I had a theory about the nature of matter, the universe, and everything (TOE), but it turns out to be an extremely simplified, skeletal outline version of string theory. Did I read or hear about this theory, not really paying attention, but then suddenly declared it as my own - subconscious plagiarism? The gist of "my" idea is that forces are created by dimensional folds - a one dimensional line is folded to create a two dimensional triangle, which is folded to create a three dimensional shape, which is folded again to create a four dimensional shape, etc, etc. With each fold, the structure becomes stiffer and stiffer and the forces become larger and larger. These would correspond to gravity, electro-magnetism, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, etc.
This ties in with another idea that I somehow acquired. A point existing by itself is meaningless - it is only when the point interacts with another point that it becomes meaningful. Two points create a line - the interaction of two zero dimensional objects create a one dimensional object. Continuing this line of reasoning out to the universe, or to a tree falling in the forest when no one is around, is the universe meaningful if it does not interact with another universe? What would multiple universes look like (not multiple galaxies)? This would seem to require multiple realities. But how would different realities interact?
My pipe-dream answer is that consciousness, or self-awareness, is the interaction of multiple realities. The realities which interact to create consciousness are the realities that we perceive. If they did not create consciousness, then we would not perceive them. The non-interacting realities are as meaningless as a solitary point.
So, we could have infinite universes, or infinite realities, sort of like a probability cloud – overlapping and interacting to create pockets of high density consciousness.
What comes next? How do consciousnesses interact and what do they create – god? What then? How many turtles? Each turtle stands on the back of the next, all the way down… Call it infinite oneness, a self-referential loop, ?…
It is interesting that when you work backward along the chain of “logic”, each higher dimension gives meaning to the lower dimensions.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Pencil Test
The best test I could recommend for anyone considering a career as a structural engineer is: Write a twenty-five page essay on the physical characteristics of your pencil. Include tables, drawings, and formulas.
If you enjoy describing every possible usage scenario and the resultant stresses on your pencil, then structural engineering is the job for you.
If you enjoy describing every possible usage scenario and the resultant stresses on your pencil, then structural engineering is the job for you.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Foggy Will
We like to think we have free will, but I don't think we do. Based on the amount of evidence and explanatory writings on this subject, I would like to think that this is a settled question, but it's not. So I ask myself, "Why do people still believe in free will?" Or, more generally, why do people have irrational beliefs or why do people believe something despite evidence to the contrary?
Many intelligent people hold to ideas which are irrational or contrary to evidence, so I will immediately discount the argument that complexity is the stumbling block.
Many of our so-called rational beliefs are actually so poorly understood they could be called irrational beliefs in the rational. Take for instance viruses. I do not know this for certain, but I think it is safe to say that most people would have a very difficult time explaining what a virus is or differentiating it from bacteria. Although we talk about viruses as if we were rational, modern people, but we might as well be talking of witchcraft for all we really know about how they work. My point is, rational or irrational, culture affects what we believe.
Culture is a very broad term. I think the most useful way defining culture for this context is the shared beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a group. Or, in other words, culture is the way in which individuals identify themselves with a group. Beliefs are more of a means to belong to a group than an end in themselves. There is a slew of experimental evidence supporting this point, but I think it is enough to say that people typically avoid conflict with the group. (Although, as an aside, members of a group are irresistibly fascinated when conflict does erupt.)
My conclusion is that the acceptability of a belief is more important than the truth or rationality of a belief. The belief itself could be completely irrational, but if most of the people you like or feel friendly toward believe it, then you are likely to believe it too. Free will is a fairly abstract and complex topic, but penetration of its complexity is not really that difficult. In fact, many of the writings trying to support free will are complex. The priorities of many of our great philosophers who have dealt with this topic are less on the truth than on creating a legal defense to justify their beliefs.
To rephrase Nietzsche, philosophy is dead. Empirical science has taken its place. In particular, with respect to human nature and consciousness, evolutionary psychology is the new religion and Darwin is the god. One of the primary moral values of this religion is humility. Devotees of evolutionary psychology strive to fully recognize how similar we are to other animals and how many of our beliefs and tendencies are rooted in biology.
Many intelligent people hold to ideas which are irrational or contrary to evidence, so I will immediately discount the argument that complexity is the stumbling block.
Many of our so-called rational beliefs are actually so poorly understood they could be called irrational beliefs in the rational. Take for instance viruses. I do not know this for certain, but I think it is safe to say that most people would have a very difficult time explaining what a virus is or differentiating it from bacteria. Although we talk about viruses as if we were rational, modern people, but we might as well be talking of witchcraft for all we really know about how they work. My point is, rational or irrational, culture affects what we believe.
Culture is a very broad term. I think the most useful way defining culture for this context is the shared beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a group. Or, in other words, culture is the way in which individuals identify themselves with a group. Beliefs are more of a means to belong to a group than an end in themselves. There is a slew of experimental evidence supporting this point, but I think it is enough to say that people typically avoid conflict with the group. (Although, as an aside, members of a group are irresistibly fascinated when conflict does erupt.)
My conclusion is that the acceptability of a belief is more important than the truth or rationality of a belief. The belief itself could be completely irrational, but if most of the people you like or feel friendly toward believe it, then you are likely to believe it too. Free will is a fairly abstract and complex topic, but penetration of its complexity is not really that difficult. In fact, many of the writings trying to support free will are complex. The priorities of many of our great philosophers who have dealt with this topic are less on the truth than on creating a legal defense to justify their beliefs.
To rephrase Nietzsche, philosophy is dead. Empirical science has taken its place. In particular, with respect to human nature and consciousness, evolutionary psychology is the new religion and Darwin is the god. One of the primary moral values of this religion is humility. Devotees of evolutionary psychology strive to fully recognize how similar we are to other animals and how many of our beliefs and tendencies are rooted in biology.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Professionalism Protectionism
Several of the podcasts I listen to have touched on the distinction between science and pseudoscience. The root motivation for this distinction is, I believe, to preserve the image and reputation of “scientists”. The problem of creating a distinction between “us” and “them” and "good" and "bad" is common to many, if not all, categories of people, but it is especially obvious with professionals.
This panicky protection of the power of the professional image interests me professionally and avocationally. I am an immigrant to Canada with an engineering degree the Professional Engineers of Ontario will not recognize, despite treaties and agreements between the Canadian and US accreditation boards. The Professional Engineers of Ontario want to protect their precious pretentious reputations from anyone who does not fall within their tightly drawn lines of distinction between the rest of us and Them.
While the preservation of the professional image is, on one hand, laughable, ridiculous, and infuriating, it is, on the other hand, perfectly understandable. Even when quality is not considered, if professional standards are not enforced, the service provided by the professional and the image associated with the profession become vague and diffuse. The identity of the profession weakens, and when the identity weakens, the power and prestige weakens. In the end, only the professions which protect their images continue to exist as defined entities.
The preservation of quality is another good reason for being eagerly exclusive. The benefits of clear engineering, accounting, or legal standards are fairly obvious but are more clouded for the medical or scientific professions. Science and medicine are rapidly growing and developing fields in which standards and regulations inhibit innovation, but without which, end up becoming filled with quackery. Professional snobbery provides an essential evolutionary pressure in weeding these out.
The popularization of science is where pseudo-science comes to play. Successful popularization of scientific ideas depends heavily on how entertaining the ideas are made to appear. The entertainment factor is the primary evolutionary pressure for the popularity of scientific ideas. Ideas which are not interesting, exciting, or easy to use to entertain friends are simply not going to last long or go very far. But when scientific concepts or discoveries are spiced up with too much of the entertainment factor, then they become pseudo-science. It is both ironic and appropriate that science podcasts, and the popular science authors they interview, are complaining about pseudo-science, since an outside observer probably would not see much distinction.
This panicky protection of the power of the professional image interests me professionally and avocationally. I am an immigrant to Canada with an engineering degree the Professional Engineers of Ontario will not recognize, despite treaties and agreements between the Canadian and US accreditation boards. The Professional Engineers of Ontario want to protect their precious pretentious reputations from anyone who does not fall within their tightly drawn lines of distinction between the rest of us and Them.
While the preservation of the professional image is, on one hand, laughable, ridiculous, and infuriating, it is, on the other hand, perfectly understandable. Even when quality is not considered, if professional standards are not enforced, the service provided by the professional and the image associated with the profession become vague and diffuse. The identity of the profession weakens, and when the identity weakens, the power and prestige weakens. In the end, only the professions which protect their images continue to exist as defined entities.
The preservation of quality is another good reason for being eagerly exclusive. The benefits of clear engineering, accounting, or legal standards are fairly obvious but are more clouded for the medical or scientific professions. Science and medicine are rapidly growing and developing fields in which standards and regulations inhibit innovation, but without which, end up becoming filled with quackery. Professional snobbery provides an essential evolutionary pressure in weeding these out.
The popularization of science is where pseudo-science comes to play. Successful popularization of scientific ideas depends heavily on how entertaining the ideas are made to appear. The entertainment factor is the primary evolutionary pressure for the popularity of scientific ideas. Ideas which are not interesting, exciting, or easy to use to entertain friends are simply not going to last long or go very far. But when scientific concepts or discoveries are spiced up with too much of the entertainment factor, then they become pseudo-science. It is both ironic and appropriate that science podcasts, and the popular science authors they interview, are complaining about pseudo-science, since an outside observer probably would not see much distinction.
Friday, June 6, 2008
John Gray, Straw Dogs
I have been thinking about the problems with utopianism, the problems with ethics, the problems with economics, the problems with human nature, etc, etc... All rather pessimistic and cynical, but, I can't help believing, realistic. Although this is like saying a realistic definition of a car is four patches of rubber on a road...
In any case, I came across an interview with John Gray, an economist and philosopher who affirms and expands my cynicism to new levels. Here is a taste of his thoughts and style:
“ "I should liken Kant to a man at a ball, who all evening has been carrying on a love affair with a masked beauty in the vain hope of making a conquest, when at last she throws off her mask and reveals herself to be his wife." In Schopenhauer's fable the wife masquerading as an unknown beauty was Christianity. Today it is humanism.
What Schopenhauer wrote of Kant is no less true today. As commonly practiced, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs. In Kant's time the creed of conventional people was Christian, now it is humanist. Nor are these two faiths so different from one another.
Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error – the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.
Philosophy has been a masked ball in which a religious image of humankind is renewed in the guise of humanist ideas of progress and enlightenment. Even philosophy's greatest unmaskers have ended up as figures in the masquerade. Removing the masks from our animal faces is a task that has hardly begun.
Other animals are born, seek mates, forage for food and die. That is all. But we humans – we think – are different. We are persons, whose actions are the results of their choices. Other animals pass their lives unawares, but we are conscious. Our image of ourselves is formed from our ingrained belief that consciousness, selfhood and free will are what define us as human beings, and raise us above all other creatures.
In our more detached moments, we admit that this view of ourselves is flawed. Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.
But what if we give up the empty hopes of Christianity and humanism? Once we switch off the soundtrack – the babble of God and immortality, progress and humanity – what sense can we make of our lives?
”
— John Gray, Straw Dogs
In any case, I came across an interview with John Gray, an economist and philosopher who affirms and expands my cynicism to new levels. Here is a taste of his thoughts and style:
“ "I should liken Kant to a man at a ball, who all evening has been carrying on a love affair with a masked beauty in the vain hope of making a conquest, when at last she throws off her mask and reveals herself to be his wife." In Schopenhauer's fable the wife masquerading as an unknown beauty was Christianity. Today it is humanism.
What Schopenhauer wrote of Kant is no less true today. As commonly practiced, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs. In Kant's time the creed of conventional people was Christian, now it is humanist. Nor are these two faiths so different from one another.
Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error – the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.
Philosophy has been a masked ball in which a religious image of humankind is renewed in the guise of humanist ideas of progress and enlightenment. Even philosophy's greatest unmaskers have ended up as figures in the masquerade. Removing the masks from our animal faces is a task that has hardly begun.
Other animals are born, seek mates, forage for food and die. That is all. But we humans – we think – are different. We are persons, whose actions are the results of their choices. Other animals pass their lives unawares, but we are conscious. Our image of ourselves is formed from our ingrained belief that consciousness, selfhood and free will are what define us as human beings, and raise us above all other creatures.
In our more detached moments, we admit that this view of ourselves is flawed. Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.
But what if we give up the empty hopes of Christianity and humanism? Once we switch off the soundtrack – the babble of God and immortality, progress and humanity – what sense can we make of our lives?
”
— John Gray, Straw Dogs
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