The Book
Inside Meaning in the Multiverse
A consilience of metaphysics, physics, artificial intelligence, and contemplative practice — structured in three movements: meaning, the metaphysics that could ground it, and the practice of living it.
For twenty years I worked at the forefront of computational science as an engineer and technology strategist for the largest domestic semiconductor memory manufacturer. That training made me skeptical of explanations that are not falsifiable, or that do not stand against their detractors and attempt to correct the errors in their own logic. But as an industry engineer rather than an academic, I am free to delve into philosophy without the disingenuous penalty a hard-science career would otherwise take from a cross-genre work like this one.
My aim is to be additive to the crucial theories surrounding both existence and experience — to blend the scientific work of giants with their metaphysical antecedents and build a new framework for an all-natural universal meaning. Not because I have a god-sized hole in my purpose, and not to undercut the scientific institutions I have spent my career inside, but because I am curious about the biggest questions, the best explanations, and the betterment of our species.
Meaning, Existence, and Experience
Is life meaningful? The question has stood across all of time and status, demanding an answer — and going unasked, because the implication of a negative result is too much for most of us to bear. Part I reclaims metaphysics from both the woologists and the dorm-room mystics, and argues that the place to start is exactly where the line between the world-as-it-is and the world-as-we-experience-it is most blurred or paradoxical.
- 1 Why Meaning Matters — meaning as the meme that has moved history more than any other; from ghost fear to humanism to whatever comes next.
- 2 Existence and Experience — oneness with spacetime, the frozen-yet-flowing nature of time, and the question: have you ever been experience?
The Metaphysics of Meaning
What sort of universe would allow for an all-natural universal meaning? Part II works through the leading ontologies — materialism, idealism, and the process-relational view that synthesizes them — and lands on the many-worlds multiverse as the explanation that clarifies the most paradoxes with the fewest claims.
- 3 Materialism — its grip on what counts as fundamental, and where it runs out of explanatory road.
- 4 Idealism — information and qualia as candidates for the bottom layer; bits from black holes; the qualia of God.
- 5 Process Ontology — processes (wavefunctions, optimization, consciousness) as the fundamental constituents; the laws of physics as the code running the whole show. Ancient as the Tao, modern as the holographic universe.
- 6 Many Worlds — the multiverse first invoked to explain the dual-slit experiment, extended to consciousness from clones and meaning from many worlds.
Optimization
Even granting that meaning from existence is more logical and ethical than purely personal meaning, it is no more actionable until we make it so. Part III turns to practice: flow with existence and mindfulness of experience, both arriving — in the most profound moments — at the same transcendent optimum.
- 7 Flowing with Existence — deliberate practice and design thinking as the engines of flow.
- 8 Mindful Experiences — a wide mind, heroic mindfulness, and the lab only you can run.
- 9 Synthesis — distinguishing natural from supernatural universal meaning, the morality of meaning in the multiverse, and where it all lands.
Go deeper into the ideas
The themes page draws the central threads out of the chapters and lays them side by side.