Factoring Humanity

"That's long been one of the problems in quantum mechanics: why do the observations of a single observer create a concrete reality for everyone simultaneously? The answer, of course, is that everyone is part of the overmind, so the observation made by one person is the observation made by all people - indeed, quantum mechanics requires the overmind in order to work."

You have to love fiction that can accurately and intelligently discuss Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, Jung's work and additional dimensions.

While the dynamics of multiple-observer interactions may be relatively easy to describe from the multiple subjective perspectives, the construct(s) upon which these interactions take place and shape observable reality are virtually unknown. This is perhaps the biggest obstacle to 5-dimensional modelling with interacting and mutually-constraining observers. Of course, many aspects of the model could still be tested without any knowledge of the constructs that underlie their functionality. But definitive answers to the bigger philosophical questions demand more knowledge of substrate of a 5-dimensional existence.

Factoring Humanity suggests that an additional spatial dimension is what enables access to the overmind - a construct similar to Jung's collective unconscious. Naturally, in Factoring Humanity, we are given this knowledge and the means to access the overmind from aliens. (This in no way detracts from the compelling portrayals of the major human characters and their personal storylines.) Believe it or not, I had great difficulty visualizing a hypercube or a tesseract while reading the book. This should tell you that I have no great vision of a 5-dimensional construct for my model either. Part of the problem is that our observable reality has 4 obvious dimensions. The fifth dimension of experience is not immediately observable when you look out into the world. Much like the dimension of time, which requires the ability to notice change, the dimension of probability requires the ability to notice correlations and degrees of overlap among perceptual and mental data sets.

Time is a dimension of our experience because we have the ability to store previous observations and compare them to our current experience. Without this ability, our awareness of time would be lost and we would undoubtedly model 'reality' quite differently.

Does adding a fifth dimension of experience push us closer or further from having an accurate model of the substrate of our existence?