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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Posted inReality

I aspire to a radical embrace of reality

There's quite a bit to unpack in the title of this blog post, but I'll try to keep it fairly simple.  "Aspire" obviously means that a radical embrace of reality is something that I'd like to be able to do, but often this is more of a hope than an actuality for me. "Radical" refers to the fact that I, along with just about everybody else in the world, chooses to not embrace reality much of the time. Too disturbing. Too painful. Too whatever. So we cling to a form of unreality instead. If we always turned toward reality, that…
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Posted inAwareness Reality

Calm acceptance of what is — my newest adage

I enjoy coming up with new pieces of advice that I can tell myself. They become temporary mantras, something I can repeat in my mind now and then to keep myself as centered as possible in an unpredictable world. Calm acceptance of what is. This is my newest adage.  I've always been impressed by people who can stay calm in stressful circumstances. Soldiers fighting in war. Emergency room doctors and nurses. Parents of a two year old having a temper tantrum. So many other examples of humans handling difficult situations with poise and competence. That requires a certain detachment from…
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Posted inReality Religions

Enjoying religious stories is fine. Just realize they’re fiction.

As I've noted before on this blog, I'm a big believer in good stories. I enjoy reading fiction. I enjoy watching fiction.  It never fails to amaze me that I can be sitting in our bathtub every evening, nestled in hot water with a vaporizer full of quality Oregon marijuana, holding an escapist thriller book (I love Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels; he's a CIA operative), getting excited about whether Rapp is going to succeed in his latest exploit -- while I know full well that Mitch Rapp is a creation of Flynn's imagination, or in the case of the…
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Posted inReality

We live in a world of imperfect realism

A few days ago I explained why I wasn't writing about an idea I had: Embrace what's real, not an ideal. I was planning to revisit that topic tonight. But this morning I read a fascinating chapter in David Chalmers' new book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.  The chapter, "Have we fallen from the Garden of Eden?," reflected the basic notion I had. That there's a marked difference between viewing life as it actually is, versus how it could ideally be. Chalmers starts off his chapter with a creative look at how science has changed the Eden-like…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Mind-body dualism almost certainly isn’t true, but it could be in a simulation

Are mind and body two different things, or one thing? Descartes, along with Eastern religions that view consciousness as immaterial, argue that mind and body belong to different realms, nonphysical and physical. A big problem with this view, of course, is that it's obvious that mind and body are intimately connected. I think, "Type I think," and voila, that's what happens. If mind and body are different, how could an immaterial mind control the physical fingers that tap out letters on my keyboard? And how is it that ingesting coffee, LSD, alcohol, or numerous other substances affects the mind, if…
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Posted inReality

If we’re in a simulation, its creator is our god

A few days ago I wrote about one of the central notions in David Chalmers' new book, "Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. Namely, that if we're in a simulation, our world is still real.  In this post I'll talk about a chapter in the book with a compelling title: Is God a hacker in the next universe up?  What I'm enjoying most about Reality+, aside from how clearly Chalmers writes and reasons, is how he integrates basic philosophical questions with the specific issue of us being in a simulation. Does God exist? The question has been asked…
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Posted inReality

Even if we’re in a simulation, our world is real

As computer simulations become more and more lifelike, the question could we be living in a simulation?  becomes more interesting. Especially to fans of The Matrix movies.  But also to philosophers, since Plato, Descartes, and many others have wondered whether this world that we assume is real, actually is. David Chalmers, a philosopher who is the codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University, has written a fascinating book: Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.  In an early chapter, Chalmers summarizes the central questions he addresses in the book, along with his one…
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Posted inReality Science

Does spacetime emerge from a more fundamental reality?

The title of this blog post is a question posed on the cover of the February 2022 issue of Scientific American. It refers to a story in the issue, "The Origins of Space and Time."  I enjoyed the story, even though it was difficult to understand.  Here's an image that encapsulates the two main approaches to figuring out what space and time (or as relativity theory puts it, spacetime) emerge from -- assuming they emerge from anything. So if you were expecting some explanation that could be fit, or crammed, into a religious or mystical worldview, expect again. Science of…
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