Of Gods and Dice

Einstein’s often quoted out of context statement that God does not play dice with the universe, had no bearing on whether or not he believed God. It was no more than a rebuttal of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. This principle is one of the underlying assumptions of quantum mechanics. Basically it states that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured and known, the less precisely the other can be known. This is not a failure of the researcher's ability to measure, but rather it is a statement about the system itself. In a system that is large, for example that which we can measure with a tape measure, this uncertainty is too small to be of consequence, but at an atomic level it is substantial relative to the size of the particles these measurements are applied to. Einstein never could accept this theory and attributed it to our present lack of knowledge and understanding. In a way he accused Heisenberg of making up a theory to fill the gaps in our knowledge, much the same as scientists will accuse religion of evoking God to explain whatever science is not able to come up with an answer to. So far the theory has held up.

Einstein was a bit old school in this; he wanted to keep the ideals of determinism in place. Everything has a cause and an effect and randomness is only apparent randomness. It only appears to be random because we do not have perfect knowledge of all the factors that caused the effect. Knock a cue ball into a triangle of billiard balls and the effect appears to be random. Not so, if you could plot the exact position and weight of each ball, the exact smoothness of the green baize, the exact air resistance, the exact direction and force that the cue ball strikes the first ball in the triangle, you could predict the exact position of all the balls on the table after all have ceased to move. It would take a fair bit of calculation, but with the right computer programme this should not be too difficult. Now extend the number of balls to a thousand and the table to a thousand square metres and fire the cue ball at a thousand miles an hour and you may find your computer programme could start to struggle.

The old Newtonian determinism was to view the universe as a clockwork mechanism, vastly more complex than a clock, but ultimately as predictable, provided perfect knowledge of all particles and forces therein are known. Of course from inside the universe such knowledge is not possible to possess, for practical as well as philosophical reasons. Determinism at the very least provides a deity with something to do, the super computer that knows the alpha and omega and all things in between. The need to determine a reason for existence does not exist, everything is already determined; the thoughts going through my mind at this instance were predicted a billion years ago. This universe has a certain fatalistic appeal to it, in a way it is comforting to know that we merely do what the script says; we are not really to blame for anything.

Quantum mechanics on the other hand points to a fundamentally different universe. Randomness rules at the core of it. If the attributes of particles are only knowable in terms of probabilities, then no matter how much computing power, earthly or ecclesiastical, you have at your disposal the present state can only tell you so much about the future or even about the past. Only probabilities are knowable and the further away from the present the less reliable any prediction becomes, and that is as true for the past as it is for the future.

This is of course very obvious; it is exactly how we actually experience the world. We didn’t really need Heisenberg to tell us that the universe is ruled by randomness.  Our experience tells us that causality is only part of the story, we set off on a journey with defined objectives, but we come to the first fork in the road and causality gets diluted by chance. Only the young can believe in cosmic plans, life has a way of telling you that planning is just vanity.  We play dice with our lives because we have no choice. The next move could be up a ladder or down a snake and it is more the product of chance than the wisdom of our choices. Naturally when it works out well we are less inclined to attribute our achievements to good fortune.

Without randomness life would not have arisen, much less intelligent life, evolution requires random mutations in the reproductive processes of life forms. Spin the clock back four billion years and re-run history and the chance that intelligent life (such as we call ourselves) will arise from apes to inhabit Earth at this time, is vanishingly small. There were too many chance twists and turns in the history of life, too many throws of the dice. If the God’s do anything it is evident to me that they are very fond of gambling.

So what has all this to do with the reason for existence? For one thing it points to the truth that the laws of nature that govern the universe are not conducive to the existence of an omniscient deity. Complete knowledge is not compatible with the facts. If God exists, and that remains a very big if, then at least He does not necessarily know the omega. If randomness is indeed fundamental to the universe, does this mean that the idea of purpose is simply a non-starter?  Maybe the Universe is just a giant computer, (a la Douglas Adams, the answer is 42), and we are just part of a programme. That appeals to me, the God’s playing X Box instead of dice.  In a random universe the purpose of existence may well be to find that purpose

Another Day, Another Dollar

 I’m sitting in the commuter train going home. Tired and staring at the faces of other tired commuters. I, and without a doubt many of my fellow passengers, have spent the day dealing earnestly with matters that have very little real value. Most of what we do in this service economy does not leave any long term legacy; much of it will not leave an impression beyond one single day. No one should be surprised that we seek to find some significance, some higher purpose in in all this drudgery. 

The nihilistic thought that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’, for some people is just horrible. That all of this teeth gritting is just to get you and your dependents reasonably well sheltered, fed and clothed on the road to the grave. Of course anyone that has spent any length of time hungry, cold and exposed to the elements will contest that there is a great deal of point in having these items covered off. But, I am referring to the bigger picture here, once the lowest rungs in Maslow’s Hierarchy are satisfied. Is it possible that there is actually no point to this whole thing? We will all personally die and be forgotten, our species will go extinct, our sun will burn out and the universe will either become a vast cold dead place or contract back to a singularity and disappear up its own ass, so to speak. To everything there is an end, nothing lasts forever.

I don’t know if a finite existence should have a bearing on purpose. I don’t believe that mortality should rob our lives of relevance. Personally I’m not sure that I’d want immortality, if it were on offer. Actually the whole idea of a greater meaning to life is a little scary. I’m more comfortable with the ‘life is meaningless’ point of view. At least I’m not pissing around with some grand cosmic plan when I screw up…much less pressure.  No matter what I do my ultimate fate is precisely the same as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Ed Wood and Bill Gates. On one level a comforting thought, in the long run there are no winners and no losers, it makes true communists out of all of us.

I seem to have digressed. The answer to the Why question could absolutely be that there is no meaning beyond that existence. Whether you find this unpalatable, or like me are unsure as to what the preferable answer is, our preferences and most ardent beliefs are not relevant in this quest. Reason and evidence is all that we can consider. Logic must triumph over belief; unlike the religious, I will not ask anyone to suspend their incredulity. This blog is about discovering the truth, even if that truth leads me to where I fear to go. For now the biblical option may have plenty of appeal and some damn good marketing going for it, but it isn’t my first choice. Nonetheless, if this quest  leads to a truth that involves a weird old guy in a white bathrobe, a flowing beard and a decidedly disturbed outlook on life, if reason or evidence points that way, then so be it.

Whether or not we have an element of the divine in us, or if we are here purely because of an incredibly unlikely series of chances, we are something special. It is true that, in the words of The Bloodhound Gang, ‘we ain't nothing but mammals’, but we do have true awareness, we can contemplate our own immortality and that of our loved ones. This is our dilemma, we can sit at the table of the gods and hold our own knowing that we will soon grow feeble and will have to slink away to die quietly before dessert is served. This is our blessing and our curse; no other earthly creature can do this, or perhaps would want to. This is why we at least want to know the reason for existence, for all our faults, this makes us noble.

WHY

Why existence and even why am I doing this? Why would I want to hive off a few hours a week from my already frantic schedule to pursue this “... one person’s attempt to find out something about the meaning of existence...”  As noted, this is amateur philosophy because I haven’t yet found someone to pay me good money to contemplate my navel, (any takers?). The amateur status may not be a bad thing, after all Einstein’s most productive year, his Annus Mirabilis, happened whilst he was employed by the Swiss patent office where his job was to evaluate patent applications. The short answer is that as time goes by I seem to get stuck more and more on the treadmill of daily life that my existence has evolved into. This is my attempt to force myself to consider something other than the banalities of my life (work, buy stuff, eat, sleep and work some more.)

Of course I have no pretentions to equalling or even achieving a fraction of the insight in this pursuit as Einstein had in his. Yet the achievements of the great scientists of the last few hundred years and what I am trying to do are in some way linked. They queried the How by means of reasoning, experiment, mathematics and observation, and have produced an enormous body of knowledge that, though possibly far from complete, described our world to a remarkable degree. We know a lot about how nature works and have harnessed this knowledge to produce the technology that we wield (to good and bad effect). 

The Why question may well be answered by the scientists at some future date, but right now science can only eliminate possibilities, it does not answer why the universe exists, or why life or even why self aware life forms exists. This is no failing of science or humanity at all, the fact that a creature that evolved as a hunter gatherer has achieved this level of understanding is fantastic.  This points to a question that could be the subject of this blog at some time... why do we have this level of brain power that is clearly way beyond minimum spec for the job. I don’t believe that the Why question can be answered by anyone right now, and it is not a goal of this blog to attempt to do so, that would be silly. Instead I hope merely to gain some insight and using intellegent reasoning to come up with a set of possible answers and firmly eliminate some others.  

  

The Why question is closely linked to the How question especially when the thorny issue of religion comes into it. Evoking the existence of a deity to fill in the gaps of our knowledge automatically provides a framework to hang answers to the Why question on. Sadly these answers seem to always be driven by the very human interests of those that provide these answers, more on this discussion to come.

It is not my intention to structure this blog in any particular way, but rather to go with the topics as they come to mind, so bear with me in the hope that this could prove to be interesting. 

Well that’s about enough for one day...