The world revolves around me. Wait, that's an understatement. The universe revolves around me.

Before you dismiss me as an egoistic a-hole, give me a few moments to explain. Here is the big idea: The universe exist because you perceive it. Let me try giving a few illustrations.

1. "If an man shouts in the forest and nobody hears him, does he make a sound?"

Age old mind blowing question. To answer this question, you have to define what is sound. Does sound exist if no one hears it? Does something exist if no ones knows about it? Before America was discovered (assuming there is no one living on it at first), did it exist? People lived their lives like America didn't exit. We all think that is actually there, except no one discovered it. But there isn't really any proof that America popped up right before Christopher Columbus (I know, this isn't historically accurate, just enjoy the correlation ok?) saw its shores in the horizon. Are we discovering things that are already there or are we inventing things from non-existence?

I know this is a feeble argument. Let me strengthen it by widening the scope a little. Knowing that something exists is not limited to knowing directly. According to my claim, electrons did not exist before JJ Thompson discovered it in 1897. But it must have existed before 1897, if not matter would have behaved very differently before that. That is precisely my point. The fact that we can observe evidences that something is there means that we 'know' of its existence. A more modern example will be dark matter. We can't sense it, but by observing how other things react to it, we 'know' it exist. Or at least that is what scientists claims, which brings me to my next point.

2. What is our current perception of existence?

Imagine an empty space. However, this space is a bit special. Only to your eyes, light reflects of this empty space so you see a box. Only to your skin, pressure receptors activate when you bring your hands near it. Does it exist? What if everyone else told you that there is nothing there, and you are just imagining things? Does it exist? What if everyone else cannot see or touch it, but lie to you and say that it is there. Does it exist? How do you know that the computer that you are reading this on is not just part of your imagination, and the whole world is just pretending that it is there? We only think that things exist because what we sense are confirmed by others (let's not forget, we can prove that they are telling the truth).

Would a rainbow exist if you are blind? I'm sure majority of blind people will not deny the existence of rainbows. Why? Because people who can see tell them that it is there. In the same way, we do not deny the existence that dark matter exist because scientists tells us it is there. If we manage to convince a blind man that there are dancing cows on every rainbow, it would exist! Well at least in his universe (hold on, I'll get there). This is quite an uneasy idea to swallow as it you mean you can create universes if you are persuasive enough. You can create a universe where there are real dancing cows on rainbow for a blind man. This takes 'my whole life is a lie' to a next level eh?

This really raises the question of what is true. It is true to you that a chair exist because you can sense her, and everyone else tells you of its existence. (Or are you just imagining that she is there and imagining other people you telling you about it?) How about things like ghost? Are they real? Before you grab a loud hailer and declare your opinion as the truth, take a break and put yourself in someone else's shoes. You might believe with all your heart that ghost do not exist but there might be someone else who believes with all his heart that they do. What makes your opinion more important than his? The answer is that, because it is your universe. You call the shots. If you truly believe that ghost do not exist, the other person strong belief is all but a crazy idea. On the other hand, if you d believe, people who do not believe are just plain ignorant. What you believe is what exist in your universe, cause after all, the universe is just what your brain thinks. So do ghost exist? I don't know about your universe but not in mine. For now.

3. Relative universe

Einstein illustrated the relativity of time with this example: When a lady is dancing with her lover, time passes very fast. When she is waiting for a daughter to come home late at night, time passes very slowly. If the 4th dimension can be relative, why can't the previous 3? It's easy to think of the universe as a large 3D graph paper and we constantly changing our coordinate, as we move along the timeline at a constant rate. (Ok, maybe not so simple.) But I like to think of myself as the (0, 0, 0, 0) coordinate. Yes, I'm the origin (and hence the title). I don't move around the universe but the universe moves around me. All I have to do is move my legs and the bus stop comes towards me. It makes perfect sense if you look at it mathematically. Time that you have already experienced before is the past (we can see this as negative), what is happening now is 0, and the future is the positive. The large difference between past present and future should not be represented by 2, 3 and 4, but rather <0 0="0" and="and">0. The 3rd dimension is more tricky as we are able to move about freely within it. Let's assume that there is a distance of 100m between myself and the bus stop. I only know the distance (refer to physics textbook) between us is 100m. Was it me that moved 100m away, or the bus stop? Or did we move 50m each? Since it how I process it shall just assume the bus stop moved towards me. There isn't a very big difference actually, just depends where I place the origin. If I include a 3rd party walking from the bus stop to me, and use him as the origin, it would seem like I'm moving towards the bus stop while the bus stop is moving away from me. But in actual fact (at least for the bus stop and me), none of us moved. Therefore, it is just simplifies things to always use yourself as the origin, since it is where all the information gather and cognitive ability takes place. 

Using this concept, to me, the bus stop is moving towards me. To the bus stop, I am moving towards it. Ah ha! Contradiction! Someone has to be wrong, right? Wrong. Actually we are both correct. Everyone lives in their own universes, with themselves as an origin. We can only have things like latitudes and longitudes because we identified things which we agree that do not move relative to each other (like the North and South pole). In a world where everything is always moving, or where there is only one thing no one will be able to agree where that thing is, because that thing will have different coordinates to different origins. We just need to accept the fact that we all live in different universes. 'Worlds apart' seems like an understatement now eh? In order for different origins to agree, we compare the distance between 2 points on our Cartesian plane to the distance of the same 2 points on someone else's plane.

Then again, distance my not be a constant. Imagine a world where we are all born with binoculars on our eyes. We see things closer then they are. Then in this world, someone is born without them. He claims that things are actually further than what everyone else thinks. Who is right? What if someone comes to you now and tell you the sky is red. Who is right? What is 'right' to us is just how we are used to perceive things. When we use a binoculars, we know that it is not the 'right' distance because we are aware of the binoculars and we are also used to what the world without the binoculars look like. Then again, the human eye is but a tool. The only reason why we can agree on distances is because we have other things to gauge it upon, such as maybe how many steps it takes to get there. A metre is metre because we claim a metre rule is 1 metre. And by comparing this metre rule to other things, this is how we can get similar ideas of distances with other people. Same reason why we can all claim the sky is blue. This is because someone pointed to the sky and claimed it blue. We all register that colour we see as blue and all other colours that look similar to us. Who knows, the sky might look very different to me than it does to you.

Technically I can make the bus stop come to me by not even moving my legs. I just have to perceive the 100m between us as 1m. Then I only have to walk 1m, right? Erm, well right and wrong. Yes, according to your previous perception, the bus stop is indeed 1m away from you. But when you change your perception, you change your perception of the whole world. Your legs also become shorter so you still have to walk the same number of steps to the bus stop. The metre rule will become smaller so if you do measure, the bus stop is still 100m away. Seems like there's no lazy way out...

Or is it? When we dream, our mind creates the dream as we perceive it. (Yup, that's from Inception). Good thing about dreams is that we believe anything we tell ourselves. So if I dream that the bus stop is really 1m away from me, to my dream self, that would be reality. Sadly that only happen in dreams. Technically speaking, if we manage to convince ourselves (like really really without a doubt, double confirm) that the bus stop is 1m away, it will really be 1m away in our universe. Then someone will come and tell us that the bus stop is 100m away, so we doubt and everything collapses.


Ok the next part is pretty deep. I am also not sure how to put it into words... To me, you are just a piece of matter that moves around in my universe that I can see, hear, touch etc. Sounds unfeeling but its true for everyone. 'I' (what I think of myself, able to think, feel etc) am actually just some... thing within your universe which can say things to make you think I think, which can cry to make you feel I feel. The fact is that, I cannot prove that I exist in your universe. I can only prove I exist in my universe.

Wow okay I was just thinking about relativity after dinner and wanted to jot down some of my thoughts. Somehow this ended up as a... (hold on, doing a quick word count) 2000 word essay. Haha I amaze myself. Probably not the best time for it though... Wasting precious revision time before the promos... Oh well, time is relative haha.

Jc signs off