The advances of theoretical physics over the last several centuries have provided profound insights into the structure of reality at the smallest and largest scales in our universe. But they have fallen short of explaining the scale of our everyday experience, that is we cannot yet explain the existence of you or I or any life for that matter, or even more simply stated that mathematical objects are made real by ingenuity of some physical systems (i.e. us). Our current best explanations in physics tend to appeal to what amounts to fine-tuning: assuming the universe started in a low-entropy state that just so happened to have in its future this essay among other things. It is not difficult to think of examples where properties that are not exactly physical - well not in the sense of mass or charge or energy - can nonetheless be causal. These are ubiquitous phenomena that appears to pervade our perception of reality – basically anytime we perceive that information, or abstractions have causal consequences. It is however difficult to explain this beyond mere anecdote. In this essay I attempt to push thinking in that direction.
Sara Walker