Philosophy


Bernie

This man is Bernard d’Espagnat. He has a brain the size of a planet. In his extraordinary career, he has worked with other people with brains the size of planets, including Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.*

D’Espagnat has just been awarded the 2009 Templeton Prize, which, in the words of the Templeton Foundation, is bestowed on a recipient for ‘progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities’, and carries with it a useful £1 million in pocket money.

M. d’Espagnat was given the prize this year for his work in quantum physics, and in particular for his assertions that ‘reality’ (whatever that is) can never be truly known by us in any meaningful sense. Crucially, in regard to the Templeton Prize, his conclusions about what he has discovered in his research veer towards the metaphysical.

From New Scientist:

‘Unlike classical physics,’ d’Espagnat explains, ‘quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled.’

D’Espagnat subscribes to the third view and hypothesizes a ‘‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly’. A veiled reality that encompasses what he refers to as a ‘Being’ and ‘a great, hypercosmic God’.

All things considered, I’m happy that the Templeton Foundation is spending their (evidently) vast fortunes in this way (let’s face it – the money could be going to Creationists). John Templeton, the founder of the organization, was the kind of religious person of whom we need many more. As a practising Presbyterian Christian he asked a question that all believers of religion should ask:

Why shouldn’t I try to learn more? Why shouldn’t I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn’t I go to Muslim services? If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.

Indeed.

It puzzles me, however, that M. d’Espagnat, genius that he indisputably is, seems unable to grasp what is apparently too much of a subtlety of his ‘veiled’ reality; if it exists why must it imply the existence of his hypercosmic God, rather than infer instead that our human brains (planet-size or otherwise) may simply not be capable of understanding the true nature of things? This, to me, seems to be a far likelier explanation than the unsupported jump to the notion of a mysterious and inscrutable creator.†

Perplexingly, d’Espagnat himself seems to be within stepping distance of the same conclusion. He said, on receipt of the prize:

I feel myself deeply in accordance with the Templeton Foundation’s great, guiding idea that science does shed light (on spirituality). In my view it does so mainly by rendering unbelievable an intellectual construction claiming to yield access to the ultimate ground of things with the sole use of the simple, somewhat trivial notions everybody has.

It would appear, then, that he is merely replacing a simple (or trivial) faith in God with a complicated one built on the scaffold of a type of physics and mathematics that very few people understand. Sure, it’s not the thunder-and-lightning enemy-smiting God of the Evangelical Christians/Muslims/Hebrews, but it comes from exactly the same irrational place; the hubris of humans and our belief that the Universe revolves around us.

It seems, then, that in this realm we’ve not really made many advances since Copernicus after all.

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*If those names don’t mean anything to you, they should. They are among the brightest and most insightful scientists we have ever known.

†Which, in any case, is a completely simplistic and futile supposition – as I’ve said elsewhere: if you want to make that assessment, then you may as well suppose that you, your world and all your memories were created by that God yesterday, fully formed and intact – how would you ever know? It’s the same kind of intellectual pursuit. From there, a raft of fanciful worlds become possible and reality unravels like ball of wool in the paws of a kitten.

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Trapped!

From Agence France-Presse (via The Australian):

A BRITISH man has reportedly survived more than two days trapped under his sofa by sipping from a bottle of whisky.

Joe Galliott fell against the sofa during a power cut at his home in Somerset, southwest England, and could not free himself because of back problems, the BBC reported.

He remained stuck for 60 hours in that position – during which time a bottle of whisky rolled close enough for him to open it – until a neighbour became concerned that Mr Galliott’s curtains had not been drawn for two days.

“The whole settee tipped over catching me like a rat in a trap,” the 65-year-old told the BBC.

“I took a sip of (the whisky) and thought, well this isn’t too bad.”

Mr Galliott, who spent five days in hospital recovering, admitted to becoming concerned after going so long without food or water: “It felt like a lifetime, you think you’re there forever.”

He told the broadcaster that he now kept a bottle of whisky next to the sofa “just in case”.

I don’t know that I can usefully add much to this, other than to say that I heartily endorse Mr Galliott’s advice. It might be also useful to keep bottles of whisky next to the fridge, the bookshelf and in the coal cellar.

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Thanks to Pil for her ever eager Cow Eye!

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Let's All Panic

Bad News

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Punchline courtesy of Violet Towne – xxx

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

A couple of posts back I mentioned Reborn Baby Dolls in the context of The Uncanny Valley and the problem of distinguishing robots from humans.

Well, Comment Number 22 on that post is very interesting because it is conceivable that it might just possibly have been made by a robot:

August 1st, 2008 at 10:19 pm

Tracy adds:

I will say that reborn dolls are the most realistic looking dolls I’ve ever encountered and dealt with, but don’t you think they are as creepy as they are cute? As mentioned before the ones with the open eyes can give a person the chills.

We can certainly entertain the idea that Tracy’s ‘human’ quotient is converging on robot. We know for sure that she is insincere, since her link takes us back to a Reborn Baby Doll site (well, it did before I made it go somewhere much more appropriate. Tsk. No free advertising of your creepy hobby on The Cow, Tracy).

See, this is the problem with the Uncanny Valley; bots, when approaching any level of ‘humanness’ are likely to appear at first as mad people. Or at the very least, untrustworthy people. I am unable to tell whether Tracy is real or a clever bot that has just done a search for Reborn Baby references and mangled some of my words to make it seem as if a real person has commented, embedding a link back to RBD site. Read it again. Does it make any sense to you? The grammar is wrong and the ‘sense’ of the statement is wrong (she’s agreeing with me, but not really…). Additionally, the cadence of the comment is very similar to some kinds of spam I’ve received – and believe me, I’ve read enough spam to get a very good feeling for it.

OK – show of hands – who thinks Tracy is a real person? And now, who thinks Tracy should make some further ‘guest’ appearances on The Cow?

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