More Profound Things: The Living

There are many things and concepts within the collective worldviews of humanity that are considered pretty mundane. However, there’s certainly a collection of things and ideas which rise to the top in profoundness when compared and contrasted with the ordinary everyday routine. These are the sorts of profound things and concepts which keep you awake at night, pondering the Big Issues. No two people will come up with identical lists. Without further ado, here are some more of mine. 

* Human Matter Matters: We are starstuff (and Big Bang stuff too). It’s pretty profound to realise that all the elements (except hydrogen) that makes you, you, once-upon-a-time resided in the interior of a massive star(s). Does that make you ‘hot’ stuff? Of course all that makes you, you - all of the fundamental bits and pieces like electrons and quarks – can be traced back to the Big Bang. That’s even more profound, though being ‘Big Bang stuff’ is probably not as poetic as being composed of ‘starstuff’.

* Spooky Observations at a Distance: When you look up at the night sky, a) is someone or something is looking back at you, or b) is no one or nothing is looking back at you? Either scenario is profound when you think of the implications.

* We Gotta Walk-That-Walk: That we have a totally upright bipedal gait, without benefit of a balancing tail, is something totally unique and therefore somewhat anomalous in the animal kingdom, despite all the obvious disadvantages. What disadvantages? For one, obviously, it’s a lot easier to fall down when you’re standing on two legs relative to four, six, eight or more. Falling over can result in serious consequences, especially if there isn’t anyone else around to come to your aid. Secondly, going bipedal called for a radical shift in our skeletal structure as well as in related musculature and organ attachment.  A bipedal gait must therefore be not only revolutionary but really of evolutionary importance. But that profound observation leads to another anomaly. If a bipedal gait without the encumbrance of a balancing tail is such a significant improvement, why haven’t more animals undergone that shift?   

* We Face Facts: Human facial features. Say you are shown a photograph of the face of a short, bald, chubby, 30-ish white male. Say you are shown a photograph of the face of a chimpanzee; the face of a lion; an Indian elephant; a grizzly bear, a koala bear, a brown rat; a German Shepard, a wallaby, a bottlenose dolphin, a pelican, an ostrich, a cobra snake; a Nile crocodile, a green tree frog; a tuna fish, a lobster, a German cockroach; a black ant; a house fly, a huntsman spider, even a flea. Now, here you stand in a police line-up looking at five short, bald, chubby 30-ish white males, five chimpanzees, five lions, etc. etc. Match the original facial photograph with one of the five suspects! While a match is likely in the case of the human males, it’s going to be on average pure guesswork with any other species or breed of species unless the individual in question had some very unique and atypical facial feature. Now, the profound question is, why do humans have unique facial features while the rest of the animal kingdom doesn’t. How do you tend to recognise a human? First and foremost by his or her face. This is all very odd because it is so very unique, yet very profound. 

Equally as profound, not only do we have unique facial features, but racial facial features. Take four ‘passport’ photos of a Caucasian, a Negro, an Asian, and an Australian Aboriginal 30-ish something male and photoshop them so that all are exactly the same shade of grey. It would still be easy to match the face to the race. What’s profound here is that those racial facial features evolved, for reason(s) unknown, within the time a small group of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa just roughly 50,000 years ago.

  

* Memory, Creativity and Chemistry: Like a book or an LP, like a film strip or a DVD, like a painting/photograph or a CD, like computer software or a tape recording, the human mind houses a record of events which we call memory. Unlike these other physical media every time your mind does a replay, it can value-add to that memory. You may have a memory for how make pizza, but unlike the recipe in the cookbook, you can be creative and change the recipe. All of that memory/creativity is based in chemistry, specifically neurochemistry, which, unlike all other kinds of chemistry, makes that possible. How, I don’t begin to comprehend, but it is so, and it is rather profound upon reflection.

* Our Family Tree is Kaput: All our human ancestors are extinct. Something is screwy somewhere! I mean there have been dozens of separate and apart hominoid/hominid species that separate modern Homo sapiens from our closest still living ancestors, the chimpanzees. All those in-betweens have gone extinct, for reason(s) unknown. That all would have succumbed to, whatever, seems to defy probability. Clearly many of those hominoid/hominid species shared many of our survival traits like possessing a relatively high degree of intelligence, tool making, group cooperation when hunting-gathering, etc. There’s no rational explanation offered up by paleoanthropologists that explains this. There’s not even that ‘easy’ answer of Homo (‘shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later’) sapiens being the fall ‘guy’ here. ‘Modern’ humans hadn’t of been thought up yet in anyone’s evolutionary philosophy when most of these extinctions took place.

* Not a Ghost of a Chance: It’s also pretty profound when you have every human culture and society from across all time frames believe in the reality of a phenomena that modern science rejects as pseudoscience or supernatural and paranormal nonsense, and it isn’t just life-after-death or an afterlife but an actual apparent manifestation of same. Some call them ghosts, wraiths, spirits, and phantoms – whatever. Actually I view (not that I actually have) ghosts, etc. as further evidence that we ‘exist’ in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, but that’s another story for another time.



The Russell Stannard Questions: Life

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. Why is the universe life-friendly?

A. The universe is both bio-friendly and not bio-friendly. 99.999% (add a few more 9’s here) of the cosmic environment is decidedly bio-unfriendly and would snuff you out so quick-smart you wouldn’t know what hit you. Of course the cosmos is also bio-friendly otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you reject a supernatural explanation, that leaves coincidence, a multiverse, or software. Coincidence is stretching things since there are just so many dials that have to be set to a very narrow range. The multiverse appeals to probability statistics – think of those millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters one of whom will type “Hamlet” word-for-word – eventually. That leaves software, or in other words a Supreme Programmer programing our universe in a bio-friendly way. 

Q. Is there extraterrestrial life, and if so, how do we humans stand in comparison as regards intellectual capacity?

A. Given the vastness of the cosmos, and the sheer number of galaxies in the observable cosmos, and the numbers of stars per galaxy with associated solar systems and the number of planets per solar system not to mention possible rogue/orphan planets and how interstellar cosmic organic chemistry associated with life is, well, cosmic, etc., you would have to be pretty brave to bet the family farm arguing Planet Earth being the proverbial cosmic IT when it comes to life. Even going up the chain from the origin of life ‘living’ molecules to unicellular life to multicellular life to intelligent life to technologically advanced life forms and advocating extreme difficulty in getting from one step to the next step on up the line, there must be – if you’re a betting person – millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the cosmos and a goodly number in our galaxy too. Further, we humans are the new boys on the block, so the odds are that any other extraterrestrial intelligences will have been around way longer that we have, and thus have evolved greater intellectual capacity that we have yet achieved. However, the interesting bit is that once intelligence is achieved, natural selection gives way to artificial selection, and part of that artificial selection might ultimately be the transition from biological intelligence to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence which will further evolve via artificial selection as machine intelligence designs ever better machine intelligences.



The Russell Stannard Questions: Mind Over Matter

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. The problem of consciousness.

A. How can your basic building blocks that are electrons, neutrons and protons combine to form atoms; atoms that combine to form molecules; molecules that combine to form complex molecules - complex molecules like organic molecules, biochemical molecules and molecules part and parcel of neurochemistry; the ultimate result being that this chain from the simple to the complex crosses a threshold from the inanimate to the animate and from the animate to the animate entity that is self-aware. It is a profound mystery why one has a fairly unique structure comprised of the same fundamental bits and pieces that comprise all other structures but yet one that can contemplate itself. That structure is the brain and the mind that resides within that structure. The brain is the only structure in the cosmos that can examine itself and yet that structure is ultimately comprised of just electrons, neutrons and protons. However, is there really a problem if that structure can ultimate figure out how to create another structure that also has consciousness. In other words, intelligent and conscious biological software can deliberately give rise to an artificial intelligent and conscious string of software and in doing so thus create a Simulated [Virtual Reality] Universe that houses or contains an apparent (but artificially) intelligent and conscious biological entity or entities that wonders whether or not there was an artificially intelligent software program that gave rise to it. That sort of reminds me of the human who dreamed she was a butterfly who dreamed it was a human, or was that the butterfly who dreamed it was a human who dreamed she was a butterfly.

  

Q. The free will/determinism problem.

A. I tend to have a belief in absolute causality, much like both Newton and Einstein who believed in a regular clockwork universe. If X happens, Y follows. All the laws, principles and relationships of the natural universe were forged at the time of the Big Bang event and once that clock was set in motion, all else flowed from those first established laws, principles and relationships. So, in other words, determinism rules, okay? That equally holds true if we’re in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, regardless if we are, like a character in a video game a ‘puppet-on-a-string’ or the avatar as a stand-in in a simulated world for someone in the really real world, or as the consequence of someone programing a set of laws, principles and relationships then hitting ‘run program’ and standing back to see what eventuates. We’d all like to think we have free will, but if we are programmed to believe that, what harm has been done if you really do believe that what you had for dinner was something you freely did choose to have.

Q. Does complete understanding require more than solely physical explanations?

A. By complete understanding, one has to incorporate those seemingly nebulous things that reside within the mind, things that seem far removed from the physical world of forces and fields and particles and actions and reactions, etc. These so-called nebulous things revolve around consciousness and the subconscious, thinking (that’s clearly a neurochemical process), memory (clearly chemically encoded), creativity, emotions (definitely chemically driven), morals and ethics, right and wrong, a soul, spirituality, free will, etc. However, all these sorts of concepts reside in the brain or in a part of the brain normally identified as the mind. Whether mind-in-the-brain, or just in or a part of the brain, the brain is ultimately composed of fundamental particles that make up atoms that make up molecules that ultimately make up your neurochemistry and thus your brain and structures within. The proof of the pudding that these so-called nebulous concepts reside in the realm of the physical is that these concepts or things can be altered by physical things – physical happenings like injury (you can be knocked unconscious) or lose consciousness in sleep; chemical things like drugs, lack of sleep, the aging process and related can have decided effects on aspects of your personality, etc.; biological happenings like disease also can have profound effects on some of those so-called nebulous things. They can also be altered by your own self, being creative and via thinking deep thoughts which is an electrochemical process (you might think ‘morals be damned, crime does pay’) and of course closely related, the lifelong learning process (as in learning and altering your learning about say morals/ethics; right/wrong) – as you learn, you may find that what you thought was crystal clear, black and white, is really murky and grey. The learning process (formal or otherwise) can have profound effects on your belief systems and worldviews. Learning clearly has foundations in neurochemistry.   



Astrobiology: The Jovian Planets

If you are a professional scientist interested in astrobiology (exobiology), searching for life in the Universe, your mantra is “follow the water”. If you want to find life, find liquid water first. But liquid water isn’t the total be-all-and-end-all when it comes to finding LGM – Little Green Microbes. Water, based on Planet Earth’s own terrestrial life as the only statistical sample we have, is certainly critical, but so to are lots of other things as we shall soon see.

The Jovian planets, Jupiter and Saturn, including those gas giants further out (Uranus and Neptune) continue to be overlooked as habitable abodes for ET or LGM. The logic of this escapes me as we shall soon see, for the idea that the Jovian planets could in theory harbour life forms as complex as jellyfish or other quasi-aquatic life forms even up to and including the equivalents of Jovian dolphins and whales can’t be ruled out. While Jovian extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) might be possible, Jovian ETI with technology can pretty much be ruled out, and for much the same reason as to why dolphins and whales here on Earth aren’t a technological species - they can’t build things in the environment to which they have adapted to.

So what’s needed to build us an ET? Well, minimum requirements are 1) appropriate life-as-we-know-it chemicals (CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen – and of course water or water vapour); 2) a proper comfortable environment for life-as-we-know-it (an appropriate temperature range for liquid water or water vapour); 3) mixing that brings the various inorganic and organic chemicals required into proximity; and 4) an energy source(s) to drive things along, like solar energy does for many terrestrial organisms on Earth.

It’s time to introduce the main players, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and those four essentials: CHON, environment, mixing and energy. If there is life-as-we-know-it on these four planets, then we need CHON, we need a proper environment, we need mixing to bring essentials together at one time and place, and we need a source(s) of energy.

One clarification is in order first. Although the Jovian planets are usually called “gas giants”, that is a slight misnaming. While it’s true that relative to Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the Jovian planets are indeed great big balls of gas, they still must have at their centre a solid rocky core, due to, if for no other reason, that over 4.5 billion years of their existence, asteroids, maybe even small planets, meteors, dust, and comets have all slammed into them. The rocky stuff, ultimately, must sink to the bottom forming a solid heavy element core. With that clarification made, let’s see what there is to be speculated upon.  

CHON: Any biological organisms that have been and are are being provided with appropriate CHON. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have atmospheres rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen compounds.  The CHON box is ticked on all four Jovian planets. With respect to CHON, there are probably all sorts of way more complex organic molecules present in the four Jovian atmospheres but in such relatively small quantities that are dispersed widely and deeply so as to have escaped detection to date from our relatively faraway fly-by and orbiting probes. 

Suitable Environment: All the gas giants have a Goldilocks environment (at least in places). There’s no disputing that the cloud tops are bitterly cold; the deep interiors are way too hot. But, that alone suggests that there will be a Goldilocks area in-between, probably extending vertically for hundreds of kilometres, and extending as well horizontally around the globe. That volume, given their large size (relative to Earth), comprises a lot of Goldilocks territory. The habitable environment box on all four Jovian planets is therefore also ticked.

Mixing: Since Jupiter and company have very hot interior cores and the top of the atmospheres are extremely cold, and since heat rises and cold descends, that alone suggests that mixing in their primarily gaseous/quasi-fluid body must take place. Quite apart from that, all one needs to do is view time-lapse photography of their upper atmospheres to see all the turbulent motion that takes place. A tranquil pond the gas giants aren’t. The mixing box also gets a tick.

Energy: The Jovian planets all have an abundant energy supply, albeit not photosynthesis. Solar energy is highly unlikely to drive any Jovian biology because their atmospheres are very thick, and just like with our terrestrial oceans, things get very dark very quickly as one descends. However, chemical energy (chemosynthesis) is a strong possibility, like that which drives terrestrial hydrothermal vent communities. Then there’s infrared (instead of visible) radiation. Jupiter and company radiates much more heat that it receives from the Sun, the heat being slowly radiated outward from their original quota of primordial heat energy largely stored in the core of the planets.  The Jovian planets are fantastic places to visit if you’re fond of thunderstorms. Lightning really lights up their skies. Lightning is a prime source of energy for driving chemical reactions. Translated, all up, the gas giants are awash with potentially useful energy sources to drive any local biology. The available energy supply box is ticked too.

I suggest therefore that the soupy atmospheres of the giant planets have all the fundamentals required not only for the origin of life, but long-term habitability. There also have been over four and a half billion years for interesting biological happenings to have occurred. In addition, there’s a lot of volume in each of the Jovian planets for interesting stuff to happen in. The odds of things all coming and getting their act together in a small pond is small relative to a large soupy atmospheric ocean.

That all four Jovian planets have evolved life is problematical; that at least one has become a biological abode is much more certain, IMHO. Throw in one or more of their satellites like Europa and Enceladus that offer a liquid water ocean environment – well that’s a bonus. On top of all that, the Jovian planets have the highest gravities apart from the Sun. Now that means they suck in more than their fair share of other solar system debris – like comets and asteroids. Now comets and asteroids, the leftovers of that initial stuff out of which our solar system was made, also tend to be rich in CHON. No doubt they, via impacts with the Jovian planets, have contributed their CHON bit to the already potential suitability of those abodes as habitable abodes.

So what sort of Jovian life might we expect? On Planet Earth there is a sharp boundary between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. On the four Jovian planets one just slowly merges into the other as one goes deeper and deeper. Terrestrial but airborne microbes, bacteria, germs, and other single-celled beasties, and their marine equivalents, like plankton and other unicellular critters, occupy both environments and are happy little campers. There’s no reason for there not to be Jovian equivalents that ‘swim’ and multiply in whatever region of the various four varieties of Jovian atmospheric ‘soups’ that have a comfortable, Goldilocks temperature regime. Of course that Goldilocks region could extend over hundreds of vertical kilometres in range. Some organisms might be better adapted to the thinner cooler upper regions; others to the murkier but warmer depths. Regardless, it gets dark fast so eyesight in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum might be problematical. Of course phosphoresce, not all that uncommon in marine life here on Earth, can’t be ruled out of course.    

If simple life forms originated and evolved on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and/or Neptune, then more complex and far larger ‘marine’ and ‘aerial’ life forms might be present too. Their trick, in order to stay in the Goldilocks zone, will be to have evolved the capability to maintain neutral buoyancy, but also to be able to rise if turbulence pushed them downwards towards greater heat; be able to sink if currents push them too high where chill factors come into prominence. So ‘gas bag’ floaters or ‘fish’ with ‘airbags’ might be possible Jovian alien life-forms. There’s no reason such critters couldn’t have developed a relatively sophisticated degree of intelligence. It’s possible to have intelligence without the means of developing technology as our whales and dolphins and even the humble octopus demonstrate.

The fly in the ointment is that our on-site investigation is going to prove to be an extremely daunting technological task, one that most certainly won’t happen in the next several decades – probably much longer. In the short term, the best bet is to use remote spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheric ‘surfaces’ or actual surfaces (in the case of the satellites) to identify biological signatures – compounds that just cannot be accounted for by non-biological processes. An example would be the pinkish-red areas on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. 



Natural History: Some Even More Random Rambling

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s a potpourri of thoughts too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* We’ve all read and heard about how we consume way more salt than is necessary and that too much salt can cause high blood pressure and heart attacks and associated nasty conditions. What is never mentioned in all these health warnings about salt is the feedback mechanism that restores the proper balance. It’s akin to how many bars will put out free salted peanuts or salted chips for the customers. It’s not out of the pure kindness of the bartender. If you take in a lot of salt you get, surprise, thirsty. And so the bar makes up for the ‘free’ peanuts and chips by selling more drinks to quench the thirst you build up by eating all that ‘free’ salty stuff. In other words, if you over indulge in the salt, you’ll drink more fluids because you get extra thirsty, and the additional liquids will, when filtered through the kidneys, take the unnecessary salt with it (salty urine) and the proper balance is restored. So, if we consume way more salt than is necessary, we probably drink way more fluids as well. 

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* I think most of us would agree that a reasonable definition of free will is the ability to voluntarily and consciously choose between two (or more) courses of action. You make a decision by your own free will that’s generated by your internal conscious self with no external influences, like someone, even Mother Nature, holding a gun to your head! However…

What if you view an optical illusion, an apparent reality of which there are numerous classic examples available? Initially you have two choices. You can convince yourself that what you are seeing is indeed reality (wrong choice) or you can convince yourself that what you’re seeing is not reality (right choice). But that’s mission impossible.

You know – you are consciously aware – that what you are looking at is an illusion and not reality. Can you now, of your own free will, take that course of action that will actually convince yourself that what you are looking at is an illusion and not reality? You know it’s an illusion, but can you convince yourself of that fact? Try as you might, no matter what, you will still see that apparent reality – the illusion – even though you know it’s just an illusion. Your brain is fooled and your mind can’t do a damn thing about it. Your free will cannot free yourself from seeing the illusion. You cannot negate that illusionary effect of your own free will even though you know it is not reality.

Now some optical illusions give you the apparent free will to view the illusion as this thing or that thing (like the classic two faces or one vase), but you can’t sustain that. You will shift perspective between the two illusionary options quite against what your own free will dictates. Further, you don’t have the free will third option of seeing neither of the two illusionary options.  

In a somewhat similar vein, watching one of the season three episodes of “Through the Wormhole”, part of that episode, exploring the subconscious, showed the experiment of a test subject who was fitted with a pair of camera-glasses that showed him an image of a test dummy dressed the same as the test subject. The test subject was fully aware of this. The test subject was then conditioned by being stroked with a rod while at the same time viewing the test dummy being stroked. Then, the test dummy was suddenly violently assaulted, and of course the test subject reacted as if he were being assaulted and not the dummy. Even when the test subject was told that the dummy was going to be assaulted, he was aware of this in his conscious mind, he still couldn’t help himself via his subconscious reacting as if he were being assaulted instead of the dummy. 

In short, your conscious mind cannot override or overturn your subconscious, free will be damned.

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* Despite the very popular but self-promotional conception, human beings are the least rational species on this planet. Any other animal that acts irrationally, say via a genetic defect or disease or the equivalent of dementia, is a dead animal. I have yet to witness any animal acting in any way, shape, manner or form that wasn’t rational for either its own survival or the survival of its genes, its community or its kind. I most certainly cannot say the same about the human species.

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* Here’s a wicked thought experiment. Create two clones of yourself. Raise them to maturity. Then, remove their brains and toss them away (this is just a thought experiment and so morals and ethics can be bypassed). Now have your brain removed (and toss your body away). Have one hemisphere transplanted into one clone; the other hemisphere transplanted into the second clone. While the two hemispheres of your brain have slightly different emphasis in terms of functionality, you can function as a reasonable whole with just one hemisphere. Now the question arises, will you be self-aware in two bodies at the exact same time? You could accomplish twice as much and be totally aware of the totality!

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* Humans and cycles go hand in glove. Though most are artificial constructions and therefore rather phoney, cycles are important to humans and human society. The Day-Night cycle is of the most prime importance, and it is a natural cycle. Humans put a lot of stock in the seven day week cycle, which is an artificial construct, and to a lesser extent the month (also a phoney cycle even if ever so loosely based on the lunar cycle). The year is a natural cycle (in terms of the seasons) and probably of greatest significance next to the day and week cycles. Decades and centuries rank fairly low in importance and are artificial constructs in any event. The millennia are only important when the calendar changes over from say 1999 to 2000 (though the new millennia actually began in 2001) and 1000 year cycles lie outside of the human lifespan in any event. And that should be pretty much it – except for some ancient societies who had cycles of apparent importance so long that predated the very existence of those societies (and concluded well after those societies went extinct), like the Mayan long count (recall that famous doomsday date of 21 December 2012). Other societies measure ongoing cycles of creation-destruction in such lengthy periods that they really have no imminent impact on the societies propagating them. When societies have cycles of significance that are of no immediate significance, then you have an anomaly and you have got to wonder where hence gave that particular cyclic concept.

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* Try as I might, I could never teach my cats the barest and most basic rudiments of algebra or even those boneheaded elementary mathematics of arithmetic that elementary schoolkids master. I could never get my cats to understand and appreciate the ancient Egyptian cat cults and goddesses. Even the concept of biological evolution – the how and why cats evolved into cats and the ancestry of my cats would be so much triple-Dutch to them. Their wetware, neurochemistry, etc. just isn’t up to this. Sunshine gives them warmth – that they understand but not how the sun shines.

Now, the upshot of that is, despite the human arrogance that our minds can comprehend everything part and parcel of life, the Universe and everything, perhaps we just can’t through absolutely no fault of our own. Maybe human brains, in the here and now, are not capable of figuring all things out, like the meaning of quantum physics, and the theory of everything (TOE) which is basically a theory of quantum gravity and coming to terms with what exactly is dark matter and dark energy and answering all those other questions that have gone without resolution for thousands of years.  

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* You probably think of yourself as one singular organism. The expression “me, myself and I” are all singular. Yet, you know perfectly well that you are really a colony of billions of organisms (cells) working in more often as not the case in total harmony. Yet, as things turn out, you play host to billions and billions more microbes. Nine out of ten of the microbes that make you up aren’t really a part of you at all, like say those bacteria that survive and thrive in your mouth. So, are you an organism, a colony of organisms or an environment for organisms? I’m quite astounded to learn that 90% of me isn’t me! So perhaps our real purpose in life is to serve as hosts for the greater multitudes. The needs of the many [microbes] outweigh the needs of the one [Human].

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* In the simulated universe scenario I (and many others) have suggested we exist inside a computer as a software program or subroutine within a larger software program. The un-stated assumption is that the Supreme Programmer was of flesh-and-blood (terrestrial or extraterrestrial). But why make that assumption? Why not suggest that the Supreme Programmer was/is an Artificial Intelligence in its own right just being creative. Silicon –and-steel (artificial) intelligence is a logical evolutionary successor to flesh-and-blood (natural) intelligence and is likely to not only evolve far more rapidly (Moore’s Law) than human evolution ever did but have an overall longevity vastly in extent of ours.



Cull The Humans!

Our species has evolved on a pristine 4.5 billion year old planet and ruined it with 8 to 10 thousand years, and it’s not improving as we march headlong into the future. At seven plus billion and rapidly increasing, human life is cheap. So if there is any one species on Planet Earth that needs culling desperately, it’s the human species. Fortunately, humans do a somewhat reasonable job of doing just that, but as the report card always says, “could do better”.

You know there’s something very terribly wrong when non-human species are disappearing and going extinct at a rapid rate of knots while humanity breeds and breeds and keeps increasing its numbers by leaps and bounds.

Abortion: Anything that has prevented millions of brats from being inflicted on the world has got to be a good thing and needs to be encouraged. More of same please. And as a bonus, all those brats that never were, never turned into adults; adults that never were and didn’t breed even more brats. Yippee! 

Animal Attacks: Humans kill millions of animals a day (including fish) for fun and profit so it is only fitting and just deserts that every once in an all too extremely rae while, animals even up the score – well hardly even since the ratio is still millions and millions to one. Of course if you include all those bacteria and viruses as ‘animals’ then the score is a bit more balanced. And isn’t it lovely how all those nasty bacteria are developing ever increasing resistance to human antibiotics. We’re really overdue for a pandemic.

Bioterrorism: All you wannabe mad scientists out there bring it on!

Birth Control: This is a painless way of keeping the human population under control. Can you imagine the benefits if this practice were increased 100-fold!

Death Penalty/Capital Punishment: If you know the law of the land and you persist in paying your money and taking your chances, well, so be it. Maybe the death penalty prevents some people from doing stupid things; maybe not. However, the one absolute benefit of capital punishment is that the offender will not ever be a repeat offender, and it’s got to be a cheaper option to the taxpayer that keeping someone locked away for the term of their natural life.

Drug Use and Abuse: Hey, it’s a victimless ‘crime’ and if it kills the user, well that’s another user loser who bit the dust and as far as I’m concerned, the more who eat dust, the better.

Extreme Sports: People risking their necks by participating in extreme sports make me extremely happy if it results in an extreme number of fatalities.

Gun Control: I don’t think so. Guns don’t kill people; people kill people using guns and the more of that the better. I understand that, for example, a significant number of firearm-related deaths in the US of A are caused by young black males to other young black males. I’ve got no issue with this at all. We just need a contest to determine the last young black male standing.

Internal Conflicts in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, etc: Muslims killing Muslims by the thousands! Hey, I got no problem with that. As Sarah Palin said, let Allah sort the mess out. But is WASP countries want to pitch in and contribute sending Muslims to their Promised Land, so much the better. I’ll look forward to the 21^st Century version of the Crusades! 

Natural Disasters: Religious types say this is God’s wrath and way of punishing wicked humanity. I could care less about the religious overtones, as long as nature keeps culling the human species. Humans should be encouraged, even given financial assistance to migrate to disaster prone areas, IMHO.

Obesity: Anything that shortens the natural lifespan or life expectancy of the human being has got to be a good thing (and it keeps the medical profession gainfully employed). So please keep on stuffing your faces, blubber-girls and remove yourselves from the gene pool sooner rather than later. And yes, it’s primarily the female of the species who over indulges and thus over bulges. 

Save the Children: Why? So they can grow up and breed like rabbits and produce hordes more brats that will need saving! It should read “Save the world from children”.

Suicide: This is a private and personal matter that is no one else’s business. If one has a right-to-life, then one has a right-to-death. That includes euthanasia as well. It’s better to go out swinging and of your own free will than risking another alternative. Suicide should be encouraged, or at least not be prevented. Again, this is a victimless ‘crime’.  

Traffic Accidents and Road Deaths: This should be encouraged, especially for carloads of drunken hoons. As a runner-up, drivers who engage in cell phone usage on the road, well they too deserve to meet their maker.

Kindly note by the way that I’m not discriminating against any particular human nationality; any particular human race or ethnic group; any particular human religion; or any particular human anything. All humans are grist for my mill. The only good human is a deceased human and one that kicks-the-bucket before his or her use by date.

However, I do have to admit that every once in a while, I read some story of some type of incredible bond between a human and his or her companion animal – dog usually, but also cats, horses, etc. Sometimes there will be some sort of heart-warming human interest story of a human putting the wellbeing and life of an animal ahead of his or her own. At times like those, I reflect that there just might be some hope for the human species after all. However, on balance…

But then I remember how the Japanese slaughter their dolphins and all those great whales that have been and are being harpooned. Then I remember how the Canadians bludgeon those baby harp seals to death. Then I remember the slaughter to extinction of the passenger pigeon and the dodo and other species way to numerous to mention. Then I remember too total overfishing and trawling the ocean floor killing unwanted species by the thousands. And then I remember all those so-called ‘sportsman’ hunters with guns blazing away 24/7 to the point I’m surprised there’s a wild animal still left alive anywhere in the world, though ‘sportsman’ hunters are happily rectifying that situation even as I write this. Then I remember that not all hunting is for fun and profit, and how the ACT government    revels in culling thousands of kangaroos annually because kangaroos get in the way of voters – or at least voters who own cars and hit the animals on the road when they get in the way. Then too I remember how many millions of lab animals have been tortured in the name of ‘beauty’ by having potential cosmetics tested on them first, often by rubbing the product into their eyes. Then too I remember the horrendous treatment meted out to Australian livestock in Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt, treatment that was so inhumane as to boggle the mind of the cruelties humans are capable of. There’s something especially barbaric above and beyond the norm about how Muslims treat animals.

It’s rare therefore to get by even one day without reading, viewing or hearing about yet another atrocity committed against non-human species, and I’m not talking about issues related to food or survival here (nature’s predator-prey relationship includes humans), but cruelty, torture, and slaughter just for the sake of cruelty, torture and slaughter.

I can take some consolation in that in the decades and centuries ahead, because humans have so totally screwed or stuffed things up, life is just going to get more and more nasty and miserable for the human species. In fact it’s already happening in that for the first time in recent history the average life expectancy of the human being is and will continue to decrease.



Natural History: Some More Random Rambling

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s a further potpourri of thoughts on or about natural history that are too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* There are probably as many different definitions of “what is life?” as there have been and are biologists, life scientists, naturalists and philosophers, etc. Most centre on or around concepts like growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, metabolism, violations of the second law of thermodynamics (entropy), and related similar ilk. None have been entirely satisfactory otherwise we would have THE textbook definition. My take on “what is life?” is somewhat different. Life is some sort of complex organic structure that has a behaviour that is not absolutely predictable via classical (or even quantum) physics. Or, in other words, under the most tightly controlled and uniform set of laboratory conditions, the ‘structure’ will do as it damn well pleases!

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* Speaking of life, there is no such thing as ‘living matter’ vs. ‘dead matter’. All matter is ‘dead matter’ since all matter, from the ground up, is composed of electrons, protons (quarks and gluons), neutrons (more quarks and gluons), photons, neutrinos, etc. Few if any would ague that an electron, proton, neutron, etc. is ‘living matter’. And the atoms, hence molecules, even complex molecules they make up are not alive. No matter is alive or is ‘living matter’. What is ‘alive’ is the organisation, the overall structure of various bits and pieces of matter, in highly specific arrangements, such that – and this is the key point – entropy, at least temporarily, is thwarted. Entropy finally wins when the organisational structure breaks down, that is, life dies.   

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* Does free will require you to have an infinite or unlimited number of choices, or a finite number? If the latter, you’re still confined in a box, just a slightly larger box than if your box confined you to one and only one choice.

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* The ultimate lack of free will associated with you is that you had absolutely no say in being conceived and being popped headlong into this world. You had no choice in your ancestry or in your genetics or your sex or even what historical era you were to make your way in. Now if you have absolutely no free will in these rather important, in fact absolutely fundamental, parts of your life being kick-started, why should you expect any free will from there on in?

Of course in some societies you’d have no choice in schooling or religion or upbringing or even to the person you got hitched to, etc. But all of that really falls under a separate category of sociology and culture and has nothing to do with the metaphysical or usual notion of what it means to have free will.

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* It struck home to me recently how often we shift our worldviews. We have no worldview at birth. Our worldview at five is one that’s full of self, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, imaginary friends, and parties with lots of cakes, cookies, soda pop and presents. All of that certainly changes, and drastically so, when you hit the teens when your worldview shifts to the opposite sex and sex and rebellion against all things adult. Maybe somewhere there’s an easing in period, a first stirrings, where you start to acquire a worldview of a God and heaven and angels and all things bright and beautiful (that’s probably imposed on you by parents and social mores. Then you get trust out (usually by choice) into the adult world that’s full of bills and responsibilities and employment and/or family life raising your own brats. During all of this you probably never really think of the ‘natural’ cosmic context you find yourself in. But that tends to come as you pass the half-way mark and start heading downhill. The Big Questions come more to the fore and you start to adopt a worldview that makes comforting sense away from the normal routine worldview of taxes and nasty bosses and your kids in trouble with the police again. Again, for most, that tends to revolve around God and heaven and angels, etc. But some people start thinking more outside the comforting religious box and more about space and time, and before and after, and finite vs. infinity and what non-religious Big Picture makes the most philosophical and logical common sense. And whatever specific you come up with can also shift as you reflect on your earlier reflections without end as new concepts and connections come into being or focus which you’ve got to ponder and fit into the master worldview jigsaw puzzle you’ve established.

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* Death is not something to be afraid of. You experience dying, but not death since once dead, you have no existence and you need to have an existence, you have to be alive, in order to experience something, anything, even death. So you never experience death, only that up to but not including death.

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* There’s one absolute reason I’m convinced telepathy doesn’t exist. As I go about my daily walkabout routine and associated observations, I’m forever passing out mental thoughts and images of what I think of many of the deadbeat drivers and other lesser forms of humanity I spy with my little eyes. My thoughts tend not to be very complementary to say the least. But since the lowlifes and rift-rafts haven’t ever proceeded to immediately stop their lowlife activities and drop what ever rift-raft things they were up to, to instead change direction towards me and beat me about the heat and body unto a bloody pulp for my unflattering thoughts, I conclude telepathy doesn’t exist. If it did, I doubt I’d be typing these thoughts now.  

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* Humans call them weeds. Mother Nature calls them plants. So-called ‘weeds’ too have their place in the natural scheme of things. Stupid humans!