death & entropy

New Scientist – A British magazine that is to science journal Nature what Popular Mechanics is to the proceedings of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers journal – has reported a possible break-through for a peculiar twist on string theory.

The break-through reported in this article is the claim that noise interfereing with the Max Planck society’s Geo600 experiment to identify gravitational waves  is due to a fundamental limit in the divisibility of time. A quantum of time if one  use the term. Moreover according to theorist Craig Hogan this noise was predicted by the Holographic Principle, a bizarre theory that holds that 3d reality is projected from a fundamental 2d surface.

All of this, apparently comes back to a dispute between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking over black holes. Susskind was upset at Hawkings proposal that the information contained in matter which got sucked into a black hole simply ceased to be. He argued that instead the information was retained on the event horizon of the black hole. Extending this argument to the whole universe the theorists then suggested that the 3D universe could be a projection from a surface but that the universe we live in would, by necessity be blurry, because the amount of information on a 2D surface must be less that the amount of information in a 3D projection. The blur is the quantum of time supposedly picked up by Geo600.

Well, its a theory. And not being an astrophysicist I am in no position to argue with it. However as philosopher I am becoming increasingly interested in the psychology of this form of science.

What interests me is the fascination with the event horizon – the boundary over which information cannot pass. Because it looks to me suspiciously like a more personal horizon and that is the instant of death.

Black holes and death have a lot in common. Things go in, and they don’t come back. The proposition that the information of the doomed is retained somehow seems to me somewhat wishful.

Of course physicists would probably argue that when they speak of information, they are not talking about their life-stories. But my question to this is “why not?” We might not make much difference to the universe but we do make some. Our actions are shaped by our political, social and religious beliefs. Why is this information not captured on the surface of the event horizon? It is information it is in the universe, why is it irrelevant?

My personal belief is that in the cold-hearted universe in which we live humankind does not count for much. And yet Leonard Susskind has argued that this is not so. According to him the fact the the cosmological constant is such that it allows for the creation of humankind (of the 10^500 possible values it could have had) is a kind of evidence that the purpose of the universe is indeed to support humankind (among others presumably).

Personally the idea that information is not lost seems like a principle rooted in psychological need rather than any evidence. In my view information is constantly lost. How many individuals thoughts have evaporated into nothingness over the past two million years? Indeed Gregory Chaitain’s omega number suggests some information can simply never be inferred.

It may well be there is a limit to the divisibility of time. We already know there is a limit to the speed of information in the universe and it is a very small fraction of the overall size of the universe. It should not surprise us if time is indeed granular.

But whether physicists are correct in inferring from this to the rather more radial hypotheses this article is running up the flagpole remains to be seen. I am certainly old enough now to have seen a great many ‘revolutionary’ notions, simply vanish over time. If this one does, I certainly won’t be surprised.

What is now?

On the one hand relativity suggests “block time” or as T.S Elliot more poetically put it in The four Quartets “Burnt Norton”:

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.”

That is to say that everything that will happen, will have happened in the future, therefore the passage of time as we experience it is merely a formality. Time is a dimension and it doesn’t really matter whether we go forward or backward in it the same sequence of events will occur.

Or as Lewis Carroll has the Mad Hatter say in Alice through the Looking Glass:

“What a strange kind of memory to have that only works backwards”.

I am not a physicist but what I read of physics strongly suggests to me that many physicists are not really engaging in science at all but a form of speculative cosmology expressed in mathematics. For while string theory, m-brane theory, multiverses, and fractional dimensions are all very cute there is rather a dearth of good old fashioned experimental data on which to base such speculations. Brilliant as these theorists may be they are as likely to be wrong as Aristotle occasionally was on matters of empirical science – despite pretty much being the architect of that mighty foundation of rationalism himself.

The problem here is where the language of mathematics itself is leading us. Ever since Kurt Godel pulled the rug from under Russell and Whitehead, mathematics has been getting more and more slippery. More recently mathematicians such as Stephen Wolfram and Gregory Chaitan have started scouting the very boundaries of computability discovering large holes in the firmament of logic which suggest we may have to start seriously getting our spades dirty (ie do experimental mathematics) if we want to understand the nature of tools we are using to explain the universe.

And so I come back to the question of time. What is it?

A few somewhat obvious observations:

1. It is only positive (like a number squared) in that causality only works one way (for if it were to reverse some laws would have to reverse as well ).

2. We only remember backwards so we are more certain of the past than the future.

3. The moment Now! is the only moment in which we act or do anything. although we act in clear anticipation of events (eg catching a ball).

4. We all live with an unknown count-down to death

From this somewhat naive view I find it hard to class time as a dimension. It would be as if a physical dimension only had the value “left”. A dimension should be traversible in both directions.

While relativity describes space-time in deterministic language, quantum physics describes particles in statistical patterns. The former can reverse time but the latter is a sparkling combination of zillions of random events.

On a simple level then time is the realisation of what might be.

However here is an interesting thought about time and its perception: we experience time as a series of linked continuums. When we speak of “now” we are speaking of the current continuum. For example I write this early one morning while the infant and children play around and we have yet to sort out what we will do today. Now to me is this continuum.

The interesting thing about these continuums is the way they form contextual heirarchies. For example the continuum of international relations in Elizabethan England meant that the Spanish Armada came into abrupt and unfortunate (for it) contact with the Atlantic weather pattern continuum. Politics is subordinate to the weather just as people are subordinate to politics.

Political continuums must be treated very much as part of the universe as the actions of intelligent agents do impact on what happens. The interchange between intelligent agents is part of the functioning of the universe and cannot be divorced from it. What this illustrates is the rules of different contextual continuums can be very different – and indeed are not immutable. We do not know whether this is true of physical propensities (laws) but we haven’t evidence to the contrary so for the moment we must assume not.

The interesting thing about the notion of continuums is that they can clash or reverse and that this is the very nature of humour. I tell a story which develops one way and then it clashes or reverses and you laugh.

Another interesting point is that dreams are a legitimate, if entirely private continuums. Dreams affect people and make them do different things. Some dreams are believed to be prophetic in that they indicate continuums that might be ( as opposed to continuums that are impossible).

The notion that the universe is a story already told, lies in contrast to the notion that it is still one in the telling. The latter treats everything as a memory, the former treats everything as a moment in a continuum.

The Zen Buddhists focus everything on the moment which is now, and treat everything else as less certain. Now is the only time that is completely real, although not all continuums of that now may be known.

Threats and Opportunities and Meaning of Life

From a simple housefly to a human being to an animal to an alien intelligence the ability to assess threats and opportunities is the quality that distinguishes live from dead.

At essence is the ability to recognise a potential predator or food. It is absurd to contemplate a theory of perception that does not ground itself in this fundamental necessity of being. Also the ability to assess threat and evaluate opportunity is the very basis of any obvious measure of intelligence. If an entity cannot compete on this level nature does not muck around. Dodos are dead for a reason.

Naturally threats and opportunities are not limited to essential matters of survival. Both can be highly abstract. A senior academic may fight passionately and with skill for a car park in response to either a threat (to perceived status) or an opportunity (to improve status). The Inland Revenue Department is a highly abstract organisation but it inspires a lot of flight or fight responses in ordinary citizens.

The fact of perception being based on threat and opportunity does not in any way discount the possibility of selfless action. A mafiaoso may elect suicide to protect his family because he perceives a threat to them and sees suicide as the best opportunity to protect them. Once again this is at a higher level of abstraction than a housefly may be expected to act but nonetheless still linked to defence.

Some religious groups argue that ‘lusting and defending’ are the cornerstones of errors of consciousness. They suggest that God consciousness is beyond such things. My difficulty with this is that nearly all of these orders are highly heirarchial. Do they take turns to be Grand Poobar? Do they make appointments at random? No. Despite arguing for God conscienciousness in actual fact these organisations are highly political with each participant perceiving threats and opportunities within their own organisation as well as to it.

Looked at from the perspective of God (the self conscious universe) the threats or opportunities of all individuals will be perceived within the context of their ability to the abstract. A housefly could inspire a higher mind to brilliant poetry but that is not an opportunity for the housefly. Even if it does the meaning of the Housefly’s life is not based on the poetry it accidentally inspired.

Killing is an act that establishes a meaning relationship between killer and victim.

If I kill a housefly because it is annoying me I am asserting that the life of any housefly is only of value depending on the level of annoyance it causes me. If I kill a person for annoying me I am asserting the same thing.

The problem is that there is no obvious distinction as a being between one person and another. If I kill a person for annoying me I am allowing that people (including me) may be killed for annoying other people. I am debasing the value of life of all people by debasing the life of one.

This is an understanding of justice which seems natural in the sense that other species (eg wolves) understand it. That is that each act establishes a principle based on simple and obvious equivalences. Those equivalences are rooted in potential threats and opportunities.

Being and meaning

I have started this blog as a means to get down a range of views I have been developing about being. I am doing this, not as part of a course in philosophy (although I do have some training in that subject) but in order to tease out some themes which I believe will only reveal themselves to me in the course of writing them down.

My objective is to use as much plain English as I can. I do not want to invent words or use jargon, or even comment on the special uses of words that others may have made (eg Heideigger’s dasein). This is essentially about a thought experiment in plain English to see where it leads.

It starts with that fundamental question: why ? Why something and not nothing? Why me ? Why is it so? Why am I constrained? Why am I free ? Why am I conscious ? Why do I believe others are conscious? And what do the answers to the questions (if there are any) mean?

So lets start with some definitions. My object here is to establish a lexicon that does not defy ordinary usage but which simplifies areas of considerable debate. A secondary concern is that it is not anthropocentric. This lexicon could apply as well to a Dog as any non-earth-dwelling species.

I: the entity aware of its choices, threats and opportunities

Being: the act of Self Consciousness

Consciousness: The ability to make choices, assess threats and opportunities

Time: The difference between anticipation and memory

Anticipation: the recognition that I am able to predict the circumstances of a time that has not happened.

Intelligence: The capacity for handling Complexity in Consciousness

Complexity: the amount of data needed to fully explain a choice, threat or opportunity

World: the context in which I am presented with choices, threats and opportunities

Others: entities in the world which appear to have choices, face threats and have opportunities

Self: My experience of being Conscious in the World according to my Intelligence

Communication: The act I or Others make of expressing my Consciousness and Self to Others

Language: A set of Communication protocols for actions I have learned from Others designed to express my Self and relate to Others

Knowledge: A set of anticipations that can be expressed as language.

Natural Language: A set of inter-species Communication protocols for threats and opportunities

Meaning: the intended interpretation from any form of act of Communication or Being

Love: the emotion I have for Others which means I will regard them as near approximations of my Self

God: the conjecture that the world is also an ‘other’

Society: the protocols and rules for interacting with others

Animals: creatures I do not recognise as being like me

Childhood: the period of time when I am smaller and more vulnerable than Others and rely on my parents to guide me in Society and protect me in the World.

Parents: those who choose to protect and guide Children in Society and the World

Dimension: the degrees of freedom for action in the world

What I am trying to point out here is that the concept of “I” is very much connected not only to what I think I sense but also what I think I can do. That is that action and sensation are inextricably linked. Equally that others are an inherent part of our reality. Thus divisions between ethics and knowledge and society are entirely artificial and do not actually occur in real-life.