Why Humans Will Never Understand 4D Space

I have always more or less been on a quest to understand the Universe.

What could be more fundamental than Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons? Well you quickly find out that Elementary Particles are just made out of Energy. So Energy seemed to be the thing to start with.

Eventually I learned that Energy can arise out of Space itself. So what does this mean about our concept of Space?

There could be different kinds of Spaces besides our 3D Space. There could be a 4D Space. There could be no Space. The possibility of no Space is almost impossible to grasp by the 3D human brain.

I think this is an important realization for Philosophy and the study of the limits of our ability to understand things.

What could be more fundamental than Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons? Well you quickly find out that Elementary Particles are just made out of Energy. So Energy seemed to be the thing to start with. — SteveKlinko
The problem with energy is, it's not a tangible thing, it's a mathematical tool. It took me a long time to grasp that. Physicists like to treat energy as an entity that has the ability to cause things, but energy doesn't cause anything, it is simply a description of motion and potential to cause motion. We don't need to talk about the fuzzy concept of energy to describe the universe, we could simply talk about particles and their motion and their ability to move other particles (even though as we talked about in your thread about physicalism such particles cannot explain the emergence of conscious experience so they cannot be all there is).
When they say a photon is pure energy, they mean to say that it can't be slowed down or accelerated, but it can be seen as a particle that has the ability to cause motion.

When they talk about the famous E = m.c², what that equation says is simply that an atom that emits a photon becomes easier to put into motion by a certain quantity, but again we could describe that without referring to the concept of energy which often carries with it a lot of misconceptions.

Eventually I learned that Energy can arise out of Space itself. So what does this mean about our concept of Space? — SteveKlinko
I think you may be referring here to what they call the energy of the void, of empty space, but really all that means is that what they call empty space isn't empty, there are a bunch of things in apparent empty space, a bunch of particles we don't detect easily, and again we don't have to treat energy or space as tangible substance or entities.

There could be different kinds of Spaces besides our 3D Space. There could be a 4D Space. There could be no Space. The possibility of no Space is almost impossible to grasp by the 3D human brain. — SteveKlinko
I wonder if you came to the idea of a 4D space because of the theory of general relativity that makes use of a 4D space. But in fact we don't need a 4D space to make the predictions that general relativity does, we can explain observations as accurately as general relativity in a theory that makes use of a 3D space, Einstein felt simply forced to use a 4D space because of the assumptions he made which made 4D more mathematically elegant, but mathematical elegance is not conceptual simplicity.

Space is just a background, a map on which we put the particles, we can choose whatever kind of map we want, flat, elliptic, hyperbolic, all that changes is the coordinates we give to the particles, but observations won't tell us what kind of space we live in, space has no shape other than the one we give it, I'm sure we could also come up with a convoluted way to describe the whole universe in 2 dimensions, it doesn't mean there is an actual physical entity called space that is 2D or 3D or 4D, it's just a tool, and we just find it easier to describe the whole in 3D.

Many concepts in physics are treated as tangible entities while they are merely mathematical tools, concepts, this is the fallacy of reification, and it is widespread regarding the concepts of energy, mass, force, space, time, they are all just tools, not things we actually observe or interact with.

I think this is an important realization for Philosophy and the study of the limits of our ability to understand things. — SteveKlinko
I wouldn't say there are limits to our ability to understand so much as limits of our ability to see, our eyes only see a small part of all that is, they only see a small part of the photons that reach them, many photons do not interact with our eyes in a detectable way but they interact with other instruments that we see with our eyes and that's how we come to believe that there are a bunch of photons we don't see, and that's just one small part of what we don't see, that we have feelings tells us that there is more than particles out there, there's more that we can't comprehend by focusing on what we see with the eyes and on all our concepts that stem from what we see with the eyes, we need to come up with other concepts that stem out of what we feel, and I feel there is a great unknown there we have barely explored.

Our biology isnt made for 4D, thats all. Will it ever be? Perhaps. We will learn more and more about our biology, and 4D. Eventually we might alter our biology to understand or sense 4D, or invent a proper interface that might get us there.
I dont think “not smart enough” is right, that is like saying we are not smart enough to have a bats radar senses. A 4D being, whatever that might entail, could very well have no ability to imagine a 3D universe and instead forced to rely on math models the way we do for 4D. Doesnt mean its dumb, or that we are.

I've tried to read a little on 4D mechanics and I think one of the key aspects of a higher dimension is its permeability of the lower dimensions. For example, a 2D being would not be able to see the whole of a 2D model e.g. a circle, unless they went around it. And even then, they would only see the portion in front and which would still obstruct the rest. The same applies to our 3D sight when observing stuff. A common example is the horizon at the edge of any vista. Or the fact that we only see the part of solids directly reflecting light at us. It is often proposed that 4D sight would enable us to view the whole of a 3D object, permeating through its structure to perceive every angle from just one point of view without shifting. Anyway, that's just a guess.

I have been thinking about multi dimensionality because of what I have been reading and viewing on YouTube recently, regarding unexplained phenomena.

I found it useful to think of multi dimensionality in terms of the process of how we get there: for example to move in space we need to change at least one of our coordinates and we are at a different place. The way our senses work, we get a different input into our senses, distance, for example will make things look smaller and other things look bigger. Others will sense us differently.

Now imagine a multi dimensional universe where we could change one of the coordinates of the fourth dimension. If we move far enough into the fourth dimension, we may not be able to be sensed by someone with the same 3D coordinates as us. So we disappear.

If we our able to travel within the fourth dimension?

?SteveKlinko We have right and left, back and forward, up and down; so I think the four spatial dimension might be outwards and inwards, an eccentric and concentric motion. That way the rule of orthogonal angle with the others spatial dimensions is preserved.
Moreover, I think the big bang and expansion of the universe is a fourth dimensional movement that we perceive "magically" as coming out of nowhere, just like flatlanders would perceive a sphere passing their bidimensional plane. I ilustrate my point with this picture, that contributes no helpful information but it´s really cool:

This leads to the conclusion that there could be no Space! Most Cosmologists would say there was no Space before the Big Bang. The Space and the Energy were created by the Big Bang.

This leads to the conclusion that there could be no Space! Most Cosmologists would say there was no Space before the Big Bang. The Space and the Energy were created by the Big Bang. — SteveKlinko
This is exactly why we need to consider the 0th dimension, a dimension with no space. When we realize that there could be a time without space we need to allow for this in our representations of the relationship between time and space. The logical procedure is to model time as the 0th dimension rather than as the 4th dimension, such that 3d spatial existence follows from time, rather than modeling time as the fourth dimension which follows from 3d spatial existence.

My mathematical understanding of reality is very poor. But I have read that spatial dimensions (the way we experience them anyway, that is, the way we make sense of our interaction with the underlying informational process) are such that the second dimension spreads orthogonally in relation to the first, and the third is projected perpendicularly, intersecting at right angles with the first and the second dimensions. This makes me think that a fourth spatial dimension has to interact (or be experienced as) a movement towards the centre or separating from the centre, in our 3D mindset. This would be noticed in our 3D world as objects that come from nowhere and go to nowhere, changing size and intensity of interaction with our plane along the way. The fact that we don´t get to see these anomalies very often, might be just the consequence of being too small to notice such events; we would only detect them considering huge spans of spacetime, like the ones studied in Cosmology.

I was hoping that you guys will tell me if this intuition is false or makes some sense, as I don´t have the mathematical tools to examine it. In my mind it feels right, but mixing coffee and beer also feels right in my mind.

There's a much easier answer: "Humans will never understand =>4D space because there is no such thing. It's just something we can construct theoretically based on the way we've developed the language of mathematics. It's basically a "language game" we can play.

When I say Energy I am referring to Electromagnetic Energy, which is not just a Mathematical Tool but is an actual thing. Energy is what Matter is made out of. At the dawn of the Universe there was only Energy and Matter formed at a later time out of the Energy.

I agree that there must be something there, but when you see how Science views this Phenomenon, they usually have no other explanation than that it came out of Empty Space.

The Space we live in is 3D. You can go up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. It is a particular kind of Space.

But the really amazing conclusion is that if you can have 3D Space or 4D Space then it would seem that Space itself is a thing that can have different basic properties. This leads to the conclusion that there could be no Space! Most Cosmologists would say there was no Space before the Big Bang. The Space and the Energy were created by the Big Bang.

Physicists like to treat energy as an entity that has the ability to cause things, but energy doesn't cause anything, it is simply a description of motion and potential to cause motion. We don't need to talk about the fuzzy concept of energy to describe the universe, we could simply talk about particles and their motion and their ability to move other particles

(even though as we talked about in your thread about physicalism such particles cannot explain the emergence of conscious experience so they cannot be all there is).

When I say Energy I am referring to Electromagnetic Energy, which is not just a Mathematical Tool but is an actual thing. Energy is what Matter is made out of. At the dawn of the Universe there was only Energy and Matter formed at a later time out of the Energy. — SteveKlinko
What happened at the dawn of the universe is based on a bunch of untestable assumptions. Electromagnetic energy is a tool in the sense that we don't see it, we create the concept to describe what we do see. Observations lead us to imagine that there are small things that travel at the speed of light which can have an observable impact on what we see, it doesn't explain anything to call these things 'energy', energy is just a concept. Matter is a concept too. It doesn't mean much to say that matter is made of energy, all it says is that what used to be described by the concept of matter can be described by the concept of energy. Don't take the words of physicists as gospel, many of them are unfortunately poor philosophers and they use many words in an inconsistent way.

I agree that there must be something there, but when you see how Science views this Phenomenon, they usually have no other explanation than that it came out of Empty Space. — SteveKlinko
They call it empty space because they used to believe it was empty, but observations have come to show that it's not, it seemed empty because we didn't see anything in it but it is now clear it isn't empty, it is unfortunate that physicists keep calling it empty space and create misconceptions in the minds of people who want to understand the universe.

The Space we live in is 3D. You can go up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. It is a particular kind of Space. — SteveKlinko
I don't agree with that, I think up/down left/right forward/backward is just how we are used to interpret what we experience, but you could also describe what you experience without a notion of forward/backward, you would see the universe in a very different way, you would come up with different explanations for phenomena, but you could still do it in a consistent way. We choose to interpret what we experience by giving 3 coordinates to things, but we could give more or less coordinates and come up with another consistent way to view the universe. 3D is just what we find the most intuitive way to view it, but we are the ones who decide how many dimensions we use to describe what we experience.

But the really amazing conclusion is that if you can have 3D Space or 4D Space then it would seem that Space itself is a thing that can have different basic properties. This leads to the conclusion that there could be no Space! Most Cosmologists would say there was no Space before the Big Bang. The Space and the Energy were created by the Big Bang. — SteveKlinko
We create the concept of space. We can pick whatever as a 4th dimension, if you take what is in your memory as a 4th dimension then there you construct a 4D space. If you assume that what you don't see is in another dimension then there you construct a 4D space, you can say "at such or such 3D location there is some invisible thing that changes and which I can describe with a 4th coordinate".

Cosmologists have no idea what happened before their Big Bang. The space they talk about is the 4D spacetime of the theory of general relativity which they make use of, in that theory in some simulations with a finite universe you get at some point in the past a spacetime infinitely small and infinitely dense, their simulation doesn't go further than that so they say maybe the spacetime was created at that point, but really this isn't based on observations this is just fantasy. Don't blindly listen to what they say because what they say is based on a bunch of beliefs they don't state and are often not even aware of, when you look critically at what they say and try to find out what their claims are based on you come to realize that a lot of it is untestable and based on untestable assumptions which they never challenge, so I feel there are much more productive avenues than following their footsteps.

Physicists like to treat energy as an entity that has the ability to cause things, but energy doesn't cause anything, it is simply a description of motion and potential to cause motion. We don't need to talk about the fuzzy concept of energy to describe the universe, we could simply talk about particles and their motion and their ability to move other particles — leo
I don't really understand what you're saying here. No physics student, much less a physicist, treats energy as a tangible thing. You yourself point out the standard definition of it, the capacity to perform work.
"particles and their motion and their ability to move other particles " just means energy (kinetic or potential) in physics.



(even though as we talked about in your thread about physicalism such particles cannot explain the emergence of conscious experience so they cannot be all there is).

I probably don't want to jump down this rabbit hole here, but I'm just going to say this sounds really disingenuous. I've never heard a physicist talk about consciousness as being explained by fundamental particles. Maybe some extreme anti-reductionist idiots in philosophy might say that, but one might as well suggest analyzing political systems with fundamental physics. One will never even begin to answer or discuss the most basic aspects of politics, so I'd be surprised if you could name any known physicist (with an actual publication record) speaking so cavalierly about that.

I don't mean to say you're dishonest or something, but this sounds like a category of opponent who doesn't exist, or barely so if it does. Maybe that "mad dog naturalist" philosopher whose name escapes me at the moment (Alex Rosenberg?) might but his epithet kinda sums up the view on him.

I don´t understand how spacetime is considered as space and time inseparable..., but then we can talk about what happened "before the Big Bang (Space) came to be?: or to put Time as a dimension in a series of spatial dimensions, like when you put "orange juice" in a series of types of oranges?

These absurd considerations can be exposed from a mere philosophical standpoint, because they are just nonsense physicists have to say because they do not really know what time and space are. They are supposed, as scientists, to play with words like that: because it´s very helpful when you need to explore. But often we forget these statements are just language games, and we accept that time is the fourth (spatial?) dimension, and things like that which confuse us all when we take them too seriously.

For instance, when philosophers propose an eternal universe as a "solution" to creatio ex nihilo, they are falling into this reification. From a logical point of view, there is no real ontological difference between a world created out of nothing and a world that always existed, even admitting the reification of our general idea of time. Because a universe "that always existed", is also ex novo, out of nothing. Considering time, real or constructed, is only a distraction which allows us to distance ourselves an imaginary step from the fact that Reality (when considered as a whole) is there for no good reason, and necessarily exists out of Nothing in a philosophical sense; both in potential and actuality.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. No physics student, much less a physicist, treats energy as a tangible thing. You yourself point out the standard definition of it, the capacity to perform work.
"particles and their motion and their ability to move other particles " just means energy (kinetic or potential) in physics.

I've never heard a physicist talk about consciousness as being explained by fundamental particles.

I specifically said that the Cosmologists make Speculations. Nobody is taking what they say as some kind of Gospel. But you have to start with some kind of Premise for any argument. it was a spectacular breakthrough and discovery when Science discovered that Matter is made out of Energy. So it means a lot to say that Matter is made out of Energy.

We are talking about Space dimensions here. There are in fact 3 dimensions of Space in our Universe and you can designate any point in this Space using 3 coordinates. Having only 2 coordinates will not let you designate all the points. Having an extra coordinate would be redundant. You only need 3. But in an actual 4D Space you would need 4 coordinates. With 4D Space you actually have another direction that you can move in. There is a whole lot more Space in 4D Space than there is in 3D Space. 3D Space is an entirely different thing than 4D Space.

I specifically said that the Cosmologists make Speculations. Nobody is taking what they say as some kind of Gospel. But you have to start with some kind of Premise for any argument. it was a spectacular breakthrough and discovery when Science discovered that Matter is made out of Energy. So it means a lot to say that Matter is made out of Energy. — SteveKlinko
I tend to agree that what we call matter and what we call light are closely related, that fundamentally they may be one and the same, just gotta be careful in saying that "matter is made out of energy" because that can be misinterpreted in many ways, seeing that the concept of energy is used in so many inconsistent ways. If you say matter is made out of electromagnetic energy then fundamentally gravitational attraction would be electromagnetic attraction, which surely is possible but we haven't come up with a precise model for that yet. But I agree that light is closely connected to what we call matter.

We are talking about Space dimensions here. There are in fact 3 dimensions of Space in our Universe and you can designate any point in this Space using 3 coordinates. Having only 2 coordinates will not let you designate all the points. Having an extra coordinate would be redundant. You only need 3. But in an actual 4D Space you would need 4 coordinates. With 4D Space you actually have another direction that you can move in. There is a whole lot more Space in 4D Space than there is in 3D Space. 3D Space is an entirely different thing than 4D Space. — SteveKlinko
What I don't agree with here, is that we choose to construct the universe as having 3 dimensions of space, we are the ones who choose to interpret our experiences in that way. We presuppose that the universe has 3 dimensions of space and then fit what we experience into these 3 dimensions, but we could just as well presuppose that it has 2 dimensions and fit our experiences into these 2 dimensions. What that would change is that, when you 'think' that you are moving forward or backward, you would instead see the 2D universe change in front of you. What you interpret in a 3D space as you turning your head in an unchanging universe would be interpreted in a 2D space as you being still in a changing universe.

Then maybe we could come up with interesting insights by presupposing 4 dimensions of space and fitting our experiences into that. But what I'm saying is that we are the ones who through thought impose the number of dimensions of space over our experiences, rather than these dimensions preexisting. And that it would be more fruitful to fit our experiences into various numbers of dimensions and see what comes out of it, rather than assuming from the start that the universe has 3 spatial dimensions, which is a viewpoint that we force and not something testable empirically. Sure we intuitively fit many of our experiences into 3 dimensions of the mind, but maybe the interesting thing to do here would be to try fitting our experiences into 4 dimensions, rather than assuming there are 3 dimensions and thus finding ourselves unable to visualize a 4th.

You are wrong about Space. Our Space is 3D. There is no presupposing it is 4D. Think about the actual Space you live in. You can go Up/Down, Left/Right, Backward/Forward and that's it. In 4D Space you actually have another pair of directions you can move in. 4D is a whole different thing than 3D.

Yes that's arbitrary, but I find it harder to visualize a 2D universe where we are moving in the same instances that we interpret ourselves as moving in a 3D universe. So I was really just giving an heuristic argument as to why we are the ones who impose dimensions onto what we experience, rather than these dimensions existing independently of us.

Ah, that makes sense.

Have you never heard a physicist say that a ball thrown upwards decelerates because its kinetic energy is converted into potential energy, that a faster collision makes more damage than a slower one because more kinetic energy is dissipated,

I don't know who might claim that consciousness is explained by fundamental particles, but many physicists believe that they would arrive at a "theory of everything" by uniting the four "fundamental" forces into a neat unified theory, yet such a theory would still be totally unable to account for the fact that we experience anything, feel anything, and that they don't realize. It's not that it would be very complicated to derive consciousness from such a theory, it would be demonstrably impossible, and so it couldn't be a theory of everything claiming to have found the fundamental building blocks of existence.

You are confusing convenient speech patterns with the literal belief in the things spoken about. This is an obvious misunderstanding. You already know what energy is defined by in physics so I don't know why you're going on about this.

Name one published physicist who has claimed a "theory of everything" like string theory could be used - even in principle - to analyze and speak about literally everything. These are theories of fundamental physics, no one thinks they're going to be used to understand highly emergent phenomena, mathematics, politics or what have you.

After all, 3D is just how we interpret what we see with the eyes.

I see what you call "convenient speech patterns" as sources of endless confusion. In all these speech patterns energy is reified as some sort of thing that makes up tangible things. Energy is just a tool, and yet it is said to be a cause, to convert, to be the fundamental constituent that makes up tangible things, to you that may be convenient, to me that apparent convenience in using improper language leads to much more inconvenience in the misunderstandings and misconceptions it creates.

You're saying people don't confuse these speech patterns with literal beliefs, then why is it that even some professional physicists confuse space as an actual entity that stretches or expands between galaxies, because we keep talking about expanding space?

n principle you might use string theory to say, strings make up particles which make up atoms which make up molecules which make up our brain and body, then the brain and body behave in such a way so as to protect themselves and survive, and communicate with other brains and bodies to survive better, which you could describe as politics,

because I don't see any actual error in saying energy causes some such phenomena.

Who else is being confused by it? Physicists and those studying the subject know very well that energy isn't this other thing, tangibly out in the world. No one is actually reifying it in any substantive way. What are the supposed confusions resulting from this? The actual ones, ones that really do - in the real world - cause confusions and errors in thinking.

...Because space is expanding? Or more specifically, the metric governing the geometry and size of the universe is increasing (the metric tensors change over time), so calling that expansion is perfectly sensible.

Just pointing out things are constituted from smaller things doesn't mean understanding those smaller things will allow one to understand everything about what they make up.

You are wrong about Space. Our Space is 3D. There is no presupposing it is 4D. Think about the actual Space you live in. You can go Up/Down, Left/Right, Backward/Forward and that's it. In 4D Space you actually have another pair of directions you can move in. 4D is a whole different thing than 3D. — SteveKlinko
You're not attempting to understand what I say. To you it is obvious that our space is 3D, that there is no interpretation of the mind going on that makes it appear 3D, that it just is 3D. It used to be obvious that the Earth is flat. Often things appear obvious because of unchallenged deeply held beliefs, of how we intuitively generalize from limited experiences. Yes sure it appears to you that you can go up/down, left/right, backward/forward, that's obvious to you, just like it's obvious that the Earth is flat. And yet from another point of view the Earth doesn't appear flat. You know how some optical illusions make your mind see the exact same thing in two very different ways? It's not the thing that changes, it's how your mind interprets differently the thing that makes it look different. In the same way I'm saying that by interpreting what you see differently you could come to see things differently. And see that it is your mind that interprets space as 3D.

Again, try to assume for a moment that our space is 2D. Under this interpretation, it is not you who moves across a static scenery, it is the scenery that moves while you are under the impression to be the one moving. This interpretation is not intuitive, it takes some thought and focus to get used to, but it is not inconsistent. You cannot demonstrate empirically that the space is 3D and not 2D. Because it is the mind that imposes dimensions on what it experiences.