Well, extra dimensions within our universe aren’t specifically ruled out in your op, Robert163, and an entity as you seem to be describing would be a good candidate for having presence in some of the extra dimensions called for by some quantum theories as well as the ones we ourselves exist in. Otherwise, I’m left trying to figure out how this being even exists in our universe to begin with.
The Star Trek mechanism used in the show for (just about everything it seems)is sub-space which is similar to but distinct from and not at all the same thing as quantum space and or theory. As a side note subspace is where they store their relativistic mass when traveling at warp. I’d give you a cite, but it was in a cd-rom Stark Trek technical manual/encyclopedia I had years ago.
Can you imagine what it’s like to be an animal with echolocation, like a bat or a dolphin? Or an animal that experiences the world through touch, like a star norsed mole? You can guess, but you can’t really know. And those are closely related mammals, not some advanced being.
In sci-fi treatments robots usually think much faster than people, performing untold billions of operations per second. Sometimes this is shown as them experiencing time slowly. Does that make sense? Does a genius experience time more slowly than a dullard? Would advanced AI even have qualia as we know it?
As mentioned, higher dimensions are fun. The classic treatment is is Flatland, if you want to check it out. Or look at this Sagan video. To summarize:
it would be impossible to hide from a higher dimensional being because it could look right into all 3D objects, just like we can look into 2D objects
it could manipulate the inside of your body without breaking the skin
it could lift you up and plop you down wherever it wanted, effectively teleporting you out of existence from everyone else’s perspective. The thing I disagree with the standard explanation is the part where the lower dimensional being sees the higher. That shouldn’t be possible. It would look like an acid trip from hell.
If the being could view time as a dimension from the outside it’s usually depicted as a worm or a tube. On one end is your birth, the other is your death, and you experience your moment to moment life as slices of the worm, just like lower dimension beings experience the higher spatial dimension as slices of whatever dimension it occupies.
The Tralfamadores couldn’t manipulate time, only observe it. In other cases the advanced beings can directly control it, just like we can manipulate any normal 3D object.
That’s all a bit of whimsy though, since AFAIK physics goes haywire at higher spatial dimensions. Basic things like light wouldn’t work right. I think there’s a debate over whether planets and such could even form.
Go outside to a rainwater puddle. Take a drop of water and put it on a slide. Put the slide in a microscope. Take a look. You’ll see microscopic organisms. Move the slide a bit and you’ll see more. Increase the magnification and you’ll see more stuff. That drop of water is their universe. That’s what it would be like.
Wow, what a great answer, thank you!
Do not feel obligated to read/respond to every detail below… I’m just in a good mood.
Flatland - was part of a Sons Of Anarchy episode, one of the characters, Clay, is reading it at one point… check here for more detail… IDK if you are a fan of the show… the book was kind of a one off detail…
As to the actual book, I’ve heard of it before and wanted to read it. If I am basically ignornat of math and geometry and physics, do I want the annotated version of the book ($15)[1],[2] or the standard economy version ($4). Will the annotations help or just confuse me? (I am thinking maybe you did not read the annotated version… if not thats ok).
Thank you for mentioning Qualia. The director of Ex Machina mentioned Qualia, the discussion of Qualia with a friend was the generation of the idea for the movie. I read this in an excellent Reddit AMA. In that AMA, on of the science consultants, Murray Shanahan who wrote this book was on the AMA, the director said off all the books he read about AI preparing for the movie that was the best book. Maybe you know it already… WOW!!! expensive $63 book, Embodiment and the inner life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds.
(The experts in that AMA say that we are 50 years away from human level AI we do not yet know whether that level AI would be a danger to biological humans).
(Did you see the movie? Here is a very minor spoiler with a link to Wittgenstein)
minor spoiler the name of the computer company that makes the AI is called Blue Book, named after Wittgenstein’s notebooks…
I just watched Ex Machina… we have a most excellent thread about it here.
