Musings on the Nature of the Cosmic Progenitor
In popular culture, fat is hardly the most desirable substance. Business for organizations like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig is booming, with more and more of us wanting to shed the pounds. Any food item can now be found in a "low fat" or "low calorie" variety to appease the recent cultural obsession with the slimline. There is a darker side, too: it is estimated that 1 in 250 people worldwide suffer from anorexia nervosa, which is a dangerous obsession with weight loss. In such a lipophobic world, many people have questioned why fat is so special; why it occupies such an elevated pedestal in Fatercism.
The importance is that fat is an energy store which can be called on by individual moments of consciousness in our brain - quantum events. This means that fat exists in a super-position of being both burned and unburned, and it is in this amalgam of all possible states (called a wave-function) that Universes can exist. Of course, the Universe in our own fat is tiny, and far too small to be occupied by any living things - as well as far too ephemeral for life to evolve. However, our own Universe obviously exists within the wavelength of an organism's fat, and we call this organism the Cosmic Progenitor.
There is something mysterious about the Cosmic Progenitor. In Manifolds of Reality, Guru James Spencer calculated that, based on the approximate size of our Universe, the Cosmic Progenitor has 10^85 (that's 1 with 85 zeroes after it) cells of fat in its body. That's more than the total cells of fat on the bodies of every human on Earth! Estimating the age of the Cosmic Progenitor is more tentative, since a minimum unit of time (the Planck time) is not determined by the width of a cell of fat like the Planck length (which allows us to directly calculate the number of fat cells on the Cosmic Progenitor by dividing the volume of the Universe by the Planck volume) but rather by the time it takes for a cell of fat to divide. This could be literally anything, but in humans it is 1 hour - and multiplying the number of Planck times in the history of our Universe by 1 hour gives an age of 2 x 10^54 (2 followed by 54 zeroes) years!
No human could ever hope to come anywhere near these figures. Whatever the Cosmic Progenitor is, it certainly isn't anything like us. Up until now, there has been no real argument made about what the Cosmic Progenitor is like, but I feel I have arrived at some serious suggestions. The first thing one must realize is that fat is not intrinsically special. If I entered a laboratory and was able to produce a blob of fat identical to the lipids stored in the human body, it would be nothing to fawn over. The significance of fat is not that it is fat, but that it is used in our bodies as an energy store which can be called on by the brain to produce consciousness. How very anthropocentric to insist that the Cosmic Progenitor's energy store must be anything like what we call fat!
Many computer scientists, physicists and neuroscientists would argue that robots could one day attain consciousness. After all, consciousness is just the result of complex processes in our brains - and robots are getting more complex all the time. I find it shameful that I had not considered this possibility before: Might not the Cosmic Progenitor be a conscious robot? If oil or standard electricity was used, it seems unlikely that the fuel would come to exist in super-position, as it would likely not be the conscious robot itself which called on a single unit of fuel to be used but rather the presence of an electrical current or the positioning of the fuel in the tank, which are not quantum events. However, if nuclear fuel were to be used, there would be a super-position, since atomic decay is a quantum event (and the basis of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment!) Robots are not confined by biology, and so it is plausible that the Cosmic Progenitor some sort of super-robot.
However, robotics is not the only possibility. Many species on Earth are hive-minded (for example ants or wasps), and is it not plausible that a hive-minded species could evolve to be intelligent and conscious? Such a hive-minded organism may well have a collective store of energy which could function as a single Permanence, and the fact that the entire hive may not die off for an incredibly long time would account for the astronomical life-span (in fact, more than astronomical - longer than the entire lifespan of our Universe!) of the Cosmic Progenitor. A final option might be that the Cosmic Progenitor actually isn't conscious at all. After all, consciousness is not the only quantum event - there is radioactive decay, and the spin of atoms, and perhaps many more possibilities in a Universe which may have different laws of Physics to our own. This certainly seems less aesthetically appealing - there is something compelling about a biocentric view of the Universe - but we must not allow our perceptions of reality to be shaped by our anthropocentric and frankly egotistic desires.
It seems that there are a few real possibilities. However, there is another issue with making sense of the Cosmic Progenitor which has never really been touched on. When something which has a wave-function (i.e in superposition between different states) is observed, it undergoes quantum decoherence and the wave function collapses into a single state - determined randomly, taking into account probabilistic measures called amplitudes. However, "observed" is a little bit misleading, and this term has led to all sorts of quantum mumbo jumbo which states that consciousness somehow affects things in the Universe just by being aware of it. Rather "observed" means that it interacts with its surroundings in any way. This means that our own internal Universe is constantly destroyed and recreated, as the wave-function constantly collapses and reforms whenever our Permanence interacts with its surroundings. Of course, the Cosmic Progenitor's fat (or whatever else it is that we live in!) has clearly not undergone quantum decoherence - after all, we are living in its wave-function, and there is solid evidence to suggest that the wave-function has held for at least 14.6 billion years (for example, a plausible cosmological chronology can be deduced which explains the lifetime of our Universe - a chronology which is not disrupted by constant destruction and rebirth!). The Big Bang also seems to have been the moment the Cosmic Progenitor accumulated its first fat cell, which suggests that it has never undergone quantum decoherence. How can this be?
One of the most common ways in which something can undergo quantum decoherence is through gravitational interaction with another object in the Universe. For this reason, Professor Sir Roger Penrose has proposed what he calls the "one-graviton rule" - suggesting that it is things with a weight of less than one graviton (the particle which carries the force of gravity - and therefore the minimum weight something can have) which tend to exist in superposition. Could it be that the fuel of the Cosmic Progenitor has a mass of less than one graviton? This is impossible in our Universe, but remember that the Laws of Physics may well be different in other Universes. There may be no force of gravity at all! Gravity is not the only force by which things can interact, so might it be that the Cosmic Progenitor occupies a Universe with no forces? How could anything form in such a Universe?
We may never know the answers to some of these questions; we may have already reached the final frontier of knowledge. After all, different Universes cannot interact with one another (otherwise they would not be different Universes), and so it may be fundamentally impossible to obtain experimental data to draw conclusions from. I remain optimistic, in the hope that theorists may be able to shed light on the matter. Lipophysics is probably the most prolific region of Fatercist thought, and though it might not have the practical applications of some of our other discoveries, it fulfills that deep-rooted desire to know about the world in which we live - and who knows where that knowledge might lead us?
By Guru Patrick Cattell
The importance is that fat is an energy store which can be called on by individual moments of consciousness in our brain - quantum events. This means that fat exists in a super-position of being both burned and unburned, and it is in this amalgam of all possible states (called a wave-function) that Universes can exist. Of course, the Universe in our own fat is tiny, and far too small to be occupied by any living things - as well as far too ephemeral for life to evolve. However, our own Universe obviously exists within the wavelength of an organism's fat, and we call this organism the Cosmic Progenitor.
There is something mysterious about the Cosmic Progenitor. In Manifolds of Reality, Guru James Spencer calculated that, based on the approximate size of our Universe, the Cosmic Progenitor has 10^85 (that's 1 with 85 zeroes after it) cells of fat in its body. That's more than the total cells of fat on the bodies of every human on Earth! Estimating the age of the Cosmic Progenitor is more tentative, since a minimum unit of time (the Planck time) is not determined by the width of a cell of fat like the Planck length (which allows us to directly calculate the number of fat cells on the Cosmic Progenitor by dividing the volume of the Universe by the Planck volume) but rather by the time it takes for a cell of fat to divide. This could be literally anything, but in humans it is 1 hour - and multiplying the number of Planck times in the history of our Universe by 1 hour gives an age of 2 x 10^54 (2 followed by 54 zeroes) years!
No human could ever hope to come anywhere near these figures. Whatever the Cosmic Progenitor is, it certainly isn't anything like us. Up until now, there has been no real argument made about what the Cosmic Progenitor is like, but I feel I have arrived at some serious suggestions. The first thing one must realize is that fat is not intrinsically special. If I entered a laboratory and was able to produce a blob of fat identical to the lipids stored in the human body, it would be nothing to fawn over. The significance of fat is not that it is fat, but that it is used in our bodies as an energy store which can be called on by the brain to produce consciousness. How very anthropocentric to insist that the Cosmic Progenitor's energy store must be anything like what we call fat!
Many computer scientists, physicists and neuroscientists would argue that robots could one day attain consciousness. After all, consciousness is just the result of complex processes in our brains - and robots are getting more complex all the time. I find it shameful that I had not considered this possibility before: Might not the Cosmic Progenitor be a conscious robot? If oil or standard electricity was used, it seems unlikely that the fuel would come to exist in super-position, as it would likely not be the conscious robot itself which called on a single unit of fuel to be used but rather the presence of an electrical current or the positioning of the fuel in the tank, which are not quantum events. However, if nuclear fuel were to be used, there would be a super-position, since atomic decay is a quantum event (and the basis of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment!) Robots are not confined by biology, and so it is plausible that the Cosmic Progenitor some sort of super-robot.
However, robotics is not the only possibility. Many species on Earth are hive-minded (for example ants or wasps), and is it not plausible that a hive-minded species could evolve to be intelligent and conscious? Such a hive-minded organism may well have a collective store of energy which could function as a single Permanence, and the fact that the entire hive may not die off for an incredibly long time would account for the astronomical life-span (in fact, more than astronomical - longer than the entire lifespan of our Universe!) of the Cosmic Progenitor. A final option might be that the Cosmic Progenitor actually isn't conscious at all. After all, consciousness is not the only quantum event - there is radioactive decay, and the spin of atoms, and perhaps many more possibilities in a Universe which may have different laws of Physics to our own. This certainly seems less aesthetically appealing - there is something compelling about a biocentric view of the Universe - but we must not allow our perceptions of reality to be shaped by our anthropocentric and frankly egotistic desires.
It seems that there are a few real possibilities. However, there is another issue with making sense of the Cosmic Progenitor which has never really been touched on. When something which has a wave-function (i.e in superposition between different states) is observed, it undergoes quantum decoherence and the wave function collapses into a single state - determined randomly, taking into account probabilistic measures called amplitudes. However, "observed" is a little bit misleading, and this term has led to all sorts of quantum mumbo jumbo which states that consciousness somehow affects things in the Universe just by being aware of it. Rather "observed" means that it interacts with its surroundings in any way. This means that our own internal Universe is constantly destroyed and recreated, as the wave-function constantly collapses and reforms whenever our Permanence interacts with its surroundings. Of course, the Cosmic Progenitor's fat (or whatever else it is that we live in!) has clearly not undergone quantum decoherence - after all, we are living in its wave-function, and there is solid evidence to suggest that the wave-function has held for at least 14.6 billion years (for example, a plausible cosmological chronology can be deduced which explains the lifetime of our Universe - a chronology which is not disrupted by constant destruction and rebirth!). The Big Bang also seems to have been the moment the Cosmic Progenitor accumulated its first fat cell, which suggests that it has never undergone quantum decoherence. How can this be?
One of the most common ways in which something can undergo quantum decoherence is through gravitational interaction with another object in the Universe. For this reason, Professor Sir Roger Penrose has proposed what he calls the "one-graviton rule" - suggesting that it is things with a weight of less than one graviton (the particle which carries the force of gravity - and therefore the minimum weight something can have) which tend to exist in superposition. Could it be that the fuel of the Cosmic Progenitor has a mass of less than one graviton? This is impossible in our Universe, but remember that the Laws of Physics may well be different in other Universes. There may be no force of gravity at all! Gravity is not the only force by which things can interact, so might it be that the Cosmic Progenitor occupies a Universe with no forces? How could anything form in such a Universe?
We may never know the answers to some of these questions; we may have already reached the final frontier of knowledge. After all, different Universes cannot interact with one another (otherwise they would not be different Universes), and so it may be fundamentally impossible to obtain experimental data to draw conclusions from. I remain optimistic, in the hope that theorists may be able to shed light on the matter. Lipophysics is probably the most prolific region of Fatercist thought, and though it might not have the practical applications of some of our other discoveries, it fulfills that deep-rooted desire to know about the world in which we live - and who knows where that knowledge might lead us?
By Guru Patrick Cattell