Friday, May 18, 2007
What is reality, really?
You know what reality is, right? Or do you? We define reality, in the strictest sense, as what we and the instruments we've designed can perceive; the problem with that is that neither our senses nor our instruments are designed to perceive reality as a whole... all we can get are bits and pieces.
We think our 5 senses are wonderful, but looked at objectively there's not much to them: We can perceive light and sound, but only within certain ranges. We can distinguish some sorts of chemicals via smell and taste, but far from all. Our sense of touch tells us about what we're in contact with (down to a certain level) and temperature. And that's IT; our bodies have no ability to detect any of the other aspects of reality, whether it's commonplace stuff like microwaves, esoteric stuff like the parallel universes predicted by string theory, or anything in the spiritual realm. Even within the zone of what we CAN detect, we're no great shakes; countless lower animals have far sharper senses than we do, and in the bigger picture our senses evolved only to help us deal with our immediate environment, so we can't see atoms or galaxies, much less the nuts and bolts of how the omniverse is built and operates. Worst of all, our senses, and the parts of the brain that deliver their data to us, are easily fooled; illness, drugs, tiredness, emotional distress, religious mania, etc can distort our perceptions, and illusions, both of the optical and magician varieties, show how easy it is to trick them.
And; our brains filter out the overwhelming majority of info our senses produce, so that our conscious minds only get a trickle of what little information we HAVE about reality... don't you wish you could see what the world around you looks like withOUT that filtration? AND; studies show that your memory isn't anywhere near as good as you think it is, which is bad because pretty much all our knowledge and understanding is rooted in MEMORIES of what we experienced or learned. Thus, we're basing our view of reality on woefully incomplete data brought into easily-fooled brains through crude senses, filtered heavily and then corrupted over time.
Still think you know what reality is?
But wait, what about the information brought to us by scientific instruments, or more basic ones like cameras-don't they show objective reality? Ignoring the issue of glitches and such, when one of our gadgets records something, it means that something real was there; it does NOT necessarily mean that what was recorded exactly matches what was there (ask anyone who's tried to photograph a dark object on a light background), or that the experts, who are only human, correctly interpreted what was recorded, or, and here's the biggie, that what has so far been recorded is everything that exists. Most scientists like to make it sound like we know everything now, except for minor details, but the truth is that, not only do we NOT know it all, we can't even guess at how much exists that we can't even SPECULATE about yet, much less measure and study via instruments... and all that stuff is part of reality.
If you went back a few hundred years and tried to talk to people about, say, subatomic particles, you'd be greeted with laughter, scorn, derision... and maybe get thrown into an asylum, or even burned at the stake as a heretic. Even the most educated folks wouldn't believe you, because they'd have no way to perceive or otherwise detect the particles, or any evidence at all of their existence, and wouldn't just take your word on it... just as people with no personal experience of "the unknown" usually don't believe that there are spirits, psychic abilities or karma no matter what those of us who've experienced them claim.
In the modern world, some of the most brilliant people we've got, theoretical physicists, can't agree on... just about anything that'd explain how the universe(s) is built at the finest level and/or how all the forces and the quantum world can be tied in together, despite the fact that massive amounts of the highest level math point to... well, they don't agree on that either. In other words, they don't agree on what reality is... so how can WE be sure when THEY aren't? And let's not forget, there's no reason whatsoever to think that the points they're debating now will be the final answers; if you had a dollar for every time the so-called experts believed they had the final answer for ANYTHING and were later proven wrong, you could retire. String theory, which is the best they can offer currently to explain reality, might be right, but why should we believe that strings are absolutely the most basic parts of matter/energy (which are actually the same thing, remember)... just because they're the most basic part that anyone's THOUGHT of thus far? And let's not forget that they've got nothing but guesswork to account for what 99.02% of the mass of the universe is made out of (see my post of 2-15-07); it could be ghosts, God, heaven, hell, demons, angels, karma, anything your religion, spiritual path or philosophy has come up with, and/or stuff that no human has even guessed at yet in the wildest speculative fiction... and whatever it is, it's part of reality.
STILL think you know what reality is? If so, you need to write a book, because you're the only human being with that knowledge; of course, you'd be asked to furnish PROOF to convince the scientific types... and if you don't have any, you're in the same boat as the rest of us, because we've all spent the greater part of our lives, at the very least, believing that the combination of our personal observations and experiences, whatever bits and pieces of scientific lore we can recall, and our particular flavor of spirituality combined to fully describe reality.
Ok... so what? On the one hand, this is all totally irrelevant, because you can live your life just fine without knowing what reality is. On the other hand, it's the biggest issue there is... and would you still be reading this post if you didn't have some shred of desire to KNOW? The best suggestion I can make is to pay a little attention to science to give you some guidelines, and ALOT of attention to those patterns in what goes on around you that can't be explained by normal cause and effect, and keep asking yourself "how?" and "why?"; sooner than you'd believe, you'll discover that "There are more things in heaven and Earth," and be a big step closer to knowing what reality is.
We think our 5 senses are wonderful, but looked at objectively there's not much to them: We can perceive light and sound, but only within certain ranges. We can distinguish some sorts of chemicals via smell and taste, but far from all. Our sense of touch tells us about what we're in contact with (down to a certain level) and temperature. And that's IT; our bodies have no ability to detect any of the other aspects of reality, whether it's commonplace stuff like microwaves, esoteric stuff like the parallel universes predicted by string theory, or anything in the spiritual realm. Even within the zone of what we CAN detect, we're no great shakes; countless lower animals have far sharper senses than we do, and in the bigger picture our senses evolved only to help us deal with our immediate environment, so we can't see atoms or galaxies, much less the nuts and bolts of how the omniverse is built and operates. Worst of all, our senses, and the parts of the brain that deliver their data to us, are easily fooled; illness, drugs, tiredness, emotional distress, religious mania, etc can distort our perceptions, and illusions, both of the optical and magician varieties, show how easy it is to trick them.
And; our brains filter out the overwhelming majority of info our senses produce, so that our conscious minds only get a trickle of what little information we HAVE about reality... don't you wish you could see what the world around you looks like withOUT that filtration? AND; studies show that your memory isn't anywhere near as good as you think it is, which is bad because pretty much all our knowledge and understanding is rooted in MEMORIES of what we experienced or learned. Thus, we're basing our view of reality on woefully incomplete data brought into easily-fooled brains through crude senses, filtered heavily and then corrupted over time.
Still think you know what reality is?
But wait, what about the information brought to us by scientific instruments, or more basic ones like cameras-don't they show objective reality? Ignoring the issue of glitches and such, when one of our gadgets records something, it means that something real was there; it does NOT necessarily mean that what was recorded exactly matches what was there (ask anyone who's tried to photograph a dark object on a light background), or that the experts, who are only human, correctly interpreted what was recorded, or, and here's the biggie, that what has so far been recorded is everything that exists. Most scientists like to make it sound like we know everything now, except for minor details, but the truth is that, not only do we NOT know it all, we can't even guess at how much exists that we can't even SPECULATE about yet, much less measure and study via instruments... and all that stuff is part of reality.
If you went back a few hundred years and tried to talk to people about, say, subatomic particles, you'd be greeted with laughter, scorn, derision... and maybe get thrown into an asylum, or even burned at the stake as a heretic. Even the most educated folks wouldn't believe you, because they'd have no way to perceive or otherwise detect the particles, or any evidence at all of their existence, and wouldn't just take your word on it... just as people with no personal experience of "the unknown" usually don't believe that there are spirits, psychic abilities or karma no matter what those of us who've experienced them claim.
In the modern world, some of the most brilliant people we've got, theoretical physicists, can't agree on... just about anything that'd explain how the universe(s) is built at the finest level and/or how all the forces and the quantum world can be tied in together, despite the fact that massive amounts of the highest level math point to... well, they don't agree on that either. In other words, they don't agree on what reality is... so how can WE be sure when THEY aren't? And let's not forget, there's no reason whatsoever to think that the points they're debating now will be the final answers; if you had a dollar for every time the so-called experts believed they had the final answer for ANYTHING and were later proven wrong, you could retire. String theory, which is the best they can offer currently to explain reality, might be right, but why should we believe that strings are absolutely the most basic parts of matter/energy (which are actually the same thing, remember)... just because they're the most basic part that anyone's THOUGHT of thus far? And let's not forget that they've got nothing but guesswork to account for what 99.02% of the mass of the universe is made out of (see my post of 2-15-07); it could be ghosts, God, heaven, hell, demons, angels, karma, anything your religion, spiritual path or philosophy has come up with, and/or stuff that no human has even guessed at yet in the wildest speculative fiction... and whatever it is, it's part of reality.
STILL think you know what reality is? If so, you need to write a book, because you're the only human being with that knowledge; of course, you'd be asked to furnish PROOF to convince the scientific types... and if you don't have any, you're in the same boat as the rest of us, because we've all spent the greater part of our lives, at the very least, believing that the combination of our personal observations and experiences, whatever bits and pieces of scientific lore we can recall, and our particular flavor of spirituality combined to fully describe reality.
Ok... so what? On the one hand, this is all totally irrelevant, because you can live your life just fine without knowing what reality is. On the other hand, it's the biggest issue there is... and would you still be reading this post if you didn't have some shred of desire to KNOW? The best suggestion I can make is to pay a little attention to science to give you some guidelines, and ALOT of attention to those patterns in what goes on around you that can't be explained by normal cause and effect, and keep asking yourself "how?" and "why?"; sooner than you'd believe, you'll discover that "There are more things in heaven and Earth," and be a big step closer to knowing what reality is.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Awesome URL's
In today's "Foxtrot" comic strip
http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2007/05/13/
the "average" kids get promised rewards for straight A's, but the smart kid doesn't get offered anything because he ALREADY gets straight A's; kudos to cartoonist Bill Amend for making the long overdue point that, while it's fine to reward kids for better-than-usual performance, kids that perform well all the time should get something for it every so often too... even, dare I say it, MORE often than the kids who perform less well.
Those of you that're constantly changing your layouts will love this one:
http://colorpicker.info/
The topmost picker (there are some other useful ones on the page as well) allows you to select any color and get multiple colors that go perfectly with it, whether you want similar colors or wildly contrasting ones; there are controls (nearly every part of the display is clickable) that allow you to alter aspects of the colors to get you to the desired shades(s)... you can even choose to see how your chosen colors would appear to people with different kinds of colorblindness. The only thing that keeps this from being perfect is that, inexplicably, although you can enter specific #'s for hue, saturation and brightness you can't enter the hex # of a color; Photoshop can translate hex to HSB, and if you don't have it you can go here
http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/boethin/pub/coca/
to get a translation, but be aware that you may have to alter the hue 15-20 points to get the correct hex at Colorpicker-the math for that is a little bit off.
Here's a site that, as long as they don't do something stupid, will make a fortune:
http://www.bagborroworsteal.com/
Bag Borrow or Steal™ allows you to "Rent the Latest Authentic Designer Handbags Purses Jewelry and Accessories"; they've adopted the Netflix concept (also used by Blockbuster and some game rental companies) of your being able to pick what you want, have it mailed to you, keep it as long as you like, and mail it back when you're done... with the necessary difference that you have to pay for every week/month you keep each item, since these things are worth far more than most DVD's. Unlike with the DVD/game setup, you can't treat these items like garbage (I'm convinced that at least one of my fellow Blockbuster-onliners drags DVD's behind his truck), because they get checked when you return them, and you get penalized if you damaged them; the upside of that is that renters are presumably guaranteed to receive them in usable condition. If, once you've got a stellar accessory, you can't bear to part with it, you can "steal" (aka buy) it... or cross your fingers and hope you snag it when it gets demoted to their online store. What makes this site brilliant is that for a tiny fraction of what it'd cost you to BUY these pricey, cutting-edge accoutrements you can "rent" them for a party or to just be trendy while they're "hot"; I'm betting that this is gonna be BIG... and if they ever offer stock, it'd be an excellent investment.
This next one is the coolest thing I've ever seen online, a Shockwave... well, it's not a game really, it's... just go take a look:
http://www.lecielestbleu.com/media/pateasonframe.htm
Be sure and have your sound on, because it's musical, and I don't just mean a few beeps and clicks; most of the construction pieces are effectively musical instruments, and each one that's part of your maze/machine adds to your orchestra. In addition, the controls on the factory actually do stuff, and for the musical pieces you have the ability to change the pitch of their "songs." My husband and I have had hours of fun with this; my goal is to have as many different actions going on at once as I can, and his is to try to construct and guide it so that he has one "playing piece" trapped in a infinite loop; however YOU play it, I guarantee you'll love it.
And finally, here are a couple of great free samples we've gotten recently:
My husband loves this cereal, which is as crunchy as you can get without eating gravel (aka Grape Nuts)
http://kashi.com/trialevent3/freesample/default.aspx
My mother actually laughed with pleasure when she got this and saw how big it was (it contained THREE hair care products, each a full 2 oz), especially compared to the little packets most hair-related samples come in
http://www.gethairapy.com/samples/
http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2007/05/13/
the "average" kids get promised rewards for straight A's, but the smart kid doesn't get offered anything because he ALREADY gets straight A's; kudos to cartoonist Bill Amend for making the long overdue point that, while it's fine to reward kids for better-than-usual performance, kids that perform well all the time should get something for it every so often too... even, dare I say it, MORE often than the kids who perform less well.
Those of you that're constantly changing your layouts will love this one:
http://colorpicker.info/
The topmost picker (there are some other useful ones on the page as well) allows you to select any color and get multiple colors that go perfectly with it, whether you want similar colors or wildly contrasting ones; there are controls (nearly every part of the display is clickable) that allow you to alter aspects of the colors to get you to the desired shades(s)... you can even choose to see how your chosen colors would appear to people with different kinds of colorblindness. The only thing that keeps this from being perfect is that, inexplicably, although you can enter specific #'s for hue, saturation and brightness you can't enter the hex # of a color; Photoshop can translate hex to HSB, and if you don't have it you can go here
http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/boethin/pub/coca/
to get a translation, but be aware that you may have to alter the hue 15-20 points to get the correct hex at Colorpicker-the math for that is a little bit off.
Here's a site that, as long as they don't do something stupid, will make a fortune:
http://www.bagborroworsteal.com/
Bag Borrow or Steal™ allows you to "Rent the Latest Authentic Designer Handbags Purses Jewelry and Accessories"; they've adopted the Netflix concept (also used by Blockbuster and some game rental companies) of your being able to pick what you want, have it mailed to you, keep it as long as you like, and mail it back when you're done... with the necessary difference that you have to pay for every week/month you keep each item, since these things are worth far more than most DVD's. Unlike with the DVD/game setup, you can't treat these items like garbage (I'm convinced that at least one of my fellow Blockbuster-onliners drags DVD's behind his truck), because they get checked when you return them, and you get penalized if you damaged them; the upside of that is that renters are presumably guaranteed to receive them in usable condition. If, once you've got a stellar accessory, you can't bear to part with it, you can "steal" (aka buy) it... or cross your fingers and hope you snag it when it gets demoted to their online store. What makes this site brilliant is that for a tiny fraction of what it'd cost you to BUY these pricey, cutting-edge accoutrements you can "rent" them for a party or to just be trendy while they're "hot"; I'm betting that this is gonna be BIG... and if they ever offer stock, it'd be an excellent investment.
This next one is the coolest thing I've ever seen online, a Shockwave... well, it's not a game really, it's... just go take a look:
http://www.lecielestbleu.com/media/pateasonframe.htm
Be sure and have your sound on, because it's musical, and I don't just mean a few beeps and clicks; most of the construction pieces are effectively musical instruments, and each one that's part of your maze/machine adds to your orchestra. In addition, the controls on the factory actually do stuff, and for the musical pieces you have the ability to change the pitch of their "songs." My husband and I have had hours of fun with this; my goal is to have as many different actions going on at once as I can, and his is to try to construct and guide it so that he has one "playing piece" trapped in a infinite loop; however YOU play it, I guarantee you'll love it.
And finally, here are a couple of great free samples we've gotten recently:
My husband loves this cereal, which is as crunchy as you can get without eating gravel (aka Grape Nuts)
http://kashi.com/trialevent3/freesample/default.aspx
My mother actually laughed with pleasure when she got this and saw how big it was (it contained THREE hair care products, each a full 2 oz), especially compared to the little packets most hair-related samples come in
http://www.gethairapy.com/samples/
