PappawJack’s Ramblings

USA Today recently ran this news article:

Pope: Don't pursue immortality medicine

VATICAN CITY March 10, 2008 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI says an immortality pill might not be such a good thing.
During a homily in a church near St. Peter's Square on Sunday, the pontiff was reflecting on the goals of science and wondering whether a pill against death would be a good discovery.

In the view of the pope, the world would be full of old people and there would be no more space for the young. The 80-year-old pontiff says it's better not to hope for biological life that can be made to last forever.

I commented on the article:
One of the most important goals of the human race is the advancement of knowledge. A person accumulates a vast store of information over their lifetime and when they die, much of that information is lost. Not being able to communicate all you have learned in a lifetime is truly a great tragedy. If we can overcome death, then I beleive we can easily overcome any overcrowding problems we might face. One thing we might do is reduce the birthrate and another is to expand into outer space. Another thing we might do is to allow people to die when they want to.

The Importance of Good Communication

When asked what I think causes more problems than anything else in the world, I invariably reply, "poor communications". By my answer, I am not referring to the physical layer of communications. The internet, telephones, newspapers, and television do a very good job in that area. The problem lies in written and oral communications. Furthermore, I don't want to discuss the problems of translating one language into another, although there are certainly profound problems with that, not the least of which is finding words in the destination language which convey the full intended meaning in the source language. What I want to discuss is written or oral communications intended for an audience conversant in the same language.

Too many people don't ask the right question or don't answer the question they are asked and therein lies one of communications worst problems. When you ask someone a question, it's generally something you have been thinking about for some period of time and in so doing, you have built up in your mind a certain amount of background material. You must supply this background material to the person before you ask the question or they will often misinterpret what you're asking. This is a very common problem between people who have worked or lived together for a long time. It's so easy to assume the other person has been thinking along the same lines about the problem as you have when in fact they have not and they have no idea what your question means. They misinperpret the question and their answer sounds to you like the answer to another question altogether.

And then there is the "definition of terms" problem. The same word means vastly different things to different people - sometimes even the opposite of that intended. Define your terms before you deliver your message, in such a way that they can not be misunderstood.

Before speaking or putting pen to page, you should consider the audience you are addressing. Try to think how that audience will interpret what you are about to say based upon their attitudes, opinions and mentality and if you can't find words to match your audience, then you must define the words you are about to use. It's a mistake to do this in a way that implies your audience is lacking knowledge or wisdom. This makes me think of the one small piece of poetry which I read as a teenager and was so impressed by it that I memorized it way back then. It is the last stanza of Emerson's "Merlin's Song" and it goes like this:

      The music that can deepest reach

      And cure all ill is cordial speech.

      Mask thy wisdom with delight.

      Toy with the bow, yet hit the white.

      Of all wits uses, the main one

      Is to live well with who has none.

My interpretation of what Emerson is saying is: If there is any ill will (misunderstanding) between you and someone else, speak nicely to them (no ranting or raving or raised voice). Don't come off as being smarter than they are. Gently prod them into coming up with the solution you believe is correct and then show delight in it. The best use you can make of your wit is to get along well with others who don't seem to have any wit. I at first thought that last part sounded a little egotistical but later reasoned that whether you think it is or not does not detract from the fact that this is some of the most valuable advice you can find if your aim is to communicate well with others. So you see it's fine to be smarter than others as long as you don't act (or talk or write) like you are. Even though it's all right to be wrong, many people will take offence when told that they are.

A great way to get your point across is to use analogy or allegory. In that way you are enabling your audience to come up with the meaning you intend but it feels to them more like they are coming up with that meaning. This is one way of "toying with the bow" as Emerson put it. Another way is to provide a lot of the background information you used in arriving at the meaning and allowing the audience to gradually come to the same conclusion you have. In other words, don't just "hit the nail on the head", but "turn the screw until it's tight enough".

Being a good listener is very important for good communication. If you wait to hear the rest of the story before you raise an objection, it may turn out that they are right and you will have learned something. I always say that a person who can't do this is "listening with their mouth". Besides, a good listener many times gives the impression of being smarter than they really are.

Having references or evidence for your ideas lends credence to them and is invaluable if the purpose your communication is to convince your audience of something. Of course, if you can devise an experiment to illustrate your meaning then you can "show" instead of just "tell" your audience that you know what you're talking about.

There's an old story about a preacher who went to an insane asylum to deliver a sermon for the unfortunate residents. He began his sermon with the question: "Why are we all here?" and then he repeated with emphasis: "Why are we all here?" At that point a man in the back row stood up and said: "We're here because we're not all there!" Humorous, but the man may have inadvertantly given the best answer ever to that age old question, at least for those people that don't accept faith based beliefs.

When I was barely 5 years old, my Mother asked me why I thought we were all here and I replied promptly that we were here to learn as much as we could about everything. I have lived my whole life (70) years according to that tenet and I still think it is the best answer.

The more we learn about everything, the better life will be for everyone.

Let me only state that learning faith based beliefs is not included in my definition of learning. Learning means to discover evidence that something is so, not to just say that it is so.

You can not truly believe anything just by saying that you believe it.

If you delude yourself in this way you are either a hypocrite or you are insane.

Saying you believe something without evidence is dangerous because it will

put you at odds with others who say they believe differently.

If you can produce evidence for your beliefs, then you have a chance

of convincing others of what you believe.

Having faith that something is true does not make it so.

Wanting something to be true does not make it so.

Saying you believe something on faith alone is only "saying you believe it"

and not "truly believing it".

In other words, you can NOT make yourself believe something just

by saying you believe it.

You can hope something is true without any evidence at all,

but you cannot believe anything without evidence.

To truly believe something without evidence is a form of insanity!

Whether something is true or not, you cannot make it true by saying you believe it!

If you think there is a form of belief that requires no evidence,

what you are thinking of is "hope" and not "belief".

Using two different names for the same concept is confusing and "matter" and "energy" both refer to the same concept and "space" and "time" refer to the same concept. Matter is just concentrated energy and what space is to one observer, time is to another observer. Regarding matter and energy as two separate things and space and time as two separate things seems to cause problems. We need just one word in both cases and do away with the words "matter", "energy", "space", and "time".

I don't know whether it's possible or not but I feel it would help remove some of the strangeness of quantum mechanics and relativity. Physicists do much of their work using a system of units called quantum-gravity units (or Planck units). This is a system of units in which h-bar (h/2pi), G, and c are set to unity. Where h is Planck's constant, G is the universal gravitational constant, and c is the speed of light. However, even in this system of units, mass and energy are still treated as separate entities as are space and time. After converting to this system of units, it's only a matter (no pun intended) of inserting a factor of c or c squared here and there to convert everything to "mattergy" and "spime".

So far, Einstein seems to be almost the only one who has really accepted the equivalence of mass and energy and the equivalence of space and time. No one else can seem to get rid of the old idea of separate entities. Our universe is really just spime filled with mattergy!

Now I can't say I put a lot of time and effort into composing this small article. I'll have to say I put a lot of spime and mattergy into composing it.

Quantum Mechanics describes the butterflies that cause the storms we call reality.

God’s will (AKA fate) is whatever just happened.

Catma is better than dogma!

Religion depends far too heavily on the belief that life is something special.

The difference between religion and science:

It is possible to disprove scientific theories but impossible to disprove religious dogma.

Religious people are not required to believe scientific theories.

Scientists strive to disprove them.

They are our best description of reality.

Our environment is intelligent. After all, it designed life.

I’m sorry. My Karma ran over your dogma.

The biggest problem in quoting from the Bible is selecting material to quote that is truly relevant to your purpose and yet is something which is still applicable in today's world. If you quote something that sounds as if it might not apply in today's world, then you must also supply an interpretation of your quote that is broad enough to make it applicable. If you find it difficult to come up with this broad interpretation, then you are trying to quote what I call an "exiom". This is a contraction for "ex-axiom". If it is truly relevant and applicable, I consider it to be an "axiom". It might not truly be an axiom according to the dictionary definition of axiom, but this is an easy way to classify and discuss Biblical quotes. Even the most zealous dogmatist will agree that there are some exioms in the Bible. I don’t think anyone today would cut off one of their fingers if they accidentally touched a pig (I’m not sure that’s what the rule was in the Bible, but I’m sure you get the idea).

I believe that you can avoid most of the exioms in the Bible by just reading the words attributed to Jesus. Thomas Jefferson is reported to have said that he did not believe everything in the Bible but he believed in the philosophy of Jesus Christ. He even had a Bible made up mostly of the sayings of Jesus. It’s called "The Jefferson Bible" ( http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/ ). So the difficulty in good Biblical quotes comes down to deciding whether your quote is an axiom or an exiom.

No one can know all the massive amount of knowledge and wisdom we've accumulated in the last two thousand years that might possibly turn axioms to exioms, but the weirdest, most unfathomable thing is that people, who know enough of that knowledge and wisdom and even accept it as true, still quote the exioms that refute it. Some people say they believe the earth is only six thousand years old and humans did not descend from primates even though they know about carbon dating and fossil records. Other people say the Bible should be interpreted "literally", but I'm not sure what that really means.

Islamic extremists believed they were interpreting their religious books literally when they flew planes loaded with passengers into the Twin Towers in New York and when they committed many other heinous acts of terrorism. Down through the ages, ever since there was a "written word", many millions if not billions of people have been slain in the name of literal interpretations.

Just what is a "literal interpretation"? If a group of people are asked individually for a literal interpretation of one of the books of the Bible, do you think their interpretations would agree?

The Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary defines the word "literal" as follows:

As you can see there are even several meanings for the word "literal" itself.

In truth, interpretation, even "literal interpretation", is a subjective process. Words don’t have exact definitions. Words have dictionary definitions, but they also have connotations. And even if everyone uses only dictionary definitions from the same dictionary, words still have different connotations to different people. Take for instance the words "slain" and "killed". For example: "In the gun battle, 3 of the men were killed by the police" vs. "In the gun battle, 3 of the men were slain by the police". They both mean to take life away, but "slain" has different connotations from "killed". When translating a sentence containing either word into a different language, that other language may not have both words available and the translator has to use what he believes is the closest word available and so the translation will not be as easy to interpret "literally". The Bible, I’m sure you will agree, has been translated several times and translators had to make those kinds of decisions many many times.

Then there is the fact that even though the Bible may be the divine word of God, it is the divine word of God as communicated to humans thousands of years ago when much less was known about the true nature of the universe. We have discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe and that the earth goes around the sun. We know what makes the grass green and the sky blue and that our sun is a star just like all the other stars we see in the night sky. If all we have discovered today had been known in Biblical times, I think the Bible would read a lot differently today.

I actually believe it is impossible to write something today that can be "literally interpreted" correctly even 200, much less 2,000 years in the future. Look at some of Benjamin Franklin’s or Thomas Jefferson’s writings and try to literally interpret them so that that interpretation agrees with anyone else’s literal interpretation. Or, conversely ask a lawyer or law maker how difficult it is to write so that their writings will not be misinterpreted many years in the future. Just read some laws that were written 200 or so years ago and see how appropriate they are to the present.

Now, are you sure you want to "literally interpret" a 2,000 year old Book that has been translated several times from languages that aren’t spoken today.

The spiritual, moral, and ethical content of the Bible are not necessarily lost by a liberal interpretation but may even be enhanced because it may be much closer to the intended interpretation!

It seems the human race has always considered itself to hold a special place in the universal scheme of things. I suppose it's only natural, but they (the human race) has so far always turned out to be wrong in this assumption. Once upon a time the earth was considered the center of everything, then the sun was the center, then the solar system, etc. Now it seems we believe that everything we can detect with all of our most sensitive instruments is the entire universe.

I would like to propose that our detectable universe is merely a very small part of a much larger universe. I read this small article a while back that got me to thinking along these lines:

Ever wonder where in the universe you’re headed?

"We’re Going Thataway"

From "Discover" September 2000

While sprawled in a lawn chair, munching a labor day hot dog under the late-summer sun, you may feel perfectly at rest. It’s an illusion, of course. Earth is spinning, orbiting, and swooping at hundreds of miles per second, carrying you on a complicated pathway through deep space. The motions range from the familiar progression around the sun, which touches off the start of autumn on September 22, to arcane movements that betray the hidden construction of the universe.

The primary step in this celestial dance is your daily circle on the spinning Earth, and your speed has everything to do with latitude—zero at the poles and a maximum of 1,040 miles per hour, or 0.3 miles per second, at the equator. If you’re not afraid of the math, you can find your exact speed by multiplying the cosine of your latitude by 1,040. This works out to nearly 800 miles per hour in New York City or Indianapolis (latitude 40 degrees north) but just 450 mph in Fairbanks (65 degrees north).

The next complicating factor is Earth’s yearly revolution around the sun, at an average speed of 18.5 miles per second. To get a feel for this movement, face the midday sun and picture yourself orbiting to the right. When watching a sunrise, our planet’s rotation carries you forward—that is, toward the sun—but the much faster orbital motion is hurling you upward, around the sun and toward a spot high in the south.

The sun itself takes a 250-million-year carousel ride around the nucleus of our galaxy, the Milky Way, dragging Earth along for the ride. Visualizing this swift motion, some 140 miles per second, is particularly easy this month. Along with most of the stars of the night sky, we rush straight up at nightfall, toward the cross-shaped constellation Cygnus and its brightest star, Deneb, nearly overhead in early evening. The galaxy’s densely packed nucleus hovers lowish in the south, marked by a brightening in the misty glow of the Milky Way.

The Milky Way, part of a small gathering of galaxies called the Local Group, is moving too. We’re falling toward the center of the group at about 25 miles per second. And in 1969, scientists noticed a strange distortion in the ubiquitous cosmic microwave background, radiation thought to be left over from the Big Bang. That distortion implies that the whole galactic neighborhood is moving about 370 miles per second toward the constellation Hydra. This unexpected and still unexplained motion might result from the pull of vast super-clusters or walls of galaxies—the biggest known structures in the universe.

Our celestial velocity could also reveal what holds the superclusters together. Cosmologists believe that more than 90 percent of the universe consists of dark matter—invisible subatomic particles that make themselves known only by their gravity. These particles, if they exist, do not generally associate with ordinary atoms, but they occasionally collide anyway, producing some secondary effects,

So as we circle the Milky Way’s center, we should plow through swarms of dark matter. In June, our planet’s orbit around the sun carries us in the same direction as the galactic rotation; in January, we move against the flow. We should therefore slam through more of the evanescent particles in summer than in winter. This past February, a Chinese-Italian research collaboration claimed to see just such an effect (see last month’s Works in Progress column).

Interestingly, September brings not only the time of the equinox, when day and night are equal in duration. It also gives us the time of another equality, when Earth’s motion about the sun neither adds to, nor subtracts from, our orbital velocity around the galaxy. Something to ponder as you savor the dwindling lazy days of summer.

From this article, I extracted the following motions:

1.) Earths Rotation – 1,040 mph (or 0.3 miles/sec.) at the equator. 800 mph (.23 miles/sec.) at Indianapolis ( lat. 40 deg.)

2.) Earths Revolution (around Sun) – averages 18.5 miles/sec.

3.) Solar Systems Revolution about Galactic Center - 140 miles/sec. (250 Million Years per orbit)

4.) Milky Way’s motion within the Local Group of Galaxies – 25 miles/sec. Toward the center of the group.

5.) Motion of the Local Group of Galaxies toward Constellation Hydra – 370 miles/sec.

So, you see, that "370 miles per second toward the constellation Hydra" is what got me started thinking and wondering if we're not wrong once again in thinking "our" universe is all there is.

Margarine

          In the United States of America we have separation of Church and State and public schools are “State”, since they are supported by government taxes.  It then stands to reason that public schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that must be accepted on faith.  In other words, everything taught in public schools should have the quality of being provable or disprovable by either experiment or logic.  I don’t mean by this that we should not teach “theories” in public schools.  All knowledge amassed by humankind throughout the ages is made up of theories.  The word “theory” really only means “capable of being disproved”.  Science doesn’t try to “prove” anything.  Science constructs theories that can be used to describe and predict what we observe and then tries to improve or disprove them.  Einstein did not disprove Newton's theories of gravitation and motion.  Einstein’s theories of relativity improved Newton's theories with theories that applied in situations not foreseen in Newton’s time.

      Faith based beliefs on the other hand, can never be disproved because they aren’t theories.  They are “dogma” and stated as being absolutely true.

          Many people confuse morals and ethics with religious faith.  Morals and ethics are a big part of religion, but they don’t require faith for their acceptance.  They were arrived at by experiment and logic and could well be (and should be) taught in public schools.

          Not only must we restrict what we teach in public schools to that which is provable or disprovable by experiment or logic, but we must select those theories which are most likely to be true.  If there are several theories about a particular topic, we must select the theory which is best supported by experiment and logic.  If instead we try to teach all of them equally well, then it will either take too long to teach or we must cut back on the amount of information we are trying to get across for each theory.

          Let’s teach our children those things that are best supported by experiment and logic.  Teach “theory” not “dogma”.  Teaching anything that requires faith for its substantiation is only proper in churches or religious institutions.