Forward regression
Music: 邰正宵- 一千零一夜
Book: Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
I skipped school again, this time for more practical reasons. No point going to a sch event when you're dont feel like a part of the school.
Ive fallen in love with peaceful mornings where you wake at 9 and listen to some random music and close your eyes and lie on the bed. A good read might follow. Or some thinking. It is very important to lie on the bed and think about things, anything, your life, the universe. Or if you feel energetic enough, a morning swim would be lovely, or a jog. Or maybe both.
I cant wait for the June holidays to come.
I just finished Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Real good read if you skip the more intense scientific conecpts (and there are surprinsingly few for a book of this sort, which makes it all the better; he managed to encapsulate, or rather, simplify things to accessible quotients) Here's an excerpt to prod the interested-but-lazy number of you in the right direction.
If the universe is indeed spatially infinite, or if there are infinitely many universes, there would probably be large regions somewhere that started out in a smooth and uniform manner. It is a bit like the well-known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters--most of what they writer will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Similarly, in the case of the universe, could it be that we are living in a region that just happens by chance to be smooth and uniform? At first sight this might seem improbable, because such smooth regions would be heavily outnumbered by chaotic and irregular regions. However, suppose that only in the smooth regions were galaxies and stars formed and were conditions right for the development of complicated self-replicating organisms like ourselves who were capable of asking the question: Why is the universe so smooth? This is an example of the application of what is known as the anthropic principle, which can be paraphhrased as "We see the universe the way it is because we exist".
There are two versions of the anthropic principle, the weak and the strong. The weak antrhopic principle states that in a universe that is large or infinite in space and/or time, the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time. The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighbourhood not seeing any poverty...
Few people would quarrel with the validity or utility of the weak antrhopic principle. Some, however, go much further and propose a strong version of the principle. According to this theory, there are either many different universes or many different regions of a single universe, each with its own initial configuration and perhaps, with its own set of laws of science. In most of these universes the conditions would not be right for the development of complicated organismsl only in few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question:"Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answwer is then simple: If it had been different, we would not be here!
The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the elctron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the elctron...The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars would either have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium...
In the hot big bang model described above, there was not enough time for heat have flowed from one region to another. This means that the initial state of the universe would have to have had exactly the same temperature in every direction in order to account for the fact that the microwave background has the same temperature in every direction we look. The initial rate of exapnsion also would have had to be chosen very precisely for the rate of expansion still to be so close to the critical rate needed to avoid recollapse. This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It should be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.
-Hawking
The almost-reflexive questions that come after would include Why did God (or whatever higher scientific power there is) create us? What is mankind's mission? Does He (or She, or It) have the power to un-create us anytime he likes?
Or consider this: Your death would impact your family members, your friends etc the same way their deaths would impact you. What if you remove both you and your family then--nobody would die, nobody would get impacted. Expand this to this planet--if it were removed, if we had never any consciousness in the first place, --so what? Why are we here, so what if we weren't?
Or consider this: 1.3 million earths can fit into the sun, and the sun is just one of 400 billion of stars out in our milky way, a galaxy which spans for a hundred thousand light-years, a galaxy which is one of a hundred billion galaxies detected (and thats not the final number). Have you any idea how pathetic our existence is?
I hope we're getting some answers when death comes. Or actually if not all answers can be provided I would just like (please?) to view the complete map of the universe. Or maybe experience what it'd be like to be in a black hole, that'd be fine too.
You know, everytime I read and think about the vastness of space out there, everytime I picture the big bang, or god, or that alien spaceship that is going to come out of a wormhole and say hi to us anytime now (imagine an infinite number of alternative realities); and then look at the things around me, tables chairs this computer books, and then think of all these people out there whose lives revolve around Gucci and Prada and their boyfriends and their jobs and their kids and the scoreline of the next football match and the time left to A levels, I feel a sense of pity. A sense of pity because on one hand I am unable to fully integrate with such space-relative materialistic concerns and on the other, short of dying right now, I am unable to immerse myself into space.
Oh well.
Book: Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
I skipped school again, this time for more practical reasons. No point going to a sch event when you're dont feel like a part of the school.
Ive fallen in love with peaceful mornings where you wake at 9 and listen to some random music and close your eyes and lie on the bed. A good read might follow. Or some thinking. It is very important to lie on the bed and think about things, anything, your life, the universe. Or if you feel energetic enough, a morning swim would be lovely, or a jog. Or maybe both.
I cant wait for the June holidays to come.
I just finished Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Real good read if you skip the more intense scientific conecpts (and there are surprinsingly few for a book of this sort, which makes it all the better; he managed to encapsulate, or rather, simplify things to accessible quotients) Here's an excerpt to prod the interested-but-lazy number of you in the right direction.
If the universe is indeed spatially infinite, or if there are infinitely many universes, there would probably be large regions somewhere that started out in a smooth and uniform manner. It is a bit like the well-known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters--most of what they writer will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Similarly, in the case of the universe, could it be that we are living in a region that just happens by chance to be smooth and uniform? At first sight this might seem improbable, because such smooth regions would be heavily outnumbered by chaotic and irregular regions. However, suppose that only in the smooth regions were galaxies and stars formed and were conditions right for the development of complicated self-replicating organisms like ourselves who were capable of asking the question: Why is the universe so smooth? This is an example of the application of what is known as the anthropic principle, which can be paraphhrased as "We see the universe the way it is because we exist".
There are two versions of the anthropic principle, the weak and the strong. The weak antrhopic principle states that in a universe that is large or infinite in space and/or time, the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time. The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighbourhood not seeing any poverty...
Few people would quarrel with the validity or utility of the weak antrhopic principle. Some, however, go much further and propose a strong version of the principle. According to this theory, there are either many different universes or many different regions of a single universe, each with its own initial configuration and perhaps, with its own set of laws of science. In most of these universes the conditions would not be right for the development of complicated organismsl only in few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question:"Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answwer is then simple: If it had been different, we would not be here!
The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the elctron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the elctron...The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars would either have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium...
In the hot big bang model described above, there was not enough time for heat have flowed from one region to another. This means that the initial state of the universe would have to have had exactly the same temperature in every direction in order to account for the fact that the microwave background has the same temperature in every direction we look. The initial rate of exapnsion also would have had to be chosen very precisely for the rate of expansion still to be so close to the critical rate needed to avoid recollapse. This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It should be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.
-Hawking
The almost-reflexive questions that come after would include Why did God (or whatever higher scientific power there is) create us? What is mankind's mission? Does He (or She, or It) have the power to un-create us anytime he likes?
Or consider this: Your death would impact your family members, your friends etc the same way their deaths would impact you. What if you remove both you and your family then--nobody would die, nobody would get impacted. Expand this to this planet--if it were removed, if we had never any consciousness in the first place, --so what? Why are we here, so what if we weren't?
Or consider this: 1.3 million earths can fit into the sun, and the sun is just one of 400 billion of stars out in our milky way, a galaxy which spans for a hundred thousand light-years, a galaxy which is one of a hundred billion galaxies detected (and thats not the final number). Have you any idea how pathetic our existence is?
I hope we're getting some answers when death comes. Or actually if not all answers can be provided I would just like (please?) to view the complete map of the universe. Or maybe experience what it'd be like to be in a black hole, that'd be fine too.
You know, everytime I read and think about the vastness of space out there, everytime I picture the big bang, or god, or that alien spaceship that is going to come out of a wormhole and say hi to us anytime now (imagine an infinite number of alternative realities); and then look at the things around me, tables chairs this computer books, and then think of all these people out there whose lives revolve around Gucci and Prada and their boyfriends and their jobs and their kids and the scoreline of the next football match and the time left to A levels, I feel a sense of pity. A sense of pity because on one hand I am unable to fully integrate with such space-relative materialistic concerns and on the other, short of dying right now, I am unable to immerse myself into space.
Oh well.
5 Comments:
Tend to think of life as fitting into the surroundings rather than the surroundings fitting to life's needs. If organisms can survive close to the earth's core feeding on sulphur under that pressure and heat, i'm sure life can find a way to tap energy if the physics of this galaxy is different.
How life came about is the more difficult question....maybe some scientist from a bigger realm planted us as microorganisms in a cell to study our effects on it?
I read A Clockwork Orange when I was in sec 4. Its a good book and I even have the DVD. The movie, together with Fight Club, Trainspotting and Amercian Beauty is known as the most impactful movies in socity. I can lend A Clockwork Orange DVD to you if you are keen. You can't find it in any other DVD store.
Yes indeed, we are just a tiny fart if we look at the galaxy as a whole. but think of it this way, chew on whatever you can chew at this part of your life and leave the larger part when you are able to do so. All As for A'levels! You can do it!
P.S: Thats your purpose for the time being.
The way that you write is very poetic. I will be happy to have a check any now and then and see what you are recommending to read. I am very big into the reading and have read Clockwork orange and a million other books in my 29 years. Always up for some advice on something classic that I might have not thought about.
YES I WANT THE DVD!!!
AND WOW SOMEONE FROM POLAND!! Wonder how you found this place...
"The answwer is then simple: If it had been different, we would not be here!"
That's rather like arguing after you win the lottery that "because" you won the lottery, you didn't need the winning ticket.
This, "...we would not be here." lacks force and any real explanatory power. Soon enough, most of us will not be here to observe anything as we will be dead, yet the numerous conditions favorable to life that are physically impossible to account for in Naturalism will most likely remain, regardless. Observation by sentient beings of the numerous conditions apparently set very specifically to favor the existence of intelligent life in Nature has nil to do with their cause or their continued preservation in the system and laws of Nature.
Thomas Jefferson, on the order of causes
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