356: Chapter 356: Zombie Observation

With these novel and ingenious concepts from Jiang Zhe, the twenty-plus experts present were truly lost in thought.

Everything mentioned above by Jiang Zhe exceeded the realms of medicine and neurology, instead grounding them directly within the framework of Quantum Mechanics...

Ouyang Baili shook his head repeatedly, his expression still full of wonder.

Professor Chen Runzhi couldn't help but exhale deeply. " 'Consciousness account bankruptcy'—this metaphor completely overturns everything my old medical school classmates have understood about aging for decades."

"Those old buddies say aging is an irreversible disease; my old classmates even write papers claiming that reversing aging can extend life, perhaps even to a thousand years."

"Looking at it now, that's simply impossible!"

"Even if we truly manage to extend the physical limit of the body one day, we would ultimately end up as vegetables due to the exhaustion of consciousness energy."

He looked around and found that everyone's face was filled with curiosity and wonder.

"It's a good thing there are no medical professors here, otherwise their Daoist hearts would collapse, and they'd go crazy!"

Old Qian, standing to the side, looked distressed.

Twenty years ago, his mother had passed away due to Alzheimer's disease.

For countless nights, he had wished that medicine had been more advanced decades ago, but now, hearing Jiang Zhe speak, he realized that even if it had been advanced... it would have been useless, because the energy the body needs and the energy consciousness needs are not the same kind of energy!

Academician Zhang, in the front row, stared intensely at the six characters 'Debt Restructuring Window' on the whiteboard.

He was accustomed to geological time units of millions or billions of years; he had never imagined that human consciousness was borrowing from the universe every single second.

After a long while, he sighed, "If deep sleep is debt restructuring, then insomnia is loan sharking."

What was originally a laughable statement was now met with no refutation; everyone was deeply considering its possibility!

Lin Chen, sitting in the middle-back row, sighed, "Hey!"

"Our national meteorological department processes millions of observation data points every day. According to Jiang Zhe's theory, we might be the largest debt-issuing institution on Earth."

At this moment, the live stream chat was flooded with comments.

"So people with chronic insomnia aren't just sleeping poorly, their consciousness is about to go bankrupt?"

"I dream every day, so it turns out I'm just continuing to observe? Damn, does that mean I've never repaid my debts?"

"It's over, even breathing is a sin."

"This hypothesis is terrifying, but I can't find any logical loopholes in it."

Soon, a golden comment from a physics student flashed by: "What about evidence? Where is the evidence?"

"To the person above, and you call yourself a physics student? Have you forgotten the mass-energy equivalence equation? Any movement requires energy, and the consciousness observing the outside world also requires energy. It's just that the energy consciousness needs isn't the carbohydrates or whatever the body uses; it's the energy of consciousness itself. Use a little, lose a little."

"Exactly, exactly!"

"If that's the case, I kind of understand our ancestors now—although genes can determine the limits of lifespan, our ancestors would go off to quiet places to cultivate; in essence, that was just 'reducing observation', 'observation of the world', 'observation of people', 'observation of everything'!"

"To the person above, awesome! I've realized it. I'm going to sell everything I have and head into the deep mountains!"

"..." Looking at the comments flashing across his laptop, Jiang Zhe grinned. These netizens certainly have broad imaginations!

After a long while, he waited until the discussions in the living room had died down. Just as he was about to speak, his attention was drawn by Ouyang Baili.

"Little Jiang, what about collective observation? If a group of people look at the same thing at the same time, will it be different?"

"That is exactly what I am about to address," Jiang Zhe said, holding up three fingers. "You've hit the nail on the head. This is the third layer—collective observation. We are dragging each other down."

"One person observing one particle borrows one unit of debt."

"If one hundred million people observe the moon simultaneously, guess how much they borrow? It's not one hundred million units; it's exponential!"

"Because each observer is not only observing the moon but also observing the fact that other observers are observing the moon. This is called the quadratic effect of observation."

To make it easy to understand, he turned and wrote a simple formula on the whiteboard: N observers, debt ~ N².

He turned back to the crowd and continued to explain: "A simple example: when we humans host the Olympic Games, billions of people around the world simultaneously confirm that a certain person is the champion."

"Those billions of observations, when superimposed, will borrow an astronomical amount of debt from the universe."

"And the interest, dark energy, will have a tiny, accelerated jump at that moment."

"Have our global astronomers measured this jump? I regret to inform you that we have, indeed, measured it!"

At this point, his gaze fell on Professor Hans, an astrophysicist in the back row. "But you call it 'anomalous fluctuations in the rate of cosmic expansion'!"

Ouyang Baili was about to speak, but was interrupted by an astonished Professor Hans: "Incredible, Mr. Jiang Zhe. The anomalous fluctuations in the cosmic expansion rate you mentioned—we have indeed discovered them multiple times in supernova observation data since 2008. At the time, our team attributed it to measurement error."

"If observation debt is real, then these jumps should be closely correlated with large-scale global synchronous events!!!"

"Perhaps what you are saying is the truth!"

Jiang Zhe looked at him and nodded with satisfaction. "Not bad, this Professor Hans is quick to accept new theories!"

"The truth is exactly this: large-scale global events, wars, the World Cup, super disasters, and so on—these are all paying interest to the universe."

"The more united and synchronized we are in focusing on the same thing, the faster our collective bankruptcy will be!"

"So, why did ancient sages advise us to watch less of the commotion, and that not observing is a virtue?"

"That is because they vaguely grasped this law of debt. Collective ignorance is the stable state of the universe; collective consensus is often the fast lane to liquidation!"

As these words fell, the live stream chat boiled over again.

"So me scrolling through trending topics is equivalent to slow suicide?"

"Joint observation accelerates vacuum decay. Holy crap, that's terrifying when you think about it!"

"Mom, I'll never dare to be a fan of celebrities again."

"..."

Upon hearing this, Professor Hans's eyes lit up. "This is getting more and more interesting. It seems your observer debt hypothesis is viable!"

Jiang Zhe smiled slightly. Of course, he wouldn't say that this was the definitive conclusion from his past life. Even in this world, it remained viable!

"Alright, let's continue! The fourth layer: memory tax. Do we think that if we forget, we don't have to pay?"

He shook his head with a look of regret. "Unfortunately, that's not the case. What follows is an even more vicious mechanism!"

"Is memory an observation for which the debt has already been paid? No; memory is the collateral for the debt."

"When we remember something, it is equivalent to us promising the universe: 'I, Jiang Zhe, will continue to acknowledge this observation result in the future; I will repay the universe in the future.'"

"Therefore, for every one of our human memories, the universe is charging a storage fee. This is a hidden form of interest, deducting a little bit from our consciousness energy every day."

Speaking of this, his gaze swept across Guan Jingming, Professor Chen Runzhi, Celestial Master Zhang, Hans, Professor Ouyang, and others.

"And all those childhood traumas, unforgettable first loves, and deep-seated failures of yours!"

"You all think they are just psychological burdens, but in reality, they are not; they are bad debts on the balance sheet."

"Every time you recall those wretched things, you reactivate the observation, and the interest rolls over once more!"

Hearing this, Zheng Ming in the back row couldn't help but frown and look at Celestial Master Zhang. "Brother, your Daoist school speaks of 'reducing and reducing, until reaching non-action'—is that to say it's about reducing this human observation debt to the universe?"

Celestial Master Zhang was somewhat surprised. He hadn't expected this brother of his, who loved to refute everything and everyone, to have reached such clarity. However, he still did not speak to interrupt Jiang Zhe, but instead nodded gently.

At this moment, Jiang Zhe's voice came again.

"Then what if you forget?" "Unfortunately, forgetting is not clearing the debt; it is having the debt sold off to the collective unconscious."

"The collective unconscious is a concept from Jungian psychology—but in my past live streams, I have mentioned the akashic records."

"If you find it troublesome to understand, you can just think of it as the 'akashic records' or the 'zero-point field'."

A few experts in the audience had indeed not watched the very early live streams, and it was only when they heard about the akashic records and the zero-point field that they had heard of it.

"The things we forget are packaged by the universe into a 'zombie observation'. The zombie observation floats in the ocean of dark energy, waiting for some unlucky person to observe it again."

At this point, he suddenly grinned. "In this 'Observer Hypothesis', the doctors, neurologists, and psychologists of this world call 'zombie observations' 'déjà vu'!"

"The truth is, when you suddenly feel that a scene is familiar, it is because you are 'repaying the debt' for someone who has already died; you are 'repaying' their observation debt to the universe."

"And our human civilization is unconsciously inheriting the debts of all those who have passed away, and we humans don't even know that we are carrying the burden."

After finishing, he suddenly grinned, causing a cold wind to sweep through the audience, and every face was filled with horror!