It's impossible to know everything. That shouldn't be surprising to most people.
However, the next statement will probably flip out a few people: it's impossible to know not just everything but anything.
Well, for certain values of "know", anyway.
The fully qualified answer is this: it is impossible, within the confines of the universe, to be 100% certain that any knowledge or perceived knowledge is 100% representational of reality. There are countless - in fact, likely near-infinite - examples of this in history, where various folks (many quite brilliant) stumbled upon something and said, "Ah ha! At last we know for sure!" only to have some piece of data float on by later that doesn't fit their theory, leading to a new theory and a new "Ah ha! At last..."
One might argue that the single biggest obstacle to scientific advancement is the certainty that one is correct. That being said, one could also say that the single biggest boon to scientific advancement is the drive to legitimately prove it - which always, eventually, fails.
Now, there are a few arguments that challenge this, usually nuanced.
In the first: "But, our laws and theories and science have led us to do amazing things! They have to be true!" No, they don't. They just have to be consistent enough with reality within allowable tolerances. An excellent example of this is Aristotalean mechanics: the fundamental principles are flat-out wrong, as proven by thousands of years of study. However, they're "wrong" by details that don't arise in practical use, especially for Ancient Greek-level technology. So, while "wrong", they're decent enough approximations that amazing things could be done using them. Modern science is no different. Our tolerances in many situations are much smaller, so our theories tend to be consistent enough to a very low level of results. However, that doesn't mean the logic or reasoning behind them is accurate or that some random bit of data won't fall into our laps in the next few years to which they are horribly inconsistent. Just take a look at things like dark matter and dark energy if you want to see examples.
The second argument is far more layman: "Okay, so that kind of technical stuff may not be 'known', but real-world stuff is. Like, I know I'm standing here talking to you." No, you don't. This piece of the puzzle can get a little more philosophical, but it's true on the practical level as well: you can never state how something is, only how it is perceived. The difference is far from trifling. In scientific terms, we have Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that the act of observing something inherently interferes with the observation. Combine that with limitations on observational speed, and it is easy to deduce that any statement we could make, technically, about something has a decent chance of being false by the time we make it.
There's another sort of "fuzziness" that gets introduced, especially with real-world examples. For one: no human is a thing; humans are collections or concepts to begin with. Each person is made up of multiple bits - billions or more, depending on the level we wish to examine - but even from a cellular level, the body has pieces constantly growing, changing, and dying. Matter is taken in, matter is excreted, and as a result the body itself changes. Even without that, individuals atoms or subatomic particles disappear and reappear according to quantum flux principles. You as an individual and everything around you that you recognize only exists as an average state of multiple bits that are constantly changing. Again, our level of "allowable tolerances" comes into play: nothing is known except to a certain degree of approximation, and that includes existence.
The final support for our lack of knowledge is both more technical and more philosophical: everything in the universe seems to be affected by everything else. And by "everything", I mean everything. Every electron, every microvolume of space, every spark of energy affects and is affected by everything else. It is, therefore, impossible to know everything about, for example, a proton without knowing how it is being affected by everything around it - which would require knowing everything about everything. Now, on a local level, the larger part of the universe affects everything evenly so that only local variations really "matter" for our purposes: for example, we don't need to know the locations of all the planets and their velocities to be able to determine (within practical tolerances) how fast a cannon ball will fall from a tower, because us, the tower, the ground, and the cannon ball are all being affected about the same way by the planets. However, that's just another level of approximation - if we wanted to know how fast the cannonball was travelling through space, we'd have to know everything.
It's ironic that, in a very real sense, one reason we've managed to accomplish so much is that we're egotistical enough to think that the levels of observation we can make are the only ones that matter.
If you want to try to work these ideas into your real life, you can answer "probably" instead of "yes" to questions. You can also try to work in E-Prime, though it might take people a while to notice the difference.
And, finally, I'll just say that while it's impossible to know everything, or even anything, that's far from a reason for us to stop trying. As the phrase goes, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp/else what's a heaven for?"
2010-05-21
2010-05-13
Gravity got you down?
(Oh yeah, this one's going to be fun...)
Well fret no more. I'm here to tell you that gravity doesn't exist!
There, feel better? No? Still tethered to your planet, at the bottom of a gravity well hundreds of miles deep (unless I have readers on the space station)?
Okay, then, let's back up a little. Gravity exists, but no one knows what it is or why. If you go by the old rule of "if you can't define it's limits, it doesn't exist", we could argue that gravity doesn't. (Hrm, still not floating...)
Gravity's a bit like time in that respect. We have it, we can measure it, we can even use it, but we have no way of describing it fundamentally. We have no real notion of what is taking place, other than a grade-school concept of "the attraction between two bodies".
First, let's give what we *do* know: gravity seems to be an attractive force. This doesn't mean it's pretty: I mean that it brings two objects together. The amount of gravity any one object "inflicts" on any other can be calculated based on their relative masses and separation distances. We also know that gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration.
That's pretty much it. We don't know how it works: most interactions between objects require a medium of interaction, and despite searches for the almighty graviton, no such particle has ever been detected. Einstein got around this by stating that the "medium" was spacetime itself, and while it's a neat little answer, it's a bit too neat - and too black-boxy - for most modern physicists. We also haven't really been able to determine whether gravity operates within discreet units like other forces; this is important, because discretion would imply a quantum nature whereas a lack of discretion would seem to imply - well, something else. We also know that gravity is related to mass, but we don't know *why* it's related to mass.
We also have to reconsider the whole "attraction between two bodies" concept, not because it's wrong but because it's a simple statement that really doesn't make its full impact apparent. When we say "between two bodies", we really mean "between two things that exist" - again, since gravity is related to mass, and mass is interchangeable with energy, and everything in the universe has mass and/or energy, everything inflicts some gravity. Also, everything is affected by gravity. So, our little "attraction between two bodies" really means "attraction between everything in the universe and everything in the universe". That's right, gravity is trying to pull together everything in the universe; most of the time the force is too small to be measured or effective, but it's always there (and yes, while this means you're technically being drawn however slightly towards that bag of potato chips, it doesn't explain why you had to eat the whole bag in one sitting).
There is also, noteably, no such thing as "anti-gravity", which is one more trait gravity shares with time: whereas most forces or actions have an opposition, gravity (like time) does not. Even antiparticles - which are just mass like anything else - are attracted to each other and to standard particles. We've never encountered anything that has a reverse gravitational effect - basically, a repulsion instead of an attraction - that isn't based on some other force.
That's not to say a lot of people aren't trying to solve the unknowns. Quantum gravity, quantum loop gravity, holographic theory - there are a lot of approaches to answering the big question of how gravity works. There are even a few that state that gravity, like centrifugal force, "doesn't really exist" and is instead just something else being (mis)interpreted as a separate force - usually acceleration (again!) or entropy.
We'll have to see where it all goes. Since much of our future scientific and cultural expression will rely on overcoming gravity efficiently (at least locally), I expect this area of study to be one of the biggest for the next 50-100 years or until a major paradigm shift takes place.
Until then, it helps to realize that even something as familiar as gravity isn't all that familiar and remember all the good things that gravity permits - like a nice day in the waves at the beach.
Well fret no more. I'm here to tell you that gravity doesn't exist!
There, feel better? No? Still tethered to your planet, at the bottom of a gravity well hundreds of miles deep (unless I have readers on the space station)?
Okay, then, let's back up a little. Gravity exists, but no one knows what it is or why. If you go by the old rule of "if you can't define it's limits, it doesn't exist", we could argue that gravity doesn't. (Hrm, still not floating...)
Gravity's a bit like time in that respect. We have it, we can measure it, we can even use it, but we have no way of describing it fundamentally. We have no real notion of what is taking place, other than a grade-school concept of "the attraction between two bodies".
First, let's give what we *do* know: gravity seems to be an attractive force. This doesn't mean it's pretty: I mean that it brings two objects together. The amount of gravity any one object "inflicts" on any other can be calculated based on their relative masses and separation distances. We also know that gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration.
That's pretty much it. We don't know how it works: most interactions between objects require a medium of interaction, and despite searches for the almighty graviton, no such particle has ever been detected. Einstein got around this by stating that the "medium" was spacetime itself, and while it's a neat little answer, it's a bit too neat - and too black-boxy - for most modern physicists. We also haven't really been able to determine whether gravity operates within discreet units like other forces; this is important, because discretion would imply a quantum nature whereas a lack of discretion would seem to imply - well, something else. We also know that gravity is related to mass, but we don't know *why* it's related to mass.
We also have to reconsider the whole "attraction between two bodies" concept, not because it's wrong but because it's a simple statement that really doesn't make its full impact apparent. When we say "between two bodies", we really mean "between two things that exist" - again, since gravity is related to mass, and mass is interchangeable with energy, and everything in the universe has mass and/or energy, everything inflicts some gravity. Also, everything is affected by gravity. So, our little "attraction between two bodies" really means "attraction between everything in the universe and everything in the universe". That's right, gravity is trying to pull together everything in the universe; most of the time the force is too small to be measured or effective, but it's always there (and yes, while this means you're technically being drawn however slightly towards that bag of potato chips, it doesn't explain why you had to eat the whole bag in one sitting).
There is also, noteably, no such thing as "anti-gravity", which is one more trait gravity shares with time: whereas most forces or actions have an opposition, gravity (like time) does not. Even antiparticles - which are just mass like anything else - are attracted to each other and to standard particles. We've never encountered anything that has a reverse gravitational effect - basically, a repulsion instead of an attraction - that isn't based on some other force.
That's not to say a lot of people aren't trying to solve the unknowns. Quantum gravity, quantum loop gravity, holographic theory - there are a lot of approaches to answering the big question of how gravity works. There are even a few that state that gravity, like centrifugal force, "doesn't really exist" and is instead just something else being (mis)interpreted as a separate force - usually acceleration (again!) or entropy.
We'll have to see where it all goes. Since much of our future scientific and cultural expression will rely on overcoming gravity efficiently (at least locally), I expect this area of study to be one of the biggest for the next 50-100 years or until a major paradigm shift takes place.
Until then, it helps to realize that even something as familiar as gravity isn't all that familiar and remember all the good things that gravity permits - like a nice day in the waves at the beach.
2010-03-30
Go West
The sun doesn't rise in the east.
Think about that. Really wrap your mind around the concept.
Of course the sun doesn't rise in the east. It's Earth that rotates and causes the illusion. We all know this. Yet, sunrises and sunsets are so ingrained in our social consciousness that we have trouble breaking free of them.
Civilization shifts westward. While not an absolute trend, it's definitely a trend that is visible in history. A lot of thought has been given to why this trend exists, but the most reasonable and testable hypothesis has to do with sunsets.
As the day goes on, the sun appears to sink into the west. Like the sunrise, sunsets are built into our social culture and tend to represent the end of things: the end of the day, of a life, the passing on to something we cannot follow, etc.
So, it's only natural that those people who are seeking to break molds or to escape from the limits of their lives will chase the sun and try to reach that sunset. That means moving westward.
So, this migration started in eastern Asia aeons ago and is "currently" at the West Coast of the US. That has many people convinced that Japan/China/eastern Asia are next up for the migration, completing the loop and perhaps starting another. But, if the true motivation is "chasing the sun", as it were - reaching beyond the limits of the known/current to something else - then that makes little sense. Indeed, the supposed rise of Japan in the late 80's collapsed, and even China's "supremacy" of global markets at the moment is driven largely by unsustainable fiscal policy on the part of China's government. India may be on the brink of tremendous famine thanks to a new wheat disease, and no other country in the region is set for major growth.
So, if we can't keep going west, but we have to go somewhere... the only place to go is out.
Time to *really* start chasing the sun, and get beyond sunrises and sunsets altogether.
Think about that. Really wrap your mind around the concept.
Of course the sun doesn't rise in the east. It's Earth that rotates and causes the illusion. We all know this. Yet, sunrises and sunsets are so ingrained in our social consciousness that we have trouble breaking free of them.
Civilization shifts westward. While not an absolute trend, it's definitely a trend that is visible in history. A lot of thought has been given to why this trend exists, but the most reasonable and testable hypothesis has to do with sunsets.
As the day goes on, the sun appears to sink into the west. Like the sunrise, sunsets are built into our social culture and tend to represent the end of things: the end of the day, of a life, the passing on to something we cannot follow, etc.
So, it's only natural that those people who are seeking to break molds or to escape from the limits of their lives will chase the sun and try to reach that sunset. That means moving westward.
So, this migration started in eastern Asia aeons ago and is "currently" at the West Coast of the US. That has many people convinced that Japan/China/eastern Asia are next up for the migration, completing the loop and perhaps starting another. But, if the true motivation is "chasing the sun", as it were - reaching beyond the limits of the known/current to something else - then that makes little sense. Indeed, the supposed rise of Japan in the late 80's collapsed, and even China's "supremacy" of global markets at the moment is driven largely by unsustainable fiscal policy on the part of China's government. India may be on the brink of tremendous famine thanks to a new wheat disease, and no other country in the region is set for major growth.
So, if we can't keep going west, but we have to go somewhere... the only place to go is out.
Time to *really* start chasing the sun, and get beyond sunrises and sunsets altogether.
2010-03-19
Astronomical fun facts
The sun doesn't rise in the east. It actually doesn't rise at all; the earth rotates. It can be difficult to remember this when watching it from the surface of the Earth, but doing so can really help change one's focus.
The space station is about 200 miles above Earth's surface. If you could drive vertically as easily as you could drive horizontally, it'd take you about 3 hours (at normal 65 mph) to get there. If you then decided to drive off to the moon, pack a few snacks: it'll take you another 6 months.
99.86% of the mass of the solar system is in the sun. Jupiter is less than 0.1% of the mass of the solar system, yet it's 2.5x the mass of all the other planets combined. That means that there's enough non-planetary mass in the solar system to make up 21 Earths. Might get a little crowded around here.
The mass of the solar system is about 1.989x10^30 kilograms. There are 6.022 protons and/or neutrons in 1 gram, or about 6,022 in a kilogram. That means, in the solar system, there are approximately 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 protons or neutrons (electron mass is mostly insignificant). This is off slightly, since some of that mass is converted to energy.
Contrary to popular belief, the Moon doesn't orbit the Earth: they both technically orbit a common gravitational "locus", similar to the way two people holding hands and spinning orbit some point between them. Because the Earth has significantly more mass, the locus is "within" the Earth - a few thousand miles off-center, about 1000 miles below the surface - so, from a distance, Earth looks like it wobbles around its axis. Also, the Earth - and all the planets - don't actually orbit the sun for the same reasons. In fact, because of the distances involved and the density of the sun, the locus of Jupiter (also called the center of mass) is generally 30,000 miles above the surface of the sun, though the "wobble" of the sun changes dramatically depending on planetary alignment.
The milky way (our galaxy) is about 100,000 lightyears across and 1,000 lightyears thick. This tells us that the volume of space it occupies is roughly 7.8 trillion cubic lightyears. If we assume the high-end estimate of 400 billion stars, that means there are an average of 1 star per 19 cubic lightyears. This isn't really accurate, since stellar density is far higher in the center of the galaxy than at the edges; out by us, the actual density is closer to 2300 cubic lightyears per star.
If we assume that radio waves have been broadcasting from Earth in some form since around 1880, then those signals fill a volume of space of approximately 9.2 million cubic lightyears. That means our radio broadcasts have reached less than 4,000 stars and just over 0.0001% of the galaxy. Needless to say, the odds that any of the planets near us could support life, much less *do* support life that could notice our broadcasts, is pretty low, but we've only just scratched the surface of the galaxy as a whole.
The space station is about 200 miles above Earth's surface. If you could drive vertically as easily as you could drive horizontally, it'd take you about 3 hours (at normal 65 mph) to get there. If you then decided to drive off to the moon, pack a few snacks: it'll take you another 6 months.
99.86% of the mass of the solar system is in the sun. Jupiter is less than 0.1% of the mass of the solar system, yet it's 2.5x the mass of all the other planets combined. That means that there's enough non-planetary mass in the solar system to make up 21 Earths. Might get a little crowded around here.
The mass of the solar system is about 1.989x10^30 kilograms. There are 6.022 protons and/or neutrons in 1 gram, or about 6,022 in a kilogram. That means, in the solar system, there are approximately 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 protons or neutrons (electron mass is mostly insignificant). This is off slightly, since some of that mass is converted to energy.
Contrary to popular belief, the Moon doesn't orbit the Earth: they both technically orbit a common gravitational "locus", similar to the way two people holding hands and spinning orbit some point between them. Because the Earth has significantly more mass, the locus is "within" the Earth - a few thousand miles off-center, about 1000 miles below the surface - so, from a distance, Earth looks like it wobbles around its axis. Also, the Earth - and all the planets - don't actually orbit the sun for the same reasons. In fact, because of the distances involved and the density of the sun, the locus of Jupiter (also called the center of mass) is generally 30,000 miles above the surface of the sun, though the "wobble" of the sun changes dramatically depending on planetary alignment.
The milky way (our galaxy) is about 100,000 lightyears across and 1,000 lightyears thick. This tells us that the volume of space it occupies is roughly 7.8 trillion cubic lightyears. If we assume the high-end estimate of 400 billion stars, that means there are an average of 1 star per 19 cubic lightyears. This isn't really accurate, since stellar density is far higher in the center of the galaxy than at the edges; out by us, the actual density is closer to 2300 cubic lightyears per star.
If we assume that radio waves have been broadcasting from Earth in some form since around 1880, then those signals fill a volume of space of approximately 9.2 million cubic lightyears. That means our radio broadcasts have reached less than 4,000 stars and just over 0.0001% of the galaxy. Needless to say, the odds that any of the planets near us could support life, much less *do* support life that could notice our broadcasts, is pretty low, but we've only just scratched the surface of the galaxy as a whole.
2010-03-18
Right to Life
So, I'm going to approach a very delicate subject from an angle that I rarely hear expressed coherently.
The abortion debate is very contentious, with members on both sides railing about rights to life and quality of living and such. A quick question - really, the question - is whether or not the foetus has the same rights as the carrier.
I'm going to side-step the moral questions for a moment and merely tackle this specific question.
First off, we have to understand what we mean when we refer to the rights of the carrier. As I'm in the U.S., my viewpoint will, be skewed slightly towards that political climate, but that should have little impact eventually.
The ethology of the U.S. states that various rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. - are imbued in all humans; this isn't stated in the Constitution, mind you, but it's often used as a governing principle when interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. So, from a legal aspect, we can state that "humanity" is one required principle for a certain level of rights.
Obviously, there are rights imbued to citizens, who are classified as natural or naturalized - both of which are specific processes or conditions. The easiest way to qualify as a citizen is to be born in the U.S.; since the foetus obviously isn't born yet and, furthermore, likely hasn't gone through a naturalization process, it cannot be a citizen.
Furthermore, there are certain "rights" viewed as existing to "all living things", generally enforced or seen as dictated a reduction of animal cruelty and such.
So, that gives us a framework for the "rights" aspect of a "thing": if it's alive, it has a certain level of "rights" that aren't necessarily universally enforced; if it's human it has other "rights"; and if it's a citizen, it has even more.
The carrier obviously qualified for all of the above without question. So, we focus on the foetus.
The foetus is, as stated, not a citizen since it has never been born and has never participated in naturalization. So, the rights of US citizens to not apply.
Is the foetus alive? In some sense, yes. However, as stated, this does not guarantee a granting of rights: we kill living things all the time, and very rarely is an ethical question raised. Usually such ethics are only called in when the living thing is capable of demonstrating a sensation of pain; it's questionable at what stage a foetus is able to do so, though observation seems to indicate that such sensation is possible only at around the start of the third trimester.
However, again, that isn't necessarily sufficient justification for the absolute prevention of killing; we still kill/harm living things that can feel pain, often for seemingly "trivial" reasons.
The third criteria is the crucial matter and the hardest to gauge: is the foetus human? To do so, we have to define what it means to be "human", something that is very difficult to do.
Inarguably, for most of its life, a foetus has little resemblance to a born human being beyond the biochemical - even once tissues start differentiating, the physical anatomy takes weeks to become recognizable. A foetus that is delivered before the end of the second trimester is not likely to live: survival rates, even with the best medical care, are barely 50% at 24 weeks (two weeks before the end of the second trimester). (This fact, combined with the development of the ability to feel pain, is generally why there is the current "third trimester" limit on elective abortions.)
Many people, mainly the religious, argue that a foetus is human from the moment it is conceived; the justification for this appears entirely religious, but I'll try to tackle it from an evidence-based perspective.
Merely having the genetic material of a human does not make something individually "human": cancer cells, for example, have all the genetic requirements for "human" but are killed all the time. Many even have slightly different genomes (usually through mutation) and thus might actually qualify as a separate life form from the host, but this doesn't stop us from killing said cells. Clearly, society as a whole uses some other criteria for judging the "humanity" of a being. Formalizing that criteria would go a long ways towards clearing up the abortion issue.
As a final consideration, it can be argued that, until the foetus is independently viable (again, around the start of the 3rd trimester), it cannot be truly considered an "independent life" and is instead either part of the carrier (as an organ or other growth) or a parasite. Carriers regularly excise either from their bodies, sometimes under medical requirement and sometimes electively.
If the foetus is not independent, it has no "rights" as an entity. If it is independent but isn't human, it has no rights normally associated with humanity. Even if it is human, it has no rights associated with citizenship.
It's clear that, if society could formulate answers to the first two questions (those of independence and humanity), the issue of abortion could be solved ethically once and for all. From the known evidence, I currently think the current 3rd-trimester limit is the most scientifically justified ethic, but it is society as a whole that needs to resolve the issue on the basis of all evidence.
The abortion debate is very contentious, with members on both sides railing about rights to life and quality of living and such. A quick question - really, the question - is whether or not the foetus has the same rights as the carrier.
I'm going to side-step the moral questions for a moment and merely tackle this specific question.
First off, we have to understand what we mean when we refer to the rights of the carrier. As I'm in the U.S., my viewpoint will, be skewed slightly towards that political climate, but that should have little impact eventually.
The ethology of the U.S. states that various rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. - are imbued in all humans; this isn't stated in the Constitution, mind you, but it's often used as a governing principle when interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. So, from a legal aspect, we can state that "humanity" is one required principle for a certain level of rights.
Obviously, there are rights imbued to citizens, who are classified as natural or naturalized - both of which are specific processes or conditions. The easiest way to qualify as a citizen is to be born in the U.S.; since the foetus obviously isn't born yet and, furthermore, likely hasn't gone through a naturalization process, it cannot be a citizen.
Furthermore, there are certain "rights" viewed as existing to "all living things", generally enforced or seen as dictated a reduction of animal cruelty and such.
So, that gives us a framework for the "rights" aspect of a "thing": if it's alive, it has a certain level of "rights" that aren't necessarily universally enforced; if it's human it has other "rights"; and if it's a citizen, it has even more.
The carrier obviously qualified for all of the above without question. So, we focus on the foetus.
The foetus is, as stated, not a citizen since it has never been born and has never participated in naturalization. So, the rights of US citizens to not apply.
Is the foetus alive? In some sense, yes. However, as stated, this does not guarantee a granting of rights: we kill living things all the time, and very rarely is an ethical question raised. Usually such ethics are only called in when the living thing is capable of demonstrating a sensation of pain; it's questionable at what stage a foetus is able to do so, though observation seems to indicate that such sensation is possible only at around the start of the third trimester.
However, again, that isn't necessarily sufficient justification for the absolute prevention of killing; we still kill/harm living things that can feel pain, often for seemingly "trivial" reasons.
The third criteria is the crucial matter and the hardest to gauge: is the foetus human? To do so, we have to define what it means to be "human", something that is very difficult to do.
Inarguably, for most of its life, a foetus has little resemblance to a born human being beyond the biochemical - even once tissues start differentiating, the physical anatomy takes weeks to become recognizable. A foetus that is delivered before the end of the second trimester is not likely to live: survival rates, even with the best medical care, are barely 50% at 24 weeks (two weeks before the end of the second trimester). (This fact, combined with the development of the ability to feel pain, is generally why there is the current "third trimester" limit on elective abortions.)
Many people, mainly the religious, argue that a foetus is human from the moment it is conceived; the justification for this appears entirely religious, but I'll try to tackle it from an evidence-based perspective.
Merely having the genetic material of a human does not make something individually "human": cancer cells, for example, have all the genetic requirements for "human" but are killed all the time. Many even have slightly different genomes (usually through mutation) and thus might actually qualify as a separate life form from the host, but this doesn't stop us from killing said cells. Clearly, society as a whole uses some other criteria for judging the "humanity" of a being. Formalizing that criteria would go a long ways towards clearing up the abortion issue.
As a final consideration, it can be argued that, until the foetus is independently viable (again, around the start of the 3rd trimester), it cannot be truly considered an "independent life" and is instead either part of the carrier (as an organ or other growth) or a parasite. Carriers regularly excise either from their bodies, sometimes under medical requirement and sometimes electively.
If the foetus is not independent, it has no "rights" as an entity. If it is independent but isn't human, it has no rights normally associated with humanity. Even if it is human, it has no rights associated with citizenship.
It's clear that, if society could formulate answers to the first two questions (those of independence and humanity), the issue of abortion could be solved ethically once and for all. From the known evidence, I currently think the current 3rd-trimester limit is the most scientifically justified ethic, but it is society as a whole that needs to resolve the issue on the basis of all evidence.
2010-03-17
In the beginning
... there was nothing, because there is no beginning.
As one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, has written, stories don't start - they weave. What seems like a beginning is just the continuation of something else. Tom Stoppard once wrote, "We do on stage what most people do off, which is a kind of integrity if you look at every exit as an entrance somewhere else."
And there's the rub (to quote another bard): nothing is ever truly first. There's always something that came before. Even all the way back to that seminal event (that may or may not have occurred) called the Big Bang, and even prior to that - because for the singularity to "expand", it had to exist first, which means something was there before the Big Bang.
This is the trap of thinking in four dimensions - of thinking in terms of "time". Time, you see, isn't a location, it's a direction. It's flow - as in, time *is* flow and nothing else. We have no method to describe it that isn't self-referential. We have no tools for measuring it directly. And yet we observe its assumed effects.
We could argue that time is part of the universe we know, and that therefore time itself came into existence as part of the big bang. However, that solves nothing; it just complicates matter. For something to "pre-exist time" implies the existence of some kind of "supertime" (the same way that stating something as "outside our universe" implies something larger): it doesn't solve the problem, it merely shifts it up a level.
Furthermore, because of how time is - flow - once it existed it had always existed. Wrap your mind around that one for a few seconds: if time itself comes into existence, then any notion of "past" had to come into existence also, so "as soon as" time existed, there were past, present, and future already formed. Once time was around, it had to have always been around, because "always" is a concept of time.
Anything that happens "outside" time - without a time dimension - would, by definition, happen simultaneously/constantly/forever (there really isn't a non-temporal word that works). That means that what existed "before" the big bang would have to co-exist with whatever exists "after" the "universe" created by the big bang finishes/collapses/ends/whatever. In essence, not only is the big bang still happening in the "superuniverse", but it's also already over.
And yet, we see the stories weave as we always have, one second before the next. And just as no story every really begins, no story ever really ends - it just becomes part of another story, another path to weave.
As one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, has written, stories don't start - they weave. What seems like a beginning is just the continuation of something else. Tom Stoppard once wrote, "We do on stage what most people do off, which is a kind of integrity if you look at every exit as an entrance somewhere else."
And there's the rub (to quote another bard): nothing is ever truly first. There's always something that came before. Even all the way back to that seminal event (that may or may not have occurred) called the Big Bang, and even prior to that - because for the singularity to "expand", it had to exist first, which means something was there before the Big Bang.
This is the trap of thinking in four dimensions - of thinking in terms of "time". Time, you see, isn't a location, it's a direction. It's flow - as in, time *is* flow and nothing else. We have no method to describe it that isn't self-referential. We have no tools for measuring it directly. And yet we observe its assumed effects.
We could argue that time is part of the universe we know, and that therefore time itself came into existence as part of the big bang. However, that solves nothing; it just complicates matter. For something to "pre-exist time" implies the existence of some kind of "supertime" (the same way that stating something as "outside our universe" implies something larger): it doesn't solve the problem, it merely shifts it up a level.
Furthermore, because of how time is - flow - once it existed it had always existed. Wrap your mind around that one for a few seconds: if time itself comes into existence, then any notion of "past" had to come into existence also, so "as soon as" time existed, there were past, present, and future already formed. Once time was around, it had to have always been around, because "always" is a concept of time.
Anything that happens "outside" time - without a time dimension - would, by definition, happen simultaneously/constantly/forever (there really isn't a non-temporal word that works). That means that what existed "before" the big bang would have to co-exist with whatever exists "after" the "universe" created by the big bang finishes/collapses/ends/whatever. In essence, not only is the big bang still happening in the "superuniverse", but it's also already over.
And yet, we see the stories weave as we always have, one second before the next. And just as no story every really begins, no story ever really ends - it just becomes part of another story, another path to weave.
2010-02-09
Needs and Wants
Why do we get into relationships?
It seems like it *should* be an easy question, but it's not. It's a vast whirlpool of conflicting ideas, ideals, and realities, one that can drag us down and crush us under the pressure.
I know part of the answer. Many times (most times?) we get into a relationship with someone because of something they have that we need, or something we have that they need (or sometimes both). I don't necessarily mean material goods - though that obviously happens. No, mostly, it's about psychological needs.
Like, one friend I have doesn't feel like he has any personal worth unless he's loved - and that's what he needs from his relationship, an affirmation of self-worth (if that even makes sense). Another needs a stabilizing force, and in return he provides an element of fun or pleasure. Some people need someone who is stronger, or someone to take care of, or someone to simply be there so they don't feel alone at night.
If I had to guess, I'd say 90% of all relationships fall into this category. That doesn't mean they're bad, mind you - sometimes, that kind of shared need is enough. Sometimes, it's not, and the relationship ends relatively quickly.
I have to think, though, that there's something else out there - some relationship that doesn't include these kinds of needs, where there's no psychological game to play or role to assume. Where you're with someone simply because you enjoy them, and they enjoy you. Maybe that's my own need - a need for there to not be needs - but I think that's getting a little solipsistic.
I think that's why I'm not in a relationship, and why I date so rarely. I usually state it as "I can't date anyone I have to fix", but maybe it's better stated that "I can't date anyone I have to fulfill". Oh, I can be a provider - of stability, of amusement, of strength, of weakness, even of love - but I don't want a relationship to be based on those being *necessary* for personal well-being. I want to date someone who is stable, and comfortable, and secure, and happy, with or without me.
I think I'd rather be wanted but not needed. Others can make their own choices.
It seems like it *should* be an easy question, but it's not. It's a vast whirlpool of conflicting ideas, ideals, and realities, one that can drag us down and crush us under the pressure.
I know part of the answer. Many times (most times?) we get into a relationship with someone because of something they have that we need, or something we have that they need (or sometimes both). I don't necessarily mean material goods - though that obviously happens. No, mostly, it's about psychological needs.
Like, one friend I have doesn't feel like he has any personal worth unless he's loved - and that's what he needs from his relationship, an affirmation of self-worth (if that even makes sense). Another needs a stabilizing force, and in return he provides an element of fun or pleasure. Some people need someone who is stronger, or someone to take care of, or someone to simply be there so they don't feel alone at night.
If I had to guess, I'd say 90% of all relationships fall into this category. That doesn't mean they're bad, mind you - sometimes, that kind of shared need is enough. Sometimes, it's not, and the relationship ends relatively quickly.
I have to think, though, that there's something else out there - some relationship that doesn't include these kinds of needs, where there's no psychological game to play or role to assume. Where you're with someone simply because you enjoy them, and they enjoy you. Maybe that's my own need - a need for there to not be needs - but I think that's getting a little solipsistic.
I think that's why I'm not in a relationship, and why I date so rarely. I usually state it as "I can't date anyone I have to fix", but maybe it's better stated that "I can't date anyone I have to fulfill". Oh, I can be a provider - of stability, of amusement, of strength, of weakness, even of love - but I don't want a relationship to be based on those being *necessary* for personal well-being. I want to date someone who is stable, and comfortable, and secure, and happy, with or without me.
I think I'd rather be wanted but not needed. Others can make their own choices.
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