Category Archives: Science

The Invisible Brat

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Sorry! I saw the Toronto Maple Leafs give up a three goal lead to lose in overtime last night, and I’ve been informed that it was probably my fault. I jinxed them, apparently. Whatever your theories might be on Reimer’s rebound control, lack thereof, or Toronto’s unique talent for giving away leads at the last minute, put it all to bed; it was me.

Sports are full of superstitions. So are the arts. Some athletes wear the same item during every game, regardless of whether it brought them a win or loss in the previous game. Actors will curse you if you say “Macbeth” backstage at a play, even if the play they’re performing is Macbeth. It’s a strange world out there, full of strange beliefs.

Interestingly, today I read an article in Scientific American about the power of rituals. The article points out that according to a few recent studies, rituals work. And they work regardless of whether you believe they will. Now, when I say “work”, I don’t mean they make the impossible possible, but they have an effect on the people who do them.

And why shouldn’t they? So many unconscious processes affect us all the time that we really can have only a vague idea why we succeed at some things we attempt and not others. Many of our unconscious processes contradict our conscious intentions, so we often manufacture failure for ourselves without realizing it. If we can perform some ritual to prime our unconscious, to let that invisible brat know it’s game time, we might find our performance enhanced.

I know from experience that the best plays and the most outstanding goals usually don’t spring out of a conscious plan. They happen when the player’s conscious mind gets lost in the chaos of the game and the instinctual unconscious takes action. This is why “beginner’s luck” exists. A new golfer might hit a hole in one while a veteran may wait his or her entire life and still never get one. Beginners don’t out-think their unconscious intent because they haven’t had all the lessons, haven’t heard all the ways their swing is incorrect.

On the other hand, there is a popular theory that we can become an expert at just about anything by accumulating 10 000 hours of practice. This makes sense too because the repetitive conscious practice drills the desired behaviors into our unconscious through muscle memory and long-term potentiation in the brain. When you’ve racked up that much time doing anything, you don’t need to think about it a whole lot to have success. Just let the invisible brat do it.

But make sure you don’t piss the invisible brat off. There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “If you want to see God laugh, tell Him your plans.” The brat loves to mess with conscious intent, and it has the mentality of a four year old. So don’t talk about your goalie’s shutout or your pitcher’s no-hitter until the game is over. I keep my important plans silent so God doesn’t know what to think.

Nice Nihilism

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I recently read James Steinhoff‘s review of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions (2011) by Alex Rosenberg and it got me thinking. I consider myself a form of nihilist and I’ve noticed that many people are shocked by the notion. It seems like our culture has a phobia about nihilism. So to temper those fears, Rosenberg puts forward the idea of “nice nihilism”.

I don’t see why we need an apology for nihilism. Think through history about the people who have been killed or injured in the name of Nothing. Now think of the people killed in the name of some belief. Let the believers apologize if they want. Nihilism gives me no anxiety.

I consider myself a nihilist because I make a conscious effort to hold no fixed beliefs. I can watch the sun rise six days in a row and “believe” that it will rise on the seventh. But this isn’t a fixed belief, it’s just memory and understanding. I definitely do not hold the fixed belief that the sun will rise forever. As a matter of fact, I know this is impossible.

Many people assume nihilists are automatically immoral. They have no grounds to do so. I recently read a moronic tweet asking an atheist why he doesn’t just kill and rape anyone he wants? The atheist responded, “I do.” Of course he does, and so do I, because normal people don’t kill or rape. Let’s disambiguate the term nihilist from “asshole” forever. A better synonym for “asshole” would be “fanatic believer”.

Rosenberg takes a staunch materialist view of everything, it seems. He thinks that matter and energy and strict causality created all of reality, and that absolutely everything can be answered by physical facts. I find this ridiculous on a few levels. At exactly what point in history did science gain all the answers? It is a perfectly true fact that science has never had all the answers.

In the early days of the Newtonian revolution, everyone thought his system was The System. Of course Einstein proved that he was completely wrong. Sure, Newton’s theories were a huge jump forward owing to their usefulness, but let me just reiterate, he was wrong. The idea that there is some absolute space and absolute time is pure fiction, false to the facts of the universe. To assume physics will ever have all the answers is to disregard history with a faulty intellectual hubris. Not surprising since Rosenberg believes history is meaningless.

Everything that science has illuminated, it has done so through the human nervous system. There are no cold, hard facts sitting out there in a vacuum. Everything we understand about reality happens as a result of some nervous system interacting with the universe, of which that nervous system is a part. We can talk about the material basis for thoughts and feelings, but in order to express the uniqueness of each individual, we need something more.

Every one of us lives in our own unbelievably complex semantic environment. We interact with symbols, languages and feelings all the time, and all of these experiences become uniquely related to the observer. Even contemporary material science recognizes the effect of the observer on an observed physical system. Of course life loses meaning and purpose when you only consider the material side of reality. The semantic side is full of meaning, and inextricably linked to everything we know or can know about the universe.

Somehow Mr. Rosenberg thinks he can speak for the universe by eliminating the human experience. Then again, I haven’t read his book. I’ve only read the review. Anyway, it’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

I liked the bullet point Q & A that outlines Rosenberg’s position, so I’ll just give a quick rundown with my first reactions for your reading pleasure. Naturally snappy answers to big questions are oversimplified.

Is there a God? No.

“Yes” or “No” doesn’t matter much to me without any attempt to define God.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

Physics itself says nothing. Physics is the name human beings have given to our own scientific observation of the universe. But even physicists don’t agree. There is still no fully developed model of our universe that doesn’t contain huge contradictions. Loop quantum gravity, string theory, etc., are not compatible. Even the Big Bang is just a theory, and one that no monolithic scientific community can get behind. To assume our current science is on the right track to discover everything is ridiculous. As our powers of perception continue to increase there will be always be more unknowns in the universe.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

The question is a teleological error. Teleology, the doctrine that final causes exists, is nonsense to most modern philosophers, so the question is a silly one. The answer is correct though.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

I dare Rosenberg to define the word “meaning”. If he chooses to define his words with other words, and to define those words with still more words, he will eventually come to either a circular definition or ambiguous nonsense. Meaning is a function of the semantic structure of some human experience.

The term meaning is related to the level of abstraction taken into consciousness. Rosenberg wouldn’t admit that his book is meaningless, while most people should agree that a kitchen sink has no ‘meaning’. Meaning involves a cohesive structure of symbols, interpreted through a nervous system, reason, emotion, intuition, etc. As a writer, I consciously create meaning through the manipulation of symbols. Meaning is what we make it.

Of course if he’s talking about some objective meaning for all of life, I agree there’s no master plan at work here outside of our own.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Yes. Good call.

Does prayer work? Of course not.

On this point he is actually wrong. There have been numerous studies that show results from prayer and meditation. Even if prayer only serves to focus one’s attention on certain concerns, it has had an effect. This type of answer reeks of dogmatic atheism, a fanatical belief which I have no time for.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

Are you kidding? Once again, asking ambiguous questions, making no attempt to define the topics, and writing them off. Forgivable in this short-form index.

Is there free will? Not a chance!

Hmm. It’s tough to define consciousness, but among its criteria is the ability to apply different responses to stimuli. The more responses an organism can have to a given stimulus, the more conscious it is. This is a very reduced and ambiguous definition, but broadly acceptable to my mind. Strict determinism makes a lot of questionable assumptions about why different reactions would be given to the same stimuli. Chaos Theory and quantum effects might form a material basis for an answer, but that level of reality is effected by observation.

It’s very easy to feel from daily experience that the decisions we make come from thinking and not because of material, deterministic factors. To say that thoughts are only the results of electronic impulses is to completely disregard the human experience, to disregard quality over quantity.

What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on before, except us.

To be fair and literal, nothing ever just goes on as before.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.

This may sound controversial, but I agree. I do not believe in moral absolutes, and as there is no such thing as a teleological expert, all moral systems are of equal value. Obviously going around killing people isn’t helpful to oneself or anyone else, and so is simply stupid. I do agree with his assumption that people are naturally inclined to be good and nice.

Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.

I more or less agree here. I think personal happiness is a good goal for life, and everyone’s personal happiness is connected with mine.

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.

To quote the creed of Hassan-i Sabbah “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” Sabbah was the founder of the Assassins…so he’s probably not a great example for “nice nihilism”.

What is love and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it.

Huh?

Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.

History is a collection of data on the experiences and interaction of organisms similar to myself. If I can glean anything about what motivates people to act, I can apply this knowledge to my own decision-making process.

Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with (2-3).

I have no reaction to this one.

 

P.S. I was reminded of a scene from The Big Lebowski that highlights the absurdity of this phobia towards nihilism. Three extortionists threaten to cut The Dude’s nuts off. Walter refers to them as Nazis but he is corrected by The Dude – they’re nihilists. Walter gets serious and says, “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, but at least it’s an ethos.”

Inside, Outside, and “The Real”

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Atheism is on the rise thanks to progress in empirical sciences and reason. This movement of un-belief is popular in our social media due to the satirical efforts of atheists like Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais. Unfortunately it seems that these outspoken atheists cannot argue against the devoutly religious using reason, and so resort to a campaign of constant ridicule. Besides being generally distasteful and disrespectful, their comments have the effect of polarizing people, getting laughs from like-minded people while causing believers to dig in their heels. They generally do not promote dialogue.

When confronting this disrespect of religion it’s helpful to remember that religions maintained their power for centuries by the systematic persecution of all those who disagreed with them. This is much worse than ridicule, and entrenched power structures still pull this nonsense today. It’s only now that U.S. politicians are taking a second look at the religiously-inspired intolerance of homosexuality. (And just this weekend, BBC reported that a 60-year-old woman was tortured for alleged witchcraft in Nepal, which assault was apparently sanctioned by the local village council. Last year a different woman was burnt alive for the same reason.)

The problem seems to be that everyone is so sure of themselves. I recently saw an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher that mocked a Newsweek article called “Heaven Is Real”, in which a comatose neurosurgeon claims to have visited the afterlife. Bill and his panelists scoffed in their usual manner, claiming the account was unscientific and unreal. While the account was definitely unscientific, its reality is debatable.

The scientific empiricist laughs the experience off as a hallucination, as unreal because it is not verifiable in a laboratory. They say that such an article is harmful to science, and therefore to society, because it promotes belief in the supernatural. They would argue rightly that belief in the supernatural leads away from belief in empirically-testable phenomena and hence towards insanity.

Of course there is no doubt that Dr. Eben Alexander’s experience was real to him. It reordered his conception of reality and was a transformative experience with obvious subjective value. He is not wrong to write about his experience, though he is wrong to call it scientific. The whole method of science is to root out those variables that are purely subjective.

This debate brings me to one of my favorite topics: The Real. I get a lot of personal joy from the fuzzy definitions of the word “real”. Individually the definitions of the word are unbearably limiting because they fail to acknowledge the multi-ordinality of the word (to borrow a term from Alfred Korzybski). The definition of the word “real” depends entirely on its context and the structure of the argument in which it is used.

Through our entire lives experience is the primary datum. We can’t even properly speak of the universe without reference to our experience of it. Scientific advancements are valuable to us because they can make the macroscopic, microscopic, or sub-microscopic realms intelligible to our experience, just as a telescope is merely a technological extension of our sense of sight. A telescope does not measure the reality of far away places; it is the empiricist who proclaims “I see it, therefore it is real.”

“The empiricist…thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.” – G. Santayana

I am comfortable in proclaiming the reality of subjective experience. However, subjective experience has the insidious tendency to colour our perceptions of the outside world. William James says the mystic has every right to his or her visions, and that no outsider can refute this. However the corollary to this is that mystical realities are valid only to the one experiencing them and do not extend beyond the subjective realm. The connection between the inside and the outside cannot be perfect.

This is where I can get on board with Bill Maher: theism and atheism aside, when purely subjective experiences leak out into the objective world, the objective world is made insane. When religious metaphysics shape our social policies, the politicians are out of touch with the external reality they ought to be governing. It is only when subjective experiences are true to the facts of the external world that they should be used to dictate external laws. To do otherwise is a confusion of planes; what is real externally may not be real internally and vice versa.

Zeno’s paradox of dichotomy, which states we can never make it to our destination because we have to first travel half way there, then half of the remaining distance, and so on ad infinitum, is silly and insane because it disregards the external fact that we don’t travel according to logarithmic principles. I simply walk to my destination and arrive without noticing when I’m half or three-quarters of the way there. Zeno puts mathematics before experience, but mathematics is a priori and doesn’t refer to nature.

When empirical policies must be formed, empirical laws must be obeyed. When we decide our own personal code of beliefs and ethics, the subjective experiences of our life will be determinative. To regulate belief from without would also be a mistake. As for religion, if a subjective, personal connection to the divine becomes good enough for everyone, I bet these atheists won’t have much to say about it. It’s mainly belligerent evangelism they’re trying to tear down.

A Far-Off Utopia

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Science and religion don’t traditionally get along. The premises of religion are scientifically untenable while religious experience remains unquantifiable by scientific method. Of course being religious doesn’t mean you can’t be scientific and vice versa, but it occurred to me recently that science and religion don’t work together because they face opposite directions.

The scientific worldview gets more and more refined through time. It offers increasingly accurate discovery of our world, more and better ways to deal with problems, and continually improves on itself (in theory, at least). Science progresses along a forward timeline towards a far-off technological utopia.

Many religions, on the other hand, feel that we live in dark times. Hindu belief calls this age the Kali Yuga, as in Kali, the demon of confusion and pain. They consider it an age of spiritual degeneration, a dark age. Many Christians would agree that we live in an age of moral disintegration marked by vice and irreverence. There is something slower, more solemn, and holier about the past. They long for Eden.

The scientific person might say the religious person longs for something that doesn’t exist. Science considers the beliefs of the olden days naive; they didn’t have the tools or knowledge we have today. Since the scientific acumen of the people grows constantly, the people of the past must have been exceedingly dumb, relative to today, and especially relative to tomorrow.

The religious person has faith in a different mode of existence outside the scope of science. They don’t really look to go back in time, they are looking to get outside of time. Their Eden (or Heaven, for that matter) represents an extra-temporal mode of being, free from degeneration. Scientists can scoff all they like, the religious person isn’t worried. They can feel sure such a mode of existence is real, even without direct experience, because it has been documented through all stages of history as a fundamental human experience.

Technological utopia is unrealistic. As the leading-edge of technology is pushed further and further by specialists, the ability to integrate systems becomes harder and harder. The pursuit of technological achievement fills our world with cancer, confusion and noise in a way that makes it very difficult for us to find the sacred.

Eden is a mystical fable written by a desert-mad prophet and its lessons contribute very little to modern humanity. Longing for simpler times is fine, but shying away from technological convenience pulls one out of step with the rest of society. The world keeps getting noisier and the effects are inescapable.

If scientific and religious progress stopped, the scientifically-minded could still look for their utopia by looking outward towards an integrated, perfected whole while the religious-minded could look for their utopia by turning inwards to the realms of personal experience. Religion and science would still be looking opposite directions.

Maybe this is a good thing. Two heads are better than one, and if you look two different directions you have a better sense of the big picture. Interestingly, where history meets the future and the inner intersects the outer, we find the here and now.

Change Your Brain – Pt. 1

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One of the most exciting areas of modern science is the study of neuroplasticity. Neurologists and behaviorists have known for decades that most behaviors are learned through repetition. Synapses fire between neurons when the brain is working, and after enough repetition these neurons form relatively permanent bonds.

In recent years scientists have been showing us that brain training is not just reserved for psychologists, behaviorists, or neurologists. Meaningful change is available for everyone. Neuroplasticity is for the end-user, meaning those of us who have brains.

When we think of changes we would like to make in our lives, few of us choose things that are impossible. I doubt serious people get depressed because they cannot levitate themselves or read minds clearly. Most often the changes we would like to see are practical – we want more money, a change in career, or to be happier.

Real changes like this are achievable, and the answers to our problems are often obvious. Work hard and ask for a raise, find a better job, stop sweating the small stuff. But we are all creatures of habit and often lasting changes like these can seem unattainable. The reason these changes seem unattainable is because our neurons are simply not used to firing in the particular way we want. This means that even conceiving of life as we would like it to be is a challenge to our existing thought patterns.

If we agree that behaviors are learned through training, reiteration, and neurological fortification, why should any realistic change be out of reach? Being unfamiliar with something is a lame excuse not to try it and we all know it. If we want change we should be willing to challenge the things we value, to reassess things we find distasteful, and to search out ideas we haven’t even heard of.

These three books challenged my beliefs and enriched my mind.

"The Sacred and the Profane"1. The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade is a Romanian scholar who takes an academic approach to spiritual problems. He has written profoundly on yoga, shamanism, mythology and philosophy. The Sacred and the Profane is a study of holiness, giving new language to concepts I previously only intuited. With incredible scholarship Eliade relates the idea of the “sacred” with time, space, and psychology in a way that simply makes sense. The approach to the sacerdotal is likened to erecting a pillar in space. This pillar is obviously not literal, but extends away from the world toward our conception of the “holy”. This justifies the idea of holy places and non-temporal states of being while placing them firmly in our secular world. I would recommend this book to atheists and materialists.

 

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"2. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

This groundbreaking work posits that early man actually spoke with the gods, as most ancient literature asserts. It asks why early literature is replete with references to the gods, why most theurgic speech comes in metered form, and why this is much less common now. The thesis is that the human brain was different back then – that the right and left hemispheres of the brain were more distantly connected because the corpus callosum had not yet solidified as a bridging structure between the lobes – and that the so-called dialogue with gods was actually the two hemispheres of the brain communicating with each other. This sounds far out, but this long essay puts forward a fascinating argument that sheds new light on ancient history. What this means if true is that our conception of human consciousness as something that has gradually evolved since the time of the neanderthal is wrong, and that human consciousness as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon on earth. This is the kind of book that, while you read it, your eyebrows raise higher and higher. Since I have heard nothing like this theory anywhere else, I recommend this book to anyone.

 

"Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer"3. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by Dr. John Lilly

Using computer language, this beautiful, bizarre little manual describes the behavioral patterns of our body-brain complex (the biocomputer), and implies how we might reprogram our software (ideas and behavioral patterns) to achieve personal change. The language can seem tough to wrap one’s head around at first, but there’s nothing quite like learning a new jargon to get those synapses firing in new ways. The book also talks about metaprograms, which are the subconscious routines that set the table for behavioral programs. For example, I will be less likely to appreciate hip-hop (program) if I am subconsciously racist against black people (metaprogram). Once the learning curve of language is mounted this book reads like a slender, elegant volume of instructions on creating new behaviors. Recommended for wordy sad-sacks.

Big Bang Theory vs. Kubrick’s “The Shining”

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BIG BANG THEORY

The Big Bang Theory is the current, widely-accepted model of the birth of our universe. It was formulated in the early 20th century and refined to the present by progressive theory and experiment. The Big Bang is based on observations of redshifts in distant stars (meaning the stars are getting further from us), background radiation, and other conditions observed in our universe, and the scientific majority agrees that the universe is expanding from its origin as a singularity. The model explains many questions about why our universe is the way it is. Ongoing reiteration and support from the scientific community has made worldwide scientific hegemony of the matter despite that common sense tells us it’s impossible.

The Big Bang Theory is not a scientific fact. It is a theory. It states that our whole universe exploded out of a singularity almost infinitely dense and almost infinitely small. But how can we believe, based on observation (i.e. scientifically), that our whole universe with it’s mind-boggling mass and size can fit into a point smaller than an electron? Common sense and experiential evidence tells us this is ridiculous, but expert testimony and high science support it as true. Counter arguments are generally dismissed by the scientific community and rarely make it to major media. Granted, physical and theoretical experiments have been carried out by “experts” to corroborate this majority opinion, but these experiments cannot prove The Big Bang Theory true in a way that is scientifically valid. The progress of this theory reminds me of the Vatican’s discussions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. At best The Big Bang Theory is a good speculation which can help further exploration.

Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, and other pop scientists in contemporary physics seem to agree, though they might differ on the finer points of the theory. While selling this line on a television program, Hawking went so far as to declare that there is no God, but offered up a cosmology just as miraculous – that the Big Bang just happened. They seem to miss the point that the role of a scientist is to observe and to postulate, not to declare completely unprovable opinions. There is no such thing as holy fiat in science, and it seems to me that these declarations hurt future science because they narrow the aperture with which coming generations will view the universe.

Of course we need scientists to operate at all levels of intelligence, and the smartest will likely be unintelligible to the majority of the world. Specialized science pushes the boundaries of knowledge omni-directionally, expanding our understanding at increasing rates. But because the average person cannot understand quantum physics or super string theory, scientists are forced to dumb down their message, forcing people to accept certain assumptions without question, and this leads away from the spirit of science.

Initiates into scientific mysteries speak their own language, a jargon developed throughout history. The Vatican is likewise initiated into its own specialized explanations of mysteries. The cosmological explanations of the Dark Ages made some sort of sense to people of the time, even if they sound absurd from a secular, contemporary point-of-view. But look past the God question and ask if there are things in religion that improve humanity. Cultivation of morality, relief from personal suffering, and religious experiences are real effects that can be explained with the models put forth by the church. To that end, debating the fate of souls has some relevance, even if is clothed in bizarre cultural symbols. We should assume current theories will seem equally absurd in the future.

It is not my intent to say whether The Big Bang Theory is true or false. Obviously I don’t know. My complaint is the dogmatic approach modern popular science takes. Dogma caused the Dark Ages. If the theory explains the universe in a way you find personally useful, then by all means use the theory. But if you have a hard time believing that the whole universe can be contained in a space of virtually zero volume, then you shouldn’t just accept the theory because specialists in scientific jargon say it’s true.

THE SHINING

In the novel The Shining by Stephen King, a hotel caretaker is haunted by ghosts. These ghosts, who inhabit The Overlook Hotel, possess Jack Torrence, driving him to murder his child Danny. These ghosts have many magical capabilities, including the animation of lions made of shrubbery. Fortunately, Danny has a magical friend Tony to look out for him and keep him safe. The novel left me unsatisfied, and part of this is because I can’t comprehend the scope of the forces at work. There is so much magic happening that as a reader I’m forced to suspend my disbelief throughout. Even if I stay with the story to the end, I understand that nothing real is at stake.

But most people would agree there are no such things as ghosts, no such thing as magical fairies from the future who can tell you where to hide, and no such things as hedges that can bite your face off. Most people today are much too rational for beliefs like this. And this is why the film adaptation of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick is a far superior work of art.

In the film, the antagonism is believable. People understand that the mind is a fragile thing. It is able to bend and warp into psychosis and we understand this because we see it every day in the news. People do go on murderous rampages. Bushes do not attack people. Kubrick eliminated the hedge lions completely and focused the malevolent forces within the psychology of Jack Torrence. Instead of suspending disbelief, the audience is able to fully engage with the descent into madness of an alcoholic with cabin fever and the sympathetic intuitions of his young son.

The film version of The Shining is simply more honest. For most of us, possession by ghosts sounds impossible unless it is explained by way of psychology. The film trumps the novel every time because a) it is perfectly executed, and b) it is based on something society can observe and understand, as opposed to the Big Bang.

Art is about showing truth. Science is about finding truth. Speculation is a good starting point for both, but only as a spring-board to truth. In the end, truth should trump speculation every time. Therefore the winner in this week’s Battle Of Unrelated Things is Kubrick’s The Shining.

Centrifugal Farce

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[It's a bad pun, I know. This post is early because I'm seeing Antibalas tomorrow night. - ERS]

Early in university a lifelong friend and physicist told me that centrifugal force didn’t exist. I shook my head and made him repeat it. Maybe I should have figured this out on my own, but it was something I was taught and I never questioned it. Remember that grade school experiment where you wheel a bucket of water around and no water falls out? Of course no water falls out, that’s centrifugal force! Well guess what, there is no measurable radial force acting outward from the center of the orbit.

Even more mind blowing was the fact that just the opposite is true – objects traveling in circular paths were subject to centripetal force which draws them in toward the center of their orbit instead of outward. This seems to contradict experience, but it’s true and provable. We don’t notice it because we don’t have the sensory capacity for it. Usually we’re distracted by the other forces at work.

It turns out that centrifugal force is actually just a name that’s been given to the apparent outward force, which is actually caused by tangential momentum. If you let that bucket go, it doesn’t fly away or toward the center of its orbit (your shoulder), it continues on a straight path at a tangent to its orbit, ninety degrees to the radius (subject to gravity if you’re trying this on Earth). But the continual drag of tangential momentum, the inertia of the payload, levied against the constant circular pull of your arm really does feel like a force traveling outward from the center.

And because tangential momentum always figures in orbital paths, we can actually talk about centrifugal force meaningfully, even if it doesn’t exist or is only a linguistic convenience. The concept of centrifugal force is false but meaningful. It comes to mind that there might be other false but meaningful ideas in use daily.

Euclid laid down the rules of geometry as we know it. We regularly refer to lines, angles, corners, squares and so forth, but there is literally no straight line or perfect circle in nature. We can always look just a little closer to find a flaw. Hell, quantum physics tells us that if we zoom in to a small enough scale, things are fundamentally amorphous and fuzzy. But we can still use the principles of Euclid’s geometry to do useful things within our fuzzy world. There are other kinds of geometry that are equally valid but are simply not as popular.

Utility drives our language. Human beings have needed different concepts for different times, so language has developed over our entire history. Animals running through the forest need to be differentiated so I can communicate that the animal salivating behind you is a tiger, not your neanderthal wife. Inuit languages have many words for snow, Sanskrit has many words for inner states, and the language of politics is full of bureaucratic bullshit.

Concepts don’t have to be true to be useful. The Ptolemaic system made sense to them back then, even if it’s laughable by today’s standards. That’s something to keep in mind when scientists get pompous – two hundred years from now people will be shaking their heads and saying, “Can you believe how primitive their understanding was?”

“[A}ny hypothesis, however absurd, may be useful in science, if it enables a discoverer to conceive things in a new way; but … when it has served this purpose by luck, it is likely to become an obstacle to further advance."

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

This is kind of like the placebo effect. When subjects in drug tests are given sugar pills with the standard accompanying medical ritual, the drugs often work because people believe they will. In fact, they often work better than the real drugs. If we can convince ourselves of the validity of a proposition, we open ourselves to its functionality. This is why I don't like to trash talk religions and belief systems. If it works, use it. As John Lennon said, "Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right, it's all right."

Interestingly, we don't need to consciously believe something for the placebo effect to work. Our subconscious or unconscious impulses can do the work for us. In fact there's no need to hold on tightly to beliefs. After all, we can believe something and be wrong. And if we identify ourselves with a belief system, we'll tend to clash with opposing belief systems. But its more useful to take what we need, use what works, and move along on our own orbit.

Get yourself into the head-space of someone who believes something you don't. It's a fun experiment. And let someone prove one of your beliefs wrong. That's not so fun at first, but feels better in the long run. Either way, it's growth.

[Note: By reading this post you are subject to The Schiller Effect, which obligates you to buy a Schiller a beer the next time you see him or her. Something with a decent hop bill too, don't get cute.]

Unsatisfying Mysteries

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When I was young I used to enjoy the show Unsolved Mysteries, which I just realized is a redundant title. There was something alluring about watching adults like Robert Stack investigate strange situations and come up with no answer. Robert Stack spoke with authority, so if he couldn’t figure it out, there must be something magical at work.

The other night I came across a similar show. I can’t remember the name of it. I’m glad my brain knew to forget. In this show an authoritative narrator told us about mysterious science experiments, and the worst actors ever helped to dramatize these unsolved mysteries.

The show reenacted a man attempting to measure the weight of a soul by measuring patients as they died. He placed the unfortunate “consumptive” patients on a scale and had to wait out their final moments, which, judging from the look on the actor’s face, took a really long time. But behold, the body did lose some of its mass. Whether this account is accurate or not is probably not worth worrying about.

This became the “21 grams” legend that inspired a movie I haven’t seen. That this landmark of scientific inquiry faded into obscurity isn’t surprising; it’s built on a slush pile of ambiguous principles. The operational assumption that every “thing” in the universe has mass is wrong; light exists but has no measurable mass. This blog exists but has no mass. Not yet…

But my favorite piece of illogic is the assumption that if a dying body loses weight, the soul must have escaped. It’s interesting that this “scientist” thinks the soul is something you can hold in your hand, like an overripe eggplant. At no point does he attempt to define the soul. When you break it down, the implication made by his experiment is this: “The soul is something that has weight and leaves upon death.” Defined mathematically: Weight Loss = Soul Leaving. It’s nonsense.

These types of shows, while disguised as a rational investigation, never give rational answers. Every case covered in this episode ended with a question, i.e. “Did Dr. Whatsisname prove the existence of the soul?”

No. No he obviously didn’t.

After sleeping on it, I realized something very obvious. These shows aren’t aimed at the rational crowd. They are aimed for people looking for a mystery. And here is where I’m torn, because I have a hunch there is psychological worth in cultivating mystery and awe in the unknown. Big questions are important, like what am I? Where did we come from? Where did they find these actors? Why did nobody watch the edited footage? Why did nobody edit the actors out?

Fortunately there are people in the world who take the mysteries of the human condition seriously. Werner Herzog’s Into The Abyss is a recent documentary exploring murder and the death penalty. As usual, Herzog asks questions that matter because they lead us into the deep realities of his subjects. The mystery in question is how and why a person or a state commits murder.

I definitely didn’t laugh as much watching Into The Abyss as I did watching that other show. So they both have their pros and cons, I suppose. Maybe watching Unsolved Mysteries back then actually did foster my reverence for mystery. In meditation I explore mysteries of my own that are far deeper and more personal than could ever be caught on tape, so perhaps I took what I needed and outgrew Unsolved Mysteries. Thanks Mr. Stack.

These days I’m more enriched by people like Herzog who ask questions out of a deep respect for life and to leave us thinking about mysteries. Unsolved Mysteries and similar shows all end with the conclusion that “We may never know the answer,” and that seems to me like it actually discourages thinking rather than inciting it.

A Short Case for Yoga

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THE FALSE BINARY

We all have moments where we’re ‘in our heads’, oblivious to the world around us. And we all have moments where we’re fully so fully engaged in a physical task that we’re not consciously thinking. Our language has separate words for both mind and body, and so we perceive them as two distinct items. But they are connected by yet another remarkable structure: the central nervous system (CNS). As essential to a square as four sides, the body, mind, and action of the CNS are integrated parts of a whole, living being.

So what are they?

1) I am a mind. I perceive the world and think. I can think conceptually and abstractly, I can think about specific sense impressions, and I can imagine new things. I practice induction and deduction and can grasp universal concepts such as mathematics and Euclidean geometry, and I can apply these ideas to the physical world around me through the medium of my body.

2) I am a body. I have mass and physical extension in dimensions perceivable by my mind. I am a collection of organs and fluids. I am a skeleton. I can operate machinery, apply force to objects, and use my own physical geometry to accomplish an innumerable amount of physical tasks.

3) I am a central nervous system. The word spirit is put here often and that’s fine because it represents the breath of action between body and mind. At any rate, the CNS mediates between the mind and body in continuous feedback loops, sending out actions and taking in impressions. Electricity runs our brains and fires through synapses. This interaction is somewhat mysteriously represented as our consciousness.

The brain, which is the base of the central nervous system, is part of the body. Scientists look at the brain and see correlations between activities in the brain and activities in behavior and consciousness. In Western philosophy, this proves that the brain causes consciousness. But the fact that a neuron fires in my brain doesn’t explain the phenomena of consciousness. Why should, and more importantly, how does a neuron firing represent itself as the smell of coffee or the sight of another person?

In Eastern religious philosophy, consciousness is primary, and dictates to the brain what action to take. But this argument has no empirical evidence to support it, unless you consider the Radical Empiricism of William James, a favorite of mine. Either way, there is nothing objectively measurable to confirm the hypothesis.

Modern Western thought doesn’t think the mind/body connection very mysterious these days. The central nervous system mediates between the mind and the body, so what? But how it operates is more magical than anything dreamt up in fantasy fiction. Think about it: I simply will the synapses to fire in my brain, tell them to send a signal through my nervous system, into my shoulder, arm, wrist and hand, to lift a glass of Laphroaig single malt scotch to my mouth. The scotch is smokey and beautiful. And I don’t even have to will my stomach to digest it or my liver to siphon out all that lovely alcohol. Now that is a spirit I can believe in. Ahhhh..Digression.

If you look around though, it’s obvious that not everyone has figured the whole mind/body thing out. This is because the issue is not as simple as naming it. When you see people carrying around a lot of extra weight, or slouching with bad posture, what is to blame? Does their mind will their body to slouch? Are they effectively slouching mentally? Or are they physically unable to walk tall? Or is their central nervous system not controlling things properly? Something isn’t right. In order to have our mind/body/spirit in best working order, we need some way to integrate them all into a unified whole, with all parts complimentary to each other.

If there was some way to plug into the mind and draw it down to invigorate the CNS to exalt the body to it’s optimal working order, then obviously we would be as healthy and effective as possible for our circumstances. Well it turns out that technology has been around for over five thousand years.

SOFT TECHNOLOGIES

When we think of the word ‘technology’ we often think of physical things. A phone and a car are examples of technology, but technology has other forms. At some point in ancient history, something like a man or woman realized it could use physical objects as tools. Soon everyone was doing it and it made things easier. The use of hand tools is arguably the first soft technology.

When they realized they were more effective in groups and they wanted a way to communicate with each other, language was laboured into existence. Now they could use their brains together like never before; they were on the fast track to technological advancement. Communicating with each other would only improve their effectiveness as a group and further accelerate their advance as a species.

At some point before 3000 B.C., a soft technology was developed to synergize the individual. It aimed to unify the mind and body into a whole, so they called it “unity”. Today we call it “yoga”.

YOGA

Here is the deal: there is no mystery about it. Yoga is a series of exercises that systematically integrate your mind and body while fine-tuning your central nervous system. Using breath, you train your mind to will energy and consciousness through your nervous system which you extend and stretch and hold in a series of postures. Breath is the physical vehicle whereby attention and energy is brought to every part of the body, all of which require regular use to maintain optimal health. And as they say on television: exercise is important.

But at the same time, the experience of actually doing yoga can be as mysterious and magical or rational and logical as you want it to be. The rational arguments for yoga make perfect sense. The mystical arguments for yoga…well, dissolve yourself into the process and see for yourself. Keep in mind that you’ll be using your body, mind, and spirit in new integrated ways to produce new, enhanced types of experience.

There are different kinds of yoga, from pure, still meditation, to vigorous physical activity, and obviously doing a range of these things is best. Some people find satisfaction in physical yogas, and do only those, but that is only half the battle. On the other hand some people are satisfied with raj yoga or meditation and don’t bother with the physical. Remember, the key is integration and unity, so the practice should become ongoing in different ways. After all, the mind and body are two parts of a whole. As I work down into the body and up into the mind, I become more attuned to each, and more aware of the connection between the two.

Maybe most importantly, yoga brings about self-awareness. You become more conscious of breathing well, and more conscious of energy flow. You start to pay attention to what you eating, and how much, and how you’re digesting everything. You raise your physical and mental capacities by integrating them and become more aware of cause and effect between them.

There are probably millions of pages on yoga out there, but like anything practical, the proof is in the experience. If being a more integrated and effective person is something worth working for, yoga just might be for you.

 

 

Angels and Demons at Play

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I hope you enjoy this week’s post. Here’s some reading music from the always-relevant Sun Ra.

Maxwell’s Demon

In a nineteenth-century thought experiment, the physicist James Clerk Maxwell showed that the second law of thermodynamics is more of a strong suggestion than a law. The experiment shows our universe’s natural entropy can be subverted using intelligence. I think we all hope some kind of super-intelligence can prevent the disintegration of our universe.

Imagine a box filled with gas. Now divide it in two by a wall. We put a tiny door in the wall the size of one gas molecule. Now we put a demon in there to operate the door. The demon watches the gas molecules bump and grind against themselves on the dance floor and he sees that some are hotter and faster than others. He watches for a hot molecule from This Side on a trajectory with the door and he opens it. The hot molecule goes through to the Other Side. The demon keeps doing this, and letting cooler molecules back through the door to This Side. Suddenly we have a distinct temperature difference without adding outside energy; things are becoming less homogenous, and we have more energy to do work.

The experiment is meant to show that information (the demon’s intelligence) can be used like an energy source to do physical work. Of course in the experiment, the demon is an energy source doing work inside the box, but what the experiment points out is that the right organizing principle can reform our our fundamental ideas about how the universe works. Maybe Mind can reverse the decay of matter.

I once had a conversation with a Creationist who claimed there is no such thing as negative entropy, therefore God must have intervened to create us. But human beings have always organized into more and more methodical structures, physically, culturally, and mentally, for all of our history. Obviously this Creationist person was repeating an argument he had heard before, but it’s interesting to me that in his worldview, human beings are outliers in the natural order of things.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Author, inventor, engineer, philosopher, and autodidact Bucky Fuller realized in the twentieth century that technological advancement was making it possible to do more work with less materials and less time. This idea undermines Thomas Malthus’ proclamation that the world is a place of limited resources, hence there will always be “haves” and “have nots”.

Back in the day if I wanted to give you forty sheep for your daughter, I had to shepherd them to your house, then haul your daughter back to my place (gently, of course). That’s a lot of work. Transactions now happen using about three calories of thumbwork on a smartphone. Money and purchasing power are now metaphysical and with them you can buy physical labour to plow your fields, carry your luggage, and park your car, or you can purchase physical goods to do with what you like.

Fuller saw that every generation is increasingly technology-savvy, and the advancement of technology therefore increases exponentially. And technology allows humanity to accomplish more work using less pounds of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time at a correlative rate. This implies that the human race is more and more capable of supporting itself and doing the work it needs to do at a decreasing toll on natural resources.

He called this process “Ephemeralization“. Doesn’t that word sound like the name of an angel? Ephemeralization…she drifts over us intangibly, giving blessings of efficiency.

Unfortunately, the weapons get better as well.

One Big Happy Play-Thing

It’s exhilarating to think how fast our collective intelligence is rocketing us into the future. It’s a bit like a roller coaster in the dark; it could yank us in any direction and there are too many possibilities to prepare for. I’m new to smartphones while in science labs around the world right now people are accomplishing quantum levitation, invisibility clothes and 3D printing. (Cheers to the best invention using those three technologies together for something awesome.)

When I think of the amount of personal information I have floating around cyberspace it’s a little unnerving. And I don’t even use Facebook. Financial information, contact information for everyone I know, purchasing habits, web history, and so much more could be lifted and used for who-knows-what. I have the choice to be paranoid and secretive about my personal information, protect it from the Googles and Apples and Facebooks etc., or I can extend my trust and hope all the beautiful conveniences that come with those brands are symptomatic of good intentions.

Conceive of an “angel” as an organizing principle following good intentions, and conceive of a “demon” as an organizing principle following selfish and freedom-reducing intentions. Demons play dirty, but angels surely have the bigger team. Once the angels and demons have had their fun, my hope is that our collective will to survive and evolve will continue to move us forward to a point where everyone’s needs are met and people can get on with being happy.

And as always music is there to help us along.

“Without music life would be a mistake.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols