Let's jump it off...

My name is Jim Irving.  I'm building this website to present, distribute, and archive interesting articles and viewpoints that I feel that certain people need to see.  The overall theme is the presentation of science, technology, and philosophy.  If it's possible, I'll get some nice links up detailing string theory, quantum physics, and good old biology.  If the right people get together there'll be a nice discussion on our ongoing experimentation/observation with dreaming.  For today we'll start with one of my favorite pieces of media on the web.  Rob Bryanton has written a book, and more importantly for us, a flash video, giving a simple and elegant explanation of reality in 10 dimensions (of the either 10 or 11 indicated by string theory).  While you watch it, there are two things I'd like to put into your mind:

1)  According to quantum mechanics, objects only exist in a concrete position in time and space when we observe them and revert to an ethereal wave state when they're not being observed.  This has given rise to what's referred to as the Anthropomorhic Principle.  It states that no universe can exist which cannot support the existence of a being which can observe said universe.  The idea is that without an observer nothing would ever be collapsed into what we would call reality.  Furthermore, it couldn't be collapsed.  Therefore that universe could not exist.  Of course, since we're observers, a test for this theory is going to be trick to devise. 

2)  Philosophers have always had a conundrum in the conflict between free will and determinism.  The neat thing that the view that this video points out is that we are not only free to make every possible choice, but we also do make every possible choice.  In such a system, all outcomes are already determined, and therefore totally deterministic.  So now which is it?  Are we free or are we slaves?