Dr. Eric Amidi is a best selling author and scientist. His special interest is in particle physics, artificial intelligence, and mindset of success. Eric’s scientific work includes artificial intelligence and its application to detect subatomic particles. His research in this area contributed to the discovery of the Top Quark – one of the building blocks of matter.
Eric became interested in self-improvement during his research in artificial intelligence and Quantum Physics. These two topics both reveal mysteries of our brain and our perceptions. Artificial intelligence mimics the learning capabilities of the brain. Quantum physics questions the objectivity of the reality. How we learn and adapt along with how we perceive the world forms the bedrock of self-improvement.
Self-improvement is often considered a topic of Psychology. However, there’s a stunning similarity between psychological models and Quantum Physics and AI. In fact, many fields in the first half of the 20th century found their roots in a pervasive movement. One known as Logical Positivism in western philosophy. This movement gave birth to modern ideas in science and art in 20th century.
Reality and Quantum Physics
How you perceive the world is your reality. But if everyone has his/her own version of reality, then what is “the” reality? Is there even such a thing as “the” reality at all?
Can someone go out of his/her own perception and see the reality unfiltered? The answer is NO. Everything that you perceive comes through your senses as signals and end up in your brain. Your brain is trapped in a box, your skull. So it has no choice but to construct reality based on the signals it receives from outside. Nobody can bypass this process to observe the outside world. Thus according to Logical Positivism, there is no objective reality. All there is are different versions of reality.
The reality seems solid and objective. That’s because we reach a consensus with others on what we call reality. In other words, we all share a dream.
This maybe hard to cope with when it comes to our daily lives. However, Quantum Physics shows this to be true at the most fundamental level.
Depending on how we observe the matter, its behavior changes. As if the matter does not have a solid and fixed reality, but it’s reshaped based on how we look at it.
Neural Networks
Once your brain receives signals from the outside world, it constructs your reality for you. But how does it do that?
Your brain is made up of millions of interconnected synapses. These connections create a network. The signals travel through these connections. They make synapses fire tiny electric signals across this network along the way. This forms your thoughts and perceptions. If you change these connections, your brain will interpret the signals differently. And so you perceive the world in a different way.
Andrey Kolmogorov, the famous mathematician, showed how a network of nodes can form our perception. That helps us perceive the world through the signals we receive. The mechanism is quite mathematical.
A Case for Self Improvement
Now, you may ask, what does all this have to do with self-improvement?
You can improve yourself, when you are capable of changing yourself – when you change your brain. You can change your brain, only when you can change the connections among the synapses in your brain. Once you do that, you perceive the world and behave differently. And once you perceive the world differently, your reality will change.
Now, you can see how the neural networks in your brain, your perceptions, and your reality are all interconnected.
Eastern Philosophies
The parallels between ancient eastern philosophies and modern quantum physics are stunning. The writings of some eastern philosophers sound like quantum physicists wrote them. You can find a book in the reference section below, which explores this similarity.
One of the methods of change that’s central to ancient practices is meditation. Mediation as a path to enlightenment or as a way to see things differently.
Amazingly, modern science shows that brain’s neural network becomes more malleable during meditation. In other words, meditation can lay the ground work for changes in your brain. It can trigger transformations.
Self-awareness and Ego
Once you know that the network of interconnected synapses create your reality, you begin to see yourself from above. You begin to realize that, in a way, you and your thoughts are a mechanism. Something that you can change and control once you step out of it. This is the beginning of self-awareness.
One of the side effects of self-awareness is that you can become detached from how you feel and perceive. In other words, you can step out of your own ego, and observe yourself detached from how you feel.
The Awakening
Once you can observe yourself from outside of you, you can see how you can change your reality. It’s very much like when you become lucid while dreaming. That’s when you become aware that you are dreaming, while you still stay in the dream. You can change the course of the dream as you wish, rather than being dragged along from one situation to another.
When you become self-aware, you realize that you are in a shared dream along with others. But now that you are lucid, you have the power to change the course of this shared dream to your liking.
References:
This is a well written book about parallels between Quantum Physics and Eastern Philosophies : The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet