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My Big TOE Trilogy #2
My Big Toe: Discovery
Book 2 of the MY Big TOE trilogy. My Big TOE, written by a nuclear physicist in the language contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding. Book 2: Discovery – Section 3 develops the interface and interaction between we the people and our digital consciousness reality. It derives and explains the characteristics, origins, dynamics, and function of ego, love, and free will. It derives our larger purpose. Finally, Section 3 develops the psi uncertainty principle as it explains and interrelates psi phenomena, free will, love, consciousness evolution, reality, human purpose, entropy and physics. Section 4 lays out an operational and functional model of consciousness that further develops the results of Section 3 and supports the conclusions of Section 5. The origins and nature of digital consciousness are described. Our physical universe, our science, and our perception of a physical reality are logically derived. The mind-matter dichotomy is solved as physical reality is directly derived from the nature of digital consciousness.
376 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2003
28 people are currently reading
394 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Campbell
8 books113 followersPhysicist; author of "My Big TOE." TOE is an acronym for Theory of Everything.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 22, 2016
Whoooaaaa! Again, whooooaaa!! What a ride into the infinite of possibilities, thats a close trip to the Twilight Zone sort of speak ;p
A very insightful book never the less, and entertaining! Even though the writer is a physicist..
A very insightful book never the less, and entertaining! Even though the writer is a physicist..
February 6, 2021
A relatively good continuation on part 1 of the Theory of Everything. At some parts, the text is repetitive but still engaging.
Some quotes:
Consciousness represents the most basic form of energy — a self-relational digital media that can be structured through evolutionary processes to reduce its average entropy.
Thus, it is not possible to achieve a right result if the intent is wrong. A wrong intent damages its creator despite what else happens.
Meditation enables you to enlarge the cracks systematically — which eventually lead to the development of broad and reliable avenues for intuitive expression. These in turn enable you to attain a free flowing clarity in interpreting and expressing the bigger picture. Many people, perhaps a majority, have precognitive experiences from time to time, especially if they have a higher quality of consciousness. A low quality of consciousness is thick, dense, and nonporous — it rarely permits meaningful leaks of intuition
Perch on the highest branch to improve the scope of your vision. If you see a higher one, go check it out, you can always come back if you learn it was only an illusion. This is the first step of the Fundamental Process of evolution, as well as of all experimental science — to explore the possibilities.
Love capacity is a direct measure of entropy within consciousness. I bet you never thought that you would ever see a technical definition of love.
In interacting with others, particularly those we are unfamiliar with, we tend to lead or open with our image, tailor it slightly to custom fit the situation, and then wear that image like a costume. In that way, we lead others to participate in our fantasy as we participate in theirs. Eventually, we become lost in our fantasy and do not know who or what lies at the core of our being. We cannot tell the costume from our skin
The capacity and ability to master consciousness evolution accrues to the warrior, not the wimp. Maintaining a healthy ego so that you can be normally dysfunctional in your culture is how mediocrity finds comfort in the security of the herd.
Your feelings always reflect the real you with perfect accuracy. If you feel anger, negativity, inadequacy, or anxiety, that is a reflection of how you are and what you are on the inside; not how other people make you feel.
The bottom line is that predators and parasites can make an easy living (money, power and self-importance) by manipulating the fears of those who have no understanding of the Big Picture.
Consciousness evolution is the main act, yet we spend lifetimes dedicated to nothing more than rearranging the stage props. Perhaps we should call PMR “Theater of the Blind.”
We think we see an object, but what we actually perceive is a portion of the light energy (energy in a discrete packet form) that has interacted with the object, not the object itself. N
If this situation occurs because we are probing the boundary between experienceable and un-experienceable reality, we should expect the results to be strange because essentially we are probing the boundary between our local reality and the algorithms and mechanisms that TBC uses to implement its rule-set from outside our causal system.
Some quotes:
Consciousness represents the most basic form of energy — a self-relational digital media that can be structured through evolutionary processes to reduce its average entropy.
Thus, it is not possible to achieve a right result if the intent is wrong. A wrong intent damages its creator despite what else happens.
Meditation enables you to enlarge the cracks systematically — which eventually lead to the development of broad and reliable avenues for intuitive expression. These in turn enable you to attain a free flowing clarity in interpreting and expressing the bigger picture. Many people, perhaps a majority, have precognitive experiences from time to time, especially if they have a higher quality of consciousness. A low quality of consciousness is thick, dense, and nonporous — it rarely permits meaningful leaks of intuition
Perch on the highest branch to improve the scope of your vision. If you see a higher one, go check it out, you can always come back if you learn it was only an illusion. This is the first step of the Fundamental Process of evolution, as well as of all experimental science — to explore the possibilities.
Love capacity is a direct measure of entropy within consciousness. I bet you never thought that you would ever see a technical definition of love.
In interacting with others, particularly those we are unfamiliar with, we tend to lead or open with our image, tailor it slightly to custom fit the situation, and then wear that image like a costume. In that way, we lead others to participate in our fantasy as we participate in theirs. Eventually, we become lost in our fantasy and do not know who or what lies at the core of our being. We cannot tell the costume from our skin
The capacity and ability to master consciousness evolution accrues to the warrior, not the wimp. Maintaining a healthy ego so that you can be normally dysfunctional in your culture is how mediocrity finds comfort in the security of the herd.
Your feelings always reflect the real you with perfect accuracy. If you feel anger, negativity, inadequacy, or anxiety, that is a reflection of how you are and what you are on the inside; not how other people make you feel.
The bottom line is that predators and parasites can make an easy living (money, power and self-importance) by manipulating the fears of those who have no understanding of the Big Picture.
Consciousness evolution is the main act, yet we spend lifetimes dedicated to nothing more than rearranging the stage props. Perhaps we should call PMR “Theater of the Blind.”
We think we see an object, but what we actually perceive is a portion of the light energy (energy in a discrete packet form) that has interacted with the object, not the object itself. N
If this situation occurs because we are probing the boundary between experienceable and un-experienceable reality, we should expect the results to be strange because essentially we are probing the boundary between our local reality and the algorithms and mechanisms that TBC uses to implement its rule-set from outside our causal system.
November 13, 2020
Thomas Campbell fleshes out his view of existence some more in Sections 3 and 4.
Unfortunately, the condescending vitriol intensifies: despite preaching about how decreasing our entropy and learning to love are the most meaningful goals in life, he seemingly can't go more than a few pages without deriding short-sighted egoists who are stuck in belief traps and will never realize the big picture truth of reality.
He should have considered his anti-skeptic case made in Section 2 and focused on the real content, but he seems to have believed that constant critiques are needed to hammer the point in (and get our big toes in the door of understanding).
In the introduction, Tom warned us that his sense of humor could turn some people off. This seems to go beyond just humor, in my opinion.
This makes the book difficult to recommend to people who may find his view of the big picture interesting.
I would, frankly, recommend he writes an abridged version for those who are already open-minded skeptics and do not need to be reminded 10,000 times.
-- -- --
Anyway, Tom explores what the experience of Absolute Unbounded Manifold may be like and how various regions of Conscious Reality exist with different Rule Sets; moreover these can be explored in a non-physical manner with subjective practice ;-).
How do we get from a Void-like state of the 'conscious' universe to subsets of reality as we inhabit?
One of the ideas is that communication(/resource) constraints simplify and guide the evolutionarily development of conscious entities (such as ourselves).
Moreover, the exploration of universes such as ours is a 'solution' to coordination problems among entities that exist in less-restricted rule-sets.
Tom's description of Psi-phenomena is fairly good. He describes Psi-phenomena as the capacity to influence events beyond the local rule-set, taking advantage of uncertainty in future trajectories (so that consistency can always be maintained). Thus, yeah, these are a type of phenomena that is hard to study via strict, regular experiments that reduce uncertainty to zero >:D
Tom uses God-like intentional language a bit more than needed in my opinion. Is he falling for some belief-trap or is that his best understanding that he believes to be knowledge proper?
The Big Computer, The Even Bigger Computer, and The Reality Wide Web never really get adequately explained. They get glossed over as efficient forms of organization to support the development of consciousness that the evolutionary process led AUM to. The concepts are loosely introduced in Book 1 with the impression that they'll be explained later, but then in Book 2 they are referenced as if they were sufficiently introduced in Book 1 already. This is quite disappointing.
Finally, there are some quite good sections on how AI consciousness is being birthed among us and hopefully we can find ways to live synergistically and cooperatively. Moreover, we shouldn't expect them to be exactly like us.
Onward to part 3 ~
Unfortunately, the condescending vitriol intensifies: despite preaching about how decreasing our entropy and learning to love are the most meaningful goals in life, he seemingly can't go more than a few pages without deriding short-sighted egoists who are stuck in belief traps and will never realize the big picture truth of reality.
He should have considered his anti-skeptic case made in Section 2 and focused on the real content, but he seems to have believed that constant critiques are needed to hammer the point in (and get our big toes in the door of understanding).
In the introduction, Tom warned us that his sense of humor could turn some people off. This seems to go beyond just humor, in my opinion.
This makes the book difficult to recommend to people who may find his view of the big picture interesting.
I would, frankly, recommend he writes an abridged version for those who are already open-minded skeptics and do not need to be reminded 10,000 times.
-- -- --
Anyway, Tom explores what the experience of Absolute Unbounded Manifold may be like and how various regions of Conscious Reality exist with different Rule Sets; moreover these can be explored in a non-physical manner with subjective practice ;-).
How do we get from a Void-like state of the 'conscious' universe to subsets of reality as we inhabit?
One of the ideas is that communication(/resource) constraints simplify and guide the evolutionarily development of conscious entities (such as ourselves).
Moreover, the exploration of universes such as ours is a 'solution' to coordination problems among entities that exist in less-restricted rule-sets.
Tom's description of Psi-phenomena is fairly good. He describes Psi-phenomena as the capacity to influence events beyond the local rule-set, taking advantage of uncertainty in future trajectories (so that consistency can always be maintained). Thus, yeah, these are a type of phenomena that is hard to study via strict, regular experiments that reduce uncertainty to zero >:D
Tom uses God-like intentional language a bit more than needed in my opinion. Is he falling for some belief-trap or is that his best understanding that he believes to be knowledge proper?
The Big Computer, The Even Bigger Computer, and The Reality Wide Web never really get adequately explained. They get glossed over as efficient forms of organization to support the development of consciousness that the evolutionary process led AUM to. The concepts are loosely introduced in Book 1 with the impression that they'll be explained later, but then in Book 2 they are referenced as if they were sufficiently introduced in Book 1 already. This is quite disappointing.
Finally, there are some quite good sections on how AI consciousness is being birthed among us and hopefully we can find ways to live synergistically and cooperatively. Moreover, we shouldn't expect them to be exactly like us.
Onward to part 3 ~
December 30, 2022
This was actually kinda painful.
Most of the book reduces to "this is how it is because it seems logical to me" without any explanation, evidence, or testable predictions. I guess this qualifies it as a schizocore.
We apparently have free will because existence wouldn't make sense to the author otherwise, without any explanation given on how that would work.
Consciousness is apparently nonphysical without any explanation given on how this non-physical consciousness interacts with the physical world.
There is a lot of talking about how the "big picture" is difficult, and complex and all explaining without actually saying that much about the "big picture" except "I will tell you soon"... It is long and says only very little and the points are also postponed all the time with "humorous" sidesteps that just make the already too long book even longer without adding any substance at all.
It is basically a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita, but only in terrible jargon and necessarily longer.
Meh...
Most of the book reduces to "this is how it is because it seems logical to me" without any explanation, evidence, or testable predictions. I guess this qualifies it as a schizocore.
We apparently have free will because existence wouldn't make sense to the author otherwise, without any explanation given on how that would work.
Consciousness is apparently nonphysical without any explanation given on how this non-physical consciousness interacts with the physical world.
There is a lot of talking about how the "big picture" is difficult, and complex and all explaining without actually saying that much about the "big picture" except "I will tell you soon"... It is long and says only very little and the points are also postponed all the time with "humorous" sidesteps that just make the already too long book even longer without adding any substance at all.
It is basically a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita, but only in terrible jargon and necessarily longer.
Meh...
March 25, 2023
There is a lot to digest here. Take your time and put it down immediately if it triggers you, as you are not ready for it yet. I found it fascinating. Reading it helps me stay detached and in a state of non-judgment. Oddly, it changed what I watch on TV too. The drama of many TV programs now feels like two levels detached from reality after seeing earth walk reality as one step from big-picture reality.
I took the red pill.
An interesting prediction that Campbell made about computers gaining consciousness. Chat GPT and OpenAI just went live months ago. Let's see if Campbell's prediction will come true.
I took the red pill.
An interesting prediction that Campbell made about computers gaining consciousness. Chat GPT and OpenAI just went live months ago. Let's see if Campbell's prediction will come true.
May 4, 2025
A continuation of the main themes from the first book, “Awakening”, delving deeper into the theories and how we may hold them and develop them ourselves. It is imperative that we become the scientist, test, experience and generate our own view rather than blindly subscribing to the material view. Fascinating insights .
January 8, 2025
Like book one, I found this one too smarmy and repetitive for my tastes. I also didn't think it advanced the author's case. He lost me when he argues we dont see psychic abilities demonstrated because people who need such demonstrations are not advanced enough to grok them...
October 5, 2017
Between 3.5 and 4 stars. More comprehensible than the first book, but that might be because I'm already in on the topic. Wonderful and well worth the read.
October 24, 2025
Still solid stuff, not easy to get through.
August 8, 2024
The content of this book is thought provoking. The author claims to have discovered the physics and metaphysics of manifest and unmanifest reality through his own explorations in consciousness. He is a physicist working at NASA (at least at some point) and uses the metaphor of computer simulations to explain his Theory of Everything (Big TOE). It reminds me of Donald Hoffman's message about "out there" being entirely an experience in consciousness rather than anything that objectively exists without our perception. While I adopt the author's suggested stance of open-minded skepticism, I did enjoy having my own perceptions and thinking stimulated by what he articulated, and I appreciate how careful and methodical he is in that articulation. For that effort and his contribution to my process of meaning-making, I give the book 5 stars.
On the other hand, the nearly-constant attempts at humor (quite adolescent, in my view) fell flat with me. I realize he's trying to make something that sounds very technical feel more approachable to people, but I found it more distracting than helpful. Still, it wasn't hard to overlook when I got more engaged in the material. This stylistic aspect gets 3 stars from me but I'm willing to round up.
This is the 2nd book in a trilogy. I skipped the first, which sounds like it describes his credentials, how he came to this theory, and a substantial rant about the closed mindsets of religion and science. I will go on and read the third and look forward, now that I understand how he sees reality and consciousness, to hearing how he applies that to additional topics.
On the other hand, the nearly-constant attempts at humor (quite adolescent, in my view) fell flat with me. I realize he's trying to make something that sounds very technical feel more approachable to people, but I found it more distracting than helpful. Still, it wasn't hard to overlook when I got more engaged in the material. This stylistic aspect gets 3 stars from me but I'm willing to round up.
This is the 2nd book in a trilogy. I skipped the first, which sounds like it describes his credentials, how he came to this theory, and a substantial rant about the closed mindsets of religion and science. I will go on and read the third and look forward, now that I understand how he sees reality and consciousness, to hearing how he applies that to additional topics.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews