John Parker

“I thought about Wheeler’s four questions and how we might answer them after everything we’d learned. It from bit? Yes, but each observer creates different its from the same bits, bits that are themselves observer-dependent and arise from the asymmetry wrought by a finite reference frame. A participatory universe? Participatory, yes; a universe, no. It was one participatory universe per reference frame, and you can only talk about one at a time. Why the quantum? Because reality is radically observer-dependent. Because observers are creating bits of information out of nothingness. Because there’s no way things “really are,” and you can’t employ descriptions that cross horizons. How come existence? Because existence is what nothing looks like from the inside.”
― Amanda Gefter, Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything

“There was also no longer any sense of my moving along a time line. Time was no longer a path with the past behind me and the future before me, as we commonly conceive of it. Instead there was a sense of an eternally unfolding present moment. Rather than time being a journey along a linear path, change appeared to be mandala-like. It seemed to be like a flower seen from above, endlessly unfolding from within, or like a kaleidoscope’s image forever rearranging itself. It struck me as highly misleading to think in terms of there being a past behind us and a future ahead of us. Instead there was only this one present moment, eternally unfolding according to its nature. I found myself in an eternal, timeless present.”
― Bodhipaksa, Living as a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change

“Husserl—he’s one of the greats. His term noema refers to the thing as we experience it, the thing as structured by us.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

“It seems that the parietal lobes of the brain have the function of creating a sense of time and space, and when that part of the brain goes offline, we lose our sense of there being an inside and an outside to our experience.”
― Bodhipaksa, Living as a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change