The edge of time

This is a contentious idea, despite the fact that we all believe we experience it all the time. Many physicists, including ones I admire, and whom I readily admit know a lot more than me (like Sabine Hossenfelder), believe that ‘now’ is an illusion; or (in the case of Paul Davies) that it requires a neurological explanation rather than a physical one. I will go further and claim there is an edge of time for the entire universe.
 
I made the point in a previous post that if you go on YouTube, you’ll find discussions with physicists who all have their own pet theories that are at odds with virtually everyone else, and to be honest, I can’t fault them, and I’m pleased that they’re willing to share their views.
 
Well, I’m not a physicist, but this is my particular heretical viewpoint that virtually no one else agrees with, with the additional caveat that they all have more expertise than me. They will tell you that I’m stuck in 19th Century physics, but I believe I can defend myself against that simple rebut.
 
During COVID lockdown in 2021, I did a series of online courses through New Scientist, including one on The Cosmos, where one of the lecturers was Chris Impey (Distinguished Professor, Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona) who made the point that the Universe has an ‘edge in time’, but not an edge in space. He might have used the word ‘boundary’ instead of ‘edge’, which would be more appropriate for space. In fact, it’s possible that space is infinite while time is finite, which means that the concept of spacetime might have limited application, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
 
The one other person I’ve read who might (partly) agree with me is Richard Muller, who cowrote a paper with Shaun Maguire, titled Now, and the Flow of Time, as well as a book, NOW; The Physics of Time, which I’ve read more than once. Basically, the edge of time on a cosmic scale is the edge of the Big Bang (which is still happening). What I’m saying is that there is a universal ‘Now’ for the entire universe, which is one of the most heretical ideas you can hold. According to modern physics, ‘Now’ is completely subjective and dependent on the observer – there is no objective Now, which is what I challenge.
 
There is a way in which this is correct, in that different observers in different parts of the Universe see completely different things (if they’re far enough apart) and would even see different horizons for the Universe. In fact, it’s possible that an observer who is over the horizon to us will see objects we can’t see, and of course, wouldn’t see us at all. This is because objects over the horizon are travelling away from us faster than the speed of light.
 
Because the speed of light is finite, the objects that we ‘observe’ millions or billions of light years away, are commensurately that much older than we are. And it follows from this logic, that if anyone could observe Earth from these same objects, they would see it equally old compared to what we see. This means that everyone sees a different now. This leads to the logical question: how could an objective ‘now’ exist? I like to invoke Kant that we cannot know the ‘thing-in-itself’, only our perception of it.
 
And I invoke Kant when I look at relativity theory, because it’s inherently an observer-dependent theory. I would contend that all physics theories are epistemic, meaning they deal with knowledge, rather than ontic, which is what is really there. Some argue that even space and time are epistemic, not ontic, but I disagree. The dimensions of space and time determine to a large extent what sort of universe we can live in. A point made by John Barrow in his book, The Constants of Nature.
 
In a not-so-recent post, I explained the famous pole-in-the-barn paradox, where 2 different observers see different things (in fact, measure different things) yet, in both cases, there is no clash between the pole and the barn (or in the example I describe, a spaceship and a tunnel). One of my conclusions is that it’s only the time that changes for the 2 observers, and not the space. Instead, they measure a different ‘length’ or ‘distance travelled’ by using their clocks as rulers. But it also implies that one of the observers is more ‘privileged’ than the other, which seems to contradict the equivalence principle. But I can make this claim because there is a reference frame for the entire universe, which is provided by the CMBR (cosmic microwave background radiation). This is not contentious, because we can even measure our velocity relative to it by using the Doppler effect, hence our velocity relative to the entire universe.
 
But there is another famous and simple experiment that provides evidence that there is an overall frame of reference for the Universe, which philosopher of science, Tim Maudlin, called ‘the most important experiment in physics’. If you were to go to the International Space Station and spin an object, it would be subject to the same inertial forces as it would on Earth. So what’s it spinning in reference to? The spaceship, its orbit around Earth, or the entire cosmos? I’d say, the entire universe, which is obviously not spinning itself, otherwise it would have a centre. Of course, Einstein knew this, and his answer was there is no absolute time or space but absolute spacetime.
 
I raised this earlier, because, if time is finite and space infinite, the concept of absolute spacetime breaks down, at least conceptually. But space doesn’t have to be infinite to have no boundary. In fact, it’s either open and infinite or closed and finite, albeit in 3 dimensions. To provide a relatable analogy, the Earth’s surface is finite and closed, but in 2 dimensions. Marcus du Sautoy made the point that, if the Universe is spatially infinite, we might never know.
 
The other point is that you could have clocks running at different rates dependent on where they are in the Universe, yet there could still be a universal Now. This is implicit in the famous twin paradox thought experiment. I like to point out that when the twins reunite they have lived different durations of time, yet agree where they are in time together. This means you can have a universal Now for the universe while disagreeing on its age; if you lived near a massive black hole, for instance.
 
In the same way observers can travel different distances to arrive at the same destination, they can travel different time intervals as well. In fact, they would agree they’ve travelled the exact same spacetime, which is why relativity theory argues you can only talk about spacetime combined rather than space and time separately. But I argue that it’s the clock that changes and not space, where the clock is the ruler for space.

The fly-in-the-ointment is simultaneity. According to relativity theory, simultaneity is completely dependent on the observer, but again, I invoke Kant. There could be an objective simultaneity that can’t be observed. I’ve written on this before, so I’ll keep it brief, but basically, you can have a ‘true’ simultaneity, if both the observer and the events are in the same frame of reference. And you can tell if you’re not, by using the Doppler effect. Basically, the Doppler effect tells you if the source of the signals (that are apparently simultaneous) are in the same frame of reference as you. If they’re not, then they’re not simultaneous, which infers there is an objective simultaneity. Whether this applies to the entire universe is another matter.

You may be familiar with this diagram.

 

 
I want to make a couple of points that no one else does. Firstly, everything outside the past light cone is unobservable (by definition), which means relativity theory can’t be applied, yet people do. As I said earlier, relativity is epistemic and all epistemic theories (or models) have limitations. In other words, I contend that there is an ontology outside the light cones that relativity theory can’t tell us anything about (I discuss this in more detail in a post appositely titled, The impossible thought experiment).
 
Secondly, the so-called ‘hypersurface’ is a fiction, or at best, a metaphor. Yet Brian Greene, to give one example, discusses it and graphically represents it as if it’s physically real. If ‘Now’ is the edge of the Big Bang, it suffuses the entire universe (even if it’s physically infinite), which means it’s impossible to visualise.
 
Let’s talk about another epistemic theory, quantum mechanics. In fact, the ontology of QM has been an open debate for more than a century. I recently watched a discussion between Matt (from PBS Space Time) and Mithuna Yoganathan (of Looking Glass Universe), which is excellent. It turns out they’re both from Melbourne, which is where I’m writing this. I figured Mithuna was Aussie, even though she’s based in London, but I didn’t pick Matt’s accent. I have to admit he sounds more Australian in his conversation with her. Towards the end of the video, they readily admit they get very speculative (meaning philosophical) but Mithuna provides compelling arguments for the multiple worlds interpretation (MWI) of QM. Personally, I argue that MWI doesn’t address the probabilities which is intrinsic to QM. Why are some worlds more probabilistic than others? If all outcomes happen in some universe somewhere, then they all have a probability of ONE in that universe. If there are an infinite number of universes then probabilities are nonsensical.
 
If you go to 37.10m of the video where Mithuna talks about the Schrodinger equation and the ‘2 rules’, I think she gets to the nub of the problem, and at 38.10 puts it into plain English. Basically, she says that there are either 2 rules for the Universe or you need to reject the ‘measurement’ or ‘collapse’ of the wave function, which means accepting MWI (the wave function continues in another universe), which she implies without saying. She says the 2 rules makes ‘the Copenhagen interpretation untenable’. I find this interesting, because I concluded many years ago that the Universe obeys 2 sets of rules.
 
My argument is that one set of rules, determined epistemically by the Schrodinger equation, describes the future and the other set of rules, which is classical physics and is determined by what we observe, describes the past.
 
A feature of QM, which separates it from classical physics, is entanglement and non-locality. Non-locality means it doesn’t strictly obey relativity theory, yet they remain compatible (because you can’t use entanglement to transmit information faster-than-light). In fact, Schrodinger himself said that “entanglement is the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought.” In other words, it obeys different rules to classical physics, with or without ‘measurement’.
 
MWI effectively argues that superposition exists in reality, albeit in parallel universes, whereas I contend that it only exists in the future. The wave function describes all of these possibilities, and via the Born rule, gives them probabilities. But when we observe it, which axiomatically puts it in the past, there is only ONE and there is no longer any superposition.
 
All physicists agree that entanglement, in principle, can apply to objects on opposite sides of the Universe. In fact, Schrodinger’s equation, in principle, can describe a wave function for the entire universe, which is why I’ve half-jokingly called it God’s equation, and have it tattooed on my arm.
 
I contend (though, as far as I know, no one agrees with me) that entanglement across the entire universe only makes sense if there is a universal Now for the entire universe. A Now that separates QM future superpositions (described by the wave function in Schrodinger’s equation) from past ‘observables’ in classical physics.

Evil arises out of complacency

 I was going to post this on Facebook and still might, but I think my blog a more apposite home.

 
Evil arises out of complacency, which is why it oftentimes only becomes obvious in hindsight, especially by those who were involved. Also, anyone can commit evil, given the circumstances, despite what we tell ourselves. When it becomes a social norm, it’s the person who resists who becomes the exception. And that’s the key to it all – it becomes normalised and we rationalise it because the subject obviously deserves it, and the perpetrator is on the side of Right (with a capital R).
 
We are witnessing its emergence in various parts of the world right now: specifically, Ukraine, Gaza and America. In the case of Ukraine, the perpetrator is Russia, who is not on ‘our side’, so it’s easy to call out. But in the case of Gaza and America, the perpetrators are traditionally our allies, so there is a tendency to turn a blind eye, and certainly not to create waves. Israel has weaponised famine in a most iniquitous fashion, because they control the aid, and even the aid is used as a weapon and a coverup for genocide and ethnic cleansing, as called out by Francesca Albanese (United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories).
 
In America, people are being ‘disappeared’ off the street, which is so unbelievable that the Administration has got away with it (this obviously doesn’t happen in the epitomised free world; you must have imagined it). In both of these cases, the actions have become normalised to the point that any negative response is but a murmur. You might ask: are these acts evil? Well, genocide is usually considered a war crime, but apparently not when Israel is the aggressor. Israel knows how to leverage the West’s collective guilty conscience for the pogroms of the 20th Century. And disappearing someone might not be considered evil until it happens to a family member – that may change your perspective.
 
At the very least, Netanyahu and Trump both have cruel streaks in their psyche (as does Putin), and both of them exploit the hate felt and expressed towards outsiders and both have normalised activities that not so long ago would have been considered morally reprehensible. History may judge things differently.

Addendum: I came across this, which I think is very relevant. Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge (Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham) talks about Hannah Arendt's observation that "superfluous people are a feature of authoritarian thinking. Once you've decided that some people's lives are not as important or as valuable as others, you are already walking into trouble." Arendt, of course, was a Jewish refugee from Germany who helped refugees in Paris before escaping to America, where she made her home and reputation.

 

 

 

 

The infinite monkey theorem and the anthropic principle

 I was originally going to write this as an addendum to my not-so-recent post, The problem with physics, but it became obvious that it deserved a post of its own.
 
It so happens that Sabine Hossenfelder has posted a video relevant to this topic since I published that post. She cites a paper by some renowned physicists, including Lawrence Krauss, that claims a theory of everything (TOE) is impossible. Not surprisingly, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem for mathematics forms part of their argument. In fact, the title of their paper is Quantum gravity cannot be both consistent and complete, which is a direct reference to Godel. This leads to a discussion by Sabine about what constitutes ‘truth’ in physics and the relationship between mathematical models, reality and experiments. Curiously, Australian-American, world-renowned mathematician, Terence Tao, has a similar discussion in a podcast with Lex Fridman (excellent series, btw).
 
Tao makes the point that there are 3 aspects to this, which are reality, our perception of it, and the mathematical models, and they have been converging over centuries without ever quite meeting up in a final TOE. Tao comes across as very humble, virtually egoless, yet he thinks string theory is 'out of fashion', which he has worked on, it should be pointed out. Tao self-describes himself as a ‘fox’, not a ‘hedgehog’, meaning he has diverse interests in maths, and looks for connections between various fields. A hedgehog is someone who becomes deeply knowledgeable in one field, and he has worked with such people. Tao is known for his collaborations.
 
But his 3 different but converging perspectives is consistent with my Kantian view that we may never know the thing-in-itself, only our perception of it, while such perceptions are enhanced by our mathematical interpretations. We use our mathematical models as additional, complementary tools to the physical tools, such as the LHC and the James Webb telescope.
 
Tao gives the example of the Earth appearing flat to all intents and purposes, but even the ancient Greeks were able to work out a distance to the moon orbiting us, based on observations (I don’t know the details). Over time, our mathematical theories tempered by observation, have given us a more accurate picture of the entire observable universe, which is extraordinary.
 
I’ve made the point that all our mathematical models have limitations, which makes me sceptical that a 'final' TOE will be possible, even before I’d heard of the paper that Sabine cited. But, while mathematics provides epistemological limits on what we can know, I also believe it provides ontological limits on what’s possible. The Universe obeys mathematical rules at every level we’ve observed it. The one possible exception being consciousness – I am sceptical we will ever find a mathematical model for consciousness, but that’s another topic.
 
Tao doesn’t mention the anthropic principle – at least in the videos I’ve watched – but he does at one point talk about the infinite monkey theorem, which is a real mathematical theorem and not just a thought experiment or a pop-culture meme. Basically, it says that if you have an infinite number of monkeys bashing away on typewriters they will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare, despite our intuitive belief that this should be impossible.
 
As Tao points out, the salient feature of this thought experiment is infinity. In his own words, ‘Infinity absolves a lot of sins’. In the real world, everything we’re aware of is finite, including the observable universe. We’ve no idea what’s beyond the horizon, and, if it’s infinite, then it may remain forever unknowable, as pointed out by Marcus du Sautoy in his excellent book, What We Cannot Know. Tao makes the point that there is a ‘finite’ limit where this extraordinary but not impossible task becomes a distinct possibility. And I would argue that this applies to the evolution of complex life, which eventually gave rise to us. An event that seems improbable, but becomes possible if the Universe is big and old enough, while remaining finite, not infinite. To me, this is another example of how mathematics determines the limits of what’s possible.

Tao has his own views on a TOE or a theory for quantum gravity, which is really what they’re talking about. I think it will require a Kuhnian revolution as I concluded in my second-to-last post, and like all resolutions, it will uncover further mysteries.

 

Sympathy and empathy; what’s the difference?

 This arose from an article I read in Philosophy Now (Issue 167, April/May 2025) by James R. Robinson, who developed his ideas while writing his MA thesis in the Netherlands. It prompted me to write a letter, which was published in the next issue (168, June/July 2025). It was given pole position, which in many periodicals would earn the appellation ‘letter of the week’ (or month or whatever). But I may be reading too much into it, because Philosophy Now group their letters by category, according to the topic they are addressing. Anyway, being first, is a first for me.
 
They made some minor edits, which I’ve kept. The gist of my argument is that there is a dependency between sympathy and empathy, where sympathy is observed in one’s behaviour, but it stems from an empathy for another person – the ability to put ourselves in their shoes. This is implied in an example (provided by Robinson) rather than stated explicitly.
 
 
In response to James R. Robinson’s ‘Empathy & Sympathy’ in Issue 167, I contend that empathy is essential to a moral philosophy, both in theory and practice. For example, it’s implicit in Confucius’s rule of reciprocity, “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself” and Jesus’s Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” Empathy is a requisite for the implementation of either. And as both a reader and writer of fiction, I know that stories wouldn’t work without empathy. Indeed, one study revealed that reading fiction improves empathy. The tests used ‘letter box’ photos of eyes to assess the subject’s ability to read the emotion of the characters behind the eyes (New Scientist, 25 June 2008).

The dependency between empathy and sympathy is implicit in the examples Robinson provides, like the parent picking up another parent’s child from school out of empathy for the person making the request. In most of these cases there is also the implicit understanding that the favour would be returned if the boot was on the other foot. Having said that, many of us perform small favours for strangers, knowing that one day we could be the stranger.

Robinson also introduces another term, ‘passions’; but based on the examples he gives – like pain – I would call them ‘sensations’ or ‘sensory responses’. Even anger is invariably a response to something. Fiction can also create sensory responses (or passions) of all varieties (except maybe physical pain, hunger, or thirst) – which suggests empathy might play a role there as well. In other words, we can feel someone else’s emotional pain, not to mention anger, or resentment, even if the person we’re empathising with is fictional.

The opposite to compassion is surely cruelty. We have world leaders who indulge in cruelty quite openly, which suggests it’s not an impediment to success; but it also suggests that there’s a cultural element that allows it. Our ability to demonise an outgroup is the cause of most political iniquities we witness, and this would require the conscious denial of sympathy and therefore empathy, because ultimately, it requires treating them as less than human, or as not-one-of-us.

The problem with physics

 This title could be easily misconstrued, as it gives the impression that there is only one problem in physics and if we could solve that, everything would be resolved and there would be nothing left to understand or explain. Anyone familiar with this blog will know that I don’t believe that at all, so I need to unpack this before I even start.
 
And you might well ask: if I know there are a number of problems in physics, why didn’t I make that clear in the title? You see, I’ve embedded a question in the title that I want you to ask.
 
I’ve been watching a number of videos over a period of time, many of them on Curt Jaimungal’s channel, Theories of Everything, where he talks to a lot of people, much cleverer than me, some of whom have the wildest theories in science, and physics in particular. If one takes John Wheeler’s metaphor of an island of knowledge in an infinite sea of ignorance, they are all building theories on the shoreline of that island. I like to point out (as a personal ego-boost) that I came up with that metaphor before I knew Wheeler had beaten me to it.
 
To give just one example that seems totally ‘out there’, Emily Adlam proposes her ‘Sudoku universe’ where everything exists at once. She’s not alone, because it’s not dissimilar to Sabine Hossenfelder’s position, though she uses different arguments. Of course, both her and Sabine are far more knowledgeable on these topics than me, so while I disagree, I acknowledge I don’t have the chops to take them on in a proper debate. Another example is Claudia de Rahm, whom I’ve referenced before, who thinks that gravitons may have mass, which would seem to contradict the widely held belief that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. She has discussions with Curt, that once again, are well above my level of knowledge on this topic. 

Another person he interviews is Avshalom Elitzur, who even makes statements I actually agree with. In this video, he argues that space-time is created when the wave function collapses. It’s a very unorthodox view but it’s consistent with mine and Freeman Dyson’s belief that QM (therefore the wave function) can only describe the future. However, he also has a radical idea that the ‘creation’ of space may be related to the creation of charge, because if the space is created between the particles, they repel, and if it’s created outside, they attract. I admit I have problems with this, even though it took Curt to clarify it. Richard Muller (whose book, NOW, I’ve read) also argues that space may be created along with time. Both of these ideas are consistent with the notion that the Big Bang is still in progress – both time and space are being created as the Universe expands.
 
So there are lots of problems, and the cleverest people on the planet, including many I haven’t mentioned like Roger Penrose and Sean Carroll, all have their own pet theories, all on the shoreline of Wheeler’s metaphorical island.
 
But the island metaphor provides a clue to why the problem exists, and that is that they are all just as philosophical as they are scientific. Sabine attempted to address this in 2 books she wrote: Lost in Math and Existential Physics; both of which I’ve read. But there are 2 levels to this problem when it comes to physics, which are effectively alluded to in the titles of her books. In other words, one level is philosophical and the next level is mathematical.
 
All of the people I mentioned above, along with others I haven’t mentioned, start with a philosophical position, even if they don’t use that term. And all physics theories are dependent on a mathematical model. There is also arguably a third level, which is experimental physics, and that inexorably determines whether the model, and hence the theory, is accurate.
 
But there is a catch: sometimes the experimental physics has proven the ‘theory’ correct, yet the philosophical implications are still open to debate. This is the case with quantum mechanics (QM), and has been for over a century. As Sabine pointed out in a paper she wrote, our dilemmas with QM haven’t really changed since Bohr’s and Einstein’s famous arguments over the Copenhagen interpretation, which are now almost a century old.
 
Some would argue that the most pertinent outstanding ‘problem’ in physics is the irreconcilability of gravity, or Einstein’s general theory of relativity (GR), and QM. Given the problems we have with dark matter and dark energy, which are unknown yet make up 95% of the Universe, I think we are ripe for another Kuhnian revolution in physics. And if that’s true, then we have no idea what it is.

The role of the arts. Why did it evolve? Will AI kill it?

 As I mentioned in an earlier post this month, I’m currently reading Brian Greene’s book, Until the End of Time; Mind, Matter; and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, which covers just about everything from cosmology to evolution to consciousness, free will, mythology, religion and creativity. He spends a considerable amount of time on storytelling, compared to other art forms, partly because it allows an easy segue from language to mythology to religion.
 
One of his points of extended discussion was in trying to answer the question: why did our propensity for the arts evolve, when it has no obvious survival value? He cites people like Steven Pinker, Brian Boyd (whom I discuss at length in another post) and even Darwin, among others. I won’t elaborate on these, partly due to space, and partly because I want to put forward my own perspective, as someone who actually indulges in an artistic activity, and who could see clearly how I inherited artistic genes from one side of my family (my mother’s side). No one showed the slightest inclination towards artistic endeavour on my father’s side (including my sister). But they all excelled in sport (including my sister), and I was rubbish at sport. One can see how sporting prowess could be a side-benefit to physical survival skills like hunting, but also achieving success in combat, which humans have a propensity for, going back to antiquity.
 
Yet our artistic skills are evident going back at least 30-40,000 years, in the form of cave-art, and one can imagine that other art forms like music and storytelling have been active for a similar period. My own view is that it’s sexual selection, which Greene discusses at length, citing Darwin among others, as well as detractors, like Pinker. The thing is that other species also show sexual selection, especially among birds, which I’ve discussed before a couple of times. The best known example is the peacock’s tail, but I suspect that birdsong also plays a role, not to mention the bower bird and the lyre bird. The lyre bird is an interesting one, because they too have an extravagant tail (I’m talking about the male of the species) which surely would be a hindrance to survival, and they perform a dance and are extraordinary mimics. And the only reason one can think that this might have evolutionary value at all is because the sole purpose of those specific attributes is to attract a mate.
 
And one can see how this is analogous to behaviour in humans, where it is the male who tends to attract females with their talents in music, in particular. As Greene points out, along with others, artistic attributes are a by-product of our formidable brains, but I think these talents would be useless if we hadn’t evolved in unison a particular liking for the product of these endeavours (also discussed by Greene), which we see even in the modern world. I’m talking about the fact that music and stories both seem to be essential sources of entertainment, evident in the success of streaming services, not to mention a rich history in literature, theatre, ballet and more recently, cinema.
 
I’ve written before that there are 2 distinct forms of cognitive ability: creative and analytical; and there is neurological evidence to support this. The point is that having an analytical brain is just as important as having a creative one, otherwise scientific theories and engineering feats, for which humans seem uniquely equipped to provide, would never have happened, even going back to ancient artefacts like Stonehenge and both the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. Note that these all happened on different continents.
 
But there are times when the analytical and creative seem to have a synergistic effect, and this is particularly evident when it comes to scientific breakthroughs – a point, unsurprisingly, not lost on Greene, who cites Einstein’s groundbreaking discoveries in relativity theory as a case-in-point.
 
One point that Greene doesn’t make is that there has been a cultural evolution that has effectively overtaken biological evolution in humans, and only in humans I would suggest. And this has been a direct consequence of our formidable brains and everything that goes along with that, but especially language.
 
I’ve made the point before that our special skill – our superpower, if you will – is the ability to nest concepts within concepts, which we do with everything, not just language, but it would have started with language, one would think. And this is significant because we all think in a language, including the ability to manipulate abstract concepts in our minds that don’t even exist in the real world. And no where is this more apparent than in the art of storytelling, where we create worlds that only exist in the imagination of someone’s mind.
 
But this cultural evolution has created civilisations and all that they entail, and survival of the fittest has nothing to do with eking out an existence in some hostile wilderness environment. These days, virtually everyone who is reading this has no idea where their food comes from. However, success is measured by different parameters than the ability to produce food, even though food production is essential. These days success is measured by one’s ability to earn money and activities that require brain-power have a higher status and higher reward than so-called low-skilled jobs. In fact, in Australia, there is a shortage of trades because, for the last 2 generations at least, the emphasis, vocationally, has been in getting kids into university courses, when it’s not necessarily the best fit for the child. This is why the professional class (including myself) are often called ‘elitist’ in the culture wars and being a tradie is sometimes seen as a stigma, even though our society is just as dependent on them as they are on professionals. I know, because I’ve spent a working lifetime in a specific environment where you need both: engineering/construction.
 
Like all my posts, I’ve gone off-track but it’s all relevant. Like Greene, I can’t be sure how or why evolution in humans was propelled, if not hi-jacked, by art, but art in all its forms is part of the human condition. A life without music, stories and visual art – often in combination – is unimaginable.
 
And this brings me to the last question in my heading. It so happens that while I was reading about this in Greene’s thought-provoking book, I was also listening to a programme on ABC Classic (an Australian radio station) called Legends, which is weekly and where the presenter, Mairi Nicolson, talks about a legend in the classical music world for an hour, providing details about their life as well as broadcasting examples of their work. In this case, she had the legend in the studio (a rare occurrence), who was Anna Goldsworthy. To quote from Wikipedia: Anna Louise Goldsworthy is an Australian classical pianist, writer, academic, playwright, and librettist, known for her 2009 memoir Piano Lessons.

But the reason I bring this up is because Anna mentioned that she attended a panel discussion on the role of AI in the arts. Anna’s own position is that she sees a role for AI, but in doing the things that humans find boring, which is what we are already seeing in manufacturing. In fact, I’ve witnessed this first-hand. Someone on the panel made the point that AI would effectively democratise art (my term, based on what I gleaned from Anna’s recall) in the sense that anyone would be able to produce a work of art and it would cease to be seen as elitist as it is now. He obviously saw this as a good thing, but I suspect many in the audience, including Anna, would have been somewhat unimpressed if not alarmed. Apparently, someone on the panel challenged that perspective but Anna seemed to think the discussion had somehow veered into a particularly dissonant aberration of the culture wars.
 
I’m one of those who would be alarmed by such a development, because it’s the ultimate portrayal of art as a consumer product, similar to the way we now perceive food. And like food, it would mean that its consumption would be completely disconnected from its production.
 
What worries me is that the person on the panel making this announcement (remember, I’m reporting this second-hand) apparently had no appreciation of the creative process and its importance in a functioning human society going back tens of thousands of years.
 
I like to quote from one of the world’s most successful and best known artists, Paul McCartney, in a talk he gave to schoolchildren (don’t know where):
 
“I don't know how to do this. You would think I do, but it's not one of these things you ever know how to do.” (my emphasis)
 
And that’s the thing: creative people can’t explain the creative process to people who have never experienced it. It feels like we have made contact with some ethereal realm. On another post, I cite Douglas Hofstadter (from his famous Pulitzer-prize winning tome, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid) quoting Escher:
 
"While drawing I sometimes feel as if I were a spiritualist medium, controlled by the creatures I am conjuring up."
 
Many people writing a story can identify with this, including myself. But one suspects that this also happens to people exploring the abstract world of mathematics. Humans have developed a sense that there is more to the world than what we see and feel and touch, which we attempt to reveal in all art forms, and this, in turn, has led to religion. Of course, Greene spends another entire chapter on that subject, and he also recognises the connection between mind, art and the seeking of meaning beyond a mortal existence.