7 billion worlds theorum

Do you believe that there is just one world shared by 7 billion people? I'm going to prove this is not true.

We see world as static collection of physical objects - trees, rocks, people, sky, sun. But in reality, humans don't hear and see. They experience. I can prove this. You're angry about something and walk in a room with loud music, it makes you very angry - you shout "TURN IT DOWN!". Walk into the same room while in a great mood and you'll sing along to the song and say "TURN IT UP!."

It's the same song - same volume - same room - totally different experience. The hearing and seeing are just raw inputs. By themselves meaningless.  (Take a hallucinogenic, you can even distort the very raw inputs!)

This applies to every sensory experience in life - sight, sound, touch, smell,

So you see now the world is not static at all. One sensory input can be experienced in infinite unique ways. The same rock is actually many different rocks depending on when you experience it. Experience is influenced by what you had to eat for breakfast, if you need to go to the bathroom, the type of childhood you had, and the fight you had with your girlfriend earlier that day.

Now things get interesting as we expand this idea.

I was on Venice beach and I look around and see many people. It's in our human nature to see other people as just mirrors - we project our own mental state at that moment into their physical body. This is a side effect of empathy, an important human skill but it can create problems.

And it couldn't be more wrong. Every person on that beach is experiencing a completely different world. You see 100 people around you? In a sense you're standing in 100 vastly different worlds.

This can cause great conflict. Approach a stranger with a friendly "hello". The snap back and tell you to "Go fuck yourself". You are very confused - how could this be? You should really be asking: how could this not be?

7 billion people in the world - 7 billion worlds. If you accept this 7 billion worlds theory the scenario above makes perfect sense. That person's world at that moment in time was not able to accept a hello, totally out of the question.

You can project this onto a simple object, say a gray wall. Do you REALLY see a gray wall? No. We've already proven that you are actually experiencing a gray wall.  Some set of molecules is triggered in your brain when the rods in your eyes detect 'gray'. Is it the exact same brain cells in my brain as in yours? Impossible! We don't have the same brain therefore the cells cannot be same therefore the experience cannot possibly be same! Heck your gray might be my pink. Or, my interpretation of Mozart's 7th symphony. (if you listen to the symphony on repeat while looking at a gray wall you can actually wire your brain in this way)

And every person who is told to look at that gray wall will experience something unique. A different wall. We use the same language - english - to describe it as "gray wall", but that is where the similar ends. English isn't a good tool for describing experience; much more suited for describing sensory inputs only, like light reflecting off our eyes. As creatures of experience, what our eyes see is actually pretty meaningless.

We frequently capture experiences mostly with cameras as photos. A photo is just a snapshot of the reflected, visible light spectrum. It is not a snapshot of your experience of that light spectrum. What if there was a device that could capture this?

Imagine taking many people - different genders, ages, faces, religions, conduct study to record their experience of the same object. How much we would learn about one another.

Next time you walk down your street, think about this - it is not the same street you saw yesterday. And it is not the same street the person next to you is walking down. This fascinating mental exercise will make your day a little more interesting, and may even improve how you interact with other people.

Big-ups to my brilliant mental awareness associate Aditya Prasad for putting these crazy thoughts into my head. 42.