Beneath the surface of the great illusion, the universe is seemingly a soup of quantum interaction generating a constant flow of illusory experience on the four-dimensional stage of spacetime. We and all other entities in the universe play out our existence as part of this great drama.

Is the play all about us? Probably not.

For most of our recent existence, we humans have imagined that the great drama is mostly about us. We see ourselves at the center of the universe, brought into existence by a creator who stages the play for our benefit.

We know now that we are not the center. The sun does not orbit around us as we once thought. Our sun’s system is one of hundreds of millions in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of hundreds of millions of galaxies in the universe. The likelihood that this great expanse exists for our sake seems vanishingly remote.

Are we in the cast?

So if the universe does not exist for our sake, do we at least have a role in the great drama? Absolutely.

We even have an important role, one that we share with all other entities alongside us in the universe.

We make choices. We make decisions. We act and interact. And by doing so, we turn probabilities into reality.

The universe presents us with options every moment of our existence, and from those options we make choices. Every choice transforms a host of probable possibilities into a single outcome. Sometimes we choose the most probable outcome; sometimes we do not. But every choice, action, or moment of awareness adds a unique outcome to the stream of outcomes that shape the drama of the universe.

The play is driven by probabilities, not certainties

We live in uncertainty, both in the macrocosmic world of the great illusion and the microcosmic world of quantum reality. It is not a practical uncertainty, driven by unknowns, but a fundamental uncertainty driven by quantum interaction. The core of our reality is not an endless stream of cause and effect pushing the universe down a wholly determined path. Our universe is about a flow of probabilities and interactions, with every interaction affecting the next set of probabilities. The future can never be predicted definitively in the way we once imagined; it is possible only to know the probabilities for the future. That is fundamental, and it cannot be changed.

Our choices and experiences define future probabilities

Every choice and every experience eliminates other potential options from contention. By choosing among the options and experiencing each moment presented to us, we create information about the universe.[1] Constantly. That is what we do.

Not just us. Every creature or organism that moves or acts or chooses or experiences, even in a rudimentary way—turns left instead of right, flies or walks, jumps or dives, slithers or stays at rest—creates information about the world. Every one of those actions or experiences define what the world is instead of what it could have been.

A philosophizing physicist might suggest that we and other entities help collapse the quantum wave function of the universe. That perhaps every choice or experience collapses the wave function of probabilities for that moment into a single outcome. And that every outcome then affects the distribution of probabilities in the wave function for the next moment.[2]

We help create the future

Like all the other creatures or entities that inhabit the universe, we help transform the universe from probability to reality. We create information about the universe that turns the future into the present. That is our role. The universe needs us to do that.

So we are in the play and the cast. Our role is vital. But it is not unique to us.

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[1] “At any one time, we have precisely one conscious experience out of vastly many possible conscious experiences. Every conscious experience therefore delivers a massive reduction of uncertainty, since this experience is being had, and not that experience, or that experience, and so on. And reduction of uncertainty is—mathematically—what is meant by ‘information’” Seth (2021), p. 56.

[2] A set of probabilities prior to an interaction results in an outcome from the interaction. That outcome then changes the state reflected in the wave function for the very next moment. The world is presented with a new wave function, a new set of probabilities that influences a new interaction and outcome. And the process repeats itself. On and on. Forever. This is how quantum mechanics might describe creating the future.