Wood Or Marble?

 

A Facebook post on the Guardian article is copied here. I have added additional thoughts which I felt needed to be shared. To be honest, I don’t suppose they really needed to be shared, I just wanted to do so.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/the-big-idea-why-relationships-are-the-key-to-existence

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847863/holographic-principle-universe-theory-physics

 >So quantum physics may just be the realisation [sic] that this ubiquitous relational structure of reality continues all the way down to the elementary physical level. Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes.<

Which sounds an awful lot like the weak holographic principle. This concept declares that the entire universe is not real in and of itself, but only real in so far as it is an exchange of information or data points. Nothing is real except the information and how it interacts with the other information about it.

This has been expanded from its original concept into a very complex and interesting theory of quantum entaglement on a two dimensional surface causing  a projection of all that we consider to be real, including ourselves.

Lots to talk about here such as Berkinstein’s Bound, der ding an sich, etc.  Just the sort of stuff I love to talk about at great length with friends, pizza, and beer.

I can’t help but add a couple more thoughts because this is one of my favorite topics of discussion. Philosophy is a very broad subject area encompassing theology, metaphysics, science, government and just about everything else you can imagine.  Today many scientists express a great contempt for philosophy which is bizarre considering that science is and always has been a branch of philosophy. It’s rather like a scientist declaring, “I really hate automobiles.  They are stupid and a waste of time, unlike my Chevy Malibu which is so much better than a car.”

You could argue that the scientists are simply doing a poor job defining the term “philosophy”, but scientists should not do a poor job of defining their terms.  This is inherent in the very nature of what we regard as scientific.

Still, they have a certain point. If they were to argue that their particular branch of science is rigorous, logical, and meets other strict requirements for accuracy whereas other branches of philosophy can be quite vague, they would have a possibly valid point.

What I wish to share with you as my thoughts is that while this particular branch of philosophy, originally called natural philosophy, has isolated itself from the other branches and can make a case for considering itself superior in that it requires empirical evidence which is continuously tested and which requires a level of confirmation not applicable to other branches of philosophy; I think it is possible that the schism may be slowly healing.

As quantum physics advances and continuously undermines the rigidity of the old physics which insists the universe is utterly, totally and completely deterministic, thus abolishing the concept of free will and probability, the absolute certainty of the old physics crumbles. And absent that absolutism, science itself begins to look at least a bit more like the other branches of philosophy.

Einstein, and no doubt other scientists like him, abhorred the uncertainty of quantum physics. This is why Einstein spent (many would say wasted) the last 30 years of his life trying to disprove quantum physics and failing miserably. He would say that he preferred a world of marble, not one of wood.  By this he meant a world like that of Greek or Roman architecture. A world of mathematics. A world of certainty. A world of predictable engineering and meticulous design. What he disliked was the randomness of a forest.

This is not to say he didn’t enjoy a walk in the forest or wished to spend his life sitting in a Greek temple. He was speaking metaphorically of how he wished the universe to be designed.

But today, with matters such as the holographic principle, we see science becoming potentially more and more like the living forest and less and less like the engineered Greek temple.

Personally, I much prefer this more open ended universe. I would say the opposite of what Einstein said, and, in fairness, it is because of personal preferences rather than objective reality that I have this inclination – – as, no doubt, with Einstein.

So much more to say, but there are other things I must do today and I doubt many have had the patience to read this far, so at this point I will  tuck this away for future discussions with those who do enjoy them.

The Stuff Of Life

 Posted by my granddaughter:  A speculative piece on what I believe defines personality and whether personality persists in total isolation without external sources to react to.

https://soulleak.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/what-defines-personality/

An interesting article. Here is an excerpt: >But if a man was raised in a white, empty room without ever having human contact and assuming he does not need to be fed and has basic knowledge enough to be civilized and not like an animal, would he have personality? (In this example, he need not be fed for the sake of not having food to interact with). Without any faculties to react to, would he have intangible attributes of character?<

My response:  Interesting. Of course the problem with the thought experiment is raise a human being that way and they will simply die. Small children, especially babies, who don’t have sufficient human contact fail to thrive and die. Children adopted by Americans from highly neglectful orphanages have profound personality disorders that simply cannot be corrected. Look to Maslow‘s experiments with infant monkeys. Quite cruel, and today probably would not be permitted. However, quite informative.

Jun 20, 2018

PsychologicalScience.org

...the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

 https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/us-experiment-on-infants-withholding-affection/13213

 > In the United States, 1944, an experiment was conducted on 40 newborn infants to determine whether individuals could thrive alone on basic physiological needs without affection. Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, none of the babies becoming ill. 

The experiment was halted after four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died at that point. At least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more natural familial environment. There was no physiological cause for the babies' deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage with their caregivers, generally stop moving, nor cry or even change expression; death would follow shortly. The babies who had "given up" before being rescued, died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions. 

The conclusion was that nurturing is actually a very vital need in humans. Whilst this was taking place, in a separate facility, the second group of twenty newborn infants were raised with all their basic physiological needs provided and the addition of affection from the caregivers. This time however, the outcome was as expected, no deaths encountered.<

We are social animals.  Without society, without socialization, we do not survive. The followers of Ayn Rand, so much of today’s conservative movement, ignores the basic nature of human beings. Their philosophy, if you want to call it that, makes as much sense as breatharianism. Yeah, there actually is such a thing. People who claim that you don’t need to eat food or even drink water, all you need to do is breathe.

Our need for human contact, for human touch, for human affection runs deep. So deep that it defines the very nature of what it means to be a living human being.  To expand on my granddaughter’s question, at what point do we cease to even care about our own survival?. Are these poor abused monkeys really monkeys? Where those poor abused babies really human?

One thing is clear, they did not even value their own survival in the absence of the affection of their own species.

To withdraw love and affection from those who love you and need you is one of the cruelest of all acts.  Whether you are a biblical literalist or an objective rationalist, it is clear that we are, as human beings, one great family.  Every stranger is a distant relative. We must care about each other and for each other or we will fail to thrive.

Trust Me, I'm a Fully Qualified Do It Youself NueroPhysiologist!

In response to a friend's post inquiring about the effectiveness of nuero-enhancing medications, I said:

Have you considered direct electrical stimulation of the brain? 

From the Forum column of Scientific American February 2014: Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) applies electrodes to the scalp which then deliver miniscule amperages of current to the brain.  For reasons not fully understood this  causes adjustments in the electrical potentials of the membranes of the neurons closest to the electrodes, increasing or decreasing their likelihood of firing. Again, for reasons not entirely understood, measurable improvements in memory, language, attention, and other cognitive domains can result.

Although the authors go on to state that the FDA has not yet approved this procedure and that the consensus among experts is that it should be performed only under qualified supervision, they point out that it is:

A. Safe, portable, easy to implement, and inexpensive. (If used properly.)

B. Some do-it-yourselfers have already built and are using their own devices at home.

It is reported that the effects of this device make users smarter, faster, and more attentive.

I bet you and Nick could whip up one of these over a weekend. If you do, I'd love to see a video of the results.

PS, if you do try this and post a video to YouTube you will get more hits if Nick rubs his hands together and gleefully chortles "It's alive! It's alive!" at the end of the experiment.

Idle Thoughts -- Erewhon, Evil, and Ted Bundy

It's clear to many people that Ted Bundy is the perfect example of evil. He killed people without showing any feeling about them,  just for the sake of killing.  But you have to ask yourself, what do we mean by evil? Bundy didn't present himself as a worshiper of Satan or any of the other excuses often made by perpetrators.  He simply said he killed because he enjoyed it. He said it was a very powerful experience and that he felt the people he killed were always a part of him. The way described it sounds almost like someone having a deep religious experience.

Although psychiatrists couldn't agree on exactly what was wrong with him, it is clear that something was was abnormal. He didn't feel things that normal people felt. He also obviously felt emotions that other people feel as connected with positive events, but in his mind, they were connected with murder.

It wasn't long ago when people, even doctors, were convinced that all manner of things were totally "in the head". In World War I many soldiers who broke down from the horrors of combat were charged with crimes. The British said they had a lack of moral fiber. By World War II we were beginning to understand that the human body can only take so much and the brains of these men were simply breaking down. These people did not lack moral fiber, what they lacked was a environment in which human beings could survive without falling apart.

I recently watched a  documentary in which in a neurophysiologist was studying MRIs of the brains of convicted killers. He actually went into prisons to test inmates to determine what might or might not be different about their physiology. He discovered that individuals who had killed cold bloodedly, not on impulse or temporary rage, had differences in brain structure from normal humans.

One day, as he was reviewing his data, he was looking at the scans of brains. He had not paid attention to the labels. He was looking at one and thought, there's a person who clearly shows the signs of a damaged brain that is likely to commit murder. He then looked at the tag. It was a scan he'd done of himself.

He carefully studied his own scan in regard to the others, and concluded that yes, his brain show the same signs that serial killers and cold-blooded murderers displayed. When he told this to his family, he explained to the viewers, his family laughed. They said that it didn't surprise them! They then talked with him about his childhood and said he had always seemed rather ruthless to them

It isn't that he was a horrible person. It's just that he could get obsessed about something and follow through, determined to make it happen. He concluded that there are structures in your brain which can malfunction, but if you have that function it only means you are disposed toward becoming a heartless criminal.  It does not mean that you are unable to resist.

Had he had a different upbringing, in an abusive family such as Ted Bundy's, he probably would have become another evil monster.  Instead he became a respected scientist and doctor.

In another study, Finnish researchers looked at the extensive records the socialistic government kept on adopted children.  Because this government is such a presence in people's lives, the records extended over decades and allowed them to look at children's entire lifespans.  In the case of identical twins separated at birth, researchers made a very interesting discovery which led with even more interesting conclusions.

What they found out was that children who came from families with high criminal rates had different results in their own lives depending on the families with which they were placed.  If a child from a family with a record of a high criminal rate was placed with a family with a high criminal rate, the child had an increased likelihood of becoming a criminal himself. If the child's twin was placed in a family with a low criminal rate, this genetically identical individual was no more like to become a criminal than anyone else.

They also discovered that the children from families with low criminal rates also had lower rates of criminality, no matter which type of family with which they were placed.  In other words, children who had both factors were likely to become criminals. Children with only one factor were not. Remember that the two factors are that the child comes from a broad family background which displays a high criminal rate and is raised in a family with a high criminal background.  If both factors apply, the children  are more likely to become a criminal.  It is important to remember that we are talking about identical twins. That is to say, individuals with the same genetic and prenatal background.

These two cases strongly suggest that while certain brain structures can predispose someone with a certain personality type to become dangerous and perceived as evil, the right circumstances in raising that individual also prevents them from actually falling into that pattern.  

I don't know if you can work this into your paper, but as a child I remember being convinced that no one could actually deliberately do the horrible things I heard about in the news.  I just couldn't stand the suffering and the grief which was being caused. But obviously the things were happening, so eventually I concluded the people who did this must simply be sick. Strangely enough, that emotional response on my part may now seems to be showing some signs of having a scientific basis.

It is not impossible to imagine a day when, using advanced scientific knowledge and techniques with are not yet available to us, we will be able to look at criminals not as lacking moral fiber, but as individuals with a diseased or broken brain.  Picture a person accused of murder in the future. If sufficient evidence indicates that he committed the crime, he may be forced to take the equivalent of a functional magnetic resonance imaging test which will display what is or is not wrong with his brain.

It is possible then that the equivalent of a pacemaker may be inserted into the brain, altering its structure. So criminals might one day not be punished, but  cured.  This also, strangely enough, reflects a humorous, satirical book called Erewhon.

The book was published by Samuel Butler in the late 1800s. Among many other satirical comments, he said that in this strange Utopia people regarded criminal activity as an illness while they regarded illness as an evil sinful act.  While I can't imagine getting a cold or catching the measles ever being regarded as sinful, he may have made an excellent point. It is possible that serious criminal activity is a combined function of problems with your brain's physiological nature added to a poor upbringing.

After all, it is not only combat fatigue which we now regard as physiological, schizophrenics who under some circumstances commit horrible crimes can now can be treated with medication. Families report cases of individuals who become normal, healthy members of society while they were on their medications deciding to stop taking them and then reverting to strangely disturbed individuals who might commit acts of evil.

Krista Tippett, on C-SPAN 2, talked about her book, Einstein’s God. Her points were complex and interesting, very non simplistic. Still, she made interesting viewing as she explored the vast ground between the fundamentalist extremists on both poles in the self declared war between the ultra religious and the ultra secular.

I recall a contest in which high school students were asked to make speeches responding to and defending their positions when answering the question, “Which is most dangerous, religion or science?” I was long out of high school and so could not participate, but I wished that I could, because my answer would have boiled down to, “Extremism in either is the danger. Neither is dangerous in and of itself.”

In our currently so polarized and emotional nation, it pays to take some time to think and reflect on what we share rather than to obsessively focus on what divides us. Even between Democrat and Republican, Progressive and Tea Partier, there is much more in common than in contrast. Unfortunately, it is easy to deny this. Especially from the right at this time we hear cries about conspiracies to destroy America and etc. Do these individuals really believe that Obama wants his daughters to grow up in an America which he has destroyed? What parent would want such a thing? We may fiercely disagree with how to attain security in this dangerous world, or how to promote American prosperity. but can anyone actually think about the situation and sincerely believe that either of the opponents actually wants to hurt this country?

No one despises Bush more than I do, but I know that he thought he was doing the right thing and was sincerely trying to make America wealthier and safer. The left wing nuts who still insist that he lead a conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center are simply not thinking clearly.

The problem is, of course, that we are emotional creatures who can, but often do not, use our ability to think. It is so much easier to emote and react than it is to think and plan. Hard work is not always pleasant, though it can be, and thinking is very hard work. The brain accounts for a huge amount of our body’s energy usage--even when we are being emotional. Thinking burns up even more power; and free will can only exist as a result of thought.

I remember, when I was a freshman in high school, becoming angry At Barry Goldwater’s declaration that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” I knew he was wrong, though I had not so thoroughly developed my sense of balance and my opposition to extremism. Today I say, he’s right. It is no vice. It is a mortal sin.

Bekka-chan's comment on how hard she was hit by the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" made me think of my beliefs of human free will. Most go to one polar extreme or the other [surprise, surprise!], either declaring that we have no free will and are simply biochemical robots or that we can choose whatever we like and are fully accountable for everything we do. This tendency to think in extremes has caused much grief in human history and, I think, helped to lead Hegel into his thesis, antithesis, synthesis view of history.

The fact remains that people do horrible, even unthinkable things, if they feel peer and superior pressure to do so. Yesterday, the L A Times reported that a French “reality show” was actually a psychology experiment repeated on national television. Participants were told to more and more severely electrically shock a man [actually an actor] until he died. Sounds impossible? Sadly, in both the original American experiment and in the television program, most participants did what they were told to do and willingly committed murder. In fairness, in the experiment, and I assume in the program, the participants were not told to actually kill the individual they were shocking, but they did hear him pleading for mercy and showing signs of major damage from their actions. Clearly, they should have seen that the man was near death and stopped--but they didn’t.

Much of the basis for Original Sin lies in the assumption that Adam and Eve had free will and abused it to decide to defy God’s will. The Greeks certainly believed in moira, or fate. The website, http://www.log-of-the-moira.com/MOIRAE.HTM, refers to the Fates in this entry:

The ancient Greeks believed in Fate. They said there were three sisters of fate, the Moirae, tripple [sic.] Moon-goddesses robed in white, whom Erebus begat on Night. They were not the children of Zeus, but parthenogenous [sic.] daughters of the Great Goddess of Necessity, against whom not even the gods contend.


Yet the Greeks, for all their fear of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, believed in free will. It was not that you could decide your course and control your fate entirely, but you could control how you faced your fate. The hero, the great man so important to Greek thinking, earned respect by struggling nobly against the impositions of the gods. He might not be able to change his fate, but he could refuse to meekly submit.


This places the belief in free will at the very foundations of our culture, both Greek and Judeo-Christian.

My own beliefs have developed over my life. when young I insisted on a more Judeo-Christian interpretation than Greek. Now I find myself much more in agreement with the latter. the evidence had=s compelled me [fate?] to acknowledge that we are biochemical robots, that we are another form of ape. Yet, I insist that we are apes plus, biochemical robots plus. Plus what? Plus free will. Call it intelligence, call it options, call it defiance of the gods.

Much of literature takes time to condemn man as a herd animal, as a member of the flock. But man is not a sheep, not cattle. We are apes. We are members of a troop. As social animals we feel not merely pressure, but biological and psychological needs to fit in. This is not limited to our experiences in high school [I was a loner--that’s a sort of group which, then again, isn’t a group..trust me to take the odd path. Must be my fate].

Still, how is it that some members of our troop gain authority to be the deciders for the rest of us? The answer is complicated, but well known to us all. We know who the leaders are, we help to publicly decide them in elections. But even the chosen have followers and deriders. This means that we also decide personally and privately who to trust and who to deride. There are those who choose to trust Fox News as their provider of facts and even as their leader in thought. As for me, I don't fully trust any source, but I refer to Fox as the Fox Propaganda Channel. And I’m not joking.

The problem with choosing someone or some group to lead us is that this means we have surrendered a portion of our free will, and remember that I find free will very restricted to begin with. That is not to say that doing so is a mistake. We operate on auto pilot for most of our lives because this is necessary. Imaging using free will for every single decision. The alarm goes off, do we choose to turn it off or to let it ring? Having decided to turn it off, we much decide which are to use to reach over to hit the sleep button...uh oh, should we turn it off or hit the sleep button? By the time we decide all of our choices, we will probably be too weak from starvation to get out of bed, which, of course, nearly eliminates free will.

The problem arises when we use auto pilot so much that our free will becomes atrophied from lack of use, like muscles that are never exercised. This is even easier to allow because we are not only biochemical apes, who can think and make choices but often don’t bother; we are also animals who are deeply emotional. When we do make choices, most of them are made not from thought, but from emotional response. Consider one of the most compelling and dominating choice we make, our religion. Ask individuals about this choice and most will assure you that they carefully decided this. Press for details and you will quickly realize that the “thought” that went into this decision was almost entirely emotional. Actual thought came in after the decision was made, as rationale for a choice already confirmed. This is why I insist, as I have since high school, that the only honest intellectual position in religion is a sincere agnosticism. Religion, even atheism, is about faith and emotion, not about rationality. Even the fundamental evangelical atheists who hate religion so bitterly are clearly being emotional apes, not thoughtful human beings in their hatred. Yes, I mean Hitchens and Dawkins--they sound more like Falwell and Robertson than like intellectuals when they rant against the evils of religion. The bitter sweet irony is that they have deluded themselves into thinking they are coolly rational on the subject!

For anyone who doesn’t know me, I suppose I must add that referring to these men as emotional apes is not an insult. We humans are all emotional apes -- You, me and the guy next door. It is what we are. We are also, to a very small degree, thoughtful human beings who can think and can utilize their limited free will. Also note that the very term “human being” incorporates the emotional ape base and the tiny, but potentially significant bit of intellect and free will at the top of the pyramid that is humanity. Finally let me add that any time anyone says ‘All humans...” you know they are talking about themselves. When Freud said everyone wanted to murder his father and marry his mother, he said a lot about Sigmund Feud, and almost nothing about the rest of us.

I’m getting disoriented so I’ll wrap this up. Most of human evil is done from blind obedience and a desire to fit in and do what is expected. From the experiment above to the infamous prison experiment in which college student played out the roles of brutality and resistance expected of them in a role play situation [see: www.prisonexp.org/], we humans surrender our free will to fit in, to be a part of the troop. This is not all bad, we are social animals and must fit in or become sociopaths, but it can quickly become a horror of Nazi extremism and murder. What is needed is what I always say is needed, balance. Homeostasis, the Vital Balance [Thank you, Karl Menninger]. We must fit in or become sociopaths, yet we must not fit in so well that we lose our thin and precious overlay of humanity.

Fate, moira, kismet, destiny, karma--they sharply restrict, but do not negate our free will. Unless we let them.