:drink:
Vorrik
Wassup guys
puubert
(puubert)
#2
Chaos and Order Essay
“The greatest pity of today’s world is that intellectualism is regarded as the sole property of intellectuals. Ask the average Westerner (or Easterner) about anything more profound than the contents of his breakfast, and he will tell you that it is above his head. If he does not say this, most likely he believes it, and is lying to you.”
“The irony lies in the fact that it is not true.”
CONTENTS:
Introduction
Fit the First: Bases.
Fit the Second: Is History?
Fit the Third: Time and Why it Probably Isn’t.
Fit the Fourth: Epic Fantasy.
Fit the Fifth: Of Mind and Movies.
Fit the Sixth: Thought and Free Will.
Fit the Seventh: Hello the Tape Recorder.
Fit the Eighth: Where Are You?
Epilogue: The Epiplectic Bicycle.
INTRODUCTION
Brain is in the bed. Mind is the sleeper.
(Mentor)
This is a work of science. It will draw conclusions from accepted science and clear logic. If you cannot understand it, it is because your mind will not let go of its prejudices about what is “really” true.
FIT THE FIRST: BASES
When the sleeper awakes, the eye must open.
(Mentor)
The first law is this: A difference that makes no difference is no difference. (I know we have too many first laws around already, but this is my book and I’m going to call that the first law throughout. So there!)
It has been said that solipsism is the only logically defensible religion. Solipsism is the belief that the universe exists only as a product of one’s own mind. All you know are the sensations that enter your mind. The sensations you receive are all consistent with an external universe that follows certain physical laws, but that is no proof that the universe is independent of your mind.
This is what is meant by the first law. If a question cannot be resolved between two alternatives by any measurement or distinction you can sense, the answer is both alternatives, and neither - they are effectively the same. It can make no difference to your view of the world.
This statement is curiously paralleled in modern physics. It is summed up in the thought-experiment of Schroedinger’s Cat:
In an airtight room with one shuttered window is placed a radiation meter. In the meter’s detector is a small quantity of radium - just enough that the probability of one or more atoms decaying in a ten-minute period is 50 percent, and the probability of no atoms decaying in that period is 50 percent. The meter is connected to a phial of cyanide gas; if a decaying atom is registered, the phial will open. Also in the room is a cat. Turn on the radiation meter by remote control, wait ten minutes, and turn it off. What is the status of the cat?
According to quantum physics, low-level events such as the decay of an individual atom are inherently unpredictable. Therefore, according to the mathematics of quantum physics, the status of the radium is neither decayed nor un-decayed - until it is observed, at which time it becomes definitely one or the other. Such uncertainty about a single atom does not disturb us, but here uncertainty has been magnified into the fate of a living being. The cat is neither alive nor dead - the difference makes no difference - until an observer opens the shutter and looks.
Of course, someone always asks the question: “Who counts as an observer?” Do you? Does a fellow scientist? A child? A rat? An insect? The cat itself?
This question is easily resolved. If another being looks in the window, nothing has changed for you. It could be said that the other knows the cat’s status, but you are then as uncertain of the other’s knowledge as of the cat’s life itself. The mathematical expression of the cat does not resolve for you until you observe. The state of the universe depends on your consciousness - solipsism.
Of course, for all practical purposes a solipsistic universe behaves the same as a classical external universe. It makes no difference to you which is real, and so, by the first law, there is no difference between them. Is not logic wonderful?
FIT THE SECOND: IS HISTORY?
When the sleeper’s eye opens, she leaves the bed.
(Mentor)
What do you know of the past?
Memory.
How do you know your memory is true?
I cannot.
If you cannot tell the difference between true memory and false, is there a difference?
Another result of quantum physics is the statement that the law of conservation of matter and energy can be violated, briefly. Mass/energy can appear out of nowhere, as long as it disappears soon. (Very soon. The amount of mass/energy appearing, in joules, multiplied by the number of seconds it exists, must be less than about 10(-35).) (This is another example of the first law. There is no way to detect such a minute event, so it makes no difference whether or not it happens, so it might as well happen - so it can.)
Although this appearing matter is temporary, there is no limit to the number of times it can appear, even continuously. It can appear in any form, or appear in one form and disappear from another. Anything can happen, anything can change — a one-in-a-trillion chance, to be sure, but it is possible. There is no way to be sure of what the future will be, or even what the past was. What assurance do you have that you did not appear out of nowhere a half-second ago, complete with memories and a social security number? None (other than the assurance that you’ll never know the difference, so it doesn’t matter.)
Even this paranoid view of the universe is not quite accurate. If the universe has meaning only in relation to your mind, how could physical laws have created you? This confusion stems from the use of quantum laws as applied to a universe which exists externally, even if it is not perfectly measurable. It cannot be resolved; the universe, whether real or relative, contains (gives the sensations of?) many physicists (figments?) who have found evidence supporting these laws.
FIT THE THIRD: TIME, AND WHY IT PROBABLY ISN’T
To knit, one must first shear.
(Mentor)
If there is no certainty about what the past was, and what the future will be, there is no certainty about what time is. The Buddhist allegory of Indra’s Net may illustrate this point. An infinite net of threads runs through the universe. At each intersection is a being, and each being is a crystal bead. The Light of Existence shines through all, each bead reflecting all the others.
To adapt the story slightly, consider each bead to be a different arrangement of matter and energy in the universe. There are infinitely many of these. The threads show the passage of time; a universe-state is connected by a strong thread to a universe-state it is likely to change to in the next instant. For example, if the universe contained nothing but two iron spheres a foot apart, gravity would slowly pull the spheres together. So the bead representing that universe would be strongly connected to the bead representing the universe with the spheres slightly closer together.
Since there is a small chance that random molecular motion will move the spheres apart, the first bead would be weakly connected to the bead representing the spheres farther apart.
Notice that this net is still. All of time is represented in it all at once; there is no “spark” that flows along the threads as time passes.
But we have proven that any universe-state can lead to any other. Every bead is connected to every other bead, by a weaker or stronger thread.
So time connects everything to everything. There is a most probable path of time, certainly, but probability is not certainty. An absolute, definite flow of time is a useless concept.
FIT ASIDE:
The gut reaction now is to say: “Even if we can’t know what the past was, wasn’t there still a definite past?” Indeed there is (was) not. Remember the first law, and Schoedinger’s Cat. What you see is what you get. What you know is what is; what you do not know is not.
FIT THE FOURTH: EPIC FANTASY
Falling can’t hurt. Now landing, that’s a different matter. One must know how to land.
(Mentor)
No single future, no single past. What does this leave of history? How much of what we know as “history” could have been different if single atomic collisions had gone differently? Delaying the combustion of the gunpowder in a rifle by a fraction of a second could have changed history in any number of battles. One sperm cell is nudged slightly by a surge of molecular motion, and Frau Hitler conceives a daughter instead of a son. A cosmic ray zigs instead of zags into primeval DNA half a billion years ago, and unicorns evolve. And all these histories are equally real – out there, somewhere, one might say; a history to match any story by any author you could name, from Tolkien to Oliver North. King Arthur is as real as you. Think about it.
FIT THE FIFTH: OF MIND AND MOVIES
The sleeper dreams the universe. What will happen when he awakes?
(Mentor)
In this still-life picture of a universe that encompasses all of the real and possible time, what are you? All this deduction seems to be flatly contradicted by the way we can all sense time flowing. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Sherlock Holmes said. If time is an illusion, a true sense of time is impossible, so the flowing of time we all sense is an illusion, however improbable that seems to you.
And what does that sense consist of, anyway? You remember things changing, you see them moving, so you insist time is real. But is it not true that you see only one instant at any given time? The scene you saw an instant before is only in your memory, however real it may seem, and memory is static. You cannot see motion or change – you can only deduce them from fixed memories. Motion deduced from fixedness – does this not sound strange?
In fact, at any given instant, you are only a set of fixed memories. “Thought,” as you know it, is the progression of memories interacting through time; if time is an illusion, what is “thought”?
FIT THE SIXTH: THOUGHT AND FREE WILL
Matter is the pattern that mind makes.
(Mentor)
In the strict quantum-mechanical interpretation, thought is not defined; nothing takes place in your brain other than waves of chemical change moving down nerve fibers. Of course, you think you know that you think; but how can one expect an unbiased opinion from chemical waves which = are, so to speak, trying to prove their own competence?
The classic argument between believers in free will and proponents of determinism is now easily resolved. Of course, the patterns of nerve impulses are determined by the laws of physics, although those laws do include the unpredictability of quantum randomness. But free will is also included, for what is free will but the ability of mind to act by itself, under its own influence, based on what it knows? Certainly the nerve impulses, chasing around the fibers of the brain, are influenced by nothing but each other and the input of the senses.
I have, on occasion, heard a theory stating that while physical laws determine the nerve-impulse patterns of the brain, the mind can still have free will, because the mind influences the random factors of quantum mechanics, causing the nerve impulses to go where it wills. I do not know whether this theory was conceived out of a fanatic need to believe in a “soul” separate from the body, or simply an inability to tell cause from effect.
FIT THE SEVENTH: HELLO THE TAPE RECORDER
Mind, conciousness, awareness, spirit, thought, perception, feeling, memory, imagination, and intention: These are the fragments that delude us.
(Mentor)
Of course, this does not mean that our notions of the mind are totally unfounded; certainly there is something one can recognize as a concious mind, and see that it exists at the other end of a telephone link, and does not exist in a reel of tape, however much a recorded voice may sound like a real one. Precisely how do we tell the difference between a person and a recording? By its responsiveness, of course – a person can engage in active conversation, while a tape recorder simply blathers on regardless of what one says to it.
Now remember the many roles of probability in the universe. Even if you are talking with a voice over a telephone, how can you be sure the voice is not a lucky tape recorder – one that just happens to say the right thing at the right time? The probability of this goes down exponentially as the conversation goes on, but the possibility is always there. Recalling the first law and Schroedinger’s cat, you can only say that the object you are talking to is 99.999 percent human and 0.001 percent tape recorder – or, equivalently, that in 99.999 percent of the universes branching from yours, you are talking to a human, and in 0.001 percent, you are talking to a tape recorder.
(“Universes branching from yours” is used in the common (sort of) sense, of the time-paths of highest probability leading away from your bead in the Net. Don’t try to use my own arguments against me.)
A tape recorder is an object that does not respond to anything that it hears at all, and a human responds (hopefully) to everything – are there other possibilities? What about a dog? A catatonic human? An ELIZA program? A deaf human? All these have different levels of responsiveness; clearly there is some sort of ranking we use in determining whether there is an intelligent mind behind the voice. But any ranking can be extended, in both directions. Certainly one’s own mind is the one whose responses are easiest to feel, and one’s own mind is most clearly perceived.
Now extend the ranking downwards. An insect barely responds at all to anything, so we consider it unintelligent. What of a chair? No response at all, certainly? Look into the tiny vibrations and ripples in its structure – surely some of those could be interpreted as a response in Morse code. They are, of course, drowned in a flood of Morse gibberish, but you might say that a tiny portion of the chair is responding intelligently.
The point here is that intelligence, like reality, is what the viewer makes of it; the closer you look, the more likely you are to find anything you want. A lucky tape recorder is an artificial intelligence (although hardly practical, if you have to wait trillions of years to get appropriately lucky.)
FIT THE EIGHTH: WHERE ARE YOU?
Mind is a local phenomenon.
(Mentor)
A final question: Where are you?
Consider that there are an infinite number of “timelines” which contain versions of you. Some of them even contain versions of you thinking exactly the same thoughts you yourself are thinking. Say, for example, that a thug cuts your throat… now. You die in seconds. But there is, somewhere, a version of you – healthy – with exactly the same memories, up to the point of death, followed by normal conciousness. Is that person, in some sense, a reincarnation of you? She would certainly think so. But would your mind actually move into her body? As usual, it makes no difference; the effect is the same.
And the same effect takes place even if the thug doesn’t cut cut your throat. (As, presumably, he didn’t.) There is a version of you sitting on the shore of the Ganges, with exactly the same memories as you, wondering how she got there. She is as much a reincarnation of you as the one with the uncut throat. Reincarnation before death – an odd thought, no?
EPILOGUE: THE EPIPLECTIC BICYCLE
There is a reason we close the eyes of the dead.
(Mentor)
The end of another ten pages of rumination. Hopefully, you have learned enough to question the answers that “everyone knows.” The purpose was not really to spread my answers; it was to show you that the universe is more bizarre than we can imagine, and that anyone can uncover this bizarrity – given a willingness to think.
Vorrik
(Vorrik)
#3
Technically I was talking to my good friends Paul, Arnout, Richard, Matt, Jered, and gang… but thanks for the long and rather winded reply Puubert :bash:
Vorrik
DarkMatrix
(DarkMatrix)
#4
:weird: that’s real nice
hope you didn’t sprain a finger typing all that.
pgh
(pgh)
#7
Some pretty fucked up stuff puubert. Nice read tho even if my head is asking myself a thousand questions… o.0
evilsock
(evilsock)
#10
Puubert - I was going to write you a long long reply about this as I recognise your struggles but decided that SD’s forum isn’t the place. Agree very much with you on the relationship between mind and universe - good work m8 .
*edit, all I would add to that is to invite you to take another look at the significance of numbers which are deemed to be of high importance to ancient civilisations - get on the trail of the Sumarians.
puubert
(puubert)
#11
Vorrik, maybe you should have directed your “Whassup” to them instead of aiming it at everyone. I was just trying to save this from becoming a wasted thread.
Evilsock, I didn’t write it. I found it on a Cradle of Filth message board years ago, and I agreed with it so I kept it. Dunno where it came from, but it’s a good read. I agree with you regarding the numbers. Numbers are the language of the universe.
evilsock
(evilsock)
#14
um, Puubert the Purple? - I thought this was an interesting read - maybe not entirely correct, but interesting all the same - authored by one of your countrymen I believe 
-=peace=-
puubert
(puubert)
#15
I’m embarrased to say I am a countryman of this fool. Anyone with a basic understand of science can refute this idiot.
In Chemistry, Hydrogen and Oxygen burn to form Water, H 2O, as true to the theory,
What theory explains the exceptions H 2 O 2 Hydrogen Peroxide and H O 2 Hydrogen Dioxide?
He seems to think that the only theoretical combination of Hydrogen and Water is H20. This is obviously not the case. There numerous different types of Uranium, Helium, Carbon, virtually any molecule. Atoms can be stuck together in many different formations, each formation creates a new substance. The only thing that changes is the amount of time the molecule can survive. H202 and H02 are NOT some kind of magic molecules that disprove molecular theory.
Geologists attribute the Earth’s magnetism to the Earth’s Liquid Iron core ;
a core composed of a material , nearly half the density of Iron ?
The core is liquid, as he states. As anyone with high school science knowledge knows that solids are denser than liquids and liquids are denser than gases. The Earth’s core IS iron, it’s in liquid form, which is less dense than solid iron.
In Physics, as relativity theory states, E = m c 2, then ,
1 Kg of Hydrogen contains the same energy as 1 Kg of Uranium ? … Not true!
This is an obvious misunderstanding of the equation. All Einstein’s equation means is that matter and energy are interchangeable. You can convert matter into energy, and energy into matter, as long as you do not lose any. Matter cannot be created from nothing, nor can it be destroyed, but it can be changed into enery. Of course a 1kg of Hydrogen and Uranium have different energies, but that has NOTHING to do with relativity. You can’t covert a 1kg of Hydrogen into Uranium of vice versa.
All in all, this man is an idiot. I’ve read a page about a guy who could prove the Earth was a cube. Interesting read, but he was full of shit.
pgh
(pgh)
#16
And tonites host on ‘Science Sunday’ is your one and only, evilsock and puubert! cue claps and cheers
evilsock
(evilsock)
#17
heh /me smiles at the pigged one
Puubert - fair enough, I did say it had errors, but isn’t that the gist of what our friend Lanigan-O’Keeffe is trying to say about our sciences? OK, some of his theories are flawed but he makes the point over and over that there are flaws in our accepted sciences today. If we accept that there are anomilies in the basic building blocks of our understanding and in turn the higher structures we build upon those basic blocks then the picture we see of the universe is a huge generalisation with errors.
I’m done.
Actually, let me explain some more and maybe you’ll get the direction I’m headed. I accept that our current set of sciences do a pretty reasonable job of allowing us to understand our environment - we’ve made things in real life that work based on mathematical proporsitions I won’t dispute that.
What I do dispute is the belief ppl in general have that our sciences are precisely accurate and without flaw. Our basic mathematical model is based upon Greek principles which state ‘the belief that everything in the world and universe can in some manner be mathematically expressed’ - compare and contrast that with the ancient Chinese approach which states ‘The method of calculation is very simple to explain but has wide application. This is because a person gains knowledge by analogy, that is, after understanding a particular line of argument they can infer various kinds of similar reasoning … Whoever can draw inferences about other cases from one instance can generalise … really knows how to calculate… . To be able to deduce and then generalise… is the mark of an intelligent person.’
Now I actually see the state of modern science as a combination of both types of thinking but as you’ll appreciate - by implication and necessity, it’s a generalisation.
Now consider Pythagoras (569-475BC)- his assertion that ‘a2 + b2 = c2 where c is the hypotenuse while a and b are the sides of the triangle’ is generally attributed to the man himself but in fact he discovered the therum on Babylonian tablets dated at around 1900-1600BC - interesting no?
Now consider that the Ancient Egyptians must have understood the therum to have been able to build such accurate structures as the Pyramids (Giza 2532- 2504 B.C) - it’s generally accepted that the Babylonians (who were the succesors to the Akkadians who themselves were the succesors to the earliest civilisation, the Sumerians) got this information from the Egyptians. Interestingly, both the Akkadians and Babylonians ‘inherited’ many of the Sumerians teachings on written tradition (cuniform), maths, astronomy etc - quite magnaminous for successive victorious invading armies…
By getting to grips with the origins of maths, it starts to become clear that it’s ‘normal’ or common for civilisations to evolve arithmetical counting systems based on either their hands or feet or both - hence base 10 and base 20 - it’s quite a natural thing as well - anyone can easily see how those systems came into being - yes? So isn’t it somewhat extrodinary that our most ancient civilisation (Sumerians - 5000-1595 BC) should choose Base 60 as their preferred base for calculations? (no 0 and very hard to divide 7) - our understanding of the degrees of a circle and the sub-division of time are represented in this way which in turn suggests an understanding of approximately how many days must pass before the earth orbits the sun (365 in fact but 360 is a good generalisation 
)
Now what I want to know is - why base 60? and why is the number 12 so important to our ancestors?
Flame me as you would Lanigan-O’Keeffe is you must, but I think it’s an interesting proposition myself.
puubert
(puubert)
#18
If you can get your hands on it, “Time” by Alexander Waugh answers the questions you put. Well theorises answers to them. I’ve read it a couple of times, but not recently enough to give you comprehensible answers. Your post became quite different than what I expected, and something I take an interest in. I’m trying to remember now why base 60 was chosen, but can’t for the life of me. The Sumerians were a very astronomical people, as were all the ancient civilisations, and this had a large part to do with their numbers. Everything was inspired by the stars. Base 12 comes from the of zodiac. 360/12 = 30. Sumerians/Egyptians and so on could measure the movement of the equinoxes from year to year. Something like that. I really can’t remember. I’ll have a look for some stuff for you.
As for Lanigan, I understand agree with “If we accept that there are anomilies in the basic building blocks of our understanding and in turn the higher structures we build upon those basic blocks then the picture we see of the universe is a huge generalisation with errors”, but reading what I responded to above left me with little but irritation. There’s a difference between questioning errors and straightout misunderstanding.
I accept that sciences theories prove nothing. They are only our best “guess”. While relativity and so on are obviously extremely good guesses, as relativity is yet to be experimentally disproven in over 80 years, it is possible that tomorrow it could be proven incorrect and we’ll have to start again. But over the past 400 years we’ve been refining what we see, what we know and what we think to a level where, I think, we can say with adequate certainty we’re on the right track. I guess that’s the problem of being beings that are part of the universe, as opposed to being outside the universe. We’ll never really know because we can never really experience it as a whole. We can only understand what we can see.
evilsock
(evilsock)
#19
Thanks for the considered reply - I’ll look into that book, sounds like an interesting read