Posted inCoronavirus Science

Anti-science views of conservatives led to many more COVID deaths

I'm a strong believer in science. Everyone should be. Not just because science is our best means of knowing reality, and that's a very good thing. Also because ignoring science can be dangerous to your health. Very dangerous, according to Peter Hotez, MD, Ph.D, who wrote a book that I'm about half through reading: The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning. Hotez is the founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, where he co-directs the Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development. His book, which I'm enjoying a lot despite the bleak theme,…
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Posted inReality Science

I’ve finished “The One.” It ended up kind of ho-hum.

Well, some books end with a rousing crescendo. Others end with a deflating sense of ho-hum. I can't say that Heinrich Pas' The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics was totally in the latter category for me, but it was close to it. I've been writing about the book because I'm fascinated by quantum mechanics and have read quite a few books that explore the possible meaning of this field, apart from the undeniable success of the mathematics of it -- which makes possible so much of our modern technology. Pas deserves a lot of praise…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

Religion hates mystery. Science loves mystery.

Recently there's been a comment conversation on this blog about the religious philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, a medieval Christian. I've never been interested in his theology, since like most avid religious believers, Aquinas wants to use philosophy to defend his faith, not to engage in a search for truth. Wikipedia has a cogent criticism of Aquinas by Bertrand Russell. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

New Scientist story by Heinrich Päs about quantum oneness

I got excited when I saw the cover of the most recent issue of New Scientist that appeared in our mailbox a few days ago. Ooh! "A bold new way to think about how the universe fits together" Bring it on! When I turned to the cover story, which is called Reality Reconstructed in the print edition, I saw that the author was Heinrich Päs, the theoretical physicist who wrote The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, which I've written previous blog posts about here, here, and here.  As noted in the third post, Päs devotes…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Einstein: “It is the theory which decides what can be observed”

Here's my third post about Heinrich Pas' book The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, the previous posts being here and here. In my reading I've reached a sort of interlude in-between the first and last parts of the book, each of which deal fairly directly with a monistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which explains The One title. But two intervening chapters, "The Struggle for One" and "From One to Science and Beauty," focus on the historic struggle between monism and dualism in Western thought (there's very little mention of Eastern thought, which also has monistic and dualistic…
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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 inBuddhism Science

Buddhism and quantum physics both point toward One

I feel a duty to report on how the subject I've been writing about recently, Rob Burbea's book about Buddhist teachings, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, ends. There wasn't a big surprise in the final pages. Burbea had been steadily building a case for emptiness being the foundation of both inner and outer reality, so it wasn't a shock when the final chapter concluded, in a thoroughly Buddhist fashion, that the world as it seems (distinct separate objects) and the world as it really is (empty of inherent existence) amount to the same thing. Burbea writes: We…
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Posted inReligions Science

Detection of gravitational wave “orchestra” shows power of science

Since I subscribe to the online edition of the New York Times, I get frequent notifications of new stories on my iPhone. Some interest me. Some don't. This morning it was a pleasure to be sent a story about how scientists were able to discover a background hum of gravitational waves, building on the first detection of these waves in 2015. I've made a PDF file of the story, "The Cosmos is Thrumming With Gravitational Waves, Astronomers Find." It's well worth a read, having been written by a science reporter with a Ph.D. in particle physics. I'll share a few…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Artificial intelligence likes me. Here’s what ChatGPT said about Brian Hines.

On my HinesSight blog, yesterday I wrote about how I'd finally gotten around to trying ChatGPT, the online chatbot offered by OpenAI, a company whose goal is A.G.I. -- artificial general intelligence that can do anything a human can do. I got the idea to look into ChatGPT after listening to part of an interview MSNBC's Ari Melber did with hip hop artist Erykah Badu where Melber read to her ChatGPT's answer to his query, "Discuss Erykah Badu's contributions." That answer from the artificial intelligence chatbot was really impressive. You can see that part of the interview in the video…
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Posted inBooks Science Spiritual practice/meditation

How a physicist embraces both science and spirituality

I embrace science. I also embrace spirituality, so long as "spirit" isn't viewed as something supernatural, but as a word that points to a deep personal understanding of existence that is compatible with science. So when I heard about physicist Alan Lightman's book, The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science, I knew that I wanted to read it. (I included an excerpt in this post.) Now that I've finished the book, it met my expectations, though I didn't learn anything astoundingly new. Lightman does a good job of explaining how we can feel a sense of belonging to…
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Posted inPolitics Religions Science

Trump’s arraignment reminded me of connection between law and science

Today Donald Trump was arraigned in New York City on 34 felony counts involving the falsification of business records.  Trump at his arraignment  I was thrilled. Trump is a horrible human being. He has lied and cheated his way through a life that, amazingly, until now hadn't included being charged with a crime. That changed today, and almost certainly Trump will be charged with additional crimes since there are other ongoing investigations into his wrongdoing. Following the news about the indictment against Trump that was unsealed today, I heard lots of legal analysis on MSNBC and CNN. I also read…
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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 inNeuroscience Science

Feelings are an unreliable guide to reality

Thanks to a Church of the Churchless commenter who mentioned Lisa Feldman Barrett's book about how emotions are uniquely fashioned out of our experiences and environment, rather than appearing ready-made the same way in every human brain, I've been reading How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain with increasing enjoyment now that I'm past the initial introductory chapters. Barrett, a psychologist and neuroscientist, makes a strong case for her admittedly out-of-the-mainstream view of what emotions are and how they come to be. She cites lots of research, both her own and that of others, as she systematically…
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Posted inFree will Science

A physicist demolishes the argument in favor of free will

Ian caused a tremendous amount of damage today. Countless cars were destroyed. Lots of homes and business were rendered unusable. Emergency 911 calls largely weren't responded to, because Ian created so much trouble over such a large area. If Ian was a person, he'd be charged with innumerable crimes. But Ian was a massive Category 4 hurricane that struck Florida today, so there won't be any jail time for the perpetrator of all that havoc. Watching cable news cover the hurricane, I was impressed (as I have been with previous hurricanes) with how accurately forecasters were able to predict the…
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Posted inReligions Science

Here’s what makes something scientific or ascientific

Recently I was talking with someone about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the India-based religious group centered on a guru that I was a member of for 35 years.  I mentioned to this person that I'd always loved science, so one thing that attracted me to RSSB way back in 1970 was that it sometimes used Science of the Soul to describe itself.  I liked the idea of a spiritual science. But back then I hadn't given a lot of thought to what makes something a science. There's lots of different definitions. In her book, "Existential Physics," here's how Sabine…
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Posted inScience

Good video on “Does the past still exist?”

Today commenter Appreciative Reader clued me in to a video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder about whether the past still exists. This is a fascinating topic that I wrote about recently since I'm reading Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics. Here's what Appreciative Reader had to say about the video, along with the video. Just watched this Youtube video of Sabine Hossenfelder speaking about just this topic, about how and whether the past might exist per theoretical physics. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwzN5YwMzv0.) Short enough video, around 15 minutes. She speaks very well, and explains all of these complex concepts and ideas in an extremely clear…
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Posted inBooks Science

All it takes are particles to make a conscious being

Here's an excerpt from Sabine Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics, that I liked a lot. In another post I'll share some subtleties about her emphasis on reductionism as being how the universe works. Does it take anything more than particles to make a conscious being? I have found that many people reflexively reject the possibility that human consciousness arises from interactions of the many particles in their brain. They seem wedded to the idea that somehow something must be different about consciousness. And while the scientifically minded among them do not call it a soul, it is what they mean. They…
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Posted inBooks Science

A physicist answers the question, does the past still exist?

Here's how theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder answered one of Life's Biggest Questions in her book, Existential Physics -- which I wrote about a few days ago.   This is the brief answer to "Does the past still exist?" (At the end of each chapter, Hossenfelder gives a one paragraph summary of her take on the Big Question tackled in the chapter.) According to the currently established laws of nature, the future, the present, and the past all exist in the same way. That's because, regardless of what you mean by exist, there is nothing in these laws that distinguishes one…
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