Posted inBooks Reality Science

The “many worlds” of quantum mechanics arguably is a “single world”

Here's my second post about Heinrich Pas' book The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, the first post being here.  I realize that probably I'm more interested in quantum mechanics than most people visiting this blog, so I'll do my best to make my posts about the book as simple as possible. Which isn't easy, since quantum mechanics is confusing at best and totally mystifying at worst -- at least for those of us who aren't professional physicists, and even they readily admit that much about quantum mechanics is difficult to grasp. The so-called "measurement problem," for…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“The One” is a fresh look at the meaning of quantum mechanics

There's been two big problems with attempts to fathom the meaning of quantum mechanics (the commonly used term by scientists in that field, rather than quantum physics). New Age types, along with other mystically-inclined fans of quantum mechanics, make too much of what quantum mechanics means -- spouting indefensible notions of how we create our own reality, consciousness pervades the cosmos, and such. Physicists, along with others who work with the applications of quantum mechanics, typically make too little of what quantum mechanics means -- proclaiming that all that counts is the astoundingly precise mathematics underlying this field, often encapsulated…
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Posted inReality Vedanta/Advaita

Experience is all there is for us. Praise be to nonduality!

Once again proving my adage that I don't need to buy nearly as many new books as I used to, now that I've realized that every time I re-read a book, it's as a new person, I'm back to taking another look at David Loy's Nonduality.  (That's a newer edition; I have the 2010 version.) It was just about a year ago that I wrote about the book in my aptly titled post, "Nonduality" is a great book about a fascinating subject. In that post I shared links to three previous posts about the book, the first written in January…
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Posted inReality

This is my favorite Rumi quotation

For several years, a few decades ago, I became obsessed with the great Sufi poet, Rumi. I devoured every English translation of his writings I could find, also buying books that weren't literal translations, but were written in the spirit of Rumi. Eventually I donated most of my Rumi books when my obsession abated. But I kept a few, including William C. Chittick's translation of Rumi, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi. One reason I held on to that book was that it contained my favorite Rumi quotation, from his Masnavi.  Fear the existence in which…
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Posted inReality Religions

Truth is beautiful. Which is why religion is ugly.

Truth was on my mind in various ways today. In the morning I listened to a Chris Hayes "Why Is This Happening?" podcast interview with Kate Crawford, an Artificial Intelligence expert. Then I read an essay in my Question Everything book about the limits of free speech. In the afternoon I made a video on our back deck where I performed the Water Boxing form that I learned in my Tai Chi classes. I'll start with the video. I wanted to show people what the Water Boxing form looks like, but I knew that since I'd never seen myself doing…
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Posted inGod Reality

Religions exist because we can’t grasp that the cosmos just is

For most of my life I marveled at the classic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" But with advancing age, and maybe some advancing wisdom, I came to prefer "There is something rather than nothing." No why required. Just a factual statement.  Because that why takes us into the realm of religion, and I'm no longer religious. Most religions, with the notable exception of Buddhism, assume there was a creator of the cosmos.  So God is the answer to the why question. There's something rather than nothing due to God bringing the creation into being. Of course, we…
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Posted inMystics Reality Religions

Religion and mysticism are mostly conceptual

Reality can't be captured in concepts. After all, it's extremely unlikely that the human brain has evolved to be able to completely capture the nature of the reality that fashioned both the human brain and everything else in existence. But this doesn't take away the utility of concepts for making sense of the world. "Tree" is a useful way of describing the general nature of vegetative entities that vary tremendously in size, appearance, and such, yet share common characteristics. However, trees are part of the natural world. They are obviously real.  Concepts that refer to entities which can't be observed…
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Posted inReality

We are the only animal that can deny our animal nature

In some regards we humans have capabilities beyond those of other species with whom we share our planet. But in this regard we are inferior to those creatures: we are the only animal that can deny our animal nature. Not everybody does this, of course. I'm proudly animal, as is Maxim Loskutoff, who wrote "The Beast in Me" in The New York Times collection of philosophical essays published in the newspaper, Question Everything. As you can read below, Loskutoff vividly recognized his animalness when a grizzly bear stalked him and his partner during their hike in Glacier National Park. But…
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Posted inReality Wu Project

Beyond awe, beyond mystery, there’s ultimate not-knowing

There's many levels lying on the other side of ordinary knowing. I've been pondering this after writing the recent post, What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine? I hasten to point out that while I'd love to lay claim to such a marvelous title, it belongs to David Wolpert, who wrote an engrossing monograph about the limits of not only human knowledge, but the knowledge of any other species. Wolpert lays out the foundation of his complex and subtle arguments in a single paragraph. This question does not concern limitations on what we can know about…
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Posted inReality Science

What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?

I love the question that's the title of this blog post. The question didn't come from me, but from David Wolpert. I learned about a paper he wrote when it was mentioned in a recent issue of New Scientist. But there is a deeper question here: can we be sure that logic, even a reformed kind, is enough to understand the universe in all its fullness? It is a question that David Wolpert at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico has been thinking about for decades. In a recent monograph, he spelled out his argument that it is more…
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Posted inReality Science

A systems view of reality shows the hollowness of religion

It dawned on me this morning that one reason people have so much difficulty understanding why free will is an illusion, a subject I've written a lot about over the years, is that most of us are addicted to a linear hierarchical view of the world. So when presented with a perspective that undermines the simplistic "I wanted to do X, so that's what I did," substituting a vision where influences that determine our thoughts and actions come from many sources, with our thoughts and actions then affecting the world that determines our thoughts and actions, people tend to accept…
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Posted inConsciousness God Reality

God, like money, is real only because of the human mind

As I noted in a previous post about Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, I'm enjoying the book more now that I'm past the introductory chapters. One reason is that Barrett doesn't just describe how emotions are made. She embeds that description in larger issues. For example, her "Emotions As Social Reality" chapter starts off with the classic question, If a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? Even though I should know better, when I ponder this question my first…
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Posted inReality

Ultimate reality doesn’t exist, says physicist Carlo Rovelli

When I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization, for quite a few years I gave frequent talks to the RSSB faithful. One of my favorite topics was ultimate reality. I loved those two words. Putting ultimate before the familiar reality produced a wonderful feeling of transcendent potential wisdom in me. Not that I really knew what ultimate reality was. It was an aspiration, a goal to be pursued through daily meditation and the other aspects of the RSSB teachings. Now, I hardly ever think about ultimate reality. Except when it comes up in a book…
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Posted inAwareness Reality Science

Prior experiences and assumptions determine how we view reality

As I've noted previously on this blog, one of the spiritual phrases that now irritates me, yet used to make sense to me, is "as it is."  There's a mistaken notion that it's possible to see reality as it is, objectively. That notion gets elevated into various sorts of mumbo-jumbo where this or that meditation technique, or whatever, supposedly gives someone the ability to perceive what is actually there with no trace of illusion. Today I finished reading another chapter in David McRaney's book, How Minds Change. "Socks and Crocs" was super-fascinating. I'll try to do the chapter justice in…
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Posted inReality

There isn’t nature and humans. Nature is all there is, including us.

Recently a hugely important bill that, in part, contains hundreds of billions of dollars to fight global warming, passed the U.S. Senate with exactly zero support from Republicans.  This is so crazy, it makes people in mental hospitals seem positively sane.  There's no logical or empirical basis for the conservative claim of a need to balance human economic interests with environmental interests. Not when it comes to global warming, which threatens to upend human civilization if greenhouse gas emissions aren't cut dramatically, and soon. Nature isn't a nice thing to preserve. Nature is what we are.  It's absurd to consider…
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Posted inReality

Truth. A lovely word. I wish more people loved it.

These are tough times for truth. I speak as someone old enough (73) to remember the time when there was a general consensus about what was true.  Here in the United States, the nightly news was widely watched. If you subscribed to TIME, Life, National Geographic, Saturday Review, and a daily newspaper, you'd be able to keep up on events in the world.  It was relatively rare for there to be a widespread disagreement about facts. Sure, after John Kennedy was assassinated conspiracy theories about the "real killer" surfaced. But they didn't infect the minds of a large proportion of…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Dibloggenes explains the universe in a mere 1,070 words

Here's the second comment from Dibloggenes that I've elevated to the profound status of a Church of the Churchless blog post. (I can hear the typing of Dibloggenes as he redoes his resume to include this newfound honor; the first elevated blog post is here.) I admire any and all attempts to explain the universe, especially when they clock in at a sparse 1,070 words. The Bible, Newton's Principia, and Darwin's Origin of Species are all much longer. And, without the occasional bursts of humor that make Dibloggenes' treatise more sparkly than it would otherwise be. One reason I like…
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Posted inReality Science

Space may be created by the interaction of individual quanta of gravity

If you're at a party, talking to someone, and the conversation is lagging, consider saying the title of this blog post: Space may be created by the interaction of individual quanta of gravity.  One of two things could happen, the first being most likely. Either the person will look at you like you're crazy and make an excuse to leave your company, or they'll reply, "That's so interesting. Tell me more." Having read physicist Carlo Rovelli's book, "Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity," I could talk some more about quantum gravity, but only a little…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“Reality is Not What It Seems,” a book by Carlo Rovelli

My new favorite book, until a fresh one arrives from Amazon, is Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who, not surprisingly given the title of his book, is focused on resolving the mismatch between relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The key to doing this is to find a theory of gravity that is more fundamental than Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of space-time and isn't compatible with quantum mechanics. That's a fascinating subject, made more fascinating by Rovelli's impressive writing ability, albeit in…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Life is Simple, a fascinating book about Occam’s razor

I've been making my way through Johnjoe McFadden's book Life is Simple:How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. It traces the history of science through the lens of Occam's razor. William of Occam, who was born in the late 13th century, is famous for favoring the simplest solutions in theology, science, and other areas of life. The book says, "Three centuries after his death, the French theologian Libert Froidmont coined the term "Occam's razor" to refer to William's preference for shaving away excess complexity." But contrary to how many people look upon Occam's razor, this doesn't mean…
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