Just like every "2D" object has thickness, every "3D" object has a temporal duration. Without duration, it wouldn't exist.
So everything is at least 4D, 3D doesn't exist.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Take my fcking upvote, sir.
But... You can perceive 2D things. Like this text. Or a drawing.
This text or drawing is not really 2D. Down at the atomic/molecular level they are still 3D particles. We are just abstracting it as 2D.
The text on your screen doesn't exist as molecules. The text exists as the light travelling between your screen and your eyeballs.
The length light has to travel to reach your eyes is three dimensionak, but the actual shape of the text is still two dimensional.
Then there is the light itself, which has wave-particle duality; a light particle has no discernable border, and can be described as a one dimensional point in space, with a two-dimensional wave function.
A "dimension" is just something that can be measured. Imagine you have a square of paper and it has 5 coins on it. It has a width, a height, a thickness, a coin count. That's 4 dimensions already. It also has zero elephants on it, now we have 5 dimensions!
The trick is to only consider the "dimensions" you're actually interested in.
Electrons would like to have a word.
Quarks would like to have a word.
Gravity is standing in line.
1D and 2D are just mathematical abstractions.
Your confusion is you expect 1d and 2d universes to exist within ours, when the reality is they are separate universes.
It's not like one is built on top of the other, they most likely exist separately and incompatibly.
We currently only see models of it in our universe, just like anyone from a higher order universe would only be able to see models of ours.
It would take insane levels of technology for them to even briefly appear here, and the only reason that would be worth it is if we're essentially a "warp" zone for them where moving a short distance here would translate to a huge distance back home, at faster to whatever their equivalent of a speed of light is.
Ah that’s interesting. I didn’t think of them as separate universes.
My point still holds though. I mean, we call 3D as 3D because of 1D and 2D. Since they don’t exist in our reality (but of course they are mathematically useful). One could still argue that since it cannot(has not) be perceived since it is theoretical a.t.m, it’s not real.
May be this is some form of nihilistic thought too 🙂
I mean, we call 3D as 3D because of 1D and 2D.
No, we call it 3d because there are three physical dimensions we move thru: front/back, side to side, up and down.
We experience time linearly, so it's not included. However time behaving like the three other dimensions isn't precluded by a single law in physics. Literally everything works backwards just as fine as forwards, except consciousness. We need the cause/effect of linear time to be conscious.
Since they don’t exist in our reality
Think of it like fireworks. There can be multiple in your field of view at once.
Each firework is a universe, with its own unique laws of physics and number of physical dimensions. Multiple are still "real" at the same time, even if they're incredibly unlikely to interact.
I mean, one of the leading theories on how a universe forms is there's giant "planes" randomly bumping into each other. On that scale not only are multiple universes "real" we're all completely inconsequential and incredibly fleeting. Not just as individuals, species or even planets. Entire universes don't matter.
If you're interested there's a lot to learn about with all that stuff, but it honestly doesn't really matter.
with its own unique laws of physics
I never thought of it like that. I thought laws of physics as laws of everything. Nice thought. Thanks for response.
Personally, and take this with a grain of salt, I feel like you’re overthinking it. Everything at some level is just an abstraction of something else. So what. Dimensional exist whether you acknowledge them or not. 🤷♂️
Dimensions are primarily about coordinate systems. They are about the question of "Where is something?".
1D and 2D exist and are used all the time. If you are moving your pawn to e3 in chess, you are using a 2D coordinate system.
If you have an accident and you call emegency systems and tell them that you are at highway kilometre 134.5, then you are using a 1D coordinate system.
Higher dimensionality coordinate systems exist too. For example, if you watch a live-rendered 3D animation (laso not something that's pre-rendered into a flat video), then it's a 4D video. Objects in the video have fourdimensional coordinates: a 3D position and a timestamp. In statistics you often have much higher dimensional data as well.
The idea that there would be an n-th dimension as a physical space is nonsense and it's also not what dimensions are about at all. That's what happens if fiction authors hear fancy terms without understanding what they are about.
Edit: in fact, three dimensions are only enough to describe the position of a thing in real life, but things also have rotation. That's another 3 dimensions. And since e.g. humans can rotate a ton of things, each of these things is another dimension for each rotational axis.
I need to get you to sit down for a philosophical discourse with the Time Cube guy.
I spent a lot of time reading the time cube guys rants, and I'm like 90% sure they just never understood that if you rotate a cube enough on both axis it resembles a globe.
He just didn't understand that the earth has multiple times zones because it's a big old globe, instead of 4 timecube-zones, because he couldn't understand how surface area stretches over a globe, just a cube.
Anyway, my two cents. Sometimes ranblings are just a misunderstanding of basic math or scientific concepts.
Sorry 2D /3D OP, but you're a great example too.
You want to claim 2D or 3D aren't "real" when what you're simply trying to say is that we, as humans, with limited and dull senses, are incapable of perceiving dimensions / universes that exist outside our own.
No shit.
That doesn't mean they don't exist. For that, it requires tools that exist outside our perception, but are universally sound. Aka Math.
So yeah, we can prove other dimensions exist with math, but can't perceive them because we're meat.
That doesn't mean math is bullshit, it means you need to read philosophy enough to understand our existence isn't centered on human perception.
We're monkeys that have harnessed self awareness to the point we can prove there's a reality that exists outside our limited perception. But simply because that's only doable through math, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It means your feeble human body is literally only capable of understanding extradimensionality because of the meat in your head, and it's ability to comprehend math.
You are meat. But math is universal. You are limited in perceiving the universe to what your meat has given you. So doubt your meat, not the math.
It's what the time cube guy should have done imo.
We have no evidence of a 1 or 2 dimensional universe existing, just like we have no evidence of a 4 dimensional universe existing. That might be because they don't exist, or it might be because we can't look into other universes.
If time is a dimension or not, that depends more on what you think the word "dimension" means than on what time itself is.
Pssshhhhh! I'm in the 39th dimension. Thats the one where colors start having tastes! And fingernails scream as you violently pull them out with pliers.
This guy must be from Ohio.
I believe you
1D and 2D are just mathematical abstractions.
So are all dimensions. The number of dimensions is just an attribute of a vector space, and vector spaces are just models we humans define to describe natural phenomenona. You can claim that some of these models are more useful than others. But at no point does it make sense to claim that a model "exists" or not. There would be no meaning to such a statement, it would contain no information. Not wrong, just nonsensical.
Yes, they are only abstractions, just like numbers are. I do not understand your conclusion that they therefore do not exist.
I still upvoted this, because I can see where you are coming from. It's frustrating when adults portray thin flat objects as "2D objects" to explain dimensions to children. It's not a simplification; it's simply wrong.
I get what you are saying, but it is not wrong. It is not even a simplification. The surface of any object is 2D, and the surface of a flat object is the simplest form of a 2D coordinate system.
What I meant is that some people portray the thin flat object itself as a 2D object, e.g. a piece of paper opposed to a box. I do understand that it's intuitive to associate the absence of a dimension with a value close to 0 for it and vice versa, because that's how we visualize it.
I haven't heard anyone actually claiming that a piece of paper has zero thickness before.