Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged Philosophy
Elastic Universe
5 months ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’m not very versed in the wonderful world of astrophysics. It is something I am avidly reading but I don’t expect it to ever be a topic I feel I’m an expert in. Tonight before I begin my vacation I wanted to leave you, whoever you are, with a few fleeting thoughts.
It appears that our universe is ever expanding, I may be mistaken but I believe this hypothesis was reached because we see the entire universe around us red shifting. This means the light waves between us and them are stretching, which can only currently be explained by a universe that is itself expanding.
I wonder if this isn’t a situation of the ball and paddle.
“Science?”
When you hit the ball against the paddle it accelerates away from the paddle. A few things slow it down first, air resistance mostly and then shortly thereafter the tension of the string. Up until this point the ball appears like it could continue onwards, and if we removed air resistance it could feasibly continue to accelerate.
The universe itself did not explode into existence filling up a previously empty void. It was an unimaginable mass that stretched from an unimaginably small point, at least that’s how I understand it. Taffy being torqued with incredible ferocity 14 billion years ago till present. We understand how explosions work, how mass expands and contracts.
But I wonder if that stretching action involves forces we do not yet understand. A force magnitudes stronger than that of the strong force, not that it would necessarily need to be so. The string that holds the entire universe together. As it accelerates outwards from the center of the universe the string is tensed and eventually it’ll hit its maximum and contract, bringing the ball back to the paddle.
That’s my guess at least. We are watching the beginning of the swing, the ball racing onwards towards seeming heat death. Yet I suspect if humanity managed to live long enough to immortalize itself it would find itself eventually hurtling back towards the core of existence.
A cyclical process that has happened again and again, for time infinite, expanding and contracting. Interstellar heartbeats that give and take life, when such opportunities arise. Perhaps science will find otherwise for certain, or perhaps it already has, but at this time I am still of the persuasion that time is a Mobius strip. Seemingly two sided, but indeed one.
See everyone in two weeks, I’m off to Alaska tomorrow. Should be fun.
The Fish and the Faith
8 months ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’m a big fan of philosophy, I am not a “believer”, nor ever will I be. The following article is one half of the puzzle as to why. Obviously I will never see the purpose, personally, in faith and certainly not in religion, the emotional and physical benefits of either are equally found in merely being optimistic/charismatic.
This does not mean I would tell another that they should stop believing. I do however ask that nobody ever stop questioning their faith. Not to see if it is wrong, but to be sure that their understanding is always fresh and alive. The moment a person becomes locked in what they feel they know, they no longer know anything at all.
So with that lets begin this little adventure:
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”—Author unknown
It’s a saying that is easily as old as I am. At least I recall hearing it at a young age. This is one of those sayings that I feel transcends survival and roots itself in the very question of faith. Allow me to backpedal one step further and we’ll return to this.
It is said, by most faiths that I’m aware of, that a creator of some fashion formed the Earth and the Sky above. These days we extrapolate that to mean the entire universe (cause that’s what we do). This leaves me with a very difficult problem to accept. I am supposed to believe that a being would create the entire universe, a region so unbelievably big that it is literally impossible to fathom. That humans would be placed on a pebble in the middle of a vast ocean for seemingly no reason.
The amount of waste involved in this belief is unrivaled by any other form of waste in all known human history and easily you could take every wasted though, action, or death of every living thing that has ever existed on the Earth, you could give them nearly any level of weight in importance, and still all of this would be pittance compared to the phenomenal level of waste creating the universe for humans would create.
It is, upon any level of reflection, completely and utterly preposterous. If I were to be told by any person that they find it believable in any way I would be greatly disappointed in them. I don’t believe I could write a character intelligent enough to design RNA but foolish enough to create this much universe merely as a backdrop to a planet. Old game designers would tell you that you could just throw up a space wallpaper and call it good.
But this is where the previous point comes in. If we are to believe for the sake of this argument that a god, any god, any creator, is real, and if we are to believe in any form of heaven, I propose that thousands of years of people have been examining the issue wrongly.
It would not be death that leads us to heaven, this would be as with the first part of the story, merely giving the man a fish. Death is easy, praying is easy, belief is easy. I know some folks say belief is hard but I spent many years believing with all my heart I could control the weather, coincidence and cognitive mistakes make belief profoundly easy.
What is hard however is altering the real world to make it better. What is hard is improving your lot in life and the lot of those around you. This I think would be the lesson of any deity. We are not here to live and die to find our place in heaven. This is the canvas we have been handed. A sandbox of literally unmatched size, a universe so large that there is light that has been traveling for billions of years and still hasn’t reached us.
Science is the essence of Curiosity. This concentrated wonder is our tool to improving the universe. To not merely waiting till Heaven comes to us, but instead creating Heaven where we stand.
I propose that if one truly believes in faith, if one truly believes in god and heaven, they must look at two questions. Has this god been so wasteful as to create the entire universe as merely a stepping stone to another even larger one? Or has this god created a universe of phenomenally life span and girth to give humanity a chance to expand into the deep stars and to unravel every last mystery it has to offer. To transcend all things we think possible and to literally create heaven ourselves?
I am still very much a man rooted in this realm, but I do believe that if all faiths took this as the interpretation of heaven and of life we could see great advancements in society and our future. If there is a god, or gods, they are most certainly not at war with science nor with technology. There are many destructive things they may be at odds with, but curiosity is not one of them.
Matthew 13:47-50 (English Standard Version)
47"Again, the kingdom of heaven is(A) like a net that was thrown into the sea and(B) gathered fish of every kind. 48When it was full,(C) men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49
I hate to be one of “those guys” but the fish that a fisherman would throw away are those that are long dead, frail, sick, or wasted. I would think in our world death would seem to be the tossing away of those fish. Culling the Earth of those that did not succeed in their task. (Also the quell the rage, I realize the next part talks about angels coming to earth, but the entire piece is symbolic. I also realize anyone can pull anything they want from any line, allow me to indulge this once). I could think of no greater hell, hyperbole excused, than to waste away before exploring everything.
Rico Examines “People, Politics, and Pretense.”
1 year ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Basically anyone who has read an article about politics has seen an astounding statement of just how “Out of Touch” the politicians involved are. When people talk about the efficiency of businesses versus government run operations there is a distinct separation of the two. As if there is some magical race of beings that are running one versus the other.
Lets first establish what people run, people run everything, they run businesses, they run families, they run schools, they run hospitals, they run governments, and they run religions. There is absolutely nothing different about this between them all, each is run by people and each has people picked in some manner of fashion for that position. Perhaps they established kin through procreation, or established quality of talent through election or hiring, or they’ve established belief through convincing parable. Which by the way is a word everyone should use today, try it.
There is no reason why one should assume that a government cannot run something as well or better than a corporation. Likewise there is no reason to assume that a corporation cannot run something as well or better than the government. Mix and match any of the above examples and the statement is the same. It is not that these organizations cannot do it, it is that they do not do it.
The fault of course, as it must, falls upon people as a whole. People decide what is an acceptable level of accomplishment for each organization and that acceptance is what decides the level of success the organization performs to. If you accept your neighbors being terrible parents you have set a precedent that that level of parenting is all that is necessary. If you accept that your government cannot run anything properly they will then achieve that level of success. The same for schools, faiths, and hospitals.
Absolutely everything in this world run by humans will run at a level that is accepted by the people. Because absolutely everything in this world run by humans is (tautology time) run by humans. So they function under the same rules, the same psychological triggers, and will all rise or fall because of the same variables.
Don’t ever accept anything because of what organization it is a part of if the outcome is not to the standards you feel fair. There is no inherent static wall that an organization cannot rise above, everything is limited only by the expectations of global society. It is, in its entirely, no more complicated than that.
Coming this Week on TheIOS:
Rico Examines “Video Games: Graphics Vs. Gameplay.”
Rico Examines “The Beauty of Mathematics.”
ADIOS: The King of Spes: Votum.
IIWP (If I was President): Taxation
How many people are you?
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’ve been on a journey of sorts through my life, to prove to folks that likely nothing is black and white. Now honestly, could something like “How many people are you?” be that complicated of a question? I mean obviously, you are one person, I am one person, it seems so simple.
Well lets go on a very short journey, through an entirely plausible series of events, merely limited by current medical technology. I’ll then ask a few simple questions and we’ll see how straight forward they are.
For reasons unknown, Markus, has entered a hospital to have a peculiar surgery done. The hospital is going to cut Markus completely in half from tip of his head to his groin. The brain itself can survive as damaged as 50%, which means that a perfect cut with optimum tools and technology would leave two halves that only are limited by the organs that remain. We would need to either build or donate an extra heart and any other organs that are not perfectly split. Essentially the ‘open’ side would then be closed with a bionic enclosure. Nothing fancy, an apparatus that helps enclose both sides so that now we have two living halves that both function.
My first question is a simple one. What would each side know? Would one side be able to speak and the other not? Does the brain store certain information in a raid between both halves? What would the halves say to one another?
Perhaps some deeper more philosophical questions. Would the halves themselves feel one another? In theory if we have a soul we would be dealing with one entity that now experiences two separate sets of sensation. What metaphysical ramifications come from each not communicating with the other?
Now I ask you. Given this situation that could quite easily happen with some small gains in the medical field. Is this just one person or two people? If you argue that it is one person, would you arrest one half if the other (unbeknownst to it) robbed a bank? If you didn’t arrest both of them then you are acknowledging that they are both separate people.
But now we have a new question. At what point did we take one person and make them two? What was it that defines a person? Is it simply the bridge between the two hemispheres? Or is it merely how many functioning bodies are present. In the face of the split man you have taken one functioning body and made it into two with a few modifications.
So that’s my conundrum. A problem that could be so easily fixed by just having a brain that does not operate when the hemispheres are disconnected from one another. This of course isn’t my finest work but the simple scenario and questions should keep folks busy which is what is important.
Non-existing existence
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
“There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld
For those that peeked up from their sessions of WoW the above quote might be familiar. From what I take from it, there are things that exist that we know exist, there are things that exist that we don’t know exist, then there are things the we don’t know that we don’t know they exist. Which to the casual reader might come off as “Oh so you basically said the same thing twice.”
So is there actual unknown unknowns? Or is this a case of poor labeling. Modern astronomers might ask the question “What will you find at the end of a black hole?” However if you go far back enough people didn’t even know black holes existed. This would classify to Rumsfeld as an unknown unknown, but to me it is just a further stripping back of your basic everyday unknown.
Essentially knowledge is not a light switch, we do not suddenly know something is true one day, things gradually become more and more understandable as we dig deeper and deeper into the make of them and their interactions with the universe around them. At no point is anything absolutely certain on a scientific level. You can make literally trillions of subjective statements that appear to be objective and think you’ve proven something absolute but in the end it all comes back to your 5 senses, your language, and the true meaning behind everything involved with that postulate.
Honestly once you are done parsing just about anything you once thought was rock solid it falls apart, as stated in a very early post here, if it explains in absolution it is absolutely wrong (I used different phrasing before, I thought this sounded swanky though).
The existence of a non-existent thing is a paradox of language and should be treated as such. Throwing on unknown onto unknown is redundancy and should be treated as such (if you ask me…which you didn’t). Sure one could argue that god is a nonexistent existence, a being that doesn’t exist by the laws of the universe (thusly being nonexistent) however does exist outside of those laws (thusly being existent) however to that I would slap myself in the head, head butt my keyboard, and likely take a nap. Because once again once you start parsing and digging deep just about anything sounds absolutely stupid.
But who knows, perhaps with further understanding of quantum physics and all these theoretical particles we will find out that indeed in the physical world there exists a non redundant case of unknown unknowns, about that time though I assume we’ll have mixed the genetic makeup of Pigs with Albatross so that we will have simultaneously dealt with an old and abused saying and proved a currently nonsensical modern one.
One can dream.
Taken a good look at a Tyrannosaurus lately?
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
You ever had a bombshell drop in a class and had nobody but you seem truly interested. I would appear that inside the bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex they found actual fleshy bits!
http://www.smm.org/buzz/blog/tyrannosaurus_rex_flesh_pictures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
However as with all things it would appear that UW is trying to crush this wonderful bit of news for me (Darn you UW). So I’m not entirely sure whether or not I’m reading about the same bone or if one bone has flesh and another is sludge or if indeed that one both is just sludge (even though those scans that look like bird flesh are pretty convincing). But it gives some hope, I don’t feel that any dinosaur could function properly with our current environment compared to theirs. Perhaps we could work to make pygmy versions of them. However considering that you can’t even have cats without people letting them into the wild (or pythons for that matter) I suppose this would certainly end poorly.
There are constant reminders that the most unlikely of events can indeed happen. Offhand I don’t know the principle but there is the idea that anything that can happen will happen (or has). I like this for one reason, if we are to assume that any value greater than 0 is possible (that is anything that can happen can happen…pretty novel concept) then it would seem pretty silly to assume anything that has a 1 in a trillion chance is never going to happen.
Yet you will find people constantly treat it like that. “There is a one in a gajillion chance you’d have written the exact thing as that other person on your own.” Yet the fact remains the original person wrote it on their own. Likewise if there is any chance then it may have indeed happened. Just seems silly to have fractions over a hundredth if we aren’t going to treat them as possible.
Ah…at any rate it is good to see some possible truth from Jurassic park 
.
Words given too much credit.
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Whenever a person of interest (generally coined ‘celebrity’) they are put under an unusually high level of excess and I feel unnecessary stress. One thing in particular is the idea of ‘thinking before you speak’. For the vast majority of people I do think there is a level of thought always joined with the act of communication it is something of a necessity. We all make mistakes in what we are saying, that is to say simply that occasionally we say orange when we meant to say carpool or something like that.
What I don’t feel is fair however is to assume that words have power. Words are no different than currency, essentially all the money you own is only worth as much as you and your social region believe they are worth. There is also that whole exchange rate globally but for the most part a nation could ignore that and still function pretty well. All our words and the emotions we tie to them are entirely personal, there is no automatic response to any words. If there was telling a baby with a sweet tone to go fuck themselves would not elicit the same response as it does from anyone who has been ‘lectured’ or ‘indoctrinated’ into the local lingo. Indeed cursing is all in all just as harmless as discussing vegetable preferences.
However we in a pretty sizeable amount give far far too much credit to words. What most recently elicited this train of thought was that “Special Olympics” comment of the President on the Tonight Show. He equated his bowling skills to something you would see in the Special Olympics, a simple enough example that produces a relatively vivid and likely consistent image amongst anyone who hears it.
People are up in arms about how he should apologize and that while it would have been ok for him to say that before he was President it is not alright anymore. Which to me is highly confusing. If an action is not alright in one instance I would assume that it should either be wrong in all instances or be reexamined.
A persons feelings about themselves, about their world, and about basically anything should not be so easily swayed by the simple speaking of others. This is akin to walking outside, feeling a cool breeze and killing yourself because of it. It’s a radical response to a relatively unimportant gesture. While of course these are all just personal opinion and suggestions it does pay to point out that my own personal life became easily exponentially easier to maintain once I stopped caring about the random banter of others.
Words are wonderful in their artistic quality, but just as you shouldn’t stop eating or lose your self confidence when you see the Mona Lisa, you also shouldn’t be dropping proverbial bricks every time someone says something. Especially considering how often these responses end up being hypocritical. You can’t be treated fairly if everyone feels you need to be treated special. To put it simply, if you can make comments about anything you can make comments about everything. Anything less and we risk (and indeed do) begin enforcing slanted and almost exclusively hypocritical rulings on the realm and limitations of language.
A Fairly Confusing Trade
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
As was spoken of briefly in the last update I find it extremely unusual that fair trade is an opt-in system. Essentially it is universally agreed in this country that all companies are treating anyone possible poorly unless otherwise specified. It would seem more reasonable to have all companies that do not want to treat people like people could opt-out of being labeled as fair trade.
It’s odd though that this is where the world is. One would hope that thousands of years into civilized nations that at some point someone would have raised their hand and said “Hey lets stop looking for what is cheap and look for what is humane.” It’s true that treating people like dogs (figuratively speaking) can be cheap, in fact it almost always is cheap. Likewise absolutely ignoring environmental impact is equally efficient at saving money. However at what point is the income superfluous? What can a company do with 2 trillion dollars that it couldn’t have done with 1? There are plenty of things I can think of but there is an unusual difficulty in targeting a positive advantage to that extra chunk of change but perhaps visitors here are more creative.
So also to the superfluous nature of the increased income comes the danger, especially now, of people discovering the dark dirty secrets of the company. Wal-mart has been getting increasingly more famous for the absolutely unacceptable treatment of its employees and Quasi-employees, those being illegal immigrants who are manipulated into working far longer than legal for fear of being deported. The Boy Scouts have recently made headlines for a large portion (I believe it was roughly 33%) making money by performing some exceptionally aggressive logging. Then we have the most obvious example of AIG and similar companies in the recent recession. All sharing the common trait of doing the wrong thing to make a little bit more money, sure to the average penguin the amount they save is amazing, however when looking at the relative gains its almost inconsequential.
I think the first step succeeding as a nation (any nation not simply the US) is to not congratulate people for doing what should come naturally. Instead you should make known those who would sooner make a bit more while sacrificing any semblance of humanity their company has remaining. It is a fairly confusing trade-off that, if asked before the start of human dominance upon Earth, I would never see being debated.
Black Holes and Human Brains
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
This is a bit of a thought experiment but I’ve come to think that perhaps the human brain is an example of evolutionary pit falling. I’d use a better term but my brain is kind of not running on all cylinders at the moment itself!
In the universe there are many objects of varying sizes and gravitational pulls. It would seem obvious that at a certain point that gravity becomes so great that it just continually compounds upon itself and creates an extremely massive singular point. Essentially whenever you are dealing with variable systems there seems to be a real world situation where there is a runaway train effect that creates otherwise seemingly impossible (or extremely unlikely events).
The Human brain seems to be another example of this. I have a strong feeling that the evolution of the human brain works in a similar fashion. This may be an event that is unlikely to happen again for quite sometime. When the original mutations hit and the earliest humans did grow larger brains (in whatever manner or region that they did) it must have been an extremely helpful mutation. This was much like that first bit of mass past the critical threshold in space. As more and more generations of this species reproduced the changes were reinforced more and more and the brain kept growing progressively larger.
I imagine larger brains are evolutionarily extremely handy (extreme being the popular theme this post) however they are not biologically primary mutations. There is some sort of required event, perhaps a very large amount of food to help lessen the necessity of other advantages (like strength or senses). The human skull did change allowing more space for the brain and that change was the weakening of the jaw muscles. Perhaps the major food source of Humans changed in some great manner and that change increased the amount of food ingested per human per life.
It’s an interesting question, while mutations are hardly intentional it does seem that certain mutations do cause absolutely amazing continual mutations that lead to extraordinary organisms.
Extra Note: I will warn you in advance. If these existential posts are a bit annoying for you the next week might be difficult for you! I’m on vacation so it’s probably going to be a week of thought experiments. I will try my best to make them as inspirational as possible.