Slicer has enthused in previous posts about his fascination with physics and the insights it gives us into the nature of the cosmos. He's also enthused about artistic communication. It's hard to think of a better 20th Century communicator of physics and cosmology to the layman than Carl Sagan. He makes difficult stuff seem easy, and the video coming up is one such example.
One of the principles which Slicer has explored before, c/o Frank Wilczek's book, is the notion of mathematical symmetry - finding ways to see things from a different perspective, such that we see that they are not necessarily different, but the same. This approach has been used with some success to make sense of the universe in terms of the unification of forces, and the nature/generation of particles of matter. It renders things possible which otherwise seem impossible (never mind unlikely) at first sight. It seems that one of the things which has become necessary (eg in String Theory) is to factor in many more dimensions than the 3 spatial dimensions which we experience. Back in 1884, Edwin Abbott came up with a satirical"Romance..." which lends itself to this territory.
Using Abbott's imagery, Carl Sagan explains the concept of extra dimensions extremely well in the video below. He communicates much more eloquently and artistically than Slicer but Slicer takes some consolation that he's not trapped like Sagan in a fashion timewarp!
The revelation that there are things that we can't directly experience or represent in our 3D 'world' but which can nonetheless interact with it, eg by creating a 'shadow,' is intriguing to Slicer. In an earlier post, he's highlighted some issues around the mind/the self/the person (conscious or otherwise), and whether 'you' and 'I' are real entities or just illusions, as some working in neuroscience and philosophy currently posit. Is nature 'multidimensional' in other ways? Are there other interactions going on which are not immediately apparent or necessary to our model of reality? Are there areas we can't access directly with our measuring tools? Frank Wilczek suggested that sometimes we have to run with 'hunches' before we can know. In scientific endeavours, we're always looking for falsifiable hypotheses, and it has served us extremely well to set them up and then test them. We don't like to think/believe that there are no-go areas, or boundaries to the 'knowable.' But is it reasonable that we should assume that we can always devise an experiment which will provide the answer? In order to understand the quantum world, what if the "Large Hadron Collider" really isn't that large? Instead of needing an accelerator built in a 27km tunnel, what if we actually need one the size of the solar system, or the galaxy? Sure, let's keep trying, but let's also consider the possibility that "you can't always get what you want."
Meanwhile, Slicer wonders what it would be like to slice in more than 3 dimensions... maybe he does frequently and doesn't even realise. It's certainly tempting to think that, because we seem to function in 3 spatial dimensions perfectly well, we have no need for any other interactions....
Some say it's profound; others say pretentious. It divided critics, but when did anything good not divide opinion? The film is described as a story of family life against a cosmic backdrop. According to its writer-director Terrence Malick, "We trace the evolution of an eleven-year-old boy in the Midwest, JACK, one of three brothers. At first all seems marvelous to the child. He sees as his mother does with the eyes of his soul. She represents the way of love and mercy, where the father tries to teach his son the world’s way of putting oneself first. Each parent contends for his allegiance, and Jack must reconcile their claims. The picture darkens as he has his first glimpses of sickness, suffering and death. The world, once a thing of glory, becomes a labyrinth."
Mallick continues, "The story ends in hope, acknowledging the beauty and joy in all things, in the everyday and above all in the family—our first school—the only place that most of us learn the truth about the world and ourselves, or discover life’s single most important lesson, of unselfish love."
The trailer begins, "There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of grace."
As the film hasn't been released yet, Slicer hasn't seen it - so he doesn't have an opinion on whether it's profound, pretentious, or something else entirely. But the subject matter seems right up his street, and clearly continues to fascinate artists. Oh, and he nearly forgot to mention it just scooped the top prize at Cannes...
Following on from a previous post in which he corrupted Descartes' linking of thinking and ontology, Slicer considers the organ of thinking, in the context of being. Where is that organ situated? Is it for men often inside their pants, as women may allege? (Slicer will come back to that territory later in this post). Is the brain the seat of personhood? Or are personhood, individual personality, and conceptualisation merely illusions produced by our brains?
Does our mind ‘inhabit’ our brain (or indeed our whole physique) or is the ‘mind’ merely the sum of electrochemical neural impulses within the cranium? If the latter, where does this leave our sense of personal identity, our belief systems and our judgments - even apparently logical ones? It suggests that they are only an illusion, with no standalone reality. Some may be selected systems of perception, selected because they have survival benefit, but then we would need to explain why a false notion of reality should survive. The problem this presents for an atheistic worldview has been recognized by Richard Dawkins, sufficiently so that he has felt the need to dream up the speculative notion of the meme. However, the reductionist/monist/materialist who labels religious belief as an illusory product of neurotransmissory imagination has to subject his/her own concepts to the same critique.
The materialist appears to be on course to circular, self-destructing argument, recognized by biologist and rationalist J B S Haldane when he wrote:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
Haldane’s assessment suggests (by logical extension) that the basis for an argument that religious belief/experience is illusory, also renders illusory the argument itself. It would seem to lead to the conclusion that, despite superficial appearance to the contrary, there is no substantive difference between a vivid imagination and cognitive thought.
Of course, Slicer is being provocative, and selective in quoting Haldane, as others have done before him. He recognizes that the issue is whether or not we have a correct model of the world around us - whether we can discriminate between what is real and what is not. In evolutionary terms, there would be obvious survival advantage in being able to do so... not much good being unable to tell what is a predator from what is food, or a mate...
Nonetheless, if our consciousness is an illusion, on what a shaky foundation folk are standing when they claim that holding a purely materialist worldview is more ‘worthy’ than holding a different position:
Tim really likes Christmas, and Slicerreally likes Tim but finds this poignant song about loved ones inevitably sad. Interestingly, such claims relating to 'unworthiness' of religious concepts are often accompanied by language suggesting that sceptics hold higher moral ground than those they oppose. Those of us who hold to a worldview that the mind ‘inhabits’ the physical brain would seem to have a stronger footing for the notion of a hierarchy of ‘worthiness’ of ideas, since in that worldview conscious thought has an existence not confined to a mind which is itself an illusion.
When it comes to determining whether or not there is more to personhood than neuro-chemical transmission, we’re back to hypothesis and belief. Arguably our survival to reproduce is usually not influenced by whether we hold one or other worldview; however, some would contest that our ultimate fate is influenced by the choices we make – but that particular survival test (if it’s there) lies in the future for each of us considering these issues. So, for the present, a monist/purely materialist worldview is a concept just the same as that held by dualists and by those who, like Slicer, believe there is more to reality/life than physical components and processes, but aren’t sure whether any of the many varieties of dualism has got it nailed.
Is our consciousness, our self-awareness, our sense of being individuals really just a useful and accidental collection of thought processes, which evolved to enhance the likelihood of our survival to reproduce? If so, this must then also apply to the feelings we have towards our loved ones. Dare we submit all our thought processes, and emotions, and sense of identity to this view - that they are nothing more than evolved neurotransmission pathways, having no essence apart from that? Feelings are mirages, with no ‘meaning’ apart from being tools to survive?
Is the rise of post-modernism, with its subjectivity, just a wrong turning along the way of 'progress?' Or does it betray that, sometimes, in the words of Coldplay:
"Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart"?
Many modern (physicalist) philosophers believe/argue that the ‘self’ is an illusion. Is there in reality no ‘us,’ beyond a machine capable of reproducing its genome, with consciousness and sense of personal identity merely tools to help it do so better? With this approach, questions around meaning in our existence are (conveniently) deemed “the wrong question” or ‘meaningless’ questions – thought crime. What a great recipe for despair... which must of course also be a ‘feeling’ with no substance other than molecular interaction.
Bertrand Russell clearly recognized this when he wrote:
“Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collisions of atoms.... all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only... on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Whilst some would speculate evolutionary advantage in some characteristics of despair or depression, it seems irrational to Slicer that despair would enhance the prospects of survival to reproduce. So why has it persisted as a feeling and/or state?
In materialist thinking, concepts like good and evil then must also be illusions, abstract; concrete only in so far as the collection of neural impulses which amount to their perception. Moreover, arguments that we have no real freedom of choice, being destined by genetic predisposition/determinism at a neural level, leave us deserving neither credit for a ‘more worthy’ worldview, nor accountability or blame for evil/harmful decisions/acts.
It should come then as no surprise that some evolutionary psychologists explain rape in Darwinian terms as a survival mechanism:
A Natural History of Rape:Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Thornhill R, Palmer CT. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Prof Frans B M de Waal, reviewing the above book in the New York Times notes that female and feminist voices are dismissed as ideological; whereas scientists – like the authors – engage in the objective search for truth. Slicer may be under an illusion, but he perceives that de Waal is being ironic... He makes quite a few other interesting and valuable points, which are worth checking out: Download Survival of the Rapist.
“If evolutionary biology is a soft science, evolutionary psychology is its flabby underbelly... Freud is no longer the preferred behavioural paradigm. Now Darwin is ascendant. Blame your genes, not your mother.”
Slicer currently accepts evolution as the likely process used in the creation of man. However, he too is sceptical of its use as a one-size-fits-all, magic bullet explanation for everything, including all aspects of behaviour. By the same token, he resists seeing mankind reduced/confined to a genetic description/explanation, and considers genetics cannot be used as a justification of moral evil. Of course for the (allegedly) dispassionately objective monist, the problem may be avoided by arguing that there is no such thing as evil – it’s just a way of describing what is harmful to the species.... There is, of course, the distaste we have for torturing puppies – so maybe it’s not just in the context of harm to our own species, but also to species (or at least their young) which we don’t perceive as threatening our survival.
Slicer tends to stick with a more traditional view of evil, well expressed in song by Jakob Dylan, as being a real entity rather than a concept which is merely an illusion within our cerebral cortex:
He sees no reason to abandon the view that feelings, judgments (moral, logical & instinctive/intuitive), and decisions are intrinsic elements of a person; an ‘I’ or a ‘you’ who is greater than the sum of our parts – indeed, an ‘I’ or ‘you’ who inhabits those parts. If so, that would allow us hope rather than despair... and real choices... you might even call it “free-thinking” (if some materialists hadn’t already tried to claim a monopoly on the term, despite forbidding us from asking questions related to meaning).
Elton & Leon's recent venture into philosophy might be closer to the truth than a philosophy dressed up as valid science which claims that in reality there is no 'you,' just a genetic machine which imagines it has 'self'.... "I, Robot," anyone?
Slicer realises that he is out of step with what is philosophically fashionable at this point in time, and expects some accusations that he's out of touch with reality. However, he's not going to be intimidated by that particular whip, and figures that he has motivation to follow the example of another who took a thrashing for not submitting to an emperor (with or without clothes):
"When the whip that’s keeping you in line doesn’t make him jump
Say he’s hard-of-hearin’, say that he’s a chump
Say he’s out of step with reality as you try to test his nerve
Because he doesn’t pay no tribute to the king that you serve..."
and some parallel questions on setting healthcare priorities.
The emergency landing of a Qantas flight in the last 24 hours has triggered Slicer to vent on the veneer of concern for passenger welfare exhibited by the airline industry. That is not to suggest that Qantas has been irresponsible or negligent or lacks concern and, if Rain Manis to be believed, it has been the safest carrier to fly with.
Slicer observes this incident to be just the latest in a sequence of events – events which you might think could or should be a tad embarrassing to those in senior management in the airline industry who have been so outspoken in recent months.
Each time we board a flight we are asked to watch the safety demo closely, and study the laminated “card in the seat pocket in front” of us. Many don’t bother, and Slicer confesses to being often disinclined to watch the same dull play over and over with different actors. Even with novel approaches which capture the attention for a while,
interest is likely to wane as the novelty wears off. What we do not have is the opportunity to inspect the decision to fly or not to fly, or the route to be taken, or the security measures, or the pre-flight checks, or countless other aspects which impact on safety. In many ways Slicer has no problem with that – best leave it to the professionals who are in a better position and whom we trust have the requisite skills to make good objective judgments in the light of the best available information.
The serious question is, ‘are objective professionals making all the judgments pertaining to safety, or are some of these kind of judgments being made by those whose primary concern is the financial performance of their company?‘
Little over a week ago, airline officials complained bitterly about the stringency of American security requirements for planes entering US airspace, and asked for them to be relaxed. The same officials were presumably lying low when only two days later a number of bombs destined for Chicago were discovered – and one on a cargo plane on UK soil. It was almost missed during initial UK searches. One of two bombs destined for the US had travelled part of its route by passenger jet.
During the global disruption to airline travel which followed the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull in May, passengers were inconvenienced but it is hard to see any stronger motivation in suspending flights other than genuine concern for passenger welfare. What became truly disturbing was that, the longer the disruption continued, the greater the calls from the airlines to move the goalposts of what was considered a safe level of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. Even more worrying, it appears these calls succeeded in getting the goalposts moved, presumably because governments became concerned about the economic impact of ongoing suspension of flights. No good reason for why the original cut-off for a tolerable level (arrived at by those deemed most expert at interpreting the available data) was subsequently raised have ever been presented to air travelers. Steve Ridgway, the Chief Executive of Virgin Atlantic (which lost £30 million during the disruption) is reported as saying:
“We started to just not believe the data that was coming out of the Met Office.”
As the story of yesterday’s Qantas A380 engine explosion broke, the BBC reported:
“Qantas had no immediate comment on whether the incident might be related to eruptions of Indonesia's Mount Merapi over the past 10 days - which have prompted some flights above the volcano to be suspended.”
Pending further investigation, the putative implication of volcanic ash in the explosion of a Rolls-Royce engine on the Qantas A380 yesterday suggests that concerns remain. The airline industry’s complaints that the evidence base for given thresholds of volcanic ash are not well established cannot be a licence to disregard either whatever data do exist, or informed expert opinion in their interpretation.
Slicer can’t help but see a parallel with government disregarding the view of the scientific committees it appoints eg the view of the government advisory committee on drugs. It seems that, when it comes to setting policy or operational decisions, carefully and expertly assessed balances of risk can be set aside for political expediency or as a result of pressure from industry, motivated by financial concerns. It is unrealistic for there always to be cast-iron evidence on which to base decisions. We do have to live by faith in the skill of others in making a good call on the basis of knowledge, skills or experience – and they must be allowed to make those calls. In healthcare the demand for use of evidence, where it exists, is no bad thing: the demand also motivates good (and bad) research. However, the reality is that many things will continue to require skilled assessment of a clinical situation and clinical judgment by a suitably trained professional, in the absence of evidence. There are many things for which there will never be a robust scientific study conducted. It has been said before but it’s worth repeating: no-one wants to participate in a randomized placebo-controlled trial testing the efficacy of parachutes...
Analogies are often drawn between aeroplane safety procedures and healthcare safety procedures, and health professionals (and their patients) have no doubt benefited from the experience and lessons learned by the airline industry. Slicer is strongly supportive of fiscal responsibility and efficiency with the finite public purse in healthcare, but also sees danger in managing a national health service as a business. Emphasis on throughput and performance statistics could all-too-easily be prioritized over safety of individuals. Is same day admission for major surgery a step forward for patients? Is this practice change prompted by professionals who will do the procedures, or by a committee, with/without surgical/anaesthetic representation?
Was there not a good reason why such patients used to be admitted to hospital the day before? What is the main driver for the change? Is it an increase in throughput? Is saving the cash involved in a bed for one night in hospital a suitable justification? Is it both? Is asking the patient to spend part of the night before surgery driving to the hospital, in order to avoid the accommodation cost to the NHS, the equivalent of a budget airline choosing highly inconvenient flight times in order to save a bob or two? Budget airlines often state that, wherever they trim their expenditure, safety is not compromised. Can that be said for the NHS? Whilst the airline companies might have the potential for corporate greed, the same charge cannot be applied to the NHS since it is a net consumer rather than generator of wealth. However, it is reasonable to ask a few questions...
What is it with time? Must it continue inexorably, ravaging as it goes? Slicer commented in his first post that there never seemed to be enough of it. After that he observed that it’s part of the fabric of the universe (and therefore part of us). Its effects can be good and bad: things mature (crops, humans, wine) and then deteriorate. Most of us agree we’ve got to make the best use of it.
Slicer is sure he must have lost some along the way – one minute he was a skinny kid with brown hair who could sprint a hundred metres in 11.2 seconds*; the next he had kids of his own, his hair had got a definite silvering at the sides and, while he can still produce a respectable sprint, he wouldn’t want to find out just how much those 11.2 seconds have slipped as a result of skinny no longer being entirely accurate. Still, he gets to do things now – in work and play – that he didn’t then. He also sees things as less black and white than he used to, and he hopes he’s a bit less arrogant than he used to be. As Dylan put it:
“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Dylan also said: “Time is an ocean” but Slicer has been reminded that the tide is coming in pretty fast.
George Bernard Shaw said: “Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.”
NapoleonBonaparte put it this way (Maxims, 1815): “There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.”
Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide...) reckoned: “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
Maybe we should see time as a motivator. The great composer Leonard Bernstein considered: "To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."
We can’t stop the march of time, so we often wish each other well for the future. One of the most memorable sets of good wishes given to Slicer was on the day of his wedding during a speech by his best man. After public comment about Slicer’s anatomy and critique of Slicer’s dress sense, his best man closed his speech by reciting a section from Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”
A young Roger Daltrey sang, purportedly on behalf of a generation, “Hope I die before I get old.” Either he’s changed his hope, or he’s more flexible with his definition of what “old” is than he anticipated he would be when he... er... wasn’t.
As William Wallace said some time around 1300 AD (according to the movie “Braveheart” at least): “Every man dies. Not every man lives.”
So Wallace beat Abraham Lincoln to Lincoln’s famous (and overused) quotation by 500 years. I don’t imagine Braveheart would have had much in common with Andy Warhol, but they would likely have agreed on Warhol’s maxim: "They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
There is something within us that wants to resist the ageing process, and many try to disguise the signs, if not the reality. This is well treated in the black comedy Death Becomes Her, where Goldie Hawn & Meryl Streep bravely play women who are losing their looks through age, and who resort to various methods to fight it including plastic surgery and drinking a secret potion.
There is a legend in Ireland that a long lost bottle of triple distilled Arran whiskey holds the Elixir of life...However, outside movie-land and folklore, the idea of an elixir of life, or a modern version which involves tinkering with molecular biology, still remains attractive and is an area of active research.
Richard Dawkins has mulled over why religious faith has persisted for so long, assuming it’s not rooted in reality. An obvious explanation is the offer in many faiths of “the life everlasting,” as the Apostles’ Creed puts it. Of course this reasoning of the appeal of faith neither confirms nor refutes the reality of "the life everlasting." The quest for immortality is one of the oldest subjects of literature, being a central theme of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is thought to be at least as old as the 22nd Century BC. A few species have been considered to have “biological immortality” (eg the Hydra, forming a neat link with Slicer’s last posting).
Dylan’s “Forever Young” is a father’s wish for his young son, and appeared on his 1974 album Planet Waves. Countless other artists have covered the song, and many parents identify with the theme. Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders clearly did, and released a great “Pretenderized” version.
Those with savvy for what’s current, and what might influence the “youf of today,” recently saw fit to release a remix of the song to promote a fizzy drink:
But the song contains so much more than a desire to halt the ageing process. It wishes for insight, wisdom and character, suggesting that these are associated with quality of life:
“May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true”
“May you always know the truth and see the light surrounding you”
“May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong”
It highlights that quality of life and character are defined by acts of grace (and being gracious in receiving them too):
“May you always do for others, and let others do for you” (Dylan returned to this notion 5 years later in another song – clearly he felt there was more to add).
He wishes fulfillment in life:
“May you build a ladder to the stars, and climb on every rung”
“May your hands always be busy
(and Slicer particularly identifies with the next line)
May your feet always be swift”
He suggests that a strong footing (and perhaps some flexibility) is necessary to avoid being swept away by new circumstances:
“May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift.”
And finally he wishes joy in all things, and a personal contribution to the world which will not fade away:
“May your heart always be joyful, may your song always be sung”
Slicer really can’t think of a better way to wish the best for the future to anyone.
*This was when Jim Hines held the world record for 100m at 9.9 seconds. Many things are relative, but that 1.3 second difference is enormous, and spanned the gap then between respectable schoolboy athletics and Olympic excellence.
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