Does the universe exist as interpreted by us or does it exist at some other level?

For example:

Two people hold each other’s hands.
Each feels the hand of the other and interprets this as friendship.

But does that friendship actually exist in the universe?

Does it exist, not just on the agreed-upon surface, but below the surface—that universal land of potential and probability? The implied. Bohm’s Implicit Order (as opposed to some explicit order–our surface explanations and generalizations)?

We seek what lies  beneath the surface, always silent and invisible–the implied–The WHAT IS BEHIND WHAT IS (The WIBWI)?

Let’s start at the leading edge of scientific philosophy:

The Double-Slit or Bell’s Experiment.
The bizarre statistical quantum world and its reality.
They all seemed to be based on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle aka Uncertainty with a capital “U”.

Uncertainty has to do with perspective and therefore includes the human element and its corruption of objectivity or objective science:

Some have pointed out that science cannot be completely objective because there are observers—us. Every time each of us tries to understand anything that persists in our universe, we must sample it—reach out into the WIBWI and collect data. We interpret that data in the context of everything else we know. If our interpretation works for a time (during which we continue to sample it), we call it truth.

For example: She interprets friendship from feeling the warmth of his hand, he from a twinkle in her eye. Are their interpretations real?

Do they work for a time?

Or are they just speculative fantasies based on nothing but desires?

Uncertainty has to do with perspective. For example: Standing on the railroad tracks we look into the distance in a particular direction where the tracks seem to come together at a distant point–a location.

In this way, we can know the position (with reference to us) of a train, but Uncertainty tells us we can only look or sample the train from one point of view (POV or perspective) at a time. If we know the train’s position, we can’t know its speed. To calculate its pure speed, we have to be looking at it perpendicular to the tracks. In doing so we can collect two or more data points or instantaneous positions that return the train’s velocity.

Uncertainty says, if we know its location—where it is—we cannot know what it is or how fast it’s going. To know what it is—let’s say, its shape—requires more than one data point (in space/time). And where it is requires the same.

So Uncertainty tells us, that upon observation, we can only see part of the truth.

Another example:

We approach a house from the front.

There is a front door, windows, and shutters. So is a HOUSE made up only of those aspects?

What if we approached that house from above in a helicopter?
We would only see a roof with shingles. So is a house composed only of shingles?
We know it isn’t.

So this conundrum might hint that the WIBWI that underlies everything else, could be made up of tendencies toward many different aspects or points of view.

Our individual realities might be made up of the convergence of all perspectives we’ve sampled and the generalizations we’ve made about them.

From this understanding of perspective, we can look at unsettling scientific theories, like those about double-slit results and the statistical quantum world, or whether Schrodinger’s Cat is dead or alive.

Here at The Union of Opposites, speculation based on belief rather than hard data is compared to scientifically disciplined generalizations. How each of us holds a piece of the puzzle and whether that puzzle is real or virtual. For example—If one’s perspective is subjective, then it must ever project a virtual world (the surface, explicit WHAT IS as opposed to the ever silent, invisible, and implied WIBWI).

Through thought experiments, we attempt to understand the assumptions we make about our “real” world in order to come a bit closer to understanding the WIBWI underlying it all.