Richard Feynman compared the accuracy of quantum theories - experimental predictions - to specifying the width of North America to within one hairs breadth of accuracy. It postulates a vast and rapidly growing number of parallel universes, mutually undetectable except through the narrow porthole of quantum mechanical experiments. Embrace it as the multi parallel universes. Because the universe, is not queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. Wittgensteins asked why people say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth? His friend replied, it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth. Wittgenstein replied, Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating? If we were bacteria, constantly buffeted by thermal movements of molecules, it would be different, but we Middle Worlders are too big to notice Brownian motion. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably would perceive rocks as full of empty space. Our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding Einstein. We also have this tendency to think that only solid, material things are really things at all. Waves of electromagnetic fluctuation in a vacuum seem unreal. But think about this, in a desert plain in Tanzania, theres a dune made of volcanic ash. It retains its crescent shape and moves along as if it is walking around. What happens is that the wind blows the sand up the shallow slope, and then, as each sand grain hits the top of the ridge, it cascades down on the inside of the crescent, and so the whole horn-shaped dune moves. Steve Grand points out that you and I are, ourselves, more like a wave than a permanent thing. Think of an experience from your childhood. After all, you really were there at the time, werent you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: You werent there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and MOMENTARILY COMES TOGETHER TO BE YOU. Really, for an animal, is whatever its brain needs it to be in order to assist its survival, and because different species live in different worlds, there will be a discomforting variety of reallys. What we see is just a model of the world, regulated and adjusted by sense data, but constructed so its useful. The nature of the model depends on the kind of animal we are. A moles software for constructing models of its world will be customized for underground use. A water striders brain doesnt need 3D software at all, since it lives on the surface of the pond in an Edwin Abbott flatland. The fact that the bat uses echoes in pitch darkness to input the current variables to its model, while the swallow uses light, is incidental. Bats use perceived hues as internal labels for some useful aspect of echoes - perhaps the acoustic texture of surfaces - in the same way as swallows or, indeed, we, use those perceived hues to label long and short wavelengths of light. Theres nothing inherent about red that makes it long wavelength. And the point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used, rather than by the sensory modality involved. A dog would probably be able to place the acids in the order of their molecular weights by their smells, just as a man could place a number of piano wires in the order of their lengths by means of their notes. Middle World - the range of sizes and speeds which we have evolved to feel intuitively comfortable with - is a bit like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see as light of various colors. Were blind to all frequencies outside that, unless we use instruments to help us. Evolution in Middle World has not equipped us to handle very improbable events; we dont live long enough. In the vastness of astronomical space and geological time, that which seems impossible in Middle World might turn out to be inevitable. ted/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe#t-127200
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 08:33:06 +0000
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