Answering the ultimate question of existence requires all hands on deck
Talking about escaping the matrix. To study the fundamental building blocks of the universe at Planck scale require an enormous amount of energy. The reason is we have to accelerate particles to a fraction or near speed of light. With current technology of large hadron collider, the structure itself would be big enough to wrap around the Sun and we would have to harvest the sun directly.
But maybe that’s not the only way, maybe we can find a clever way around it with much more efficiency.
And there’s a group of computer scientists and big tech think they can solve quantum gravity with AI. Maybe they can. But that’s just another piece to the puzzle.
Then there are people who want to extend life indefinitely, so we can have more time to study all these and not dead before the answer is revealed.
There are also people who want to extend life to other planets to build civilization resilience so knowledge and life can be preserved if something go wrong on Earth.
Great minds from old ages like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and modern scientists alike.
A vast majority of people do nothing related to this but they help maintain civilization in various ways.
What I’m trying to say is escaping the matrix will require all hands on deck. Everyone offers a piece of the puzzle.
The debate between determinism and free will is often framed in black-and-white terms, but human behavior suggests a spectrum. Sometimes our actions feel automatic, driven by biology or environment; other times they feel deliberate, guided by reflection and long-term goals.
Take a simple case: breakfast. You might choose between cereal, eggs, or skipping the meal. That decision is shaped by both external inputs (what food is available, what you see in the fridge) and internal states (hunger, health goals, habits). The final choice emerges from the interplay of these factors inside the brain.
By contrast, some processes—heartbeat, breathing rhythms, circadian cycles—are regulated by deeper brain structures like the brainstem. These are not accessible to conscious choice. They illustrate that not everything within us is under voluntary control.
Where decision-making does come into play is in the brain’s higher networks. The prefrontal cortex integrates sensory input, memory, and goals into plans. For example, when crossing a street, your visual cortex detects moving objects, your hippocampus provides a spatial map, and your prefrontal cortex coordinates whether and when to step forward. Consciousness arises where internal goals and external information converge in a global workspace—a network where perception, memory, and reasoning are shared.
Not all actions in this workspace feel equally “free.” Going to the bathroom is biologically compelled; choosing to fast for religious reasons reflects higher-order goals. Some individuals even override basic survival instincts: protestors who endure extreme pain without fleeing are examples of agency overriding reflex. In this sense, “free will” varies in degree depending on how much deliberation and internal motivation outweigh immediate stimuli.
What makes humans distinct from simpler animals is the complexity of this internal process. A goldfish may eat whenever food is present, but a human can filter eating through layers of thought: Am I hungry? Is this food spoiled? Should I wait for my partner? Does this fit my health plan or religious commitments? The richer the web of considerations, the less behavior is dictated by the immediate environment. Complexity builds buffers against reflex.
Of course, none of this implies that we escape physics. Every thought is a neural process, constrained by physical law. In principle, a complete map of the brain and environment could predict our decisions. But complexity matters: in practice, human cognition is so layered and self-referential that simple external inputs cannot easily override it. Elon Musk will not abandon his Mars project because of three counterarguments; his internal network of reasons is too elaborate. This illustrates how a complex brain can shape the world more than it is shaped by it.
So where does this leave free will? If by “free will” we mean a supernatural power outside physics, there is no evidence for it. But if we mean the capacity of a brain to deliberate, weigh goals, and act according to its internal organization, then free will exists as a real phenomenon—bounded by physical law but genuine in its functional sense. Our freedom lies not in breaking determinism, but in embodying it at a level of complexity where actions reflect internal reasons rather than mere reflex.
Conclusion: Free will is compatible with determinism. It emerges from the brain’s ability to integrate information and pursue goals, even though every step is physically determined. The laws of physics set the stage, but within that stage, a sufficiently complex system like the human brain can generate choices, resist impulses, and project its own designs into the world.
PS: That is why changing someone mind is hard. You have to peel back layers and layers of thoughts and brainwave to hopefully reach to the core of their belief. Let’s say if someone parents get killed by a minority in front of their face, for them to not fear those same minority in the future is almost impossible. Another conclusion is that there’s also no absolute free will. For any action there’s equal and opposite reaction. For any effort to try to change someone mind, their mind will maybe change a little bit even if it’s not fully conscious yet. It just takes a very long time to untangle their thought to reach to the core. A complex lock with many layers of security will of course require a complex key, if there’s any key at all.
These concepts, like many other concepts, may exist on a spectrum and not black and white. Consider an example where you are able to determine what to eat for breakfast this morning or not eat at all and do something else. There are choices presented to you from the environment that affect your decision making and you also have your own internal goal and other internal mental process that affect the choice. These 2 different internal and external factors will work together in your mind to determine the choices you make for breakfast this morning.
However, there are process where you don’t have much choice. For example, you can’t decide if your heart stop beating or not even if it’s entirely inside you. However, I’ll later argue that the mental working space is where potential free will happen and your heart is just another peripheral device that help keep the mental process sustainable. Blood and nutrition for the brain of course. But there’s a specific small space where free will happen, not in entire brain.
And there are mental process that have very high agency and as a result, a lot of free will, like you just wake up and decide to pray as a habit from internal goals this morning. High agency actions have more free will than other actions such as you going to the toilet (not having much choice isn’t it). You wake up in your same room, no outside stimulus, just an internal desire to connect with your faith, very high agency and mostly free will action.
Our brain has multiple parts. The brainstem I would argue doesn’t have much free will. It only take information from the body that you don’t consciously micromanage and keep it alive like breath cycle, heart beat, sleep wake cycle. It doesn’t have the complex internal goals and mental process. Its goal seems to be chemically regulated, a pretty simple system.
There are part of brain that have more free will. When you walk down the street, your eyes feed signals to the visual cortex to detect shapes and motion, while the temporal lobe recognizes objects like cars or people. The hippocampus provides your internal map. The prefrontal cortex decides when to cross or turn. However, the prefrontal cortex pull together sensory input from the visual and parietal lobes, spatial memory from the hippocampus then integrate it into a plan. There’s an internal saved knowledge about street sign, hazard, cars, and there’s an internal goal of crossing the street. That will then be mixed with external stimuli like images of cars and objects from your eyes. There’s a workspace where these 2 stream of internal and external information meet, that is where most of consciousness or free will decision making arise.
You have more free will when the external stimuli doesn’t affect your internal decision making in anyway and you have less free will when the external stimuli mostly or totally affect your decision making. For example, I once watch some people burn themselves in a protest, the heat doesn’t make them run and they keep standing or seating there. No matter if you agree with them or not, that’s an extremely high agency action and mostly free will. Even the lizard brain process of fight or flight doesn’t make them run for safety.
Now for the part where I’m projecting strongly. It may be totally wrong.
1) The internal mental process in our brain is just a physical process, just like the external information coming to our brain.
2) However, the amazing thing is some part of this internal process is so complex and multi-layered that it doesn’t get affected by the external process. For example, an animal will eat what they see, the only filter is either they are hungry or not. Some animal is so dumb in such a way they keep eating until they die from bloating. Sorry my gold fish. But we as human, when I look at food, I think of 8 different things or layers before I eat. For example, 1) am I really hungry or not, 2) does it look spoiled, is it a healthy food to eat, 3) do I have some work to do, if I eat now my job will delay, 4) did my wife eat yet, is this her food 5) did I say I would cut sugar and fat because I want to live longer 6) there’s a study where they starve mouse and it live longer 7) is this a right time to eat, maybe I’ll just wait for my wife maybe we go eat out later , so so many thoughts come to mind. There are religious people who do fasting on top of that as well. For animal, a mere image of food, which is a simple physical process itself, is enough to punch through and unlock all of their brain internal mental process to force an action and change their behavior that is to eat. For a human, especially someone with thoughts and higher agency, it’s much harder.
3) The more complex the internal mental process, the more it doesn’t get affected by the external physical world and it somehow affects physical world by itself. It’s like the other way around, the world doesn’t affect you but you can change the world, only when you have a more complex and multi-layered thought that doesn’t weakened overtime from external stimuli. For example, I dare you change the mind of Elon Musk to not occupy Mars, I bet he had 1000 complex reasons and you can not use 3 simple reasons to reasons with him. Your simple external information and reasoning is not enough to change the extremely complex internal brain process of Elon. It’s just not enough to unlock. You can’t unlock an extremely complicated lock with 10 layer of security with a simple key that can unlock 2 of the layer. However, Elon can change the world because his mind is now extremely complex “my mind is a storm, most people don’t want to be me”, that he somehow, from the sheer complexity of his internal mental process, that dictates his action and he went on to change the world.
4) that’s exactly how the brain can determine by itself and pick and choose what to do in the physical world where things seem to be deterministic from physical law. That comes entirely from its internal goal and information.
5) the brain is also controlled by physical law and contained within the world. But if it’s complex enough it will have its own small section of the physical world that can decide what it wants to do internally and projecting its action externally using our body.
6) I’d go so far to say while the brain is complex and can determine what it wants to do. Those entire process is actually just a physical process and if we understand it completely, we will know exactly what the brain wants to do next. New technology slowly show us this seems to be the case where we can predict brainwaves.
7) Even when we can determine and change the world based on our free will, that free will itself seems to be a deterministic physical process that happen in our brain. There is a confusing part here. How can i even say that free will is actually a deterministic physical process. Free will by definition is. Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choose between different possible courses of action,[1] (yes you can choose among the choices your free will or your brain give you, even when you try to think of other choices, your brain is giving you choices, it’s not like you can exist outside of your brain), (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral responsibility, (yes, you can do whatever you see fit among the choices given to you by your brain) or (c) be the ultimate source or originator of their actions (yes, if your thought and brain is complex enough, it will not be affected much by external stimuli and the choice is almost totally yours).
8) So I think free will is fact that the brain is free by itself to choose given that it’s complex enough based on its own goal and internal process. However, the internal process of the brain appears to be another physical process, just isolate from the world because of its own complexity but it must abide by the rule of physics. You can not think faster than the speed of light, you can’t exist outside of your brain. The complexity of the brain, no matter how much, is built upon foundational physical law. No new law is created or no old law is lost. There’s no evidence that say the brain can transcend or whatever that word means any physical law. The only way you can prove that is to show the brain internal process violate some law, which is not possible yet.
9) In conclusion, yes you have your own free will to choose but the choices are bounded by physical laws.
Many people say morality come from either God or culture, environment etc. But no one yet discuss the kind of eerie affect of Morality dependency on the direction of time.
For example, if you give a homeless person some money, that’s generally a good thing to do. But if you reverse the video, reverse the direction of time, you are apparently taking money from the homeless person, which is bad and weird. This works for many video or scene or scenario I can think of.
You pull a drowning person from the water versus you putting them back down.
You save a cat from a fire versus you throwing the cat back into the fire
The morality itself seems to have a very strong correlation with the direction of time
You stitch and heal a person versus you remove the stitch and the wound open back up.
It’s eerie how morality almost depend entirely on just the direction of time.
Morality is a very complex concept while time is arguably a much more fundamental concept. Morality is an emergent characteristic and one of the things that make up morality seems to be time.
I can imagine if the universe have a twin and time run in reverse. Everything in this universe that is considered good will actually be evil in the other universe
For example, the birth of a live is considered good and a blessing in our universe. But that’s total blasphemy in the reverse universe. Why? Maybe the cycle of life of the reverse universe is that they are not born from a mother but they were dug up from the grave yard by a process opposite of decomposition of corpse, the person now live their life and in the end they will be put back into a womb. Crazy I know.
But it’s an interesting thought experiment that can help us unlock the fundamental truth of morality as a concept
Black hole vaporize via hawking radiation because on the edge of black hole, there’s quantum process that make matter and anti matter popping out from nowhere.
Math, as complex as it seems to be, based on the single most important fundamental construct, that is the number 1.
The number 1 itself is an identity that can be equal to anything you want to reason with. 1 car, 1 atom, 1 universe, etc. There are numerous mathematical manipulations and types of numbers but they are just to quantify the identity itself. It doesn’t deny the fundamental construct of 1 as an identity.
If physics can be described by math well, it seems to me that the fundamental construct of physics have to be just like the fundamental construct of math, which is 1. That means, the most fundamental construct of physics consist of many of the exact same thing. These fundamental building blocks of reality must be identical and consistent so they can be described by math. If they are not identical, describing them with math will be much more problematic because the identity and the number it represents does not map correctly in any equations. For example 1 = 1 and not 1 = 3 or 1 = 8 at different points in time or space. That fundamental building block has to be eternally consistent and not randomly change by itself.
It also seems to me the only things different between the building block is the relational relationship of these building blocks. Everything else should be the same
We usually say things exist in space and travel through time. That would mean things and space are 2 different things. That’s problematic because …
Every one appreciates its beauty. But I’m more curious about what it means. Let’s break it down
e represents compounded changes, which means, when it change, it take into account what was before.
i represent complex plane and dimension
pi represent symmetry. Pi is not merely related to circle. It’s a number associated with symmetry.
1 is an identity. You can say 1 anything, so even if it’s a person, dog, universe, atom or quantum spin network, you can assign number 1 to it and segregate it as a “1” identity
0 means nothing. Remember that the antithesis of 1 is not 0. Antithesis of 1 is -1. The opposite of something is not nothing. The opposite of something is something else that when combined with it, produce nothing 0.
= means equality, Exactly the same
So what does this mean
e^{i*pi} + 1 = 0
1 = – e^{i*pi}
I think it means that if we have an identity, which is 1, and then we rotate it in a symmetrical way, which is pi, in a complex plane, which is i. It will produce the exact antithesis of the identity. e here means the changes or rotation compounded upon itself. There is nothing sudden or lost. There’s no step. Just gradual change.
For example, if you have a wave, and then you flip it in a mirror sense, to produce another wave with exact opposite characteristics, when those 2 waves combined it will cancel each other out and produce nothing
A simulation must have less substrate than the one come before it, and ultimately, the base reality
A simulation is not something new, it’s rather a subset of a base reality. Therefore, it may run on the same substrate, just given different conditions
From the meter to the second to the joule, the units we use to describe the universe are the legacy of human convenience, historical accident, and Earth-bound intuition. They were not born out of the fundamental laws of physics, but rather constructed to fit the scale and needs of human activity. As a result, much of modern physics is burdened by a clutter of conversion constants—Planck’s constant, the gravitational constant, the Boltzmann constant—used not because nature demands them, but because our units are misaligned with reality. What if we could strip away these artifacts and build a system of measurement grounded not in tradition, but in the universe itself?
The Arbitrary Nature of Human Units
Consider the origins of the meter: once defined as a fraction of the Earth’s circumference, then later based on a metal bar in Paris, and now tied to the speed of light in a vacuum. The second began as 1/86,400th of a day, and the kilogram was literally a chunk of metal stored in a vault until 2019. These units were necessary for commerce, navigation, and engineering—but they are not rooted in any deeper physical truth.
Because of this arbitrariness, we need constants like Planck’s constant h, the speed of light c, and the gravitational constant G to bridge the gap between our human-made units and the real behavior of nature. These constants act like currency exchange rates between the abstract world of physics and the parochial one of meters, seconds, and kilograms. But what if we eliminated the middlemen?
Natural Units: Physics Without the Clutter
In theoretical physics, it’s common to work in natural units where the fundamental constants of nature—such as the speed of light and Planck’s constant—are set to 1. This isn’t just a mathematical trick. It reflects a profound truth: these constants aren’t numbers handed down by the universe—they are artifacts of our unit choices.
By setting c = 1, time and space become interchangeable: distances can be measured in seconds, and time in meters. When \hbar = 1, energy and frequency are the same thing, as are mass and inverse length. Suddenly, the equations of quantum mechanics and general relativity simplify, constants disappear, and we’re left with a view of physics that is cleaner, more symmetric, and closer to nature’s true language.
Planck Units: The Universe’s Native Code
Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, went one step further. He proposed building a unit system using only the most fundamental constants of nature: G, \hbar, and c. This gives rise to Planck units:
Planck length (~1.6 \times 10^{-35} m): the smallest meaningful unit of distance. Planck time (~5.4 \times 10^{-44} s): the smallest possible unit of time. Planck energy: the scale at which gravity, quantum mechanics, and relativity all converge.
These are not arbitrary—they emerge from the architecture of the universe. A kilogram is a human artifact; a Planck mass is a cosmic truth.
Why This Matters
So what’s the harm in using messy units? For engineers, maybe not much. But in theoretical physics, the clutter of constants obscures structure. Equations become longer, dimensional analysis becomes harder, and intuition is clouded by bookkeeping. Worse, it can lull us into thinking these constants are physical substances, rather than conversion tools.
By adopting natural units as a default—especially in education and theoretical research—we free ourselves to see the form of physical laws, not their formatting. The equations become cleaner, symmetries become obvious, and connections between different areas of physics (like thermodynamics and quantum field theory) emerge more naturally.
Conclusion
The joule, the meter, and the second are powerful tools for navigating human-scale problems. But they are not the language of the cosmos. If we aim to understand the universe at its deepest level, we must be willing to shed our anthropocentric scaffolding and adopt a system of measurement that speaks in nature’s native tongue. That path leads through Planck units, natural units, and a vision of physics unburdened by its own past. To move forward, we may first need to let go of the tape measures we’ve outgrown.
One of the most fundamental truth is I think therefore I’m of Descartes
This implies the existence of I myself.
I personally think, without the existence of I myself, other things will can still exist. So there’s another deeper fundamental truth that I can describe is “to be” or “something exists”
Is the most fundamental characteristic of anything is either it exists or not?
I struggle with this for a while while also thinking about how the ultimate quantization of the universe can interact with each other.
Interaction by itself means there’s an even smaller process, which defeat the concept of the ultimate quantization.
However, I think I’ve some valuable insight linking between this ultimate concept of interaction and existence.
Here’s a thought experiment. If something indeed exists but there’s no possible transmission of information or physical interaction between our world and that thing, will that thing still exist? Probably not. At least from our world point of view. Simply because there’s no possible interaction. It’s outside of our realm of existence. Even if it does “exist” along side with other things it can interact with.
That galaxy exists because ancient photon from it hits our eye, everyone sees it.
Valhalla doesn’t exist, at least to us, because no information from it reach anyone of us. Even if it does “exist” in a completely different realm, it’s not really relevant or constructive as a concept of existence itself. So we can just say it doesn’t exist.
So here’s my crude and alternative definition of existence: if something exists, it means there’s possibility to interact with it. If we can’t interact with it or no information, it doesn’t exist
However, we need to be careful because there are things that indeed exist, we just can’t detect it or find ways to interact with it yet. But it does exist.
Anyway, so if existence is merely the fact that if we can interact with something, it doesn’t sound really fundamental to me. It sounds like there are other realm of existence.
There’s a conundrum of how can we know if something exists in other realm, or not exists in any realm at all. Or is that really matter because there’s no interaction?
Occam’s razor: I don’t think we should care much about other realm. Only this realm.
This bring me to the fundamental truth: existence means there’s some information and possible interaction.
But here may lie another deeper fundamental truth: what is this interaction and how exactly can it happen?
It seems to me if one thing want to interact with the other, the 2 things have to have something in common. That’s the minimum requirement. However, we can not just say they are in the same space or space is the common thing. What if space itself has an ultimate quantization. Then what’s the thing that’s common between all space quantization?
I personally think an ultimate quantization can not have states. States just means there’s something smaller, a smaller quantization.
I think the quanta don’t have states of its own. But it have certain conditions where it can interact with another quanta
A quanta must be this: inseparable. Which means they tend to repel each other if they somehow touch. Like tiny marbles. This create a directionality in interaction.
A side thought, time and space are not fundamental. These quanta make up both time and space. What is time? It is a temporal order of quanta events. If quanta A affects quanta B, and something about A and B change, that in itself is the smallest unit of time. It’s this ability to change and interact between quanta that make up everything, and firstly, space and time.
I may need to start from scratch. Thinking in term of SI is mind boggling.
Lets forgot about second or frequency. Let’s just say my time is this 1 event where each quanta change. I don’t know what is the change but something has to change.
Let’s forgot about meter. My space or geometry is this quanta and it is a solid number 1.
It doesn’t matter why a quanta is that small or why is it not smaller or bigger because all that matter is relative scale and not absolute. For example, if everything is suddenly or slowly be 100x times “larger”, do any of us know about it? No. The correct question to ask is why is our human body is this big compared to the quanta. Remember that the size ratio of the entire universe to human body is even smaller than human body to the quanta. Our body is a universe by itself.
I’ve read many thinkers mention Dual Aspect monism, which mean mental and physical process coming from the same thing. That same thing maybe the quanta. Consciousness are inherent in each quanta. We feel when they are orchestrated in a way that give rise to consistent experience. Daily objects doesn’t have this neuron network that can give rise to a consistent experience. But remember that each of the quanta in that table still have inherent conscious aspect.
Go back to the point that each quanta must be extremely simple and can’t be separate nor have smaller elements. If the only thing each quanta has is consciousness element, then it shouldn’t have anything else but consciousness element. But what exactly is consciousness, I think it’s pretty obvious that consciousness is a self-reference action. Because at the most basic level, a quanta can only refer to itself (point Back to itself). Because the quanta is pretty consistent, the consciousness element of it cannot be merged, separate, changed in any shape or form. The only thing that can be changed here is the relational relationship between one quanta to another. Remember that they are not moving through space, they are space. We can’t imagine like they are marble; they are just the relational relationship between one and another. Physical processes, physical law happen when these relationship changes.
But how do they change? What are the limit of these relationship?
Elon Musk once quote a funny story from the book Hitch Hiker to the Galaxy. The answer to the universe is 42. Such beautiful and elegant answers. Nobody understands why. In the same spirit, what if the answer to our physical world is a number and that number is the limit of these quanta relational relationship?
Kissing number vs dimension
Based on the table above, If the answer to universe is 2 we have 1 dimensional, 6 then we have 2, 12 then we have 3. What if the answer to the universe is 12?
