On Opinion

When the evolutionary volcano spewed its genetic lava thousands of feet into the air for no apparent reason, a certain hunk of cooling molten rock gathered itself together into a vaguely human-like shape and splashed down in a gentle mountain stream that imbued it with the majesty of conscious thought. The original thoughts and ambitions of our ancestors were simple; all arose in the single root of a trickling creek. The pure and unencumbered mountain spring breathed into our igneous pores the desire for food, shelter, warmth, and each other. And that’s all we had; we weren’t scathed by urges for pride or splendor, politics or style, purification or sanctity. We simply wanted to make it from one day to the next. But, as time passed, even the tame flow of the stream eroded our impermanent stone to six billion bits of dust, and the dust began to get stirred up and float randomly within the water that protected it, and it joined the stream in its continuance down the mountainside.

As the stream passed through its scenery, the particles of dust did not forget their initial desires, and as they traveled in generally the same direction they tended to agree upon the methods by which these desires could be sated. However, as a stream proceeds downward, it is unlikely that it will travel straight until it reaches the ocean. It is far more probable that it will do as this particular stream did and split into tributaries every once in a while. And so, as forks in the downward path opened up, some of the little bits of dust went one way and some went the other way; they still kept the same desires, but their methods of achieving these began to differ. Some took to hunting, some preferred gathering; some built houses of sticks, some slept in caves; some created their own fires, some borrowed the fires of others; some lived in families, some lived in societies. And such, out of this first fork in the stream of methodological evolution, opinion was born.

As time moseyed on, the stream split over and over again and the ideas of the people in this world began to stray far from one another; some of the stream’s branches became full with followers and others waned to merely stifled exhalations of diehard fans trickling down the mountainside. However, as each path diverged from all of the others, the little bits of dust floating within it tended to forget that not only had they originated at the same root spring, but also that they were all heading downwards to the same ocean. By the time the opinions of the world had become those of today, by the time ideas such as liberalism and conservatism and capitalism and communism had arisen, it became almost infeasible to see that the underlying goals of each ideology were still essentially the same. Still we yearn for food, shelter, warmth, and each other, and very little more. From this perspective, the nature of opinion is not overtly complicated. But of course, at times our opinions are so different from others that oftentimes the only intuitive conclusion seems to be that they originated from entirely separate streams of thought, perhaps even atop different mountains. Unfortunately this has created a nonsensical cloud that nowadays obscures the vital connections between opinions that at first appear so distinct. However, because opinions evolve as such, it logically follows that each pair of opinions indeed share a common ancestor, just as do any two species of organism. This, I believe, ought to underscore the nature of argument and debate. Rather than concentrating solely on what distinguishes two ideas, we ought first to acknowledge their similar motivations. By tracing their paths down the mountain stream in this manner, we can determine almost precisely where their trajectories diverge and therefore avoid the unconscious misunderstandings about underlying motivations that are commonplace amid argument and debate.

Opinion is one of the most powerful capabilities of the human mind. However, it can destroy just as easily as it can create. Opinion ought be used only to illuminate ideas, never to push them into shadow. Every pair of “opposing” ideologies share similar motivations on at least some level, for they were once part of that same mountain stream. We should therefore focus on the harmonies among opinions first and later analyze their discordances. A reasonable compromise to any controversy comes by studying not where two opinions finally end up, but instead where they initially diverge. We should not abuse the power of opinion, but instead use to progress, for the ability to have conscious thoughts and recognize their variations is a gift to be cherished.

On Magical and Confusing Things

It’s silly, isn’t it, that so many throughout history have asked such a silly question as What is Truth?, or the even sillier, What is The Truth? This, I admit, is one of the most curious aspects of human nature. Certainly, with enough research into biological and cultural evolution, most can understand the basics of how humans came to walk on two legs, develop tools, domesticate animals, etc., but I doubt a scientist today could ever have looked at Earth’s evolution from an outside perspective and predicted, “these strange beasts will not only learn to harness fire, hunt animals, and invent indoor plumbing, but they will also question the meaning of their own existence.”

Amazingly, entire fields of study have been devoted to the task of answering this seemingly impossible question. Philosophy and physics stand out most here, despite often appearing to approach the question from quite different directions. After centuries of thinking about What is The Truth? and proposing various hypotheses, the human race has certainly come quite far along in its journey, extending its arms, hands, and fingertips deep into realms we had not even considered until recently. However, it seems that the very “essence of Truth,” if you like, still remains infinitely far out of reach. Fortunately, we can indeed lock our fingers around a much simpler question than What is The Truth? and pull it towards us for closer examination. That question is Why The Truth?

So, why the truth? Why not lies? Why not just enjoy the simple things in life? Why not spend your days with your true love, laughing and walking hand-in-hand down the beach humming little-known Hawaiian tunes? Why spend hours and days and months and years searching for this odd entity called Truth, an entity that we humans named ourselves? I’d reckon that much of why we search for Truth is intuitive. I learned as child to be honest, to be objective, to be fair. I learned that understanding my surroundings was important, that misconceptions never led anywhere good. And such when I first began peering deeply into physics and metaphysics and philosophy, it seemed inherent that Truth was the ultimate goal and despite questioning everything I stumbled upon, I never bothered to question the nature of my quest itself. Truth was a great lion gracefully traversing the African plains, and I was its pursuer. I was not alone in my quest, but the paths of others had diverged early on enough that I could no longer see them, even when I squinted my eyes. It might as well have just been I and Truth in that open grassland, no one else. Determined to catch and tame this mighty beast, I relentlessly sought clues and hints regarding its whereabouts. Every once in a while I caught a glimpse of it, but it immediately dived off again into the savanna, leaving me unsure as to whether or not it might only have been a mirage. As my quest proceeded, I began to learn a bit about the lion’s nature, to predict a few of its delicate maneuvers. With relative accuracy I could anticipate how fast it ran and where it tended to hide when I approached. However, the creature was always full of surprises and every so often turned unexpectedly, leaving me bedazzled and wondering, for there is much to learn about why a lion behaves the way it does. Not until recently, though, did I begin to question the why of my safari, the why of the Truth.

The why of the lion was much different than the lion itself. Why was I chasing this magnificent beast? Why was I chasing this ever so evasive Truth? Was it only because of its beauty and splendor, because I already felt humbled by its presence, because to catch it would represent a great triumph? Or would it be better just to let it run free and unhindered through the vast expanse before me, so it would not end up caged and on display, where crowds of human eyes would only see its majestic exterior and hear its roar, unable to detect the intricacies of its character? Did the capture and dissection of Truth destroy its entire nature? One answer to the why emerges as at least partially feasible.

In the most elementary sense, we search out this so-called Truth because we seek Satisfaction. We seek Satisfaction in school, in work, in love, in Minesweeper, in everything in life. Feeling unsatisfied makes us feel, well, unsatisfied. By definition, dissatisfaction inspires the strive for Satisfaction. The quest for Truth, then, is simply synonymous with the quest for ultimate Satisfaction. That is what we’re after, ultimate Satisfaction.

Satisfaction is the one feeling for which every creature, every atom, every galaxy, every entity in this universe pines. The inanimate world expresses this Satisfaction as a form of stability. A boulder rolls down a hill until it stops; an ember burns until it has no more fuel; planets settle into orbits amid solar systems, which settle into orbits amid galaxies. Every physical system oscillates until the forces at work balance, and the system relaxes into equilibrium where it can finally release a sigh of Satisfaction. At times the Satisfied states are stationary like the cessation of a boulder’s roll, and at times the Satisfied states are cyclical like the motion of the planets. Either way, every system in the universe seeks out nothing more than ultimate Satisfaction, and then when it has found it, it stops. We humans are no exception; it is simply that our ultimate Satisfaction is Truth. Perhaps if we find it, we too shall “stop.” The mystical quest for this strange idea that once appeared to distinguish us among the universe’s various entities has in fact let us know that in that very respect, we are no different than any other essence around us. We just give our Satisfaction a more grandiose title.

The journey of entities of the universe towards Satisfaction serves not only as a strong unifying point amid external differences, but also as a standard of measurement of one of the most peculiar enigmas of nature: time. One of the most poetic, beautiful, and worthwhile things for everyone to do at some point in their life is to sit behind a large bay window and stare out into a quiet yard during a snowfall. As each snowflake tumbles toward the ground, you can see it as a tiny piece of patterned matter seeking out nothing more than Satisfaction. Unsatisfied hovering in the air, the snowflake descends softly to the ground until it rests upon all the others, finally reaching its long-awaited state of Satisfaction. Every other snowflake in sight mimics its brothers, the whole lot of them tranquilly touching down upon the crystalline sea below, each peacefully achieving its so treasured Satisfaction. And once all the snowflakes have landed on the ground that stretches out unmoving before us, placid and blank, it seems that time almost stands still. Not an insect twitches its wings and not a snowflake moves from its so carefully chosen resting place. In fact, if it weren’t for the rhythmic beat of your heart, your slow but deliberate winter breathing, and the various disconnected thoughts popping in and out of your head, there really wouldn’t be any way to tell that time was passing by at all. No entity around you would appear to be moving toward Satisfaction. Everything in sight would be perfectly Satisfied, no complaints, no qualms, no imbalance of forces, no uneasy tension needing to be resolved. Simply Satisfaction. In a more scientific sense, time would be no more than an acknowledgment of observable entities journeying towards this Satisfaction. If the universe itself were ever to reach complete Satisfaction, then, by definition, time would simply up and wither away. Some people may call this “peace,” but I don’t like to think of it that way. Personally, the journey seems much more fun to me than the destination.

Robert Prisig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, used a clever simile in describing his notion of the undefinable “Quality.” Quality, he argued, lies not atop the mountain but rather in the bristling life on it’s sides. But, of course, there could be no sides without a top. A destination is necessary, but it is not where the Quality exists. Something similar, I think, applies to our Satisfaction. Maybe we can only achieve Satisfaction by enjoying our the sides of its mountain. If we can be ultimately Satisfied simply by the quest towards ultimate Satisfaction, then maybe we can reach our destination while still enjoying the journey all the while. To be honest though, I really can’t say; I don’t even want to claim to be able to say; it just seems like kind of a nice thought. But isn’t that what everything’s all about, nice thoughts? And that’s all I want to suggest, a nice thought, a brief contemplation on Satisfaction and on Truth. Nice thoughts always seem to change the world, even if it’s usually in an inconspicuous way.

On Identity

Some of the behaviors that have developed amid humans simply confound the mind. Some are so peculiar, we tend to ask ourselves how on Earth they could even have arisen.

Whether it’s caused by cultural metamorphosis, evolutionary machining, or a clumsy mixture of the two, at some point in their lives, everyone asks the question who am I? The search for identity pursues us; in all of our daily goings-on, the question who am I? persists in our minds, and of course, we try to answer it. Because we are so plagued by this thought, it becomes nearly inconceivable to disregard it, and we carve out an integral part of our lives dedicated solely to this mechanical search for self. Although this vague concept of awareness and self begins to first doff its mask of incoherence at quite an early age, the process of organizing articulate interpretations of our own identities essentially starts with school.

On the first day of kindergarten I was asked to tell the class my name, my favorite animal, my favorite color, and my pets’ names (if I had any). I happily did so, though without realizing the grandiose implications of my actions. By disclosing those four facts about myself, I crudely shaped the first tower of my sand-castle identity. From that moment on, I was Rich, whose favorite animal was the shark, whose favorite color was blue, whose fish were three and unnamed. These four fragments of information, menial as they may have seemed initially, provided the first step in pointing me towards a future destination, giving me a direction in which I unfortunately I stayed pointed without question for a number of years later.

It took me eight years to realize blue did not necessarily have to be my favorite color, and in fact I really didn’t care for it much at all. After five more years, I realized one really needn’t even have a favorite color at all. Whenever we state a fact, a value, a belief, a principle, or anything about ourselves, whether we’ve selected it through random choice, social pressure, or even a complex series of logical deductions, we construct a tremendous bias towards that statement, and tend to do whatever is in our power to defend it and to keep it from changing. We assume our own selection from all possible options to be inherently superior and all others to be inferior. This is precisely why it is so hard to change favorite colors, or more practically, societal ideologies.

Memorizing those four facts for fourteen other students, of course, was more than enough to occupy a class full of kindergartners for the rest of the day. By the end of the week though, we could all walk along the beach and easily pick out everyone's sand-castle towers, each unique in height, width, and uneven parapets. The foundation for the rest of our lives had been set, and the trend did not cease to continue.

On my first day of high school, I was assigned to write an essay in my freshman English class that instructed me to introduce myself and to write on anything I thought was important about my character. To supply us with a nucleation site for our thoughts, our teacher encouraged us to write about sports, interests, hobbies, or personality traits. In other words, in our paper we were to illuminate any of our significant characteristics. Not only were we continuing to build new towers of sand, but we were etching more detail into the old ones. As we mature, we begin to more solidly define ourselves in many ways, one of the most fundamental being through the use of language. This makes sense, because language is the most practical way within society by which to communicate our definitions of self, and such explains why its teaching is emphasized so forcefully in high school. The lamentable aspect of this practice, however, lies in the permanence of what is writ in ink. Writing developed as a record-keeping tool, as a method to concretely engrave words, sentences, thoughts, and descriptions such that they would last for a relatively long period of time. Thus, when we write about ourselves in high school (or at any point during life), we add a kind of permanence to our descriptions of self; the words that we use to depict our individual nature again lock us onto a specific path, and as we define ourselves further and more deeply, it becomes increasingly difficult to veer from that path when opportunity for change arises. The words we use to distinguish ourselves become ingrained in our subconscious, and they become a distinctive part of who we are. With a wrench in the gears of self-change, rather than seek out new tenets of identity, we instead subtly attempt to conform to our already transcribed definitions.

Countless other “identity” essays followed after that first as I progressed through high school. In no way could I escape the emphasis on the development of my ability to be able to tell the world who I was, and to do so in clear, unambiguous terms. Crudely shaped sand towers were no longer acceptable methods of building an identity. With each essay or story or short paragraph that I wrote, I imprinted finer and finer detail into the walls of my sand-castle edifices, and I shaped them more and more carefully so that their architecture might end up as aesthetically pleasing as possible. The rigidness and static nature of my identity was beginning to show itself. It was detailed but incredibly resistant to change. I even began to mold a new type of structure into my growing sand palace, composed of words, definitions, labels, phrases, and anecdotes. As the essays and conversations about myself became more numerous, I found that I tended to repeat certain descriptions quite frequently, whereas others dissolved away. This is what led to the construction of a moat around my sand-castle; my identity's first line of defense had been built. No longer could the incoming tides reach the towers within the center of the castle as easily, for they would simply spill into the moat and their mighty power dissipate before they could brush up against the tower walls. After we define a terminology with which to describe ourselves, we deepen our moat, and the various outside forces that once influenced so strongly each and every one of our actions begin to reach our inner castle more and more infrequently. We become impervious, resistant, and the dynamic nature so key to human experience starts to disappear. Our sand-castles become rock solid in the hot sunlight, and no longer can they even subtly feel each others’ presences. They might as well be made of stone, unyielding, unresponsive, and to the casual observer, unconscious.

The beauty of sand-castles lies most primarily in their short-lived existence. Children will spend endless hours building the most well-planned-out and intricate sand-castle, knowing all the while that it won’t even last past high tide; the next day, they simply and happily start anew, filled with new ideas of how to make it better, or at least different. The beauty of any edifice, whether physical like a mound of sand, or psychological like a our own identity, comes not from any snapshot of the construction itself, but from an analysis of how it has changed over time and from an appreciation of all of the possible variations in its design. Whenever we examine our concepts of self, we ought to view our towers and buildings not from within the walls of the castle itself, but from the perspective of a passerby on the shore. We ought to envision how changing certain aspects of ourselves might in fact lead to a more sound or at least a more aesthetic make-up of our identity.

Before wrapping up, I think it seems relatively important to also touch on the concept of I at least briefly. After all, an understanding of what the pronoun I describes is a crucial part of being able to understand the question who am I? I is one of those words that has arisen in every language, simply out of practicality (I imagine it would be a trifle difficult for a society to function were there no way to reference the first person singular), and it has unfortunately come to take on connotations derived solely from its practicality. In the most straightforward sense, it refers to whoever the speaker; this is a necessary practice in order for a society to communicate about the relationships among its members. In its practical use, however, I needs only to designate the speaker in the brief period of time surrounding the current moment of speaking. What matters is where I am now and what I am doing this week, or this month, not where I will be in fifty years or what I will be doing when I am eighty, at least in immediate and pragmatic conversation. However, in the more philosophical sense of I, the one we most often attempt to procure when answering the question who am I?, I must refer to one’s entire self, not just oneself during the present week, or during the present moment. Most people have somewhat of an understanding of this, and thus when answering who am I? talk about their existence in the present, as well as the events in the past that have led up to how they perceive themselves now. However, this still represents only a portion of the description of I, for a significant piece of everyone’s life lies in the future. This piece of life, of course, is impossible to describe, as the future is unpredictable at best. Therefore, by simple logic, whenever someone attempts to answer who am I?, the most he or she can do is to begin with the qualifier so far... This person, though not fully answering the question, will at least not try to pretend to have responded completely.

To completely respond to the question who am I? is impossible. Still though, we try in vain. We attempt over and over again to describe ourselves more accurately and definitively, to fortify our interior identity so strongly that the ocean tides can no longer reach it. But in fact, if we open up our walls, and fill in our moats with sand, and let the tides pour in over our towers, we may discover new forms, and new sandy architectures that are even more aesthetic than we had ever imagined. Instead of building up our identities linearly, only adding more to what was previously there, we ought to experience the variations of our thoughts, our ideals, our beliefs. If our towers start to crumble we ought to let them fall. Only then can we see how to more beautifully reconstruct them.

A New Perspective on Ideas

Assumptions:
There exists a fifth dimension, invisible to the human eye (bear with me please!), expanding itself not through space, but through the infinite realm of physical possibilities.

This post is not entirely derived from logic, for I am beginning to feel that although logic may be one of the most fundamental arteries of truth, it may not be the only one. The primary reason the following thought is not inspired by logic is because it is based on the assumption of the existence of a fifth dimension entailing all of physical possibility, a hypothesis that, though surprisingly fitting in many scientific circumstances, has yet to be proved with substantial physical evidence. This post about ideas was inspired by theoretical physicist David Deutsch, who in turn was inspired by geneticist Richard Dawkins.

In his book, The Fabric of Reality, British theoretical physicist David Deutsch argues strongly for the existence of parallel universes, each representing a different physically possible cosmos. This hypothesis describing the nature of reality is one of the more notorious explanations regarding quantum mechanics and interference phenomena. In essence, according to the theory, every time a quantum event occurs (i.e. a particle moves from one location to another, though the latter location is not certain; rather it is described as a probability wave of possible locations), the universe in which it occurs splits into many different universes, each corresponding to one of the possible measurable outcomes of the quantum event. For more information, I would highly recommend reading Deutsch's text, as it presents a much more elegant argument for the hypothesis than I could describe here. Again, this theory has not yet been tested (but perhaps may be soon, through the advent of quantum computation), so we cannot know for sure that it is true. However, what I would like to do is for now pretend that it is indeed true and examine how different aspects of reality may be viewed through this new and uncanny perspective.

Although the "multiversal" theory of reality yields several important implications in regard to physics and computational theory, what fascinated me most in reading The Fabric of Reality was Deutsch's application of his theory to genetics. When I picked the book up off the shelf at Borders, sandwiched in between Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Lee Smolin's Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, the last place I imagined Deutsch would journey was to the inner workings of DNA. However, in his writing, Deutsch presents a conjecture, which, whether true or not, describes the science of genetics in an unexpectedly beautiful manner. He begins by addressing the all too often questioned nature of "junk" DNA, or DNA that has no impact on the structure of the organism in which it resides. He states that in the one-universe understanding of reality, there can easily be a long sequence of A's, C's, G's, and T's that is present both in a gene paramount to the survival and reproduction of the organism as well as in a seemingly random sequence of junk DNA. Upon inspection, absolutely no physical difference distinguishes the gene's sequence from the junk DNA's sequence. Each is composed of the exact same number and type of atoms in exactly the same arrangement. They are objectively identical. This problem has plagued genetics since DNA was first discovered. However, when Deutsch applies the multiversal lens to this problem, a peculiarly elegant image of the gene comes into focus, one that clearly distinguishes between the two "identical" sequences described above. Deutsch's logic is based on the fact that a particular sequence existent within a gene has complete control over the reproduction of the organism, and more specifically the reproduction and survival of the gene itself. Therefore, if a gene is mutated in copying at one point or another, it is likely that that mutation will prevent the reproduction of that gene; the gene will cease to exist. In other words, the preservation of a sequence of a section of DNA within a gene is key to that gene's own survival. That same particular sequence present in junk DNA, however, will continue to exist no matter how it is mutated, for it has no impact on its own survival. Applying the multiversal lens to this, Deutsch argues that a copy of a gene in millions of different universes can and does only exist if its sequence is preserved exactly; if the sequence had become mutated, it would have stopped its own reproduction long before. This is not true of a segment of junk DNA, which will exist no matter how its constituent nucleotides are arranged. Deutsch therefore describes a gene as a type of multiversal, or five-dimensional crystal, an absolutely stunning representation of the Earth's most fundamental unit of reproduction. It will have no deviations in its form, for the genes with imperfections simply cannot exist. Every cross section of this five-dimensional crystal will contain the exact same sequence of DNA.

Deutsch's application of the multiversal theory of reality to Dawkins' work on genetics is absolutely brilliant, and even if not provably true, it is an incredibly beauteous illustration of the nature of the gene itself. Dawkins, however, described a new type fundamental evolutionary unit, different than, but quite analogous to the gene. This unit he called the meme. According to Dawkins, and all current and past memetics specialists, a meme is defined simply as an idea that is passed on and reproduced, by humans in particular. The reproduction of a meme is not necessarily simpler, but certainly much quicker than the reproduction of a gene. In order for a gene to be reproduced, a series of intricate biological workings must occur, and though this may be a fast for an individual gene, in order for a gene to really spread itself across a large area, we must give it quite a while. This is the fundamental reason why the mechanism of evolution grinds along so slowly. A meme, however, can be spread across the entire Earth incredibly quickly. In ages past, a book or pamphlet could spread a thought to a huge number of people in less than a few months. Today, all one must do to spread an idea (even one simple enough to be described in a single sentence) is simply to post it on the internet, where it can be accessed and interpreted seconds later by people all over the world. Memetics also goes through a very similar evolutionary process, in which interesting or successful memes reproduce and live on for epochs, but uninteresting and unsuccessful memes can die out almost immediately. The main difference is that, with memes, it happens much more quickly. A culture can change overnight, but that same change in a species takes centuries. Deutsch did mention memetics a bit in his musings; however, he did not apply his multiversal theory to the study.

The multiversal approach to understanding the gene describes it as a five-dimensional crystal, uniform in composition. Because of the incredible relation between memetics and genetics we have just mentioned, therefore, it seems natural to apply the same type of understanding to the meme. However, certain obvious differences between the meme and the gene must be accounted for prior to proceeding. The most important difference, of which I have not yet spoken, is that memes are much more likely to undergo subtle and unquantifiable mutations as they are reproduced. A gene is mutated one nucleotide at a time, and this happens relatively rarely. A meme, however, is changed at least somewhat almost anytime it is passed from one conscious mind to another. Even two people reading the exact same sentence, or looking at the exact same picture almost consistently will interpret it differently. However, unlike as is with the gene, only significant mutations will prevent a meme from being reproduced. Therefore, a meme can be present through the vast expanse of the multiverse in all of its variations and still exist. This primarily distinguishes the gene from the meme.

Let us now attempt to look at the meme as a five-dimensional object just as Deutsch did with the gene. We can still look at a meme, or an idea, rather, as an extended crystal through the multiverse. Each slice of this crystal, however, is not a physical one like a gene, but rather an entity that exists solely within one's conscious mind. Representations of an idea, of course, can be scribed upon paper or canvas, but the idea itself still only exists when someone is present to interpret it. Because these ideas exist and reproduce despite their variations though, we must realize that this crystal that comprises them is no longer uniform like that of a gene. Each cross section is indeed different, and no two are exactly alike. If we furthermore imagine an infinity of possible, yet existing universes in which the idea spreads, it follows that every single possible interpretation of the idea exists as well. Ergo, every pair of variations on a single idea can be linked through a seamless fabric containing each idea in between the two (this is kind of like a function's continuity and smoothness in mathematics). When we view this crystal from afar, we can see now that it is not rigidly inflexible like the crystal of a gene, but instead constantly changes as we travel from one slice to the next. Furthermore, because of the seamlessness between every slice, the crystal's sides are not jagged, as one might initially expect, but smooth. If this crystal were a physical entity, we could easily run our finger down the entire length of it without fear of splinters.

Thus, though the concept of an "idea" on some levels seems simple and on some overwhelmingly complex, when we look at it through this multiversal perspective (which may in due time be proven by quantum mechanics and quantum computational experiments), what arises is a beautiful crystaline structure of ever-changing, yet fluid consciousness, which I must say, seems just too elegant to be untrue.