I've been thinking a bit about this topic lately. All you have to do is spend a little time browsing the internet to find the wildly varying information available. From researchers publishing their latest breakthroughs, to supporters of intelligent design offering supposedly scientific counterpoints, and everything in between. Honestly, it can be pretty confusing to those unfamiliar with the subject and downright frustrating to those who feel passionate about the issue.
I am not an expert. I might sometimes talk like I am, but I have no degrees or formal training on the topic, save for a year in college studying molecular biology (when that was my major). I'm not claiming to know anything absolutely, and quite frankly, I feel more comfortable when people concede a lack of perfect knowledge. For me, one of the strongest ideals of science is that it recognizes that data may someday appear that challenges even our most fundamental understanding of the way things work. Theories are only as certain as the data they describe, and their predictive power only indicates a reasonable confidence in their conclusions but never absolute certitude.
That certitude which exists in the minds of supporters of religious explanations for the origin of life (and everything else) is actually a weakness. It may seem counterintuitive, but this sense of an absolute truth that can be fully known prevents the believer from acknowledging new information that, though it may strongly contradict his belief, is strongly supported by objective evidence. If a believer could absolutely be shown to be wrong (not that I'm saying that can be done), I'm pretty sure he would still deny the evidence, because his belief system does not allow for the acceptance of such evidence. If, however, a scientist could be shown absolutely to be wrong (which is possible and has happened many times), she would simply have to reassess her understanding of that data and would have to offer an alternative theory that doesn't just account for this new data, but is highly predictive of it.
That is the strength of science. It is not a house of cards that relies on every theory it puts forth being true to hold it up. Science is more like a clay sculpture that can always be refined to a more accurate representation of reality, though perhaps never a perfect duplication of it.
To some degree, the intelligent supporters of creationism or ID recognize that it is impossible to argue against science without science, so they try to incorporate science into their explanations and refutations, confident that their assertions are a death knell to science. This is amusing because if you could prove the scientific method was faulty by using the scientific method, wouldn't that indicate that the process you used to prove it was faulty was, itself, faulty? This is a paradox of the same order of the statement "this statement is false". Fortunately, no such paradoxical proof has ever been offered, and I'm fairly sure that no such proof exists.
Instead of attacking the methods of science, creationists and ID'ers attack the data by cherry picking some data of their own. They often present physical evidence that might be interpreted in such a way as to support their beliefs, but ignore other evidence that refutes it or alternative explanations for their supposed evidence. Probability is also a favorite tool, as it is easily manipulated to achieve results that could support any number of viewpoints.
For example, many creation "scientists" boggle at the odds they calculate for the random creation of life. Their argument goes something like this:
"In the simplest known organism, there are about 5,000 genes. These genes must be in a certain configuration for that organism to exist. If you do the math, you find that there are 4.8 x 1050 possible arrangements of those genes. Hence, the odds of that particular strand of DNA forming are 1 in 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000."
Wow, that number sure is impressive when you write out all the zeros. When you consider that the best estimates of the number of unique species on the Earth are about 10 million (and there may well be significantly more), it seems staggering to suggest that all that happened by chance.
Well, sure. Ok. If one were to suggest that at some instant in the past, atoms suddenly arranged themselves in the perfect configuration to build E. Coli bacteria, I would demand some pretty compelling proof. If you then went on to tell me that this happened randomly, I would probably walk away thinking you were crazy.
This is one of the major disconnects in arguments between evolutionists and creationists. Oftentimes, creationists go into a debate with an idea about what the evolutionist believes that is so far removed from reality, one can hardly blame them for questioning it. In fact, any evolutionist who believes that lightning struck a puddle of various chemicals, which then arranged itself into a perfect DNA molecule, is ignorant to the process proposed by most scientists.
It is important to note that, while we don't understand all of the processes involved in DNA or how it came to be, there is nothing in the structure or function of DNA that suggests it is defying the laws of chemistry. There are no remarkable compounds that just shouldn't be there, there are no chemical combinations that are impossible according to our current understanding.
That said, it is not absolutely impossible for these processes to have happened by chance. These staggering numbers that creationists offer (which I will demonstrate are misleading) still mean that it is possible, though highly unlikely by their numbers, that such things would have happened by chance. If you can prove that the chance that something occurs is not zero, you have just proved that it is possible.
Consider, for a moment, the following text: q@0oDt61m^eIDy%ag#eV4ivpws)h9r.
This text is a random string of 30 symbols from the set of all lower and upper case letters on a standard US keyboard as well as the numbers 0-9 and all the alternate symbols on those number keys. That means that any one of those symbols in that string has a 1 in 72 chance of being chosen at random (26 upper case + 26 lower case + 10 numbers + 10 symbols). That means that the odds of randomly typing that specific string of 30 characters is 1 in 5.25 x 1055.
Wow! That's even less likely than the odds that the 5,000 genes in E. Coli bacteria just randomly flying together! And yet, there it is. It happened. Is it a miracle? No. Granted, that string of 30 characters doesn't mean anything, at least, it isn't intended to mean anything. Similarly, genetic code was never "intended" to mean something. Life didn't form based on chemistry's intentions, just the laws that govern it. That distinction is important because creationists need to think that the complex chemical reactions that are involved in life are somehow more special or remarkable than the thermonuclear reactions that power stars or the complex system of gravitational interaction that comprises a galaxy. The only remarkable thing about us is our ability to reason about whether or not we are remarkable.
Regardless, no reputable scientist is arguing that those 5,000 genes of E. Coli just suddenly assembled. Instead, scientists propose the very reasonable suggestion that on the early Earth, where organic compounds (those containing carbon and that are necessary for life as we know it) were in abundance and bombarded with all kinds of possible energies, from ultraviolet solar radiation to the still cooling planet's internal heat, assembled into more complex molecules over time. This is merely chemistry. One can perform experiments with chemicals thought to be in existence in early Earth and easily create amino acids, which are again a crucial part of life on this planet.
Over the course of probably geologic time scales, chemical reactions with organic molecules were happening simultaneously all over the Earth. In one of these reactions, the result ended up being some kind of molecule that was capable of replicating itself to some extent. There is nothing magical about this, nothing that requires supernatural explanation. Within the context of the laws of chemistry, it is perfectly possible for a molecule to exist that is able to replicate itself within a solution of its component parts. This self-replicating molecule was the precursor to our DNA.
There are numerous theories as to how DNA may have ended up within the nucleus of a cell, or within any part of a cell, but I will leave readers to investigate those on their own. If you haven't agreed with me thus far, you won't agree with any of the stuff that comes after. ID proponents often start with DNA in their arguments, especially because of the impressive probabilities against abiogenesis that can be derived (and exaggerated), so I thought I'd start there too.
Another favorite supposed science "gotcha" is the infamous and inviolable second law of thermodynamics. Specifically, this law states: The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
It is the more general interpretation of this law, however, that creationists jump on. That interpretation states that the amount of order in any system will reduce over time rather than increase, unless there is some external force that acts to increase it. It should be pretty clear why this seems so significant to those who seek to prove that life was created by a divine intelligence.
The argument goes like this: A pocket watch is a highly ordered state of matter. It contains several tiny gears, cogs and springs, all perfectly suited to a specific purpose. If one were to come upon a pocket watch on a tree stump in the woods, it would be absurd to the highest degree to assume the pocket watch had assembled through some sequence of random events, especially if its discoverer knew about the second law of thermodynamics. The most logical conclusion, given the evidence, is that the pocket watch had an intelligent creator who cleverly crafted the watch with his own hands.
On the surface, that certainly seems reasonable. The parallels between a pocket watch and a living creature seem clear in this context. Living beings are also made up of many meticulously integrated parts that are perfectly suited for functioning in their native environments. If you remove one of its fundamental parts, it will cease to function (or at least cease to function as well as it once did).
So, what could possibly be wrong about this analogy? Furthermore, if the random assemblage of a pocket watch would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, then why isn't the random assemblage of a living creature? Well, keep in mind that what science claims about life is hardly random. Again, science believes that life originated via deterministic chemical processes, not that chemicals randomly combined in impossible ways. A pocket watch does not function through chemical processes. This is a pretty important point because there are no laws of chemistry that we know of that would govern a reaction that would result in even a single gear or cog in a pocket watch. Through non-chemical means, the natural formation of any part of such a watch in probabilistic terms is far less likely, by orders of magnitude, than the odds of a natural chemical reaction resulting in the precursors of DNA, which through natural selection evolved into increasingly more complex structures resulting in living cells.
So what of thermodynamics? Isn't a living creature a more ordered state than a pile of the same atoms sitting on the ground? How would one propose to explain that living things appear to violate the second law? For starters, let's revisit that pesky law:
The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
Notice how I highlighted the word "tend" there. What the second law is referring to is a statistical reality that may not represent specific instances within that isolated system. Rest assured, over the course of time, the second law will result in an even distribution of entropy throughout the universe. That is, of course, unless the force of gravity in the universe is strong enough to overtake our expansion, but that's a whole other conversation.
Now, that last paragraph might seem like hand-waving. Verbal prestidigitation to allow for decreased entropy in living systems on a technicality. Well, if you think that's a poor explanation, you're right. The truth is, we don't need such technicalities to explain the supposed decreased entropy of a living system. This is true for two reasons.
First, even if a living system represents a higher state of order than a random pile of the elements that make it up, there were plenty of sources of energy that were around to be added to the system on ancient Earth. The planet was significantly less hospitable to modern life as we know it, but it was a boon to the chemical reactions that would give rise to life. Solar radiation, geothermal activity, cosmic rays, lightning and fiery impacts from the debris that littered the early solar system, just to name a few. Any or all of these sources could have provided significant energy to the chemical system that preceded life. This might suggest that life is one of the results of the entropy in the solar system moving toward equilibrium.
Second, consider for a moment some properties that all living things share. One of the fundamental properties of all life is a metabolism. All organisms must expend energy to perform the tasks of living, and so must obtain that energy from somewhere. Metabolism is the process by which organisms extract energy from their surroundings. We eat food and our body breaks that food down chemically to provide us with the energy we need to live. The most important thing about this system is that an organism's metabolism converts chemical energy into other forms of energy that are dissipated back into the environment, creating more disorder than the order required for a living thing to exist.
Just think about that. Simply by sitting there, your body is generating 98.6 degrees of heat by breaking down the food you've ingested and providing energy for respiration, circulation and all the other autonomic functions of your body. That heat is energy that radiates into the universe and heats it up. Even at rest, you increase the entropy in the universe every second. This energy exchange happens at all levels of life, and it is the crucial element to answering whether or not life violates thermodynamics.
With the points covered in the above paragraphs, it is pretty easy to demonstrate that life as a chemical process could have certainly arisen on ancient Earth without any direction from a greater intelligence. Once a molecule forms that can crudely copy itself, it is trivial to show that variation would have given rise to natural selection, which would have resulted in a more robust molecule. Further interactions with the environment and possibly ongoing chemical reactions would have gotten the ball rolling toward something we would consider life. All that would have been necessary from that point forward was time.
What really amazes me is that this whole process is stunning, a beautifully entwined confluence of physics, yet those who are opposed to these ideas seem convinced that science is somehow reducing life to something empty, hollow. The explanations of science don't allow for a soul or a divine creator, and this somehow lessens life's beauty and significance. Having an omnipotent being will into existence the diversity of life, fully formed, makes for great mythology, but it is truly awe-inspiring to know that the laws of physics alone are sufficient to account for all the wonder that surrounds us.
Showing posts with label physics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label physics. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
Pale Blue Dot
Sometime in the first half of 1990, as the Voyager 1 spacecraft hurtled beyond the edge of our planetary system, it spun around to take one final photo of the place from whence it had come, perhaps never to return again. Actually, Voyager 1 took several images in an attempt to capture a snapshot of the entire planetary system as each world orbits the sun. One of these pictures in particular, however, stands out as perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring and humbling images ever captured in the entirety of human civilization. It was entitled "Pale Blue Dot" by the man who campaigned to have the picture taken and who, in 1980, formally introduced the world to the "Cosmos". That man was Carl Sagan, astronomer, author and arguably the greatest contributor to our common understanding of the universe in modern history.
Sagan's words reflecting upon the significance of the "Pale Blue Dot" have been quoted and paraphrased many times. One wonders if it could ever be said better than this:
The sheer sense of humility inspired by such musings is chilling, and yet we should also be reminded of what we don't see beyond the confines of that photo. The image shows us as a part of the much larger grandeur of the universe. Granted, it is a very small part, but it is still a part. Carl Sagan also said, "We are a way for the universe to know itself," and while the universe may not have planned us for this purpose, or even planned us at all, I think we should rise to that challenge. This picture of a minuscule Earth sparkling in a ray of light is just a glimpse of the amazing perspectives that await us as we strive to meet that challenge.
To know the universe is a pretty enormous undertaking. We're making some strides, but we still have quite a way to go. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and took about 12.5 years to travel to a point where it would be about 6.1 billion kilometers from Earth, the distance from which the "Pale Blue Dot" photo was taken. A distance of 6.1 billion km is pretty far when you consider the distances we typically travel on the Earth, but on a universal scale, it isn't even a drop in the bucket.
Consider these points:
The universe was recently estimated to be 156 billion light years wide. As many of you probably know by now, a light year is the distance light travels in a single Earth year. Since light moves incredibly fast (a bit under 300 million meters a second), to say 156 billion light years definitely sounds like a lot, but words like "light year" and "billion" are simply words that we use to make it more convenient to talk about distances and numbers most humans couldn't even imagine. For the sake of demonstration, I am going to try to stop using these words to give you a little better idea of how mind boggling these numbers really are. My standard measurements will be in kilometers (km) and meters (m), admittedly abstractions themselves.
If the universe is 156 billion light years wide and there are (get ready) 9,500,000,000,000 (that's 9.5 trillion!) kilometers in just one light year, that means that the universe is 1,482,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.5 septillion) km wide! Looking at the distance at which the "Pale Blue Dot" was taken, which was probably about 6,054,558,968 km (give or take a few million km), we can do some simple math to figure out how that compares to the universe.
*doing calculations*
That means that the distance at which Voyager 1 snapped that picture was 1/242,950,819,672,131th of the total diameter of the universe. To put that into perspective, if the width of the universe were 1 meter, the distance from Voyager 1 to the Earth in 1990 would be about .00000000000000412 meters. The shorthand for this tiny distance is 4.12 femtometers, which is about the diameter of an atomic nucleus (depending on the atom). This calculation, comparatively, reduces the Earth to a size smaller than a proton or neutron, probably smaller even than a quark.
While this comparison seems to relegate us to some insignificant proportion of the universe, that's only true looking down on this tiny blue speck from afar. If we instead look outward at the vast reaches of our universe, we see that there is so much yet to discover. We are travelers on a quest to answer every question that can be conceived. The universe offers us no shortage of opportunities to drive and satisfy our uniquely human brand of curiosity.
It's not going to be easy. Many things stand in our way, the most perplexing being the universal speed limit, the speed of light. Even significant fractions of the speed of light seem difficult to fathom given our understanding of relativistic speeds and the current level of our space travel technology. Even at the relatively impressive speed that Voyager 1 shoots out of our solar system, it is still only moving at 1/18,000th the speed of light. We're going to have to come up with something a lot faster than that if we're going to explore even the closest corners of our interstellar neighborhood. I believe, however, that we are propelled by such an intense need to know, we will find some way to overcome these obstacles. Far in the future, when the intelligent descendants of the human species look back on this pale blue dot, I hope they will look on it with fondness as the starting point of the incredible journey that brought them to every corner of the galaxy and maybe, just maybe, to their first steps into the larger universe.
Sagan's words reflecting upon the significance of the "Pale Blue Dot" have been quoted and paraphrased many times. One wonders if it could ever be said better than this:
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
The sheer sense of humility inspired by such musings is chilling, and yet we should also be reminded of what we don't see beyond the confines of that photo. The image shows us as a part of the much larger grandeur of the universe. Granted, it is a very small part, but it is still a part. Carl Sagan also said, "We are a way for the universe to know itself," and while the universe may not have planned us for this purpose, or even planned us at all, I think we should rise to that challenge. This picture of a minuscule Earth sparkling in a ray of light is just a glimpse of the amazing perspectives that await us as we strive to meet that challenge.
To know the universe is a pretty enormous undertaking. We're making some strides, but we still have quite a way to go. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and took about 12.5 years to travel to a point where it would be about 6.1 billion kilometers from Earth, the distance from which the "Pale Blue Dot" photo was taken. A distance of 6.1 billion km is pretty far when you consider the distances we typically travel on the Earth, but on a universal scale, it isn't even a drop in the bucket.
Consider these points:
The universe was recently estimated to be 156 billion light years wide. As many of you probably know by now, a light year is the distance light travels in a single Earth year. Since light moves incredibly fast (a bit under 300 million meters a second), to say 156 billion light years definitely sounds like a lot, but words like "light year" and "billion" are simply words that we use to make it more convenient to talk about distances and numbers most humans couldn't even imagine. For the sake of demonstration, I am going to try to stop using these words to give you a little better idea of how mind boggling these numbers really are. My standard measurements will be in kilometers (km) and meters (m), admittedly abstractions themselves.
If the universe is 156 billion light years wide and there are (get ready) 9,500,000,000,000 (that's 9.5 trillion!) kilometers in just one light year, that means that the universe is 1,482,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.5 septillion) km wide! Looking at the distance at which the "Pale Blue Dot" was taken, which was probably about 6,054,558,968 km (give or take a few million km), we can do some simple math to figure out how that compares to the universe.
*doing calculations*
That means that the distance at which Voyager 1 snapped that picture was 1/242,950,819,672,131th of the total diameter of the universe. To put that into perspective, if the width of the universe were 1 meter, the distance from Voyager 1 to the Earth in 1990 would be about .00000000000000412 meters. The shorthand for this tiny distance is 4.12 femtometers, which is about the diameter of an atomic nucleus (depending on the atom). This calculation, comparatively, reduces the Earth to a size smaller than a proton or neutron, probably smaller even than a quark.
While this comparison seems to relegate us to some insignificant proportion of the universe, that's only true looking down on this tiny blue speck from afar. If we instead look outward at the vast reaches of our universe, we see that there is so much yet to discover. We are travelers on a quest to answer every question that can be conceived. The universe offers us no shortage of opportunities to drive and satisfy our uniquely human brand of curiosity.
It's not going to be easy. Many things stand in our way, the most perplexing being the universal speed limit, the speed of light. Even significant fractions of the speed of light seem difficult to fathom given our understanding of relativistic speeds and the current level of our space travel technology. Even at the relatively impressive speed that Voyager 1 shoots out of our solar system, it is still only moving at 1/18,000th the speed of light. We're going to have to come up with something a lot faster than that if we're going to explore even the closest corners of our interstellar neighborhood. I believe, however, that we are propelled by such an intense need to know, we will find some way to overcome these obstacles. Far in the future, when the intelligent descendants of the human species look back on this pale blue dot, I hope they will look on it with fondness as the starting point of the incredible journey that brought them to every corner of the galaxy and maybe, just maybe, to their first steps into the larger universe.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
More on Determinism...
So, I recently read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Given my interests, it's surprising it's taken me this long to get around to reading it. I have to say that I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner. It's quite fascinating, if a bit over my head at times. It's amazing to me how counter-intuitive physics becomes when you break it down to the quantum level or try to stretch it back to the beginning of time. It's even more amazing that we've managed to figure out any of the parts beyond Newtonian physics, which is, relatively speaking, pretty easy to observe.
I can't imagine the internal conflict for the first physicists to investigate these advanced concepts. Bohr, Schrödinger, Einstein, just to name a few, must have been stunned by the things they discovered. Indeed, Einstein's objections to some of the conclusions he and his colleagues were coming to are well documented. I'm reminded somewhat of Darwin's inner struggle with the reality he observed with evolution and natural selection versus what his lifelong faith told him about the origin of species.
Most interesting, though, is what these researches discovered about what we don't know and, indeed, perhaps can never know. The most significant of these, in my opinion, is Werner Heisenberg’s formulation of the uncertainty principle. I have to admit, this is one of those things that kind of goes over my head. I'm sure if I were a better mathematician, I might "get it" a bit more, but I'm not, so I don't.
I understand only the most basic concepts that come from uncertainty. Let me sum it up in my own words. Uncertainty basically tells us that there are certain variables that cannot be known to the same level of precision simultaneously. These variables seem to be somehow complementary to one another, or at least, the possible methods of measuring them seem to be complementary in such a fashion that the more precisely you know one, the less precisely you can know the other. For example, if you measure the position of some particle with high degree of precision, you will be unable to measure its momentum with much precision at all. Conversely, if you've measured its exact momentum, its position will be a mystery.
I've actually known this specific example of the uncertainty principle for quite some time, but I always thought that it was merely a matter of weakness in our measuring capabilities. According to Heisenberg's work, however, uncertainty is actually a feature of the universe. It wouldn't matter how advanced our instruments were, we could never measure these things simultaneously to the same level of precision.
I was thinking about this the other day, trying to figure out if I could come up with a macroscopic example that would demonstrate how this could possibly be true, and I think I came up with one. Please bear with me as I try to set it up...
Have you ever played Outburst? How about Password? In these games, and a few others, you have a card with some words written on them in light blue ink. Then, over the entire surface of the card, there are a bunch of small, randomly-shaped, and transparent red splotches. The purpose of this red pattern is to obscure the words written in blue so that they cannot be read at a glance. The only way to read them clearly is to insert the card into this little red plastic window that comes with the game. The clear red window cancels out the red on the card and the light blue ink of the words stand out as a dark purple.
Another example of this same concept is those old red and blue 3-D glasses. When I was a kid, I had this book with a bunch of drawings of dinosaurs in this blue and red ink. When you looked at it through the 3-D glasses, the dinosaurs seemed to jump off the page. I noticed that when I put the red eye of the glasses over a part of the drawing, the red lines would disappear. Similarly, when I put the blue eye of the glasses over the drawing, the blue lines would disappear.
Ok, going back to the Outburst example, say you wanted to read the words on the card as clearly as you possibly could. The best way to do that would be to slip the card into the red window. Now, say you wanted to see the random red splotches as clearly as you could. To do that, you'd put the card into a blue window. Now, it is true that green would contrast best with the red splotches, but you would still barely be able to see the word in blue ink, which might interfere with how well you were able to see the detailed shape of the red splotches over that word.
So, what if you wanted to be able to see both the words and the red splotches in the best detail possible simultaneously? One might suppose that a purple window might work, but probably not very well. I doubt you could see either the blue or the red ink any better than you could in regular light. Even if it was better, it still wouldn't be as good as seeing either one color or the other in the windows specifically designed to cancel out the color you wanted it to.
Wow, are you still with me?
So, translating this example to uncertainty, the words in blue ink represent a particle's position and the red splotches represent its momentum. To know its position with a high degree of precision, you have to put it in the red window. For its momentum, the blue window is best. There exists no window, however, that would reveal both simultaneously as nicely as the red and blue windows reveal the blue and red ink respectively.
Well, how do you like that? I've just reduced one of the most puzzling (to me) aspects of quantum physics to the simple pieces of a family game. Though I admit, this may just as well describe a lack of understanding as it does the basic concept of uncertainty. I'd be curious to know what a physicist thinks of it.
Ok, so what the hell does this have to do with determinism? Well, when I first read that uncertainty was "built in" to the universe and is something we are not likely to be able to overcome, my whole idea of a deterministic universe started crashing around me. Now, keep in mind that I was sleepily reading this on a flight to L.A., so my brain wasn't at its peak. What I later realized was that it still doesn't necessarily rule out determinism. All it does is solidify the idea that the universe is ultimately unpredictable. Uncertainty assures that we will never have all the information necessary to propagate the laws of physics out theoretically to some future moment.
In my last post about determinism, I hypothesized about a computer that was powerful enough to hold all the information and perform all the calculations necessary to predict the future. I reasoned that such a computer could not be built because it would require infinite resources. Thinking about it now, I realize I may have been wrong about not only the reason it was impossible, but also its requirements. The reason it would be impossible is because uncertainty guarantees that we will never have all the information necessary to load into the computer. So, even if we had infinite memory, we wouldn't be able to fill it with the necessary information to perform our calculations.
Which brings me to its requirements. Would it really need infinite memory? My reasoning was that such a computer would have to include a simulation of itself resident in memory, which would set up an infinitely recursive situation. If we're talking about building a computer in the sense of a modern-day computer, that might not be far off. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking talks about the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. He says that in the process of storing data in memory or processing that data, a computer generates heat, which increases the overall entropy in the universe by a much higher degree than the order that is created by the memory storage or processing. So, my future-gazing computer would have to at least include in its simulation the amount of heat it outputs into the universe, which would require more memory and processing, which would increase the heat further...etc.
But, let's say we don't build the computer like a modern-day computer. Instead, we'll let the universe run the simulation itself. Or, at least, we'll have half the universe run the simulation. So, let's ignore uncertainty for a moment. All we have to do is freeze time and build a huge partition that splits the universe exactly in half and prevents any energy transfer between the two. Then, we arrange every particle in one half in exactly the same position as the particles in the other half. Once that's done, we use the laws of physics to manipulate one half as it will appear at some arbitrary point in the future. Now the only thing left is to start up time again. If you want to know what's going to happen in the future of the one half, you just have to look at the other half. Simple, no?
Actually, it's not simple. In fact, it's ridiculous. You have to throw out so many physical laws to accomplish this, in the end you're just dealing with fantasy. Ignore uncertainty? Freeze time? Build a perfect barrier between two halves of the universe? Even if you could do these things, what do you then do to calculate out the future of each particle in the half that's going to be your future universe? You can't use a computer, because that's what you're building. It's the whole reason for this insane project! The only option that leaves is to do it by hand or incrementally using weaker computers. Even so, if you could freeze time, you could take the preposterously ponderous amount of time required to calculate the future incrementally using your weaker computers.
I could go on, but it doesn't serve my point, which is that even if the universe is deterministic, which I believe it to be, it may as well not be. Daunting does not even begin to describe the most trivial of steps in calculating the exact future of the universe, and that's even ignoring uncertainty. Throw uncertainty into the picture and your nearly infinitely difficult task literally becomes impossible.
Now, let me propose a thought experiment to you. I'm not sure what conclusions you might draw from it, but I think its purpose is more to evaluate how you think about time (and time travel) than to determine whether or not the universe is deterministic. However, if any definite conclusions could be reached with this experiment, they might have some interesting implications about determinism. So, here goes:
Suppose I approached you and asked you at some specific moment to choose a random number between 1 and 100. If there are truly random events in the universe and human free will is a consequence of that randomness, then there is a 1 in 100 chance that you will pick a particular number within that range, regardless of any events that occurred in all of the universe's history before I asked you to choose.
Now, suppose at some arbitrary point in the future I traveled back in time to a point before I asked you to choose a number and, taking the place of my past self, I approach you at the same moment I did previously and ask you in exactly the same way to choose a random number between 1 and 100. Again, we are assuming that there are truly random events and our free will is a consequence of them. It shouldn't matter, then, that this already happened in the past I know. There should still be a 1 in 100 chance that you will pick a specific number in that range, which means that the number you choose this time might not be the same as the number you chose last time.
Think about how time travel is represented in science fiction. Does this thought experiment agree with that representation? Consider the hypothetical "what if you could go back and kill Hitler?" question. Well, what if you went back far enough that enough events that depended upon the random elements of a non-deterministic universe played out differently and maybe Hitler wasn't even born, or maybe he made different decisions that led to a different history than the one we know? In this hypothetical universe where random events truly happen and have noticeable effects, you wouldn't necessarily have to do anything to stop Hitler. It might just work out that Hitler never ends up doing what he did in our history, if he even exists at all.
There is, of course, one minor kink in this experiment. If the universe is deterministic, then the amount of entropy you inject into the past universe by arriving there via time travel might have a significant effect on future events as well. Just by being there, the energy your body gives off as it metabolizes calories might change how history plays out. Unless you can figure out how to travel to the past without adding more entropy to the past universe, you'd never be able to completely rely upon your observations to prove randomness. But to talk about figuring out how to prevent contamination of your experiment while traveling to the past, you have to figure out how to travel to the past in the first place.
Ultimately, we're no further along in figuring out whether or not the universe is deterministic. I still believe that it is, but I also still believe that it doesn't matter. And it seems like the more we know, the more we're starting to understand that we'll never know it all. We may end up knowing a lot of it, but some things in the universe will still remain a mystery. I'm ok with that.
* * * * *
I can't imagine the internal conflict for the first physicists to investigate these advanced concepts. Bohr, Schrödinger, Einstein, just to name a few, must have been stunned by the things they discovered. Indeed, Einstein's objections to some of the conclusions he and his colleagues were coming to are well documented. I'm reminded somewhat of Darwin's inner struggle with the reality he observed with evolution and natural selection versus what his lifelong faith told him about the origin of species.
Most interesting, though, is what these researches discovered about what we don't know and, indeed, perhaps can never know. The most significant of these, in my opinion, is Werner Heisenberg’s formulation of the uncertainty principle. I have to admit, this is one of those things that kind of goes over my head. I'm sure if I were a better mathematician, I might "get it" a bit more, but I'm not, so I don't.
I understand only the most basic concepts that come from uncertainty. Let me sum it up in my own words. Uncertainty basically tells us that there are certain variables that cannot be known to the same level of precision simultaneously. These variables seem to be somehow complementary to one another, or at least, the possible methods of measuring them seem to be complementary in such a fashion that the more precisely you know one, the less precisely you can know the other. For example, if you measure the position of some particle with high degree of precision, you will be unable to measure its momentum with much precision at all. Conversely, if you've measured its exact momentum, its position will be a mystery.
I've actually known this specific example of the uncertainty principle for quite some time, but I always thought that it was merely a matter of weakness in our measuring capabilities. According to Heisenberg's work, however, uncertainty is actually a feature of the universe. It wouldn't matter how advanced our instruments were, we could never measure these things simultaneously to the same level of precision.
I was thinking about this the other day, trying to figure out if I could come up with a macroscopic example that would demonstrate how this could possibly be true, and I think I came up with one. Please bear with me as I try to set it up...
Have you ever played Outburst? How about Password? In these games, and a few others, you have a card with some words written on them in light blue ink. Then, over the entire surface of the card, there are a bunch of small, randomly-shaped, and transparent red splotches. The purpose of this red pattern is to obscure the words written in blue so that they cannot be read at a glance. The only way to read them clearly is to insert the card into this little red plastic window that comes with the game. The clear red window cancels out the red on the card and the light blue ink of the words stand out as a dark purple.
Another example of this same concept is those old red and blue 3-D glasses. When I was a kid, I had this book with a bunch of drawings of dinosaurs in this blue and red ink. When you looked at it through the 3-D glasses, the dinosaurs seemed to jump off the page. I noticed that when I put the red eye of the glasses over a part of the drawing, the red lines would disappear. Similarly, when I put the blue eye of the glasses over the drawing, the blue lines would disappear.
Ok, going back to the Outburst example, say you wanted to read the words on the card as clearly as you possibly could. The best way to do that would be to slip the card into the red window. Now, say you wanted to see the random red splotches as clearly as you could. To do that, you'd put the card into a blue window. Now, it is true that green would contrast best with the red splotches, but you would still barely be able to see the word in blue ink, which might interfere with how well you were able to see the detailed shape of the red splotches over that word.
So, what if you wanted to be able to see both the words and the red splotches in the best detail possible simultaneously? One might suppose that a purple window might work, but probably not very well. I doubt you could see either the blue or the red ink any better than you could in regular light. Even if it was better, it still wouldn't be as good as seeing either one color or the other in the windows specifically designed to cancel out the color you wanted it to.
Wow, are you still with me?
So, translating this example to uncertainty, the words in blue ink represent a particle's position and the red splotches represent its momentum. To know its position with a high degree of precision, you have to put it in the red window. For its momentum, the blue window is best. There exists no window, however, that would reveal both simultaneously as nicely as the red and blue windows reveal the blue and red ink respectively.
Well, how do you like that? I've just reduced one of the most puzzling (to me) aspects of quantum physics to the simple pieces of a family game. Though I admit, this may just as well describe a lack of understanding as it does the basic concept of uncertainty. I'd be curious to know what a physicist thinks of it.
Ok, so what the hell does this have to do with determinism? Well, when I first read that uncertainty was "built in" to the universe and is something we are not likely to be able to overcome, my whole idea of a deterministic universe started crashing around me. Now, keep in mind that I was sleepily reading this on a flight to L.A., so my brain wasn't at its peak. What I later realized was that it still doesn't necessarily rule out determinism. All it does is solidify the idea that the universe is ultimately unpredictable. Uncertainty assures that we will never have all the information necessary to propagate the laws of physics out theoretically to some future moment.
In my last post about determinism, I hypothesized about a computer that was powerful enough to hold all the information and perform all the calculations necessary to predict the future. I reasoned that such a computer could not be built because it would require infinite resources. Thinking about it now, I realize I may have been wrong about not only the reason it was impossible, but also its requirements. The reason it would be impossible is because uncertainty guarantees that we will never have all the information necessary to load into the computer. So, even if we had infinite memory, we wouldn't be able to fill it with the necessary information to perform our calculations.
Which brings me to its requirements. Would it really need infinite memory? My reasoning was that such a computer would have to include a simulation of itself resident in memory, which would set up an infinitely recursive situation. If we're talking about building a computer in the sense of a modern-day computer, that might not be far off. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking talks about the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. He says that in the process of storing data in memory or processing that data, a computer generates heat, which increases the overall entropy in the universe by a much higher degree than the order that is created by the memory storage or processing. So, my future-gazing computer would have to at least include in its simulation the amount of heat it outputs into the universe, which would require more memory and processing, which would increase the heat further...etc.
But, let's say we don't build the computer like a modern-day computer. Instead, we'll let the universe run the simulation itself. Or, at least, we'll have half the universe run the simulation. So, let's ignore uncertainty for a moment. All we have to do is freeze time and build a huge partition that splits the universe exactly in half and prevents any energy transfer between the two. Then, we arrange every particle in one half in exactly the same position as the particles in the other half. Once that's done, we use the laws of physics to manipulate one half as it will appear at some arbitrary point in the future. Now the only thing left is to start up time again. If you want to know what's going to happen in the future of the one half, you just have to look at the other half. Simple, no?
Actually, it's not simple. In fact, it's ridiculous. You have to throw out so many physical laws to accomplish this, in the end you're just dealing with fantasy. Ignore uncertainty? Freeze time? Build a perfect barrier between two halves of the universe? Even if you could do these things, what do you then do to calculate out the future of each particle in the half that's going to be your future universe? You can't use a computer, because that's what you're building. It's the whole reason for this insane project! The only option that leaves is to do it by hand or incrementally using weaker computers. Even so, if you could freeze time, you could take the preposterously ponderous amount of time required to calculate the future incrementally using your weaker computers.
I could go on, but it doesn't serve my point, which is that even if the universe is deterministic, which I believe it to be, it may as well not be. Daunting does not even begin to describe the most trivial of steps in calculating the exact future of the universe, and that's even ignoring uncertainty. Throw uncertainty into the picture and your nearly infinitely difficult task literally becomes impossible.
Now, let me propose a thought experiment to you. I'm not sure what conclusions you might draw from it, but I think its purpose is more to evaluate how you think about time (and time travel) than to determine whether or not the universe is deterministic. However, if any definite conclusions could be reached with this experiment, they might have some interesting implications about determinism. So, here goes:
Suppose I approached you and asked you at some specific moment to choose a random number between 1 and 100. If there are truly random events in the universe and human free will is a consequence of that randomness, then there is a 1 in 100 chance that you will pick a particular number within that range, regardless of any events that occurred in all of the universe's history before I asked you to choose.
Now, suppose at some arbitrary point in the future I traveled back in time to a point before I asked you to choose a number and, taking the place of my past self, I approach you at the same moment I did previously and ask you in exactly the same way to choose a random number between 1 and 100. Again, we are assuming that there are truly random events and our free will is a consequence of them. It shouldn't matter, then, that this already happened in the past I know. There should still be a 1 in 100 chance that you will pick a specific number in that range, which means that the number you choose this time might not be the same as the number you chose last time.
Think about how time travel is represented in science fiction. Does this thought experiment agree with that representation? Consider the hypothetical "what if you could go back and kill Hitler?" question. Well, what if you went back far enough that enough events that depended upon the random elements of a non-deterministic universe played out differently and maybe Hitler wasn't even born, or maybe he made different decisions that led to a different history than the one we know? In this hypothetical universe where random events truly happen and have noticeable effects, you wouldn't necessarily have to do anything to stop Hitler. It might just work out that Hitler never ends up doing what he did in our history, if he even exists at all.
There is, of course, one minor kink in this experiment. If the universe is deterministic, then the amount of entropy you inject into the past universe by arriving there via time travel might have a significant effect on future events as well. Just by being there, the energy your body gives off as it metabolizes calories might change how history plays out. Unless you can figure out how to travel to the past without adding more entropy to the past universe, you'd never be able to completely rely upon your observations to prove randomness. But to talk about figuring out how to prevent contamination of your experiment while traveling to the past, you have to figure out how to travel to the past in the first place.
Ultimately, we're no further along in figuring out whether or not the universe is deterministic. I still believe that it is, but I also still believe that it doesn't matter. And it seems like the more we know, the more we're starting to understand that we'll never know it all. We may end up knowing a lot of it, but some things in the universe will still remain a mystery. I'm ok with that.
* * * * *
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Determinism in a Chaotic Universe
Lately, I find myself frequently thinking of determinism. I'd like to put down some of my thoughts, though I doubt I have anything new to say on the matter. It's one of those things, like so many, that we probably can't really know the answer to, but that's one of the reasons these kinds questions are so intriguing. It's only when our questions are finally fully answered that we will stop asking them. So, let's hope for the sake of human intellectual development that some of these questions never get answered, or that, if they do, others take their place.
Anyhow, on to determinism. The question in most people's minds, I think, when they think about determinism is whether a deterministic universe can allow free will. Also, many proponents of free will often wonder how a belief in determinism does not result in fatalism or defeatism. Ostensibly, it does seem rather contradictory to believe in both determinism and free will. It's a complicated question, and not one that I'm all that sure I can even begin to answer. I don't think my purpose is really to answer any questions, rather to hypothesize, or at least to ramble thoughtfully. What I'm trying to say is, don't take me too seriously.
Okay, so as a basic definition, determinism is the belief that every event, from the most trivial to the most significant, has a cause or set of causes. Physics suggests that the universe is at least partially deterministic. Psychology tells us that human behavior is deterministic to some degree. Causality is a deterministic concept and popular fodder for time-travel-loving sci-fi writers.
For society in general, feelings about determinism are complicated. Some say there's a reason for everything. Concepts of fate and destiny are romanticized in popular culture. When we see someone we pity doing something horrible, we say he can't help it. It's just the way he was raised, or he doesn't know any better. If some tragedy befalls us, it's not our fault. There were events beyond your control. Suggest to the average person, however, that every decision she makes or feeling she has is the end result of a sequence of events that chains back to the beginning of existence, and she will likely feel insulted, or at least be a little indignant at the suggestion that her thoughts are not completely her choice.
That is not to say that all determinists believe that our actions are predetermined. There are those who also believe in free will and even those who say that, despite the deterministic nature of the universe and its influence on our thoughts and feelings, we are still ultimately in control. As I've already said, I don't think I can answer the obvious questions that spring from this stance. All I can do is discuss my thoughts.
So, do I think our thoughts and feelings are predetermined? Well, as uncomfortable as the idea makes me, I'm kind of leaning towards yes. To me, thoughts and feelings are simply a sequence of complex chemical and electrical interactions. It might seem cold to reduce them to that, and I confess it is rather an oversimplification, but it's difficult for me to think otherwise, given my interpretation of what science has to say on the matter. If it can really be reduced to simply a sequence of chemical and electrical interactions, which by their nature are governed by the laws of physics, then how they could possibly be non-deterministic is beyond me.
Then what's the point of doing anything? Or deciding anything? If everything is predetermined, then what is the point of anything? Well, that attitude is fatalist, and I think you'll find that there are few determinists who are fatalists. Why? Well, to put it obviously, events that depend upon you doing them to get done won't get done if you decide not to do them. Of course, if that decision is not really in your control, that is to say, if whether or not you make that decision is based on every event in history since the beginning of time, then, again I ask, what is the point of "deciding" anything? Enough commas in that sentence for you?
Here's the problem with thinking of the universe in deterministic terms. It always leads to cyclic or self referential arguments. Whether it's about whether our decisions are our own or about the origin of a deterministic universe, we find ourselves getting caught up in the pointless infinite loop of logic that our limited brains must do when we try to reason about the unknowable.
The thing is, nothing is gained from the knowledge of whether or not the universe is deterministic. Even if we knew for certain that it was, it still wouldn't make the universe predictable. If the universe is truly deterministic, that would mean that if we knew every governing rule of existence and every single state of every infinitesimal piece therein, we could extrapolate future events with 100% accuracy. The problem is, that is not possible for us. No human brain, no matter how evolved, could hold that much information and process it fast enough to glean any useful information from it. Similarly, we could never build a computer that could do it either. In order to hold the state of every infinitesimal piece of existence, first of all, we would have to have discovered them all first, and second of all, we would have to be able to hold an infinite amount of stuff in memory. Even if there is only a finite amount of information in a single slice of time in existence, the computer would also have to have a simulation of itself in its simulation of the universe. And we're back to the self-referencing problem we had earlier. Even the finite information would become infinite because the simulation of the computer simulating the universe would have the same simulation of the universe running inside it, which would contain the same simulated computer running a simulation...ad infinitum.
Let me explain why it doesn't matter in simpler terms. Pick a random number between 1 and 100. Ok, now I'm going to guess what it is. Are you thinking of it? Good.
It's 68.
Was I right? According to probability, I'm not likely to be. According to probability, on the average I would guess correctly for 1 out of every 100 people who read this post. I would guess that, given a large enough sample, it probably works out that way too. Does that mean people are actually capable of choosing random numbers? Would I be able to guess any better if I knew every experience you had ever had since birth? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that your choice wasn't influenced by those experiences.
Now take this little JavaScript I wrote to generate a random Sudoku puzzle. It generates a bunch of random numbers to fill in a grid, then randomly deletes pairs of cells such that it doesn't end up in multiple solutions. Now, is it truly random? No. I know for sure that it isn't. I know that when the script requests a random number, it looks at the system time, does some kind of math with it and returns the result. If I knew the exact system times when each random request was made and the math that was used to generate the number, I could calculate by hand the solution to the Sudoku puzzle the same way the computer did.
Ah, now we're getting to the heart of my point. Here's the thing, even if I could know all of the starting information and solve it by doing exactly what the computer did by hand, why the hell would I want to do that? What's the point? Is it faster that way? Not with my math skills. Is it more fun? I daresay it isn't. Similarly, even if I could somehow calculate "by hand" which random number you would have chosen, is it worth our time? Is nearly as amazing as my simply guessing it "at random" (assuming either one of those is amazing to any degree)?
See, the thing is, JavaScript’s random number generator is "good enough", as it serves our purposes for such a trivial task. Just like the number I asked you to choose randomly. Even if it wasn't random, it might as well be. It works the same for the universe. It might be deterministic, but it may as well be at least a little random because we can't ever know every state in one timeslice of existence and thus the starting conditions for it all.
I don't know that this argues that we should be mindful of our decisions and keep trying to improve our lives, but the possibility that it doesn't matter isn't going to stop me. If the universe IS deterministic, then things aren't going to just get better randomly. It's going to require the initial condition of effort on my part. My decision to make that effort might be predetermined, but I'm grateful that it is if that's the case. I also take comfort, like many people, in the fact that, whether the universe is random or deterministic, some events (most of them, in fact) really are beyond our control. It might not be the highest note to end on, but it serves its purpose.
Anyhow, on to determinism. The question in most people's minds, I think, when they think about determinism is whether a deterministic universe can allow free will. Also, many proponents of free will often wonder how a belief in determinism does not result in fatalism or defeatism. Ostensibly, it does seem rather contradictory to believe in both determinism and free will. It's a complicated question, and not one that I'm all that sure I can even begin to answer. I don't think my purpose is really to answer any questions, rather to hypothesize, or at least to ramble thoughtfully. What I'm trying to say is, don't take me too seriously.
Okay, so as a basic definition, determinism is the belief that every event, from the most trivial to the most significant, has a cause or set of causes. Physics suggests that the universe is at least partially deterministic. Psychology tells us that human behavior is deterministic to some degree. Causality is a deterministic concept and popular fodder for time-travel-loving sci-fi writers.
For society in general, feelings about determinism are complicated. Some say there's a reason for everything. Concepts of fate and destiny are romanticized in popular culture. When we see someone we pity doing something horrible, we say he can't help it. It's just the way he was raised, or he doesn't know any better. If some tragedy befalls us, it's not our fault. There were events beyond your control. Suggest to the average person, however, that every decision she makes or feeling she has is the end result of a sequence of events that chains back to the beginning of existence, and she will likely feel insulted, or at least be a little indignant at the suggestion that her thoughts are not completely her choice.
That is not to say that all determinists believe that our actions are predetermined. There are those who also believe in free will and even those who say that, despite the deterministic nature of the universe and its influence on our thoughts and feelings, we are still ultimately in control. As I've already said, I don't think I can answer the obvious questions that spring from this stance. All I can do is discuss my thoughts.
So, do I think our thoughts and feelings are predetermined? Well, as uncomfortable as the idea makes me, I'm kind of leaning towards yes. To me, thoughts and feelings are simply a sequence of complex chemical and electrical interactions. It might seem cold to reduce them to that, and I confess it is rather an oversimplification, but it's difficult for me to think otherwise, given my interpretation of what science has to say on the matter. If it can really be reduced to simply a sequence of chemical and electrical interactions, which by their nature are governed by the laws of physics, then how they could possibly be non-deterministic is beyond me.
Then what's the point of doing anything? Or deciding anything? If everything is predetermined, then what is the point of anything? Well, that attitude is fatalist, and I think you'll find that there are few determinists who are fatalists. Why? Well, to put it obviously, events that depend upon you doing them to get done won't get done if you decide not to do them. Of course, if that decision is not really in your control, that is to say, if whether or not you make that decision is based on every event in history since the beginning of time, then, again I ask, what is the point of "deciding" anything? Enough commas in that sentence for you?
Here's the problem with thinking of the universe in deterministic terms. It always leads to cyclic or self referential arguments. Whether it's about whether our decisions are our own or about the origin of a deterministic universe, we find ourselves getting caught up in the pointless infinite loop of logic that our limited brains must do when we try to reason about the unknowable.
The thing is, nothing is gained from the knowledge of whether or not the universe is deterministic. Even if we knew for certain that it was, it still wouldn't make the universe predictable. If the universe is truly deterministic, that would mean that if we knew every governing rule of existence and every single state of every infinitesimal piece therein, we could extrapolate future events with 100% accuracy. The problem is, that is not possible for us. No human brain, no matter how evolved, could hold that much information and process it fast enough to glean any useful information from it. Similarly, we could never build a computer that could do it either. In order to hold the state of every infinitesimal piece of existence, first of all, we would have to have discovered them all first, and second of all, we would have to be able to hold an infinite amount of stuff in memory. Even if there is only a finite amount of information in a single slice of time in existence, the computer would also have to have a simulation of itself in its simulation of the universe. And we're back to the self-referencing problem we had earlier. Even the finite information would become infinite because the simulation of the computer simulating the universe would have the same simulation of the universe running inside it, which would contain the same simulated computer running a simulation...ad infinitum.
Let me explain why it doesn't matter in simpler terms. Pick a random number between 1 and 100. Ok, now I'm going to guess what it is. Are you thinking of it? Good.
It's 68.
Was I right? According to probability, I'm not likely to be. According to probability, on the average I would guess correctly for 1 out of every 100 people who read this post. I would guess that, given a large enough sample, it probably works out that way too. Does that mean people are actually capable of choosing random numbers? Would I be able to guess any better if I knew every experience you had ever had since birth? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that your choice wasn't influenced by those experiences.
Now take this little JavaScript I wrote to generate a random Sudoku puzzle. It generates a bunch of random numbers to fill in a grid, then randomly deletes pairs of cells such that it doesn't end up in multiple solutions. Now, is it truly random? No. I know for sure that it isn't. I know that when the script requests a random number, it looks at the system time, does some kind of math with it and returns the result. If I knew the exact system times when each random request was made and the math that was used to generate the number, I could calculate by hand the solution to the Sudoku puzzle the same way the computer did.
Ah, now we're getting to the heart of my point. Here's the thing, even if I could know all of the starting information and solve it by doing exactly what the computer did by hand, why the hell would I want to do that? What's the point? Is it faster that way? Not with my math skills. Is it more fun? I daresay it isn't. Similarly, even if I could somehow calculate "by hand" which random number you would have chosen, is it worth our time? Is nearly as amazing as my simply guessing it "at random" (assuming either one of those is amazing to any degree)?
See, the thing is, JavaScript’s random number generator is "good enough", as it serves our purposes for such a trivial task. Just like the number I asked you to choose randomly. Even if it wasn't random, it might as well be. It works the same for the universe. It might be deterministic, but it may as well be at least a little random because we can't ever know every state in one timeslice of existence and thus the starting conditions for it all.
I don't know that this argues that we should be mindful of our decisions and keep trying to improve our lives, but the possibility that it doesn't matter isn't going to stop me. If the universe IS deterministic, then things aren't going to just get better randomly. It's going to require the initial condition of effort on my part. My decision to make that effort might be predetermined, but I'm grateful that it is if that's the case. I also take comfort, like many people, in the fact that, whether the universe is random or deterministic, some events (most of them, in fact) really are beyond our control. It might not be the highest note to end on, but it serves its purpose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)