Asklemmy

Would you really want to prove it? What would that accomplish?

You're probably going to be depressed either way: either your parallel life is worse or your parallel life is better. If it's worse then you have to witness it and (I assume) can't do anything about it. If it's better then it's not really you that gets to enjoy it, and is nothing more than an existential cocktease.

I guess if you're really lucky parallel-universe-you might have invented something world-changing and you figure out how it works and bring that information back to your universe. But if it's anything like most of my dreams it's mostly just uncanny anxiety-inducing quasi-nightmares.

even if you can describe things you see from another place, you could not reproduce a working version.

If you can't functionally use any information from the other universe or vice versa, then what's the difference between a real universe or a fake one.

There are a few ways it can be proven.

1. If the parallel universes are different versions of our own, I can use them to get information I couldn't get in my own universe. For example, if it's a universe where North Korea has an open border policy, I could walk in and observe my surroundings, then end the dream and describe things about North Korea nobody knows about. Though this is not super hard proof.

2. I could venture into the parallel universe to get a better understanding of physics, and people in my universe would know something is up because I came back knowing about how things work that the average person could never know. Though, again, this is not super hard proof.

3. I can play Marco Polo with other sleepers from my universe to see if I can find them in the parallel universe, using a system of identification that cannot be impersonated if any entity tried. This would be hard proof, but it would require that people end up in the same parallel universes.

I had dreams of omnipotence. Including omniscience - they knew I was dreaming of them. In fact, one of them was particularly aggravated that I was aware of them.

If those universes are real, then they could contact me in this one.

They have not. So those gods aren't real.

I dunno what this changed.

I'm confused by the premise. Is it hypothetical? What's with the current beliefs assessment? Further narrowing the hypothetical?

I hope not. The other night I had one where I was pooping slugs

I know there's many nights I've spent working on things in some other universe, like working on projects, building things, figuring out stuff, there's other people there, it's like I know them and they know me. Its probably just a dream but what if it isn't?

Reminds me of the st voy ep where 7of9 visits that alternate place while she regenerates.

I feel like this is content for hypotheticalsituation sub from reddit. Not sure which lemmy equivalent is.

I think there needs to be some clarification to the rules. By imagination, is it an active process? Or is it a passive process like day dreaming?

By parallel universe/multiverse, is it known that it is only 1 consistent one every dream? Or is it random universes every dream, without guarantee of visiting the same ever again?

How long and short is each “view”? I’m assuming for simplicity it is passive viewing without being able to act upon anything.

Is it only me who can do this? Or is it everyone? Is it only a random subset of people (eg genetic mutations)? Am I the only one in the multiverse able to do this? Are all versions of me capable?

What am I seeing exactly? Am I only seeing through the eyes of my parallel selves or just random snapshots of people? If I only dream of mountains and random people, how do I ever know that this is just some generative biological process inside my brain rather than a link to another world?

Even if the premise is that there’s no details of how it works, I think I need to first convince myself I am not insane before trying to convince others or use any of the information in these dreams. Acting upon information from unreliable sources (how/why unreliable? cuz I can’t even convince myself) can cause harm not only to me but the people around me.

You dream of things you’ve seen others accomplish. As you accomplish and grow yourself, your dreams will become reality, leaving room for new dreams to occupy your mind.

how could you use this information to benefit yourself or others

I would try to communicate the feel of things - either "this doesn't feel right" or "oh shit, I think this is what we should do!" but idk how to do it better because the information from dreams is always so misty - what's a silly amalgamation of experiences you've had, and what's an actual analysis of things that might happen?

how do you convince others that the things your are seeing are really happening without being labeled insane?

I genuinely don't know about this, because this is a problem I have in my real waking life: patterns and weirdness adding up to problems that cause me an itch that I usually can't express until it's an issue for everyone else, too, and then it's usually too late.

Take a peek into the multiverse to see how other versions of yourself have solved these problems..

I think this is the best use of psychedelics - they help you see solutions that are outside your usual, obvious worldview.

Oh, I've got something unexpected for you. I got bored listening to people going on and on about the Universe being a simulation, so I built a machine that can check if you're in some (but not all) classes of a simulated Universe. Take that, Plato!

It works using Bell's Theorem and the limitations of Turing machines. The former shows that for some types of measurements, the outcomes are purely probabilistic, and do not contain hidden deterministic variables (seems like a dumb way to design a Universe for simulation!). Then Turing machines are capable of computing anything that can be defined as an algorithm (but only things that can be defined in an algorithm!).

Since the former provides a non-deterministic measurement that the latter cannot model, you make a machine that produces those measurements, and ties them to something on a bigger scale (stock market purchases, social media posts, whatever). Then you keep the measurements, and attempt to determine whether they were actually generated with an algorithm (this is very hard but possible in theory -- sort of like reversing a hash). Meanwhile in the Universe upstairs, for the results to appear random enough so that analysis is nontrivial, it must consume extra computation in whatever device is running the simulation. In short, I'm doing a thing that consumes extra processing power.

So logically, if this Universe is being simulated, and someone is observing the machine closely that is doing the simulating, I can pass messages encoded in CPU activity. Just like in computer security where you can extract encryption keys by looking at a video of your power LED!

So if I'm not actually typing this on my laptop right now -- but really am sleeping/dreaming with some equivalent to an EEG monitor or MRI or whatever in some other Universe -- someone may be able to conclude whether this Universe is being generated by my mind or not. In the former case, they may have their answer, but have not woken me up yet. At that time, regrettably, your continued existence is not guaranteed. Sorry about that, but there was science to do!

If you would like to use the device I have built, you can do that. Because of course it's sitting on my desk, connected to a server via MQTT, and subsequently connected to a Lemmy bot. If you message kong_ming on my instance (with a non-blank message), it will use the device as an entropy source to generate an I Ching reading. You know, to help you answer personal questions with only a vanishingly small likelyhood of causing the Universe to cease existing. Sometimes it is down for maintenance, although I just checked in on it now and it seems OK.

I also have a second such device, at an undisclosed location, that is designed to work with a coffee machine. You know, for those times you want coffee that's simultaneously caffeinated and decaffeinated until you drink it.

Anyway, there you go. I've added a feature to the fediverse, I guess.

Define universe.