This is merely a proposal of a workable metaphor. It may be of use in the same way that the metaphor of gravity being the curvature of spacetime is useful. Sometimes the simplest of ideas can be the catalyst to a major shift in discovery and understanding. I offer this as an idea in the hopes that the model might be useful.
What if the membranes in M theory had mirror-like qualities? The use of two mirrors facing each other as a metaphor presents some interesting parallels to how physics describes the functioning of reality.
If a particle (and all of physicality) is actually more like the image in a mirror and we have two mirrors facing each other, such an interaction describes phenomena such as:
how it appears as though there are many electrons where there may actually only be one.
How it appears as though there are infinite universes where there may actually only be one.
Why it is that each particle appears to have a pair particle with exactly opposing qualities.
Entanglement and the observation/WF collapse issue. Two mirrors facing each other would give the appearance of there being two particles interacting instantaneously, each having opposing qualities, but in actuality it would be a singular entity. QM is able to “look at both mirrors” simultaneously. And/or, it is able to investigate the qualities of the mirrors rather than focusing on the image in the mirrors. The purely objective “consciousness” of mathematics is not distracted by the “spell of maya” that human consciousness is. Human consciousness has a deeply-rooted bias toward focusing on physicality. We cannot help but focus on the image in the mirror. When looked at through the filter of mathematics, consciousness is better able to investigate itself free from such bias.
Inflation. The moment one mirror is placed in front of another mirror, there is a procreation of the image in both mirrors that occurs at the speed of light. If the mirrors are very close together this would produce an almost instantaneous and infinite “expansion” of the image. I'm guessing that the math describing such an interaction would reveal something very similar to that of the inflationary epoch.
Quantum jumps between energy orbits is the focusing on each successive image in the mirror. Nothing is really moving in all of this, other than consciousness. The only “movement” is the act of the focusing of consciousness. Consciousness can focus on the images, which brings about the appearance of physicality, or it can focus on the mirror, via “pure thought”, or it can focus on itself, which is getting into spirituality, which I won't do here.
Mirrors are used in the making of a hologram. If the holographic principle is a workable metaphor, then there must be a mirror-like aspect to the process.
I have the strong intuition that the fundamental “mirrors” are the interaction of thought and matter. Causation is fundamentally not at the physical level, but rather is the interaction of thought and physicality mirroring each other. Both are mutually dependant, but not really causally related.
This metaphor may also be of use in other fields such as psychology (thought-action) and biology.