The reason why an interference pattern is present in an unobserved double slit experiment is because that is the manifestation of Possibility. Showing everywhere it has the potential of being.

Just like a hologram card, all states exist, but due to a fluke of evolution, you can not see every angle at once. But by turning it in your hand, you selectively view which angle you want to see at that time. As with the universe, you selectively rotate it with your mind to follow the probability thread of least resistance.

I rather like the hologram better than the VHS tape, because you can't change the latter.

Of course, the idea that you can selectively view which "angle" of the holographic universe you wish has many questionable repercussions, not the least of which can head down lots of psudoscientific ideologies of self determination bordering on mysticism. How far down that rabbit hole I'm willing to go I wont say.

Lets go back to that hologram card for a second. The only reason that the image seems to move, seems to be three dimensional, is that all of the intermediate images have commonalities to each other. You can just as easily make holograms that, when view from one angle, have an altogether different image than when viewed from a slightly different angle, with no intermediate transitional states. That being said, lets assume for a moment, that with the baseball card, the images are linearly sequential, and maintain a continuity. Holding the card at an extreme left angle, and turning it to the extreme right, you will see the batter swing at an inbound pitch and connect nicely, most likely sending it out of the park. But lets say there are more images locked into different angles in the card. What if, when turning the card to the right, you stop half way through, and tilt it up instead? These images then show a miss, and in fact, the ball hitting the batter squarely in the jaw. Tilting the card down instead may show his grip slipping on the bat.

Which is the real outcome?

According to the card, which has no bias, they're all real. All correct. You choose which outcome you wish to see by deciding which axis in three dimensional space you rotate the card on. In a holographic hyper dimensional universe, to say there are a *lot* more angles to rotate the card on... well. Is understating the obvious.

What did I say above? "I believe that the truth of the matter is that the single electrons exist everywhere, at every possible location in the universe." Right, right... back to that. Lets say on this eleven dimensional baseball card, there exist every outcome that ever could be, given the laws of physics. There's even one for the ball simply passing through the batter as all their composite matter happened to line up, just right.

Notice I said one. Just one.

There's a functional infinity of angles to turn this card on. Many, many of them simply show a hit, or a strike, or various other expected normal outcomes. Copies of the same exact event on different angles of the card. But only a hand full of these discrete angles show these fluke outcomes. Maybe only one. While this outcome is there, a part of the "universal wave function", it is almost impossible that you'd ever see it, that you'd ever find the right angle, even if you were intentionally looking for it.

This analogy relates to my previous statement regarding the electron. There exists a story model in the universe for that electron to be anywhere, in the most broad sense the word anywhere can imply. But there are so many more copies of other story models, that finding the rarer ones is like looking for a quantum needle in an eleven dimensional hay stack.

This is where things are going to start to get a little strange, and where I'm sure a lot of people are going to disagree. Hey, I welcome it. Every path to knowledge begins with a question. Now, let me continue.

The whole universe is like that VHS tape, or that baseball card. Only a lot more complex (this should go without saying).

And I do mean the WHOLE universe, not just how it is right now, in this second. Same with the VHS tape, it holds more than one second of the movie, and the baseball card holds more than one angle. The universe is more than one "frame" of time. It is every frame, from the beginning to the end.

My idea is that time does not move.

We do.

The universe -- or multiverse, if you like -- is a hologram baseball card with 11 dimensions of rotational freedom. Every state that the universe and all things in it CAN exist in, it already does. This moment in time that we are privy to existed before we got here, and all the past states are still there even though our perception has moved beyond them.

For some strange reason, it was evolutionarily advantageous to have stereo-optic vision. We have some slight visual angle differentiation. Not much, but enough to get by. Likewise, it was also evolutionarily advantageous to have linear 4th dimensional awareness. We know what came before, but not what comes next. Our ability to make assumptions on what might come next (and I stress might) is a relatively new thing. A "mental opposable thumb" so to speak, that gave us an edge. It gave us the ability to navigate the 4th dimension, instead of blindly addressing each second only when we arrive there.

One counterintuitive phenomenon it has made us aware of is the nature of the double slit experiment. The apparent assumption that observing has an effect on the outcome. I believe that the truth of the matter is that the single electrons exist everywhere, at every possible location in the universe.

(I split the following up into a few posts because it was too large.)

I don't claim to be an expert, or an authority on this stuff. I will say that I've been fascinated by it on a personal level for over ten years. It started back in the ZDtv days (before TechTV), when Michio Kaku was on an episode of Big Thinkers. I read anything I can get my hands on, and watch all material that comes my way.

Take the following for what it's worth, I'm not trying to proselytize an agenda, just share some of my private thoughts.

I've got a number of analogies I could use here for describing the entire (11 dimensional) universe. Two of my favorites are a VHS tape and hologram baseball card. They both kind of work the same way in so far as how they relate to the thought experiment. I'll explain both.

In the case of the VHS tape, it has your favorite movie on it. You know it word for word, line for line. You've seen it a hundred times. But no matter how many times you watch it, the story will always end the same way. But, from the point of view of the characters (I'm talking in a 4th wall sense; the characters themselves, not the actors playing them), have no idea what will happen next. In fact, the same was true for you the first time you saw the movie. There may have been some foreshadowing, but hell, there's some of that in real life too.

The point is, with the tape, you can fast forward, rewind, pause, browse the timeline however you choose. But the characters are oblivious to this. You aren't really manipulating their timeline, you're just browsing it for your own perspective. If you eject the tape though, you're holding the entire timeline. You've collapsed their universe into a 3 dimensional object. It only has a 4th dimension when you put it in the VCR. When you watch it. But even during the novel first experience of the initial viewing, the end of the story was there. It was always there, predetermined at the end of the tape.

On to the baseball card for a moment. Now, given various factors in the developing process, that hologram card has a lot more information than what you can see at one time, flat on. You have to tilt it one way or an other to get a different view -- to access more of the data. And yet, viewing the different angels don't create that data. Knowing they're there doesn't make them exist. It only makes you aware of them. Holding the card, you still hold all the potential that image has all at once, in that one object, even if you can't be privy to it all at once.