Your initial concerns are based on assumptions that are either incomplete or wrong. The current theories that are floating around have to do with information, and I will just skim over the surface here with a few highlights and some references:
In the book Gravitation by Meisner, Thorn and Wheeler, the authors, speculate, based on some very sound science, that the ultimate cause of the universe is symbolic logic.
There is a book out now, The Information, that sets forth the idea that it is information that is fundamental, not matter. That in fact, matter may be an emergent property of information. Information is, at its core, binary / discrete. This may be why the world is quantum as opposed to continuous in nature.
See Douglas Hofstadter and his works on the nature of information. Where do the works of Shakespeare reside? On paper, or on hard drives or in our minds? When the computer is turned off, where does the information go?
There is more than one theory about that life (whatever that is) exists, so that the universe may observe itself. Whatever that means.
Put all that together, and one sort of comes up with the idea that stuff is an emergent property of information, not the other way around. If, at your core, "you" are a pattern of information, than your body is as important to "you" as a disk drive is to Hamlet.
I really do not know. More than likely those who do KNOW, are wrong.
You may wish to get somewhat familiar with Buddhism
In the book Gravitation by Meisner, Thorn and Wheeler, the authors, speculate, based on some very sound science, that the ultimate cause of the universe is symbolic logic.
There is a book out now, The Information, that sets forth the idea that it is information that is fundamental, not matter. That in fact, matter may be an emergent property of information. Information is, at its core, binary / discrete. This may be why the world is quantum as opposed to continuous in nature.
See Douglas Hofstadter and his works on the nature of information. Where do the works of Shakespeare reside? On paper, or on hard drives or in our minds? When the computer is turned off, where does the information go?
There is more than one theory about that life (whatever that is) exists, so that the universe may observe itself. Whatever that means.
Put all that together, and one sort of comes up with the idea that stuff is an emergent property of information, not the other way around. If, at your core, "you" are a pattern of information, than your body is as important to "you" as a disk drive is to Hamlet.
I really do not know. More than likely those who do KNOW, are wrong.
You may wish to get somewhat familiar with Buddhism
