All Our Yesterdays; All Our Tomorrows

We are all familiar with the concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’. We probably use the terms all the time in daily conversation and correspondence. But exactly where do we find ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’? What exactly is ‘yesterday’ or for that matter ‘tomorrow’? When exactly is ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’? We use the terms loosely, but pinning them down is elusive.

Actually, to start the ball rolling, the concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ are totally artificial since your today is already someone else’s tomorrow, or someone else’s yesterday, depending on the relative time zones you and that someone else inhabit. Rather, there is a universal ‘now’ (even if it’s noon in one place and midnight 180 global degrees opposite), and at that point defined as ‘now’ there’s what’s past ‘now’ (history) and what’s still ahead of ‘now’ (the future). However, since we are all familiar and comfortable with the terms ‘yesterday’ (history), ‘today’ (now) and ‘tomorrow’ (future), let’s stick with that though they are unnatural time units since they are artificial distinctions or inventions by humans. Other unnatural, artificial, meaningless, manmade time divisions include the second, minute, hour, week, month, decade, century, and related. But there are some natural time divisions: the ever varying day-night cycle and the broad yearly cycle of the seasons are reflected in the natural world, from annual tree rings to the awake-asleep patterns of wildlife. The Lunar cycle is another natural time unit that influences life on Earth but one that has no corresponding manmade equivalent.

Anyway, even though an artificial concept, where does ‘yesterday’ reside? Where are all our yesterdays? Where does ‘tomorrow’ reside? Where are all our tomorrows?

Let’s consider ‘yesterday’ first, but perhaps one needs to start off by distinguishing between a personal ‘yesterday’ and a generic or universal ‘yesterday’, a ‘yesterday’ that contained all things that happened ‘yesterday’ throughout the entire universe.

When it comes to ‘yesterday’, and the day before ‘yesterday’ and the day before that, etc. you could say ‘all our yesterdays’ resides in what someone tells us happened, or what’s recorded in a book or newspaper, or what’s on tape as in a radio show or TV news bulletin. Yet, if you hear that person, read that article, see that TV program that details all things ‘yesterday’, you are hearing, reading, seeing that ‘yesterday’, today, so you are experiencing ‘yesterday’ today. That’s not what we really mean by ‘yesterday’. 

What happened ‘yesterday’, even if you find out something about ‘yesterday’ today, ultimately resides in your mind and in your memory. That’s what makes ‘yesterday’ really real to you. But ‘yesterday’ is even more real if you directly experienced ‘yesterday’s’ happenings ‘yesterday’. Your ‘yesterday’ is your past; your past is contained in your memory.

But where does ‘yesterday’ reside after the oldest person alive who can remember or recall a ‘yesterday’ beyond the recall of any other living person, dies? Then records that detail all our ‘yesterdays’, say an historical museum exhibit, are only experienced afresh today. There’s no way you can deal with a ‘yesterday’ in ancient Egypt in the same way that an ancient Egyptian who lived through that ‘yesterday’ dealt with it.

A universal ‘yesterday’ suggests that not everything that belongs to ‘yesterday’ is known to other people or is written down or otherwise observed or recorded. In fact most of what happened ‘yesterday’ is in total oblivion to all and sundry. 

What if there was absolutely nothing to preserve for posterity an event that happened ‘yesterday’, say a raindrop impacting the middle of the ocean and there’s not even a fish around to see it splash. Or perhaps a meteor impacted the far side of the Moon or several hydrogen atoms fused to create a helium atom in the core of our Sun releasing a photon which has to ‘fight’ it’s way to the surface and escape, but that takes thousands of years, or if inside a faraway star in a faraway galaxy that photon wouldn’t be visible to us (or our descendents) on Planet Earth for maybe millions of years, if ever (since 99.999% of such photons will bypass Earth). Unless there is a cosmic consciousness, that photon will go unobserved and unrecorded, in which case, did the event happen? Does the photon exist? In fact, ‘yesterday’, 99.999% (add at least 100 more 9’s) of events that transpired in the greater Universe went unrecorded and unobserved. So the historical record of ‘yesterday’ is grossly incomplete, unless again you wish to argue that unobserved, even by the humblest of microbes, means it didn’t happen. It’s a variation on the old ‘if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nothing or no one there to observe it, did it make a sound’?

In any event, perhaps this photon event is an example of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ merging – a ‘yesterday-tomorrow’ connection. A photon created ‘yesterday’ (sometime in the past) but not observed until ‘tomorrow’ (sometime in the future) is still just a single timeline event. In fact, ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ are always linked because what happened ‘yesterday’ has a direct causality bearing on what will happen ‘tomorrow’. So in one sense ‘yesterday’ resides in ‘tomorrow’, and ‘tomorrow’ will in turn reside in tomorrow’s ‘tomorrow’. On a human level, a dance between the sheets ‘yesterday’ can result in quite another event nine months worth of tomorrows later!

Where does ‘tomorrow’ (the future) reside? Well, as hinted at above, the future resides in what happened ‘yesterday’. That’s the generic or universal future. What of your personal future? Where does that reside? There’s only one place your personal future resides – inside your mind.

You can imagine the Sun rising ‘tomorrow’, but until it actually does happen that event is all in your mind, but of course when it does happen it’s no longer ‘tomorrow’ is it? ‘Tomorrow’ never actually comes around, just morphs into today. But sooner or later all your personal mental ‘tomorrows’ come to an end, at least that’s the accepted wisdom.

Your future ceases when you’re declared brain dead, or does it? Not entirely, for each and every elementary particle (electrons, etc.) that makes up what was you in your past still has a future – another case of the ‘yesterday and tomorrow’ connection – as those bits and pieces have had as many ‘yesterdays’ as there were ‘yesterdays’ and will have as many ‘tomorrows’ as the Universe allows for. Some of those bits and pieces were no doubt once part of a ‘yesterday’ pre-you life (or even non-life) form and will no doubt become a part of a post-you ‘tomorrow’s’ life form (or non-life form), so you were part of someone or something else’s immortality and you in turn will be immortal as bits of you will become incorporated into other pieces of matter and energy, ‘tomorrow’. 

In summary, your personal ‘yesterday’ is just a memory, housed and locked away in your mind. Your personal ‘tomorrows’ are just patterns of thought and probabilities, possibilities, even near certainties, but only near certainties as nothing is ever set absolutely in concrete (death and taxes excepted). What may, or may not have happened unobserved in your non-personally experienced ‘yesterday’ resides in your imagination. What may or may not happen unobserved outside of your personal world ‘tomorrow’ is also within your imagination. So where does your ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ reside – in your mind and nowhere else.

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Seven

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Other Realities: I’ve mentioned parallel (or alternative or mirror) universes above, which are related to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics. But there could easily be other less nebulous universes – a really real physical Multiverse. If Nature can create one Universe, She can create more than one. Other universes could have different physics relative to the physics we know. If that’s the case, that opens up whole cans of different reality worms! However, such universes are probably forever out of our reach.

One set of realities I haven’t mentioned yet, yet lots of people believe exist, centre around the afterlife concept – heaven, hell, a spirit world, etc. We’ll all find out for sure in or at the end. 

Appendix: Here are some of the many faces of reality. Say you see across the room the most beautiful of beautiful naked bodies you’ve ever seen of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that’s you bag). Lets call that vision “X” (but not because it’s of necessity X-rated)! Now, what is the reality of your vision?

Well, perhaps you’re involuntary dreaming of X.

Perhaps you’re voluntarily imagining X.

Perhaps you’re hallucinating X through disease, injury, a genetic defect, a biochemical imbalance (via drugs, lack of sleep, etc.).

Or, perhaps you are actually observing X and independent observers would verify the existence of X.

But, perhaps someone else is dreaming, or imagining or hallucinating both you and X.

Perhaps X isn’t a real flesh-and-blood naked body but a hologram or maybe say a perfect representation such as a wax dummy.

You’ve also got to ask yourself, does X still exist if I close my eyes or turn my head away?

Since X resides in a Universe ultimately grounded in all things quantum, X only has a probability of existing and being where you think X actually is.

Ultimately, your perception of X is filtered via your senses into your mind where it resides in a vastly reduced in size; a two dimensional representation. You only get to experience the reality of X indirectly.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Five

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Relative Reality:

The same reality can be quite different from the perspective of two different observers. But does it really matter?

Does it really matter if when you witness a sunrise whether or not it’s because the Sun goes around the Earth or because the Earth rotates while going around the Sun?

Does it really matter if you’re driving along while it’s raining vertically yet you see the raindrops hitting the windshield at an angle? Or, while driving, you see the posts go past the car, yet of course it’s the car driving past the posts.

Does it really matter if you’re flying in a plane as assume that the plane is suspended in the air and it’s the Earth’s rotation that’s bringing your destination to you?

Does it really matter if two cars are approaching each other at a combined velocity of 100 km/hour whether car one is standing still and car two is going at 100 km/hour; car one is traveling at 30 km/hour and car two is traveling at 70 km/hour; both cars are each moving along at 50 km/hour? Does it really matter if you’re in line between the two cars and thus have difficulty judging their relative velocities?

Well, ‘yes” it really does matter if you believe there is such a thing as universal or absolute truth. The Earth rotates and goes around the Sun; the raindrops really are on a vertical path downwards and would theoretically intersect the centre of the Earth; the plane is really flying and not suspended in midair; and both cars are moving at 50 km/hour.

Well ‘no’, it really doesn’t matter as long as you get to see the sun rise; you don’t get wet regardless whether or not the rain is falling straight down or at an angle; you reach your destination; and you’re not in either of the two cars on their collision course! The Universe certainly isn’t losing any sleep over this, and I bet neither will you!

But Einstein and the other relativists who followed in his footsteps care deeply about such matters because they do illustrate the principle that there are no God-given (or Nature-given) absolute frames of reference. Different strokes for different folks can produce identical results, or different results, depending..

That second observer, the different folk, complicates things. You on the ground assume the Sun goes around the Earth; the observer in space clearly sees the Earth rotating and orbiting the Sun. You see the rain hitting the windshield at an angle while the observer standing on the roadside clearly sees the rain falling vertically (and gets wet for his trouble). That second observer on the ground clearly sees the plane flying through the air and the hell with what you, the passenger, observe. That second observer from a distant hilltop has a side view sees and easily sees both cars in motion, both at 50 km/hour.

So, what about we hypothesize two identical twins (well it would be odd to have three identical twins!), born on the same day, say, just to be evil, on the sixth of June, 2006! They both die at the exact same time, say a century later. Trouble is, one has moved to the east coast; one has lived on the west coast. The east coaster dies local time at 1 am 6 June 2106. The west coaster dies at the same moment, but west coast local time is 11 pm 5 June 2106. Thus, when reunited and buried side-by-side, one has a headstone that reads b.2006-d.2106, age 100 years; the other’s headstone reads b.2006-d.2106, age 99 years! It would now seem to be a case of relative reality trumping absolute truth!

Does evening and night come before the dawning day, or does the dawning day before evening and night? Does winter follow summer, or does summer follow winter? You may think that Wednesday comes before Thursday, but Thursday the 3^rd comes before Wednesday the 9^th!

One final example, you’re standing on a railway platform, your partner is on the train. Now as the train passes by the platform, your better half drops from say chest height a rubber ball. You, on the platform see the pathway of the dropped but bouncing back up ball as a V. Your partner sees the ball go straight down and straight up. Is there an absolute truth here? Does it cosmically matter?

Relative reality is part and parcel of our overall reality.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Four

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Reality from Two More Points of View – Squared:

Position yourself way above the Sun’s North Pole and film the motion of the solar system, or just the inner solar system ‘below’ you. You’d film the Earth revolving about the Sun in a counter clockwise direction, and rotating in an easterly direction.

If you now role that film in reverse, you’d see the Earth revolving in a clockwise direction and rotating in a westerly direction. An inhabitant of that time reversed Earth would see the Sun rise in the west and set in the east! However, that’s no violation of physical law. It’s relatively easy to picture a solar system is which the revolution of planetary bodies is the opposite of ours; planets that rotate in the opposite direction. 

Such opposites with respect to motion are what you’d see in a mirror reflection – if you had a mirror big enough. So, if you reverse time [T], you produce a mirror image of the motion (left handedness motion becomes right handedness motion and vice versa), which in physics is called parity [P]. If you look in a mirror, your right hand now looks like a left hand and vice versa – that’s parity. That applies equally on the micro scale; with the added feature that to preserve the overall symmetry, the charge [C] needs to be reversed too. So, a positive [CPT] is symmetrical with a negative [CPT]. Since the macro is made up of the micro, in our time reversed; parity (motion) reversed, Earth; said Earth would have all the charges in all the particles that made it up reversed. In short, said Earth would be an antimatter Earth!

On the micro level, a positron (positive charge), rotating clockwise (spin up) while moving forward in time at one second per second is symmetrical with an electron (negative charge), rotating counter clockwise (spin down), and moving backwards in time, at a rate of one second per second! Again, there’s no violation of physical law. The laws of physics do not make any distinction between time frames moving from past to present to future relative to time frames going from future to present to past. It’s the same reality from two different perspectives. Which version you prefer is solely up to you – either interpretation is a valid one. Most people of course prefer the classical time frames forward version – the Earth revolves counter clockwise and rotates easterly and is composed of matter and goes from past to present to future. But, you can be, if you wish to be, justifiably stubborn and reverse the CPT and accept that reality.

Again, if you reverse the time frame, you need to also reverse the image of whatever is in motion to its mirror image instead. Now that image may be hard to swallow and isn’t really a ‘reflection’ of your day to day macro world. If you look in your home mirror, and see a reflection of a grandfather clock with hands rotating and pendulum swinging, it will look odd – the hands going the wrong way around (counter clockwise) and the pendulum going right-left-right instead of left-right-left. But, physicists can handle it (at least via their abstract equations – just like the mathematics can deal with the ten or eleven dimensions required of string theory.    

So, in general, negative [CPT] and positive [CPT] are the two symmetrical sides of the same physical law reality coin.

But there are two other ways of looking at and interpreting this. There’s 1) a real mix of (a hell of a lot of) matter and (a very little amount of) antimatter all going forward in time together in step, or 2) you can postulate the concept of additional pseudo-antimatter by postulating that every now and then elementary particles of matter reverse direction in time (hence reverse charge and parity as well) thus mimicking what we call antimatter. That mimicked antimatter elementary particle can reverse time direction again and revert back to what we call normal matter. That applies equally to real antimatter reversing time’s arrow and becoming pseudo-matter. While the former (1) is the commonly accepted, commonsense point of view, it’s actually the latter (2) that has greater explanatory power in solving some of those mysteries of physics, such as entanglement, and double slit experiment weirdness and why are all electrons or positrons identical (because maybe there’s only one of each zigzagging backwards and forwards in time).

Reality Really Is A Personal Thing:

The most unique thing about you is “The You” inside you – your mind. There’s nothing unique about your sex, blood type, pigmentation, hair style, body shape, age, etc. Your genetic makeup isn’t unique if you have an identical twin. Many of your body’s organs can be transplanted into other bodies. But your mind is unique. Even if you had an identical twin, your minds would be different.

Your brain, which houses the mind, is the organ that has to absorb the sensory input we constantly receive from the outside world. While we have some limited control over the sensory barrage or onslaught reality inflicts on us, we so have some – control that is. You can often choose what you want to taste or listen to or see. You can close your eyes or stick your fingers in your ears if you want.  Another form of control is that you can choose your surroundings, maybe eventually immerse yourself in a totally artificial reality, as in the Star Trek’s holodeck programs.  So, in one sense, reality really is all in the mind as all sensory input flows into it. And since your mind is unique, your reality, or your version of reality, must be unique too.

Quite apart fro having some control over external sensory input, the inner workings of your body also can affect the mind and therefore your notion of reality. Migraine headaches can cause you to ‘see’ flashes of light where no optical input is preset. A build-up of this chemical, or lack of that substance, can cause quite considerable alterations in your perception of what’s happening – reality. Near Death Experiences (the NDE) is a case in point. Control over those inner workings is possible, in some cases, to a greater or lesser degree. However, you’re body often tends to do its own thing and mind over matter is a useless exercise!

All of which leads to the point that you can also alter your own perception of reality, not directly via sensory stimuli, but chemically. There are lots of drugs, prescription, legal and over-the-counter (alcohol, etc.), not quite so legal (LSD, magic mushrooms, marijuana, various herbs, etc.) which affect brain (mind) chemistry and how you perceive the outside world.  The question then arises, if you can alter your brain’s (mind’s) chemistry, and that alters your perception of reality, how do you know that your unaltered (normal) brain chemistry is giving you an accurate reflection of what’s out there? If you’re honest, you don’t! But you can assume that you are getting a reasonable facsimile of reality, otherwise basic survival would be highly problematic. I mean if you thing that’s a purring pussy cat approaching you when it’s actually a roaring man-eating tiger, you’re in deep shit. Or, equally in the fertilizer, that’s not really table salt you’re sprinkling on your veggies, its cyanide!

There’s also the area of electrical stimulation of the brain that can produce realities which aren’t real but which, to you, are very real indeed!

There’s an opposite side to the altering-your-mind’s-sensory-input. Instead of adding or replacing inputs, eliminate them – deprive yourself of as much sensory input as possible. I’m thinking of isolation tanks where you float in water at body temperature, there’s no light, no sound, no smell. Of course your heart still thumps and you can still think (therefore you are and therefore you still have a grip on reality, even if the sum total of that reality is just you, and only you. Regardless, it’s a far removal from your day-to-day perception of what’s real!

Lastly, while mind melds (or telepathy) are probably an ever unlikely possibility, I can se the day when there is a direct interface between a computer, an artificial intelligence perhaps, and the human mind. Perhaps that computer link might be an interface between one human mind and another. That way you could directly experience another person’s reality!

The key point: Actual reality has relatively little to do with your brain chemistry (apart from providing the matter/energy needed to run the apparatus).  Your perception of reality has everything to do with brain chemistry. That’s true even if reality is augmented by technology, from telescopes to microscopes; mass spectrometers to particle accelerators; eye glasses to hearing aids.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Three

Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Personal Reality: 

For all you know, you might actually be a multi-tentacled, slimy green blob-thing living on the Planet Zork and dreaming that you are a human living on Planet Earth and deriving near infinite amount of civic pride/satisfaction and/or orgasmic pleasure in paying your way (mainly via taxes and rates). Then again, maybe your really Triffid-like, living on some extra-solar hot Jupiter, hallucinating that you’re on Planet Zork and consequently dreaming of being a Planet Earth humanoid.  

Well, maybe not. But be that as it may…

It’s probably impossible to ever know of experience absolute reality since everything external to us, in order to be experienced, has to be filtered and processed through a complex biochemical laboratory via our eyes, ears, skin, etc. hence via our nervous system up to the brain. Who really knows what kind of translation happens along the way or what’s lost (or wrongly gained) in translation. Our reality might be a total hash of actual reality! But, we do the best we can with what we get to work with.

We perceive the reality of the Universe (and its component parts) via our five senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell – and through instruments (technology) which, while extending the range of those senses, translate their measurements back into the range we can comprehend with our sensory apparatus. A radio telescope can see and record radio waves, but the (computer or paper) image spat out for our viewing is obviously in the visible light range to cater for our eyes. Ditto our radios translate radio waves we can’t see or hear into sound we can hear.

While there are probably differences in the perceptions of reality twixt males and females, it’s probably also true that these are so minor as to not be really worth elaborating on. 

No two people ever experience seemingly identical things exactly down to the Nth degree. That is, you and I will not experience vision, hearing, taste, smell or touch in the precise same way. That’s quite apart from relativity theory which can illustrate these differences quite dramatically. No, even in our relativity-irrelevant day-to-day life and world, for example, what’s blue to someone might appear slightly blue-green to another; what’s a perfect C-note to one is ever so slightly sharp (#) to another; what’s a hot cup of coffee to one person is only very warm to another, even though the temperature is identical in both cases. Even two people tasting the same food will perceive things slightly differently.

Yet clearly the blue/blue-green color has one and only one specific wavelength; the note has one and only one frequency; and the hot/very warm cup of coffee really has just one uniform temperature. [Note that these differences have nothing to do with individual likes or dislikes – that’s a separate category of an even more personal ‘reality’ altogether.]  

Speaking of temperature, differences in perception extends to instruments which augment our senses as well. We might be able to estimate temperature to within a degree or two. But even two seemingly identical thermometers will register ever so slight differences, perhaps to with 1/100^th or 1/1000^th of a degree, but differences nevertheless.

So what aspects of the Universe do we sense? Well, obviously things that are composed of matter and energy (which are two sides of the same coin). We can see matter and energy, we can hear energy, we can touch matter and experience its energy, and we can smell and taste matter. 

Yet, those aspects are quite incomplete. Our sense of vision is useless over most of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our sense of hearing is adequate over only a relatively small range of frequencies or octaves.

Our reality, apart from vision and hearing is also confined to a relatively narrow range of temperatures, gravitational and magnetic fields, and chemical elements. But we don’t sense Earth’s magnetic field (though apparently some animals do), which is a tad strange since we can sense or feel the Earth’s gravitational field or force.

Our senses can’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell time, and time is a fundamental aspect to our existence and to the properties of our Universe. And if string or superstring theory is correct, then we exist in a ten or eleven dimensional Universe, yet we can’t see, hear taste, touch or smell them. An extra six or seven dimensions to our Universe is not trivial, yet we’re not equipped to experience them. That’s weird! We’ve no direct awareness of the quantum world. What would our reality be like at the atomic level or below? I don’t know, but it sure wouldn’t mirror the comfortable reality we deal with in the macroverse. Although the strong nuclear force holds together all the atomic nuclei in our bodies, we don’t feel or sense it, nor for that matter the weak nuclear force

There’s strong circumstantial evidence that parallel universes should exist, yet we’ve no apparent perception of these. We’ve no perception of what it would be like to experience reality inside a Black Hole, and for that matter, we’ve only an academic understanding of the reality of the interior of a stellar object, like our Sun, not a personal reality, or for that matter most of the environments in our Universe. Think of all those realities we’ve never experienced, and probably never can experience.

What else might we lack knowledge or perception of that’s not yet been dreamt of in our philosophy or science? I shudder to think of all that we’re missing!

Personal Reality from Two Points of View:

Let’s return to our favourite imaginary couple, Jane and Clive, one of which sees blue, hears a pure C-note and perceives coffee as hot; the other a shade of blue-green, hears C#, and perceives equally hot coffee as only very warm.

Jane is aware of the idea that matter is mostly empty space. Jane knows that neutrinos can pass through light-years of ‘solid’ lead unimpeded. “Why can’t I be like a neutrino and pass through ‘solid’ matter?” she asks. Jane, being a good experimental scientist, decides to personally experiment and test the idea. Both Jane and Clive look up a physics equation, F=ma (force equals mass times acceleration).  They ponder this abstract representation linking force, mass and acceleration and how it could be translated into showing that matter was mainly empty space. Jane gets an idea of accelerating a mass (her fist) to provide a force against another mass (say a brick wall), expecting her fist mass and the other brick mass to intersect. [Boy is she going to be in for an unpleasant surprise.] Jane was aware of course that just leaning her hand on the wall wasn’t sufficient enough oomph – she needed more force. Anyway, Jane and Clive discuss this practical demonstration of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; Clive tries to talk her out of this experiment, but has to capitulate (a woman just has to have the last word) and just observes while a remote camera films the event for posterity.

So, we have Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall and Clive watches. We assume that Jane’s fist doesn’t pass harmlessly through the brick wall – empty space or no empty space. So Jane experiences the physical reality of intense pain; at best black and blue bruising; at worst, broken bones in her hand. Clive of course experiences no such pain (though he’d better show some sympathy or else he just might), but he certainly experiences the intense sound (scream) of Jane’s ‘ouch’!

So one definition of reality could be something along the line, and I’m sure Jane would now agree, is that reality is something that hits back when you hit it! Yet, there’s got to be more to reality than that.

Later on, we have Jane and Clive watch the film of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall. Neither Jane nor Clive now experiences any actual pain, yet the mental reality of watching the film will trigger quite different memories in each of the two participants.

We have Jane and Clive just think about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive dream about Jane slamming her fist in to a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive hallucinate (being somewhat under the influence) about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall – these are all variations on the same theme.

If these mental processes (thinking, dreaming or hallucinating) happened before-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall then that’s going to produce quite a different mental image(s) than if these mental processes happened after-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall.

So you see, one scenario gives rise to many varieties of reality. There’s the abstract reality of the equation. There’s the mental reality of what might be. There’s the mental reality of what was. There’s the physical reality of Jane’s pain and Clive’s throbbing eardrum! There’s the reality of the film to remind them never to try this stunt again!

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Two

Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Reality of Both Nothing and Something:

There has to be some nothing as well as some something. If everything were something, then nothing could move as all the Universe would be chockablock – like the fad of a VW, or a phone booth being stuffed full to overflowing with college kids. You couldn’t push anything out of the way as there would be no nothing to push it into!

The Reality of Something: Matter & Energy:

We live in the world of the macro and in the realm of classical physics – the physics you were taught in high school. Your homes, cars and offices are probably filled with electronic gadgets that operate in the realm of the micro – quantum physics (which you probably weren’t taught in high school). You’d think that there should be a smooth and continuous transition from the macro/classical to the micro/quantum, and vice versa, as you go up or down the scale of size. However, I’m hard pressed to think of an example in reality where both quantum and classical physical concepts or laws have to be integrated in order to explain or predict something. Again, it’s like there are two different sets of software running the cosmos!

That said, the reality of matter and energy in our macro day-to-day existence, while obvious, depends on the reality of the bits and pieces that make up the realm of the micro. So, molecules had better be real, and atoms and the particles that make them up – things like quarks and electrons and neutrinos. Thus, it’s disturbing to read in various books on particle and quantum physics that these are treated as point (dimensionless) particles. Presumably this is to make the mathematics easier or simpler (and just pick up an academic text in these subjects, open to a random page, and see what I mean). Clearly a dimensionless particle can not have reality as particles have mass. That implies of necessity that the particles must have size – a volume. If you gather up an infinite number of dimensionless particles, you could fit them into zero volume. Since macro bits and pieces have volume – you have a volume – you can not be ultimately comprised of dimensionless micro bits!

Further, we have all these high energy ‘atom smashers’ (particle accelerators) where the objective is to smash one particle into another at higher and higher energies and see what happens. If the particles, usually electrons or protons, had zero volume, they couldn’t collide! Despite phrases like ‘point particles’, particles really have three dimensions (volume), and thus objects around you, including you, have volume. Particles have reality, and so do you. And because mass and energy are interchangeable, energy has reality. If you doubt that, put your hand on a hot stove!

In addition, the very fact that we experience variety in matter tells us that there must be more than one kind of matter. If there were only one kind of stuff – say electrons and only electrons – then everything we experience would be just that stuff; only that stuff; that stuff alone. No variety – it’s all things electron! That’s clearly not the case, so there’s more to matter than just, say, electrons!

The Reality of Nothing: Time & Space: 

Go into a dark, quiet room with no sensory distractions. You know that time is passing all around you, yet you can’t detect this time with any of your five senses. You can’t see time; hear time; smell time; taste time; or touch time. To detect time, you need some intermediary mechanism – look at your watch; listen to the ticking of a clock; feel your pulse. Translated, to detect time (and by the way ditto space), you need matter/energy which time as some effect on. Put another way, if matter/energy did not exist, the concept of time would be meaningless. (Ditto space – in the absence of matter/energy you couldn’t detect space with your five senses. There’d be nothing to see, hear, taste, touch or smell.)

Space has no meaning unless there is something inside it, and/or outside it, to give it some boundary and hence reality. If there’s no matter/energy, there’s no need of any space for it to reside in. So, time and space aren’t real without matter and energy. Only matter and energy have reality.

Since time and space are meaningless concepts without matter and energy, its nonsense to talk about creating time and space. You’d automatically create time and space if you could create matter/energy. Alas, the conservation laws of physics state that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed in form. Presumably nothing can create matter/energy – certainly no human being has ever done it – and since I reject the concept of a supernatural creator being (God), I’m forced to conclude that matter and energy, therefore space and time, have always existed and will always exist. [Eliminating a creator God from consideration simplifies things no end.]

Your Pet’s Reality:

I’ll assume that as your pet (assuming you have one or more), or some other animal you have had a relationship with or observed closely, can’t speak for itself or themselves, and as you’re totally familiar with your pet’s personality, that you’re a good spokesperson for them – as good as it’s going to get anyway.  So, if you were your pet (bird, fish, cat, whatever) how would your perception or knowledge of reality shift – if it does.

Firstly there’s a near universal reality for all higher life forms – including humans. That universality is expressed in the phrase “empty what’s full; fill what’s empty; scratch where it itches”!

Humour aside let’s start with the initial gateways – the senses.  We’re all aware that our sensory apparatus can and has been exceeded by some animals – including common household pets. Not only is vision more acute in some animals, but extends further into the ultraviolet and/or infrared than ours. Hearing is keener; sense of smell is sharper; pressure gradients more noticeable, etc. Be all that as it may, I can’t see that altering basic perceptions of reality in any significant way.

Ditto for physical abilities - birds gotta fly; fish gotta swim; horses gotta run. Again, there’s nothing significantly different in principle here. The fact that a horse can run faster than you doesn’t give the horse a whole different perspective or outlook on the world. 

Yet, on our home world, there is a life form, with a most alien of realities, at least relative to us or from our perspective. The most alien of realities, from our point of view, must be experienced by that of a fish, even a pet goldfish. Consider, we live for all practical purposes in a two dimensional world – the surface of our planet. Fish live in a three dimensional world. They, for all practical purposes, experience no weather or climate. There’s not much temperature variation. They, depending on species and depth, may never experience a day-night cycle, rather live all the time in absolute darkness. They don’t experience gravity per say as the water and swim bladders produce neutral buoyancy.  From our point of view, I guess, their reality is not only quite different, but certainly more boring – although boring is a rather emotive term. The fish may not have any comprehension of what boring is.  So, having a conversation with a fish (a thought experiment obviously) might be about the closest one could come to terms with a substantial alternative reality. Except the absolutes, the basics are still there – survival, food, sex, etc.

Reality is ultimately perceived and processed by our brains, and our companion animals have brains, just as we do. Animals have a “The You” component to them. Pets clearly can think, make (to them anyway) intelligent decisions; they can and do dream. They have emotions. They can learn; they have memories. They have a world view.

Yet, I’m sure that 99.9% of the time your pets and mine have absolutely no comprehension of what you are doing or why. They may like warmth, but have no idea of what thermodynamics is. They like sex but the purpose and genetics of it all is beyond them. They like food but have no comprehension of agriculture and manufacturing and transport and distribution and money and shopping and all those bits and pieces that put doggie food in the doggie bowl. Yet your activities, warmth, sex, food is of course part of their reality, although not part of their understanding.

Now our companion animals are fairly closely related species to us. Felines, of which I have two, have a worldview. However, their worldview, concerns, philosophy, science, etc. revolves around whether there’s food in their food bowl; do they have a clean litter box to access; am I around when required to open doors for them and where are the mice hiding! I often envy their relatively uncomplicated lives. No pondering the great issues like looking at a star and wondering if an alien cat is looking back in this direction; no comprehension of taxes or money so-called compulsory voting or politics.

Four billions of years of evolution (assuming an origin of life within 500 million years of Earth’s origin) made no demands or requirements for living things to comprehend abstract things like philosophy or science (like cosmology or quantum mechanics) or mathematics, not to mention politics and economics. The sum total of our (meaning life, not just humans) concerns, over those four billion years, our worldview, or our reality, centered on food, shelter, sex and just plain survival. That’s also true for the hundreds of thousands of years, all through human evolution, into what we’ve become now. And that’s true today. I’m sure 99.9% of good folks (meaning humans) today pay near zero attention to these abstract non-essentials in their day-to-day existence. It’s bad enough that our lives have been enhanced by the abstractions of government and taxes and bills and nine-to-five jobs (or lack thereof).

So herein lays my fundamental question. If our companion animals can’t come to terms with the Big Picture, ultimate reality, relative to us, but we ourselves are only just that little bit further along in evolutionary (brain-related) advancement (call that advanced IQ or whatever) relative to them, then, what makes you think that the entire vista of reality is comprehensible to you? I sometimes wonder if we’re yet fully biologically or mentally equipped to ponder the great abstracts – comprehend the fullness of reality, not just the few bits and pieces that we have come to terms with and think as being the near be all and end all of what’s real. Perhaps our worldview of these things are not only limited, but of necessity will be limited. Translated, perhaps further eons yet worth of brain development might be necessary to fully comprehend our reality; what we comprehend currently might be, relatively speaking, just a tiny bit in advance of what our animal friends comprehend! There’s a long, long, road to hoe. 

To be continued…