Time To Question Time: Part Two

Time is the most mysterious concept that you are likely to think about. You know exactly what time is, unless you actually have to explain it and then things bog down. If you admit that time is pure puzzlement, well you’re not alone as the nature of time has been endlessly debated by thinkers, good, bad and average, ever since humans had the ability to think. Okay, I’m a thinker, so here are my thoughts in Q & A form about time.  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Q. Is time travel to the future possible?

A. Time travel to the future is easy – you’re doing it right now at the rate of one second per second – boring – or when you fall asleep (or pass out drunk), next thing you know you are in the future, ahead by several hours. You’ve skipped or jumped over some interval of time. That’s what one usually means by travel to the future. It is jumping over some significant interval of time without having to experience or live through it, like say going from 2013 to 2015 and avoiding 2014 entirely. Of course when you arrive in the ‘future’, be it the following morning or by skipping 2014, it’s no longer the future but the present – the ‘now’. It’s actually impossible to be in or to exist in the future, it’s only possible to head towards the future, which you do anyway at the rate of one minute per minute. 

I guess you could construct a philosophical argument that relative to your point of view of yesterday, if you say skipped a day and landed in tomorrow, you are now in the future, but such convolutions don’t get us very far since the you that existed yesterday no longer has any existence or meaning either today or tomorrow or post tomorrow. In fact, the person you call “you” that existed one second ago has now come and gone and passed away into history. The only you that has any reality is the person you call “you” that exists right now.

Apart from your normal modes of time travel into the future, you can accelerate the process. There’s also Einstein’s Relativity twin paradox whereby relative to an outside observer, time, as in rate of change, slows down for someone who is travelling at velocities that are approaching some goodly fraction of the speed of light. So, a twin who heads off at a rapid rate of knots and boldly goes, when returning to meet and greet her stay-at-home twin, will find that though twins they might be, their ages are now different. The stay-at-home twin has aged more quickly, or the boldly going twin has aged more slowly depending on your ‘relativity’ point of view, which isn’t really a paradox, rather the consequences of what happens when you travel at a very rapid rate of knots relative to someone who doesn’t.

However, the same philosophy or argument from those several paragraphs above applies in that you, in this case the you that’s the boldly going twin, is never in the future, only in the now or existing in what passes for the present (along with your stay-at-home twin). That applies even if that present is tens of thousands of years after you were born, which is possible (and thus your stay-at-home twin has long since died and returned to dust). No matter which way you slice and dice things, you only have reality in the present that you find yourself in. 

Q. And what do you conclude about the viability of time travel to the future from the above?

A. Ultimately, to my way of thinking, time travel, even to the future (by skipping over periods of time), is impossible since again time is a concept and not a thing, like a road or a river you have to travel continuously on, up and down on. If time is just a concept, then time travel is illogical.

Q. Is there any other likely impediment to time travel?

A. Yes there is. When you visualise standard time travel stories or films to the past or to the future, your time machine or device keeps you firmly attached to the same set of terrestrial coordinates from which you started, so if you say start in New York City (2013) and go plus or minus say 200 years either to the future (2213) or to the past (1813), you’ll end up in the New York City of that time. That’s bonkers! In that 200 years, either way, Planet Earth on which New York City is attached, but you are not, has moved. Planet Earth is attached to the Sun (gravitationally) and the Sun is in orbit around the Milky Way Galaxy, which itself is moving in space, so when you materialize 200 years in the past or future, the odds are extremely likely that you will materialize into the depths of outer space! Even if you ignore all that, the Earth will not make an exact number of solar orbits and axis revolutions over 200 years to bring you back into exact alignment with the terrestrial coordinates you started out from. So, you just might materialize smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Oops! What one really needs is a time and space machine like the Doctor’s TARDIS where you can also set spatial coordinates. 

Q. Have all billionaires been time travellers to the past?

A. Maybe! It’s easy to imagine looking up say all the long shot horses who won their races in say over one particular year. Now travel back in time to that year and start placing reasonable bets on each ‘long shot’ (that proved a sure thing), make a super-bundle of loot, and hop back to your own era; your own present day and start living the good life. Of course there are many, many variations on this go-back-in-time and get-rich-quick schemes.

Q. We spend our entire lives in the “now” moment, and eternal “now”, yet each “now” moment lasts way less than a nanosecond before the “now” you vanishes into the limbo-land of the past only to be replaced by the future you that was just a theoretical probability that now becomes reality, for just a nanosecond before that you too slips away into the unreachable past. That’s confusing!

A. There’s no real mystery here. There are many examples from daily life of the difference between the continuum and the part of the continuum.

You’re driving along the road in your car. Your car is the continuum since you’re always in your car for the duration (that eternal “now”); the specific section of road you are travelling over is your nanosecond “now” which changes from nanosecond to nanosecond.

You’re swimming with the current in a river. The surrounding water is your eternal “now”; the section of riverbed you’re passing over is your nanosecond “now”. Or, you can reverse the scenario. If you swim exactly against the speed of the river current or flow, the part of the riverbed you are stationary over is now your eternal “now”, while the patch of water around you is ever changing and thus becomes your nanosecond “now”.

If you walk across the stage with the spotlight on you, the light is your eternal “now” but your place on the stage is constantly shifting – your nanosecond “now”.

If you lie in bed all day (and night), the bed is your eternal “now”, but the ticking of the clock, even if only via the changing position of the sun (in the day) and the stars (in the night), or that change from sunrise to sunrise, is your nanosecond “now”.

Note that all of the examples involve motion. Motion is change and change is what the concept of time is all about.  

Q. Does God exist within time or outside of time?

A. There is no God (or gods) so the question is immaterial, irrelevant and has no bearing on the proceedings. But if there is a God(s) they would exist inside of time since to exist is to undergo change and time is nothing but a measure of change. 

Q. When do I exist?

A. Now, and only now. The “you” that existed an hour, even a minute ago is no longer. That past you, actually all those entities you called you (plural) that existed in the past have been consigned to the history books. The “you” that (probably) will exist an hour or even a minute from now, actually all those entities you will call you (plural) that will exist in the future do not yet have reality of any substance.

Q. So again, what is time?

A. One heck of a metaphysical mess!

Time To Question Time: Part One

Time is the most mysterious concept that you are likely to think about. You know exactly what time is, unless you actually have to explain it and then things bog down. If you admit that time is pure puzzlement, well you’re not alone as the nature of time has been endlessly debated by thinkers, good, bad and average, ever since humans had the ability to think. Okay, I’m a thinker, so here are my thoughts in Q & A form about time.  

Are you confused about time? If so, join the crowd. I’m part of that crowd, and I’m confused, but I’ll try to work through my befuddlement via this hypothetical question and answer session which hopefully will enlighten me and you too. 

Q. What is time?

A. Time is a concept, like Wednesday is a concept.

Q. A concept of what?

A. Change. Without change the concept of time is meaningless.

Q. What properties does time have?

A. Time has no properties, just like Wednesday has no properties. Time has no structure or substance; no mass or energy, no colour or spin or charge, it has no associated field, and it exerts no force and has no fundamental particles associated with it. 

Q. Does time have a beginning? Will time ever end?

A. No. Time is eternal. An eternal time removes those nasty philosophical questions of what came before; what comes after?

Q. Can time be created?

A. The concept of time can be created, but only by the mind blessed with some degree of sophistication, but that does not give substance and structure to time itself, any more than the JFK concept of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade’ in and of itself made it so. The concept of a lunar landing is not a real lunar landing. Time itself cannot be created like a soufflé since there are no ingredients that collectively comprise time.

Q. Can time be destroyed?

A. Since time cannot be created, time cannot be destroyed. While that is similar to existing conservation laws, there is no conservation law in existence for time like there is for matter and energy since, unlike matter and energy, time cannot be altered from one form to another, since time is not a thing.

Q. Was the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago the start of time?

A. No. Since time cannot be created, the Big Bang banged in existing time which means there was a before the Big Bang. Something had to cause the Big Bang (a change) and that something could only have been an earlier event which happened in already existing time, since an event, a change, defines what time is.

Q. Where does time exist?

A. The concept of time exists only where change exists, and change only exists within that ongoing, yet ever paper-thin slice that we can the “now”. Change neither exists anymore in the past nor does it exist yet in the future.

Q. Are time’s related terms also concepts?

A. Absolutely. None of the following can be placed on the lab’s slab; none of the following are ‘things’, just mental concepts and conventions: past, present, and future; when, now and then; before and after; second, minute, hour, day, week, month, seasons, year, decade, century, millennia, and eon; any of the named days of the week; any of the names of the seasons; any digit that represents a year (i.e. – 2013); any date; yesterday, today and tomorrow; birthday, anniversary and holiday; weekend and weekday; noon and midnight.  A clock or calendar or metronome can be put on the lab’s slab, but a clock, etc. isn’t time, just like a thermometer isn’t temperature, and a Geiger counter isn’t radioactivity.

Q. Is time travel to the past possible?

A. Yes and no.

Einstein’s concepts of General and Special Relativity allow for time travel to the past (and the future), the usual scenario is via a rapidly rotating massive object that can twist space-time around in a loop where the starting point that joins up with itself to form the loop, like a snake swallowing its tail, isn’t any longer at the same point in time. However, the flaw I find with all of that is that this requires space and time, or space-time, to be a thing, which IMHO it is not. Space-time is a concept without substance and structure because both space and time are concepts without substance and structure. Be that as it may.  

The basic argument against going back in time is the creation of a paradox, something along the lines of killing your mother when she was a young girl thus preventing your very existence which means you couldn’t have gone back in time and murdered your mother, etc. Hells, bells, why not just do the suicide properly and go back in time a few months and kill your own self! But any trip back in time will create conditions back then that did not originally exist, and however minor, not only will they become an established part of history, but have that butterfly or ripple effect on down the line – chaos theory. If those new conditions, thanks to your time travelling presence, did not originally exist and now they do, that’s also a paradox as something cannot be and yet be at the same time, and that contradiction extends on down the line as history unfolds differently.

Further, you MUST go back in time (no free will in the matter) to ever create and ensure the conditions that came to pass back when, new conditions that you initially caused – only you never initially caused them since there’s an infinitely recycling causality loop here. You went back in time which caused a certain set of conditions which become a part of established history which means at some point in your life you are required to go back in time to create that certain set of conditions which become a part of established history, all to be endlessly repeated for all eternity. Presumably you couldn’t even commit suicide before you travelled back in time and thus break the cycle.

Of course if the past were somehow changed, then presumably you’d never know it since all records, including those of your memory, would be altered accordingly. But things would be messy if millions of people each travelled back in time and altered this, that and the next thing. History textbooks and other records would be rewritten and altered to conform to all those alterations every second. Then too, what if someone went back in time and altered history to the extent that mankind went extinct as a result – that’s the ultimate going back in time and killing your mother as a young girl!

Here’s a novel concept. Say it is the 10^th of the month. Go back in time to the 1^st of the month and meet and greet yourself. The both of you now wait until the 10^th of the month and then go back in time to the 2^nd of the month where you both can now meet and greet and join up with the other two of you that existed then. Then the four of you wait until the 10^th of the month and the four of you travel back in time to say the 3^rd of the month where the four of you link up with the four of you that existed on the 3^rd. The eight of you now wait until the 10^th of the month and then travel back in time to the 4^th of the month where you group together as a crowd of sixteen. Wait until the 10^th of the month and the sixteen of you travel back to the 5^th and join up with the other sixteen to form a mob of thirty-two, and so on and so on. Starting with just you, you could create an entire army of you!

Q. Where’s the paradox in creating an army just out of you?

A. The paradox here is that you are getting something for nothing, in this case extra copies of you. Where in fact does the extra matter and energy come from that creates that you army?

Q. Anything else?

A. Another reason time travel to the past is suss is that we don’t see any time travellers from our future paying us a visit. Though Einstein’s Special and General Relativity allows time travel to the past, and although the laws of physics are time invariant (they are valid from past to future and future to past), no visitors. Either our descendents don’t have any interest in us, or perhaps there aren’t any – descendents that is – if we go extinct or go back to the Dark Ages sooner rather than later. Or, perhaps time travel just isn’t possible after all or is in the too hard basket.

Q. You lie! What about the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

A. Ah yes, what about the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is held responsible for time’s arrow or the arrow of time (i.e. – things proceed from past (which you remember) to future (which you don’t remember). But the Second Law of Thermodynamics is misnamed since the second ‘law’ isn’t really a ‘law’, just a statement of probability, albeit extremely high probability. When things happen in a statistically probable way (eggs break or scramble; eggs don’t un-break or unscramble) that’s the arrow of time that we perceive. Put in a more thermodynamic context, a boiled egg cools off and heats up the kitchen until both are at the same temperature; the kitchen doesn’t cool down and transfer that energy to the raw egg and cook it.

Q. Anything else?

A. Yes, another postulate has it that one cannot travel further back in time than the time the time machine was constructed. So if our descendents come up with a first ever time machine in the year 2113, they couldn’t come visit us in 2013, though those living in the year 2213 could go back to 2113 (but no farther back).

The way out of that is what about an advanced extraterrestrial civilization’s time machine, say built in 2013 BCE, or over 4000 years ago. Say, what about those pesky UFOs? Instead of ET coming here from out there in their and our present, they come here from there in our present but from their future! The only problem with that is that UFO events and flaps are not clustered around what we would call historically important events, like say the Trinity A-Bomb test in 1945 or the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969 or the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. Of course, that they are conspicuous by their absence, well that just maybe our parochialism coming to the fore. Time travelling aliens may have a differing agenda. 

Aliens aside, you could easily imagine a time travelling Travel Agency existing several hundred years from now conducting guided tours to important historical events of their (and our) past, say tours in groups of one hundred per. After several thousand such tours, say to the battle of the Alamo or to Custer’s last stand at the Little Big Horn, things would be getting a mite crowded since each tour has to show up at the same place and date!

Q. And what do you conclude about the viability of time travel to the past from the above?

A. Ultimately, to my way of thinking, time travel, at least to the past, is impossible since time is a concept and not a thing, like a road or a river you can travel up and down on. You can travel in a car, but not in the concept of an automobile.

To be continued…

Virtual Reality: The Simulated Universe: Part Two

There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THE COSMIC CONNECTION (continued)

* Why are all (spin-up or spin-down) electrons, etc. identical? I mean can you think of many objects that are identical down to the absolute last decimal place? No two of anything apart from elementary force and matter particles are absolutely identical, so why are they the exception to the rule? Even ‘identical’ atoms aren’t of necessity identical (since their electrons can be in different energy states); that’s even more so with molecules (some of which can come in left and right-handed forms). However, you could have a software code of bits and bytes that specifies a spin-up electron so each time and place that code appears, you get an absolutely identical spin-up electron. Simple!

* Why is the vacuum energy, experimentally confirmed, 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts? This is in fact the worst discrepancy in all of modern physics. However, software programmers can’t think of everything so when they programmed in the value of the vacuum energy, they neglected to program in the theory that would lead to the observed value. 

* Why in various physical happenings, like radioactivity, is there an abandonment of operational cause-and-effect mechanisms? Causality is the absolute fundamental bedrock of just about anyone’s worldview. You have got to have 100% confidence that if X happens, Y follows. However, there are some areas within physics where that does not apply, like radioactivity. In one case, X happens (or doesn’t happen) and radioactive Y decays; in the other case X happens (or doesn’t happen) and radioactive Y doesn’t decay. It’s like sometimes the Sun rises in the morning and sometimes it doesn’t. Now that’s nuts, and only, IMHO, can a software program create such a scenario.

* Why when it comes to various physical happenings, like the Big Bang event or Dark Energy, are there postulated the creation of something-from-nothing in violation of standard conservation laws? Well, when it comes to virtual reality, if you’ve observed and/or played human-created or software-programmed video games, you’ll note that violations of standard physical laws, principles and relationships are frequently the norm.

* Why do we have physical constants that aren’t – constant that is? Have you ever known any software program not to be upgraded, upgraded, and upgraded some more. Computer software is not exempt from the standard “new and improved” spiel that marketing and advertising executives spew out as often as possible. Any software tweak (improvement) is bound to result in tweaks to the virtual reality that software is projecting.

* Why do waves behave like particles and particles behave like waves (wave-particle duality)? For WTF readers, look up the double-slit experiment. The standard explanation is that when emitted, an electron is a particle. When an electron is detected, it is a particle. In-between emission and detection, the electron is a wave, or actually a wave of probability or probability wave, where probability refers to the possibilities where the electron actually is while in transit. Since it can be in just about an infinite number of places at the same time, well that’s more characteristic of a wave than a particle – a wave is something that’s smeared or spread out over an area. Computer software can easily morph a particle into a probability wave and back to a particle again.

* Against all the odds, why do we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe? I mean, if any of several dozens of variables had even slightly different values, physics as we know it; chemistry as we know it; hence biology as we know it wouldn’t; couldn’t, exist. The cosmos would either be too this or too that and not just absolutely right. Well, a computer programmer programming virtual reality entities in a simulated universe have got to mesh the two into some form of mutual compatibility.  There’s got to be some consistent logic in the simulation in order for the programmer to have a realistic scenario in which to interact with. Creating entities that are programmed as complex composites of matter and energy thus cannot logically exist in a programmed universe where nuclear forces, for example, haven’t been considered and hence never been programmed in.

* How can one explain the total incompatibly between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? Normally General Relativity (gravity) deals in the realm of the macro. Quantum Mechanics deals in the realm of the micro. There’s not usually much overlap. However, there is overlap when it comes to micro volumes with macro gravity – singularities that exist at the heart of Black Holes and at the time of the Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago. A definitive theory of quantum gravity, otherwise oft called a Theory of Everything (TOE), has proved elusive to thousands of theoretical physicists over many, many decades (ever since the era where Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity crawled out of the woodwork – the early years of the 20^th Century). Perhaps TOE just wasn’t meant to be. But on the other hand, there could be two separate and independently apart software programs running our programmer’s simulated universe!

* How is it possible that an electron can occupy just this orbit around an atomic nucleus, or just that orbit, but can quantum jump from one to the other (giving off or absorbing energy), yet cannot ever be found in the in-between space between the two? It’s like if you take the orbits of all eight planets (sorry ‘bout that Pluto) and each planet could jump to the orbit of any other (i.e. – Jupiter to Saturn’s orbit; Saturn to the orbit of Venus; Venus to Jupiter’s orbit, etc.) without ever having to cross the interplanetary space in-between. Well, you can imagine a film where the first few frames have Uranus and Neptune in there appropriate orbits, then the next few frames switch the two so that Neptune is in the orbit of Uranus and vice versa, and the next few frames exchange Jupiter’s and Saturn’s positions with that of Neptune and Uranus, and then the next few frames restore everything back to normalcy. The point is, there are no frames showing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune anywhere except in a standard orbit, never in-between any two standard orbits. Now what a motion picture can show, computer software programming can equally accomplish.

* How can a fundamental electron particle and a composite proton particle have an equal and opposite electric charge? What are the odds that just by chance, the two balance each other out and so you have electrically neutral atoms? Presumably there’s no natural reason why their charge values couldn’t have been vastly different, as for example are their masses (a proton being some 2000 times more massive than an electron). Of course if there was intelligent design behind those values, the intelligence being that of our software programmer, well, that answers that.

* Neutrinos come in three types or a trilogy of generations. There’s the electron-neutrino; the muon-neutrino; and the tau-neutrino. While that’s straightforward enough, apparently as they all wind their way throughout the cosmos they can oscillate or morph or shape-shift from one kind to another. That’s weird! It’s in fact weird enough having three generations of particles without having them constantly exchanging Halloween masks! If the electron, muon and tau exchanged identities here on Earth, it would play havoc with the electric power grid systems (and home appliances). Well, we’ve all seen shape-shifting in the movies or on TV or in video games. Special effects that seemingly violate common sense are standard operating procedures in the entertainment industry.  

* A cyclic universe is more philosophically satisfying than one that just fades away into an eternal cold state where nothing happens and entropy has reached maximum. A simulation can account for a cyclic universe – the software just loops around and around and so again you get another go and another and another and another though in this case not everything that can happen does happen if the software isn’t reprogrammed.

HUMAN AFFAIRS

* Mythologies sharing many, many common themes are absolutely universal throughout all human cultures. Mythologies tend to be interwoven composites of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi featuring all manner of totally implausible entities like human-animal hybrids, animal-animal hybrids, shape-shifters, those with super-human abilities, and populated with other strange humanoids like giants, the Cyclops and the wee people. Then too there’s all manner of otherworldly places from the depths of Hades to the summit of Mount Olympus and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of course to us modern humans, there’s nothing strange about faraway places with strange sounding names and monsters and superheroes. There’s no doubt a film playing at your local cinema right now that features some of the above. The upshot is that Mother Nature is hard-pressed to account for what’s featured in nearly all mythologies; a Supreme Programmer just sits back, relaxes and says “run program”.

* Why are ghosts clothed even though they shouldn’t be? Well, there are G-rated video games and then there are X-rated video games and no doubt our Supreme Programmer wanted a family-friendly rating for their “Life and Times of Planet Earth” software program. Thus, though ghosts should be starkers, sensitivities took precedence and thus our virtual reality reveals our ghosts to be suitably dressed for the occasion.

* How can those Easter Island statues walk on their own accord to their assigned positions? How can Superman fly? How can Captain Kirk beam down thanks to Mr. Scott? CGI special effects rule, OK?

* How did our uniquely human characteristics (i.e. – bipedal gait) naturally come to pass? The high number of rather highly improbably human characteristics just begs for an explanation, explanation lacking IMHO from within the academic confines of physical anthropology. A high IQ, baldness, relative nakedness (furless-ness), facial features, and racial features being other examples, can be easily accounted for if we’re the product of someone’s (or something’s) software design; not so easily explained by natural selection (though artificial selection is another possibility).

* Why Déjà vu? Is this phenomenon perhaps a case of run computer program; then rerun computer program? 

* Why is there such universe belief in an afterlife? Apart from the fact that most of us are nervous about trading in our life for a non-life, and therefore we eagerly clutch at any straw that trades in our life for a life-after-death, there’s no rational or logical reason why you should get another go-round following your allotted (roughly) three score and ten. Near death experiences are not convincing evidence of an afterlife since there never seems to be independent witnesses and alterative biochemical explanations are plausible. In other words, nobody who was a normal mortal has ever made an appearance after they kicked-the-bucket to confirm an afterlife. While the clutching-at-straws explanation is probably satisfactory as a be-all-and-end-all that-explains-that, computer software, if it’s responsible for your life, can also be responsible for your afterlife. So, if a universal belief in an afterlife suggests such a concept, then that concept can be accounted for by computer software. 

* How can one explain miracles? Miracles are basically violations of the known laws, principles and relationships that have been established by the scientific method over the past several centuries. In general, miracles are attributed to supernatural beings and their associated powers. However, there’s no problem showing miracles in film, TV and video games. Violations of the known laws, principles and relationships that have been established by the scientific method over the past several centuries are absolutely commonplace in nearly all sci-fi, fantasy or horror productions, from Saturday morning cartoons to epic Hollywood blockbusters. It would be difficult for you to go down to the seaside and part the waters. It would not be difficult for you to create a CGI film of you heading seaside and parting the waters enabling you to walk from New York City to London without getting your feet wet!

* How can one account for cryptozoology where there are sightings of unknown animals yet we have forever and a day an inability to ever catch them?

Now, if all of these anomalies were trivial ones, they could be easily dismissed, but most aren’t. Some, like miracles and the concept of an afterlife are taken very seriously by a significant proportion of the world’s population although there’s no rational explanation for them. A simulated universe can provide a plausible explanation, even more plausible than that other copout, “God works in mysterious ways”.

Virtual Reality: The Simulated Universe: Part One

There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION

* If someone (or something) were to create a simulated ‘universe’ called something like “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”, in of course incredibly realistic detail, one could probably skimp on the software programming that give rise to the details for the rest of that simulated cosmos – the Universe perceived by the virtual beings of that Third Rock. Why spend unnecessary bits and bytes creating a super realistic Andromeda Galaxy all those ‘light years’ away?

Modern cosmology seems to be at a stage now that the Solar System went through in terms of coming to terms with its construction. Way back then, to explain the motions of all the planets that (obviously) went around the Earth (being the centre of all things), epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles within epicycles had to be postulated until the who concept became so unwieldy that it collapsed in a heap. Copernicus picked up the bits and pieces and put the Sun in the centre and put the Earth going around the Sun with all the other (known) planets and then things simplified vastly and all fell into place without the need for any epicycles at all (though Einstein still had some final tweaking to do, but that was minor).

Modern cosmology seems to be full of ad hoc epicycles. We have the observation of an expanding Universe that requires explanation. Epicycle number one, the original explanation – a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago kick-started things off, though the energy source isn’t explained. That left some anomalies unexplained so ad hoc epicycle number two – a violent super-burst of explosive inflation immediately post Big Bang which apparently can come, like Heinz, in some 57 varieties. Okay, inflation started up and shut down just as quickly but it covers the anomalies that the Big Bang doesn’t. But then comes another anomaly, the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating, and the collective oomph from the Big Bang and inflation isn’t enough oomph. The Universe should in fact be decelerating under the influence of gravity. So, ad hoc epicycle number three – Dark Energy. Dark Energy provides that keep-on-keeping-on additional oomph and keeps the Universe’s pedal to the metal. Unfortunately, nobody has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy actually is which is strange since Dark Energy should be everywhere, even inside your living room, so it shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! 

The Big Bang has a couple of other epicycles attached as baggage. The first one imposed on the Big Bang is entropy, which is a measure of order vs. disorder. Low entropy is orderly; high entropy is disorderly. There are vastly more ways of something being in a state of disorder than order, as any parent knows when it comes to the state of their child’s bedroom. Left to natural forces (including the kid), a neat and tidy bedroom will ‘decay’ into a chaotic mess. That’s also an illustration of the arrow of time. Eggs do not unscramble. Unless you deliberately thwart entropy locally (tidy up the messy bedroom), but at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere, time goes from neat past to messy future. Like the bedroom, the Universe too has an arrow of time and the Universe too is getting more, more and ever messier as it slides into increasing disorder. That means ‘in the beginning’ (the Big Bang), the Universe started off neat as a pin. But, that doesn’t follow of necessity. Which is more likely – any number of possible disordered piles of bricks and timber, or an orderly constructed house? There are vastly more ways of having an ‘in the beginning’ that was messy than one that was neat and tidy. Yet against all probability, ‘in the beginning’ was pristine. That’s so unlikely that cosmologists have to postulate and accept that ad hoc epicycle of low entropy ‘in the beginning’. 

The Big Bang also requires a epicycle called quantum gravity because existing equations trying to describe the structure and substance of the creation event, crumble into dust when faced with a realm that is (allegedly) tiny (that’s the quantum bit) and yet has immense gravity (a Universe worth of gravity). Unfortunately, to get a theory of quantum gravity requires the marriage between quantum physics and general relativity. The potential bride and bridegroom however are not, and never have been, on speaking terms. So, quantum gravity (that epicycle required for the Big Bang to bang), has remained elusive despite generations of scientific effort trying to figure it out. However, that highly theoretical mathematical concept called string theory can come to terms with quantum gravity, but it has its own ad hoc epicycle burden to bear. String theory requires an additional six spatial dimensions, which IMHO is utter bovine fertilizer. So round and round we go with no actual tail being pinned on the donkey.

But that’s not the end of the ad hoc epicycles. Apparently the galaxies are rotating too fast for the amount of gravity belonging to objects that astronomer’s can see, like stars. The galaxies should have long since flown apart, their stars, planets, dust and gas scattered throughout space. So, ad hoc epicycle number four – Dark Matter. Dark Matter is postulated to have gravity, enough gravity to hold the galaxies together and prevent them from flying apart. Okay, but Dark Matter doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic force (nor apparently the strong nuclear force), so it doesn’t emit or reflect light (or photons of any wavelength) so we can’t see it. Dark Matter is actually invisible matter. Unfortunately, no matter that we can deal with has those sorts of properties. Now like Dark Energy, Dark Matter has go to be present in your living room too so it too shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! Now all of that wouldn’t be that serious were it not for calculations that suggest that Dark Energy plus Dark Matter make up 95% of the Universe, and we haven’t a clue what that 95% is.

Resolution: Perhaps all the anomalies that the (standard model) Big Bang, inflation, Dark Energy and Dark Matter have been postulated to explain, are merely examples of lax software programming in filling in the nitty-gritty details of the Universe associated with “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”.         

To be continued…

My Personal Ongoing Worldview: Part Two

Everybody has his or her own particular worldview, philosophy, a set of truisms, a concept of reality, and overall, a degree of certainty on just how the world works. Equally true, that worldview evolves as you grow older. Santa Clause was probably part of your worldview when you were five years old, but unlikely at fifty-five. I’m no exception to the rule, so here are my latest ‘set-in-cement’ thoughts on how the world operates.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

HUMAN AFFAIRS

* There is no God or supernatural deity (or deities) of any kind. Religion can however serve useful purposes, not the least of which it keeps some percentage of the human population employed.

* As suggested earlier, in an infinite cosmos there is no need for a deity of any sort. Therefore it is rather improbable that there is no Heaven or Hell (or associated places) since these must represent actual physical geographies. That being the case, we would have probably discovered them by now.

* No deities, specifically no Christian God does mean that there ain’t no end times, no second coming, no apocalypse or Armageddon, no rapture, no end-of-days or end times. In fact, all religious texts, all those allegedly that are divinely inspired, are pure bovine fertilizer.

* There is no before-the-fact meaning or purpose to your existence other than what you yourself give it. There is nobody from ‘on high’ tapping you on the shoulder or whispering into your subconscious mind that the following (fill in the blank) is your destiny or ultimate fate. 

* There is no such thing as a separate-and-apart part of you termed a soul, spirit, or any other related concept associated with a soul.

* You have no free will. That follows on from my belief that causality (a predetermined clockwork universe) rules absolutely – yesterday, today, and tomorrow. However, free will, even if illusional, serves a useful social purpose forming the general foundation for humanity’s legal system – you are responsible for your actions.

* Death is not something to be afraid of. You experience dying, but not death since once dead, you have no existence and you need to have an existence, you have to be alive, in order to experience something, anything, even death. So you never experience death, only that which is up to but not including death.

* Death is final – there is no afterlife. Post-death is an identical state to pre-life or pre-conception. You get one go per universe between conception and death – make the best of it and enjoy. However, if there are an infinity of universes in space and/or in time, then you can expect to be reincarnated both as yourself and with variations on the theme of yourself (i.e. – you might marry someone else as an example). Perhaps, just perhaps, that’s the real meaning behind the phrases of life everlasting (or everlasting life) or eternal life (or life eternal).

* Given the wide range of highly improbable human characteristics – human uniqueness such as a bipedal gait and high IQ – and extremely rapid rise to a state of having culture and ‘civilization’, the odds are extremely high that human origins and evolution were all genetically engineered by outsiders – aliens for lack of a better word.

* It’s a sweeping generalization I know, but the philosophy of the average human is “it’s all about me. I and my needs come first.”

* If the human species was created, it was a very bad mistake on someone or something’s part. If the human species was an unplanned accident of evolution, Mother Nature screwed up big-time. If one is honest, one would be very hard pressed to name another terrestrial species that has caused more unwarranted death, destruction and overall suffering to all and sundry than Homo sapiens. To be honest, while I can’t speak for the rest of the cosmos, we are surely the scum of the earth and the cosmos should rejoice if we cause our own extinction. It would be well deserved.

* Behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. So, as an example, there are mountains of mythological deities; there is a molehill that acquaints these deities as actual realities, the reality being flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials.

* Probability is a human concept with relevance to human worldviews but which has no relevance or application outside of the human experience, or perhaps that should be extended to any self-aware life forms. The real world that’s totally divorced from human affairs and the human species, deals with certainties, not probabilities. But what about quantum physics, surely that’s probability personified. But when you read all about quantum physics, sure you get probability this and probability that, but the references are all with respect to observers and measurements – in other words, with respect to human worldviews.

* Philosophy is like jazz – 95% of it is crap, but what’s good is very, very good. [At least jazz comes out vastly better percentage-wise than rap, hip-hop, heavy metal, ‘music’ which is 100% crap.]

* For obvious reasons, empty what’s full; fill what’s empty; scratch where it itches.

* Finally, you may have to grow old, but there’s no requirement to grow up!

My Personal Ongoing Worldview: Part One

Everybody has his or her own particular worldview, philosophy, a set of truisms, a concept of reality, and overall, a degree of certainty on just how the world works. Equally true, that worldview evolves as you grow older. Santa Clause was probably part of your worldview when you were five years old, but unlikely at fifty-five. I’m no exception to the rule, so here are my latest ‘set-in-cement’ thoughts on how the world operates.

After posting some 250-plus essays, it wouldn’t be surprising if I hadn’t solidified some sort of worldview. While not yet the be-all-and-end-all of my worldviews, it’s a good start, and a good exercise. When setting down all your fundamental beliefs, at least based on my doing so, I found out that I’ve sometimes ended up trapping myself into believing two entirely contradictory things. That in turn required a total re-examination of my overall set of worldviews. As I said, it’s a useful exercise and an ever ongoing one (#).   

Normally one has certain fundamental principles that form the bedrock foundation of their worldview on life, the universe and everything. I’ve boiled my fundamental principles down to two absolutes.

ABSOLUTE BEDROCK FOUNDATIONS

* Something cannot be created from absolutely nothing. Conservation laws rule.

* Something cannot happen without any reason at all. Causality rules too.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION

* Why is there something rather than nothing? Let’s say there’s a 50-50 probability between a universe that contains nothing and one that contains something. Or even make the ratio 60-40 or 99-1 or even odds of a billion to one, as long as the probability of a something universe isn’t zero. Then, well that’s something to be said for a something universe. Now a nothing universe isn’t bio-friendly and a something universe can be, so since we’re a friendly bio-entity that must mean we live in a something universe. So, as far as we are concerned, that’s what there is something rather than nothing, because if there was nothing we wouldn’t be here to ponder the issue.

                              

* Since I have shown (to my satisfaction anyway) that space, time and matter/energy cannot have been created by a Big Bang event (or by any other means), then of necessity the Big Bang event happened in existing space, time and with matter/energy already in existence too. Therefore there was a before the Big Bang and if there was one such before the Big Bang event there could have been more than one, in fact an infinite number of before the Big Bang events, or in other words, an infinite number of Big Bangs.

* The Big Bang could not have been a micro event, as to stuff the contents of our Universe into a tiny volume would result in the Mother of all Black Holes and while a Black Hole can evaporate, our Universe condensed down into a Black Hole would result in a Black Hole of large enough size that it would take trillions upon trillions of years to do so. That’s in contrast to the standard model of the Big Bang event which suggests it was more akin to a ‘wham-bam thank you ma’am’ quickie. I like to think of the Big Bang more as the Mother of all Pseudo-Supernovae. I say ‘pseudo’ because the Big Bang wasn’t literally a supernova since the ratios of elements created in the Big Bang don’t parallel that created by real supernova. I see the pseudo-supernova more akin to zillions upon zillions of people all increasingly squeezing together while madly rushing the department store front door at the start of the post-Xmas sales (collapsing universe) then fanning out again (Big Bang and expansion) once past the door and into the store proper, rather than an actual explosion. 

* Though I personally consider both time and space to be concepts, and not things, others believe that time and space are indeed things. Be that as it may.

* To avoid awkward questions regarding space and time, as in what’s beyond and what came before, I just plain postulate an infinite time and space without any quantum ‘atomic structure’. In other words, both time and space are infinitely divisible into smaller and smaller segments. There is no ultimate structure involving time and space that cannot be further divided. If you don’t care for the word “infinite” then substitute “forever” or “eternal”. 

* That an infinite cosmos exists in both time and space makes sense since there are forces which (in theory) can extend their influence out to infinity in time and in space – gravity and electromagnetism. If you shine your flashlight, beam it out into space, there’s nothing to stop it going on indefinitely through space and in time.

* If time and space are infinite then that implies a cyclic cosmos in that everything that can happen does happen and infinite number of times. So, you get another go and another and another and another. However, because you have no consciousness of time between the time of your demise and the time of your next hatching, which could be millennia later in a distant galaxy far, far away, your existences are pretty continuous.  However, you’d never know the nitty-gritty of your previous existences, though perhaps it might explain senses of déjà vu. But, in addition to multi-universes in the same space, but over time, there is multi-universes spread out in space at the same time. That follows if the cosmos is infinite in volume. Of course if the cosmos is infinite in volume then right now there are up to an infinite number of you in all possible variations. My use of “you” refers not so much to your various physical forms and lifestyles but to your mind which gives you our sense of “you”. Your mind after all really is what defines “you”.

* Because space is infinite in time, and time is infinite in space, there was no first cause; therefore, there’s absolutely no requirement for any supernatural deity or deities to act as a creator.

* Cyclic universe: As suggested above, there was a Big Bang but there was also a before the Big Bang. IMHO there was a Big Bang before that and another before that. Despite the observation that our Universe is ever expanding, and ever expanding at an ever faster rate, there are ways and means, alternative cosmologies, that can result in, and require, a cyclic universe scenario, which, if you wish to count each universe as separate and apart, results in a Multiverse at least over the time dimension. As hinted above, there would be an infinite number of these cyclic universes.

* There is a Multiverse; that follows of necessity if you postulate an infinite yet dynamic cosmos in time and space. Apart from a cyclic Multiverse as per above, there can also be a spatial Multiverse – universes existing not as discrete universes at the same point in space at differing times, but discrete universes existing in differing points in space but at the same time.

* The interior of a Black Hole is the absolute final frontier of all final frontiers left as the undiscovered country. Here there are dragons for sure!

* Causality rules as per my absolute bedrock foundations – there is absolute predetermination (therefore no free will). No matter what happens, that happening had a cause, and more likely as not, that happening will in turn be the cause of a further happening, and so on down the line (or up the line if you run the film backwards). In cosmology terms, the Universe did not, could not, create itself because a cause cannot cause or bootstrap itself.

* Causality rules in classical (macro) physics. Probability rules in quantum (micro) physics, at least that’s the standard micro model as proposed by physicists. However, quantum mechanics has IMHO deeper cause-and-effect principles. Probability as a concept is observer dependent. In a universe without any observers, without any life, would it be meaningful to invoke the idea of quantum probability or uncertainty? It’s not that difficult to imagine a universe without life. In fact that no doubt was the state of our universe for several billion years post the Big Bang event. Before any life evolved anywhere, the cosmos ticked along in clockwork (cause-and-effect) fashion very nicely, thank you very much. If it did so before humans were thought of in anyone’s philosophy, it can and will continue to do so despite humans being now present and accounted for and befuddled by the realm of indeterminacy exhibited by quantum mechanics. Ultimately quantum physics will be founded in causality just like classical physics.

* There are no free lunches as per my absolute bedrock foundations – no creating something-from-nothing is allowed. That’s because IMHO conservation laws governing the creation and destruction of matter and energy, even time and space, are absolute.

* String Theory as an alternative to the standard model of particle physics is absolute nonsense and will remain so until proponents put some experimental runs on the board.

* General Relativity and Quantum Physics have been, are, and forever will remain separate and apart. They are incompatible in theory as well as in practice and never the twain shall meet. Translated, there never will be a unified theory of quantum gravity.

* There is no meaning or purpose to the cosmos – it just is. That puts the kibosh on the Strong Anthropic Principle which suggests that the Universe was designed to be the way it is in order to give rise to life and intelligent life. It was the Universe’s way of being able to contemplate its own navel.

* The Weak Anthropic Principle is however stating the bleeding obvious, which is that because life exists in the Universe, the Universe must possess laws, principles and relationships that make the Universe a bio-friendly or Goldilocks Universe.

* In infinite time and space and a Multiverse, extraterrestrial intelligence will have come to pass if at least one such universe is a Goldilocks universe, which is actually required since in an infinite Multiverse anything that can happen does happen – an infinite number of times. 

* The Universe is the way it is. Whether the Universe is good, bad or ugly; indifferent or malicious, there’s nothing you can do about it, so cross it off your ‘need-to-worry-about-this’ list.

(#) It recently struck home how often we shift our worldviews. We have no worldview at birth. Our worldview at five is one that’s full of self, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, imaginary friends, and parties with lots of cakes, cookies, soda pop and presents. All of that certainly changes, and drastically so, when you hit the teens when your worldview shifts to the opposite sex and sex and rebellion against all things adult. Maybe somewhere there’s an easing in period, a first stirrings, where you start to acquire a worldview of a God and heaven and angels and all things bright and beautiful (that’s probably imposed on you by parents and social mores). Then you get thrust out (usually by choice) into the adult world that’s full of bills and responsibilities and employment and/or family life raising your own brats. During all of this you probably never really think of the ‘natural’ cosmic context you find yourself in. But that tends to come as you pass the half-way mark and start heading downhill. The Big Questions come more to the fore and you start to adopt a worldview that makes comforting sense away from the normal routine worldview of taxes and nasty bosses and your kids in trouble with the police again. Again, for most, that tends to revolve around God and heaven and angels, etc. But some people start thinking more outside the comforting religious box and more about space and time, and before and after, and finite vs. infinity and what non-religious Big Picture makes the most philosophical and logical common sense. And whatever specific you come up with can also shift as you reflect on your earlier reflections without end as new concepts and connections come into being or focus which you’ve got to ponder and fit into the master worldview jigsaw puzzle you’ve established.

To be continued.

The Lone Electron

One way of coming to terms with the cosmos is to do thought experiments and keeping things simple. When you come to terms with the simple picture, then you can gradually build up the complexity until you start to model the real cosmos. There’s nothing much simpler than to imagine an entire universe that contains one and only one electron – absolutely nothing else: just the Lone Electron. What sort of worldview would our Lone Electron have or we have of it? Actually it would be Boring with a capital B.

With respect to a Lone Electron universe, let’s consider…

ACCELERATION/DECELERATION: None. The same argument applies as with velocity. 

ARROW OF TIME: If there is no time experienced by the Lone Electron, then there can be no arrow of time either. In short, the Lone Electron has no experience of a past, present, or future.

CHARGE: Yes, the electron has a charge of minus one or in other words a negative charge of one unit. However, in order for charge to be meaningful, it has to be acting with or against another charge of which there is none. So, does our Lone Electron have charge in this context or doesn’t it?

COLOUR: An electron is colourless. In any event you need photons, electromagnetic energy, light waves, to transmit (wavelength and frequency) what we (our brains) interpret as colour. Our drab, bland, colourless Lone Electron has no photons to transmit any information about itself, and there are no eyeballs and brains to interpret that information in any event.

ELECTROMAGNETISM: The electron is most associated with electromagnetism and the electromagnetic force. The associated force particle is the photon and electrons can absorb and emit photons (absorb and emit energy). However, in this scenario, there are no photons, so therefore there is no electromagnetic force. In any event, a force is only a meaningful concept if there are two of more particles involved, since, if you are the sum total of things, you can’t give off or receive a force.

ENTROPY: Entropy is a statistical concept where over time, left to themselves, things tend to go from an ordered state to a disordered state, like before-and-after pictures of a wild party. One electron does not make for statistical analysis, so the electron’s state of order or disorder is what it is. It doesn’t increase nor decrease. In fact it’s rather meaningless to philosophize over it. 

EQUILIBRIUM: The Lone Electron is in a state of equilibrium with respect to its surroundings. It could hardly be otherwise since there are no other surroundings except nothingness.

EXISTENCE: Yes, it would be incorrect to say our Lone Electron didn’t exist. However, there’s nothing else around it to verify that existence or give any meaning to it.

GRAVITY: Since the electron has mass, it must have gravity. However, gravity only has real meaning between two (or more) objects with mass, like the Earth – Moon – Sun trilogy; or, in the most traditional of traditional scenarios, the Earth – falling apple scenario that, according to mythology, inspired Isaac Newton. So, in the Lone Electron scenario, it’s pretty meaningless to talk about gravity. In fact it might be meaningless to talk about gravity since gravity is equivalent to acceleration as shown by Einstein. Acceleration implies motion or velocity which in the context of a one electron universe is meaningless. Further, the (hypothetical) particle associated with gravity, the graviton, would be conspicuous by its absence in this Lone Electron thought experiment.

MASS: Yes, the electron has mass. However, it’s yet another particle, known as the Higgs Boson that gives particles with mass, their mass. The Lone Electron has no Higgs Bosons around to give it muscle.

MOMENTUM: None. The same argument applies as with velocity. 

PHASE: There is no phase. One electron does not a solid, liquid, gas or plasma make. An electron, all by its little lonesome, cannot undergo any phase change, like say from a liquid to a solid.

SENSE OF IDENTITY: Our Lone Electron doesn’t have a sense of self-awareness since it isn’t conscious and in any event it has nothing else around it to provide a contrast to itself.

SPACE: Since the Lone Electron exists in this universe, it has to exist in some sort of realm, a concept we call space. However, space is not a thing, and the electron is, so while the two share a common existence, its all apples and oranges.  

SPIN: Our electron will either be spin-up or spin-down. However, orientation, as with velocity, is always with respect to something else. If you removed all of the rest of the Universe (stars, planets, constellations, the Sun, etc.) just leaving the Earth, well the labels North and South Pole become meaningless. There no longer is anything that’s up or down or sideways that one can orient the Earth’s axis to. We know north because that’s where the North Star is located. No North Star. We know south because the Southern Cross is overhead. No Southern Cross. A compass isn’t any help because it’s only an arbitrary convention what we call north and south and in any event the compass is an example of that ‘something else’. 

STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE: The strong nuclear force only applies in keeping an atomic nucleus together. Protons, with a positive charge, would like to repel each other. That they are held in check – confined to quarters - is due to the strong nuclear force. There is no atomic nucleus in a one electron universe, therefore there’s no strong nuclear force.

TIME: An electron is a fundamental particle, a basic building block. It doesn’t change any spots and there’s nothing else around to cause the electron’s spots to change or to ‘witness’ change. No change means the concept of time is meaningless, so therefore, no time unit need apply here for a job.

VELOCITY: No, the concept of velocity is meaningless in this context. Velocity only has meaning when measured relative or compared to something else. If you drive along at sixty miles per hour, that’s relative to the landscape you are driving past, like the surface of the road. The Lone Electron has no landscape for its velocity to be measured against.

WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE: The weak nuclear force governs radioactivity, or the decay of unstable atomic nuclei into more stable forms. One type of radioactivity (Beta decay) can emit an electron, but in the absence of any nuclei, unstable or otherwise, our Lone Electron has no connection with the weak nuclear force since in this, our electron’s universe, there ain’t no such critter. 

So we see how much more meaningful it is to have more than one item per universe. Fortunately, our Universe satisfies that criteria. But the real interesting bit, at least from a philosopher’s point of view, is how some of our most take-it-for-granted concepts that form our worldview, disappear or have no meaning when applied to just one entity. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without there being time, the arrow of time (past, present, and future) or entropy. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without mass or gravity. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without motion. Yet it is entirely possible to imagine a Lone Electron universe where exactly that worldview has to apply!

A Universe Without Life: Part Two

You know and I know that at this point in time, our Universe is inhabited. Even if nowhere else in the cosmos, Planet Earth is host to terrestrial life. However, the Universe didn’t start off with any life, especially human life. This puts the kibosh on a certain brand of quantum philosophy, the brand that encompasses the role of the observer and the role played by probability.

Continued from yesterday’s Part One blog…

In a universe without life, it’s probably pretty meaningless to talk about concepts like free will. Then there’s that whole sackful of concepts related to good-and-evil like morals, ethics, sin, badness, righteousness, etc. and as such there’s no need for the concepts of heaven or hell. As such, scratch salvation, redemption, forgiveness, or damnation.

There are no emotions, suffering, pain, sorrow, pleasure, consciousness, or psychology. There’s obviously no disease.

There’s another bagful of concepts like the afterlife, reincarnation or resurrection that can go by the boards. Speaking of the latter, there’s no such thing in a lifeless universe as miracles. There is no such concept required like survival of the fittest; there are no wars, no death, and certainly no taxes! There were no soft science concepts around like society, culture, education (no homework), politics and government (no politicians), no economics (no bills), no religion (no thou shalt nots), no philosophy (who needs angels and pins), history (all those names, dates and places) and no environmental issues that needed addressing. There was no beauty (and no ugly either). In short, that pre-life era – that was what is known as the really good old days!

There’s one other important contrast between a lifeless universe and the universe that, in this case specifically contains and singles out humans and human concepts, and that is probability.  

Probability or uncertainty (two sides; same coin) dominates our existence. What odds my next child will be a female? What odds the next time I fly the plane will crash? What odds I win the lottery this week? What’s the probability I will be promoted this year? What’s the probability that I am normal, being of average height, weight, age, etc.? Even in science as performed by humans, probability or uncertainty dominates. Every measurement has error bars. Every forecast has some degree of uncertainty. Even the Sun rising tomorrow is not absolutely guaranteed (though I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that unlikely event). Every theory can ultimately be found to be wrong or incomplete. And just where is that damn electron anyway?

The fundamental question is, is probability an intrinsic property of Mother Nature like mass and gravity, or is it a human invention; a human concept? IMHO, there are no error bars in Mother Nature’s reality. Mother Nature knows the temperature is this, not around this but within this range. Mother Nature notes it will rain tomorrow, not just a chance of showers. Mother Nature knows that the Sun will rise tomorrow even though it will go nova the day after that. Mother Nature knew that Einstein’s theory of gravity was more precise than Newton’s theory of gravity millennia before Newton or Einstein was conceived of in anyone philosophy. And Mother Nature knows exactly where that damn electron is because the electron is. 

Any observer, via instrumentation or via the five senses, usually has to interpret what that observation actually represents – it’s not always obvious. If it was, science would have concluded its work decades ago, or just be engaged in refining things from the tenth to the twelfth decimal place. Interpretation – the choice between two or more possibilities – well that’s weighing probabilities.

* We’ve all observed a cat rubbing its head along an object. What’s the probability the cat is putting its scent on the object or the probability does it have an itch to scratch?

* We might have observed a boat passing away from us and disappearing over the horizon. Is this because the Earth is probably round or did the boat probably sink?

* In quantum physics, observations suggest a wave-particle duality. But is it more probably a wave or is it more likely a particle? 

* Is that unusual light in the sky probably an alien spaceship or is it probably a weather balloon?

* Does viewing a sunrise suggest t you that the Sun probably goes around the Earth or that the Earth probably is rotating around its axis?

* You spot that tornado on the horizon – maybe it will miss you or maybe it won’t. What are the odds? It certainly can’t both hit you and miss you at the same time and place.

* Is Pluto probably a real planet or isn’t it (and does it even cosmically matter)?

* My friend has a cold. I have a cold. Did I probably catch his or did he probably catch mine or was there probably something contagious in the meal we shared several nights ago?

* That Sasquatch I saw. Was it probably too much to drink or was it probably real and if it was real was it probably a bear or was it probably an unknown primate?

* Did the apple fall to earth because it’s probably seeking its natural place or was it probably due to an external force called gravity?

* Is Schrodinger’s cat probably dead or probably alive? It can’t be both simultaneously despite what quantum physics suggest.

* Why is the night sky dark? Is it probably because the Sun’s not shining in the sky at night or probably because the Universe is expanding or probably because there’s only a finite number of stars and galaxies giving off light.

* Why did the chicken cross the road this morning? You may not know (though you can probably come up with a half-dozen possibilities) but the chicken probably does.

There’s little doubt in my mind that to all of these probably observations there is but one answer(s). In many cases we’ve sussed out the answer(s). We don’t have the answer(s) in all the cases. I say answer(s) because there can be more than one answer acting jointly, like there really was a Sasquatch and yes, you were also really, really drunk; yes the Earth is round, but yes, the boat sank as well. But its an either/or certainty of an explanation(s), not a bit of both ways by sometimes probably having your cake and sometimes probably eating it too, probability, as in sometimes the apple falls to earth because it is seeking its natural place and sometimes it falls to earth because of gravity; or that Pluto is a planet on odd days or in months containing an “R” and not a planet on even days or non-“R” months; or sometimes the night sky is dark because the Sun isn’t in the sky, but at other times the night sky is dark because the Universe is expanding and at yet even on other occasions its only dark because there’s only a finite number of stars and galaxies.

The bottom line is that the Universe isn’t governed by probability. Given identical sets of circumstances or conditions, the outcomes remain the same. Observers and observations are irrelevant. That’s made crystal clear during all those millennia the Universe was observer-free.