information we would consider it.
Speaker 2: So this shape shifting quantum bit a cubit, right, that's
Speaker 2: the fundamental unit here. Each of those can store twice
Speaker 2: as much information as their classical counterparts and then we
Speaker 2: add entanglement to the mix. I would love to see
Speaker 2: this explained in the format of a YouTube cooking show. Right, So,
Speaker 2: this is where someone sprinkles in entanglement and starts stirring
Speaker 2: that stuff in. This is the feature we've been talking
Speaker 2: about that allows these units, these cubit states, to remain
Speaker 2: intertwined even when they're not in local contact. That means
Speaker 2: that we can rapidly build what's called quantum computer, something
Speaker 2: that can manipulate and store information far more efficiently than
Speaker 2: a classical computer. Or because to your point, Matt, they
Speaker 2: do not have to they do not have to be
Speaker 2: restricted to a one zero one thing one at a time.
Speaker 2: So if retrocausality is also in play, that means that
Speaker 2: these tiny, tiny, tiny tubes, these tubes are protein that
Speaker 2: you just described, these pieces of neuron structure could be
Speaker 2: interacting with time in a way that we do not understand. Fascinating, funky,
Speaker 2: an amazing concept, also very far from proven. As we
Speaker 2: record this right now. All the quantum stuff we're talking
Speaker 2: about is incredibly fragile. It's not a house of cards
Speaker 2: in a windy room. A more accurate description would be
Speaker 2: like an upside down pyramid constructed out of the idea
Speaker 2: where cards might sometime be balanced on the nose of
Speaker 2: a blindfolded circus cloud with big clown shoes writing a
Speaker 2: unicycle across a very high tight rope for the very
Speaker 2: first time at their first day working for the circus.
Speaker 2: The slightest change in anything will cause a quantum state
Speaker 2: to break down as far as we know.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing about your brain, you guys,
Speaker 1: it isn't exactly fit for this kind of quantum system,
Speaker 1: at least from what we understand right now, right deep
Speaker 1: inside there in your head of yours. Go go ahead
Speaker 1: and feel it if you can, if you've got a freehand.
Speaker 1: That's just your skull. Remember that's the hard part inside there.
Speaker 1: It's really warm, it's wet, it's kind of gross, really,
Speaker 1: and it's just not suitable for any kind of quantum
Speaker 1: system to really survive for any length of time. But again,
Speaker 1: that's our understanding of matter and how quantum system work
Speaker 1: right now, because it's what we have been able to
Speaker 1: achieve thus far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we're recording this, there are numerous people
Speaker 2: who are chasing down the possibilities right trying to determine
Speaker 2: whether there is a possibility of a quantum state in
Speaker 2: the human brain. Well, one person of particular note would
Speaker 2: be Matthew Fisher. Fisher is an expert in developing quantum computers,
Speaker 2: and he believes there is more to the story. If
Speaker 2: you're interested, I highly recommend reading a little bit more
Speaker 2: about his proposed experiments. Because we have to remember, as
Speaker 2: mentioned in a previous episode, science is a long conversation
Speaker 2: and it argues with itself, and there are many many
Speaker 2: things that, for one reason or another, our species rejected
Speaker 2: as nonsense, only to later learn that those things are true.
Speaker 2: So to bring it all back around precognitive dreams, there
Speaker 2: are so many anecdotes, there's so many arguments, there's so
Speaker 2: many fascinating experiments. I wanted to mention one that got
Speaker 2: me involved in retroactive causality a number of years ago.
Speaker 2: You guys have heard of McSweeney's, right, Yeah, so you've
Speaker 2: heard then of Walten. I know I'm cheating. I know
Speaker 2: you guys have heard about it because I wouldn't shut
Speaker 2: up about it off air when I was very into it.
Speaker 2: So Walfen is sort of like a magazine made of
Speaker 2: short films, and Walfin issued number seven included a strange
Speaker 2: bonus like a bonus article, but it was a bonus
Speaker 2: DVD that had a scientific experiment in retroactive causality. And
Speaker 2: the idea was that you, without spoiling it, as the audience,
Speaker 2: the observer of the experiment that is on this DVD,
Speaker 2: may somehow affect the results of the experiment just by
Speaker 2: watching it. I still have it somewhere. I'll send it
Speaker 2: to you guys if you want to, if you want
Speaker 2: to check it out. It's it's controversial, but it sure.
Speaker 2: You don't have to you don't have to buy it,
Speaker 2: just borrow it. But the but the idea here is
Speaker 2: is that we see experiments with this stuff. It's ongoing,
Speaker 2: and we know that people many listening in the audience
Speaker 2: today do feel and do believe that they have had
Speaker 2: some inexplicable encounter with reality through the world of dream. So,
Speaker 2: if retrocausality is real, if time, as we understand it,
Speaker 2: flows in more than one direction at the quantum level,
Speaker 2: and if the in the human brain function in some
Speaker 2: way like what we would call a quantum computer or
Speaker 2: a quantum system, a lot of ifs here, and if
Speaker 2: this system in a human brain is somehow able to
Speaker 2: not even communicate information, but to influence information on what
Speaker 2: we call the consciousness or the subconsciousness in an understandable way.
Speaker 2: Then there may just be a theoretical way for our
Speaker 2: brains to understand time beyond the concept of one second
Speaker 2: forward to the next. It took a long time for
Speaker 2: us to get there, but we had to lay out
Speaker 2: we had to lay out the case. There is actual science, and.
Speaker 1: That's really what this comes down to. There's already some
Speaker 1: science that appears to show it could be true, which
Speaker 1: is you know, fascinating and hopeful to me thinking that
Speaker 1: there might be a way for us to see a
Speaker 1: mistake that's coming our way, or to see, you know,
Speaker 1: to help somebody who may need our assistance, and somehow
Speaker 1: we could be aware of that through this connection in
Speaker 1: some way.
Speaker 3: I love. I love the.
Speaker 1: Possibility that exists here, and and just knowing that if
Speaker 1: there's already science that's leaning you know, in this way,
Speaker 1: or at least hinting at this, then it probably says
Speaker 1: that within you know, our lifetimes, we're going to find
Speaker 1: out more and we're we may even be able to
Speaker 1: prove at some point that we are more deeply connected
Speaker 1: to each other and to ourselves and to everything than
Speaker 1: we already understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the mission, right to have to in some
Speaker 2: way illuminate a bit more of this cavernous, strange thing
Speaker 2: called the universe, reality and life as we know it.
Speaker 1: This giant shadowy jemba that we all exist in.
Speaker 3: Ah, the shadowy Jemba. I love that it's such a vision. No,
Speaker 3: it's such a good visual and it's fun to say.
Speaker 2: And your lighting looks really, really awesome. This is a
Speaker 2: plug to check out the YouTube channel, which has been
Speaker 2: resurrected if you are listening in the audio version. So
Speaker 2: I have to ask. I know that the three of
Speaker 2: us have various questions that we want to ask each other.
Speaker 2: So I have to ask you, guys, do you believe
Speaker 2: that precognitive dreams exist.
Speaker 1: It's tough for me. I would have to say yes,
Speaker 1: because I have experienced a few things where either I
Speaker 1: have been given information that I did not have, or
Speaker 1: I came to information that I was seeking within a
Speaker 1: dream state and and it you know, maybe maybe that
Speaker 1: is just my brain doing the defrag process that we
Speaker 1: talked about at the top of last episode, but or
Speaker 1: maybe it is some connection that I don't fully understand
Speaker 1: and it is some kind of precognitive situation. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: would have to say, I would have to say, oh God,
Speaker 1: this is the stance I always take. I want to
Speaker 1: believe it so badly that I'm leaning towards thinking that
Speaker 1: something is there.
Speaker 5: I'm with it, man, I mean. And it's one of
Speaker 5: these things too, where it's so arrogant of us. We
Speaker 5: don't understand this quantum physics stuff, and we see the
Speaker 5: smartest people in the world, like Einstein, kind of coming
Speaker 5: up with these concepts that can't be tested and then
Speaker 5: maybe even abandoning them, and then later it turns out that,
Speaker 5: oh he was onto something. So it's like, we're not
Speaker 5: even going to be around long enough potentially to see
Speaker 5: the stuff, you know, fully play out as to whether
Speaker 5: there's truth to this or not, or the way the
Speaker 5: human mind works. Or one of the ideas that we
Speaker 5: discussed on a recent news episode about that sense of
Speaker 5: communicativeness between like, you know, beings, like like communicating through
Speaker 5: a look or knowing if someone is staring at you
Speaker 5: really hard. What was the name of that.
Speaker 2: It was called morphic resonance.
Speaker 5: Morphic residents exactly I mean, that's, you know, still on
Speaker 5: the fringes. But I send some truth to that, and
Speaker 5: I send some truth to this.
Speaker 1: How about you, Ben?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well that's what I was getting to. There is
Speaker 2: no there's one question that people keep missing when they
Speaker 2: talk about precognitive dreams. Whether we consider ourselves skeptics, whether
Speaker 2: we consider ourselves profits or oracles, or just people who
Speaker 2: know there's more to the iceberg of reality than what
Speaker 2: we see drifting above the surface. The question is this,
Speaker 2: if someone has a dream and they use what happened
Speaker 2: in the dream to better their situation, right, avoiding the
Speaker 2: car accident that we mentioned earlier, staying away from that
Speaker 2: dropping piano, which I don't think ever really happens. I
Speaker 2: think that's a cartoon thing. But you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: If they have a dream and that dream helps them
Speaker 2: somehow in the waking world. Does it matter if it's precognition,
Speaker 2: Does it matter if it's coincidence. Does it matter if
Speaker 2: it's the brain playing the probability game? I would argue no.
Speaker 2: I would argue it's very easy to get lost in
Speaker 2: our own personal feelings about what quote unquote psychic powers are.
Speaker 2: If it's like the Turing test, kind of like whether
Speaker 2: or not something is a robot or a human, whatever
Speaker 2: the whatever. The behind the scenes picture is, if you're
Speaker 2: still having a good conversation, it's still a good conversation.
Speaker 2: All that being said, without don't spend too much time
Speaker 2: talking about myself here. I come from a long history
Speaker 2: of people who are absolutely convinced that they do have
Speaker 2: some kind of precognitive dream capacity. And I'll probably hear
Speaker 2: from extended family members when this episode comes out, and
Speaker 2: they will probably not be super happy with me for
Speaker 2: the way that we approach this.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll get in touch with you prior to the
Speaker 1: episode coming out.
Speaker 2: That's right. If you can prove precognition, we would love
Speaker 2: to hear from you. Write to us on Friday, August first,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Will double check our inboxes that day and let you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that does. That joke even work.
Speaker 1: I think it does work, But this is I think
Speaker 1: works better if you truly that was a joke, right,
Speaker 1: but truly if you are experiencing us in some way
Speaker 1: right now as we record this on Friday August twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, this is what I would say if you
Speaker 1: have access to a phone, give us a call. Our
Speaker 1: number is one eight three three STDWYTK. Now it's really important.
Speaker 1: It's vitally important that you do this on Friday, August
Speaker 1: twenty first, twenty twenty. So any voicemails that come in today,
Speaker 1: I'm checking them for you. I'm going to be listening
Speaker 1: for you. Please do it brilliant.
Speaker 3: I love it.
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Speaker 5: If you would like to find me, I am at
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Speaker 5: from my core life and you know, music production and
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Speaker 1: And it's kind of work on Twitter if you wish
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Speaker 1: You can follow me Matt Frederick underscore iHeart as you
Speaker 1: will not see anything from me.
Speaker 2: And if you are opposed to social media, if you
Speaker 2: are against the idea of calling people on the phone,
Speaker 2: if you've had a bad dream about it, but you
Speaker 2: need to tell us some more importantly, your fellow listeners,
Speaker 2: a story about dreams, some new information about the possibility
Speaker 2: of precognitive dreams. You can always reach us via our
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