Virtual Physics Lectures

How I would have wanted to have attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology years ago. Well, not really. It wasn't until the 21st century that I became fascinated with Physics, Astrophysics, etc.

If I had broadband--another reason to put up with the extra expense--I could sit in on Physics lectures for nothing. I understand they are becoming the rage, worldwide.

When I get broadband, I can come back to MIT Physics lectures and enjoy one dazzling idea after another.

Maybe the new year will find me sitting in front of the broadband LCD panel in my living room soaking up lecture after lecture, while the sun rises and and sets while I take no notice of the passing of time.

How to Become Part of the Machine

Some of the mind-intensive activities or experiments outlined in this recent New York Times article have been selected below:

"Go to Google Image Labeler (images.google.com/imagelabeler) and you are randomly matched with another bored Web surfer — in Korea, maybe, or Omaha — who has agreed to play a game. Google shows you both a series of pictures peeled from the Web — the sun setting over the ocean or a comet streaking through space — and you earn points by typing as many descriptive words as you can. The results are stored and analyzed, and through this human-machine symbiosis, Google’s image-searching algorithms are incrementally refined. . . .

Now a site run by Amazon.com, the Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com/), asks you to lend your brain. Named for an 18th-century chess-playing automaton that turned out to have a human hidden inside, the Mechanical Turk offers volunteers a chance to search for the missing aviator Steve Fossett by examining satellite photos. Or you can earn a few pennies at a time by performing other chores that flummox computers: categorizing Web sites (“sexually explicit, “arts and entertainment,” “automotive”), identifying objects in video frames, summarizing or paraphrasing snippets of text, transcribing audio recordings — specialties at which neural algorithms excel. . . .

How do you categorize Wikipedia, a constantly buzzing mechanism with replaceable human parts? Submit an article or change one and a swarm of warm- and sometimes hot-blooded proofreading routines go to work making corrections and corrections to the corrections."

Click on the title of this post to read the entire article. (Free Registration may be required at New York Times site.)

The Multiple Lives You Are Living

If Quantum Mechanics really does suggest an infinite amount of parallel universes or realities existing simultaneously, then this changes what you perceive as everyday reality.

If we create our reality by our intentions and choices on a minute-by-minute basis, then even though it defies understanding, we are constantly stepping into and out of the ever-flowing river of time and reality.

Let me give an example. So much of what happens to us depends on what we envision as happening to us and as what we remember that happened to us in the past. I have been looking for a good friend from college for about 17 years with no success. Last week I recalled an incident that happened to him and his family and I commented on it on the following blog, Divergence. Hours later, I was exploring the Invisible web (the Deep Web) and accessed http://www.pipl.com/ and, to my utter surprise, I was able to find my friend's phone number in a database that had forever eluded me. I was able to talk with him and catch up with all that had transpired during those 17 years. One comment he made chilled me. He said he always felt that I'd contact him again when he turned 50 which happened last week.

I had always felt that I'd never find him again--that he was forever beyond my reach. I even thought he had died and that was the explanation as to why he was not in any of the databases that I had used to find countless friends from the past. It almost felt like I was never supposed to find him again in this life. My suspicion is that had we both not had that intention to find each other after two decades, we probably would not have done so.

Now this is the chilling part. Each of us is experiencing to some degree a different universe or reality than what we experienced even a day or an hour ago from the one we had been experiencing even a day or an ago earlier. The people we meet and the experiences we have are not the same ones we would have met or experienced had we continued existing in the previous universe or reality. Of course some things stay the same, you continue living in the same home from day to day. You continue in the same job from day to day. You stay married or related to the same spouse or love interest or friends from day to day, but there are slight changes that occur to you that are not integral to the life and world you were previously living in.

In other words, reality is always changing, perhaps subtly, but changing nevertheless. In other realities I could have lived in, I would still be looking for my elusive friend with no known address or phone number. In another universe he would still be looking for me, as well.

A good film to explore this concept of ever-changing reality is Dark City, a SciFi film that is like no other in that it explores a Matrix-like alternate reality, but one that continues changing from day to day.

Are we Living in the Afterlife Now?

If this is the afterlife, we had better make the best of it. This life has a heavenly quality for some people. For others, the experience is more hellish than heavenly. There are all the variations in-between, as well.

I'm not saying there is no Afterlife. The traditional view of some other reality after death, or at some distant point in the future after one dies, may very well also be a possibility. Nevertheless, if this present reality were to some significant degree a kind of afterlife, as perfect or as imperfect as it may seem, then the next question arises. What was the previous life like? Was it as imperfect or perfect as this one? Was it almost a mirror of this reality? Or was it slightly different in some important way?

This may sound like the reincarnation that Hindus believe with no end in site until one achieves, or doesn't achieve Nirvana or Benign Oblivion. On the otherhand, this life-after-life-after-life may simply be the different alternate realities that String Theory and M Theory postulate as existing side by side.

What if life were one long series of opening doors that are always opening or closing in a long corridor of eternity? You go through one and open another one for all eternity. This endless opening of doors does not sound like such an imperfect reality, provided one is equally healthy and happy. There will always be new doors to open and close along that endless corridor of time.

Living between Time

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven (1971) has influenced my perception of life more than I care to admit. The gist of the story is that reality is transformed by what the hero dreams. His psychoanalyst suggests ridding the world of racism. When he dreams about that, he awakens to a world where all of humanity is now gray-skinned. This and many other startling changes are brought about by his lucid dreaming.

Through the years, I didn't consciously think of that novel which I read at 15 or 16. I once caught a PBS adaptation (1980) which delighted me by its distillation into quite a completely different story from what I had imagined it to be. Nevertheless, for about 20+ years I've had the odd suspicion that some elements of life have changed ever so slightly from what I clearly remember them to have been.

One of the earliest occurrences was being completely befuddled at finding that a chord or motif that I had been so certain existed in the Beatles' Hey Jude, did not, in fact, exist. I imagined that I was mistaken, but in my mind I could still hear the other version that I had been familiar with. Now this is before bootlegs became widely available on the Internet and in Greenwich Village rare records stores. It saddened me that I remembered a version of this famous song, that, in fact, no longer existed, or perhaps, ever existed.

Another startling occurrence deals with a book that I have been reading since I was eleven, October the First is Too Late (1966) by the astronomer, mathematician, philosopher Fred Hoyle. I've read this perhaps four or five times in my life. The last time I read it I was astounded by the fact that a encounter between the hero and a historical/mythical person that I had vivid memories of having read many times before, suddenly had disappeared from this only paperback copy that I have always used when I reread this story. I tried rereading it in case I had missed this significant encounter, but alas, it was not to be found. I have a feeling that if I were to read this book again I might either find this missing scene again, or perhaps find new ones missing, or--even more perplexing--find a scene that I know I had never read during the previous readings of this unique book.

The latest occurrence of this personal phenomenon was when I recently learned of Ingmar Bergman's death. This stunned me more than you'd imagine, as I distinctly remember reading that Fanny and Alexander (1982) was his last film. I never heard anything else about Ingmar Bergman until this past month when all the news agencies reported his death at a ripe old age. Now the confusion may be that, yes, this film was in fact his last film, and his Swan Song, as far as feature films are concerned. He, however, continued making other kinds of films, mostly for Swedish TV. Now as much as I loved his work, and as much as I have immersed myself, obsessively at times, you'd think I would have read at least a review or two in the ensuing years, but that was not the case. Not until he died did I see anything in print in any of the major film or cultural media about this singular director. To my mind, this was indeed proof, that the reality I remembered quite certainly that Bergman died some time in the early 1980s, had, in fact, changed.

I'm suddenly reminded of the only line of text that I remember from my distant encounter with Catch 22. I remember a rambling discussion about the real or imagined alternates to deja vu (already seen.) The other two being presque vu (almost seen) as well as, jamais vu (never seen.) I forget the point the author was trying to make, but now that I think back on those varieties of things previously seen, imperfectly seen, or never seen, I wonder if what I've been describing can be described as a fusion of all three manifestations of realities actually experienced in some way or other.

Perhaps this very blog post may one day be remembered by myself or by someone else, when actually no such post will have ever existed in some future or alternate reality.

Please note, that the following paragraphs almost disappeared as I had previously added extra space accidentally and had forgotten that I had done so. The previous paragraph you read was almost--to my mind--the last one in this post. What a pleasant surprise and one in tune with what I've been writing about to have found these alternate paragraphs. I'm including them as is, in case they disappear again, or never register in the first place.

These are only two glaring situations in my recollection that illustrate this point. There have been, in fact, many others, including meeting people that no one else remembers, but I remember them because they left a huge impact on me. I always ignored these inconsistencies with other people's memories until I was able to reveal to relatives or close friends things they had said to me, 20 or 25 years ago, that upon some reflection, they admitted that they very well could have said that, but it was long gone from their memory. This gave me some assurance that if I remembered statements or situations in family member's lives or in those of close friends, perhaps I remembered other realities that others no longer remembered at all.

I'm not sure what this phenomenon is called. I thought briefly of how fascinated I used to be with the concept of déjà vu until until I read that it had nothing to do whatsoever with a mystical reality, but rather that it was caused by a trick of the mind. For years I often had episodes of déjà vu and they delighted and perplexed me greatly. Since learning that this phenomenon is a trick of the mind, I no longer experience episodes of déjà vu .

Recently I read in the New York Times that one major cosmologist believes that we change our evolutionary and cosmological past by what we collectively choose to remember or imagine it to be. This was both startling and comforting. I'm still looking for this recent quote, but, it seems to elude me the way other memories or recalled incidences have done for more than 20 years.

Perhaps one day I will remember that I wrote this post, but will find that no one read it or recalls it, and even more problematic, I will find no copy of it either here or in my hard copy binder of blog posts I've written.

Halographic Prayers Underground

Alternate title: World Wide Web 2050

In a special holographic circular room your entire body is connected by wireless electrodes to the supercomputer that colors your seemingly endless room by purposely preventing you from ever hitting any of the walls.

You wear no goggles. There is nothing but yourself and the almost perfect illusion that you are in bright sunshine or in the mountains of the distant past, as you meet and experience people and locations that would have been unthinkable 43 years ago.

The clothes you try on are sent to your home. The furniture you sit on has been shipped and will arrive there by morning, or sooner, for you to enjoy. The virtual people you meet will seem to know you perfectly if ever you meet them in the flesh.

As you sit in the holographic church, or temple, and worship the real God in a real heaven, you wonder how anyone ever risked the safety and the variety that the holographic web now affords you. You find it preposterous that humanity once lived in the precarious world before the free nations of the world had to go into hiding to avoid the nonstop bombing of the cities above ground.

Why are We Here? A Different Approach

God forbid that the following should ever happen. It almost happened when the fate of mankind was in the balance at Gethsemane. There really was a risk that something could have gone wrong. Otherwise Christ and God really didn't risk anything by sending Jesus Christ to die for humanity at infinite risk to himself and the Godhead.

The following is not meant to disrespect God or those of us who believe in Him. It is simply one man's attempt to answer the age old question: Why are we here? Of course, it is an approach for a believer in God that is admittedly peculiar and to some, problematic.

Again, what if, and this is a really big what if--by some terrible disaster, something happened to God? We, his heirs, spiritual and ethical, would still be in the universe to continue his vision for the universe, or the multiverse, or whatever kind of Meta-Space continuum exists beyond the parameters of our known universe. The laws of nature that God put into place would still continue to operate in the same way that a self-repairing mechanical device continues to exist as long as it is able to find newer sources of energy for itself to continue its intended function.

That might explain why there are so many of us on planet earth. We are God's insurance should anything ever happen to him. We really are the children of God. Why else create us and so many of us? Not that it will ever happen, but even we with our imperfect knowledge make plans for our children and, some of us, for our children's children. We are making those plans, ultimately, for us. So that our lives were not lived in vain. So that our descendants carry on our genes, our vision, our plans. At least that is the ideal.

With this remote and unlikely possibility in mind, humanity should make as many "what if" plans as possible. What if the asteroids that caused mass extinctions every 26 million years, wiped us out as well? What if some self-destructive principle our movement or ism alive in the world today would eventually wreak as much destruction on humanity as would that asteroid destroyer? What if some unknown but truly virulent virus were to develop in decades or centuries from now and wipe out most, or all of humanity?

All the beauty that God created, all his progeny, all his plans for us would end with these cataclysms. Every effort that can be made to protect present and future life should be made. Every resource that is now wasted should be better employed towards centuries-encompassing goals. What an utter tragedy if because of lack of vision or planning on the part of humanity, God's humanity, all the beauty and wonder and excellence that he created, is one day wiped out, with no new seed to make it grow again?

In more ways that we can imagine, not only do we live through God, but God lives through us, as well. May God and humanity continue this symbiotic relationship endlessly.

Cybernetic Reproduction

Neo-flesh covered cybernetic entities produce miniature versions of themselves that grow over a 21 year period into adult versions. Sex is for both personal fulfillment and procreation.

Each world is encased in orbs of neo-metal which in turn are enclosed within a larger orb. In effect, the larger orb is the known universe.

Some theorize that other orbs exist outside their universe containing worlds that exist as well as those in their known universe.

In an accidental time travel incident, archeologists from the known universe travel through a gateway out of their universe and into another universe or universes and make a startling discovery. They find a skeleton of an entity like themselves, but it is not made of neo-bone, but rather of a nonmetalic substance unknown to entitykind. The substance is named anti-bone. The records show that this "entity" was covered in anti-flesh and existed millions or billions of years before the arrival of entitykind. Some wonder if perhaps this accidental revelation was not so accidental after all. The original anti-entity could have made the time travel possible so that entitykind could learn the source of their being and world. Some then wondered how the anti-entity came to be and if there were others like it. Others insisted the discovery be kept secret as to not undermine society's smooth functioning.

The return trip was made impossible, but the discoverers were able to continue their existence, apparently forever, in the newly discovered universe where they lived a new existence without any further contact with their past universe. Perhaps they themselves would someday design a world within their world and cause a time traveler from its distant future to find their neo-bone remains.

Intelligent Life in the Universe

A million years from now humanity will encounter beings whose perceptional organs do not permit them to perceive us even though we will, of course, detect them. Humanity will attempt to detain them physically, and while they appear to not move as far as they are concerned, in their world they continue doing what they would have done had no "outside" interference affected them. In the alien's world, the non-perceived influence merely caused other normal fluctuations in their normal world.

If the tables were turned, theoretically, between the two species and their encounter of each other, might humanity not realize that they had been impacted or might even be presently impacted, by beings that we are incapable of perceiving, but are, nevertheless, present in their own reality?

The Future Creates the Past

Imagine a perfect being from the very distant future where perfection, as well as near perfection, has been achieved by sentient intelligences. Before the final death throes of the universe, or the metaverse if there really is a metaverse, this perfect being travels eons back in time knowing all that would happen in the universe. This perfect being travels back in time to a point before the actual occurrence of the Big Bang and jump starts the event itself.

Of course, quantum mechanics being what it is, the very same set of events do not come to pass as they did during the previous perception of the universe. Nevertheless, the general direction and chain of events would be very similar. This pre-knowledge of how things should turn out the second time around, would in effect be as close to omniscience as is possible.

The question as to how or where this perfect being came from in the first place, has no meaning. How can it? The simplest answer is that the future was the source of its being. The future will ever be the source of its being. The future really does contain the seeds of its own past because the future is perfect. It is perfect because it is still in the process of being born, unlike the past which came and went with all its imperfections and the present which is continually becoming the past.

The End creates the Beginning. The Beginning creates the End. It is all a cycle.