h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Cheers for that happy, I hope you enjoy your new boots too. Have fun doing whatever it is you are doing.

Jen

Just been converting the commands for a 'Form' from HTML to GuideML (Check out my page). Me a Computer Geek never !

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I'm sorry about all the typos above. i hope it doesn't make me sound any more idiotic than I am...

wee lik e tipos'

Hi Jenny, I just love really long and rambling posts! Yours gives me the opportunity to throw in one myself! Now this post is just Part One of a very long dissertation that starts with quantum physics and ends with Utopia; feel free to comment on this one but remember there's more to come!

Quantum physics is very interesting to me and I think it is very important. I was interested in it as a teenager, and I went on to study physics at university. I got into the quantum mechanics during my second year, but I was disappointed, because while we went into a lot of mathematics, we never went into what it all meant. I called a halt to the physics because I never really wanted to be a physicist, and I studied languages and philosophy after that. So now I have a background knowledge in physics as well as philosophy which helps me better to understand what things mean, and I keep up my interest by reading books from the library and by doing a bit of searching on the 'net. What I have managed to turn up so far has been enormously intrigueing. The science I studied helps me to grasp the concepts and even the easier pieces of mathematics.

I think it is necessary that the average person become better educated about quantum mechanics. It entails an entirely new view of the world; the worldview of average people is still similar to the old mechanical Newtonian world-view, which is not just old-fashioned, but totally wrong! Literally people don't understand what they're doing or even what they ARE. But I also suspect that we will need another revolution WITHIN the quantum-mechanical world-view to get to the bottom of reality. But we can't have a revolution in this world-view while it is still revolutionary itself. So more people will have to adopt it until it becomes commonplace. Only then will we be able to see further, real progress. Only when enough people understand quantum mechanics will there be enough people to question it and to delve deeper into it towards even more fundamental principles. We need science, we need it bad; not necessarily science as in technology, but science as in an understanding of the universe and the way it works. I happen to believe that such an understanding is possible, and I also believe that it is something that belongs to everybody, not just a small select group of scientists.

I also happen to believe that the average person has enough brain-power to understand all these things if only he/she applies that brain-power properly. I believe that a person can become more intelligent and wiser with time; I think the average person has the potential to be smarter than Einstein was; the problem is ACHIEVING that potential. But I think that the internet is going to be a stimulus to people's minds; if we can connect a large enough portion of mankind to the web we might witness a world-wide surge in intelligence. Happy, if you're reading, thanks for that info about LINUX and connecting South African schools to the 'net, that is something very relevant to our topic, and I'll tell people around here about it. Geeks of the world, unite!

There are loads and loads of weird stuff in quantum physics. Too much to get into in detail now, but we can talk about that from time to time. I for one don't think the universe is a happy accident. Or not MERELY a happy accident. There is something odd about the nature of time. Richard Feynman, one of the most brilliant quantum scientists of the twentieth century, did strange things with time in his equations and theories. (By the way, read anything featuring Feynman that you can get your hands on!) He once posed this question: why does all electrons have EXACTLY the same basic mass and electric charge? And he proposed this answer: because they are the same electron! And he imagined a single electron weaving forwards and backwards in time, its tracks constituting all the electrons we see from our time-limited perspective. And the same goes for every other elementary particle. In fact, the electron would not only have formed all electrons, but also all positrons (the anti-particles of electrons. A positron would be an electron moving backwards in time. His diagrams showed how positrons and electrons would be formed during high-energy interactions, and how they would meet to mutually annihilate each other. If this wasn't enough, Feynman also divised diagrams for the movements of particles where they actually took ALL possible roads in going from one place to another. Superimposing all potential roads gives a single answer for the most likely road, but no guarantee that the particle will take it.

In all this the arrow of time gets spun around and the familiar cause/effect relationship that rules our thinking breaks asunder. It seems that different possibilities are superimposed, it seems that the future can on a quantum level influence the past. Now the origin of our universe was a quantum event. Also there might still be quantum effects spanning the full extent of it. This might mean that speaking of the universe either being caused by something or being accidental is wrong merely for the reason that such a statement still presupposes that the cause-effect relationship operates at all at that level. The true situation might be much more complicated. It might be that the origin of the universe was caused by something that yet has to happen. I think that the universe in fact created/creates/will create itself. We can't rule this possibility out while we still have no clue as to the underlying nature of time and the cause-effect relationship.

Another view might be that the universe exists because it is thing that might possibly exist, and all things that potentially exist also exist in actuality. There is a theory, the many-worlds theory, that says that for every possible event there is a particular world history, and that the "universe" contains all possible histories. There are also theories that say our universe is merely one of an infinitude, the totality of universes being called the multiverse. Theories about underlying reality include superstring theory that postulates many dimensions more than the four we know, and a space with properties very, very different from our intuitive understanding and experience of it. If any one of these theories are even close to being true the average individual will have to radically alter his ideas of the world and of him/herself to have any chance of having a clue.

There is currently talk of a "theory of everything". I believe that it is possible that we might be able to unravel such a theory, maybe it won't even be very long until we do. But even if we do it will be a long time before we unravel all its implications. Seeing as it is a theory of EVERYTHING, it will have to be able to EXPLAIN everything - every phenomenon in existence has to be some sort of expression of it. Now the origin of the universe, or the nature of time and space, or the properties of particles - those go without saying, but more interestingly, I say such a theory will also explain human (or any other) consciousness. I think that mind and thought are to be understood by referring to tiny quantum events - because "grosser" events don't seem to me to be adequate to an explanation of the human mind. But those very same tiny quantum events might lead us to discover different kinds of mind from our own. The universe being such a complex place, it would be extremely improbable that thought as we happen to know it should be the only kind of thought that is possible. And any kind of thought that is possible would have some kind of real existence somewhere among the many worlds, or the in multiverse, or among the potentialities that decide what becomes real in "our" universe.

Stay tuned for Part Two!

wow. will read over and think.

jen

PS am staying tuned - but will be very busy again soon. I'm expecting a very busy week, and a manic weekend.

dearest Jenny,
Hi! I'm JLC if we havent been introduced. I am very interested in your postings. I have been to some sites on Noam Chompsky, maybe I spell the name wrong, anyway I can relate to them and have bookmarked them. I have also come across his name in my course in Human Development, I plan to do a research paper on his theory of LAD. "Language Aquistion Device" a theory on the side of nature vs nurture, that the human being has an inate ability to learn language which develops deep within the center of the brain. check it out on my page, it will have to be done by Nov. 15.
WORLDS OF LOVE,
JLC the TTP

Can't wait for part two. (I studed physics at university, normaly when people find this out they either want to talk about Q.P. or nukes, so I now have a pretty good adversion complex regarding talking about these subjects however I 'm staying tuned for part two.

regards

Happy

Part Two: just note that I haven't got it all worked out 100% in my head; what I have is loads and loads of hunches and gut feelings. I trust my intuition quite far, so I'm getting down all the hunches first, and then I'm going to go after the hard evidence to see how many of them turn out to be right.

I ended the last post by saying that I believe human (and other kinds of) thought to be a quantum phenomenon. So what implications would that have? It would mean that the uncertainty principle, and the wave-nature of particles, and other even stranger things also operate on the level of our minds. One particular effect that is interesting to me is that of coherence. Coherence happens when many different "particles" all exist in a single quantum state. This happens for instance in laser light and in superconductors. The coherence effect of laser light is what enables holograms to be made. A coherent beam of laser light is split in two; one part bounces off an object while the other goes straight to a photographic plate, where it recombines with the "bounced" beam. The "bounced" beam will carry phase differences relative to the "unbounced" beam, and their superimposition forms a weird pattern of dark and light patches. Now the interesting part: shine a laser through the weird pattern on the plate, and you get a restoration of the image of the object from which the first beam bounced - in 3D. You all know that; but what is also important is that EVERY PIECE of the holographic plate contains the entire image! You could cut a small piece off its corner, and when you shine a laser through it, you still see the complete object - only a little blurry. Holography makes it possible to store an incredible amount of information in a small area.

Some people believe human thought to also be based on a coherence phenomenon. Read Danah Zohar's book "The Quantum Self" for this view, which I think contains some truth. There seems to be particles in living cells that display this quantum coherence, and this makes it possible for large numbers of them to work in sync and to carry huge amounts of detailed information similar to a holographic plate. This happens in a single human brain, but it there can even be coherence effects between seperate brains. So when two people know and understand each other very well, their thoughts can become coherent, their personalities can appear to overlap and there could possibly even be "paranormal" links between them like telepathy. There is a great amount of anecdotal data about wives who dreamt about their husbands in a very vivid way and later discovered that their husbands had died at that precise moment. There's an example of this in the movie "The Perfect Storm", but of course this example is supported by many real-life stories. Also, identical twins sometimes seem to be able to communicate telepathically; at the very least, there seems to be a link between them that stays strong even when they are very far from each other, even if they grow up totally seperately. And this link seems to involve more than just similar genetics; again there are many informal stories to back this up. So far science hasn't been able to investigate it, but it seems that quantum coherence between different human minds might be a way in which such things can be possible and explicable. It's the same "action at a distance" principle that upset Einstein so much.

Coherence between different minds can lead to things like the collective subconscious of Jung, or the "zeitgeist" or the spirit of the times. When many people's minds cohere with each other, a very subtle effect can be transmitted very rapidly to all of them. That's what I mentioned in a previous post: there is currently a "new spirit" that is growing stronger in the world, and that unites different people from different countries. The title of this forum is "many others think like you", and that is precisely what I'm talking about. There's an entirely new mindset coming into existence worldwide. This new mindset is one of being concerned about the world as a whole, about people, and animals, and the resources and natural systems of the earth. Because we can now communicate very rapidly all over the world, it is now possible to establish and maintain such a mindset over the entire world. Communication and human interaction will form the foundation of the new society.

Jenny, in your long post you mentioned the big companies and the "bad guys", you said that there is a small group of very rich people who manipulate economies for their own gain. That might be true; I do believe that the current economic system, the stock markets, rules of trade and so on are totally artificial and created to benefit specific people and in the process harming many others. The current system is more or less designed to exclude the Third World completely. But personally I don't worry much about conspiracy theories because the world is a chaotic system. That means that it is very hard to predict effects on such a scale, so it would be very hard for a small group of people to control it. The world is a whole, you can't seperate it into independent parts. Any activity meant to disadvantage Africa will very rapidly start to have effects on other countries as well. And if you neglect the environment, ultimately you will be hit by the repercussions yourself. The sooner people start understanding this, the better. Again, we must communicate, so that more people will understand that they are only harming themselves by their foolish actions.

If people understand that things are very intimately interconnected, they will also understand the benefit of doing things like making sure that the world environment stays hospitable to life, that natural ecosystems are strong and healthy, that no species die out (and rare ones become common again), that every country in the world must have a stable and prosperous society, that we must empower and assist people who need help, that we maximise the total life potential of all living things, because we will all benefit from it. If one suffers, all suffer; if one benefits, all benefit. This is the new attitude that we must promote in the world.

In this endeavour we can use many different tools, there are many different approaches. The way I set things out here, I used quantum physics to illustrate some of my points. I do believe that science is something very important. Ignorance causes most of the world's problems. The more knowledge people have, the more power they have. Science is true knowledge about the world; especially the new sciences can be extremely helpful guides to understanding and action. Quantum mechanics has many very useful features, such as the embracing of uncertainty, the knowledge that there are subtle interactions by which all systems are interconnected, the idea that reality is in fact very strange and mysterious and wonderful at heart. It is a much more human science than the old mechanistic, deterministic science of dead matter and rigid laws. Much of the ruthlessness and shortsightedness of current economic and political systems are relicts from the poor understanding of an older age. We cannot underestimate the importance of getting rid of this defunct world-view.

When will we achieve Utopia, if at all? There is a lot of work still to be done, and by no means can we take it for granted that we will achieve Utopia. But I do believe that we can improve the world immeasurably, and that this will happen and happen quite fast, as a result of new developments. What will help very much is if we can replace the old systems of education. The internet can be used to educate people, from young to old, and if I have kids I will teach them very quickly how to use it; I will encourage them to learn, make suggestions on what I believe they should learn, be interested in what they are doing, but I would also give them freedom to explore what they want to explore. I am sure that people can learn more this way than would ever have been possible before. From an early age people would talk to hundreds if not thousands of people from all over the world, hear many different views and rapidly develop their own powers of judgement and criticism, learn how to get along with other people, learn many new things every day, in an interactive way. The better the system works, the more people will interact and communicate, the more finely tuned to each other they will become. And it will not all take place before computer screens. The internet will just be a system of communication and information, like the brain and the nervous system is. It will be the brain and nervous system of the new humanity, and it will help people organise their activities out there in the real world much better. At least, it has this potential; we must strive to make sure that this potential is fulfilled.

Here Endeth Part Two. I managed to get from quantum physics to Utopia, but I still have many other ideas. I'll get to them later. Now I want some of your ideas! Happy, you still have to tell me about the situation there in Britain. Jenny, I'll be checking out some of your links, but I'd like it of you can tell me more about Chomskey. By the way, I think you can do good work in the fashion industry. One thing that upsets me a bit is when there's a fashion for clothes made of the skin or other parts of rare animals. For instance there's this beautiful silk-furred antelope, the Chiru, that lives in Tibet, and they are being slaughtered to make scarves for rich bored fashionable idiots. I think in the fashion industry, and also everywhere else, customers should be informed about the origins of their products. Do you know about blood diamonds? Many Africans use diamond smuggling to pay for their weapons and wars. Many Americans buy diamonds without knowing they are helping to perpetuate atrocities. Information, communication! For instance genetically engineered food. We need research and testing so that we can know just what the hell we are doing. People must learn to be patient. But we can't just throw all progress overboard. For instance today I read that the new cloning technology was used to clone a Gaur (a rare species of Asian wild ox) from the tissue of one that had died. Imagine what that can do for wildlife conservation! In everything we must follow the golden middle way: the balance between man and nature, progress and conservation, science and scruples. JLC, is there anything you can add?

Is this my longest post yet? Might this not even be a record for h2g2?

Come in Jenny, Happy and JLC - where are you? Let's keep this thing alive!

I'll post here soon (honest)

check my post on the Reality page. I think that'll do for now.

Quantum physics, gloabl utopia and childhood geekdom is a bit much for the time being. I'm reading Brocas brain now and am worrying about the hundred trillion things the brain is supposed to be capable of knowing.

Right now I know about three.

love jenny

Co-incidence! I have borrowed Broca's Brain from the library, it's in my room right now! First I want to finish what I'm reading right now: "The Metal-Benders" by John Hasted. Since Tuesday I've also read: "A Child of Eternity" by Adriana Rocha & Kristi Jorde (strongly recommended), "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl (strongly recommended) and "Science and Parascience" by Brian Inglis (longwinded and difficult, but recommended if you have the interest).

Love, Peace, Happiness and Wisdom to you!

Willem

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welcom back to the world of free thinkers.

Me = good, I think Mr Case will be along later - Its a strange world isn't it ?

Hi, everyone! Please read "The Metal Benders" if you can get it. It happens to be relevant to everything we've been discussing here. It contains a lot of hard science and maths - which I skipped - but the rest takes no more than 30 hours total to get through, and we can keep discussing it for the rest of our lives.

Currently working on "Broca's Brain". Carl Sagan is a very readable writer, eh?

Jenny, I think we'll manage to figure out what went wrong. I think we are fortunate enought to be living in a time that will be a turning point in human, and perhaps even cosmic, history. I found another guy who's serious about world peace and prosperity: John the GURUdener. There's a link to his page on mine.

Thanks for the info about referencing, Happy! As you will see, you and Jenny are now also referenced on my page!

Take care, all! Blessings of Bliss, from

The 'Case/Willem

Hello Chaps,

really good to hear from you again. Carl Sagan is a very readable writer, and I would have to recommend all his books to everyone! (I think)

much love,

jenny