2 different views on physics and reality

Back in July I reviewed Jim Holt’s book, Why Does the World Exist? (2012), where he interviews various intellects, including David Deutsch, who wrote The Fabric of Reality (1997), a specific reference point in Holt’s interview. I’ve since read Deutsch’s book myself and reviewed it on Amazon UK. I gave it a favourable review, as it’s truly thought-provoking, which is not to say I agree with his ideas.

I followed up Deutsch’s book with John D. Barrow’s  New Theories of Everything (originally published 1990, 2^nd edition published 2007) with ‘New’ being added to the title of the 2^nd edition. The 2 books cover very similar territory, yet could hardly be more different. In particular, Deutsch’s book contains a radical vision of reality based on the multiple-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and becomes totally fantastical in its closing chapter, where he envisages a world of infinite subjective time in the closing moments of the universe that, to all intents and purposes, represents heaven.

He took this ‘vision’ from Frank J. Tipler, who, as it turns out, co-wrote a book with Barrow called, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986). Barrow also references Tipler in New Theories of Everything, not only in regard to the possibility of life forms, or ‘information processing systems’, existing in the final stages of the Universe, but in relation to everything in the Universe being possibly simulated in a computer. As Barrow points out there is a problem with this, however, as not everything is computable by a Turing machine.

Leaving aside the final chapter, Deutsch’s book is a stimulating read, and whilst he failed to convince me of his world-view, I wouldn’t ridicule him – he’s not a crank. Deutsch likes to challenge conventional wisdom, even turn it on its head. For example, he criticises the view that there is a hierarchy of ‘truth’ from mathematics to science to philosophy. To support his iconoclastic view, he provides a ‘proof’ that solipsism is false: it’s impossible for more than one person to be solipsistic in a given world. Bertrand Russell gave the anecdote of a woman philosopher writing to him and claiming she was a solipsist, then complaining she’d met no others. Deutsch uses a different example, but the contradictory outcome is the same – there can only be one solipsist in a solipsistic philosophy. He claims that the proof against solipsism is more definitive than any scientific theory. However, solipsism does occur in dreams, which we all experience, so there is one environment where solipsism is ‘true’.

In another part of the book, he points to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem as evidence that mathematical ‘truths’ are contingent, which undermines the conventional epistemological hierarchy. Interestingly, Barrow also discusses Godel’s famous Theorem in depth, albeit in a different context, whereby he muses on what impact it has on scientific theories. Barrow concludes, if I interpret him correctly, that the basis of mathematical truths and scientific truths, though related via mathematical ‘laws of nature’, are different. Scientific truths are ultimately dependent on evidence, whereas mathematical truths are ultimately dependent on logical proofs from axioms. Godel’s Theorem prescribes limits to the proofs from the axioms, but, contrary to Deutsch’s claim, mathematical ‘truths’ have a universality and dependability that scientific ‘truths’ have never attained thus far, and are unlikely to in the foreseeable future.

One suspects that Deutsch’s desire to overturn the epistemological hierarchy, even if only in certain cases, is to give greater authority to his many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as he presents this view as if it’s unassailable to rational thought. For Deutsch, this is the ‘reality’ and Einstein’s space-time is merely an approximation to reality on a large scale. It has to be said that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is becoming more popular, but it’s not definitive and the ‘evidence’ of interference between these worlds, manifest in quantum experiments, is not evidence of the worlds themselves. At the end of the day, it’s evidence that determines scientific ‘truth’.

Deutsch begins his book with a discussion on Popper’s philosophy of epistemology and how it differs from induction. Induction, according to Deutsch, simply examines what has happened in the past and forecasts it into the future. In other words, past experimental results predict future experimental results. However, Deutsch argues, quite compellingly, that the explanatory power of a theory has more authority and more weight than just induction. Kepler’s mathematical formulation of planetary orbits gives us a mechanism of induction but Newton’s Theory of Gravity gives us an explanation. It’s obvious that Deutsch believes that Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is a better explanation than any other rival interpretation. My contention is that quantum rival ‘theories’ are more philosophically based than science-based, so they are not theories per se, as there are no experiments that can separate them.

It was towards the end of his book, before he took off in a flight of speculative fancy, that it occurred to me that Deutsch had managed to convey all aspects of the universe – space-time, knowledge, human free will, chaotic and quantum phenomena, human and machine computation – into an explanatory model with quantum multiple-worlds at its heart. He had encompassed this world-view so completely with his ‘4 strands of reality’ – quantum mechanics, epistemology, evolution, computation – that he’s convinced that there can be no other explanation, therefore the quantum multiple-worlds must be ‘reality’.

In fact, Deutsch believes that his thesis is so all-encompassing that even chaotic phenomena can be explained as classical manifestations of quantum mechanics, even though the mathematics of chaos theory doesn’t support this. In all my reading, I’ve never come across another physicist who claims that chaotic phenomena have quantum mechanical origins.

Despite his emphasis on explanatory power, Deutsch makes no reference to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or Planck’s constant, h. Considering how fundamental they are to quantum mechanics, a theory that fails to mention them, let alone incorporate them in its explanation, would appear to short-change us.

Deutsch does however explain the probabilities that are part and parcel of quantum calculations and predictions. They are simply the result of the ratio of universes giving one result over another. This implies that we are discussing a finite number of universes for every quantum interaction, though Deutsch doesn’t explicitly state this. Mathematically, I believe this could be the Achilles heel of his thesis: the quantum multiverse cannot be infinite yet its finiteness appears open-ended, not to mention indeterminable.

Quantum computers is an area where I believe Deutsch has some expertise, and it’s here that he provides one compelling argument for multiple worlds. To quote:

When a quantum factorization engine is factorizing a  250-digit number, the number of interfering universes will be of the order of 10⁵⁰⁰…

Deutsch issues the challenge: how can this be done without multiple universes working in parallel? He explains that these 10⁵⁰⁰ universes are effectively identical except that each one is doing a different part of the calculation. There are also 10⁵⁰⁰ identical persons each getting the correct answer. So quantum computers, when they become standard tools, will be creating multiple universes complete with multiple human populations along with the infrastructure, worlds, galaxies and independent futures, all simultaneously calculating the same algorithm. In response to Deutsch’s challenge, I admit I don’t know, but I find his resolution incredulous in the extreme (refer Addendum 2 below).

Those who have read my post on Holt’s book, will remember that he interviewed Roger Penrose as well as Deutsch (along with many other intellectual luminaries). Interestingly, Holt seemed to find Penrose’s Platonic mathematical philosophy more bizarre than Deutsch’s but based on what I’ve read of them both, I’d have to disagree. Deutsch also mentions Penrose and delineates where he agrees and disagrees. To quote again:

[Penrose] envisages a comprehensible world, rejects the supernatural, recognizes creativity as being central to mathematics, ascribes objective reality both to the physical world and to abstract entities, and involves an integration of the foundations of mathematics and physics. In all these respects I am on his side.

Where Deutsch specifically disagrees with Penrose is in Penrose’s belief that the human brain cannot be reduced to algorithms. In other words, it disobeys Turing’s universal principle (as interpreted by Deutsch) that everything in the universe can be simulated by a universal quantum Turing machine. (Deutsch, by the way, believes the brain is effectively a classical computer, not a quantum computer.) Deutsch points out that Penrose’s position is at odds with most physicists, yet I agree with him on this salient point. I don’t believe the brain (human or otherwise) runs on algorithms. Deutsch sees this as a problem with Penrose’s world-view as he’s unable to explain human thinking. However, I see it as a problem with Deutsch’s world-view, because, if Penrose is right, then Deutsch is the one who can’t explain it.

Barrow is a cosmologist and logically his book reflects this perspective. Compared to Deutsch’s book, it’s more science, less philosophy. But there is another fundamental difference, in tone if not content. Right from his opening words, Deutsch stakes his position in the belief that we can encompass more and more knowledge in fewer and fewer theories, so it is possible for one person to ‘understand’ everything, at least in principle. He readily acknowledges, however, that we will probably never ‘know’ everything. On the other hand, Barrow brings the reader down-to-earth with a lengthy discussion on the initial conditions of the universe, and how they are completely up for grabs based on what we currently know.

Barrow ends his particular chapter on cosmological initial conditions with an in-depth discussion on the evolution of cosmology from Newton to Einstein to Wheeler-De Witt, which leads to the Hartle-Hawking ‘no-boundary condition’ model of the universe. He points out that this is a radical theory, ‘proposed by James Hartle and Stephen Hawking for aesthetic reasons’, but it overcomes the divide between initial conditions and the laws of nature. Compared to Deutsch’s radical theses, it’s almost prosaic. It has the added advantage of overcoming theological-based initial conditions, allowing ‘…a Universe which tunnels into existence out of nothing.’

Logically, a book on ‘theories of everything’ must include string theory or M theory, yet it’s not Barrow’s strong suit. Earlier this year, I read Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics, which gives a detailed history and critique of string theory, but I won’t discuss it here. Of course, it’s another version of ‘reality’ where ‘theory’ is yet to be given credence by evidence.

As I alluded to above, what separates Barrow from Deutsch is his cosmologist’s perspective. Even if we can finally grasp all the laws of Nature in some ‘Theory of Everything’, the outcomes are based on chance, which was once considered the sole province of gods, and, as Barrow argues, is the reason that the mathematics of chance and probability were not investigated earlier in our scientific endeavours. To quote Barrow:

…it is possible for a Universe like ours to be governed by a very small number of simple laws and yet display an unlimited number of complex states and structures, including you and me.

Of all the improbabilities, the most fundamental and consequential to our existence is the asymmetry between matter and antimatter of one billion and one to one billion. We know this, because the ratio of photons to protons in the Universe is two billion to one (the annihilation of a proton with an anti-proton creates 2 photons). It is sobering to consider that a billion to one asymmetry in the birth pangs of the Universe is the basis of our very existence.

The final chapter in Barrow’s book is called Is pi really in the sky? This is an obvious allusion to mathematical Platonism and the entire chapter is a lengthy and in-depth discussion on the topic of mathematics and its relationship to reality. (Barrow has also authored a book called Pi in the Sky, which I haven’t read.) According to Barrow, Plato and Aristotle were the first to represent the dichotomy we still find today as to whether mathematics is discovered or invented. In other words, is it solely a product of the human mind or does it have an abstract existence independently of us and possibly the Universe? What we do know is that mathematics is the fundamental epistemological bridge between reality and us, especially when it comes to understanding Nature’s deepest secrets.

In regard to Platonism, Barrow has this to say:

It elevates mathematics close to the status of God... just alter the word ‘God’ to ‘mathematics’ wherever it appears and it makes pretty good sense. Mathematics is part of the world, and yet transcends it. It must exist before and after the Universe.

In the next paragraph he says:

Most scientists and mathematicians operate as if Platonism is true, regardless of whether they believe that it is. That is, they work as though there were an unknown realm of truth to be discovered.

Neither of these statements are definitive, and it should be pointed out that Barrow discusses all aspects of mathematical philosophies in depth.

I think that consciousness will never be reduced to mathematics, yet it is consciousness that makes mathematics manifest. Obviously, some argue that it is consciousness alone that makes mathematics at all, and Platonism is a remnant of numerology and mysticism. Whichever point of view one takes, it is mathematics that makes the Universe comprehensible. I’m a Platonist because of both the reasons given above. I don’t think the Universe is a giant computer, but I do think that mathematics determines, to a large extent, what realities we can have.

Despite my criticisms and disagreements, I concede that Deutsch is much cleverer than me. His book is certainly provocative, but I think it’s philosophically flawed in all the areas I discuss above. On the other hand, the more I read of Barrow, the more I find myself aligning to his cosmological world-view; in particular, his apparent attraction to the Anthropic Principle. He makes the point that the probability of the critical Nature’s constants’ values are less important than their necessity to provide conditions for observers to evolve. This does not invoke teleology - as he’s quick to point out – it’s just a necessary condition if intelligent life is to evolve.

You’ve no doubt noticed that I don’t really address the question in my heading. Deutsch’s multiverse and String Theory are two prevalent, if also extreme, versions of reality. String Theory claims that the Universe is actually 10 dimensions of space rather than 3 and predicts 10⁵⁰⁰ possible universes, not to be confused with the quantum multiverse. 20^th Century physics has revealed, through quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theories of relativity, that ‘reality’ is more ‘strange’ than we imagine. I often think that Kant was prescient, in ways he could not have anticipated, when he said that we may never know the ‘thing-in-itself’.

It is therefore apposite to leave you with Barrow’s last paragraph in his book:

There is no formula that can deliver all truth, all harmony, all simplicity. No Theory of Everything can ever provide total insight. For, to see through everything, would leave us seeing nothing.

Barrow loves to fill his books with quotable snippets, but I like this one in particular:

Mathematics is the part of science you could continue to do if you woke up tomorrow and discovered the universe was gone. Dave Rusin.

Addendum 1: I've since read John Barrow's book, Pi in the Sky, and cover it here. 

Addendum 2: I've since read Philip Ball's book, Beyond Weird, where he challenges Deutsch's assertion that it requires multiple worlds to explain quantum computers. Quantum computers are dependent on entangled particles, which is not the same thing. Multiple entities in quantum mechanics don't really exist (according to Ball) just multiple probabilities, only one of which is ever observed. In Deutsch's theory that 'one' is in the universe that you happen to inhabit, whereas all the others exist in other universes that you are not consciously aware of.

This one is for the climate-change sceptics

Notice I use the English spelling and not the American (skeptic) for those who may think I can’t spell (although I’m not infallible).

Not so long ago, North Carolina passed a bill to ‘bar state agencies from considering accelerated sea level rise in decision-making until 1 July 2016’. Apparently, this is a watered-down version of the original bill, which I believe didn’t have the 4 year moratorium. I learnt about it because it was reported in the Letters section of New Scientist. What worries me is the mentality behind this: the belief that we can legislate against nature.  In other words, if scientists start making predictions about sea-level rise, it’s forbidden. The legislation doesn’t state that sea level rise can’t happen but that any science-based predictions must be ignored.

This mentality also exists in Australia where there seems to be an unspoken yet tacit belief that we can vote against climate-change politically. There is a serious disconnect here: nature doesn’t belong to any political party; it’s not a constituency. The current leader of the opposition in Australian Federal politics, Tony Abbott, won his position (within the Party or Cabinet room) over the incumbent, on this very issue. The incumbent leader, Malcolm Turnbull, felt so strongly over the moral issue of human-induced climate-change he put his leadership on the line and lost, by 1 vote (in 2009).

This interview with Climate Central's chief climatologist, Heidi Cullen, from Princeton University, helps to put this issue into perspective. We don’t live at the poles where evidence of climate change is most apparent. The signs are there and we need to trust the people who can read the signs, whom we call scientists. Malcolm Turnbull, who lost his job over this, made the point that there is something wrong with a society when we can't trust our scientists – they are our brains trust.

In Australia, the sceptics argue that this is a global conspiracy by climatologists to keep themselves in jobs and maintain an influx of funding. In other words, as long as they keep maintaining that there is a problem, governments will keep giving them money, whereas, if they tell the ‘truth’ the funding will stop. This is so ludicrous one can’t waste words on it. In Australia, scientists working on climate-change were sent death-threats, which demonstrates the mentality of the people who oppose it. Again, there is an irrational-held belief that if only scientists would write the right reports that tell us climate-change is a furphy, then it won’t happen – the problem will simply go away.

Addendum: I learnt today (8 Sep 2012) that the NSW government has done something similar: revoked local council laws indicating coastal properties which may be subject to sea-level rise based on IPCC predictions.

The Riemann Hypothesis; the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics

I’ve read 3 books on this topic: The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy, Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire and Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis by Dan Rockmore (and I originally read them in that order). They are all worthy of recommendation, but only John Derbyshire makes a truly valiant attempt to explain the mathematics behind the ‘Hypothesis’ (for laypeople) so it’s his book that I studied most closely.

Now it’s impossible for me to provide an explanation for 2 reasons: one, I’m not mathematically equipped to do it; and two, this is a blog and not a book. So my intention is to try and instill some of the wonder that Riemann’s extraordinary gravity-defying intuitive leap passes onto those who can faintly grasp its mathematical ramifications (like myself).

In 1859 (the same year that Darwin published The Origin of the Species), a young Bernhard Riemann (aged 32) presented a paper to the Berlin Academy as part of his acceptance as a ‘corresponding member’, titled “On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity”. The paper contains a formula that provides a definitive number called π (not to be confused with pi, the well-known transcendental number). In fact, I noticed that Derbyshire uses π(x) as a function in an attempt to make a distinction. As Derbyshire points out, it’s a demonstration of the limitations arising from the use of the Greek alphabet to provide mathematical symbols – they double-up. So π(x) is the number of primes to be found below any positive Real number. Real numbers include rational numbers, irrationals and transcendental numbers, as well as integers. The formula is complex and its explication requires a convoluted journey into the realm of complex algebra, logarithms and calculus.

Eratosthenes was one of the librarians at the famous Alexandria Library, around 230 BC and roughly 70 years after Euclid. He famously measured the circumference of the Earth to within 2% of its current figure (see Wikipedia) using the sun and some basic geometry. But he also came up with the first recorded method for finding primes known as Eratosthenes’ Sieve. It’s so simple that it’s obvious once explained: leaving the number 1, take the first natural number (or integer) which is 2, then delete all numbers that are multiples of 2, which are all the even numbers. Then take the next number, 3, and delete all its multiples. The next number left standing is 5, and one just repeats the process over whatever group of numbers one is examining (like 100, for example) until you are left with all the primes less than 100. With truly gigantic numbers there are other methods, especially now we have computers that can grind out algorithms, but Eratosthenes demonstrates that scholars were fascinated by primes even in antiquity.

Euclid famously came up with a simple proof to show that there are an infinite number of primes, which, on the surface, seems a remarkable feat, considering it’s impossible to count to infinity. But it’s so simple that Stephen Fry was even able to explain it on his TV programme, QI. Assume you have found the biggest prime, then take all the primes up to and including that prime and multiply them all together. Then add 1. Obviously none of the primes you know can be factors of this number as they would all give a remainder of 1. Therefore the number is either a prime or can be factored by a prime that is higher than the ones you already know. Either way, there will always be a higher prime, no matter which one you select, so there must be an infinite number of primes.

The thing about primes, that has fascinated mathematicians for eons, is that there appears to be no rhyme or reason to their distribution, except they get thinner - further apart as one goes to higher numbers. But even this is not strictly correct because there appears to be an infinite number of twin primes, 2 primes separated by a non-prime (which must be even for obvious reasons).

Back to Riemann’s paper and its 150 year old legacy. Entailed in his formula is a formulation of the Zeta function. Richard Elwes provides a relatively succinct exposition in his encyclopaedic MATHS 1001, and I’m not even going to attempt to write it down here.  The point is that the Zeta function gives complex roots to infinity. Most people know what a quadratic root is from high school maths. If you take the graph of a parabola like y = ax² + bx + c, then it crosses the x axis where y = 0. It can cross the x axis in 2 places, or just touch it in 1 place or not cross it at all. The values of x that gives us a 0 value of y are called the roots of the equation. As a polynomial goes up in degree so does its number of roots. So a quadratic equation gives us 2 roots maximum but a polynomial with degree 3 (includes x³) will give us 3 roots and so on. Going back to the parabola, in the case where we don’t get any roots at all, it’s because we are trying to find square roots of negative numbers. However, if we use i (√-1), we get complex roots in the form of a + ib. (For a basic explanation see my Apr.12 post on imaginary numbers.) A trigonometric equation like sinθ can give us an infinite number of zeros and so can the Zeta function.

If you didn’t follow that, don’t worry, the important point is that Riemann’s Hypothesis says that all the complex zeros of the Zeta function (to infinity) have Real part ½. So they are all of the form ½ + ib. Riemann wasn’t able to provide a proof for this and neither have the best mathematical minds since. The critical point is that if his Hypothesis is correct then so is his formula for finding an exact number of primes to any given number.

In the 150 years since, Riemann’s Hypothesis has found its way into many fields of mathematics, including Hermitian matrices, which has implications for quantum mechanics. The Zeta function is a formidable mathematical beast to the uninitiated, and its relationship to the distribution of the primes was first intimated by Euler. Riemann’s genius was to introduce complex numbers, then make the convoluted mental journey to demonstrate their pivotal role in providing an exact result. Even then, his fundamental conjecture was effectively based on a hunch. At the time he presented his paper, he had only calculated the first 3 non-trivial zeros (non-trivial means complex in this context) and computers have calculated them in the trillions since, yet we still have no proof. It’s known that they become chaotic at extremely high numbers (beyond the number of atoms in the universe) so it’s by no means certain that Reimann’s hypothesis is correct.

It would be a huge disappointment to most mathematicians if either a proof was found to falsify it or an exception was found through brute computation. Riemann gave us a formula that gives us an accurate count of the primes (Derbyshire gives a worked example up to 1 million) that’s dependent on the Hypothesis being correct to specified values. It’s hard to imagine that this formula suddenly fails at some extremely high number that’s currently beyond our ken, yet it can’t be ruled out.

Marcus du Sautoy, in The Music of the Primes, contemplates the Riemann hypothesis in the context of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which is germane to the entire edifice of mathematics. The primes have a history of providing hard-to-prove conjectures. Along with Riemann’s hypothesis, there is the twin prime conjecture I mentioned earlier and Goldbach’s conjecture, which states that every even number greater than 2 is the sum of 2 primes. These conjectures are also practical demonstrations of Turing’s halting problem concerning computers. If they are correct, a computer algorithm set to finding them may never stop, yet we can’t determine in advance whether it will or not, otherwise we’d know in advance if it was true or not.

As du Sautoy points out, a corollary to Godel’s theorem is that there are limits to the proofs from any axioms we know at any time. In essence, there may be mathematical truths that the axioms cannot cover. The solution is to expand the axioms. In other words, we need to expand the foundations of our mathematics to extend our knowledge at its stratospheric limits. Du Sautoy speculates that the Riemann Hypothesis, along with these other examples, may be Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem in action.

Exploring the Reimann Hypothesis, even at the rudimentary level that I can manage, reinforces my philosophical Platonist view of mathematics. These truths exist independently of our investigations. There are an infinity of these Zeta zeros (we know that much) the same as there are an infinity of primes, which means there will always exist mathematical entities that we can’t possibly know. But aside from that obvious fact, the relationship that exists between apparently obscure objects like Zeta zeros and the distribution of prime numbers is a wonder. Godel’s Theorem implies that no matter how much we learn, there will always be mathematical wonders beyond our ken.

Addendum: This is a reasonably easy-to-follow description of Riemann's famous Zeta function, plus lots more.

Sex, Lies and Julian Assange, according to the ABC

With Assange’s status again in the spotlight, and the British government threatening to revoke Ecuador’s diplomatic asylum status, using force if necessary, which would be unprecedented in the modern world, it is worth looking at what all the fuss is about.

Almost a month ago, ABC’s 4 Corners aired its own investigations of the allegations against Assange initiated in Sweden. What the programme demonstrates is just how farcical this entire episode is.

Considering he was allowed to leave Sweden by Sweden’s public prosecutor, you would have to wonder, what changed? Is it a coincidence that Sweden’s change of mind - complete reversal in fact - came about when Assange elevated his whistle-blowing campaign against America?

Going by the rhetoric coming out of London, it’s fairly obvious, no matter what decision Ecuador comes to, Assange will be extradited to Sweden, and then we will find out if America will finally reveal its hand.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Jim Holt has written an entire book on this subject, titled Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. Holt is a philosopher and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times and the London Review of Books, according to the blurb on the inner title page. He’s also very knowledgeable in mathematics and physics, and has the intellectual credentials to gain access to some of the world’s most eminent thinkers, like David Deutsch, Richard Swinburne, Steven Weinberg, Roger Penrose and the late John Updike, amongst others. I’m stating the obvious when I say that he is both cleverer and better read than me.

The above-referenced, often-quoted existential question is generally attributed to Gottfried Leibniz, in the early 18^th Century and towards the end of his life, in his treatise on the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which, according to Holt, ‘…says, in essence, that there is an explanation for every fact, an answer to every question.’ Given the time in which he lived, it’s not surprising that Leibniz’s answer was ‘God’.  Whilst Leibniz acknowledged the physical world is contingent, God, on the other hand, is a ‘necessary being’.

For some people (like Richard Swinburne), this is still the only relevant and pertinent answer, but considering Holt makes this point on page 21 of a 280 page book, it’s obviously an historical starting point and not a conclusion. He goes on to discuss Hume’s and Kant’s responses but I’ll digress. In Feb. 2011, I wrote a post on metaphysics, where I point out that there is no reason for God to exist if we didn’t exist, so I think the logic is back to front. As I’ve argued elsewhere (March 2012), the argument for a God existing independently of humanity is a non sequitur. This is not something I’ll dwell on – I’m just putting the argument for God into perspective and don’t intend to reference it again.

Sorry, I’ll take that back. In Nov 2011, I got into an argument with Emanuel Rutten on his blog, after he claimed that he had proven that God ‘necessarily exists’ using modal logic. Interestingly, Holt, who understands modal logic better than me, raises this same issue. Holt references Alvin Platinga’s argument, which he describes as ‘dauntingly technical’. In a nutshell: because of God’s ‘maximal greatness’, if one concedes he can exist in one possible world, he must necessarily exist in all possible worlds because ‘maximal greatness’ must exist in all possible worlds. Apparently, this was the basis of Godel’s argument (by logic) for the existence of God. But Holt contends that the argument can just as easily be reversed by claiming that there exists a possible world where ‘maximal greatness’ is absent’. And ‘if God is absent from any possible world, he is absent from all possible worlds…’ (italics in the original). Rutten, by the way, tried to have it both ways: a personal God necessarily exists, but a non-personal God must necessarily not exist. If you don’t believe me, check out the argument thread on his own blog which I link from my own post, Trying to define God (Nov. 2011).

Holt starts off with a brief history lesson, and just when you think: what else can he possibly say on the subject? he takes us on a globe-trotting journey, engaging some truly Olympian intellects. As the book progressed I found the topic more engaging and more thought-provoking. At the very least, Holt makes you think, as all good philosophy should. Holt acknowledges an influence and respect for Thomas Nagel, whom he didn’t speak with, but ‘…a philosopher I have always revered for his originality, depth and integrity.’

I found the most interesting person Holt interviewed to be David Deutsch, who is best known as an advocate for Hugh Everett’s ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. Holt had expected a frosty response from Deutsch, based on a review he’d written on Deutsch’s book, The Fabric of Reality, for the Wall Street Journal where he’d used the famous description given to Lord Byron: “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But he left Deutsch’s company with quite a different impression, where ‘…he had revealed a real sweetness of character and intellectual generosity.’

I didn’t know this, but Deutsch had extended Turing’s proof of a universal computer to a quantum version, whereby  ‘…in principle, it could simulate any physically possible environment. It was the ultimate “virtual reality” machine.’ In fact, Deutsch had presented his proof to Richard Feynman just before his death in 1988, who got up, as Deutsch was writing it on a blackboard, took the chalk off him and finished it off. Holt found out, from his conversation with Deutsch, that he didn’t believe we live in a ‘quantum computer simulation’.

Deutsch outlined his philosophy in The Fabric of Reality, according to Holt (I haven’t read it):

Life and thought, [Deutsch] declared, determine the very warp and woof of the quantum multiverse… knowledge-bearing structures – embodied in physical minds – arise from evolutionary processes that ensure they are nearly identical across different universes. From the perspective of the quantum multiverse as a whole, mind is a pervasive ordering principle, like a giant crystal.

When Holt asked Deutsch ‘Why is there a “fabric of reality” at all?’ he said “[it] could only be answered by finding a more encompassing fabric of which the physical multiverse was a part. But there is no ultimate answer.” He said “I would start with the principle of comprehensibility.”

He gave the example of a quasar in the universe and a model of the quasar in someone’s brain “…yet they embody the same mathematical relationships.” For Deutsch, it’s the comprehensibility of the universe (in particular, its mathematical comprehensibility) that provides a basis for the ‘fabric of reality’. I’ll return to this point later.

The most insightful aspect of Holt’s discourse with Deutsch was his differentiation between explanation by laws and explanation of specifics. For example, Newton’s theory of gravitation gave laws to explain what Kepler could only explain by specifics: the orbits of planets in the solar system. Likewise, Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection gave a law for evolutionary speciation rather than an explanation for every individual species. Despite his affinity for ‘comprehensibility’, Deutsch also claimed: “No, none of the laws of physics can possibly answer the question of why the multiverse is there.”

It needs to be pointed out that Deutsch’s quantum multiverse is not the same as the multiverse propagated by an ‘eternally-inflating universe’. Apparently, Leonard Susskind has argued that “the two may really be the same thing”, but Steven Weinberg, in conversation with Holt, thinks they’re “completely perpendicular”.

Holt’s conversation with Penrose held few surprises for me. In particular, Penrose described his 3 worlds philosophy: the Platonic (mathematical) world, the physical world and the mental world. I’ve expounded on this in previous posts, including the one on metaphysics I mentioned earlier but also when I reviewed Mario Livio’s book, Is God a Mathematician? (March 2009).

Penrose argues that mathematics is part of our mental world (in fact, the most complex and advanced part) whilst our mental world is produced by the most advanced and complex part of the physical world (our brains). But Penrose is a mathematical Platonist, and conjectures that the universe is effectively a product of the Platonic world, which creates an existential circle when you contemplate all three. Holt found Penrose’s ideas too ‘mystical’ and suggests that he was perhaps more Pythagorean than Platonist. However, I couldn’t help but see a connection with Deutsch’s ‘comprehensibility’ philosophy. The mathematical model in the brain (of a quasar, for example) having the same ‘mathematical relationships’ as the quasar itself. Epistemologically, mathematics is the bridge between our comprehensibility and the machinations of the universe.

One thing that struck me right from the start of Holt’s book, yet he doesn’t address till the very end, is the fact that without consciousness there might as well be nothing. Nothingness is what happens when we die, and what existed before we were born. It’s consciousness that determines the difference between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. Schrodinger, in What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a continuous present. Possibly, it’s the only thing that does. After all, we know that photons don’t. As Raymond Tallis keeps reminding us, without consciousness, there is no past, present or future. It also means that without memory we would not experience consciousness. So some states of unconsciousness could simply mean that we are not creating any memories.

Another interesting personality in Holt’s engagements was Derek Parfit, who contemplated a hypothetical ‘selector’ to choose a universe. Both Holt and Parfit concluded, through pure logic, using ‘simplicity’ as the criterion, that there would be no selector and ‘lots of generic possibilities’ which would lead to a ‘thoroughly mediocre universe’. I’ve short-circuited the argument for brevity, but, contrary to Holt’s and Parfit’s conclusion, I would contend that it doesn’t fit the evidence. Our universe is far from mediocre if it’s produced life and consciousness. The ‘selector’, it should be pointed out, could be a condition like ‘goodness’ or ‘fullness’. But, after reading their discussion, I concluded that the logical ‘selector’ is the anthropic principle, because that’s what we’ve got: a universe that’s comprehensible containing conscious entities that comprehend it.

P.S. I wrote a post on The Anthropic Principle last month.

Addendum 1: In reference to the anthropic principle, the abovementioned post specifies a ‘weak’ version and a ‘strong’ version, but it’s perhaps best understood as a ‘passive’ version and an ‘active’ version. To combine both posts, I would argue that the fundamental ontological question in my title, raises an obvious, fundamental ontological fact that I expound upon in the second last paragraph: ‘without consciousness, there might as well be nothing.’ This leads me to be an advocate for the ‘strong’ version of the anthropic principle. I’m not saying that something can’t exist without consciousness, as it obviously can and has, but, without consciousness, it’s irrelevant.

Addendum 2 (18 Nov. 2012): Four months ago I wrote a comment in response to someone recommending Robert Amneus's book, The Origin of the Universe; Case Closed (only available as an e-book, apparently).

In particular, Amneus is correct in asserting that if you have an infinitely large universe with infinite time, then anything that could happen will happen an infinite number of times, which explains how the most improbable events can become, not only possible, but actual. So mathematically, given enough space and time, anything that can happen will happen. I would contend that this is as good an answer to the question in my heading as you are likely to get.

The real war in Afghanistan is set in hell for young girls

This is probably the most disturbing documentary I’ve seen on television, yet it elevates 4 Corners to the best current-affairs programme in Australia and, possibly, the world. I remember reading in USA Today, when American and coalition forces first went into Afghanistan after 9/11 (yes, I was in America at the time) a naïve journalist actually worrying that the change to democracy in Afghanistan might occur too quickly. I found it extraordinary that a journalist covering international affairs had such a limited view of the world outside their own country.

My understanding of Afghanistan is limited and obviously filtered through the eyes, ears and words of journalists, but there appears to be two worlds: one trying to break into the 21^st Century through youthful television programmes (amongst other means) and one dominated by tribal affiliations and centuries-old customs and laws. In the latter, it is the custom to settle disputes by the perpetrator’s family giving land or daughters to the victim’s family. In other words, daughters are treated as currency and as bargaining chips in negotiations. In recent times, this has had tragic consequences resulting from a NATO-backed policy to destroy opium crops, which is the only real way that Afghan farmers can make money. Opium is the source of income for the Taliban but the trade is run by drug smugglers, based in Pakistan. They are the Afghani equivalent of the mafia in that they are merciless. With the destruction of crops, that the drug smugglers finance, they are abducting the farmer’s daughters, from as young as 7 years (as evident in the 4 Corners programme) for payment of their debts. The government and NATO are simply ignoring the problem, and as far as the Taliban is concerned, it’s an issue between the drug smugglers and the farmers.

This is a world that most of us cannot construe. If you put yourself in their shoes and ask: What would I do? Unless you are delusional, the answer has to be that you would do the same as them: you’d have no choice. It’s hard for us to imagine that there exists a world where life is so cheap, yet poverty, perpetual conflict and no control over one’s destiny inevitably leads to such a world. I hope this programme opens people’s eyes and breaks through the cocoon skin that most of us inhabit.

More than anything else, it demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of the Taliban, the cultural ignorance of the coalition and the inadequacy of Pakistani law enforcement.

It’s time the Catholic Church came out of the Closet

This programme was aired a couple of weeks ago on ABC’s 4 Corners, but it demonstrates how out-of-touch the Catholic Church is, not only with reality, but with community expectations. More than anything else, the Church lets down its own followers, betrays them in fact.

This deals specifically with a couple of cases in Australia, and it’s amazing that it takes investigative journalism to shine a light on them. Most damning for the Church, is evidence that protecting their pedophilic clergy and their own reputation was more important than protecting members of their congregation.

The most significant problem, highlighted by the programme, is the implicit belief, held by the Church and evidenced by their actions, that they are literally above the law that applies to everyone else.

This is an institution that claims to have the high moral ground on issues like abortion, therapeutic cloning, gay marriage, euthanasia, to nominate the most controversial ones, when it so clearly lacks any moral credibility. Most people in the West simply ignore the Catholic Church’s more inane teachings regarding contraception, but in developing countries, the Church has real clout. In countries where protection against AIDS and birth control are important issues, both for health and economic reasons, the Church’s attitude is morally irresponsible. The Catholic Church tries to pretend that it should be respected and taken seriously, and perhaps one day it will, when it enters the 21^st Century and actually commits to the same laws as the people it supposedly preaches to.

The Anthropic Principle

I’ve been procrastinating over this topic for some time, probably a whole year, such is the epistemological depth hidden behind its title; plus it has religious as well as scientific overtones. So I recently re-read John D. Barrow’s The Constants of Nature with this specific topic in mind. I’ve only read 3 of Barrow’s books, though his bibliography is extensive, and the anthropic principle is never far from the surface of his writing.

To put it into context, Barrow co-wrote a book titled, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, with Frank J. Tipler in 1986, that covers the subject in enormous depth, both technically and historically. But it’s a dense read and The Constants of Nature, written in 2002, is not only more accessible but possibly more germane because it delineates the role of constants, dimensions and time in making the universe ultimately livable. I discussed Barrow’s The Book of Universes in May 2011, which, amongst other things, explains why the universe has to be so large and so old if life is to exist at all. In March this year, I also discussed the role of ‘chaos’ in the evolution of the universe and life, which leads me (at least) to contend that the universe is purpose-built for life to emerge (but I’m getting ahead of myself).

We have the unique ability (amongst species on this planet) to not only contemplate the origins of our existence, but to ruminate on the origins of the universe itself. Therefore it’s both humbling, and more than a little disconcerting, to learn that the universe is possibly even more unique than we are. This, in effect, is the subject of Barrow’s book.

Towards the end of the 19^th Century, an Irish physicist, George Johnstone, attempted to come up with a set of ‘units’ based on known physical constants like c (the speed of light), e (the charge on an electron) and G (Newton’s gravitational constant). At the start of the 20^th Century, Max Planck did the same, adding h (Planck’s quantum constant) to the mix. The problem was that these constants either produced very large numbers or very small ones, but they pointed the way to understanding the universe in terms of ‘Nature’s constants’.

Around the same time, Einstein developed his theory of relativity, which was effectively an extension of the Copernican principle that no observer has a special frame of reference compared to anyone else. Specifically, the constant, c, is constant irrespective of an observer’s position or velocity. In correspondence with Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider (1891-1990), Einstein expressed a wish that there would be dimensionless constants that arose from theory. In other words, Einstein wanted to believe that nature’s constants were not only absolute but absolutely no other value.  In his own words,  he wanted to know if “God had any choice in making the world”. In some respects this sums up Barrow’s book, because nature’s constants do, to a great extent, determine whether the universe could be life-producing.

On page 167 of the paperback edition (Vintage Books), Barrow produces a graph that shows the narrow region allowed by the electromagnetic coupling constant, α, and the mass ratio of an electron to a proton, β, for a habitable universe with stars and self-reproducible molecules. Not surprisingly, our universe is effectively in the middle of the region. On page 168, he produces another graph of α against the strong coupling constant, α_s, that allows the carbon atom to be stable. In this case, the region is extraordinarily small (in both graphs, the scales are logarithmic).

I was surprised to learn that Immanuel Kant was possibly the first to appreciate the relationship between Newton’s theory of gravity being an inverse square law and the 3 dimensions of space. He concluded that the universe was 3D because of the inverse square law, whereas, in fact, we would conclude the converse. Paul Ehrenfest (1890 – 1933), who was a friend of Einstein, extended Kant’s insight when he theorised that stable planetary orbits were only possible in 3 dimensions (refer my post, This is so COOL, May 2012). But Ehrenfest made another revelation when he realised that 3 dimensional waves were special. In even dimensions, different parts of a ‘wavy disturbance’ travel at different speeds, and, whilst waves in odd dimensions have disturbances all travelling at the same speed, they become increasingly distorted in dimensions other than 3. On page 222, Barrow produces another graph demonstrating that only a universe with 3 dimensions of space and one of time, can produce a universe that is neither unpredictable, unstable nor too simple.

But the most intriguing and informative chapter in his book concerns research performed by himself, John Webb, Mike Murphy, Victor Flambaum, Vladimir Dzuba, Chris Churchill, Michael Drinkwater, Jason Prochaska and Art Wolfe that the fine structure constant (α) may have been a different value in the far distant past by the miniscule amount of 0.5 x 10^-5, which equates to 5 x 10^-16 per year. Barrow speculates that there are fundamentally 3 ages to the universe, which he calls the radiation age, the cold dark matter age and the vacuum energy age or curvature age (being negative curvature) and we are at the start of the third age. He simplifies this as the radiation era, the dust era and the curvature era. He contends that the fine structure constant increased in the dust era but is constant in the curvature era. Likewise, he believes that the gravitational constant, G, has decreased in the dust era but remains constant in the curvature era. He contends: ‘The vacuum energy and the curvature are the brake-pads of the Universe that turn off variations in the constants of Nature.’

Towards the end of the book, he contemplates the idea of the multiverse, and unlike other discussions on the topic, points out how many variations one can have. Do you just have different constants or do you have different dimensions, of both space and/or time? If you have every possible universe then you can have an infinite number, which means that there are an infinite number of every universe, including ours. He made this point in The Book of Universes as well.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Barrow’s book, which, over 300 pages, provides ample discussion on all of the above topics plus more. But I can’t leave the subject without providing a definition of both the weak anthropic principle and the strong anthropic principle as given by Brandon Carter.

The weak principle: ‘that what we can expect to observe must be restricted by the condition necessary for our presence as observers.’

The strong principle: ‘that the universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers with it at some stage.’

The weak principle is effectively a tautology: only a universe that could produce observers could actually be observed. The strong principle is a stronger contention and is an existential one. Note that the ‘observers’ need not be human, and, given the sheer expanse of the universe, it is plausible that other ‘intelligent’ life-forms could exist that could also comprehend the universe. Having said that, Tipler and Barrow, in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, contended that the consensus amongst evolutionary biologists was that the evolution of human-like intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe was unlikely.

Whilst this was written in 1986, Nick Lane (first Provost Venture Research Fellow at University College London) has done research on the origin of life, (funded by Leverhulme Trust) and reported in New Scientist (23 June 2012, pp.33-37) that complex life was a ‘once in four billion years of evolution… freak accident’.  Lane provides a compelling argument, based on evidence and the energy requirements for cellular life, that simple life is plausibly widespread in the universe but complex life (requiring mitochondria) ‘…seems to hinge on a single fluke event – the acquisition of one simple cell by another.’ As he points out: ‘All the complex life on Earth – animals, plants, fungi and so on – are eukaryotes, and they all evolved from the same ancestor.’

I’ve said before that the greatest mystery of the universe is that it created the means to understand itself. We just happen to be the means, and, yes, that makes us special, whether we like it or not. Another species could have evolved to the same degree and may do over many more billions of years and may have elsewhere in the universe, though Nick Lane’s research suggests that this is less likely than is widely believed.

The universe, and life on Earth, could have evolved differently as chaos theory tells us, so some other forms of intelligence could have evolved, and possibly have that we are unaware of. The Universe has provided a window for life, consciousness and intelligence to evolve, and we are the evidence. Everything else is speculation.

Alan Turing’s 100th Birthday today

Alan Turing is not as well known as Albert Einstein, yet he arguably had a greater impact on the 20^th Century and was no less a genius. Turing was not only one of the great minds of the 20^th Century but one of the great minds in Western philosophy. In fact, in January, Nature called him “one of the top scientific minds of all time”. He literally invented the modern computer in his head in the 1930s as a thought experiment, whilst simultaneously solving one of the great mathematical problems of his age: the so-called ‘halting problem’. I’ve described this in a previous post (Jan. 2008) whilst reviewing Gregory Chaitin’s book, Thinking about Godel and Turing, but the occasion warrants some repetition.

The 2 June 2012 edition of New Scientist had a feature on Turing by John Graham-Cumming, and it covers in greater detail and erudition anything I can write here. For the public at large, Turing is probably best known for his role at Bletchley Park, in the 2^nd World War, deciphering the Enigma code used by German U-boats. Turing’s contribution remained ‘classified’ until after his death, though, according to Wikipedia, he received an OBE ‘for his work at the Foreign Office’. Turing worked with Gordon Welchman on the Bombe, a machine they designed to run ‘cribs’ to decipher the enigma code. And, with mathematician Bill Tutte, he also developed a method to decode the Tunny cipher, which was used for high-level messages in Hitler’s command.

Turing also developed a ‘portable’ code called ‘Delilah’, which was unique in that it depended on clock-arithmetic, making it very difficult to decode compared to other ciphers. According to Graham-Cumming, the details of this have only recently been declassified.

Turing also became fascinated with mathematics in nature in his childhood, like the recurrence of Fibonacci sequences in spiral patterns in daisy petals and sunflower heads. In 1952 he published a paper on “The chemical basis of morphogenesis”, whereby ‘…specific chemical reactions were responsible for the irregular spots and patches on the skin of animals like leopards or cows, and the ridges inside the roof of the mouth.’ He provided a mathematical model (a computer simulation) of 2 chemicals interacting via diffusion and reaction in a chaotic yet repetitive fashion that would result in a variegated pattern. He speculated that this could become manifest as a literal pattern on animal skins if the 2 chemicals either turned on or off specific cells. Again, according to Graham-Cumming, as recently as January this year, researchers at King’s College London demonstrated Turing’s theory ‘…that 2 chemicals control the ridge patterns inside a mouse’s mouth.’

But, in scientific and mathematical circles, Turing is best known for his ‘proof’ of the ‘halting problem’, which is actually very simple to formulate but difficult to prove. Basically, Turing conjured a thought experiment of a machine that could compute an algorithm until it either found an answer or it didn’t, which meant it could run forever (the ‘halting problem’). Turing was able to prove that one could not determine in advance whether the algorithm would stop or not. An example is Goldbach’s conjecture, which can be easily formulated by an algorithm and run on a computer. At present there is no proof of the Goldbach conjecture but it has been derived by computers up to 100 trillion or 10¹⁴. Obviously, if we knew it could stop or not we could determine if it was true or not to infinity. The same is true for Riemann’s hypothesis, probably the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics. Chaitin (mentioned above) has invented a term, Ω (Omega) to provide a probability of Turing’s algorithm stopping. To quote from a previous post:

Chaitin claims that this is his major contribution to mathematics, arising from his invention of the term ‘Ω’ (Omega), though he calls it a discovery, to designate the probability of a programme ‘halting’, otherwise known as the ‘halting probability’.

But it was in conjuring his ‘thought experiment’ that Turing mentally invented what we now call a computer. I expect computers would have been invented without Turing in the same way relativity would have been discovered without Einstein, yet that is not to diminish either man’s genius or singular contribution. Turing’s insight was to imagine a ‘tape’ of infinite length with instructions that not only performed the algorithm but performed actions on the tape itself. It’s what we recognise today as software. Turing realised that this allowed a ‘universal’ machine to exist, now called a ‘universal Turing machine’, because the tape could instruct one machine to do what all possible machines could do. All modern computers are examples of Universal Turing Machines, including the one I’m using to write and post this blog.

One cannot discuss Turing without talking about the circumstances of his death, because it was a tragedy comparable to the deaths of Socrates and Lavoisier. Turing was persecuted for being a homosexual after he went to the Police to report a burglary. He was given a choice of imprisonment or ‘medical castration’ by hormone treatment, which he accepted. In 1954, at the relatively young age of 41, he committed suicide and the world lost a visionary, a genius and a truly great mind. John Graham-Cumming, the author of the 5 page feature in New Scientist, successfully campaigned for an official apology for Turing from the UK government in 2009. Given the current debate about gay marriage, it is apposite to remember the injustice that was done just over half a century ago to one of the greatest minds of all time. I’ve no doubt that there are many people who believe that Turing could have been ‘cured', such is the ignorance that still pervades many of the world’s societies, and is often promulgated by conservative religious groups, who have a peculiarly backward and anachronistic view of the world. Turing was ahead of his time in many ways, but in one way, tragically.

Addendum: For more detailed information, there is the Wiki site linked above, and Andrew Hodges dedicated Site. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a good account of Turing’s seminal work in artificial intelligence. Andrew Hodges gives a good account of his untimely attitude to being openly homosexual and an insight into his modest character. There is a very strong sense of an extraordinary visionary intellect who was a victim of prejudice. 

Prometheus, the movie

Everyone is comparing Ridley Scott’s new film with his original Alien, and there are parallels, not just the fact that it’s meant to be a prequel. The crew include an android, a corporate nasty and a gutsy heroine, just like the first two movies. There are also encounters with unpleasant creatures. Alien was a seminal movie, which spawned its own sequels, albeit under different directors, yet it was more horror movie than Sci-Fi. But SF often combines genres and is invariably expected to be a thriller. Prometheus is not as graphically or viscerally scary as Alien, but it’s more a true Sci-Fi than a horror flick. In that respect I think it’s a better movie, though most reviewers I’ve read disagree with me.

Prometheus is a good title because it’s the Greek story about the Gods giving some of their abilities to humankind. Scott’s tale is a 21^st Century creation myth, whereby mankind goes in search of the ‘people’ who supposedly ‘engineered’ us. One of the characters in the film quips in response to this claim: ‘There goes 3 centuries of Darwinism.’ From a purely scientific perspective, it’s possible that DNA originally came from somewhere else, either as spores or in meteorites or an icy comet, but it would have been very simple life forms at the start of evolution not the end of it. The idea that someone engineered our DNA so it would be compatible with Earthbound DNA destroys the suspension of disbelief required for the story, so it’s best to ignore that point.

But lots of Sci-Fi stories overlook this fundamental point when aliens meet Earthlings and interbreed for example (Avatar). And I’ve done it myself (in my fiction) though only to the extent that humans could eat food found on another planet. I suspect we could only do that, in reality, if the food contained DNA with the same chirality as ours. The universal unidirectional chirality of DNA is one of the strongest evidential factors that all life on Earth had a common origin.

But I have to admit that Ridley has me intrigued and I’m looking forward to the sequel, as the final scenes effectively promise us one. One of the major differences with Alien and its spinoffs is that there is a mystery in this story and the heroine is bent on finding the answer to it. She wants to find out who made us and where they came from and why they did it. There is an obvious religious allusion here, but this is closer to the Greek gods, suggested by the title rather than the Biblical god. Having said that, our heroine wears a cross and this is emphasised. I expect Ridley wants us to make a religious connection.

Good Sci-Fi in my view should contain a bit of philosophy – make us think about stuff. In this case, stuff includes the possibility of life on other worlds and the possibility that there may exist civilizations greater than ours, to the extent that they could have created us. We find it hard to imagine that we are the end result of a process that started from stardust; that something as complex and intelligent as us could not have been created by a greater intelligence. Ridley brings that point home when the android asks someone how would they feel about meeting their maker, as he has had to. So I’m happy to see where Ridley is going with this – it’s a question that most people have asked and not been satisfied with the answer. I don’t think Ridley is going to give us a metaphysical answer. I expect he’s going to challenge what it means to be human and what responsibilities that entails in the universe’s creation. 

Philosophy in action - on gay marriage

Last night I went and saw a live stage production of 8 by Dustin Lance Black (whose screenwriting credits include Milk and J. Edgar), a one-off production at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne. It was a fund-raiser for the lobby group, Australian Marriage Equality, so tickets were not cheap yet the theatre was packed.

The play is based on a real-life trial held in California in 2010, when 2 same-sex couples (Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarillo) challenged the passing of Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. Effectively, Proposition 8, under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, prevented gays and lesbians from getting married.  There was a strong TV campaign supporting Proposition 8, which I’ll address later, and some of these were shown to the theatre audience as background.

It was also relayed to the audience, right at the beginning, how the play came about. Requests by the plaintiff’s team to have the trial broadcast were overturned by their opponents, but transcripts can’t be denied forever and most of the play is taken directly from the transcript. The play is actually read, with almost no props, yet real actors were used to give it authenticity.

There is an on-line version on YouTube including George Clooney, Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt as part of the cast. The Australian production I saw included its own well-known actors like Rachel Griffiths, Lisa McLune, Shane Jacobson and Magda Szubanski (from Babe for international readers). It also included Kate Whitbread as one of the plaintiffs and she was instrumental in getting the production performed. Incidentally, Kate has been producer to Aussie film-maker, Sandra Sciberras (Max’s Dreaming, Caterpillar Wish and Surviving Georgia).

This is not a play that will attract opponents of gay marriage – it was clear from the audience’s reaction that most, if not all, members were advocates. Being a fund-raiser you wouldn’t expect anything else. Opponents, no doubt would call it propaganda and biased, but the ‘opponents’ in the trial come off very badly indeed. In fact, this is the salient point because it demonstrated how weak their arguments were when subjected to the rigours of courtroom dissection and cross-examination. It’s no wonder they opposed it being broadcast.

And that’s why I call it ‘philosophy in action’ because it demonstrated the difference between a glib, emotive, made-for-TV advertising programme and critical, evidence-based argument. It was obvious from the pro-proposition 8 campaign and other rhetoric we hear in the production, that it was based on fear. Fear that same-sex marriage will infect children (yes, I mean infect not affect). Their whole campaign was based around the need to protect children from the ‘evils’ of gay parents and gays generally.

It was obvious that many conservatives actually believe that lesbianism and homosexuality are contagious – not biologically contagious, but socially contagious like cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption or drug-taking. They have a genuine fear, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that more children will become gay if gay marriage is legalized because it’s a choice that they didn’t have before. In other words, gay marriage is a lifestyle choice and has nothing to do with biology. Allowing gays and lesbians to be perceived as ‘normal’ is dangerous because kids will become ‘infected’, whereas at present they are still ‘protected’. That’s their argument in a nutshell.

In a promotional review of the play in last weekend’s Age, both Kate Whitbread and Bruce Myles (director of the Aussie version) give their more parochial reasons for putting it on. Bruce said he was ‘disgusted’ by Bob Katter’s political advertisement in the recent Queensland state election, whereby Katter used lewd images of homosexual couples juxtaposed with Campbell Newman’s (Queensland’s Liberal party contender and shoe-in to win) statement that he supported gay marriage. It was an obvious ploy on Katter’s part to exploit homophobia to undermine Newman’s commanding lead in the polls.

Both Bruce and Kate expressed outrage at six Catholic bishops in Victoria sending out 80,000 letters exhorting parishioners to lobby against gay marriage. Apparently, few parishioners were as alarmed as the bishops, going by the response. In fact, both in Australia and the US, it’s conservative religious groups who are the most vocal opponents to gay marriage. Arguments based on arcane religious texts are arguably the least relevant to the debate. It’s effectively an argument to maintain a longstanding prejudice because the Bible tells us so.

Spencer McLaren, who plays the courtroom advocate defending proposition 8, said: “What it is really about is putting prejudice and fear on trial and showing the inhumanity of the discrimination that is occurring.”

For those interested, here is the online version (90 mins).

How an equation contributed to the GFC

Ian Stewart is well known to anyone interested in mathematics - alongside Marcus du Sautoy, he is one of the great popularisers of the subject. His book, 17 Equations that Changed the World, lives up to its brief. Stewart not only gives insights into the mathematics of 17 disparate topics, but explains how they’ve affected our lives in ways we don’t see. I’ve read a number of books along similar lines, all commendable, but Stewart succeeds better than most in demonstrating how so-called pure mathematics has shaped the modern world that we all take for granted. (By all, I mean anyone who can read this via a computer and the internet.)

The book includes the usual suspects like Pythagoras, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Schrodinger and lesser known ones like Boltzman, Shannon, the Bell curve, chaos theory and the Fourier transform. In all cases he explains how they have affected what we loosely call civilization. But it is the last chapter in the book that covers the Black-Scholes equation, which is most relevant to the present state of the world, and what Stewart aptly coins ‘the Midas formula’. This is the Nobel-prize-winning formula that effectively created the GFC (global financial crisis).

I was lucky enough to see the movie, The Inside Job, which had a limited release in this country, but ran for well over a month in one art-house cinema in Melbourne, such was its morbid appeal. It’s a depressing yet illuminating film because, not only do you get a recent history lesson, but you realise that no one has learnt anything and it will happen all over again.

Stewart is a mathematician yet he explains the machinations that created the current economic catastrophe with remarkable clarity and erudition, and provides antecedents that teach us how we never learn from history.

Some quotable quotes:

The banks behave like one of those cartoon characters who wanders off the edge of a cliff, hovers in space until he looks down, and then plunges to the ground.

How did the biggest financial train wreck in human history come about? Arguably, one contributor was a mathematical equation.

He then goes on to explain what derivatives are and how they became monopoly money in the hands of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

As Stewart expounds:

In 1998 the international financial system traded roughly $100 trillion in derivatives. By 2007 this had grown to one quadrillion US dollars… To put this figure into context, the total value of all the products made by the world’s manufacturing industries, for the last thousand years, is about 100 trillion US dollars, adjusted for inflation. That’s one tenth of one year’s derivative trading.

Curiously, it was a mathematician, Mary Poovey, professor of humanities and director of the Institute for the Production of Knowledge at New York University, who rang alarm bells in August 2002, when she gave a lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing, titled ‘Can numbers ensure honesty?’ The lecture was subtitled ‘Unrealistic expectations and the US accounting scandal’.  She pointed out, amongst other things, that ‘by 1995 [the] economy of virtual money had overtaken the real economy of manufacturing.’ She argued that  ‘[this] deliberately confusing virtual and real money… was leading to a culture in which the values of both goods and financial instruments were… liable to explode or collapse at the click of a mouse.’ This, of course, was the year after the collapse of Enron, the biggest bankruptcy in American history (at the time) to the tune of $11 billion to shareholders.

Stewart’s major point is that people used the Black-Scholes equation routinely, with no appreciation of its dependence on key assumptions. Change the assumptions and the consequences could be dire as we have since witnessed world-wide. Its proliferation was guaranteed by its Nobel-prize-winning status and the simple fact that everyone else was using it. What’s more, it could be converted into a computer algorithm, ensuring its ubiquity.

Economics doesn’t follow natural laws like gravity, nevertheless I expect chaos theory could provide some insights. It’s the human factor that appears to be the element that people leave out or ignore. I’m not an economist – it’s the area I least understand – yet a mathematician can explain to me what went wrong in the past decade in a way that makes sense. If I can understand it, why can’t the people who run economies and financial institutions?

Stewart’s final comment:

The financial system is too complex to be run on human hunches and vague reasoning. It desperately needs more mathematics, not less. But it also needs to learn how to use mathematics intelligently, rather than as some kind of magical talisman.

Addendum 1: Stewart also explains how mathematics gives credibility to human-generated climate-change, although that’s another issue. In particular, he claims: Global warming was predicted in the 1950s, and the predicted temperature increase is in line with what has been observed.

Addendum 2 (6 Sep 2012): I've just seen the movie, Margin Call, a well-drawn fictional account of this issue, with some big-name actors: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Simon Baker, amongst others. There is a reference to this equation early in the film in a dialogue between the Demi Moore character and Simon Baker character, though its significance is not explained nor its title given. Demi's character says: 'I told you not to use that equation...' (or words to that effect) and Simon's character says: 'Everyone else is using it...' (or words to that effect). An intriguing piece of dialogue that only 'people-in-the-know' would pick up on.

Addendum 3 (3 Nov 2012): This interview with Greg Smith (formerly with Goldman Sachs) reveals the real story behind Wall Street, its culture, its hypocrisy (how it wants zero government interference in the good times and government bale-out in the bad times) and, most importantly, how nothing has changed since the GFC.

Addendum 4 (30 Jun 2013): I changed the title from 'Mathematics and the Real World'. I think it was misleading and the new title is more relevant to the discussion.