Quantum theory describes a world of which Bohr said we must not speak, but some still wonder what the universe is like in the unmeasured state, when it isn’t being observed:
“Little has been said about the character of the unmeasured state. Since most of reality most of the time dwells in this unmeasured condition …the lack of such a description leaves the majority of the universe … shrouded in mystery.” (Herbert, 1985), p194.
The unmeasured universe is rarely discussed because it is considered unreal but if a quantum ground generates what we see on its surface, it shouldn’t be. Suppose then that quantum waves spread at light speed until they overload the space network, in a physical event that restarts them to observe each other. Physical events then are few and far between amidst a constant press of quantum events, so by what logic are they the real universe? Surely reality is what is there most of the time? If so, it is a quantum flux of waves that only occasionally produce physical events.
This conclusion means that in-between physical event observations, nothing physical continues, so the assumption that matter is a constantly existing substance is false. The Buddhist statement that the physical world is empty, because it has no permanence existence in or of itself, is then valid even today.
Why then don’t most people, or scientists at least, see the world that way? One reason is that the gaps between physical events are too fast to observe, or were until recently. For example, we now know that molecules vibrate a million, billion times a second, faster than the eye can see. This is incredibly fast to us but very slow compared to the 1045 quantum events a second that Planck time implies, so what constantly exists for us actually doesn’t. The quantum ground flashes physical events rarely but still faster than we can observe.
Essentially, the physical world is an ultra-fast 3D hologram operating faster than we can discern, but it still reflects the reality around us, and so satisfies the requirements of a local reality (1.2.6). When you kick a stone, it hurts because the quantum result damages our body. We don’t need to know how this happens to know this, so evolution probably primed our species to see what we need to survive rather than the truth:
“You may want the truth, but you don’t need the truth. Perceiving truth would drive our species extinct. You need simple icons that show you how to act to stay alive. Perception is not a window on objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.” (Hoffman, 2020).
Hoffman’s interface theory is that perceptions are like desktop icons, useful but not true. For example, a blue email icon on a screen doesn’t mean the program causing it is blue, so seeing an object icon on the screen of space doesn’t mean it is caused by objects. Indeed the opposite is expected, as icons serve to protect users from unnecessary details, so if our perceptions are useful icons, they will hide quantum reality from us, as they have done for millennia.
Evolution as the struggle to survive then opposes science as the search for truth, by making us focus on the veil of perceptions. Hence humans acquired an intellect to survive in groups, not to understand reality, and the history of science reflects this. For example, we didn’t accept that unseen bacteria cause disease until microscopes made them visible, and when atoms were proposed, Mach opposed them because they couldn’t be seen. Yet today, science accepts atoms, along with quarks, black holes, and dark matter that no-one can see, so why not quantum waves?
Science has come a long way in recognizing the unseen, but when quantum theory asked it to accept what can never be seen, it turned away. How can physical certainties come from quantum probabilities? Is the answer to life, the universe, and everything just a set of numbers? That the unmanifest causes the manifest is a step too far for physics based on physicalism, so after two thousand years of scientific struggle, it denies its best theory! This failure isn’t intellectual, as physicists can calculate quantum equations, but they can’t imagine what isn’t physical. The remedy is quantum realism, that quantum events cause physical events, and there is an unlikely precedent, as long ago some of us conceived what most of us today find inconceivable.