Sound and Fury

I have conclusive first hand evidence that disproves the old adage ‘a watched pot never boils.’ That’s a rather sensationalist gloss on the actual fact that I spent several minutes staring at a saucepan when I wanted some green tea… At first the odd bubble would pop up every now and then. I watched the bubbles at the bottom of the pan grow and occasionally float to the surface. I watched until it was in full blooded bubbly boily mode. So that’s that then. My contribution to modern science.

And given the role of the observer in the standard view of Quantum Physics I think it is important to do these experiments.

I would like to say that I was deep in philosophical reflection whilst watching the water get hotter. But I really wasn’t. The briefest of thoughts about latent heat of evaporation and the analogies between statistical mechanics/thermodynamics and QM and various things did occur to me. But most of the time I was in a state of mind blankness. Not in the kind of cool ‘zen’ way. I was just being a zombie.

I’ve been reading lots for my physics essay. I still can’t work out what I believe. Maybe quite a general essay about QM and probability. I’d like to get more specific, but all the gritty details of the various probability models are either beyond my comprehension or unconvincing… I think I’ll start writing quite a general essay and see where it takes me… The GRW objective probabilities stuff is cool, but my instinct tells me that there’s FTL signalling inherent in the GRW interpretation of the singlet state of two electrons. Unless you say that the propensity is on the level of the two electron system. But that’s not their thing… They want to say it’s all about the individual particles.

Maybe a more general propensity view is possible. Time to read some Popper…

Hey look! I changed my blog’s theme again! This is a bit of a boring theme, but the plan is to mess with it a bit. Make it a little more colourful while still keeping true to the minimalist ethic. Or something like that. What this change certainly isn’t about is another way to avoid actually working.

Speaking of not working, I have been playing Conquer Club recently. It doesn’t take up that much time, which is nice. But I suck at risk. So it’s hard. But it’s fun. Another displacement activity will consist in part two of ‘how to avoid doing any work‘ so look out for that in the near future.

My concession to actual work today has been in the form of taking four weighty tomes out of the library and downloading about 8 articles from Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. Incidentally, that is abbreviated to Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Phys. I have also decided to change my topic for Philosophy of Maths and use my old Maths topic as a possible dissertation subject.Oh and I read half a paper. And I’ll read the other half of that paper and maybe another one today. So I am getting something done… Sort of…

Euclid’s definition of a straight line is actually a line which ‘lies evenly with the points on itself.’ A line is a ‘breadthless length.’ So whatever a straight line is, it isn’t necessarily ‘the shortest distance between two points.’ In Geometry you can define lines in terms of a vector (a direction) and a point. Or as the intersection of two planes (if we have a 3rd dimension). But all this talk of vectors and planes seems to rest on some premathematical conception of what it means to say that a line is ’straight’ Straightness is in a sense more basic than talk of vectors or planes or whatever. So even if it isn’t dependent on a distance function, there is something difficult about the concept of a straight line.

The definition of a straight line in spherical geometry can be done in terms of the intersection of a the sphere with plane in the ambient 3-space (which is Euclidean) which passes through the centre of the sphere. But a plane in the ambient space is defined in terms of lines and points. So that isn’t helpful. Similarly other non-Euclidean spaces can in some sense be embedded in a higher dimensional Euclidean space and have their straight lines defined in the same way. (I don’t know about spaces you can’t embed in E-space. But never mind. The point is that you still can’t define ’straightness’ this way.) Russell wrote a book which suggests that projective geometry is somehow more basic, more foundational. But he later changed his mind on that. But I don’t know enough about P space to say any more on that topic. But it might be worth looking at.

Essentially, the way out is just to take the concept of a straight line as a primitive. You just pretend you know what you’re talking about. Well, that’s fair enough really. Then you can do stuff like add postulates which increase the content of the concept (ie there is exactly one line which goes through a point not on a line which never crosses the line. Or there are no such lines, or there are infinitely many…) But at the basis is some foundational primitive ’straight line’ concept.

OK, but this is so basic it is common to the whole family of Riemannian geometries. However you want to negate the parallel postulate (or keep it, whatever) all the resultant geometries share this basal concept. Which is weird. Lines in S2 (the sphere) that are straight are curved when considered as lines in the ambient Euclidean space. So what is it that is shared?

I’ve done that thing again where I avoid doing any real work by downloading loads of possibly useful papers. I haven’t really acheived anything or advanced my knowledge at all. Other displacement activities include updating my bibliography and printing out all the crap I download. I can quite happily waste a whole day doing that sort of stuff and not really get anywhere.

One thing I did get done today is find another possible essay topic. Well. Right now I’m not sure there’s an essay there. Basically I have found something that I am thoroughly confused about. It sounds pretty silly when you say it, but I don’t know how to think about it properly. Here it is; what is a straight line? Is it the shortest distance between two points? Then isn’t ’straight’ dependent on how you measure distance? Then how do you measure distance without straight lines?

All rather nebulous random thoughts sort of questions at the moment. Is there an essay in that sort of area? Maybe not. But for my own piece of mind I’d like to look into it a little more at least. If only to convince myself it isn’t a problem.

First was this paragraph from the Guardian;

A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word “gay”. I used to mourn the loss of gay in (what I still think of as) its true sense. But on the bright side (wait for it) gay has inspired a new imitator, which is the climax of this article. Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an “up” word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like “gay”. You can say “I am an atheist” but at best it sounds stuffy (like “I am a homosexual”) and at worst it inflames prejudice (like “I am a homosexual”).

In the article Dawkins is latching on to the idea of the Brights as a nice way of saying atheist in much the same way homosexuals ‘hijacked’ the word gay.*

Now the grand high priest of atheism is telling Atheists to come out of the closet. As if the morons at Westboro baptist church and their ilk needed more ammunition to continue conflating their two prime enemies, gays and atheists… What is Dawkins trying to do? Paint atheists as some kind of persecuted minority? I’m pretty sure that the injustices heaped upon atheists do not amount to much when compared with… well any other grouping of individuals; Jews, Women, Gays… Yes in some places apostasy is punishable by death and that is a terrible terrible thing, but the extent of the persecution and the number of instances is surely much much less severe than the suffering caused by Apartheid or anti-gay sentiment.

All in all this is a very silly move and were I to belong to any minority that had been persecuted I would probably be offended by it. As it happens I am a relatively well-off white Brit. So I am technically sort of half Northern Irish Catholic but I don’t identify with that, so it’s hard to feel offended in any specific sense.

* Dawkins uses the word ‘hijacked’ in his article, linked above. So don’t take issue with my using it. Or ‘hijacking’ it, if you will…

Crikey. Right after I write about families of awesome people I discover quite how amazing the Coppola family tree is… I knew Francis Ford Coppola was related to Sofia and to Nicholas Cage, but I didn’t realise that Jason Schwartzman is also part of the clan. And they are one of two families to have 3 generations of academy award winners. (No idea who the other family is…) So that’s pretty cool. And Roman Coppola is credited as writer for The Darjeeling Limited! (A film I really want to see!) I thought all that was pretty cool.

I’m halfway through reading this. Interesting stuff about the record industry and music piracy and so on. But I should really get back to reading this. Which isn’t as intersting. But possibly more relevant for my putative essay about Probability in Quantum Mechanics…

• Erasmus and Charles Darwin
• Thomas and Aldous Huxley
• Max Born and Olivia Newton-John

This trinity of grandparent/grandchild relations is unimpeachable proof that clever people have clever grandchildren. And there’s no shortage of evidence that rock legends have crap children; Peaches Geldof, Kelly Osbourne… Evidence that great people do not beget great children.

But what of Hugh Everett who was the father of the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? Father to Mark Oliver Everett, the frontman of the Eels. An anomaly perhaps? A beautiful freak,if you’ll excuse the muso-pun.

Just watched Smokin Aces. It’s not very good. Entertaining enough I suppose. But pretty much everyone dies. And that doesn’t really spoil the story or anything, because the famous faces start dropping like flies pretty early on… Jason Bateman as a pathetic lawyer stole the show. Well, the two scenes he is in, at least.

Saw Mr Scruff on Thursday. Very good. Ug was a highlight for me. Although I did find myself enjoying ‘lovecats’ as well. Wasn’t expecting to hear any Cure that night… Had some rather tasty mint and chilli tea at the gig. An odd but generally enjoyable experience. Mr Scruff is from Stockport. That makes him the second best thing to come out of Stockport. After the Hat Museum, obviously.

Also saw some other band who were similar to the arctic monkeys. They were friends at school or somesuch. Highlight was Will almost stealing someone’s pig mask. But he gave it back.

I just got back from a ‘debate’ on the subject ‘Belief in God is a dangerous delusion.’ Given the rather crap title, I suppose it is just as well that both participants touched only tangentially upon it. Both speakers seemed to have written their own topics. The proponent’s (Susan Blackmore) script was ‘trivialise religion and then summarise The Meme Machine in 20 minutes.’ The opponent of the motion (Alister McGrath) was following the following structure; ‘I used to be an atheist and now I’m not. Platitudes about not all religious folk being crazy fundamentalists…’

All that stark contrast of the debate structure, the obvious strong views of both speakers… I was disappointed, in a way, how polite and grey the talk was. Don’t get me wrong; both speakers are excellent and put forward good points well. But essentially they agreed on everything they could possibly have agreed upon. They sort of retreated into ‘well I’m an atheist and you’re a godbod, so that’s as far as we can go.’

The questions were interesting. Well, some of them were downright nutty. I won’t say much more on the subject, but let’s just say I’d like to have a way to vet people asking questions to remove those who are obviously a few raisins short of a fruitcake. Had I been up there in Susan’s shoes I would never have been that polite to so many people talking past the whole topic of the talk…

Bertrand Russell wrote a book called ‘Why I am not a Christian.’ (Aha, now we’re getting to the meat of theentry…) I haven’t read it, but I expect to agree with most of it. My issue is now to ponder writing something to the effect of ‘Why I am not an Atheist.’ The capital letter for ‘Atheist’ is deliberate and reflects my view that Atheism is close enough to a religion to deserve the arbitrary capitalisation that goes with that. Essentially I trace it back to Colin McGinn’s The Making of a Philosopher which I read when travelling around universities with my Dad before applying.

McGinn makes the point that atheism rests on the same kind of leap of faith as belief in God. McGrath in fact points out that Dawkins cannot jump from ‘There is no evidence for God’ to ‘There is evidence for No God’ (my arbitrary capitalisation…) This leap is of the same kind as that which brings people to a belief of a Beyond. So McGinn argues that agnosticism is the only rational position to take. (I think McGinn also concludes that veganism is the only morally defensible position on eating meat, but I haven’t swallowed that part…)

So that is sort of where I’m at. Neither side of the debate today convinced me. I can’t say I was expecting it to. I doubt anyone’s views were affected strongly by anything said at this debate. Perhaps a little more subtlety, a little polish to one’s arguments were gleaned. But everyone involved was preaching to the converted.

I’d like to write a bit more of a proper defense of agnosticism as a proper reasoned position to take but I can’t be bothered right now. What I need to do is read more of the Atheist gospels (gospel according to Dawkins, gospel according to Hitchens and so on) and take away a healthy criticism of religion. No need to do all that from scratch. Then I should look at some replies to that sort of stuff (McGrath etc) and see what works without God pulling the strings. Then I need to synthesise all this mutual criticism and distrust into a new robust genuine alternative of reasoned agnosticism. Then I shall be hailed as the Great One and people will look back on the beginning of the fence-sitting hegemony as the most important event of history ever. And the world will be a much better place because of Me.

In all seriousness though, I do think there is more to agnosticism than a kind of sitting on the fence, can’t be bothered to make up my mind, intellectual laziness sort of thing.

I have this little moleskine notebook that I write ideas that pop into my head. Often, I forget about an idea before I get the chance to grab the book; I can’t just take it out in a lecture or something; or I have an idea whilst walking somewhere and forget it when I get there… Anyway. Even when I do remember to write it down, that’s pretty much as far as it goes. I’ve made a few notes to write stuff on here or research stuff for an essay and normally I don’t ever do it. Perhaps the writing it down does help me remember to do stuff, so that even without looking at the book I’ll think to do something I had written out there…

I’m thinking I’ll do my physics essay somewhere in the area of probability and quantum mechanics. Or maybe something a little more general about mathematics and the world, still with a focus on probability and QM. As for the maths essay I’m stuck. Perhaps something about the different views Boolos takes up about 2nd order logic in his two papers we looked at, but I’m not sure. The stuff we are looking at at the moment about Lewis’ ‘megethology’  is hard! I don’t know enough about classes and mereology to follow most of it. And it doesn’t help that one of the pages in the PDF has a great big white spot on it. For no apparent reason. It’s really annoying. It means I can’t understand the last 5 or 6 pages…

See, I had more stuff to write about, but of course I have forgotten it. I could go and find my little book, but it’s all the way over at the other side of my room…