Past, Future and Disorder

We're given a glass of water and addressed to put a few ink-drops in the glass. What is going to be the most general observations?

The question may appear tawdry. However, with little speculation one must come up with the following data.
'The ink slowly starts blending in the water without any eviction untill it thoroughly mixes'. This certainly is assertion. But the ink had an ordered state at the beginning when it was just put onto the water surface. And since any natural process always tends to move from a state of higher potential to that of a lower potential, the randomness of the ink must be stable that it being in a well defined arrangement!

We know that a natural process is irreversible. Heat flows from a hot body to a cold body, water falls naturally. These processes are not reversible in nature and do not turn around unless some external work is done. Perhaps this is the second law of thermodynamics. 'The change in entropy of an isolated system can never be negative'.

Our ink dot has already evolved by this time into greater randomness, perhaps so much of randomness that it is hard to spot it. But since it has moved naturally from an ordered state to a state of complete disorder, it must really admire disorder then, than order. Mayhap this is the direction of any natural process. Order → Disorder. And now it can be pointed out that our system, the glass and the ink-dot, had a more ordered state in the beginning than in the end. One might easily say that a state of order must exist before disorder, perhaps past and future. Thus randomness has now become a way to distinguish the past and the future!

According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was initially very hot with energy distributed uniformly. For a system in which gravity is important, such as the universe, this is a low-entropy state. As the Universe grows, its temperature drops, which leaves less energy available to perform work in the future than was available in the past. Additionally perturbations in the energy density grow eventually forming galaxies and stars. Thus the Universe itself has a well-defined thermodynamic arrow of time.

We're all moving from state of order to complete disorder and randomness. And perhaps this is the way of nature, this is the arrow, the direction of time.

The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything Else

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says it’s 42.  It’s a pretty good answer, because it makes you think as much as the question itself (though not as productively).

But the question still stands – what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else?

Many find this a philosophical question.  But remember that science stems from philosophy, so maybe it’s worth it to explore this question on a science blog.

Part One: The Exploration

The meaning of life – wow, I have a knack for picking the hard topics.  Let’s see where this takes me.

Maybe the best place to start would be my beliefs - because I can’t really speak for anyone else.  I regard myself as an existentialist – which means I believe that the meaning of life is the meaning I decide to put into it.

This, I think, fits in quite well with a concept of science – model dependent realism.  Basically it states that you should use the model that best fits your current situation.  Let me cite an example here, the same example Stephen Hawking uses in his book, The Grand Design.

Imagine a goldfish in a spherical tank.  Its perception of the world is bent; it sees curves where we see lines.  But we can’t call a goldfish’s perceptions “flawed” – because to the goldfish, our perception is flawed.  Model dependent realism makes us face the fact that there is no one objective reality, the same way there is no one meaning to life, other than the one you put into it.  (This was the conversation that stemmed the creation of this blog.)

Now we’re getting somewhere.  Maybe there is no objective meaning to life, which is kind of a scary concept.  It put me in a state of dilemma for a good few weeks, and I still haven’t come to terms with it.

If there is no objective meaning to life, we are all terribly free with nothing to stop us.  People use this in many different ways.

Some people put objective meaning into life on purpose – using “divination” techniques.  Others take it to mean they can’t be held accountable for their actions and harm or kill other human beings.

Part Two: So, then, what happens at and after death?

I don’t believe in an afterlife – at least not the kind that says you get to be born again with your memory wiped and all that goes with it.  I do believe that you will leave a mark on this universe as you cease to exist and as it ceases to be your home.  I believe that one realizes the truth in the final moments of life, that that truth cannot be attained otherwise, and no matter if you’re buried or cremated (or if anything else is done with your corpse), nature will exact from you what you have taken from it.

This mindset carries me through.  If I am to leave the universe a different place than it was when I didn’t exist, I might as well make a good impact.  I only have a specific number of decades left.  I want to do what makes me happy and what leaves a good mark on the universe.

Part Three - The Conclusion

I don’t know what Douglas Adams was thinking when he said that the meaning of life was 42. But, in a weird sense, it feels like 42 had no real value of its own – it’s just a bunch of lines we have given meaning to, a concept discussed in the previous post.  The same way we give any meaning we want to 42, we give any meaning we want to life, the universe, and everything else.

Enjoy your brief moment in the sun.  

Mathematical Vomit (I Know. How Charming.)

This is a rant. It will be long. You have been warned.

Think of a number.  Big, small – it doesn’t matter.  Just visualize it.  Its face value, the way it aesthetically looks.  What meaning, if any, it holds for you.

Now think of all the stuff you can do with it.  At the basic level, you can add it to another number, subtract it from another number, have a number subtracted from it, multiply it by a number, divide it by a number, and vice versa.  All of this is basic.

Think of what it can represent.  It can represent the world – the same way it can be multiplied by the world.  Three words.  Three letters.  Just any number you can think of, followed by what it describes.  Such words, you may know, are adjectives.  And this is just the beginning.

Now think of the more abstract things you can do with your number.  If it is the length of a side of a right angled triangle, you can find the values of trigonometric ratios (put simply, if you take two of the three sides, in how many ways can you divide them by each other).  Anything more specific just gets harder to explain, but for now we’ve effectively breached the world which we want to fully unlock: a process which continues to this day, so not to worry if we can’t do it all today.

The thing is, what we were doing till now was math – a word and its representation feared by many, and, sadly, the butt of many jokes.  It’s Greek and Latin to some who don’t realize (or don’t want to realize) how powerful this is.

Do you realize that the colors of the clothes you’re wearing right now are mathematically defined?  Or that the device you’re using right now to read this blog is run on just two numbers – zero and one?  Do you realize your every intake of breath can be reduced to simple numbers, linked by mathematical operations?  What’s more is that every mathematical sentence can be reduced to four simple operations – add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  Operations learned in elementary school.  The phrase, “With great power comes great responsibility” comes to mind, because children are handed tools of great power, because math in itself is powerful.

Math is the power of a nuclear bomb.  It is the energy of the sun, the stars.  It is written in the cataclysmic event that is our mother, the Big Bang.  It is the power of a gamma ray burst set to ravage Earth.  All of which can be reduced to a few numbers and add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

But the way it’s taught – drilled into us from an early age, so much so that inevitably we loathe it as a reflex – is terrifying.  I remember thinking in math class till last year – I will be pressured into completing text book exercises for the rest of my life, when math could be so much more than this.

And it can be – heck, it is – so much more than what is taught till 10^th grade.  Why does it take 11^th grade to realize the beauty of math?

I had realized that kind of math I liked early on – the kind of math that can be translated into the kind of world I see around me.  I like the math that describes the curve of a leaf.  The math that shows the path of volleyball takes when it is served, to the moment it hits the ground.  Math that can be translated.  And math below 11th grade doesn’t really include that.  So I have pinpointed my problem.  As Richard Feynman one said, “At the base of all biology is chemistry, and at the base of all chemistry is physics.” And math is the language of physics, and languages can be translated.

Newton gave us the basic ideas of calculus.  And make no mistake – calculus is, at first glance, a bit terrifying.  But it is a life saver.  Once you start deriving equations with it, you realize that.  And you wonder how one man could come up with it at all.

But Sir Isaac Newton was great in that he took his cues from nature.  He looked at the world around him, and translated it to math.  And the reverse is just as possible.

I started this post by asking you to think of a number.  You might realize by now that, in retrospect, that number holds the key – is the key – to this whole world.  Once the weight of that starts to sink in, you never see the world in quite the same way again.

The Meaning of Life

So it had been a stressful day and in the classroom, all the discussions were lingering around suicidal attempts made by students when suddenly one of my friend jested "I would never do that. Who would like starting over from nurseries back!" It was funny a dido for then. But it gave me matter to ponder over. Do we really have a next chance? Can we rise back from dust just to set the wrongs or rights done by us in our pasts?

We've been told throughout our childhood about afterlife. But how much sense does it make when subjected to rational thought. Isn't it more of an entailment deduced from pointless opinions? There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has the responsibility to give to your life, meaning and point. The truly adult view, by contrast is that our life is as meaningful and wonderful as we chose to make it. By all means let's be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains drop out. Those ridiculously fatal arguements seems to be depriving all our Biology of its worth. Some complicated organism who've been thinking that they're alive for a reason is what all our Bioligy is subjected to and then we cross it for our intuitions! Shifting the burdens from one life to another will not make any difference ever. We must not kid ourselves that we're going to live again after we're dead, we're not. Realizing we're not contagious to dust is fine. It gives one an opportunity to live this life to its full potential. Won't it be sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring out of his bed eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it. 

On Curiosity

I remember being an eight year old kid marveling at the world around me. Heck, some part of me still is that kid. That's why I want to be an astrophysicist.

But something happened down the road. I met a bunch of people who put down my questions; dismissed them as being not important. Because apparently one can't see an umbra and a penumbra in one's own shadow at a restaurant, and one sure as heck can't ask about it in class.

Yeah, I hold a grudge from eight years ago, but for good reason.

If it weren't for that experience, I wouldn't hesitate today to ask questions in class. There was a time this hesitation would have crippled me academically. And I'm only just starting to recover what has been lost.

But it makes me wonder - what is going on? How many curiosities are killed this way? Will those even be recoverable?

Losing one's curiosity is an incredibly dangerous thing. The reason is simple and elegant, like a lot of equations in physics today. So let me do this mathematically.

We are given that humans are very clever - they have built empires, cities, and are leaving a mark of their own. Why? It is that one game changer, Curiosity.

So, we have
Humans + Curiosity = Desire to do things better. ...... - (1)
Subtracting "Curiosity" from both sides,
(Humans + Curiosity) - Curiosity = (Desire to do things better) - Curiosity
Humans = Desire to do things better - Curiosity
Now, "Desire to do things better" is made up of two interlinked ideas - Curiosity and Innovation. And one cannot exist without the other. Remove Curiosity, and Innovation crumbles. And without either of them, you have a paradox.
Humans = No desire to make things better...? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

As said in an earlier post, curiosity is our defining characteristic. One does not simply take it away. And children are naturally curious. Killing that desire to explore...in my opinion, that is a huge evil.

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein.

Kardashev Scale and Our Imminent Doom II

Aliens are already on a course to visiting humanity. What, in all likelihood, are they going to discover? Will it really be humanity in all its senses? Or will it be a specie so much dependent on science, still so much in-cognizant of it? Won't they laugh on a specie so advanced to have got to those Mass-Energy equations, yet so asleep to have nuclear weapons aimed at themselves!

Our very civilization is going through a very mordacious, or let us say, chancy transition. We're making and alteration from a level-0 to level-1 civilization. We've already come through this scaling in a recent post. It is often conceived as a stage where most of civilizations destroy themselves through nuclear war. Perhaps, this might be the reason why we're still out of glimpses of aliens. Our civilization is like a child in its primary years of maturity. Nuclear weapons are like toys in her hands only way too dangerous. Yet all nations are in a race of increasing their stock of nuclear armory! Any world war can subvert us back at the start of civilization.

However sooner or later, there is yet another problem our civilization is going to face. It is that of increasing population. The human population is increasing at an ever faster rate. A rate high enough for the resources to contend with. In fact, there might soon come a time when when the exhausting resources will collide with the flourishing human population. At this point of time we'll have to realize the importance of interstellar travel. The Earth is off course our home, it is the cradle for humanity, however we're not supposed to stay in the cradle forever. As said "We're pioneers not caretakers". We'll be doomed by a world wide catastrophe, when the rising demands will crush everything. We have to be prepared before this event even occurs. And the only way we can substantiate our situation is through interstellar travel. We have to explore potentially habitable worlds to save humanity from the collapse. We must leave our planet as explorers and not in fragments as mere survivors of a likely catastrophe.