0rder&chaos
by Geoffrey Gernant
"The greatest pity of today's world is that
intellectualism is regarded as the sole property of
intellectuals. Ask the average Westerner (or
Easterner) about anything more profound than the
contents of his breakfast, and he will tell you that
it is above his head. If he does not say this, most
likely he believes it, and is lying to you."
"The irony lies in the fact that it is not true."
(P.G., 1979)
INTRODUCTION
Brain is in the bed. Mind is the sleeper.
(Mentor)
This work you are about to read is not philosophy.
Philosophy is an attempt to understand what cannot be
understood. Even its practitioners concede that they
are trying to do the impossible. If they thought
otherwise, they would call themselves scientists.
(Already I hear your angry denials. I will not argue
definitions with anyone. If you wish to call yourself
a philosopher whose goals are attainable, go ahead.
But be aware that if I use the term "scientist", I am
talking to you.)
This is a work of science. It will draw conclusions
from accepted science and clear logic. If you cannot
understand it, it is because your mind will not let go
of its prejudices about what is "really" true.
FIT THE FIRST: BASES
When the sleeper awakes, the eye must open.
(Mentor)
The first law is this: A difference that makes no
difference is no difference.
(I know we have too many first laws around already,
but this is my book and I'm going to call that the
first law throughout. So there!)
It has been said that solipsism is the only logically
defensible religion. Solipsism is the belief that the
universe exists only as a product of one's own mind.
All you know are the sensations that enter your mind.
The sensations you receive are all consistent with an
external universe that follows certain physical laws,
but that is no proof that the universe is independent
of your mind.
This is what is meant by the first law. If a question
cannot be resolved between two alternatives by any
measurement or distinction you can sense, the answer
is both alternatives, and neither - they are
effectively the same. It can make no difference to
your view of the world.
This statement is curiously paralleled in modern
physics. It is summed up in the thought-experiment of
Schroedinger's Cat:
In an airtight room with one shuttered window is
placed a radiation meter. In the meter's detector is a
small quantity of radium - just enough that the
probability of one or more atoms decaying in a
ten-minute period is 50 percent, and the probability
of no atoms decaying in that period is 50 percent. The
meter is connected to a phial of cyanide gas; if a
decaying atom is registered, the phial will open. Also
in the room is a cat. Turn on the radiation meter by
remote control, wait ten minutes, and turn it off.
What is the status of the cat?
According to quantum physics, low-level events such as
the decay of an individual atom are inherently
unpredictable. Therefore, according to the mathematics
of quantum physics, the status of the radium is
neither decayed nor un-decayed - until it is observed,
at which time it becomes definitely one or the other.
Such uncertainty about a single atom does not disturb
us, but here uncertainty has been magnified into the
fate of a living being. The cat is neither alive nor
dead - the difference makes no difference - until an
observer opens the shutter and looks.
Of course, someone always asks the question: "Who
counts as an observer?" Do you? Does a fellow
scientist? A child? A rat? An insect? The cat itself?
This question is easily resolved. If another being
looks in the window, nothing has changed for you. It
could be said that the other knows the cat's status,
but you are then as uncertain of the other's knowledge
as of the cat's life itself. The mathematical
expression of the cat does not resolve for you until
you observe. The state of the universe depends on your
consciousness - solipsism.
Of course, for all practical purposes a solipsistic
universe behaves the same as a classical external
universe. It makes no difference to you which is real,
and so, by the first law, there is no difference
between them. Is not logic wonderful?
FIT THE SECOND: IS HISTORY?
When the sleeper's eye opens, she leaves the
bed.
(Mentor)
What do you know of the past?
Memory.
How do you know your memory is true?
I cannot.
If you cannot tell the difference between true memory
and false, is there a difference?
Another result of quantum physics is the statement
that the law of conservation of matter and energy can
be violated, briefly. Mass/energy can appear out of
nowhere, as long as it disappears soon. (Very soon.
The amount of mass/energy appearing, in joules,
multiplied by the number of seconds it exists, must be
less than about 10(-35).) (This is another example of
the first law. There is no way to detect such a minute
event, so it makes no difference whether or not it
happens, so it might as well happen - so it can.)
Although this appearing matter is temporary, there is
no limit to the number of times it can appear, even
continuously. It can appear in any form, or appear in
one form and disappear from another. Anything can
happen, anything can change --- a one-in-a-trillion
chance, to be sure, but it is possible. There is no
way to be sure of what the future will be, or even
what the past was. What assurance do you have that you
did not appear out of nowhere a half-second ago,
complete with memories and a social security number?
None (other than the assurance that you'll never know
the difference, so it doesn't matter.)
Even this paranoid view of the universe is not quite
accurate. If the universe has meaning only in relation
to your mind, how could physical laws have created
you? This confusion stems from the use of quantum laws
as applied to a universe which exists externally, even
if it is not perfectly measurable. It cannot be
resolved; the universe, whether real or relative,
contains (gives the sensations of?) many physicists
(figments?) who have found evidence supporting these
laws.
FIT THE THIRD: TIME, AND WHY IT PROBABLY ISN'T
To knit, one must first shear.
(Mentor)
If there is no certainty about what the past was, and
what the future will be, there is no certainty about
what time is.
The Buddhist allegory of Indra's Net may illustrate
this point. An infinite net of threads runs through
the universe. At each intersection is a being, and
each being is a crystal bead. The Light of Existence
shines through all, each bead reflecting all the
others.
To adapt the story slightly, consider each bead to be
a different arrangement of matter and energy in the
universe. There are infinitely many of these. The
threads show the passage of time; a universe-state is
connected by a strong thread to a universe-state it is
likely to change to in the next instant. For example,
if the universe contained nothing but two iron spheres
a foot apart, gravity would slowly pull the spheres
together. So the bead representing that universe would
be strongly connected to the bead representing the
universe with the spheres slightly closer together.
Since there is a small chance that random molecular
motion will move the spheres apart, the first bead
would be weakly connected to the bead representing the
spheres farther apart.
Notice that this net is still. All of time is
represented in it all at once; there is no "spark"
that flows along the threads as time passes.
But we have proven that any universe-state can lead to
any other. Every bead is connected to every other
bead, by a weaker or stronger thread.
So time connects everything to everything. There is a
most probable path of time, certainly, but probability
is not certainty. An absolute, definite flow of time
is a useless concept.
FIT ASIDE:
The gut reaction now is to say: "Even if we can't know
what the past was, wasn't there still a definite
past?" Indeed there is (was) not. Remember the first
law, and Schoedinger's Cat. What you see is what you
get. What you know is what is; what you do not know is
not.
FIT THE FOURTH: EPIC FANTASY
Falling can't hurt. Now landing, that's a
different matter. One must know how to land.
(Mentor)
No single future, no single past. What does this leave
of history? How much of what we know as "history"
could have been different if single atomic collisions
had gone differently? Delaying the combustion of the
gunpowder in a rifle by a fraction of a second could
have changed history in any number of battles. One
sperm cell is nudged slightly by a surge of molecular
motion, and Frau Hitler conceives a daughter instead
of a son. A cosmic ray zigs instead of zags into
primeval DNA half a billion years ago, and unicorns
evolve. And all these histories are equally real – out
there, somewhere, one might say; a history to match
any story by any author you could name, from Tolkien
to Oliver North. King Arthur is as real as you. Think
about it.
FIT THE FIFTH: OF MIND AND MOVIES
The sleeper dreams the universe.
What will happen when he awakes?
(Mentor)
In this still-life picture of a universe that
encompasses all of the real and possible time, what
are you? All this deduction seems to be flatly
contradicted by the way we can all sense time flowing.
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth,"
Sherlock Holmes said. If time is an illusion, a true
sense of time is impossible, so the flowing of time we
all sense is an illusion, however improbable that
seems to you.
And what does that sense consist of, anyway? You
remember things changing, you see them moving, so you
insist time is real. But is it not true that you see
only one instant at any given time? The scene you saw
an instant before is only in your memory, however real
it may seem, and memory is static. You cannot see
motion or change – you can only deduce them from fixed
memories. Motion deduced from fixedness – does this
not sound strange?
In fact, at any given instant, you are only a set of
fixed memories. "Thought," as you know it, is the
progression of memories interacting through time; if
time is an illusion, what is "thought"?
FIT THE SIXTH: THOUGHT AND FREE WILL
Matter is the pattern that mind makes.
(Mentor)
In the strict quantum-mechanical interpretation,
thought is not defined; nothing takes place in your
brain other than waves of chemical change moving down
nerve fibers. Of course, you think you know that you
think; but how can one expect an unbiased opinion from
chemical waves which = are, so to speak, trying to
prove their own competence?
The classic argument between believers in free will
and proponents of determinism is now easily resolved.
Of course, the patterns of nerve impulses are
determined by the laws of physics, although those laws
do include the unpredictability of quantum randomness.
But free will is also included, for what is free will
but the ability of mind to act by itself, under its
own influence, based on what it knows? Certainly the
nerve impulses, chasing around the fibers of the
brain, are influenced by nothing but each other and
the input of the senses.
I have, on occasion, heard a theory stating that while
physical laws determine the nerve-impulse patterns of
the brain, the mind can still have free will, because
the mind influences the random factors of quantum
mechanics, causing the nerve impulses to go where it
wills. I do not know whether this theory was conceived
out of a fanatic need to believe in a "soul" separate
from the body, or simply an inability to tell cause
from effect.
FIT THE SEVENTH: HELLO THE TAPE RECORDER
Mind, conciousness, awareness, spirit, thought,
perception, feeling, memory, imagination, and
intention: These are the fragments that
delude us.
(Mentor)
Of course, this does that our notions of the mind are
totally unfounded; certainly there is something one
can recognize as a concious mind, and see that it
exists at the other end of a telephone link, and does
not exist in a reel of tape, however much a recorded
voice may sound like a real one. Precisely how do we
tell the difference between a person and a recording?
By its responsiveness, of course -- a person can
engage in active conversation, while a tape recorder
simply blathers on regardless of what one says to it.
Now remember the many roles of probability in the
universe. Even if you are talking with a voice over a
telephone, how can you be sure the voice is not a
lucky tape recorder -- one that just happens to say
the right thing at the right time? The probability of
this goes down exponentially as the conversation goes
on, but the possibility is always there. Recalling the
first law and Schroedinger's cat, you can only say
that the object you are talking to is 99.999 percent
human and 0.001 percent tape recorder -- or,
equivalently, that in 99.999 percent of the universes
branching from yours, you are talking to a human, and
in 0.001 percent, you are talking to a tape recorder.
("Universes branching from yours" is used in the
common (sort of) sense, of the time-paths of highest
probability leading away from your bead in the Net.
Don't try to use my own arguments against me.)
A tape recorder is an object that does not respond to
anything that it hears at all, and a human responds
(hopefully) to everything -- are there other
possibilities? What about a dog? A catatonic human? An
ELIZA program? A deaf human? All these have different
levels of responsiveness; clearly there is some sort
of ranking we use in determining whether there is an
intelligent mind behind the voice. But any ranking can
be extended, in both directions. Certainly one's own
mind is the one whose responses are easiest to feel,
and one's own mind is most clearly perceived.
Now extend the ranking downwards. An insect barely
responds at all to anything, so we consider it
unintelligent. What of a chair? No response at all,
certainly? Look into the tiny vibrations and ripples
in its structure -- surely some of those could be
interpreted as a response in Morse code. They are, of
course, drowned in a flood of Morse gibberish, but you
might say that a tiny portion of the chair is
responding intelligently.
The point here is that intelligence, like reality, is
what the viewer makes of it; the closer you look, the
more likely you are to find anything you want. A lucky
tape recorder is an artificial intelligence (although
hardly practical, if you have to wait trillions of
years to get appropriately lucky.)
FIT THE EIGHTH: WHERE ARE YOU?
Mind is a local phenomenon.
(Mentor)
A final question: Where are you?
Consider that there are an infinite number of
"timelines" which contain versions of you. Some of
them even contain versions of you thinking exactly the
same thoughts you yourself are thinking. Say, for
example, that a thug cuts your throat... now. You die
in seconds. But there is, somewhere, a version of you
-- healthy -- with exactly the same memories, up to
the point of death, followed by normal conciousness.
Is that person, in some sense, a reincarnation of you?
She would certainly think so. But would your mind
actually move into her body? As usual, it makes no
difference; the effect is the same.
And the same effect takes place even if the thug
doesn't cut cut your throat. (As, presumably, he
didn't.) There is a version of you sitting on the
shore of the Ganges, with exactly the same memories as
you, wondering how she got there. She is as much a
reincarnation of you as the one with the uncut throat.
Reincarnation before death -- an odd thought, no?
EPILOGUE: THE EPIPLECTIC BICYCLE
There is a reason we close the eyes of the
dead.
(Mentor)
The end of another ten pages of rumination. Hopefully,
you have learned enough to question the answers that
"everyone knows." The purpose was not really to spread
my answers; it was to show you that the universe is
more bizarre than we can imagine, and that anyone can
uncover this bizarrity -- given a willingness to
think.
Order and Chaos
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