Persistant Perceptions

      As you view and interpret the first word of this blog it slips into the past while you view and interpret the next word, and so on, until you get to a little dot that tells you to recall all the words in the sentence and form them into a connected whole of subjects predicates and conclusions. This synaptic exercise is then stored and compared to other stored synaptic groupings as a part of your expanding record of all your perceptions, everything you have ever experienced.
      We often confuse the duration of what we call the "present" with a collection of recently recorded perceptions, the time it has taken to read this far in this blog for example. The duration of the present is arbitrarily assigned by every living active awareness and to each new set of perceptions. In reality the present is much more fleeting. (see my blog, "Between the Past and the Future") What gives our thoughts continuity is the persistence of our perceptions as synaptic captures that gives them a temporary permanence that can be carried forward from one fleeting moment to the next.
     The material world around us, and of which our bodies, sensory organs and synaptic organs are made, also posses this ability to persist as the thin event horizon moves forward in tiny flickering jumps and gives us the illusion of permanence and of a wide present. In fact change occurs much more rapidly than our perception of permanence and although not obvious from our limited perspective alters everything around us at macro and micro scales at a dizzying pace.
     We have begun to recognize this gap between our perceptive limitations and the flickering reality between the past and the future as quantum effects and are struggling to reconcile the two by reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity.
      This effort to join the two most effective approaches to understanding the universe around us is beyond most of us conceptually but the concept that we live primarily in the immediate past and control the future only by fleeting synaptic choices and recorded perceptions is easier to comprehend. As you walk from one room to another you put one foot in front of the other with the direction of your travel dictated by a decision made in the recent past. As you transfer your weight from your left foot to your right as you walk your last step is now in the past and your next step in the future but we overcome the necessity of providing synaptic oversight and micro moments of perceptions to every step by creating the illusion of an extended present moment lasting from several steps at a time to the entire trip into the next room to the entire day, at our discretion.
      The practical world of our existence is created by our perceptions and their ability to transcend the transition of many flickering present moments. The past is gone forever as soon as the electrons in an atom change position or the Earth turns a fraction of an inch and the future state and position of all things would be predictable if the number of atoms, objects and interactive forces were not nearly infinite and if matter become animate had developed awareness and choice.
     We, and all living things, perceive permanence only because our perceptions, like this blog, are recorded and move into the next fleeting moment of reality, a thin slice between a past that is gone forever and a future that is yet to exist.

         See blog:  Between the Past and the Future
     

Vindication

     My interest in science and technology began in my youth and has persisted into my declining years. I have been fortunate to live during a period of great discoveries and technological advances. Being able to remember life before television and computers and before relativity and quantum mechanics were widely accepted has given me a before and after perspective.  There has been a dramatic shift in human relations, and our relationship to the Universe around us. Attempting to follow these advances as science and cosmology delved ever deeper into the secrets of nature has been a great adventure, but it has also been humbling.. As great minds introduced concepts and theories that I could only partially understand, presented in mathematical formulas that were beyond my abilities, I felt excluded from the joy of discovery and the true meaning of the secrets that the geniuses of the day were sharing with their peers. But as theory began to reach beyond experiment and experiments began to produce conflicting results, my reverence for the privileged few who understood began to diminish. Could it be that the long chain of theories and discoveries had weak links?. Could it be that my own thought experiments into the nature of space, time and matter might be as valid as those that now fill the text books?
     As great mathematicians and visionaries presented nature's truths as closing arguments to our search for a theory of everything, I wanted to be one of them but I was excluded by my lack of understanding; And then a miraculous thing happened. With the help of new observational tools our nearly perfected theories ran into an old nemesis; "gravity".
     We have been able to describe and measure gravitational effects in detail since Newton and have based most of our cosmological conclusions on an, assumed, understanding of gravity's relationship to visible matter and mass. But when careful measurements of the visible mass and rate of rotation of galaxies revealed that there wasn't enough visible mass to hold them together at observed rates of spin we couldn't, or wouldn't argue with the math. At the rate they were spinning the galaxies could only remain intact if there was much more gravity than the observable mass of the galaxy could provide. Unwilling to give up the dependent connection between mass and gravity scientists have begun a search for invisible matter in the form of ephemeral atomic particles and I feel vindicated.
     The great minds of our time never claimed omnificence but I assumed it, and now that I know it isn't true, I can continue my own thought experiments and continue to blog on such matters with less intimidation.
      
    

A Privileged Access To Reality

     We have assumed a privileged place in the universe since we became self aware and appointed ourselves to a divine position. Unfortunately our inflated self importance has clouded a realistic assessment of our actual status for most of our history and still separates us from the reality around us by assuming we have a special access to reality that is all inclusive and of a different order than other living forms. We are beginning to penetrate our egoistic fog using scientific tools that are revealing a reality that is complex beyond our ability to assess and more amazing than our best collection of miraculous occurrences. The view we get through our scientific tools and manipulations is, without assessment, a jumble of astronomical radiation and movements, genetic puzzles, quantum surprises and biological mysteries. As we step down from our self appointed throne in the clouds, however, we are learning that our past assumptions of a privileged access to reality through our senses alone is unrealistic in the extreme We are also learning that the only way we can deal with the blaze of a total electromagnetic spectrum, unexplained gravitational anomalies and strange atomic structures is to create visual and mathematical analogies that we can process in our synaptic net molded to  accommodate sensory inputs only. We are explaining the reality being exposed using visual cartoons, digital reductions and symbolic manipulations. We are incapable of a total interaction with reality because we, like all other living forms, have had our attributes of awareness naturally selected in a long term, random "best fit" survival test that has sorted and resulted in our current  limited aware state. The wide view of reality we have opened with our tools is easily seen as threatening because we have not been equipped to deal with the broad perspectives and unfamiliar information from sources outside the range of our senses. Recognizing our disconnect with actual reality opens several doors, some beneficial and some detrimental.
      Our escape from a self assumed privileged ability to access reality through our senses alone or through revelations from a higher power has led to an organized examination of the reality around us and many resulting technological benefits. It is also slowly leading us to a recognition that all living forms possess some level of awareness each with their special advantages and many beyond basic human abilities and that this realization is fostering a greater empathy and appreciation of all life.
      On the detrimental side, by pointing out our disconnect from total reality and by challenging the idea of privileged access, the door is opened for those threatened by such notions to reach out to others feeling displaced from a universal center and through rhetoric radicalize their discomfort into narrow and extreme religious views. The fear and discomfort fostered by a sense of no longer belonging to or understanding a universe being exposed by investigatory tools and scientific methods is  fostering attempts to return to a pre-scientific era using revolt and violence..We cannot, however, undo a civilization built on new understandings without destroying ourselves and most other life on our small planet. We are the product of a universe with more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on earth, and of matter becoming animate and alive through natural processes, and have become what we are through the same random process that has produced every other living thing from microbes to mollusks to man, each one aware of the reality around it in its own special way.
       Moral codes formed in the fog of our egocentric past are still relevant but no longer sufficient. We now control, and must use wisely the fusion power that is the energy of stars and have the ability to intervene and control the future of life through genetic manipulations. If we turn back civilization will collapse and if we wish to survive the current imbalance between the powers we have gained by observing nature and our inability to act in accord with natural processes we must recognize new mandates imposed by our advanced evolved state. We can survive our petty perspectives and egocentric views  only by continuing to explore and learn, recognizing the sanctity of language and by always being of good council, and by being good stewards. All living things have access to reality and our access is not privileged nor complete, only more encompassing and with greater responsibilities.



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Finding order in a push-pull Universe

   Two men have influenced our modern perspectives more than any others by describing the motions going on around us. One, on a break from the formal curriculum at Oxford to escape the plague, pondered and described the motion of falling objects. The other, influenced by the relative motion of trains, pondered and described the effect of objects moving at high speeds relative to one another. Both men invented mathematical systems to measure and compare the motions they described and have had a profound influence on advances in science, technology, and living standards. Both men described and created comparative systems for the motions they studied but neither explained them. Explaining them awaits further discoveries and the serendipitous conjunction with an alert mind.
   Gravity  is one of those constants that goes unnoticed because it is always there, seemingly immutable and innate. Newton asked why and came up with the idea that all objects with mass attract each other with a force dependent on their combined mass and the distance between them. The answer he go t to his  "why" question was only a "how". We still don't know why. If we did we could explain the gravitational effects holding the galaxies together and determining their spin when there is no visible mass to explain it. We call this phenomena "dark matter", assuming it is some kind of hidden mass but all we really know is that we are observing unexplained gravitational effects. Using Newton's concept and formulae we can forecast movements in gravitational fields and extrapolate its effects in unusual circumstances. For example; the gravitational effect is zero, because of equal mass in all directions at the center of a massive object, like the Earth. At the center of the earth things are weightless. (what kind of  pressures result from this effect and does the Earth's core float weightless at the center of our planet?)  Another strange extrapolation is that a large hollow sphere with a massive crust will have a positive gravity on the outside surface of the sphere proportional to the mass of the sphere that keeps everything stuck to its surface but inside the hollow sphere everything will be weightless. A human standing on the surface will feel the gravity but a human standing just opposite on the inside surface of the sphere will be weightless.
    Newton also described but did not explain inertia.. Matter at rest tends to remain at rest and matter in motion tends to remain in motion. This observation, like "things fall down", (gravity) are DUH! statements. We all know these things without it being pointed out. What Newton added was the concept of mass as the cause of gravity and inertia and a mathematical way to measure them. At first glance gravity and inertia appear to be related because they both are a measure of mass, but they are quite different. Place a small mass inside the hollow sphere we discussed above and it will float freely. Give the hollow sphere a push however and the small mass inside will not notice the push and the sphere will move but the small mass will remain stationary as the sphere moves around it until the small mass hits the approaching inside wall of the sphere where it picks up a small proportional part of the push and begins to move with the sphere. If the push is continuous the small mass now sticks to the inside wall as if acted on by gravity and an object exactly opposite on the outside of the hollow sphere will experience a decrease in the pull of gravity.
    Before Einstein one could hypothetically carry these gravitational pulls and inertial push effects to infinity but Albert put the brakes on  by exposing a speed limit set by nature, (the speed of light). Extending his relative speed experiences on trains to the motion of micro and macro objects he exposed a universe of endless interacting motions exchanging their inertial energies through gravitational and physical pushes, pulls and collisions, changes in inertial mass at extreme velocities, and conversions of mass to energy and vice versa. Even duration (time) becomes a variable in this concept but it is all still a description, not an explanation.
    One other interactive force plays on the same stage as gravity and inertia is buoyancy. If we fill our hollow sphere with water it is no longer hollow but if we follow the reasoning above there is a zero gravity state at the center of our water filled sphere where there is an equal amount of mass in all directions whose gravity is pulling in opposite directions cancelling each other. Now place a cork in the water. On the surface of our sphere it will bob to the surface because it is buoyant. If we place the cork near the center of our water filled sphere will it bob to the center weightless point? What if we place it toward the outer shell? A similar easy experiment to illustrate the relationship between inertia and buoyancy is to tie a helium filled party balloon in a car so it is free to move back and forth Close the windows and turn off the heater fan. Step on the accelerator. Which way does the balloon lean? Now step on the brake.
     Aside from being similar are inertia, gravity and buoyancy cousins? Is there a micro limit below which gravity does not exist? Can buoyancy partially offset inertia?







 

A Very Dangerous Question

Nothing separates us more than ingrained belief systems . Communal beliefs are generally acquired and embedded through repetitive indoctrination, are a carry over from ancient attempts to explain and order human affairs, and are sustained by writings declared sacred and by ritual.
Communal belief systems expand their membership through evangelism and conquest and develop internal order and control mechanisms copied from more secular systems, both despotic and democratic. Members hold their basic tenants of faith above question, are extremely sensitive to contradiction and will  defend their beliefs by force when necessary.
Communities based on faith and ritual often attribute their insight and special self importance to a unique link to a god or gods and a special understanding of god's directives. Protecting and sustaining a faith requires evangelical efforts as well as membership control and a constant defense against societal changes brought about by science and technology and other belief systems.
When gods were more numerous and had names one could ask about one's beliefs as simply and safely as if inquiring into ones well being without risking a defensive response, but with the rise of a single god concept and the idea that ordinary individuals could interact with god without the intervention of a priestly mediator, faith based communities took on new characteristics and became more militant and susceptible to manipulation.

The question; "Do you believe in God?"  is not a question you ask a stranger if you want to open a friendly conversation. You may naively assume that everyone defines the word "belief" in the same way and assume that everyone knows and understands what you mean by "god" since there is only one and everyone knows who he is. Ask this question repeatedly at work and you will quickly attract the attention of a supervisor. Ask the question in a bar and you will find yourself sitting alone. Ask the question in a church and you will get more questioning looks than positive answers. The reason for this is that their is as many gods as there are human believers and belief is not a quantifiable term and has many levels from fanatical commitment to pretense. Even within faith based communities schisms develop and can become violent. Faith is a specific commitment to a
codified set of behavioral directives dictated by a supreme being as interpreted by officials appointed, or elected, from within the faithful community. When the question, "Do you believe in god?" is asked, more often than not it is answered by drawing a defensive line separating believers from non believers or to identify those with different beliefs who might pose a threat. When differences are identified mistrust is inevitable. Conflicts are usually initiated, not by the community of the faithful, but by the priestly guides who see their power positions threatened.

Past faith based conflicts have been between competing faiths and radical belief systems but as science feeds technology and technology exposes natures secrets the general population becomes more rational and fact based faith based causing faith based communities to become more defensive and more combative.

Dangerous lines are being drawn between the faithful and the secular, between those who pray and  those who don't. The ritual of prayer has become the control mechanism used by modern despots who would exploit the faithful and turn them into weapons. For these new manipulators of faith the question is not; "Do you believe in god, or do you pray, but "How do you pray?"  Ritual, not faith, now identifies the chosen ones.  

A Civilization Built on Sand

         The familiar metaphor that one should place the foundation of a house upon a rock rather than sand is usually used in reference to religions but it also applies to modern technology.  The, so called, civilized world of man began with the use of stone tools, weapons and building  materials, advanced with the addition of bronze implements and weapons, took another step into the age of iron and steel, and with the help of mortar and concrete, has brought us to our present state of solid roads and structures all carefully placed on solid foundations. Unfortunately we found a secondary use for sand that may be making our modern civilized world fragile in spite of it's apparent solidity.. 
     Silica, (sand), is the second most common element on Earth and we have used it as an abrasive, have turned it into glass, and combine it with many other elements to our advantage. Very recently we discovered another use for silica. By turning it into tiny chips we can use sand to store and process information, allowing us to create thinking self directed machines. The stuff we let our children play in and walk on next to ocean waves now has a memory, lands airplanes, directs factory robots, guides bombs, directs the flow of electricity to our factories, monitors our water distribution systems, provides vendors and wholesalers the tools that keep track of sales and inventory, is integral to Wall Street and every other world stock exchange and is central to our communications and navigation. We have replaced direct control of nearly every essential operation of our complex civilization with chips of sand and become dependent on their reliability. We have created a fragile interface between ourselves and the systems that sustain us. In just a few decades we have replaced a civilization built on rock and steel with human hands on the levers of control to a civilization built on sand susceptible to gamma ray bursts and computer virus.
     When sand shifts under the foundation of a building the building sinks and the foundation cracks but, with the exception of an earth quake, a sinking building seldom effects a neighboring building. Our new silica chip civilization however is networked into interlocking operations communicating with individuals and each other and a crack in one foundation quickly spreads. Some of this is accidental as was the case of the great power grid failure in 2002 and some is intentional as in the case of the Iranian nuclear development center computer crash in 2010. The most dangerous of these was the Iranian incident. Even though shielded and isolated from the Internet the security of the computer systems running the uranium enrichment program crashed when a powerful virus designed to interrupt program directives for complex machine operations was introduced internally by the insertion of a simple thumb drive. What makes this incident noteworthy is that the destructive virus escaped the secure facility and has since infected thousands of critical operations in many sectors.
     The implications of these incidents and many others should make it clear that our advanced technologically based civilization, dependent on traces for electron movements etched in silica chips and continuous communications, has moved the foundation of human survival onto soft ground.
Ironically, it may be the inherent uncertainty of the quantum world that moves us back to a rock solid foundation as quantum computing makes intrusions and errors nearly impossible.

Militant Evangelism

       To be an evangelical one needs to have been made privy to a truth, a truth that is self evident and beyond question. These absolute truths can be religious revelations, ideological constructs,  narcissistic impositions, or simply an elaborate falsehood designed to seduce large numbers of people to a cause. Nearly all evangelical efforts are based on an emotional appeal and are made directly
to individuals from the pulpit, in a conversation or on social media by tapping into latent paranoia or hatreds, or by promising a reward.
      Evangelical causes vary from the acceptance of Gods or Prophets, methods of worship or ritual, the proper relationship of a subject to a pharaoh, king or dictator, the economics of nation states, the state verses individual freedoms, correct moral behavior and many more. All start by drawing a line in the sand separating a cause from those who either reject the evangelical beliefs or who have not yet been informed and recruited.
      Evangelism can be Passive; as exemplified by the Gideon's placing Bibles in every hotel and motel room, Direct; as exemplified by Mormon youth knocking on doors and leaving pamphlets, or Confrontational; as exemplified by the Crusades, and now by ISIL. There are sixty thousand evangelical Christians in the United States and over thirty thousand militant Muslim extremist now engaged in an effort to convert the world to their absolute truths their capsulized perspectives and their narrow views.
      Militant evangelism takes place at small and large scales. The bombing of abortion clinics and murder of abortion workers is extreme evangelism using elimination and intimidation to change society to fit within their circle of beliefs. The Crusades, using the recovery of holy relics as an excuse, eliminated an entire civilization of "non believers".  Shiites kill Sunnies over minor differences as have Catholics and Protestants. I personally have been attacked by a frustrated Baptist evangelist with a machete when I refused his gift of eternal life and his demand that I commit to his beliefs. Militant evangelism recruits and controls a following by promoting paranoia and hate using emotionally charged words and measured interpretations of ancient "holy" writings and by limiting information and narrowly focusing educational curricula.
      Evangelistic movements solicit funding by appealing to basic tribal emotions, once of value in a pre-civilized world but now a dangerous vestige of evolution out of sync with nation states and a global economy. There are many potential donors and recruits among those who feel displaced by technology and society and these individuals are easy prey. A cause that reinforces their paranoia and justifies their hate,and simplifies the complex modern world of science and technology by substituting the word of god or ancient prophets empowers them and has great appeal. Give them a gun to make them feel even more powerful and surround them other like minded recruits and you have an army. Use funding from evangelistic groups to select and support political candidates with extreme views and render rational deliberative government bodies impotent.
      Even if one of these extreme militant evangelistic movements were to succeed, it would soon splinter and the new norm established would be confronted by another extreme cause. Those who hope to save us from ourselves may be the most dangerous among us.