In The Strange and Beautiful we noted that we see our world as strangely specific, and wonder why it is exactly what it is. That is, we're free at any time to ask “what if”, and since life can only reasonably taken to be defined as “everything”, where are the rest of those “what if” alternatives? Aren't they things among “everything” too? Our conclusion there was that these alternatives are here too. This means that any “what if” we conceive can be seen to exist. We will consider this again, but say further that alternatives aren't only hidden but, accepting contradictions, actual simultaneous to that which they are alternate to—we will say “to the extent that” they exist. We will discuss this as well as simply list a number of observed perspectives and see how they are alternatives to our own experience.
First we look a little more closely at the relation between contradiction and distinction. We here take a distinction to be a characterization of all things. It is a parameterized thing, assigning to every thing some character or category, itself another thing. A frequent choice of categories is just “true” and “false”. The characterization shows the thing to have distinguished parts. At one instance of the parameter it is of one category and at another instance it is of another category. We say distinction, the existence of parts in a thing, contradicts the unicity of the whole: is it one or many? So we have, by taking any impossibility, a parameterized thing. This is true and This is false—“This” is parameterized and some instance of “This” is in the category of true and some false. So, surely contradiction creates distinction—the parameterization of “This”.
Does distinction necessarily entail contradiction? Yes. This isn't crucial to the point while tricky and mathematically notated so feel free to jump ahead a paragraph. We describe here some reasoning in a logic that allows contradiction, and show not just the existence of a fixed point demonstrating a contradiction, but a point in every distinction that is contradictory. Any distinction or categorization, call it C, that is not identity or constant does lead to contradiction. Let Q and U be two different categories such that C( U ) ≠ Q and C( Q ) ≠ U. If we take any distinction T that categorizes U as Q, T( U ) = Q, and everything not U to U, T( x ) = U for x ≠ U, then we can say T( x ) is never equal to x and C( T( x ) ) is never equal to C( x ). If we define the distinction R by R( x ) = T( x( x ) ), then we see that R( R ) = T( R( R ) ). Noting T( R( R ) ) ≠ R( R ), we have two different values for R( R ), or a contradiction. But also, we see that C( T( R( R ) ) ) and C( R( R ) ) are both equal and not equal. So, not only do we have that some distinction, for example R, is contradictory, but all distinctions C are inconsistent, or at best incomplete, having ambiguous definition at R( R ).
One may wonder, if all things are distinctions, what are the base objects upon which we draw distinctions. We don't provide any. Mathematically one may be inclined to admit symbols with no further definition, but there is no atom in a world born from distinction. While we may not distinguish with choice all of our reality, all of it is distinguished and distinct and so distinction, if anything, is our undefined object. Distinction does have more than an atomic nature but as all first principles are subject to unsubstantiated self-evidence so is this, and as first principles go, distinction entails very little vagueness, it being the very method of examining any theory at all. So while we don't have a definition of what a distinction is, it is our very action of considering the question that is itself distinction, and we will have no need to formulate it, and arguably are unable to anyway, though mathematical formulations of some approximation of it may find use.
Once we see that every characterization must be incomplete we must then recognize all things are imperfect implementations of their ideal. This explains paradox in a sense because we now have the imperfection of all things, and so to say all things “are” is no longer contradictory. Is this a perfect Democracy? No, nothing is perfect, so then this is an imperfect Democracy. Is this an Anarchy? Well, it is a very imperfect Anarchy, if so. But, the Democracy was imperfect too, so we see that this is both a Democracy—to the extent it is—and is an Anarchy—to the extent it is. While we say “to the extent that” we still mean to say these distinctions are correct, even while imperfect or incomplete at a glance—correctness is provided in resolving the contradictions of the “imperfections” in a wider context.
Relativity sees no quanta, and sees the speed of light as maximal. Quantum Mechanics is quantized and breaks the barrier of the speed of light. Which is right? Since every system that describes some thing completely is necessarily incomplete in a larger context, we should expect our scientific theories to always admit improvement. This doesn't lessen our theories. Observing that by and large the speed of light is never exceeded, we can expect that, by and large, the implications of that, time dilation and relative mass, will be observable too. Whether this can be explained as merely a phenomenon of a quantum mechanical underlying truth or that in reverse the quanta of Quantum Mechanics are merely side-effects of a field-like spring and hook nature to atoms and other interfaces to our observation of reality, is essentially not important. They are both present as understandings.
Is the world broken up into three dimensions of space or do we just treat it as if it is?
Pondering a question, all answers can be seen to be true to some extent, and often your chosen future actions can be discovered to be obvious enough regardless of which answer is right. “She loves me, she loves me not. To the extent she loves me, she's shy, to the extent she doesn't, she doesn't know I exist. In either case I should initiate some interaction.”
And of course, we still have alternates hiding away, seen from different perspectives. History represents distinctions alternative to the specifics before us. In the case of our own history, it represents the alternate descriptions of the world lacking the distinctions we made in progressing through time. In the case of the history as seen from the perspectives of others, we have here the wings containing alternates to the present reality, and how could it be any other way since we write history exactly to learn from it—to answer our “what if” questions where we posit alternates that are not actual. Do you identify with a friend or a fictional character, with a historical figure? You see yourself as similar, though, obviously, not the same? Every one you identify with, and anyone at all to the extent that you do identify with them, is an alternate to you as you experience yourself.
These are just some ways that absolutely everything exists. The alternates to what we think are restrictions on what can exist, are in fact very real and not restricted from existence at all.