Selective Attention

Make this full screen before playing:

Your Place in the Universe

Let's assume that time is not infinite, but has boundaries. With that assumption, we can guess at the starting point, which is when quantum soup containing nothing decided to produce a singularity, which immediately -- for lack of better words -- exploded, shooting the most elementary particles outward into every direction, perhaps not into existing volume, but creating volume as it expanded. In short time, these initial particles organized themselves into increasingly more complex subatomic particulate until the small elements began to form; hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Eventually, those fundamental elements coalesced into stars, and nuclear fission commenced, producing the larger elements (up to iron). Heavier elements came later during supernovae. Now we have a starting point, an initial time. 

The age of the Universe is suggested through analysis of cosmic background radiation data obtained by WMAP, which allows calculation of the expansion rate of the Universe. Given the calculated expansion rate, scientists were able to extrapolate the age of the universe to within 1% accuracy at 13.73 billion years old. The Universe presumably originated from a singularity to what we see over a span of approximately 13.73 billion years.

Conceptual model of the observable Universe.

While we can understand the concept of the Universe, the actually volume is so monumental that we consequently become cognitively overwhelmed. Trying to picture the Universe as we know it is not possible. The sheer size of it makes mental rendering by our minds impractical. The Universe is dozens of billions of light years in diameter. The volume of the Universe we can quantify -- that we can observe -- hinders upon the light that has had time to travel to our observatories. Therefore, the observable universe appears from our perspective to be spherical; the radius from Earth to the observable edges is limited by the speed of light multiplied by the age of the Universe. Other locations distant in the Universe have their own unique observable universe which will not be congruent with the view of the Universe we have on Earth. While the precise shape of the true Universe remains unknown, calculations using the estimated density of the Universe predict a Universe that is nearly flat to within 2% margin of error.

Currently accepted astrophysical calculations show the diameter of the observable universe to be at least 93 billion light years across. That means light that began traveling from one edge of our observable universe would take 93 billion years to travel to the opposite observable edge. Light travels at a constant speed of 186,000 miles per second in vacuum, which boils down to roughly 670 million miles per hour. In a desperate attempt to put the volume of the Universe we can observe into perspective, imagine traveling from one edge of the observable universe to the other at 600 MPH; the upper bound on commercial airliner flight speed. Picturing yourself in that plane? Your journey would take you 37,386,000,000 trillion years, which equates to 2,722,942,462,000 times the currently estimated age of the Universe at 13.73 billion years old.

The majority of the Universe is made up of dark energy. NASA puts the amount of dark energy making up the universe at 70%. Making itself present only as a cosmological constant, not through direct observation. This constant is used to balance the equation of the currently accepted acceleration rate of the expansion of the Universe. Without the presence of this elusive and mysterious dark energy, our current expansion models would not hold weight. Dark energy is necessary to explain the exponentially increasing speed at which the Universe is expanding, otherwise our models predict that the Universe should be shrinking, which we know is not true based on observable data. Without the existence of dark energy, we are forced to abandon our current model for the expansion of the Universe, which cannot be currently replaced.

Another 23% of the Universe is said to be made of dark matter that is inferred to exist from gravitational effects on visible matter, such as how galaxies angular momentum doesn't seem to be conserved. This matter is also undetectable using current methods. The vast majority of the dark matter in the universe is believed to be nonbaryonic, which means that it contains no atoms and does not interact with ordinary matter through the electromagnetic forces we are so familiar with. Dark matter is the source of the gravitational forces required for our cosmological model to work.

My own personal view is that dark matter and dark energy are merely petty ways of forcing a failed model to work. I believe we are in need of a new and revolutionary model, one which does not require the inclusion of undetectable matter & energy to work. There is a huge void separating current theory from direct observation and both sides of the issue seem to have solid arguments. The fiasco remains unresolved after more than 20 years. If someone steps up and solves this problem they will be virtually guaranteed to win a Nobel Prize. It is worth noting that the entire dark matter issue revolves around the force of gravity acting over long distances. There may just be another long-range force that we are currently ignorant of. This whole dark matter explanation may later be laughed at; akin to the days of people not believing the Earth was round.

Let's switch gears from looking out into the vastness of the Cosmos to examining the matter we are made of and we interact with. The more a person zooms into solid matter, the more absurd things get. At the quantum level, matter dissolves from our perception of seeming structural integrity and becomes a bizarre dance of subatomic particles that seem to bounce in-and-out of reality. While these particles appear to have complete integrity on the macroscopic level, in reality they are made up overwhelmingly of empty space. Although you can reach and touch a nearby wooden object and are unable to push your finger through it, it is home to 99.9999999999999% empty space, with 99.9% of the mass concentrated in the microscopic elements nuclei.

Conceptual model of a helium atom. 15,000,000,000,000 fm equals one meter.

This places our own perceptions in between two ferocious cognitive monsters; a volume of space so large as to be unimaginable, pushed around by forces we don't fully understand, and particles so small as to be undetectable, which seem to blink in-and-out of existence.

Try now to think about how desolate the Universe is. The nearest star in our own galaxy is Alpha Centauri, which is more than 4.2421 light years away. That means the light you see from Alpha Centauri at night has been traveling for at least 4 years before it enters your retina to be analyzed by your brain's optic nerve. The nearest galaxy, The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, is 25,000 light years away from our solar system. Alternatively, Canis Major Dwarf is 42,000 light years away from the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. This distance between the galaxies is ever-increasing by universal expansion. 

The Hubble telescope was recently outfitted with an advanced new lens. Scientists then pointed the updated scope at a tiny patch of the sky the size of a dime held out at arm's length. The first images to come back were absolutely awe-inspiring; there were 10,000 visible galaxies in the photo. Each one can have over 1,000,000,000,000 stars. That means in this tiny patch of sky there are approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

Sample of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, perhaps the most important image ever created.

Trying to integrate these facts into your mind is nonsensical and therein lie the point of my discussion; we are simply unable to fully comprehend the objective reality. Despite our assumption of being the special, sentient, & intellectual top dogs in the Universe, we are ill-equipped to visually grasp the desolate nature of our Universe (both macro- and microscopically). 

A multiverse can be thought of as a conglomerate of universes stuck together, much like the way bubbles often congregate. The possible existence of a multiverse allows for an infinite number of universes, some of which may have foreign physical laws. Some scientists believe that alternate universes exist in which the building blocks of atoms never formed atoms at all. An alternative vision is that of a universe in which nothing beyond hydrogen and helium ever formed. On the flip size, zeroverse theory suggests that there is actually no Universe at all, and our entire perception is merely derivative of quantum reality collapsing where it is observed. Take a moment to ponder these strange scientific views on your own, but keep in mind that question of whether or not a multiverse or zeroverse exists cannot be experimentally tested. 

TLDR:

The Universe is at least 93,000,000,000 light years in diameter.

The Universe is at least 13,730,000,000 years old. 

The Universe's composition as a whole contains 70% dark energy & 23% dark matter, which we cannot detect and do not understand. 

The building blocks of all matter, including our brains, consists of particles which contain 99.9999999999999% empty space.

Our Universe may be one of many (multiverse) or not truly exist at all (zeroverse).

Favorite Tao Verse

Verse 30 of The Tao

A good traveler has no fixed plans

and is not intent upon arriving.

A good artist lets his intuition

lead him wherever it wants.

A good scientist has freed himself of concepts

and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people

and doesn't reject anyone.

He is ready to use all situations

and doesn't waste anything.

This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If you don't understand this, you will get lost,

however intelligent you are.

It is the great secret.

Typing Trainer

http://www.keybr.com/practice

Propagation Theory

This animation shows a kinematic wave traveling from left-to-right through an elastic medium. Observe the four voxels colored black, and how they move as the wave passes; they are perturbed, but eventually return to their original state (elastic behavior). In this example, the wave does not attenuate as it travels, maintaining full energy with increasing distance from the generative source. 

The animation is the source of this blog's name; waves are an example of a propagating disturbance. I imagine you, the person reading this, to be the black voxels. Your monitor converts the discretized, evenly-sampled binary signal passed to it from your computer's video output to the produced images that travel through the air into the back of your eye. The signals, most likely pulsating at 60 Hz, arrive upside-down, only to be processed by your brain to produce the perception that (correctly), the words are in fact what we have collectively defined as right-side up:

At this phase, the beginning of motion of the proverbial black voxels, you may ponder about the words I have strung together, the maximum motion point (peak potential energy). As you continue reading, other thought-energy pulses pierce your perception and fonder additional thought. My hope is that unlike the animation above, the process is not elastic, but plastic; when I share something compelling, I hope it would have the potential to permanently "move" the metaphorical black voxels in your brain to a new metastatic energy state.

This blog can be seen as my own permanent point-source for the propagation of my thoughts, a disturbance moving through your cognition center, occasionally permanently reforming regions therein. This process is not voluntary. You can indeed leave this page and never come back, effectively preventing uptake, and I agree with that. However, if you do continue analyzing my words, it is inevitable that an effect will be levied.

"One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Take a moment to study this image before continuing:

These emotions are not optional, and when endured, have the capability to produce action when detected at sizable measure. Ideas behave in a very similar manner. If you partake in my blog and are exposed to this propagation stream of my thoughts, your logic center's gates may be modified upon exposure to ideas of sufficient magnitude, and the process is not carried out consciously. Free will is indeed an illusion, but in my worldview (that of deterministic metaphysical naturalism), the conscious feeling that humans experience produces a surrogate experience that meets the criteria I would require for free will to have been met. Thus, if you asked me, I would scribe that while non-deterministic human behavior independent of external boundary conditions is not the case, "free will" is; what is the difference? We wouldn't be able to prove each other wrong, and anything that cannot be proven wrong is by definition inconsequential, so who cares.

"Free will" is really just a complex series of hard-wired pyramidal chemical reactions in your brain, a flutter of electrical impulses through neural synapses experienced as something more, much like the binary signals being sent and interpreted by your CPU right now. People who accept this fact may begin to turn towards nihilism, viewing the entire Universe as a meaningless chemical reaction of which they are merely a reactant. This does not have to be the case however; remember your 'free will'. You still have a say in this psychotic quantum puppet show, whether it's all involuntarily scripted or not. Do NOT pass up this valuable opportunity.

Narcissism is healthier than nihilism, and it happens to be socially acceptable (here in the West, anyway), so take that stance instead. The chemical reactions in your brain are you, and the data that your brain has had access to feed upon was only accessible by you. You are the center of your own private universe.

Now, with that being said, the more people you influence, the great the cosmic footprint you leave on the Universe's proverbial beach. The footprints all wash away eventually by the weathering of time, perhaps indefinitely through a Big Crunch. However, the more people that are exposed to your ideals, particularly those who are impressed upon non-elastically, the more likely your ideals be internalized and commandeered for use by other organic reactants.

Much like a tsunami generated by an Earthquake, your crusade produces a reaction and infinite subsequent reactions, and media such as the Internet is willing and able to help propagate your own disturbances. The end sum of the endless spiral through time of reactants may not have meaning, and may not be in your control, but I urge you to take solace in the convincing illusions of both that our minds desire.

Animation of an earthquake-induced tsunami.

Hello World

One post precedes this, whose content did not come from me, but from someone I appreciate greatly. The current incarnation of this blog is missing the hundreds of posts that were made here in the time period of roughly 2008-2012. In this first post of this blog's revival, I want to recognize that ~51,000 views and ~700 followers as of 12/04/2016 were not produced by the content henceforth, but from content produced mostly by myself and 5 other guest authors in the past. I stopped blogging in 2012, because at the time I felt that I had touched on every topic that I could think of, and my artistic expression had been fully fulfilled. I eventually removed all the content, as much of it was very controversial, and I intended to rewrite all of it into a single coherent manuscript.

So what brings me back? Lately, I have been reorganizing my vast archive of images and content, and came across the manuscript draft I worked on in 2012-2013. The content of the draft started as a brute copy-paste of the old blog's content in its entirety; I then spent time rearranging the posts and refining the message until a sense of cogency was attained. I never finished that project for reasons unbeknownst to myself.

Reading through my uncompleted manuscript, I realized that I have gained much knowledge since 2012, and replaced (or expanded upon) many of the ideals that I shared through the prior medium. Thus, I have decided that the time has come to regenerate this blog. I begin by sharing one of my favorite alphanumeric sequences in the image above. I interpret this message from Aleister Crowley -- found in The Book of Lies - to serve as a reminder that isolating yourself from the world may be comfortable and without risk, but ultimately limiting, and never truly satisfactory.

In a way, posting a blog if a form of getting OUT. I expend energy and time here so that you, and others like you, may share a glimpse of my reality. If I should be fortunate enough, it would happen that others will post their perspectives in the comments, and symbiotic knowledge-wisdom refinement can take place. In the event that my perspective is out of tune, theory holds that it will be challenged, and perhaps replaced with a new, updated view.

Content generation will be prompted by current events, new findings of interest, and a slow-paced walk-through of all the existing blog content in digestible portions. It feels good to be back.

Objectives of this blog:

- Provide a cognitive framework for understanding the nature of the Universe.- Warn of potential negative outcomes and offer suggestions for their amelioration.- Induce creative thought and inspire innovation.- Tell interesting factoids and share useful websites.
- Increase confidence through realization of who and what we truly are.

- Inform those willing to read, so they begin to see reality in new and thought-provoking ways.

What I hope to avoid:
- Promote mindless recital of my thoughts to others without fully understanding for themselves and critically examining, and sometimes challenging, what I have written.
- Direct quotations of me, rather, I encourage you to use what I say as a catalyst to spawn your own writing. Try to develop ideas further in your own unique way and rewrite them in your own words.
- To directly convert you to my view and/or generate sycophants.

Posterity and Induction

Humans reason every day of their existence. Whether it is thinking about the weather or how to take a toaster apart, humans reason. Reasoning is paramount to the human condition. It is how we, as human beings, make inferences and arrive at conclusions according to what we observe. There are many types of reasoning that are included under the broad category of “reasoning.” One type of reasoning we use every day, completely unaware, is inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is a type of non-deductive reasoning that acts a basis for a majority of scientific developments. A philosopher by the name of David Hume questioned the justification for investing so much faith into induction; he believed that it is fundamentally flawed. There were a great many responses to Hume’s argument, one being the pragmatic solution which asserts that induction is necessary to human functionality. This response acts as a plausible solution to the problems of induction.

As mentioned earlier, induction is a type of non-deductive reasoning. The process of induction involves matter of fact, rather than relation of ideas. It concerns concepts which could conceivably exist in another manner. For example, a triangle’s angles adding up to 180 degrees is something we cannot visualize any other way. It is the relation of degrees to a triangle, and is absolute. Induction does not focus on necessity, but instead relies heavily on human observation. The principle nature of induction is the extrapolation of previously observed events to future events, or from the already observed to the unobserved. Induction has an inherent reliance on past experience: if a test has produced the same result 10 times out of 10 times, one can conclude the 11^th attempt will yield the same result. One can assume that if every orange they have seen is orange, then all oranges must have the same properties. Past experience acts as a credible source for the prediction of future events. Nearly all contemporary science is based on induction. The basic limitations of humanity force scientists to rely on inductive reasoning. One cannot observe everything in the universe, nor can one guarantee an absolute.

Hume’s argument stems from the justification of induction. His claim is that we have no feasible justification for believing induction. There is no proof that the past in any way impacts the events of the future. Induction cannot be proved independent of human experience because it pertains to matters of fact. When a glass is dropped, one can conceive the possible result that it will, in fact, not break, or perhaps not even fall. Consequently, induction must be proved on the basis of human experience. This becomes quite problematic because Hume explains that such proof is circular. That is to say, that the conclusion and premises are dependent on each other. A detailed explanation of this theory of circular logic present in induction can be easily presented in an example. For instance, Bill has performed experiment X 100 hundred times and has arrived at N result every time. He believes his 101^st attempt will also produce result N, because it has every other time. Joe insists that these prior events have no bearing on the future outcome and asks for a reason for Bill’s theory. Bill is using induction and Joe is utilizing Hume’s response. Bill says that every time he has encountered such a situation in the past (one relating to induction), induction has worked; so it will work in the present. Joe carefully asks Bill to examine his statement. Upon closer inspection it is clear that Bill is justifying the use of induction THROUGH induction. Circular logic is the only way to prove induction, and it is therefore invalid. Hume is stating quite simply that there is no justification for the use of induction and it should not be implemented in proper science.

Of the many responses to Hume’s argument, there is one in particular that both embraces and criticizes Hume’s logic. The main concept of this idea is the necessity of human function, of pragmatism. Nearly every aspect of our lives and theories is in some way rooted in the idea of induction. This view basically accepts that there is no true rebuttal to Hume’s argument, that he’s correct in his analysis of induction. However, because induction is so crucial to our everyday lives, we must, accept some standard. Nearly everything we say and do can be questioned due to the flaw of induction. So, while there may not exist some succinct refuting of Hume’s ideas, we still must use induction, for the sake of convenience. Simply put, life would be greatly more difficult without induction. Despite its shortcomings, it has been very successful in the past, and is required for much of our lives. One using Hume’s argument can easily defeat any statement which doesn’t have explicit empirical evidence. Consequently, we as a society must accept some standard believability for induction. I believe the aforementioned argument to Hume’s argument is remarkably successful. It accepts Hume’s claim that induction is unjustifiable but presents a unique concept that although the method of reasoning cannot be proved reliable without circular logic, it should still be used, out of convenience. We have arrived at a wall, so to speak, and the only way around it through being pragmatic. It is a realistic solution to the issues of induction raised forth by David Hume.