When I used to give talks at meetings of my religious group, Eastern religion variety, almost always I’d use one of my favorite terms: ultimate reality. I loved those two words. They meant a lot to me, something to aim for, something to devote myself to, something to search for as a lifelong pursuit.
Reality, I thought, was interesting. But ultimate reality — that was the pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow. While I didn’t know what it was, I had some ideas in line, not surprisingly, with what the Eastern religion I belonged to for 35 years taught.
Even if those ideas turned out not to be true, I never doubted that there was some deep truth to the cosmos. Which made a chapter about Laws in Alien Science in particle physicist Daniel Whiteson’s book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, especially interesting to me.
He starts out with an Alien Contact Hypothetical in which the world’s leading physicists excitedly prepare to enter an alien spaceship to learn what sorts of amazing truths about the universe are known to the aliens that we humans are clueless about. These excerpts will give you a feel for the Hypothetical.
The physicists vainly suppressed their eager smiles as they shuffled inside, ready to speak to the oracle, to learn the fundamental nature of space, time, and matter. It took only a few hours before the first of them reemerged, scratching her head and looking frustrated. A few more surfaced next, followed by a final pack, some arguing among themselves.
…Finally, a young Swedish scholar came forward to speak for the group. “Nothing,” she said. “They understand nothing.” And shrugged. The press responded with an avalanche of questions. How did they build these ships? How did they navigate across the stars? How do their doors work? [They dematerialize.]
The woman waved her hand. “Yes, yes,” she said. “They have error-correcting quantum computers with trillions of cubits, self-organizing nanobots. Very fancy. Cute tricks. But they have no deep knowledge. They say…” She took a moment to steady herself. “They say there is no deep knowledge. it’s all just cute tricks and hardcore number crunching. Don’t you get it? They have deep answers, because there are no deep answers.” She sobbed as she walked away.
The press was flabbergasted, but the chemists, biologists, and engineers were already racing forward to take their turn. Unlike the physicists, this group didn’t resurface a few hours later. It was more than a week later before one engineer appeared. He waved the remaining press over, clearly in a hurry to return to the ship.
“They can…,” he said, pausing as he looked for the right words. He shook his head and simply said: “They can do everything.” The moment stretched out as the press waited for him to explain. “Their computers are so powerful, they can predict the weather, a century into the future, down to the drop They can calculate the plasma flows inside the sun… Their computers, can do…anything. Do you understand? Everything that was hard is now going to be easy.”
…Life on Earth was changed forever as technology leapt forward. Everyone felt like they had been vaulted into the future — everyone, of course, except for the physicists. The aliens had no deep truths to share with them, no big reveal about the fundamental nature of the Universe. That project, the aliens were convinced, was hopeless. But at least we had some nifty new toys.
Whiteson goes on to explain in the rest of the chapter that it is possible that the bits of truth about the universe we humans are able to discover can never be assembled into a complete tapestry of reality. This is sort of like discovering that the jigsaw puzzle we’ve been trying to complete, actually can’t be. Not because a bunch of pieces are missing. Because it is impossible to put the pieces together into a coherent picture of reality, since that picture doesn’t exist.
Whiteson says:
As a detective assigned to the Case of the Crazy Cosmos, you might be a bit put off if your client told you that any clues you find are only approximately true or that you might not be able to use more than one clue at a time to solve the mystery. And, they add, there might not even be a single real story about what happened. It might just be a pile of fuzzy clues. Maybe nobody even died? It’s hard to tell. Better ask for payment in advance.
While we’d like to think that cracking the mysteries of the Universe means revealing more and more bits of truth, which eventually link together to reveal the plot-twisting true story of reality, it might be more like that fuzzy mystery.
Whether our science is crisp and interconnected or whether it’s fuzzy and isolated has big consequences for what we expect from any science chat with aliens. If everyone is solving the same grand mystery, then we can hope to click our clues together with theirs, and everybody learns something. If instead it’s a fuzzy mess, with lawless regions in between patches of approximate understanding, then it might just mean more patches, forever disconnected — an island vacation observing the alien whales swimming through the swirling chaos of our rapidly accumulating metaphors.
In her book, Nothing to Grasp, Joan Tollifson makes some similar points about a spiritual quest to learn the deepest truths of the cosmos.
There is no one right way. This universe is magnificently diverse and playful. And of course, any person or activity that we later identify as “the cause of our awakening” is just one link in an infinite chain of dream-like events, a network that includes everything in the whole universe. Our worst mistakes are as essential to this imaginary process as our grandest insights.
True awakening is simply the realization that no one was ever bound in the first place. Ultimate Reality is uncaused and unconditioned. Nothing brings it about, for it is all there is. It has never been absent. We never really need to be worrying about what we “should” do. We can rest assured that we are always already doing it, that it is exactly what is presently arising, just as it is.
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“What if there’s no deep answers to cosmic questions because there’s no deep truth?” A lovely question and an even more lovely answer. ‘No deep truth,’ nothing to be ‘discovered’ other than the physical mechanics of the universe – including us.
I quite like the idea that such technological aliens had no deep truths to share, no big reveal about the fundamental nature of the Universe. I also wonder what drives us to always be seeking answers to everything. Maybe it’s a natural inquisitiveness, or perhaps it’s our basic insecurities that want to feel in control by understanding everything – a matter of feeling safe and superior?
And maybe this desire to know everything is the primary motivational force behind the formation of religions, as well as the many spiritual institutions, teachings, and teachers. All looking for certitude, safety or confirmation of our perceived specialness. No doubt, inquisitiveness and a desire to know everything drive science, though I like to think that some motives in science are altruistic.
Perhaps the reason I prefer some of the Buddhist approach is that it does address the everyday questions of life with all its cares and woes and largely doesn’t bother itself with metaphysical issues, whereas the raison d’etre of most of the other religions is to focus more on belief and personal salvation as a means to gain everlasting life.
You’re out of your league. Out of your depth on this one Brian.
However colorful these authors present their case, it is an old one disproven by science ad nauseum.
This dog won’t hunt.
Their argument is that there is nothing new to learn.
All science is disproving this multiple times every day.
Their argument includes the corrolary that there is no answer to any deep question and no questions to answer.
Again, see above. Every discovery of science that answers one question also includes new information no one thought to ask about.
A dark room isn’t non-existent.
But an ignorant mind knows no difference.
A scientist sees this false sort of nihilism disproven every day.
That’s why science says we don’t know half of what is going on.
The nihlist, the defeatist just says “nothing was ever going on. There isn’t reality. You don’t exist. But I do so please buy my book!”
Other nihlists chant, “yes! Yes!” to their sacred God, the status quo of their own routines.
Spence. Whiteson is not saying “that there is nothing new to learn”, but there is no ‘deep knowledge ‘– or ‘ultimate reality, ’ as Brian puts it.
Also, it is not “that there is no answer to any deep question and no questions to answer” – that all depends on what one means by a ‘deep question’.
And, because a person, a scientist, a mind may say that ‘ultimate reality’ is beyond science, it does not denote ignorance or nihilism.
It is not relevant to bring in the term nihilist, the defeatist, to say, “There isn’t reality. You don’t exist.” That is not something Whiteson is saying; that’s more in the realm of quantum physics – or some spiritual teachings.
Hi Ron
Forgive my hyperbole.
It may not be necessary to solve life’s deeper questions for some. Interest may not be there. It may not actually reflect Nihlism. It may bring comfort to some to have their safe harbor, their peace amidst their toys. Perhaps that is Whiteston’s point. It may be difficult for me to see that in the midst of my journey.
I only suggest that as death is a reality, anyone offering liberation is worthy of consideration. To see scorn hurled at them seems poor sportsmanship at best, and possibly a dangerous complacency. But, hey, like I said to Um, to a hammer everything looks like a nail. When in motion everything passing by looks stationary.
We each comment from our perspective.
Kits rise against the wind, not with the wind. So flowing along seems now like floating aimlessly to me.
Far out in space between our solar system and the rest of the universe there is a very large, laser projected billboard several moons wide and nearly as many tall with the blazing words “Danger! Beware of Earth! No children allowed! Toxic atmosphere! Toxic residents! Biohazard! Turn back! Your health insurance policy void there! “
I’ve known for a long time that these long drawn out essays and comments that seem to wind and go nowhere until the next book review is all the precursor for AI. Man has invented his Doom. And yes the healthcare system sucks in the United States and I can start to see why.