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David L. Collins
Research · Writing · Theory
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David L. Collins
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I am an independent researcher and writer developing Veritas Opportunus (VO), a philosophical framework informed by physics and neuroscience that explores the observer-dependent present and the finite temporal bandwidth within which experiential reality becomes meaningful. My current work integrates insights from relativity, quantum contextuality, and perceptual neuroscience, including published research on temporal integration and perceptual continuity.
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Background:
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Before my work on Veritas Opportunus, I studied mathematics and physics in both the United States and Germany. I completed advanced secondary studies at a German Gymnasium through full language immersion, with coursework in mathematics, physics, and classical languages taught entirely in German. This education emphasized formal reasoning, conceptual rigor, and synthesis across disciplines—approaches that continue to inform my current research. I later pursued mathematics and physics at UCLA, where I continued developing an interest in foundational questions about time, observation, and physical theory. My academic training included full language immersion, which shaped my approach to learning across disciplines.
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Veritas Opportunus (VO): An Overview
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Veritas Opportunus (VO)—Latin for useful reality—is a philosophical framework informed by physics and neuroscience that proposes a reconsideration of how the “present moment” is experienced by an observer.
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In mathematics and physics, the present is typically treated as instantaneous: an infinitesimally thin point in time used for precise calculation. This assumption has proven extraordinarily successful across classical mechanics and relativity. However, modern physics—especially quantum mechanics—has elevated the role of the observer in a way that raises an unresolved tension. Quantum outcomes are not fully determined until measurement occurs, yet measurement only becomes meaningful through human perception and interpretation, which unfold across time rather than at an instant.
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VO addresses this tension by proposing that experiential reality does not arise at a single moment, but within a finite temporal–spatial integration window. For humans, this window appears to span approximately 10–15 seconds, during which sensory input, contextual information, and cognitive inference are integrated into a coherent experience we call “now.”
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Importantly, VO does not deny the existence of physical instants. Events such as a neuron firing, a bullet striking a target, or a runner winning a race by a fraction of a second occur exactly as physics describes them. VO concerns when such instants are assembled into meaningful experience, not when they physically occur. Instants provide the raw data; the VO window describes the process by which those data become experientially real to an observer.
This perspective offers a new way to approach long-standing interpretive puzzles in quantum mechanics. In experiments such as the double-slit and delayed-choice experiments, outcomes appear paradoxical only if reality is assumed to be finalized at the instant of physical interaction. VO suggests instead that an experimental outcome is resolved when the full sequence of events—physical interactions, measurements, and contextual information—enters the observer’s experiential window. Under this view, wave-like or particle-like results depend on whether which-path information ultimately becomes part of the observer’s VO, without invoking retrocausality or multiple universes.
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Neuroscience provides empirical support for a temporally extended present. Research on serial dependence and continuity fields, including work by Fischer and Whitney, shows that perception is influenced by stimuli seen up to 10–15 seconds earlier, stabilizing experience across time rather than refreshing it instant by instant. Mechanisms such as saccadic eye movement integration and motion stabilization further demonstrate that perception is accumulated across time, even at shorter scales.
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Comparative biology suggests that different organisms operate with different temporal integration windows, scaled to the complexity of their nervous systems. VO interprets this as differential access to a shared temporal medium: simpler organisms integrate shorter spans of time, while humans exhibit one of the longest known experiential windows.
VO also aligns naturally with relativity, which denies a universal present, and with simulation hypotheses, in which reality may be finalized only when required for an observer. Whether the universe is fundamental or informationally rendered, VO offers a coherent account of how reality becomes meaningful in time.
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In this framework, the present is not a point.
It is a process.
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Carpe XV secundus.