Kurt to Enterprise

My wife has a cell phone, and like so many people, she seems to love it. I do not. In fact, I do not plan to own one, at least until a user-friendly cell phone is designed, and oddly enough, it doesn't seem to be coming any time soon.

Admittedly, I am not the most social person in the world, at least in terms that most people would call "social." I do participate in the community of mankind, but I prefer to have some form of insulation, such as a computer, or at least a telephone, to hide behind. But I often have difficulty in what most people would call "ordinary conversation," which I take to mean "the relatively undisciplined exchange of more or less random thoughts, ideas, and opinions." I love to learn. I love to think. Anything else is boring to me, or at least seems relatively useless. I realize that this makes me something of a social cripple, but hey, you can't be and do everything. One must make choices, and accept the consequences of those choices. At any rate, that's who I am.

On the other hand, I can certainly accept and even appreciate to a certain extent that desire for connection that most, if not all of us has. We are networking entities. Each of us has a brain that is a neural network, and which is by design, constantly looking for new nodes to link with. So, I can well appreciate the desire for such tools as writing, mail, telephone, radio, television, and the Internet. Cell phones are a step in the evolution of communication technology, that allow people to connect an communicate independent of location.

And perhaps I would own one, except for one particular and disturbing flaw in the design of every cell phone that I've ever seen or heard of. Cell phones are tiny, and the ear piece is generally less that 2 inches from the microphone. This is a source of great bewilderment to me, and I continue to try and understand the social phenomenon that drives this design. Every time I use a cell phone (usually because my wife hands me hers) I feel like saying "Kirk to Enterprise." They look a lot like the communicators in the original Star Trek series. Unfortunately, however, the volume and sound quality prohibit us from using them by holding them in front of us and talking, as they did in the original Star Trek series.

Generally speaking, the tools we design for ourselves are built around our physical characteristics. A chair, for example, has legs which are usually less that 2 feet long, because of the length of the human leg. Chairs with longer legs generally have some form of foot rest built into them, to accomodate the length of the human leg. Beds are about 6 feet or longer in length, due to the average size of the human body. Automotive vehicles have driver compartments that are shaped and sized according to the average shape and size of the human body, and mechanisms for adjusting the dimensions on an indivdual basis. Most buildings have ceilings that are at least 6 if not 7 feet tall, again, to accomodate the size of the human body.

But cell phones, apparently all of them, are made as small as possible, almost all without any means of extending the distance between the ear and mouth pieces. This results in the uncomfortable practice of constantly readjusting the position of the cell phone to either hear better or to be heard. And this bewilders me to no end.

Certainly, size and weight are an issue. I am old enough to remember the first "wireless" telephones, which were essentially 2-way radios, and generally used in cars. They were about the size and shape of a walkie-talkie. This was due to the state of technology at the time, but I note that the distance between the ear and mouth pieces was about the average distance between people's ears and mouths. As time went by, we became better at putting more technology into smaller areas, and "wireless" telephones began to shrink.

However, at some point, this "requirement" of smallness seems to have taken a life of its own, without regard for its original purpose, which was to make "wireless" phones easier to carry, and less tiresome to hold for long periods of time. Instead, the concept became "smallness is a virtue, and the greater the smallness, the greater the virtue."

Now, I can certainly understand the desire to make the size of a cell phone small enough to carry in one's pocket, and perhaps even as thin as a credit card eventually. But this does not imply that when in use, it should not be extensible to fit between the ear and mouth comfortably. After all, umbrellas have employed such technology for at least 100 years. Even the communicator in the original Star Trek series opened up and became about 7 inches long (long enough to have been held with the earpiece and mouthpiece congruent to the locations of the human ear and mouth). They didn't hold it that way, but that was because they didn't have to. Apparently, they (the fictional society of the future) had the technology to make their communicators audible and able to hear the human voice at a distance. But we don't have that technology yet. We must hold the ear and mouthpieces within a small distance from our ears and mouth to be able to communicate. But that is not the case with cell phones. Why?

Is it because the world is full of fools who imitate each other imitating each other like monkeys imitating themselves in a mirror? Is it because innovation is only payed lip service by industry, because to truly step outside the "box" of social convention is dangerous, and most people are full of fear? These are some of the possible reasons I can think of. Unfortunately, I can't think of any good ones. After all, how difficult would it be to make a cell phone that extends like an umbrella, or a pair of headphones? Surely, if we have the technology to make cell phones the size of Star Trek communicators, we have the ability to make them telescope.

It puzzles me, because honestly, I can't figure it out. If this were the case with some cell phones, but not with others, I would understand. But it is so pervasive. I don't like puzzles I cannot solve. In the meantime, though, I must admit I prefer having a space and time in which nobody can bother me. It takes me 30 minutes to an hour to drive to and from work. And that is my "me" time; it is my time to think and ponder. But this question is really bothering me. Hopefully, someone will answer it, or at least I will eventually forget about it.

Ah well. So it goes...

We Sink Zis Means Somesing

We sink zis is important.

One of my favorite films of all time is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Directed by Steven Speilberg in 1977, it is not only recognized almost universally as a great film, having won dozens of awards for filmmaking, but it illustrates some incredible philosophical ideas. In fact, this post is about (at least) one of them.

In my last post, I discussed the idea that intuition may be much more reliable than cognitive deliberation. Intuition is not exactly a cognitive process, in the sense that we think consciously about it. It is cognitive in that we perceive it, but often without words or thoughts of any kind.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is about this intuitive experience. The main character, Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, along with a number of other folks, encounter UFOs (alien space ships) at around the same time, most of them on the same night. While they are not abducted (although some are), they are all marked with unconscious impressions of something they cannot explain to anyone. They know they know something; they just don't know what it is that they know.

As time goes by, they become obsessive about this unconscious impression, and several of them begin to draw pictures of it, or create models of it. Neary goes from seeing it in various common objects, to modelling it in his mashed potatoes at dinner, and finally driving his family out of the house in an attempt to build a model of it with dirt, grass, and shrubs he has carried into the house from the front yard.

In the meantime, people from some unknown international governmental agency are seen investigating the people and events associated with the UFOs. They are aware of what has happened, but very secretive about it. François Truffaut plays the central character among these covert officials, and at one point he makes the remark in his french accent, "We sink zis means somesing. We sink zis is important." It seems that even the top secret organization doesn't know quite what to make of the visitors or their intention. It does, however, understand that what is happening is real, and that it is probably somehow important.

All of this illustrates a kind of thinking that I think is quite useful at times, in terms of problem-solving. Perception and thought are 2 entirely different things. Perception is pure; it is the conscious (or unconscious) reception of pure data by the mind. Thought is the cognitive process which we use to analyze the data. Thought may or may not be reliable. And it is the cognitive process of thought which creates the conscious model of that which we perceive. Therefore, what we consciously model from our perception may or may not be reliable.

How the mind works is still a subject of much conjecture. We are continually able to gather more data about the activities of the brain, and the behavior and communications of individual human beings. But the mechanism of the brain is still beyond the ability of science to understand. We have recognized and identified a number of different processes which we have names for, but little else. Among these are personal identity, attention, and cognitive control, all of which I want to discuss here.

The human mind (and I refer to the mind rather than the "brain" deliberately, because I don't necessarily want to limit the mind to the organ which we call the "brain") is a multi-tasking operation, behaving in many ways similarly to a multi-tasking computer. Regardless of how many operations may be occurring simultaneously, our minds are constantly performing a wide variety of tasks "at one time." We know that a computer processor is capable of only one operation at any given time, and that it simulates multi-tasking by switching from one task to another at an incredible rate of speed, performing small "slices" of each operation in a large loop process. We don't know whether the human brain does this, however. We do know that the brains exhibits simultaneous activity, which would tend to indicate many simultaneous processes, as if we had many processors in our brains. But exactly what that activity is, we do not know yet.

Still, among those processes, there is one which we call "attention," and it seems to behave as if it is a single thread, which is capable of "time-sharing" like a computer processor. That is, it can jump among many different foci (points of focus) at a high rate of speed. It does seem, however, to only be able to focus on one "thing" at a time. Attention is somehow associated with personal identity, and it may be that our sense of identity comes from this (apparently) single-threaded process; we may identify "self" as this process. I don't know. But I "sink zis means somesing."

However, apparently simultaneously, there are other mental processes at work. There are routines that have been stored, such as those that cause the heart to beat continuously, as well as the operation of the lungs and other organs of the body. We are capable of performing multiple physical tasks simultaneously, such as walking and talking at the same time. These processes are not conscious. We do not consciously control them. At one point we may have consciously directed their development, such as learning how to walk, how to talk, etc. But we don't consciously control them at some point. They are stored as complete routines and executed automatically.

We also know that decision-making is manifested both as cognitive and unconscious process. Well, perhaps it is not agreed upon as to whether it is always a cognitive process, but I will elaborate on that further to clarify. In any case, there is a cognitive control of at least some decision-making, and possibly an unconscious control of other decision-making.

As an analogy of unconscious decision-making, let's talk about a software routine, as an analogy for an unconsciously-controlled stored mental routine, such as walking. A software routine is a set of instructions which contains selective processes. If statements and switch statements are such selective processes, which constitute a form of software decision-making. If one condition is true, one set of instructions is followed. If another condition is true, another set of instructions is followed. Thus, software makes decisions, however unconsciously. Mental routines such as walking must necessarily include such decision-making, albeit unconscious. When we are walking, and we encounter a dip in the ground, our walking process "automatically" accounts for the change in orientation, and the correct combination of muscular adjustments is made, enabling us to continue walking, without any conscious control, within certain limits. If those limits are exceeded, such as a sudden change, a hole in the ground, for example, our conscious deliberative process is notified, and we swiftly get consciously involved in the corrective process.

So, it is at least possible that we make decisions both consciously and unconsciously, and that those decision-making processes which are unconscious are generally more reliable, because they have been constructed ovcr a long period of time, involving a lot of experience.

The conscious deliberative process, while less reliable, probably due to its' apparently single-threaded nature, is that which controls the creation of the unconscious routines that we store and use. How it does this is, of course, not known. And it is entirely possible that poor unconscious decision-making processes are the product of long-term input of bad data. That is, a person who is trained at a young age to distrust authority, by means of a bad parent, for example, may exhibit poor decision-making habits (routines) with regards to other authorities in adulthood. These can be corrected by long-term input of corrective data. But that is the subject of another discussion.

The point which I am getting at here is that problem-solving is a cognitive process as well. As such, it involves the attention, or conscious involvement, of the person doing the problem-solving. Because the modelling process of the conscious mind is not necessarily accurate, as direct perception is, our problem-solving ability may actually be hampered by conscious thought.

We know, for example, that when we are struggling to solve a problem it often helps to "sleep on it." The process of removing the conscious attention from the problem, even sleeping, about which little is yet known, seems to allow the data which constitutes the parameters of the problem to be organized better, perhaps associated with other information that may be related, and of which we are not (yet) consciously aware. It is this act of allowing the (possibly superior) unconscious processes to work on the problem that seems to "inspire" us with new ideas that help to solve the problem. This is sometimes also referred to as "letting go."

I believe that "zis means somesing." It is not pure will that is most capable of solving problems, of coming up with creative solutions; it is "intuition." This speaks directly to the subject matter of my previous post, which is concerned with intuition versus deliberation. That process which is termed "cognitive control," and which may be that which we identify with "self," has a strong impulse to exert control over our other processes. We feel uncomfortable when we cannot trace the logic of a solution. Yet, we are constantly creating solutions to certain types of problems without any conscious understanding of them. How do you walk? Can you enumerate the muscles and components of the nervous system that you employ in order to do it? No, at least without a great deal of scientific study. Yet, it is an ability which almost everyone has.

And so, it is my thought that perhaps we often take conscious control of problem-solving when we would be better off not to. Sometimes it is better to loosen our focus, to "let go" of a problem, to allow ourselves to float freely in a stream of consciousness, in order to most effectively come up with a solution to a dilemma. The more complex a problem is, the less likely our conscious cognitive process is to be able to solve it in any reasonable period of time. It's a simple matter of resource use. If the conscious process is indeed single-threaded, at a certain point it can only switch between so many sub-threads before it runs out of resources. The unconscious mind is apparently not limited in the same way.

In practical terms, when I begin a project, I often wait several days after being given the requirements and parameters before actually doing anything about it. That is, I don't give it much conscious thought at all. I will allow my mind to freely wander to and away from it. I will sometimes "play with it" in my thoughts, deliberately "blurring" my thoughts about it, concentrating on feelings and impressions rather than concrete ideas and thoughts. Then, when I begin the actual planning process, it seems that much of the structure is already present in my mind, having been created by my unconscious thought processes. Like the elves that helped the shoemaker in the old fable, much of the creative work has already been done for me, as if by magic. And the quality of the work is much better than it would be if I had struggled over it consciously.

This is not to negate the function of the deliberative process. It certainly has its' place, and comes to play at just such a point, filling in the details and creating all of the actual end product. The product cannot be produced without it. But the design, the inspiration, comes from the unconscious.

At any rate, while I know that this concept is not yet fully fleshed out, "I sink zis means somesing. I sink zis is important." It is my hope that perhaps this might stimulate others to do the grunt work.

Intuition - Leaving is Besieging

For Christmas, my Princess gave me a new subscription to Scientific American Mind magazine, which I have bought previously at several airports on occasion. At one time I had a subscription to Scientific American magazine, but somehow I let it lapse. I had always enjoyed reading Scientific American magazine. Its articles are written not by journalists, but by scientists and researchers. They deal with cutting-edge science, and I am a cutting-edge type of person.

When I discovered Scientific American Mind magazine, which is published by Scientific American, I immediately fell in love with it. The subject matter is fascinating, as it joins together research from several fields that until recently have remained largely separate: Psychology/Psychiatry, and Neuroscience. Only recently have we had the tools to undertake a serious study of the mechanisms of the brain, which, like most of our body, is composed of trillions of nearly-identical cells, neurons for the most part, but which is capable of incredible computational skill, such that it will be a long time before computers begin to catch up with it. There is an inner simplicity to its structure which yields an enormity of complexity and power.

At any rate, while perusing the web site and the magazine recently, I came across a series of articles provoking thought in me, which I would like to share. In fact, most of what I read in Scientific American/Mind provokes thought in me, but this line of thought in particular has pervaded my mind quite a bit recently. This leads me to believe that there is something important (at least to me) lurking underneath it somewhere.

In this case, I was poking around on the Scientific American web site, and came across a series of blog posts, which were all centered around the concept of Intuition versus Deliberation, and related to several articles that deal with the concepts in various ways. It seems that there is now scientific evidence that "intuition" is more reliable than "deliberation" in the decision-making process. I believe (intuitively?) that this is likely to be confirmed, and that the consequences of these discoveries is likely to bring a great deal of benefit to the human race.

Our conscious mind is at least from shortly after birth, almost entirely consumed with that process we call "Thought." Thought, Cognition, and Consciousness are all closely related, and all related to the process of pattern-recognition, abstraction, modelling, and organization which is constantly occurring in our mind, at least when we are awake (or "conscious"), and perhaps even when we are not.

Because we are social beings, we have also developed languages that enable us to communicate thoughts as abstractions to one another, and because we use that language pervasively throughout our lifetime, it is also a large component of our thought process. We often think in "words," as if we were having a conversation with ourselves. This thought process is enormously complex, and must consume a great deal of menta resources, as evidenced by the sheer size of the areas of the brain devoted to it.

However, there is another process at work in our brains as well, one that precedes thought. Our brain is, after all, a computer of sorts. It is capable of performing incredibly complex calculations far faster than any computer we have yet created. It is also capable of learning, responding "intuitively" to positive and negative stimuli, and creating various subroutines that govern the decision-making process.

A perfect example is that of walking. We are not born with the capacity to walk. It is learned when we are infants, and it takes several years to learn it. We learn it by a combination of factors, including observation and motivation. We are motivated by desire. A baby wants to move from one place to another. It begins by squirming, then rolling, followed by crawling, and finally walking. Walking involves the coordination of thousands of muscles, combined with the perception of very fine differences in balance. It is not an easy trick to master. This is why robots do not yet have legs (at least like ours). Yet, once we have learned how to do it, we perform it without any cognitive thought involved. Each step involves a complex sequence of perceptions, both internal (balance) and external (environment), followed by a sequence of decisions (which leg to move, how much force to apply to which muscles, etc.).

Thus, it is provable that we are capable of making decisions accurately without conscious thought.

Therefore, it is logical to presume that we might be able to apply the same sort of process to our other decision-making. We are constantly making conscious decisions as well. We decide what to eat, what clothes we should wear, whom we should marry, whether and when to use force as a means to accomplishing our goals. However, our conscious thought process is somewhat hampered with our language. Our language is inexact, and at times ambiguous.

The language of integral mathematics is rigorous and exact. It is this very exactness which makes computers so reliable (not software, but computers - that is a different topic altogether). Computers deal exclusively with integral numbers, and apply exact mathematical rules to them. 1 + 1 always equals 2. A computer processor is, at it's core, simply a counter. It adds by counting up, and subtracts by counting down. Multiplication is a derivative of addition, and Division is a derivative of subtraction. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are the basis of all mathematics. Mathematics is the basis of all computer programming.

Human language, on the other hand, is much less exact. We employ a limited set of linguistic symbols to represent a nearly (or perhaps entirely) limitless set of ideas. How we accomplish this is by employing the same symbols in different ways, in a highly-complex system of context and association, which is not integral in nature at all. When we parse human speech, we must interpret it. Each individual word is evaluated in the context of the words with which it is combined. Even more ambiguously, words are evaluated in the context of a set of ideas which forms an environmental influence upon their meaning. In other words, language is highly nuanced. Hence, we may at times have difficulty understanding one another. And because we use language internally in our cognitive thought process, we may even have difficulty understanding our own thoughts.

This thought process is further influenced by desire, which forms an environmental influence upon our internal language. We hear what we want to hear. We believe what we want to believe. We are capable of deliberately, and even unconsciously ignoring "unpleasant" thoughts and ideas. What You Seek Is What You Get.

Quite often, this leads to an internal conflict of thought, a debate of sorts which is constantly being conducted in our cognitive thought process. This is the essence of deliberation. The resulting decisions may or may not be helpful. Therefore, we are prone to "error." This can be seen in such things as "criminal" activity, immorality, and psychological disturbances of various sorts.

However, it is important to remember that there is still a part of our brain which remains incredibly reliable. This is the part of our brain which makes decisions without thought, without deliberation, the part of our mind which we use to walk, to run, to dance, to throw a ball, and so on. Is it possible to employ that reliability in the cognitive decision-making process? I believe this has already been demonstrated.

Albert Einstein spoke of the "leap of intuition." He often proposed ideas that did not arrive via any deliberative or logical process. They just "seemed right." It took a great deal of logical and scientific work to confirm these ideas, and many of them were confirmed long after his death. Yet, they were confirmed.

As children, before we are capable of conceiving complex abstract ideas, we seem to have a similar intuitive ability to "know" what is the right decision to make. Certainly, we do not always make the right decision as children, but when we are confronted with the consequences, we generally own up to our mistakes. It is simply desire which causes children to make wrong decisions, just as it is desire which causes adults to make them. The difference is that the child will "know" that they are doing wrong. An adult will often rationalize wrong-doing.

The word "intuition" is derived from 2 Latin roots, "in" (at, on) and "tueri" (to look at, watch over), and in that sense, essentially means "direct perception." This is a revealing definition, as it infers that one can perceive things without cognitive thought, which is of course true, as exemplified by infants.

It would seem that if it were possible to employ such intuition in the decision-making process, as we do when walking, and filter out the internal dialog/debate, the consequences of our decisions would improve dramatically. Various scientific studies I have been reading about in Scientific American Mind, and elsewhere seem to confirm this idea.

In fact, various forms of meditation seem to focus on such a process, that of emptying the cognitive mind of all abstract thought. While meditation seems to be associated with religion in many cases, I believe there is some aspect of the process which is not religious in nature, but purely a form of mental discipline, one that allows the intuitive, unconscious, and highly-accurate mechanism in our brains to be used in the decision-making process.

I look forward to hearing about continued study in this area.

A Phantom Asparagus

Anyway, as I was at some point beyond the visceral amplitude required for some form of ordinality, insofar as many a hungry and iterative condition would permit me to bewail the pandemonium of a phantom asparagus, I betook me to assail in some small fashion, as it were, absent from any fall plankton, or juice in a flesh gibbon.

The means of such, having befallen upon accomplishments both vicarious and educational, so it was as it should have been perhaps, a glancing backwater host of effervescent personification. No mere impediment would inscribe this invective. Only a shoeshine in a vacuum, and sometimes not at all, of course.

Altruism aside, let us happen upon a grotesque, for only in the event of a vacant idiocy would this imaginative edification find any form of ornamental vice with which to whiten your wick. Sick? Boy, a bowl of basins, not officially so, but more in the vein of a scar victoriously painted inside the phantom asparagus, handling its' own fruit in a stockyard cannibal. It is in such a suit, me a fortunate empty (of course), and only a king with a kind of a certain wild animal.

Assiduously, the vale investing afar of a formal opulence, in the form of a fairy, fell from an apple ordinary and able, belatedly pasted itself by the bare and bony flail. Until such time as would in all honesty, hitherto and frowardly skating over the silken tumbler, such and if as much as might, the candy became a kind of cane, angling about on a single wet and wobbly wheel. But then you might have known from the mangled overture, the vicious wink, the thought of which I stank.

And so upon the leaving of this painted cowboy, let not your best be less than blessed, in case of a crazed and lazy crayon, long and lost in the caverns upon which to play no fluid icon. A smatter of actual happenstance would in all victory be spoiled by the gradual violence in a kettle of kitty litter left behind by a blonde in obvious bob.

Eeyore, about seventh.

Chutney (Uncle)

Popular Quantum Mechanics

As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with the Mental Health Services Department. How many wives he had, I'll never know. But he was not wearing any pajamas. He did, however, upon hearing about my interest in all things scientific, recommend a movie to me: "What the Bleep Do We Know?" I liked the fellow, so I rented it...

I must mention to begin with, that I am a cinephile. Yes, I do obscene things to films. Mostly, I like to watch. In any case, of all the thousands of films I have watched, there were only 2 that I can remember walking out on after paying to see them. One was "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." The other was "What the Bleep Do We Know?". I don't remember exactly when I watched the first 15 minutes of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," but it was when it was first released, and I was in a movie theater. Thankfully, I had only rented "What the Bleep Do We Know?," so I saved myself a few extra bucks.

The fact that the film was recommended to me by a man with the Mental Health Services Department tends to prove Einstein's statement regarding infinites: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." I'm not sure where they got their so-called "scientists," but one of them was apparently Ramtha (J.Z.Knight).

The film was ostensibly an AOL-User-Level explanation of Quantum Physics. However, I never did hear anything about Quantum Physics, during the 30 minutes of the film that I did watch. I did hear a lot of references to Quantum Physics, but no actual science. Instead, I heard a lot of hair-brained presumptuous conclusions that were drawn from the lack of understanding that Science still has regarding Quantum Physics. The study of Quantum Physics is at this point still at the stage of Ten Blind Men examining an elephant. If The Man With a Wooden Leg Named Smith, or Richard Feynman were (still) around, one or both of them would straighten all of those so-called scientists out. The fact that one can make predictions about behaviors of something with a certain uncertainty does not indicate that one understands what one is observing. Any gambler can tell you the odds of rolling snake-eyes. Nobody can (yet) tell you why those odds are what they are. And anyone that pretends to tell you is a fool, or a con artist.

Science, like Religion, is a search for Truth, the ultimate nature of reality. It is a search for the underlying Principles that govern existence. And coincidentally, there are as many charlatans involved in the field of Science as there are in the field of Religion. These people are opportunists, taking advantage of the principle What You Seek Is What You Get, and luring the weak-minded into their orbit, in their own search for self-aggrandizement. And like everyone else, What They Seek Is What They Get. They do not get the Truth; they get a cult of worshipful followers.

What I mean is this: Everybody wants to know the ultimate nature of reality. However, most people are lazy. They are not willing to discipline themselves and accept the Truth regardless of how much it hurts. Therefore, they settle for less, because their desire to not work and discipline themselves is greater than their desire for the Truth. One of the hardest Truths to admit is simply "I do not know." Therefore, in both Science and Religion, there are those who are willing to supply a ready explanation for almost anything. From pseudo-Quantum-Physics to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, explanations abound for things which are not yet explained, or those Truths that are the hardest to swallow.

I am going to go just a little deeper now, and discuss some of the particular ideas expressed in the film. Some of these ideas are quite popular, and even taken for granite (pun intended), but erroneous just the same. One of these was the idea that on a sub-atomic level, atoms are composed of extremely small particles in a relatively extremely large vacuum. Now, I suppose that depends on what one means by "particles," and what one means by "a vacuum."

The word vacuum is defined as "a space entirely devoid of matter." But what exactly is "matter?" The word matter is defined as "the substance or substances of which any physical object consists or is composed." But what is "substance?" The word substance is defined as "that of which a thing consists; physical matter or material." And so, like the science of Physics itself, we discover that even language is relative, because we have now come full circle, from defining the word "vacuum" as being relative to the absence of "matter," and "matter" as "substance," and finally "substance" as "matter." In the end, we have defined a way to talk about things of which we know absolutely nothing. We have a perfectly circular reference.

So, how about the word "particle?" The word particle is defined as "a minute portion, piece, fragment, or amount; a tiny or very small bit." Of course, this definition begs the question "a piece of what?" Why, matter, of course! In fact, the science of Physics is not so much about the ultimate nature of things, but about how to measure them. And measurement is always relative, as Einstein so eloquently pointed out.

So, where am I going with this? Well, first of all, doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous that the universe is composed almost entirely of nothing? Why, if it was composed of all of these separated particles with vast expanses of absolutely nothing surrounding them, how on earth would they have any influence upon one another? It shocks the senses to think of it. It sounds like magic. These "particles" would have to be entirely telepathic with regards to one another.

Don't get me wrong; there are good reasons for thinking in terms of "particles" and "vacuums" and these circular definitions of things like "matter." In fact, we owe a lot to the sciences, and the various disciplines of Physics in particular. We are able to interact with the universe more successfully and accurately as a result. That is, we are able to obtain those things we seek with greater success.The mathematics which describe Physics are accurate as far as they are able to go, and that indicates a degree of accuracy in the science itself.

However, it seems to me that we should constantly be aware that these words, and our thoughts themselves are not the things about which we think. They are simply conveniences, constructs which we use to communicate in our minds and with one another about these things. Which brings me to my second point, the discussion in the film of "uncertainty."

From the film, it would appear that all is uncertain, that uncertaintly opens up a realm of possibilities regarding life itself, consciousness, perception, and our ability to "create our reality." These sorts of ideas are pure rubbish. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is astounding in and of itself, with plenty of far-reaching implications, without having to encroach on the "macro world" in which we live. In fact, it purely relates to the sub-atomic level of things, and to the concept of measurement in particular. Now, before I continue, I want to make it clear that this does not imply that the sub-atomic level of things is irrelevant in the "macro world" - only that it is a specific realm, and that the conditions within that sub-atomic realm are necessarily different than the conditions in the "macro realm" of existence. Certainly, sub-atomic conditions have an influence, but that influence is not necessarily of the magnitude that is often implied.

In a nutshell, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that there is an inverse relationship in the accuracy of the measurement of position versus momentum of a physical object. On a sub-atomic level, this indicates that the position of a sub-atomic particle may be measured, but that if the position is measured, the momentum will not be known. Conversely, if the momentum of a particle is measured, the position will not be known.

That explanation is both simple and complex, depending on how you look at it. It is important first to understand what is meant by "position," and what is meant by "momentum," and these concepts in and of themselves are difficult to comprehend, because they involve 4 dimensions, the last of which is that mysterious dimension we call "time," a dimension unlike any of the other 3, in that it seems to travel in one direction only, and that is forwards. Of course, it is not time that travels, but we who travel in time. But I digress.

In order to understand Physics, one must necessarily include Time in all equations. For example, the classic Newtonian formula of F = ma (Force = mass * accelleration) necessarily involves time. Accelleration is the increase in velocity of an object over time. Velocity is the rate of change in position of an object relative to another arbitrary object over time. For example, one cannot describe the speed of a car without using time. If a car is moving at 50 miles per hour, this means that in the time span of one hour, a car will have changed its position relative to the earth's surface by 50 miles. So, while the number "50" suffices to communicate the speed of the car, the actual mathematical formula for the speed of the car is (50 * 1 mile) / 1 hour. Think about it. How does one divide miles by hours? And yet, the math holds true.

But, if one is measuring the position of an object, one must necessarily speak of the position of that object at a given point in time. Let me repeat myself: To measure the position of an object, one can only do so by measuring the position at a single point in time. The concept is not as simple as it sounds, because time is a continuum. It does not stop. It cannot be subdivided into distinct moments, for each of those moments can be subdivided infinitely into smaller and smaller segments. There is no such things as a "particle of time," any more than there is such a thing as a "particle of matter." It is a convenience, a means of thinking and communicating about the phenomenon. Yet, paradoxically, we continually seem to exist at a point in time which is constantly in motion. We are trapped as it were, between the "past" and the "future." There is no present; it is infinitely small. Yet, it is only in the present that we seem to exist, due to the nature of the way we perceive reality.

Let me give another example, that of taking a photograph. As you may know, to take a photograph, a light-sensitive medium is exposed to light for a brief period of time, determined by the shutter speed of the camera taking the picture. The "sharpness" of the photograph is affected by the length of the interval of time during which the shutter was opened. We see what seems to be a moment frozen in time in the photograph. But that is not at all what we see. We are seeing a brief interval of time frozen in the photograph. We are seeing the visual effects of a continuous interval of time in which light was allowed to bombard the surface of the film, and during that interval, everything in the photograph was in motion. Yet, if the shutter speed was quick enough, it looks for all the world as if we are seeing a single "moment" in time. On the other hand, if it were possible to open the shutter for the infinitessimally small point between the past and the future, what would we see? Nothing. No activity could have taken place, for motion cannot exist without time. Motion is the change in position that takes place during an interval of time.

Now, this all relates both to the Uncertainty Principle, and to the Wave-Particle Duality problem with which theoretical Physicists have been wrestling for many years. This problem is centered around the fact that, depending upon how one measures, a sub-atomic particle such as an electron or a photon will behave like a particle, a distinct "piece" of something, and a wave, a continuum in a medium which has mathematical characteristics of frequency and amplitude. Sub-atomic particles indeed seem to behave like either of the 2, depending upon how one measures them. That is, if one measures the frequency of a light wave, there is no position, as the position must change over a period of time, and therefore is unknowable. On the other hand, if one measures the position of a particle of light, theoretically, one must discard time, since the position will change with time, and if the position changes, the position is not known. Yet, it is sometimes convenient to speak of photons and electrons as particles, and sometimes convenient to think of them as waves.

This brings me back to the idea that atoms consist mostly of empty space. This is purely a crock of s**t. In fact, there is no such thing as empty space, since empty space is nothing, and nothing is the absense of anything, including space. The pure fact is, if there is nothing between this and that, this and that are in contact with one another, by definition. So, in fact, the fact that whatever is between electrons, protons and neutrons is not measurable does not imply that it does not exist. It simply implies that it is not (yet) measurable. There is nothing we know of which can perceive its existence.

These concepts are indeed difficult to understand, and theoretical physicists have been wrangling over them for decades now, without any final success, as of yet. Anyone giving serious thought to these ideas is likely to wind up dizzy. Anyone without sufficient discipline of thought is likely to go wildly astray, and at that point, they are no longer scientists; they are simply kooks. Which brings me back to the film (at last!).

This is a film filled with kooks. It was kooky to think that Quantum Physics could be explained to the average AOL User, Joe SixPack, or your average everyday couch-potato. Anyone watching this film is likely to be lured into some sort of New Age Cult, or simply confused and/or disgusted (I was disgusted). It was kooky for any of the people who apparently thought of themselves as "scientists" to participate in the making of the film, since it is patently obvious to any real scientist that these concepts are unresolved, paradoxical, and require years of discipline to understand at all. It was insane for anyone in the film to think that one might apply the concepts of Quantum Physics to life in the "macro world" in which we live, at least as far as its having some influence over our day-to-day life. These concepts are only applicable with any real influence on a sub-atomic level.

And so, we are left with a modern-day, quasi-scientific equivalent of a bunch of pajama-clad Hari Krishnas, dancing madly backwards in an airport, selling copies of the Bhagavad Gita to unwary travellers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to throw up.