Contemporary science fiction author Stephen Baxter owes much to the man whom many call the father of modern sci-fi, Issac Asimov. Instead of using science fiction merely as an exotic metaphor for modern-day issues, both authors use the medium as a place to discuss about what the future really could be like. They both write to open a discussion about the possibilites of humankind's future. But their visions are drastically different, because of Baxter's disagreement with Asimov on one significant point: life on other planets.
Both authors believe there is life on other planets. Asimov, though, feels that the past 70 or so years of SETI research has shown us that if there is life out there, it's extremely rare, and most likely there is not so much in the way of intelligent, space-faring life. His vision for the future is a future filled with humans -- humans colonizing the universe, humans terraforming planets, humans fighting each other, and humans alone in the galaxy with only their technological children for company. Other lower life forms may develop on other planets, but only humankind has developed the intelligence and abilities necessary to expand and rule. The future of the universe is the story of man.
Stephen Baxter's future, though, is full of competing life forms, and in his view man is a worthy competitor to countless races in the universe. It is not man's superior intellect that makes him ultimately compete the best, it is his motivated drive towards risk, expansion, and power. In Baxter's view, life is very common, but we do not spot it now because of two main things: 1) other forms of life are not like our own so we are essentially looking for the wrong things, and 2) truly intelligent, space-travelling life simply does not bother to get in touch with us because to them we are inconsequential animals. It is not until man becomes a spacefaring people, Baxter argues, that we start to be aware of, and compete with, other species. The future of the universe is the story of evolution on a grand scale, filled with life at every corner, in which man competes admirably.
Despite these differing visions, both Asimov and Baxter have optimistic views of humankind's future. Both feel that man has what it takes to survive, that our futures are linked to advances in technology, and also that even far in the future, humans will still retain what is important about being human.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Basketball -- A Different Pace
An observation I read on the ESPN sports page struck me as somehow connected to more than just basketball.
The observation was that all of the truly great basketball players -- Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson -- have something in common, and it's not a particular move or a specific physical trait. The weird trait they have in common is that they all move on the basketball court at a different speed than everyone else on the court. Everyone else moves and flows with each other, but the greats always seem to move at their own personal pace, and by virtue of their presence force the game to move with them. The odd thing is that this pace is not necessarily faster than everyone else -- often times, it's slower. The commonality is that through any game there is a calm poise that each player holds, so that regardless of the situation they continue to play their game at their pace, and let the game come to them.
This tidbit tied into a conversation I had at a weekend brunch where this guy told me about how when he was a kid his parents discouraged him from crying after little things like scraping a knee or not getting candy he wanted. His parents told him to keep a "stiff upper lip" and taught him that even when things don't go his way, it's important to keep a hold of himself. He was taught to be tough at an early age, and to not sweat the small stuff. He told me that nowadays he's a stock trader, which is a very high-pressure job, and that his early childhood was the best preparation he had for that because when he's at his job and people are yelling and screaming, it doesn't get to him because he was taught early on that it's not a big deal when things don't do your way, you just get up, brush yourself off and move on.
I'm not exactly sure how these two items tie together, but they struck me as intimately related. Perhaps it is the notion that in basketball and life, the great ones out there don't let the small things change them. They don't panic or sweat the small things, but continue to have confidence and faith in themselves, and let the game come to them.
The observation was that all of the truly great basketball players -- Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson -- have something in common, and it's not a particular move or a specific physical trait. The weird trait they have in common is that they all move on the basketball court at a different speed than everyone else on the court. Everyone else moves and flows with each other, but the greats always seem to move at their own personal pace, and by virtue of their presence force the game to move with them. The odd thing is that this pace is not necessarily faster than everyone else -- often times, it's slower. The commonality is that through any game there is a calm poise that each player holds, so that regardless of the situation they continue to play their game at their pace, and let the game come to them.
This tidbit tied into a conversation I had at a weekend brunch where this guy told me about how when he was a kid his parents discouraged him from crying after little things like scraping a knee or not getting candy he wanted. His parents told him to keep a "stiff upper lip" and taught him that even when things don't go his way, it's important to keep a hold of himself. He was taught to be tough at an early age, and to not sweat the small stuff. He told me that nowadays he's a stock trader, which is a very high-pressure job, and that his early childhood was the best preparation he had for that because when he's at his job and people are yelling and screaming, it doesn't get to him because he was taught early on that it's not a big deal when things don't do your way, you just get up, brush yourself off and move on.
I'm not exactly sure how these two items tie together, but they struck me as intimately related. Perhaps it is the notion that in basketball and life, the great ones out there don't let the small things change them. They don't panic or sweat the small things, but continue to have confidence and faith in themselves, and let the game come to them.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Lepers
I've been reading a book entitled "Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient" by Norman Cousins. The big idea in this book is that a critical component in the prevention and healing of disease is the patient's will to live -- his ability to mobilize his own body's defenses through a positive attitude and a proactive approach towards his own health. This idea was a breakthrough when it was written in the 1970s, but at this point it's a generally accepted principle. The effectiveness of somewhat dubious holistic medicine as well as the placebo effect can be explained by pointing to the psychological effects these things have on the mind, which in turn helps the body heal itself in a real and positive way. The book also stresses the need for emphasis in preventative medicine and nutrition, a stance that in modern times is generally accepted and even commonplace.
Lepers were given as an example of why pain, which is still approached as a bad thing to be eliminated with painkillers, is a positive and necessary component to biofeedback. Leprosy, and its corresponding loss of appendages, was for a long time seen as a degenerative disease that caused limbs to fall off. A doctor by the name of Paul Brand discovered, through his studies at a leper colony, dispelled that misconception. He realized that the main thing leprosy does is deaden the nerve receptors in the body, making the person unable to experience pain or even sensations of pressure. With the absence of feedback, a leper will accidentally severely damage or even break off his limbs, and when sleeping on the street rats would bite off parts of them without them being able to notice. The moral of the story is that in his lifetime Dr. Brand worked to restore the gift of pain, because pain is what tells us both that something is wrong and that something must be done. What must be done is not necessarily taking painkillers, but getting to the root of the problem, which may be injury, disease, or even psychological causes like stress.
Lepers were given as an example of why pain, which is still approached as a bad thing to be eliminated with painkillers, is a positive and necessary component to biofeedback. Leprosy, and its corresponding loss of appendages, was for a long time seen as a degenerative disease that caused limbs to fall off. A doctor by the name of Paul Brand discovered, through his studies at a leper colony, dispelled that misconception. He realized that the main thing leprosy does is deaden the nerve receptors in the body, making the person unable to experience pain or even sensations of pressure. With the absence of feedback, a leper will accidentally severely damage or even break off his limbs, and when sleeping on the street rats would bite off parts of them without them being able to notice. The moral of the story is that in his lifetime Dr. Brand worked to restore the gift of pain, because pain is what tells us both that something is wrong and that something must be done. What must be done is not necessarily taking painkillers, but getting to the root of the problem, which may be injury, disease, or even psychological causes like stress.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
This entry will explain as best as possible Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and how it came about, as told by Gary Zukav's "Wu Li Masters."
In the year 1905, the same year Albert Einstein had published his paper proving that light exhibits particle-like properties, he also presented a paper solving the problem of the constant speed of light. It was well-known at the time that light of any kind always travels at 186,000 miles per second. The Michelson-Morely experiment displayed a curious thing, though -- light was ALWAYS measured to be travelling at 186,000 miles per second, even when the observer was quickly moving towards or away from the light source. This was confusing because one expects the speed something appears to travel to take the motion of the observer into account. For instance, if you are driving in a car at 75 miles per hour and a car is coming towards you at 75 miles per hour, it would look like the car was approaching you at 150 miles per hour. So it was considered a great puzzle that light somehow appeared to move the same speed no matter what speed you were moving towards or away from it. Physicists were asking how it was that light could change its speed relative to each observer like that.
Einstein solved the problem by assuming what was being questioned: that light really did travel at 186,000 miles per second, and that it would always appear to travel at that speed regardless of the observer's motion. In this way, the puzzle of the constant speed of light became the Principle of the Constant Speed of Light. Those two things being assumed true, and assuming that observers were taking the measurements in the exact same way, there was nothing left that could vary but time itself. So Einstein decided that time, mass, and distance itself changes with velocity. This way, light would appear to be going the same speed as it always does regardless of the observer's motion, because the length of the ruler and the rate of time changes in proportion with the change in velocity. By assuming to be true what was being questioned, and completely throwing out what was assumed to be true, Einstein made his breakthrough. Light speed was made constant, and mass, length, and time were made relative to the motion of the observer. This assertion leads to fairly exotic results, like the fact that as an object approaches light speed its mass approaches infinity and time slows to a stop.
This however is impossible to do because as it nears the speed of light, and increasingly immense amount of energy is required to increase speed because it is also increasing mass, which requires more kinetic energy to move. The most popular equation related to this breakthrough is E=MC2. This relates to Einstein's assertion that mass and energy are not merely related, they are the same thing and can be converted back and forth. This is why mass increases as speed goes up: the kinetic energy of motion makes the moving material essentially gain mass because it is gaining energy, because mass and energy are one and the same. In this equation, E=energy, M=mass, and C2 is the speed of light squared, which is a very big number -- the point being that each bit of matter is composed of an enormous amount of energy. This discovery led scientists to figure out how to blow atoms up to convert mass into energy, hence leading to the invention of the fission and fusion atom bombs.
In the year 1905, the same year Albert Einstein had published his paper proving that light exhibits particle-like properties, he also presented a paper solving the problem of the constant speed of light. It was well-known at the time that light of any kind always travels at 186,000 miles per second. The Michelson-Morely experiment displayed a curious thing, though -- light was ALWAYS measured to be travelling at 186,000 miles per second, even when the observer was quickly moving towards or away from the light source. This was confusing because one expects the speed something appears to travel to take the motion of the observer into account. For instance, if you are driving in a car at 75 miles per hour and a car is coming towards you at 75 miles per hour, it would look like the car was approaching you at 150 miles per hour. So it was considered a great puzzle that light somehow appeared to move the same speed no matter what speed you were moving towards or away from it. Physicists were asking how it was that light could change its speed relative to each observer like that.
Einstein solved the problem by assuming what was being questioned: that light really did travel at 186,000 miles per second, and that it would always appear to travel at that speed regardless of the observer's motion. In this way, the puzzle of the constant speed of light became the Principle of the Constant Speed of Light. Those two things being assumed true, and assuming that observers were taking the measurements in the exact same way, there was nothing left that could vary but time itself. So Einstein decided that time, mass, and distance itself changes with velocity. This way, light would appear to be going the same speed as it always does regardless of the observer's motion, because the length of the ruler and the rate of time changes in proportion with the change in velocity. By assuming to be true what was being questioned, and completely throwing out what was assumed to be true, Einstein made his breakthrough. Light speed was made constant, and mass, length, and time were made relative to the motion of the observer. This assertion leads to fairly exotic results, like the fact that as an object approaches light speed its mass approaches infinity and time slows to a stop.
This however is impossible to do because as it nears the speed of light, and increasingly immense amount of energy is required to increase speed because it is also increasing mass, which requires more kinetic energy to move. The most popular equation related to this breakthrough is E=MC2. This relates to Einstein's assertion that mass and energy are not merely related, they are the same thing and can be converted back and forth. This is why mass increases as speed goes up: the kinetic energy of motion makes the moving material essentially gain mass because it is gaining energy, because mass and energy are one and the same. In this equation, E=energy, M=mass, and C2 is the speed of light squared, which is a very big number -- the point being that each bit of matter is composed of an enormous amount of energy. This discovery led scientists to figure out how to blow atoms up to convert mass into energy, hence leading to the invention of the fission and fusion atom bombs.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Peter Singer: The Horns of Bush's Dilemma
I am posting this LJ Entry from November 18, 2003 because of the following things of note:
A. The post yielded quite a lengthy and interesting discussion on stem cell research.
B. It raises an underlying issue regarding the importance or irrelevance of axiomatic consistency in ethics.
C. It spurred my personal interest in the controversial modern philosopher Peter Singer.
***
Last night at New York University I attended a lecture by Peter Singer, a contemporary Utilitarian philosopher who is attaining both fame and noteriety for his hard-line ethical stances on animal rights and infanticide. This evening was not about his own personal theories however...for this lecture he had one goal in mind, and that was to point out the inconsistency in the moral and ethical doctrines set out by George W. Bush.
Mr. Singer hardly looks the type of man you would expect to be crusading for the lives of chickens, let alone taking on our President with a sharpness that rivals Howard Dean. He is a thin man with a calm but pronounced voice, with wispy clouds of hair hovering around a receding scalp, wearing a wrinkled white dress shirt with collar unbuttoned and an equally creased brown sport coat. He never appeared angry when he spoke, but there was a certain energy to him when he put forth his argument point by point, which through the course of the lecture became almost overwhelming in its power -- it was the sort of argument that is so simple that it seems inevitable. Mr. Singer unloaded one bullet in his philosophical gun, but he only needed one.
Indeed it seemed to me that Mr. Singer was fulfilling a role philosophers should play in politics -- point out logical inconsistencies within our ethical, moral and political structures. Audience members later asked the philosopher whether he thought Bush was "psychologically troubled" to which he replied that he was not an expert on foreign policy or psychology or politics -- he was an expert in reason, and it was in this function that he would contribute.
The crux of his argument lay in the inconsistency between Bush's stances on stem-cell research and war. Stem-cell research uses stem cells taken from discarded embryos, often taken from artificial insemination procedures -- when a couple wants to have a child they fertilize up to a dozen eggs in hopes that 1-3 will fertilize, then implant the eggs in the potential mother's uterus, and sometimes more than 3 eggs fertilize in which case the extra embryos are either frozen, thrown away or used for this research. Stem-cell research is being used to try to find cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimers, and has the potential for saving millions of lives. Bush has banned such practices because he is strictly pro-life -- Bush's argument runs that regardless of the potential benefit the research can have, it is at the cost of these human embryos, which have the same human right to live as we do. The embryos are not killed intentionally, as in the case of abortion, but are simply the means to an end, researching cures for diseases. So in the case of stem-cell research Mr. Bush says that the ends do not justify the means, that the loss of human life cannot be justified by its potential benefits to humanity.
On to War. In the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, on multiple occassions the military chose to bomb residential areas in hopes of killing hiding Iraqi leaders, including Chemical Ali and Saddam Hussein. This was done after Baghdad had already been taken over and the first chapter of the war, so to speak, had been completed. When asked about the decision to perform military bombings that would inevitably kill innocent civilians, Mr. Bush said that while the killing of women and children was not their intention it is a foreseen consequence, but it was justified by the necessity of killing Hussein and his evil allies. He argued that the U.S. was doing its best to minimize civilian casualties, but that some killing of innocents was necessary and justified by the potential benefit, that is, the overthrowing of the evil governments of the Taliban and Iraq, the bringing of democracy to the Middle East, and the weakening of terrorism in order to save future American lives. In other words, Mr. Singer says, Mr. Bush thinks the ends do justify the means in war, and the loss of human life can be justified by its potential benefits to humanity.
At this point I knew what was coming, but the weight of it still hit me hard. Mr. Singer puts forth the Horns of a Dilemma -- though seemingly unrelated, Mr. Bush's stances on stem-cell research and war in Iraq and Afghanistan are philosophically inconsistent. He cannot say in the case of stem-cell research that any loss of human embryonic life is unacceptable regardless of potential benefit, and then turn around and bomb residential areas and justify it with their potential benefit. If Mr. Bush wants to have people take his ethical and moral stances seriously, Mr. Singer argues, they must have an internal consistency. Either Mr. Bush must lift the ban on stem-cell research to be in line with his views on war, or he must admit to war crimes for the killing of innocent lives in Iraq to be in line with his stance on stem-cell research. If Bush, on the other hand, only applies his axiomatic ethical principles in certain cases and not others, he undermines the weight and necessity of his own arguments. That is the dilemma.
And that was it. No big condemning rant at the end about Mr. Bush's hypocrisy. That was not Mr. Singer's role -- he was merely putting forth a dilemma, and put it up to Mr. Bush, and the audience, to decide what to do with it. As Singer put it, "I think it's important to create a discussion about these things." It was a refreshing experience -- and indeed I think that Mr. Singer's got a good point, not just about Mr. Bush, but in general on the role philosophy should play in the modern world. Philosophers are experts in the examination of rational belief systems, and as such they have a role to play in modern policy because they are able to see inconsistencies within our ethical stances -- philosophy is not a toy or irrelevant artifact, it is a powerful practice with practical uses in the discussion of today's issues. Mr. Singer, as an ethicist in particular, feels that he and other philosophers have a civic duty not to merely write obscure works and get tenure, but to use their abilities to help the public understand the logic (or lack of it) in our own views and actions. I think he might be on to something.
A. The post yielded quite a lengthy and interesting discussion on stem cell research.
B. It raises an underlying issue regarding the importance or irrelevance of axiomatic consistency in ethics.
C. It spurred my personal interest in the controversial modern philosopher Peter Singer.
***
Last night at New York University I attended a lecture by Peter Singer, a contemporary Utilitarian philosopher who is attaining both fame and noteriety for his hard-line ethical stances on animal rights and infanticide. This evening was not about his own personal theories however...for this lecture he had one goal in mind, and that was to point out the inconsistency in the moral and ethical doctrines set out by George W. Bush.
Mr. Singer hardly looks the type of man you would expect to be crusading for the lives of chickens, let alone taking on our President with a sharpness that rivals Howard Dean. He is a thin man with a calm but pronounced voice, with wispy clouds of hair hovering around a receding scalp, wearing a wrinkled white dress shirt with collar unbuttoned and an equally creased brown sport coat. He never appeared angry when he spoke, but there was a certain energy to him when he put forth his argument point by point, which through the course of the lecture became almost overwhelming in its power -- it was the sort of argument that is so simple that it seems inevitable. Mr. Singer unloaded one bullet in his philosophical gun, but he only needed one.
Indeed it seemed to me that Mr. Singer was fulfilling a role philosophers should play in politics -- point out logical inconsistencies within our ethical, moral and political structures. Audience members later asked the philosopher whether he thought Bush was "psychologically troubled" to which he replied that he was not an expert on foreign policy or psychology or politics -- he was an expert in reason, and it was in this function that he would contribute.
The crux of his argument lay in the inconsistency between Bush's stances on stem-cell research and war. Stem-cell research uses stem cells taken from discarded embryos, often taken from artificial insemination procedures -- when a couple wants to have a child they fertilize up to a dozen eggs in hopes that 1-3 will fertilize, then implant the eggs in the potential mother's uterus, and sometimes more than 3 eggs fertilize in which case the extra embryos are either frozen, thrown away or used for this research. Stem-cell research is being used to try to find cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimers, and has the potential for saving millions of lives. Bush has banned such practices because he is strictly pro-life -- Bush's argument runs that regardless of the potential benefit the research can have, it is at the cost of these human embryos, which have the same human right to live as we do. The embryos are not killed intentionally, as in the case of abortion, but are simply the means to an end, researching cures for diseases. So in the case of stem-cell research Mr. Bush says that the ends do not justify the means, that the loss of human life cannot be justified by its potential benefits to humanity.
On to War. In the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, on multiple occassions the military chose to bomb residential areas in hopes of killing hiding Iraqi leaders, including Chemical Ali and Saddam Hussein. This was done after Baghdad had already been taken over and the first chapter of the war, so to speak, had been completed. When asked about the decision to perform military bombings that would inevitably kill innocent civilians, Mr. Bush said that while the killing of women and children was not their intention it is a foreseen consequence, but it was justified by the necessity of killing Hussein and his evil allies. He argued that the U.S. was doing its best to minimize civilian casualties, but that some killing of innocents was necessary and justified by the potential benefit, that is, the overthrowing of the evil governments of the Taliban and Iraq, the bringing of democracy to the Middle East, and the weakening of terrorism in order to save future American lives. In other words, Mr. Singer says, Mr. Bush thinks the ends do justify the means in war, and the loss of human life can be justified by its potential benefits to humanity.
At this point I knew what was coming, but the weight of it still hit me hard. Mr. Singer puts forth the Horns of a Dilemma -- though seemingly unrelated, Mr. Bush's stances on stem-cell research and war in Iraq and Afghanistan are philosophically inconsistent. He cannot say in the case of stem-cell research that any loss of human embryonic life is unacceptable regardless of potential benefit, and then turn around and bomb residential areas and justify it with their potential benefit. If Mr. Bush wants to have people take his ethical and moral stances seriously, Mr. Singer argues, they must have an internal consistency. Either Mr. Bush must lift the ban on stem-cell research to be in line with his views on war, or he must admit to war crimes for the killing of innocent lives in Iraq to be in line with his stance on stem-cell research. If Bush, on the other hand, only applies his axiomatic ethical principles in certain cases and not others, he undermines the weight and necessity of his own arguments. That is the dilemma.
And that was it. No big condemning rant at the end about Mr. Bush's hypocrisy. That was not Mr. Singer's role -- he was merely putting forth a dilemma, and put it up to Mr. Bush, and the audience, to decide what to do with it. As Singer put it, "I think it's important to create a discussion about these things." It was a refreshing experience -- and indeed I think that Mr. Singer's got a good point, not just about Mr. Bush, but in general on the role philosophy should play in the modern world. Philosophers are experts in the examination of rational belief systems, and as such they have a role to play in modern policy because they are able to see inconsistencies within our ethical stances -- philosophy is not a toy or irrelevant artifact, it is a powerful practice with practical uses in the discussion of today's issues. Mr. Singer, as an ethicist in particular, feels that he and other philosophers have a civic duty not to merely write obscure works and get tenure, but to use their abilities to help the public understand the logic (or lack of it) in our own views and actions. I think he might be on to something.
Epicurus, from an old LJ entry
The paragraph below was an entry into a LJ entry on October 13, 2003. I wrote it while reading books and other internet materials on Epicurus, a Greek philosopher I particularly like who had a philosophy based on a hedonism so moderate that the lifestyle it recommended ends up looking a lot like that of a buddhist monastic. This is in no small part because he favored long-term hedonistic good over short-term pleasures, and pleasures of the mind over that of the body. He had other ideas as well, about the Gods and of Physics, which the following paragraph describes.
"It never ceases to amaze me how early modern concepts started. It turns out Epicurus was one of the first to originate neo-Darwinian thought, because he sought to explain the efficient design of human beings by a process of natural selection, rather than by the design of Gods, which he felt existed but were not involved with the daily workings of men's lives. This apathetic-pantheon was also his solution to the Problem of Evil, saying that evil existed in this world despite the existence of gods because those gods were too busy hanging out with each other to be concerned with mortals. The Gods, exercising the high hedonistic ideal, are role models for than influences in everyday life. Epicurus also was a big proponent of mind-body identity, saying that mind and body are closely interdependent, though he felt that the mind rested in our chest rather than the head, because whenever we feel anxiety or happiness we feel it in our chest. (He was ahead of his time in most things, running parallel with much modern thought, so I'll give him some slack on this one.) Same goes for his postulation that we see images of things because those objects give off waves of atom-thin sheets that hit our eye and show us their pattern. Even in his time he should have struck that one down just by the fact that torch and candle-light illuminates objects -- if objects gave off atomic sheets of their own image on their own, than darkness or light would not matter to vision. But at least he got the waves thing right, and correctly guessed that we were not directly perceiving objects, but taking in with our senses images made up of actual physical material that is being given off by those objects."
"It never ceases to amaze me how early modern concepts started. It turns out Epicurus was one of the first to originate neo-Darwinian thought, because he sought to explain the efficient design of human beings by a process of natural selection, rather than by the design of Gods, which he felt existed but were not involved with the daily workings of men's lives. This apathetic-pantheon was also his solution to the Problem of Evil, saying that evil existed in this world despite the existence of gods because those gods were too busy hanging out with each other to be concerned with mortals. The Gods, exercising the high hedonistic ideal, are role models for than influences in everyday life. Epicurus also was a big proponent of mind-body identity, saying that mind and body are closely interdependent, though he felt that the mind rested in our chest rather than the head, because whenever we feel anxiety or happiness we feel it in our chest. (He was ahead of his time in most things, running parallel with much modern thought, so I'll give him some slack on this one.) Same goes for his postulation that we see images of things because those objects give off waves of atom-thin sheets that hit our eye and show us their pattern. Even in his time he should have struck that one down just by the fact that torch and candle-light illuminates objects -- if objects gave off atomic sheets of their own image on their own, than darkness or light would not matter to vision. But at least he got the waves thing right, and correctly guessed that we were not directly perceiving objects, but taking in with our senses images made up of actual physical material that is being given off by those objects."
Weird Ideas on the Infinite Microcosm
This is an entry I found in my old LJ archives. It's not knowledge, per se, or even well-founded ideas. It's more like out-there notions I've had about the universe that I put into words on September 22nd of 2003. I thought I'd place it here as well, because as weird as they are, these ideas have a place in a Journal of Knowledge.
***
The Infinite Micro/Macrocosm
It is a pet theory of mine that the universe extends infinitely outward and inward - it lends a certain fractal elegance to the world, because no matter how far outward or inward you go, there would be endlessly recursive pattern and order. Having infinite levels of smallness and bigness also places one (and everything) squarely in the middle of it all - one is both infinitely small and infinitely large depending on your perspective. It also opens up free-your-mind hippie conceptual possiblities, like saying that universes are contained in our fingernails, and our whole universe might be in a much larger being's fingernail and so on. When I look up at the sky I feel like a speck in a sea of nothing, but it's strangely comforting to think that I, too, might be also a vast sea of nothing where infinitely countless specks live and feel small in. Atomic theory already tells us that we're mostly empty space anyway, so all we need is tiny people on tiny planets living there within the quantums of quantums in every atom, looking out as far as their little telescopes can reach, the boundaries of their universes set by the outer limits of the electron clouds. Extravagant sorts of wild hypothesizing to be having while eating pepperoni pizza on my lunchbreak.
Shaking It Up
Then it occurred to me that these universes might be problematic, and indeed my own universe might be too in this view. Say I clip my fingernail universe off, or shave my chin stubble universe off, or any number of sudden movements. Or even the slowest, most gentle changes in momentum I can possibly do... those little microcosms are being rocketed back and forth at seemingly infinite speeds in any direction every time I turn, or twitch, or do anything at all. Wouldn't all of these universes be thrown apart, utterly shattered, continuously, like little snow globes of people, planets and pulsars? Likewise, our own universe could not possibly exist, they too would be thrown apart every time the uberbeing we are contained in wants to eat a donut - and his universe similarly, all the way up and down the chain none could survive the slightest movement on any scale of being. This pet theory of mine has serious problems. Until I had another idea.
Time Unbound
The idea is that perhaps there are not only infinite scales of space, but also time. What if as things get smaller, they also get faster? Or slower, to look at it another way -- a second of our time might be millennia of millenia to the universe inside my fingernail. As relative time slows down, those movements on the macro scale will also slow, relative to the time frame of the inhabitants of that universe. Entire lives, civilizations, universes would be passing by every moment, and these would be moving so fast that even the most sudden movements on our scale would be so miniscule on their time-frame that they would be unnoticed. Similarly, our universe goes on a certain timescale that makes our entire history, from Big Bang to utter collapse and annhialation, a blink of an eye or less to that macroscale being we are a part of. And so on, up and down the scale. I'm not certain, having only thought about this for half an hour, but I think that would solve that particular problem. And there's a certain elegance to postulating infinite scales of time following infinite scales of space. It follows the defining feature of my personal paradigm -- that the world makes sense, and simply so, because it is the result of infinitely simple rules repeated over and over to form the complexity we see.
Speed of Light
A thought that occurred from this infinite scale of time and space was this: perhaps this is the reason for the speed of light. When one approaches the speed of light, relative time supposedly slows down in relation to the observer. A person on a approaching-light-speed ship would feel that things were going about normally, but everything around him was slowing down. Mass also increases, to the point where reaching light speed the mass becomes infinite and time stops -- hence the speed of light becomes an uncrossable limit in this universe, something that we cannot break. But the speed of light pokes another possible hole in my theory of infinite scale -- these microuniverses would have the same limit, would they not, and so their world could not move fast enough to keep the pace required in their scaled-down time frame. Universes can't explode and collapse in a fraction of a heartbeat if they are limited to the same speeds as we are. I'd rather not throw out my pet theory, but I'll have to if it comes to this, or Einstein's theory, which is much more well-thought-out than mine. But I don't have to.
See, the speed of light in our universe is enforced by mass. It's not actually an absolute speed limit, it's a relative speed limit that is set by the ratio between mass and change in space vs. change in time. In our universe, it works out to a certain mile per hour based on distances and times that are relevant to us. But in this grain-of-sand universe, the time frame is geometically smaller, at first seemingly requiring faster-than-light speeds to operate, but the distances and mass involves is geometrically smaller too. So that same Einstein constant can be used on the microcosmic scale and everything would be fine. They would run into that exact same barrier, but due to everything being on a equivalently shorter scale, their universe would function in the same way as ours. On the opposite end, beings living on the macro scale would discover that same time-space barrier -- their mass would be geometrically higher, seemingly making the speed of light lower -- but relative to us their time is geometrically slower, so from their perspective the speed of light may be covering the same relative distances. And so on, up and down the scale. As scale increases so does mass, and perceived time slows so that motion never surpasses the space-time constant, but on each level the speed limit for that scale universe also remains constant. Kind of a neat idea. But this brought up a new question in my mind -- all of this talks about the relationship between absolute time and space, and the relative time and space of the observer on each scale of size. What about consciousness itself -- the subjective perception of space and time. Are there scales of being as well?
The speed of thought
Let's say that your mind is sped up by some hyper-drug that causes your whole thought process to move faster. You're now able to do things twice as fast, anything from do math problems to shop for groceries to react and dodge things you normally could. When you do this, does your own consciousness speed up? Or does it slow down for you -- or to put it another way, do things around you seem to be moving slower relative to you, while you do your thoughts and actions at the same perceived pace as before? OR, does everything seem to be at the same pace, so that things around you seem to be moving just as fast as before, only you are more able to keep up the fast pace? There are extreme cases in comic books, like where a character called The Flash keeps an entire city safe by running down every street and stopping crime wherever it occurs, continuously every minute. Think about how long it would take for us to jog through every street of a large city. To The Flash, would it seem like that much time, or would it seem like a blink of an eye to him too, only his mind and body are working so fast that he can keep up with it. Yes, it's a comic book, but beings living in the tiny universes inside my fingernail or in grains of sand etc. are all The Flash. Their lives and their universes would pass in the blink of an eye, but would it seem like a blink of an eye to them, or a lifetime? In other words, is there an absolute constant of consciousness, or is that also relative to the observer?
If the speed of consciousness is constant, microuniverse beings with infantesimally small lifespans would be aware that their lives were ridiculously short. The whole thing would whirl by in their minds at a seemingly infinite clip and would be over, but in that time they will have been born, grown up, dated, gotten married, had kids, grown old, and passed away. Similarly, beings on the macrolevel would be aware of how slow things were happening - their lives would feel like it was moving at a snail's pace, though they would be possibly unbothered by it. This idea at first feels wrong to me -- because I think that the slowness or quickness of time is entirely related to the pace of the subjective experience. I postulate that consciousness moves at a pace relative to the observer, and internally it seems absolute it takes in different amounts of information based on the scale of the universe it inhabits. But there are personal experiences that confuse me on this. Having taken a certain prohibited drug that disables the time/space sensing part of the brain that regulates perception of time, I have found that during that time of use I found time to be extremely slow. I at first assumed that since it seemed to be moving slowly that I was moving slowly -- but I found out that I could actually speak and act at a normal pace without major concern. But I was moving and acting at my normal pace, not any faster or slower, but to me it seemed like everything was slower or I was quicker. Now, my previously held view that consciousness relates to the real-time perception of changes in time and space runs into some serious issues when I realize that there is a specific physical part of the brain that tells us how our actions and observations relate to the perceived flow of time, and drugs can alter its input or disable it completely. What does this say about consciousness? Is our perception of the flow of time not linked to the scale of our universe, nor to the nature of consciousness itself, but to a particular mechnism of the brain that, if altered, can give us an entirely different experience of that timeflow? This third problem with the universes of scale idea is possibly the most devastating problem. And it might raise problems in this universe as well. Could there not be people in this world that, despite living perfectly normal lives, experience life as moving much, much more quickly than we do, thanks to an inborn variation in whatever brainpart regulates perception of time? Or people whose relatively short lives feel to them like millenia? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this one, but right off the bat I can say that I have experienced life moving faster and slower and felt, under influence, times where I was unable to tell. I see no reason why people could not live at either extreme. This would mean that for possible infinitely big and infinitely small universes, the relative internal speeds and laws are functions on the scale of their mass and size in the absolute, but the experience of living in those universes, like the experience of living in our own, could be following any scale at all...
***
The Infinite Micro/Macrocosm
It is a pet theory of mine that the universe extends infinitely outward and inward - it lends a certain fractal elegance to the world, because no matter how far outward or inward you go, there would be endlessly recursive pattern and order. Having infinite levels of smallness and bigness also places one (and everything) squarely in the middle of it all - one is both infinitely small and infinitely large depending on your perspective. It also opens up free-your-mind hippie conceptual possiblities, like saying that universes are contained in our fingernails, and our whole universe might be in a much larger being's fingernail and so on. When I look up at the sky I feel like a speck in a sea of nothing, but it's strangely comforting to think that I, too, might be also a vast sea of nothing where infinitely countless specks live and feel small in. Atomic theory already tells us that we're mostly empty space anyway, so all we need is tiny people on tiny planets living there within the quantums of quantums in every atom, looking out as far as their little telescopes can reach, the boundaries of their universes set by the outer limits of the electron clouds. Extravagant sorts of wild hypothesizing to be having while eating pepperoni pizza on my lunchbreak.
Shaking It Up
Then it occurred to me that these universes might be problematic, and indeed my own universe might be too in this view. Say I clip my fingernail universe off, or shave my chin stubble universe off, or any number of sudden movements. Or even the slowest, most gentle changes in momentum I can possibly do... those little microcosms are being rocketed back and forth at seemingly infinite speeds in any direction every time I turn, or twitch, or do anything at all. Wouldn't all of these universes be thrown apart, utterly shattered, continuously, like little snow globes of people, planets and pulsars? Likewise, our own universe could not possibly exist, they too would be thrown apart every time the uberbeing we are contained in wants to eat a donut - and his universe similarly, all the way up and down the chain none could survive the slightest movement on any scale of being. This pet theory of mine has serious problems. Until I had another idea.
Time Unbound
The idea is that perhaps there are not only infinite scales of space, but also time. What if as things get smaller, they also get faster? Or slower, to look at it another way -- a second of our time might be millennia of millenia to the universe inside my fingernail. As relative time slows down, those movements on the macro scale will also slow, relative to the time frame of the inhabitants of that universe. Entire lives, civilizations, universes would be passing by every moment, and these would be moving so fast that even the most sudden movements on our scale would be so miniscule on their time-frame that they would be unnoticed. Similarly, our universe goes on a certain timescale that makes our entire history, from Big Bang to utter collapse and annhialation, a blink of an eye or less to that macroscale being we are a part of. And so on, up and down the scale. I'm not certain, having only thought about this for half an hour, but I think that would solve that particular problem. And there's a certain elegance to postulating infinite scales of time following infinite scales of space. It follows the defining feature of my personal paradigm -- that the world makes sense, and simply so, because it is the result of infinitely simple rules repeated over and over to form the complexity we see.
Speed of Light
A thought that occurred from this infinite scale of time and space was this: perhaps this is the reason for the speed of light. When one approaches the speed of light, relative time supposedly slows down in relation to the observer. A person on a approaching-light-speed ship would feel that things were going about normally, but everything around him was slowing down. Mass also increases, to the point where reaching light speed the mass becomes infinite and time stops -- hence the speed of light becomes an uncrossable limit in this universe, something that we cannot break. But the speed of light pokes another possible hole in my theory of infinite scale -- these microuniverses would have the same limit, would they not, and so their world could not move fast enough to keep the pace required in their scaled-down time frame. Universes can't explode and collapse in a fraction of a heartbeat if they are limited to the same speeds as we are. I'd rather not throw out my pet theory, but I'll have to if it comes to this, or Einstein's theory, which is much more well-thought-out than mine. But I don't have to.
See, the speed of light in our universe is enforced by mass. It's not actually an absolute speed limit, it's a relative speed limit that is set by the ratio between mass and change in space vs. change in time. In our universe, it works out to a certain mile per hour based on distances and times that are relevant to us. But in this grain-of-sand universe, the time frame is geometically smaller, at first seemingly requiring faster-than-light speeds to operate, but the distances and mass involves is geometrically smaller too. So that same Einstein constant can be used on the microcosmic scale and everything would be fine. They would run into that exact same barrier, but due to everything being on a equivalently shorter scale, their universe would function in the same way as ours. On the opposite end, beings living on the macro scale would discover that same time-space barrier -- their mass would be geometrically higher, seemingly making the speed of light lower -- but relative to us their time is geometrically slower, so from their perspective the speed of light may be covering the same relative distances. And so on, up and down the scale. As scale increases so does mass, and perceived time slows so that motion never surpasses the space-time constant, but on each level the speed limit for that scale universe also remains constant. Kind of a neat idea. But this brought up a new question in my mind -- all of this talks about the relationship between absolute time and space, and the relative time and space of the observer on each scale of size. What about consciousness itself -- the subjective perception of space and time. Are there scales of being as well?
The speed of thought
Let's say that your mind is sped up by some hyper-drug that causes your whole thought process to move faster. You're now able to do things twice as fast, anything from do math problems to shop for groceries to react and dodge things you normally could. When you do this, does your own consciousness speed up? Or does it slow down for you -- or to put it another way, do things around you seem to be moving slower relative to you, while you do your thoughts and actions at the same perceived pace as before? OR, does everything seem to be at the same pace, so that things around you seem to be moving just as fast as before, only you are more able to keep up the fast pace? There are extreme cases in comic books, like where a character called The Flash keeps an entire city safe by running down every street and stopping crime wherever it occurs, continuously every minute. Think about how long it would take for us to jog through every street of a large city. To The Flash, would it seem like that much time, or would it seem like a blink of an eye to him too, only his mind and body are working so fast that he can keep up with it. Yes, it's a comic book, but beings living in the tiny universes inside my fingernail or in grains of sand etc. are all The Flash. Their lives and their universes would pass in the blink of an eye, but would it seem like a blink of an eye to them, or a lifetime? In other words, is there an absolute constant of consciousness, or is that also relative to the observer?
If the speed of consciousness is constant, microuniverse beings with infantesimally small lifespans would be aware that their lives were ridiculously short. The whole thing would whirl by in their minds at a seemingly infinite clip and would be over, but in that time they will have been born, grown up, dated, gotten married, had kids, grown old, and passed away. Similarly, beings on the macrolevel would be aware of how slow things were happening - their lives would feel like it was moving at a snail's pace, though they would be possibly unbothered by it. This idea at first feels wrong to me -- because I think that the slowness or quickness of time is entirely related to the pace of the subjective experience. I postulate that consciousness moves at a pace relative to the observer, and internally it seems absolute it takes in different amounts of information based on the scale of the universe it inhabits. But there are personal experiences that confuse me on this. Having taken a certain prohibited drug that disables the time/space sensing part of the brain that regulates perception of time, I have found that during that time of use I found time to be extremely slow. I at first assumed that since it seemed to be moving slowly that I was moving slowly -- but I found out that I could actually speak and act at a normal pace without major concern. But I was moving and acting at my normal pace, not any faster or slower, but to me it seemed like everything was slower or I was quicker. Now, my previously held view that consciousness relates to the real-time perception of changes in time and space runs into some serious issues when I realize that there is a specific physical part of the brain that tells us how our actions and observations relate to the perceived flow of time, and drugs can alter its input or disable it completely. What does this say about consciousness? Is our perception of the flow of time not linked to the scale of our universe, nor to the nature of consciousness itself, but to a particular mechnism of the brain that, if altered, can give us an entirely different experience of that timeflow? This third problem with the universes of scale idea is possibly the most devastating problem. And it might raise problems in this universe as well. Could there not be people in this world that, despite living perfectly normal lives, experience life as moving much, much more quickly than we do, thanks to an inborn variation in whatever brainpart regulates perception of time? Or people whose relatively short lives feel to them like millenia? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this one, but right off the bat I can say that I have experienced life moving faster and slower and felt, under influence, times where I was unable to tell. I see no reason why people could not live at either extreme. This would mean that for possible infinitely big and infinitely small universes, the relative internal speeds and laws are functions on the scale of their mass and size in the absolute, but the experience of living in those universes, like the experience of living in our own, could be following any scale at all...
My father on Taking Chances
Recently I decided to take a new job, despite being more than a little uncertain about whether it was a good job for me and whether taking it would be leading me in a good direction. He quoted a line that I like from Theodore Roethke's "The Waking":
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go."
I'm not sure I entirely understand the quote. But one possible interpretation is that one should be willing to take chances and venture into the unknown, because those unknown places and things and people are only known by approaching them. Speculation is easily trumped by first-hand experience.
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go."
I'm not sure I entirely understand the quote. But one possible interpretation is that one should be willing to take chances and venture into the unknown, because those unknown places and things and people are only known by approaching them. Speculation is easily trumped by first-hand experience.
Gary Zukav's "Wu Li Masters": Scientific progress
Gary Zukav's book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" explains quantum mechanics in non-mathematical terms so that liberal arts majors like me can understand it. Since this book is a summary of everything we've learned in physics since the dawn of time, it is both incomplete, and also so packed full of ideas that I'm not going to reduce it to one entry. All I want to talk about in this entry is the question of what science is.
In school, I remember being taught that science is basically fact. The laws of Newton is how things move, the Atom looks like so, Evolution happens this way, etc. But what is not discussed much, and what certainly wasn't taught to me when I was very young, is that even the most firmly established theories are just that: theories. Science is a philosophy of total skepticism, where every theory however long-standing can be disproved with a single counterexample. Further, it doesn't claim to know what's actually happening in the world -- it's simply creating a predictive model that most simply and effectively predicts our observations of the world. It says nothing about why things are there either -- it only speaks of what we can observe and predict.
One of Einstein's way of explaining science was to say that science was like guessing at the contents of an unopenable watch. We can guess at the inner contents of the watch, and make elaborate theories about what's inside the watch, but in the end the best we can hope for is a theoretical model that exactly matches the outside appearances of the watch. The "ideal limit of knowledge", then, is to find a theory that is internally consistent and explains all observable phenomena.
The problem, though, is that in everyday life it is easy to forget the tenuousness of scientific "achievements." It is easy for centuries-old laws to be treated as fact and for one to even posit that science has shown us *why* things happen. For instance, why do things fall towards Earth? Gravity, of course. But what causes Gravity? Why, it's a Scientific Law. But we don't know why gravity happens, nor can we ever. Gravity's just an imaginary force we made up to explain and predict the behavior of bodies of mass. And we don't actually know Gravity always works. This seems ridiculous to say considering how consistent it's been, but one could say the same thing about Newtonian Physics. And one of the main tasks of the book is to explain Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics exists only because Newtonian Physics was shown decisively in the past century NOT TO WORK IN THE REALM OF THE VERY SMALL. All it takes is one counterexample.
In school, I remember being taught that science is basically fact. The laws of Newton is how things move, the Atom looks like so, Evolution happens this way, etc. But what is not discussed much, and what certainly wasn't taught to me when I was very young, is that even the most firmly established theories are just that: theories. Science is a philosophy of total skepticism, where every theory however long-standing can be disproved with a single counterexample. Further, it doesn't claim to know what's actually happening in the world -- it's simply creating a predictive model that most simply and effectively predicts our observations of the world. It says nothing about why things are there either -- it only speaks of what we can observe and predict.
One of Einstein's way of explaining science was to say that science was like guessing at the contents of an unopenable watch. We can guess at the inner contents of the watch, and make elaborate theories about what's inside the watch, but in the end the best we can hope for is a theoretical model that exactly matches the outside appearances of the watch. The "ideal limit of knowledge", then, is to find a theory that is internally consistent and explains all observable phenomena.
The problem, though, is that in everyday life it is easy to forget the tenuousness of scientific "achievements." It is easy for centuries-old laws to be treated as fact and for one to even posit that science has shown us *why* things happen. For instance, why do things fall towards Earth? Gravity, of course. But what causes Gravity? Why, it's a Scientific Law. But we don't know why gravity happens, nor can we ever. Gravity's just an imaginary force we made up to explain and predict the behavior of bodies of mass. And we don't actually know Gravity always works. This seems ridiculous to say considering how consistent it's been, but one could say the same thing about Newtonian Physics. And one of the main tasks of the book is to explain Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics exists only because Newtonian Physics was shown decisively in the past century NOT TO WORK IN THE REALM OF THE VERY SMALL. All it takes is one counterexample.
Monday, October 11, 2004
Asimov's Foundation Series: Psychohistory
I have recently finished the Issac Asimov science fiction series "Foundation." I will explain the major "big idea" that drives the series: Psychohistory.
In a way, the idea of psychohistory is inaptly named, because it has more to do with sociology than psychology. Perhaps Asimov should have called it sociohistory, but no matter. Psychohistory doesn't exist yet, but conceptually it is a field that could exist. The idea is as follows: groups of people behave in certain predictable ways. In sociology we already have certain predictive principles, though not reliable. Asimov bets that in the far future, our own social studies will become more accurate until we are able to find probable predictions for group behavior. One of the reasonings behind this is that though individuals can make an impact on a small scale, as population goes up the group dynamic falls under more and more predictive power in the same way that individual particles fall under laws of gas dynamics when they increase to a certain number. The population of an entire universe would be sufficient to start finding predictable patterns in overall behavior and to start generalizing group dynamics into mathematical probablities. This could be highly accurate, but it would never be an exact science: it would be more like predicting the weather, where as time continues the ability to predict events becomes increasingly difficult.
This was Asimov's starting point, and the 5-novel series is both a melodrama following the progression of a society engineered by Hari Seldon to eventually establish a Galactic Empire, and a discussion on whether it is indeed possible to predict and control the path of a culture. Asimov's ultimate view is that extraordinary individuals will always be able to make large impacts on group behavior, so that free will can still override circumstance. This is not to say that we won't be able to predict or manipulate with increasing accuracy the behavior of human society: simply that it is impossible to completely control because, like the weather, there'll always be things that people can't anticipate.
In a way, the idea of psychohistory is inaptly named, because it has more to do with sociology than psychology. Perhaps Asimov should have called it sociohistory, but no matter. Psychohistory doesn't exist yet, but conceptually it is a field that could exist. The idea is as follows: groups of people behave in certain predictable ways. In sociology we already have certain predictive principles, though not reliable. Asimov bets that in the far future, our own social studies will become more accurate until we are able to find probable predictions for group behavior. One of the reasonings behind this is that though individuals can make an impact on a small scale, as population goes up the group dynamic falls under more and more predictive power in the same way that individual particles fall under laws of gas dynamics when they increase to a certain number. The population of an entire universe would be sufficient to start finding predictable patterns in overall behavior and to start generalizing group dynamics into mathematical probablities. This could be highly accurate, but it would never be an exact science: it would be more like predicting the weather, where as time continues the ability to predict events becomes increasingly difficult.
This was Asimov's starting point, and the 5-novel series is both a melodrama following the progression of a society engineered by Hari Seldon to eventually establish a Galactic Empire, and a discussion on whether it is indeed possible to predict and control the path of a culture. Asimov's ultimate view is that extraordinary individuals will always be able to make large impacts on group behavior, so that free will can still override circumstance. This is not to say that we won't be able to predict or manipulate with increasing accuracy the behavior of human society: simply that it is impossible to completely control because, like the weather, there'll always be things that people can't anticipate.
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