In American Beauty, there's a famous scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu8_8TJC9E8) in which a character plays a tape of the "most beautiful thing he's ever seen." It's a plastic bag, blowing in the wind. As it blows, it seems (to the speaker and, at least, to me) to have emotion; it seems to be dancing.
In reality, of course, there's no such emotion. It's just random gusts of wind, moving it around. If we knew, exactly, the state of the world (namely, the air molecules and their velocity), we could predict, entirely, the motion the bag would take. Deep down it's all just the product of billions of chaotic collisions at the particle level. But that misses the point. The beauty isn't in the literal truth, but in the illusion -- what it feels like. Thought on the matter kills it.
The same is true for any art. Last post I said watching a movie on a pixel-by-pixel basis loses the meaning; it also ruins the beauty, by breaking the illusion that what we're seeing is real. Similarly, you can take any song and, with Fourier Transforms, analyze its frequency content and see it as the wavelike motion of air molecules. These things are true, but we'd prefer to not know them; they aren't at the heart of beauty, even though they alone seem to comprise it.
Science can tell us a lot of things. It offers us a deeper look at the world around us. But at the same time, it seems that with each new discovery something of beauty dies. Imagine the world as the ancient Greeks and Romans saw it. The stars were constellations, telling stories. The forces of nature were acts of warring gods. Heaven was in the sky, Hades underground. There's a reason their mythologies make for good literature; it was a beautiful picture. Our true, naturalistic explanations of celestial bodies and forces of nature seem dull and lifeless by comparison.
That may seem like a small price to pay for social progress, but now things are getting scarier. Science has turned us inward, looking at ourselves; how the body works and, more frighteningly, how the mind works. Some people (including me) don't believe there will ever be a fully naturalistic explanation for consciousness -- but even stopping short of that, so much about mood and psychological response seems to be explained by natural phenomena. It's easy to fall into the cold trap of intellectualism, and separate yourself from what you are studying; even when what you are studying is yourself.
There's nothing wrong with scientific progress. Despite what some preachers seem to suggest, we should never be afraid of the truth. We were created rational beings, and to ignore reason is to go against our nature. But we need to be able to put it on hold at the appropriate times. We know, in principle, that the bag isn't dancing, but we choose to limit our conscious knowledge, and feel instead. We know the stars are gaseous masses in the sky, but at night in the wilderness, the bright lights against the vacuum of space feel like pictures on a black canvas. And in a sense, what we're feeling is as true, if not truer, than the underlying cause; science can't account for this beauty, and yet it remains. To abandon our "mirror dimly" pictures of the world is to make it ugly and sterile.
Keats famously said "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." There's a sense in which I agree. In principle, I think our understanding only adds to the beauty of the universe; its complexity, its enormity, the way such grandeur can arise as the epiphenomenon of a few basic laws. The whole idea is beautiful, and knowledge and truth only deepen it. But in another sense, I think this limits the scope of our humanity. Beauty is often found in the abandonment of logic and reason, allowing ourselves to simply be, false perceptions and all. Without this temporary abandon, the truths of the world have nothing to offer. Truth informs beauty, and beauty breathes life into truth. We should never lose sight of either.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Meaning in Chaos
If there's anything that's stuck with me and continues to drive me through studying Computer Science and Physics, it's this: there is power, and beauty, in abstraction. If you don't care about reading about physics or computers, you should keep reading anyway. It does get more personal.
An almost infinite sea of particles, randomly jumping from place to place, colliding and attracting and repelling. That's the world we live in. Everything follows an extremely complicated formula (the Schrodinger Wave Equation), which tracks probabilities; the world is, by law, unpredictable. If you look at a single electron, you cannot possibly know where it will be an instant later. It could be a millimeter away; it could (with some low, but nonzero, probability) be fifty thousand miles away. Taking the world as the sum of its parts, it's a chaotic, completely unfathomable mess.
But we don't see the world at that level. We don't see trillions and trillions of quarks and electrons; we see a chair, a person, a beautiful picture. We don't remember a barrage of photons hitting our eyes; we remember scenes, faces, expressions. And amazingly, even though the world really is governed by unpredictable and immensely complex laws, at this higher level view, it's meaningful, predictable, and often beautiful. If you look at a movie too closely, all you'll see are dots, completely devoid of meaning. But stepping back, choosing to ignore things "as they really are", you see something that can make you laugh, cry, empathize. This incomplete, semi-blurred picture of the world we see, is somehow more meaningful than the truth.
Now take the computer you're reading this on. Deep down, it runs by physical laws alone; it knows nothing about what it's doing. NAND gates are pieces of equipment which, by electric repulsion and attraction, produce a low voltage if two high voltages wires are fed into it, and a high voltage otherwise. This doesn't sound useful; till someone thought: "Take a high voltage to be 'true' and a low voltage to be 'false'." Suddenly it's logic: you feed in two things (A and B) which mean true or false, and out comes true if A and B are not both true: "Not AND". Combine them in different ways, and you get OR, AND, NOT, etc. Take "true" and "false" to represent 1's and 0's, and suddenly you have math. You can combine them to make something that adds two numbers, subtracts, multiplies, divides. You can combine those to make something that works like a calculator: takes a command, performs the right math, and outputs the response. You end up building an entire CPU (made up of nothing but these meaningless NAND gates), which takes a program and executes it.
Then go up on level, to the software; which, really, is just turning this huge collection of bits and wires on and off. Small, simple programs are made. Bigger ones are made by using the smaller ones. One huge program (Operating System) puts collections of 1's and 0's in "Files", puts the files in "Folders", etc. All of a sudden, you're looking at a screen, Skyping to a friend on another side of the planet, reading the news, listening to music. Billions of bits, 1's and 0's, wires flowing with an electric current which has no idea what it's doing, and you have something real and meaningful.
In a very real sense, we're no different. We're made of the same chaotic particles the rest of the world is. Although there is more to us, we are by nature physical creatures, governed by the same laws that govern the world around us. I've felt especially aware of this physicality recently, as I've started taking medication for panic attacks, which would hit me when I was trying to fall asleep. No stress, no depression, no fear or anxiety; just faulty wiring keeping my heart beating quickly and my mind from shutting off. For months I was in and out of the ER for physical symptoms with no cause; I felt like a fragile machine, and one day I was sure I would just stop running. The draining effect of that made me miss classes, do poorly on tests, and fail to reflect my true potential. Taking a pill, and having a series of chemical reactions actually make things better has been incredibly embarrassing and humbling. How much I love to flatter myself as something strong and consistent. How easy it is to forget that our souls, immortal, are for the time being living in finite, faulty machines.
But, like the chaotic world of particle physics, and the rapid electric pulses of wires and bits, this faulty, chemical-driven body, from a higher vantage point, can have purpose, beauty, and meaning. I am not the sum of my parts. The meaning of the individual dots on a painting are not in what they themselves mean (nothing), but that which they, taken as a whole, are created to reflect. The meaning of this blog entry is not in its individual letters, or the 0's and 1's which encode them, but in the message its symbols are taken to communicate. And my meaning is not in my physical framework, chaotic and weak, but in the conscious soul which underlies it, and the truths it was created to convey. Beauty is in the abstract whole of my chaotic parts.
An almost infinite sea of particles, randomly jumping from place to place, colliding and attracting and repelling. That's the world we live in. Everything follows an extremely complicated formula (the Schrodinger Wave Equation), which tracks probabilities; the world is, by law, unpredictable. If you look at a single electron, you cannot possibly know where it will be an instant later. It could be a millimeter away; it could (with some low, but nonzero, probability) be fifty thousand miles away. Taking the world as the sum of its parts, it's a chaotic, completely unfathomable mess.
But we don't see the world at that level. We don't see trillions and trillions of quarks and electrons; we see a chair, a person, a beautiful picture. We don't remember a barrage of photons hitting our eyes; we remember scenes, faces, expressions. And amazingly, even though the world really is governed by unpredictable and immensely complex laws, at this higher level view, it's meaningful, predictable, and often beautiful. If you look at a movie too closely, all you'll see are dots, completely devoid of meaning. But stepping back, choosing to ignore things "as they really are", you see something that can make you laugh, cry, empathize. This incomplete, semi-blurred picture of the world we see, is somehow more meaningful than the truth.
Now take the computer you're reading this on. Deep down, it runs by physical laws alone; it knows nothing about what it's doing. NAND gates are pieces of equipment which, by electric repulsion and attraction, produce a low voltage if two high voltages wires are fed into it, and a high voltage otherwise. This doesn't sound useful; till someone thought: "Take a high voltage to be 'true' and a low voltage to be 'false'." Suddenly it's logic: you feed in two things (A and B) which mean true or false, and out comes true if A and B are not both true: "Not AND". Combine them in different ways, and you get OR, AND, NOT, etc. Take "true" and "false" to represent 1's and 0's, and suddenly you have math. You can combine them to make something that adds two numbers, subtracts, multiplies, divides. You can combine those to make something that works like a calculator: takes a command, performs the right math, and outputs the response. You end up building an entire CPU (made up of nothing but these meaningless NAND gates), which takes a program and executes it.
Then go up on level, to the software; which, really, is just turning this huge collection of bits and wires on and off. Small, simple programs are made. Bigger ones are made by using the smaller ones. One huge program (Operating System) puts collections of 1's and 0's in "Files", puts the files in "Folders", etc. All of a sudden, you're looking at a screen, Skyping to a friend on another side of the planet, reading the news, listening to music. Billions of bits, 1's and 0's, wires flowing with an electric current which has no idea what it's doing, and you have something real and meaningful.
In a very real sense, we're no different. We're made of the same chaotic particles the rest of the world is. Although there is more to us, we are by nature physical creatures, governed by the same laws that govern the world around us. I've felt especially aware of this physicality recently, as I've started taking medication for panic attacks, which would hit me when I was trying to fall asleep. No stress, no depression, no fear or anxiety; just faulty wiring keeping my heart beating quickly and my mind from shutting off. For months I was in and out of the ER for physical symptoms with no cause; I felt like a fragile machine, and one day I was sure I would just stop running. The draining effect of that made me miss classes, do poorly on tests, and fail to reflect my true potential. Taking a pill, and having a series of chemical reactions actually make things better has been incredibly embarrassing and humbling. How much I love to flatter myself as something strong and consistent. How easy it is to forget that our souls, immortal, are for the time being living in finite, faulty machines.
But, like the chaotic world of particle physics, and the rapid electric pulses of wires and bits, this faulty, chemical-driven body, from a higher vantage point, can have purpose, beauty, and meaning. I am not the sum of my parts. The meaning of the individual dots on a painting are not in what they themselves mean (nothing), but that which they, taken as a whole, are created to reflect. The meaning of this blog entry is not in its individual letters, or the 0's and 1's which encode them, but in the message its symbols are taken to communicate. And my meaning is not in my physical framework, chaotic and weak, but in the conscious soul which underlies it, and the truths it was created to convey. Beauty is in the abstract whole of my chaotic parts.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Putting the Cards on the Table
Once of the goals I have in blogging, as I mentioned before, is to go towards consistency. I want to elaborate on that. Despite the fact that this isn't meant to be like a journal, now it's story time!
I grew up in the church. My brother and I were incredibly active in the church growing up -- we won all the awards, memorized all the verses, went to every camp, joined every Bible Study. Most everyone knew us as "the twins." Most of our friends were from the church. In Junior High, I started a Christian Apologetics website called Dolord.com (which, thankfully, no longer can be found unless you're good at digging through the archives of the internet, which I won't tell you how to do). I would debate evolution with people twice my age, and I was sure I was right. I went to a very conservative high school, where I was surrounded almost completely by conservative Christian friends.
When I went away to college, things were another story. I went to Berkeley knowing no one. One person from church, a year older than me, who I barely knew, was attending. Otherwise, absolutely no link to home. Since no one knew me, no one knew anything about my upbringing. I was free to "reestablish" myself, rethink my life, strengthen my views or abandon them. I meant to become active in a church, but I never did. I found a place and attended the main service about five times that first year. That's it for Christian influence. In its place was an extremely prevalent intellectualism, where the idea of God is laughable. That's not an exaggeration. In my Philosophy of Science class this year, any time a theory of knowledge allowed "God did it" as an explanation, it meant the death of that theory. It's simply a joke.
When I would go home on breaks, I found myself wanting to avoid certain groups of people, particularly those that knew me from church. I never abandoned my faith (never even came close), but my distaste for the Christian culture grew into almost pure cynicism. Worship services felt too fake. Messages felt too shallow. And the people I used to feel such a connection to, now felt incredibly distant. Their happiness and sureness was something I couldn't relate to (and believe me, I wanted to). But you wouldn't have known it by looking. I acted the same. I played the part well.
I played a part in Berkeley, too. People would openly mock religion, and I would nearly agree. Except to a select few people, not a word about belief in God. It scared me. Even if inwardly I was the same, outwardly I had changed.
Since those two extremes, I've tried to find a balance. I've seen plenty of friends abandon their faith completely, and I don't want that. I've also seen people willfully shelter themselves from the world we're meant to be a light to, and I don't want that either. I made a decision about a year ago that I would not divide myself or be a social chameleon to avoid confrontation. Part of that has been more practical (going to church regularly at college, speaking honestly with friends from home), but most of it has been about transparency. Openness is not easy, but it's necessary. I want both my conservative Christian and liberal atheist friends to know my beliefs. So, finally, here is a list of things which could potentially lower your opinion of me.
THINGS MY NON-CHRISTIAN FRIENDS SHOULD KNOW:
- I am a Christian. I believe in an active God and in the resurrection of Christ. I believe in the truth of the Bible.
- I am not against the Church. Even though I disapprove of many of its actions, I am a part of it.
- I do not think people in general are stupid. Even when I disagree with them, they aren't stupid. The meanness and snobbery of intellectualism is disgusting to me.
THINGS MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS SHOULD KNOW:
- I do not believe in a literal creation account from Genesis. I believe in an old earth and universe. I believe evolution may well be the mechanism used to create us; guided by an active God, not a Blind Watchmaker.
- I am moderately liberal. I voted for Obama (though not with the enthusiasm of many voters, and so far have not been particularly impressed with him). I voted against Prop 8: I believe marriage, in God's eyes, is between a man and a woman, but I don't think the government should be a tool for the church to enforce it.
- I agree with the separation of Church and State, in general.
- I drink (moderately) on occasion. I also curse on occasion. I'm not proud of these things, but they are true and I don't want to hide them.
That's it. I really didn't mean to spend this long writing tonight, but there you have it. You probably disagree with me on some of these things, and I hope in future posts to elaborate on them. In the meantime, feel free to comment.
I grew up in the church. My brother and I were incredibly active in the church growing up -- we won all the awards, memorized all the verses, went to every camp, joined every Bible Study. Most everyone knew us as "the twins." Most of our friends were from the church. In Junior High, I started a Christian Apologetics website called Dolord.com (which, thankfully, no longer can be found unless you're good at digging through the archives of the internet, which I won't tell you how to do). I would debate evolution with people twice my age, and I was sure I was right. I went to a very conservative high school, where I was surrounded almost completely by conservative Christian friends.
When I went away to college, things were another story. I went to Berkeley knowing no one. One person from church, a year older than me, who I barely knew, was attending. Otherwise, absolutely no link to home. Since no one knew me, no one knew anything about my upbringing. I was free to "reestablish" myself, rethink my life, strengthen my views or abandon them. I meant to become active in a church, but I never did. I found a place and attended the main service about five times that first year. That's it for Christian influence. In its place was an extremely prevalent intellectualism, where the idea of God is laughable. That's not an exaggeration. In my Philosophy of Science class this year, any time a theory of knowledge allowed "God did it" as an explanation, it meant the death of that theory. It's simply a joke.
When I would go home on breaks, I found myself wanting to avoid certain groups of people, particularly those that knew me from church. I never abandoned my faith (never even came close), but my distaste for the Christian culture grew into almost pure cynicism. Worship services felt too fake. Messages felt too shallow. And the people I used to feel such a connection to, now felt incredibly distant. Their happiness and sureness was something I couldn't relate to (and believe me, I wanted to). But you wouldn't have known it by looking. I acted the same. I played the part well.
I played a part in Berkeley, too. People would openly mock religion, and I would nearly agree. Except to a select few people, not a word about belief in God. It scared me. Even if inwardly I was the same, outwardly I had changed.
Since those two extremes, I've tried to find a balance. I've seen plenty of friends abandon their faith completely, and I don't want that. I've also seen people willfully shelter themselves from the world we're meant to be a light to, and I don't want that either. I made a decision about a year ago that I would not divide myself or be a social chameleon to avoid confrontation. Part of that has been more practical (going to church regularly at college, speaking honestly with friends from home), but most of it has been about transparency. Openness is not easy, but it's necessary. I want both my conservative Christian and liberal atheist friends to know my beliefs. So, finally, here is a list of things which could potentially lower your opinion of me.
THINGS MY NON-CHRISTIAN FRIENDS SHOULD KNOW:
- I am a Christian. I believe in an active God and in the resurrection of Christ. I believe in the truth of the Bible.
- I am not against the Church. Even though I disapprove of many of its actions, I am a part of it.
- I do not think people in general are stupid. Even when I disagree with them, they aren't stupid. The meanness and snobbery of intellectualism is disgusting to me.
THINGS MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS SHOULD KNOW:
- I do not believe in a literal creation account from Genesis. I believe in an old earth and universe. I believe evolution may well be the mechanism used to create us; guided by an active God, not a Blind Watchmaker.
- I am moderately liberal. I voted for Obama (though not with the enthusiasm of many voters, and so far have not been particularly impressed with him). I voted against Prop 8: I believe marriage, in God's eyes, is between a man and a woman, but I don't think the government should be a tool for the church to enforce it.
- I agree with the separation of Church and State, in general.
- I drink (moderately) on occasion. I also curse on occasion. I'm not proud of these things, but they are true and I don't want to hide them.
That's it. I really didn't mean to spend this long writing tonight, but there you have it. You probably disagree with me on some of these things, and I hope in future posts to elaborate on them. In the meantime, feel free to comment.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Introduction
It's 2:00 in the morning on my birthday. For no particular reason, I thought this would be a good time to start a blog. I've been meaning to for a while, but just never got around to it. I guess I'll lay out a personal plan for what I'd like the blog to be about.
WHAT THIS ISN'T:
- A way to tell humorous day-to-day stories about my life. Sorry everyone (no one?), it's just not that interesting to talk about. If you want to know, I'm sure Facebook and/or Twitter will tell you more random things about my life than ever need to be shared.
- Personal. Sometimes I might write about my own life and feelings (particularly in this first post), but I don't want this to be all internal. It's not about me. No emo.
- Inspirational. I am a Christian, and plan on talking very honestly about my faith. That may include the peaceful and emotional aspects, but it also includes doubts and struggles.
- Focused. I have a wide range of interests, and I don't plan on sticking to one theme. Even though this first post deals a lot with my beliefs, I don't expect all or even necessarily many posts to. I'll probably want to talk about nerdy things like AI, or Math, or Physics. I'll probably also want to ramble about Philosophy. Maybe I'll talk Politics...but hopefully not. I like keeping my friends.
WHAT THIS IS:
- This blog will be a way for me to think out loud. I don't want to come off as an authority on anything, or as someone with an agenda to spread. I'm a fallible person, and my beliefs and ideas are riddled with mistakes, I'm sure. But I want to put them down and, hopefully, dialogue about them.
- My life is pretty divided. I've always felt like friends from school may see a certain version of me, and friends from church another. But if there's anything I hate, it's a lack of integrity. I'd like to be honest and consistent, which means being open about my life and beliefs, even though it will probably let some people down.
- An excuse to write. I'm an Engineer, school certainly isn't giving me that excuse.
WHO I AM:
My goal, as of the last year or two, has been complete honesty with myself. On the one hand, I'm a big nerd. I like Science a lot. I like Math. I like Logic and Philosophy. I like academia, even when my own beliefs are the subject of ridicule. I have immense respect for people who question things.
On the other hand, I'm not secular. I believe there's more to life than scientific discovery, progress, or existence; namely, I believe in God. Not Einstein's deistic God, and not some ultra-spiritualized pantheistic essence called God. The Biblical, Christian God.
For years, the scientific community and the religious community have diverged. Christianity is almost universally viewed as irrational by academia, and many Christians in turn vilify and mock the skeptics. Most people in either camp are able to ignore the issues raised by the other. I don't want that gap. I don't want to trust the scientific community when I'm flying in their airplanes and taking their medicine, and deem them lunatics when they tell me the age of the earth. I want to face the issues, and part of that means understanding exactly what the issues are, and the science behind them. If my faith is true, it will be able to look The God Delusion and Quantum Physics in the eye and not flinch.
But all that for another time. I have plenty other interests. In particular, since I plan on studying the field of Artificial Intelligence, the relation between the mind (soul) and the brain (body) is very interesting to me. I'm a conscious soul, but my thoughts and feelings seem to be governed (or at least heavily swayed) by neurons and chemicals. Simultaneously spiritual and physical. Free will meshing with a world governed by deterministic laws; or, theologically, free will in a foreknown, predestined world. Art and beauty, and where they can be found. Abstracting an almost infinitely complex world into simple, meaningful shape. Morality and gray issues vs. tradition. General Relativity, Quantum Physics, and String Theory.
Yeah...it should be fun. For me anyway, probably not you. If you even got this far. If there's even a you to read this.
WHAT THIS ISN'T:
- A way to tell humorous day-to-day stories about my life. Sorry everyone (no one?), it's just not that interesting to talk about. If you want to know, I'm sure Facebook and/or Twitter will tell you more random things about my life than ever need to be shared.
- Personal. Sometimes I might write about my own life and feelings (particularly in this first post), but I don't want this to be all internal. It's not about me. No emo.
- Inspirational. I am a Christian, and plan on talking very honestly about my faith. That may include the peaceful and emotional aspects, but it also includes doubts and struggles.
- Focused. I have a wide range of interests, and I don't plan on sticking to one theme. Even though this first post deals a lot with my beliefs, I don't expect all or even necessarily many posts to. I'll probably want to talk about nerdy things like AI, or Math, or Physics. I'll probably also want to ramble about Philosophy. Maybe I'll talk Politics...but hopefully not. I like keeping my friends.
WHAT THIS IS:
- This blog will be a way for me to think out loud. I don't want to come off as an authority on anything, or as someone with an agenda to spread. I'm a fallible person, and my beliefs and ideas are riddled with mistakes, I'm sure. But I want to put them down and, hopefully, dialogue about them.
- My life is pretty divided. I've always felt like friends from school may see a certain version of me, and friends from church another. But if there's anything I hate, it's a lack of integrity. I'd like to be honest and consistent, which means being open about my life and beliefs, even though it will probably let some people down.
- An excuse to write. I'm an Engineer, school certainly isn't giving me that excuse.
WHO I AM:
My goal, as of the last year or two, has been complete honesty with myself. On the one hand, I'm a big nerd. I like Science a lot. I like Math. I like Logic and Philosophy. I like academia, even when my own beliefs are the subject of ridicule. I have immense respect for people who question things.
On the other hand, I'm not secular. I believe there's more to life than scientific discovery, progress, or existence; namely, I believe in God. Not Einstein's deistic God, and not some ultra-spiritualized pantheistic essence called God. The Biblical, Christian God.
For years, the scientific community and the religious community have diverged. Christianity is almost universally viewed as irrational by academia, and many Christians in turn vilify and mock the skeptics. Most people in either camp are able to ignore the issues raised by the other. I don't want that gap. I don't want to trust the scientific community when I'm flying in their airplanes and taking their medicine, and deem them lunatics when they tell me the age of the earth. I want to face the issues, and part of that means understanding exactly what the issues are, and the science behind them. If my faith is true, it will be able to look The God Delusion and Quantum Physics in the eye and not flinch.
But all that for another time. I have plenty other interests. In particular, since I plan on studying the field of Artificial Intelligence, the relation between the mind (soul) and the brain (body) is very interesting to me. I'm a conscious soul, but my thoughts and feelings seem to be governed (or at least heavily swayed) by neurons and chemicals. Simultaneously spiritual and physical. Free will meshing with a world governed by deterministic laws; or, theologically, free will in a foreknown, predestined world. Art and beauty, and where they can be found. Abstracting an almost infinitely complex world into simple, meaningful shape. Morality and gray issues vs. tradition. General Relativity, Quantum Physics, and String Theory.
Yeah...it should be fun. For me anyway, probably not you. If you even got this far. If there's even a you to read this.
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