What's the point?

Life on Earth evolved from simple organisms, to the stage where the brain – the most complex organ of all – has been developed. The human brain may well be the most complex structure in the universe, but is it an inevitable by-product of biological evolution? Given that life can start on a planet, is there a biological "ladder of progress" inevitably and inexorably leading to the development of intelligence, cognition and consciousness, and thus technological civilizations?
Darwinism and natural selection tell us that nature does not plan ahead; mutations occur randomly and are selected for their survival value at that particular time. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins likens nature to a blind watchmaker; blind because it does not see ahead, and has no pre-defined purpose in view. Dawkins writes: "... Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning." So, according to this line of reasoning, humanity’s existence is a result of mere chance.

Some biologists and philosophers look to the concept of convergent evolution – i.e. different evolutionary paths leading to the same features, e.g. eyes, legs, wing – to show that the result of evolution is not pure chance … that there must be a purpose to life. Convergent evolution is hardly surprising when one considers that millions of species on Earth are exposed to the same selective conditions – so similar solutions emerge time and time again. However, as Jared Diamond points out in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, some traits do not evolve convergently – i.e. convergent evolution is not universal. Diamond takes the example of woodpeckers that are able to excavate into live wood for food or nest sites, and appear to be the only species that has evolved to do this. No other species – e.g. parrots, honeyeaters, possums – can excavate live wood. And just as woodpeckers are the only species to have exploited a particular niche, only one species in the billions that have ever existed in the 4.6 billion year history of the Earth has ever developed human intelligence and consciousness. He goes on to say: "Earth’s really successful species have instead been dumb and clumsy rats and beetles, who found better routes to their current dominance".
So the neo-Darwinists tell us that the evolution of intelligence is not an inevitable outcome of evolution, and it is very improbable.

Even great physicists have remarked on how the universe appears to have no point. Richard Feynman wrote: "The great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behaviour has a kind of meaninglessness about it".
And Steven Weinberg wrote: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless".

If the whole point of science is to try to understand the universe, and if the universe really is pointless, then why are we humans doing science? Why are we working so hard on things like astrophysics and cosmology? The problem is that we simply don’t know. In The Goldilocks Enigma, Paul Davies states that he does not believe human intelligence to be an "accidental by-product of haphazard processes", but he is reluctant to resort to supernatural explanations. He says, "I do believe that life and mind are etched deeply into the fabric of the cosmos, perhaps through a shadowy half-glimpsed life principle." Somehow, the physical constants of the universe are set "just right" to allow intelligent beings to emerge. But how?
Science does not have all the answers, but this doesn’t mean that we should take refuge in mystic solutions. Scientists indeed try to find out more about the universe. Perhaps we will end up finding simple physical laws that explain the universe; or perhaps, just as there is the law of conservation of energy, there is also a law of "conservation of mystery" – i.e. the deeper we delve, the more mysteries we discover. However, we’ll never know unless we keep on investigating – trying to learn more – and we mustn’t pre-empt the conclusion by categorically saying, "the universe is pointless and intelligent life is just an accident", or take the deist solution and say "God set the physical constants of nature when she created the universe, and this made possible the eventual emergence of intelligent life".
For the moment, it appears to me that our lot is cast in a mysterious universe that has no purpose, but it may not be that way – that’s why we do science. And besides, isn’t it exciting to learn how nature works? ‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Hitler's Ethics

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please - Mark Twain

I'm currently undertaking part-time studies toward an masters of science degree in astronomy at Swinburne University in Melbourne, so it is difficult for me to avoid knowing that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy - initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO. It commemorates the 400th anniversary of the invention of Galileo's telescope. Although Galileo removed our planet from the centre of the universe, one other great scientist - Charles Darwin - changed our view of what it means to be human. He showed that we are basically animals, and knocked man off his pedestal. This year also happens to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth - he was born on the 12th February 1809. To commemorate the occasion, there have been a lot of celebrations, including some very interesting public lectures and exhibits here in Melbourne. What did Darwin do that was so great? As we look around our planet, we notice that lifeforms - be they humans, ducks, giraffes, etc. - are ideally suited to their habitats. We also notice that bodily organs, such as eyes, ears, brains, are ideally suited to the function they perform. We thus get the impression of deliberate design - as though a supernatural creator designed life on Earth. Darwin answered the question of how such complex "design" could arise. The answer was cumulative evolution by natural selection - i.e. by non-random survival of random hereditary modifications/mutations. In a species whose members are not identical, those members that have characteristics that make them best adapted to their environments (fittest) are most likely to procreate and pass on their inherited characteristics. This theory of evolution by natural selection made redundant the concept of a creator God. However, the creationists have attempted to restore God to his pedestal by introducing the concept of "Intelligent Design".
Moreover, the creationists have tried to pass off Intelligent Design as a legitimate science that should be taught in schools alongside Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
Intelligent design is an alternative to the Genesis story of creation. All creation myths depend on the actions of some kind of all-powerful supernatural being, and Genesis (and Intelligent Design) is one of many creations myths. Intelligent design is a kind of guided evolution. According to the supporters of intelligent design, evolution does occur - obviously the evidence for evolution is impossible even for fundamentalist Christians to ignore - but this evolution is guided by the hand of an intelligent super-being, i.e. a God.

Evolution by cumulative natural selection effectively explains how organized complex lifeforms can arise out of primeval simplicity. It is the only scientific theory that is capable of explaining the emergence of complex life, and there is much scientific evidence to back it up. Intelligent design invokes an already existing intelligent deity - i.e. it postulates a complex being without offering any explanation for its origin. Intelligent design has no hope of ever being proven or disproven by scientific testing, so it is not science.

Unfortunately, Intelligent Design is not the only example of how science - and, in particular, Darwin's theory - have been misused to satisfy particular agendas. The distortion of Darwin's argument resulted in perhaps the darkest period in the history of the 20th century.
Adolf Hitler embraced Darwinism, and used it to formulate his own form of ethics. In Hitler's mind, the Darwinian struggle for existence, particularly the struggle between different races, became the sole basis for morality. In a 1923 speech, Hitler said the following:

"... Right alone is of no use to whomever does not have the power to impose his right. The strong have always triumphed. All of nature is a constant struggle between power and weakness, a constant triumph of the strong over the weak ...". You might imagine him frothing at the mouth as he said this.

Hitler believed that the evolutionary progress and the struggle for existence was essential to promote progress. Here's what he had to say in Mein Kampf with regard to the notion of limiting population growth:

"... If reproduction is limited and the number of births decreased, then the natural struggle for existence, which only allows the strongest and healthiest to survive, will be replaced by the obvious desire to save at any cost even the weakest and sickest. Thereby a progeny is produced, which must become ever more miserable ... Eventually a stronger race will usurp the weaker ..."

So it is morally acceptable for the weak to be destroyed by the strong. This may give the impression of a barbaric, amoral dog-eat-dog view of the world, but Hitler also believed that ethics are purely a human construction - thus contradicting the Christian philosophy that ethics are God-given. He believed that morality and ethics are a product of evolution, and exist in only the "most highly evolved beings", humans. To Hitler, Germans (or Aryans) were the epitome of human morality - being more cultural and altruistic than any other race. In contrast, Jews were greedy, deceitful and immoral. He believed that strength and weakness not only applied to physical and mental attributes, but also to moral attributes. To Hitler, Jews were a morally inferior race of humans.

Using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Hitler was able to morally justify any action - including genocide and infanticide - if it contributed to the evolutionary improvement of the human race. Evolution and the biological improvement of the human species was the ultimate goal. The concept of human rights only encouraged weakness.

Obviously, Hitler's use of Darwinism was twisted and misguided. Hitler's concept of evolutionary improvement was influenced by his racial prejudices, and his personal opinion of what constitutes improvement. Just as the proponents of Intelligent Design tried to smuggle a creator God into evolutionary biology, Hitler tried to smuggle his own moral opinions and values.

Some people may blame science for Hitler's view of the world. They may blame science for the invention of weapons of mass destruction - after all, without Einstein's theory of relativity, the atomic bomb would never have been invented. But such people are misguided. Science makes no judgment about what is or isn't ethical; this is a matter for individuals and for society. Science, in its purest forms, seeks to learn more about the universe. However, science can (and should) provide advice and information as input to ethical discussions. Problems occur when our leaders allow their own prejudices and agendas to distort the facts. We saw this with Hitler; we saw this with George W. Bush who ignored advice he didn't like - e.g. AIDS-prevention initiatives and stem-cell research - because it went against his religious-based objections. Bush also ostracized scientists who argued that humans made a significant contribution to climate change. Hopefully the new tenant of the White House will treat science with the respect it deserves. Science should be allowed to advance, and should be used for the good of the planet; but this cannot happen if politicians and religious groups insist on distorting the facts.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Bushfires - the great leveller

By now, most of the world has heard of the bushfires that are savaging the southern Australian state of Victoria. As I write this, 181 people are confirmed dead, a few thousand have been left homeless, and small towns have literally been destroyed. Not to mention the native wildlife that has been wiped out. The finger of blame is being pointed at firebugs but, although they may have worsened the situation, they did not cause it. Why do bushfires happen? Is there anything we can do to prevent them?
In the case of the Victorian bushfires, the 10-year drought and the unusually high temperatures have been big factors. One theory, as explained in the book "The Emerald Planet" by David Beerling, says that natural deforestation is occurring on Earth; forests are being destroyed by Mother Nature, and replaced by grassland. Here's how it works:

The death of trees in times of drought allows patches of grass and weeds to grow. These patches of grass provide a very flammable fuel in dry seasons; they are more flammable than the trees because of the way they process carbon dioxide. Bushfires, which arise due to the high-flammability of the grass, kill more trees, and allow more of these grasses to grow (these grasses recover very rapidly after burns). So, what we're seeing is grass usurping the dominance of forests by promoting fire. Nonflammable trees are gradually being replaced by highly-flammable grasslands, and this process is being aided by a gradual increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And just to top it off, it has been shown that smoke from burning forests acts to reduce rainfall by impeding cloud formation; the fires actually increase the severity of droughts - they cause climate change.

We often hear about natural selection and survival of the fittest when applied to the animal kingdom but, if this hypothesis is correct, natural selection is being played out in the plant kingdom with lethal and devastating consequences. It is believed that this trend of grasslands usurping forests has been happening over tens of millions of years - before man came on the scene. However, there is every possibility that man-made greenhouse gases are speeding up the process. This Darwinian war of attrition will inexorably lead to a stable state in which grasslands will completely replace forests. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions will only delay the inevitable. And while all this happening, we humans - the self-proclaimed rulers of the planet - are left to watch helplessly and impotently as our houses and towns burn down, and as precious human lives are lost.

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, and it also coincides with Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. Galileo and Copernicus showed that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, and Darwin showed us that humanity is just another species of animal, occupying a tiny limb on the tree of life. To me, these fires are a reminder of these sobering facts. However, although we are not the centre of universe, humanity and human nature are a product of nature - we are a part of the universe. To me, that is a source of inspiration. ‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Why I'm going to be a Vegetarian

To people who know me, it would come as a big shock to hear that I am even entertaining the idea of becoming a vegetarian, but that’s my aim for 2009. No, I haven't been swayed by the nude antics of the PETA protesters, and I'm not trying to be stylish or trendy. I'm not even doing it for health reasons. From a health point of view there is really nothing wrong with eating lean meat. According to Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works, "though plant foods supply calories and other nutrients, meat is a complete protein containing all twenty amino acids, and provides energy-rich fat and indispensable fatty acids". And humans have a long history of eating meat; analysis of the bones of early humans reveals that lean meat was their main source of sustenance. To explain the reason for my decision, I need to briefly discuss the concept of morality and how I apply it to the animal world.

Early this year, I watched a 2006 episode of Doctor Who called “The Age of Steel”. In the episode, a mad entrepreneur named Lumic planned to convert humanity into a race of cybermen – with Lumic as their leader. Cybermen are humanoid beings, have metal skins, and walk around like heavy robots. They speak with monotone robot-like voices and – most importantly – experience no emotions or feelings (thus making them more efficient killing machines): they don’t experience fear, guilt, love, joy, embarrassment, sympathy – none of the feelings and emotions that make us human. In fact such emotions are not exclusively human, but the episode made me wonder: how would our planet have evolved if humans were deprived of emotions?

In a world without emotions, there would be no ethical standards; there would be no altruism, no kindness when it is deserved, no punishment when it is deserved, and no sense of guilt or embarrassment. Knowing that our neighbours experience the same feelings and emotions that we do means that humans have gradually had to develop moral and ethical principles that promote cooperative behaviour. In fact, I believe that this is why humans have invented deities and religions – e.g. an authority to validate and enforce these ethical principles. Many religious people wonder how humans can be “good” without religion. They insist that, without religious guidance, we impure humans would have no incentive to be good. This would be the case if we had never developed emotions. Presumably, in the Doctor Who episode, if the Doctor had not thwarted him, Lumic would somehow have wielded a godlike authority and enforced rules and regulations on the cybermen so that a cyberman society would probably function as he planned ... at least for a while. But Lumic was a product of human evolution. Humans have evolved a moral sense, and it is due to our inbuilt feelings and emotions (The Origin of Virtue by Matt Ridley discusses the Darwinian origin of morality in a very clear manner). I believe that humanity would never have developed ethical rules and morality, and it would never have progressed to its current dominance, had we been deprived of feelings and emotions.

However, morality is not hardwired into our DNA; human effort ensures that it is ever-changing. For example, during biblical times, it was okay to own slaves – but today it is morally repugnant; barely half a century ago, black people in the U.S were treated like animals, but today they have the exact same rights as white people; today women in Western society have the identical rights as men, but this was not always the case.
One day, perhaps the ever-increasing circle of morality will also encompass parts of the animal kingdom. I believe that some animals experience feelings such as empathy, sadness, joy, and even guilt ... any dog-owner (especially my friend Fiona) would attest to that. I wonder how many other members of the animal kingdom have such feelings ... and if they do, how can we humans mistreat them and eat them? In 2008, I attempted to become a vegetarian but it seems I didn’t do it properly as I developed some minor health problems as a result. In 2009, I’ll do it properly.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The Music of Life

This week we heard the incredible report from Germany of the world’s first double arm transplant; a man who had lost both his arms years ago has been given new arms which came from a young man who died shortly before the surgery. Much has been said about the possibility of rejection of the new arms, and the crucial problem of blood flow. But there is another problem: the man’s brain has to learn to recognise that the new arms are actually his arms. This may involve many months (if not years) of physiotherapy before the recipient will actually be able to move the arms. However, physiotherapy might not be enough; for those arms to become more than just two lumps of living flesh, perhaps music will be needed.

It reminds me of an extraordinary little book by Oliver Sacks called A Leg to Stand On. Sacks is a prominent neurologist who has written some incredible books such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and An Anthropologist on Mars where he writes about neurological case studies. But in this particular book (written in the 1980s), Sacks himself becomes the humble patient. In 1974, Oliver Sacks had a serious accident, rupturing the main tendon of his left leg. He underwent an operation to repair the leg, but was left with absolutely no feeling in the limb. But it was worse; he had the feeling of the leg’s extinction – that the leg was not his own leg – it was just an object dissociated from his body. It seems that since the leg was inactivated for a significant amount of time, it had lost its place in the brain’s sensory cortex. Its place was quickly taken over by mappings of the rest of the body so that Sacks’ body map which is represented in the cortex had no place for the leg; the brain’s body map represented a one-legged man. This is very interesting; body-image is not fixed in the brain, but is something that adapts itself all the time to experience. So Sacks had no conscious access to his leg so, the left leg he saw before him did not belong to him.
It is not possible for any spontaneous revival of a part of the cortical body map that has vanished to occur; there needs to be creation of a new organization, and this can only be achieved by new experiences, new stimuli and actions. This was a particularly distressing time for Oliver Sacks; he had effectively lost his leg, and it seemed that no amount of physiotherapy could reunite him with his leg. During one of his physiotherapy sessions, he even resorted to a convoluted type of 'walking', where he would calculate each step fully in advance (with reference to visual landmarks such as furniture and walls), and then make an appropriate flexion-movement of the hip. This ridiculous manner of locomotion was a completely conscious process, but the walking that we take for granted is automatic and unconscious. However, the first signs that the leg’s return was imminent came when he heard a familiar musical piece in his mind – a piece he had been repeatedly listening to the day before. Here is how Sacks described the experience:

"And suddenly – into the silence, the silent twittering of motionless frozen images – came music, glorious music. Mendelssohn, fortissimo! Life, intoxicating movement! And, as suddenly, without thinking, without intending whatever, I found myself walking, easily, with the music. And, as suddenly, in the moment that this inner music started, the Mendelssohn which had been summoned and hallucinated by my soul, and in the very moment that my 'motor' music, my kinetic melody, my walking came back – in this self-same moment the leg came back. Suddenly, with no warning, no transition whatever, the leg felt alive, and real, and mine, its moment of actualisation precisely consonant with the spontaneous quickening, walking and music. ... I believed in my leg, I knew how to walk ...

... It was as if I suddenly remembered how to walk – indeed, 'not as if'. I remembered how to walk. All of a sudden I remembered walking’s natural, unconscious rhythm and melody; it came to me.

... I was doing it perfectly and easily, with no conscious counting or calculation whatever, but simply giving myself to the activity’s own tempo, pulsion and rhythm."

But then music in his mind died, and it resulted in a relapse:

"... I had a sudden and unexpected relapse – suddenly forgot my kinetic melody, forgot how to walk. In this moment, as suddenly as if the needle had been lifted from a record, the inner playing of Mendelssohn stopped, and in the instant it stopped, my walking stopped too. Suddenly the leg ceased to be stable and real and reverted to its cinematic delirium, its awful wild jumping of shapes, sizes, frames."

"And in that moment, when the body became action, the leg, the flesh became quick and alive, the flesh became music, incarnate solid music. All of me, body and soul, became music in that moment."

This is an application of music therapy. Music is a mysterious thing. Not all of us can play a musical instrument or carry a tune (I can do neither of these things), but we spend a lot of our time enjoying music; it can alter our moods, it bonds groups of people together, and it can release tension. It varies between cultures and historical periods, but every culture has it – just like language. Is music hard-wired in our brains? Noam Chomsky taught us that all the world’s languages are based on a universal grammar module that is hard-wired in the brain; is there a “music module” hard-wired in every brain? According to musicologists like Fred Lerdahl and Heinrich Schenker, this is most probably the case. For our brains to have evolved something as complex as a universal music module means that it must have some survival value (just like language) – it’s not just there for our enjoyment and amusement. Maybe each of us carries our song within us – a "kinetic melody", a rhythm of life. I’ll stop typing and just sit back and listen to that classical guitar CD playing in the background of my lounge-room ... how about you?‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The Most Powerful Computer

It was exactly 12 years ago when the then chess world champion Garry Kasparov defeated super computer Deep Blue in a chess match. He won by a score of 4-2, and it seems that humanity had prevailed over the threat of digital dominance. But just over a year later, a new and improved Deep Blue exacted its revenge, defeating Kasparov by a score of 3.5 to 2.5. I remember following this historical match over the internet; a match between a flesh and blood human and a cold calculating super computer that was said to have the ability to analyze 200 million chess positions a second. A defeat over the world champion (and arguably the greatest chess-player in history) was indeed an impressive thing. Immediately after the match, newspapers were hailing a new era where computers had become intelligent, in the sense that they could even think for themselves. Even Kasparov himself commented that Deep Blue's moves appeared to exhibit human-like qualities of deep intelligence and creativity.

However, in spite of Deep Blue's awesome processing power, Kasparov won the first game of the six-game match, lost game 2 (he actually resigned in a drawn position), drew games 3, 4 and 5, and only lost game 6 due to tiredness and emotional strain. So Deep Blue's win wasn't as convincing as it seemed. But Deep Blue's chess style was based on raw processing power and an "opening book" containing 4000 positions and 700,000 grandmaster (human) games. It used its awesome calculating powers to find the best possible move in a position, but it was not "intelligent". It did not play like a human. Although a computer can calculate positions much faster than any human, it's calculating abilities are not necessarily more efficient than a human's. Computers lack the human skills of intuition and evaluation. A human grandmaster can consider the most likely moves and responses and reject the others. Deep Blue was merely a chess position calculator whereas Kasparov plays chess to at least Deep Blue's level, speaks Russian and English, tell jokes, drive a car, have meaningful relationships, etc. Modern computers are still very far from being able to emulate true human intelligence, even though computers like Deep Blue may pass the "Turing test" in which it can prove its intelligence by fooling a human into thinking that he/she is dealing with a human.
What's really lacking in modern computers is the kind of intuition and imagination that makes us human and allows us (for example) to make remarkable scientific discoveries and gain insight into the workings of the universe. For example, when James Clerk Maxwell originally formulated his 4 equations relating electric charges and currents with electric and magnetic fields, he felt that something was missing. He took an intuitive leap of faith - something that no computer can do - and introduced an additional term to one of the equations - the so-called displacement current. This piece of inspiration, which was not based on any logic or experiment, implied the existence of electromagnetic radiation, paving the way for some of the things we take for granted today, like televisions, telephones, power stations, street lights, etc. Computers as we know them cannot even come close to this behaviour; they are simply our slaves; we write software instructions that basically break down complex ideas into small steps that a stupid machine can deal with.
The human brain is the most powerful computer on Earth. It is a miracle of nature that has evolved only once on our planet. With its 10^11 neurons and perhaps 100 trillion connections between neurons, it is without doubt the most complicated thing on Earth. Can the human brain fully understand the universe? Since the brain is part of the universe, it seems to silly to suggest that the part can understand the whole.
It is estimated that the observable universe is made up of 10^80 elementary particles. The maximum amount of information our brains can know is "only" 100 trillion (10^14) pieces, so it seems a futile exercise. However, science has shown that the universe is governed by natural laws; i.e. there are patterns and there is order in the universe - it is not just a random assortment of 10^80 particles (if it were, galaxies, planets and life would never have arisen), so we don't need to know 10^80 pieces of information in order to understand the universe. Some of these natural laws may well turn out to be very complicated; too complex for the storage capacity of our brains to handle - but we can use our digital slaves for data storage. If the universe is finite, I believe the time will come come when humanity - with the help of the internet that connects humans together, and with the passage of time - will be able to fully comprehend it.
Personally I would not like to live in a universe where everything is knowable and there are no mysteries. For me there is no greater pleasure in life than the feeling I get from understanding some scientific concept. It is for this reason that I have returned to study at my age, and it is also for this reason that I am constantly reading and learning. There are many others like me, and this is why humanity, the most powerful computer in the universe, will one day learn the meaning of life, the universe and everything.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Work makes you free???

Arbeit macht frei (work brings freedom) - a slogan placed at the entrances of Nazi concentration camps

Hombre que trabaja pierde tiempo precioso (a man who works wastes precious time) - Cuban proverb

I recently changed jobs after only one year. I liked my work-colleagues and was sad to leave them, but I quit because the job was mind-numbingly boring and unchallenging, and I'd be damned if I stayed in such a job for too long. I feel lucky and privileged that I am able to turn my back on a job and find something better; most people have no choice but to stay in their jobs, whether they like it or not.
Just the other day, I noticed a policeman directing traffic at an intersection. I imagine that when this guy was a kid, he probably had a burning desire to be a cop; perhaps he idolized TV law-enforcers like Columbo and Starsky & Hutch, and fantasized about hunting down bad guys and bringing them to justice. But there he was - a police constable - and he certainly didn't look happy. I wonder how many teenagers are out there dreaming of becoming taxi-drivers or garbage collectors or office administrators. Yet there are people doing these very jobs - whether they like it or not. And how many people out there would quit their jobs if somebody could guarantee them an annual stipend of 50 or 60 thousand Australian dollars? I'd say that millions of people would jump at such an offer. Would you?

It has been argued that work gives people freedom and prosperity. In fact, in the recent Australian election campaign, the former prime minister constantly reminded us of how "Australians have never been better off". In Australia - as in most of the developed world - the stock market is at near-record highs, and unemployment is very low. Our overall wealth seems to confirm Howard's assertion - but look beneath the surface and you get a different picture. Yes, unemployment is low, but there are many people working in low-paying and part-time jobs who are not counted in the statistics. In addition to this, most of the workforce has experienced a decline in real wages in the past 30 years. In order to reach the standard of living of 30 years ago, most people have to work longer hours. This can be illustrated in the following datum: in the past 20 years, the starting wage for an newly qualified electronic engineer rose by an average of 3.5% per year. In the same period, the average house price in Melbourne rose by 8-10% per year. Hard work pays off less than it used to!
So how come we're so wealthy overall? How come John Howard can brag about the wealth of the Australian people? Wealth comes from capital gains of investments - shares, real estate, businesses; however, in Australia, the wealthiest 10% of households owns 90% of shares (outside of superannuation). The average worker is unable to invest much (if at all) because he/she is unable to save enough. The rich get richer and the working poor are working harder than ever before.
Obviously people have to work to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families - that's enough of a motivation for us to work in jobs we don't like. But there are other motivations: people have come to regard their jobs as means to getting the money needed to purchase items that are being marketed to them. As Madonna sang "we are living in a material world" and people are judged by the goods they possess. We are encouraged to go into debt to buy the consumer goods that advertising companies tell us we need; the message is that life is short, so why wait to buy the things you want? One of the most insidious things I've seen is the way investment strategies are marketed by "respectable" current affairs shows like Today Tonight. Every once in a while on Today Tonight, there is an "inspirational" story of a person who has become fabulously rich by borrowing heavily and gearing into property. We are shown the image of a successful investor driving a flashy car and looking very prosperous with the implied message: "dear viewer, if this average unremarkable person can go from rags to riches, why can't you?" The trouble is that when the average person uses a lot of "other people's money" to fund investments, he/she must work hard to service the debt. And as our wealth increases, so does our spending. All this in the hope of making your dreams come true ... well, the dreams that advertising companies push upon us. I worked with a guy who is still working in a job he hates, and reports to managers he loathes, but he can't quit because he has investment debts to service. Last I heard from him, he was absolutely miserable.
So what's the answer? We can't all work in our dream job, yet we all have to eat. I know of 2 people who seem to have things worked out. John worked very hard for a number of years for the same company. Due to market conditions, he was retrenched from his job and was fortunate enough to receive a generous payout. The payout was enough for him to pay off his mortgage and other debts. With no dependents and financial commitments, he chooses to live off unemployment benefits and enjoys his hobbies. Such a very simple life may not be to everybody's liking but John has never been happier.
Another case is that of Simone. Many years ago, she wrote a small software package and sold it for a small fortune. She invested every cent of the proceeds in the Australian stock market. Today her shares are worth over a million dollars and yielding a gross income of 60,000 Australian dollars. Rather than working and investing to make even more money, she retired at the young age of 40 and now lives a simple yet pleasant life, spending her time writing, painting and occasionally travelling.

Don't fall for the images that advertising companies are trying to sell us; they are carrots used by big corporations to make us work even harder. Ultimately, those ideals will not make us happy, but will only serve to make the greedy corporations richer. Simplify your life; do you really need that plasma TV and that expensive car? If you simplify your life, chances are you'll be much happier and maybe you can be freed from the clutches of the greedy corporate monster.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

How the present shapes the past

"The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense knew we were coming." -- Freeman Dyson

Much has been written about the weirdness of quantum mechanics - for example, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the wave-particle duality of light, and entanglement - however, I've just come across something mind-blowing after reading "The Goldilocks Enigma" by Paul Davies. This quantum weirdness might just explain why life exists - i.e. why the universe is "just right" for life to exist. It can explain why the laws of physics and the constants of nature are just right for life to emerge. It can explain how these laws came to be. The laws of physics can be likened to a kind of software, while the physical universe is like a giant computer - the hardware. The software cannot exist without the hardware, so what role does quantum mechanics have in the cosmic software development?

I recently watched an episode of Doctor Who, called "Blink", in which the Doctor battles against a group of Weeping Angels. The Doctor says that they are quantum-locked; when they are being observed (presumably by conscious beings), they turn to stone. But as soon as nobody is watching, they move quickly and are deadly. A touch sends their victims into the past to live out their lives before they were even born; the Angels then feed on the "potential energy" of the lives their victims would have lived in the present.
Quantum-locked: This is like the quantum weirdness which suggests that the world has no well-defined structure until a mind observes it. This is the weirdness that emerges from the mystery of what happens when the wave function of a quantum system is collapsed by the act of measurement. In quantum mechanics, the wave function is a mathematical expression that gives the probabilities that when a quantum system is measured, certain variables - e.g. position, velocity, spin - will instantly acquire values. These probabilities are not the same as those we face when, say, flipping a coin - which is only due to our ignorance of the forces acting on the coin.
The much-described double-slit experiment illustrates the quantum weirdness very well. In this experiment, light is shone at a solid thin plate that has two slits cut into it. A photographic plate is set up to record what comes through those slits. In the case where the light from both slits arrives at the photographic plate in phase, the waves reinforce each other and produce a bright band. Where they arrive out of phase, they cancel each other out, producing a dark band. Thus we get an interference pattern of bright and dark bands. The remarkable thing is that the same thing happens when the brightness of the light is turned down to the point where single photons are directed toward the double slits - implying that, although each photon passes through only one slit, it somehow interferes with itself(!) causing a pattern to emerge on the photographic plate. Even spookier: if we try to put detectors at the slits to see which one each photon actually goes through, no interference pattern results. If we don't look, the photon exhibits a wavelike behaviour but, as soon as we look, the photon behaves as a particle.



So, what has all this to do with life in the universe? John Wheeler added a new twist to the double-slit experiment; an observer waits until long after the light has passed through the slits before choosing to see which slit the photon went through. By doing this, the interference pattern is destroyed. The observation you have made affects the past - i.e. whether the photon previously behaved as a wave or a particle!!! We could wait a few seconds or billions of years - it makes no difference to the result. Apparently, this behaviour has been confirmed by experiment. The idea is that, due to the existence of observers in the universe at the moment (in other words, the existence of life), it means that life can emerge by acts of quantum observation into the past. The laws of physics were not produced ready-made from the big bang, but emerged over time since the big bang and have been fine-tuned ever since by quantum observations. So we have a situation where the Universe and its laws explain life, and life explains the the Universe and its laws - a nice iterative process. Is this concept testable? Can it be modeled mathematically? What does it mean for the concept of time? I don't know, but it's certainly an intriguing, outrageous and mind-blowing idea.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The Human-Supernova Epidemic

"Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty." - William Shakespeare (King Henry IV)

"Obesity is a condition which proves that the Lord does not help those who help themselves and help themselves and help themselves." - Unknown

When a star reaches the red giant phase of its life, and the iron group of elements are made within the central core, it has reached a very critical stage in its existence. Critical because certain factors will now determine whether the star will survive or explode.
A mass limit for the star exists, and it is around 6 times the solar mass. If a star weighs in below this limit, it will have a long, peaceful and safe future. It will gradually eject small parts of its outer layer. With time, if it manages to blow off enough mass, it will survive for a long time as a white dwarf. If the mass of the white dwarf happens to be greater than the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses, it could end up in the more compact form of a neutron star.
However, if a star is unfortunate enough to be over the critical mass period when it is in the red giant stage - i.e. greater than 6 solar masses - a very traumatic and violent future awaits it; it will explode and become a supernova.
And so it is with us humans. As we get to middle age, our doctors advise us to keep our weight down. The size of a person's waist is an indication of his/her risk of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc. - not to mention the psychological effects that come with being overweight. Obesity has been associated with tens of thousands of deaths each year. It has been attributed to our sedentary lifestyles. Binge eating and "comfort food" eating is also blamed; in neurological terms, drug addiction and binge eating are not dissimilar. Then there is the genetic component - some people may just be more predisposed to putting on weight. When you think about it, you never see a 10kg canary, so there must be something in the DNA that regulates size and weight. But genetic factors cannot explain the "obesity epidemic" that we are seeing. The rapidity with which waistlines in the western world are expanding is unprecedented. It has become more common to see children suffering from "old people's diseases" such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Make no mistake, this is an epidemic and this generation of young people will be the first in Australian history to die younger than their parents' generation. It's easy enough to blame fast-food outlets, and we can bemoan our busy lifestyles that don't allow us the time to exercise and to cook healthy meals. I believe that it is indeed our busy lifestyles that are the root cause of this obesity epidemic. People forsake their health and well being in order to chase the almighty dollar. Mothers are too busy working and no longer have the time to make their children's lunches; they give their kids $10 lunch-money, which will most likely be spent on junk food, and then blame fast-food outlets for selling unhealthy food to their precious children. People are too busy cook for themselves, so they entrust their diets to the restaurant around the corner, or to the Pizza Hut delivery boy. After a hard day's work, people are too tired to exercise, so they flop on the couch and watch the next gripping installment of "Big Brother" or "Dancing with the Stars".
We can learn from our celestial friends. Our Sun, the star that gives us life, will never end its life as a supernova because it is too small and lean. If we don't want to end up as a "human supernova", we must do everything we can to keep our weight down, and the only way to do this is to live a healthy lifestyle. Forget about things like diet pills, stomach stapling, weight-watchers programs, crash-dieting and all the drivel that gets printed in those mindless glossy women's magazines. The solution is simple: eat less, eat healthy, eat often, and make exercise a regular part of your life. No time or energy to cook or exercise? Then simplify your life. Your life, and your children's lives, depend on it.‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The clock is ticking

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. - William Faulkner

In August 1967, a signal from the heavens was detected. It appeared to come from a radio source in outer space, and it was in the form of extremely regular radio pulses. Their period, that is the time difference between two consecutive pulses, was measured to be 1.3373011512 second. To quote the period to an accuracy of 10 decimal places was unprecedented. Were these signals from an advanced extra-terrestrial civilization?

Science fiction buffs were to be disappointed. The signals were from a pulsar, christened with the name "CP 1919" - CP standing for "Cambridge Pulsar" and 1919 representing its coordinates in the sky (sidereal time 19h 19m). Since 1967, many more pulsars have been detected, but we still do not have a clear picture of exactly how they work, although we know that they must be neutron stars. Perhaps the most accepted model of a pulsar was proposed by astrophysicist Tommy Gold. It is of a spinning neutron star, with the pulse period being the period of rotation of the star about its axis. You see, a neutron star is surrounded by an "atmosphere" of charged particles, and as it spins so does the atmosphere, carried along by the star's gravitational pull. These particles may move at close to speed of light, and may generate electromagnetic waves in the presence of magnetic fields. However, with the passage of time, a neutron star's spin slows down, causing its pulse period to increase ... but that takes a long time.

On Earth, we define universal time in terms of the caesium clock, where one second is defined as the time it takes for 9192631770 cycles of radiation emitted during the transition two specified energy levels of a caesium-133 atom. The time intervals of such transitions are not always the same but, by averaging over several such transitions, we can arrive at a steady period.

How does the accuracy of "pulsar clock" measure up against a caesium clock? To measure the stability of clocks, we use the Allan variance. Such measurements show that, over short time scales (e.g. a month), the pulsar's period is not as stable, but over longer time scales (years), the pulsar is much more stable.

The late great Carl Sagan wrote in his book "Billions and Billions":
Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives.
Our civilization also dances to the tune of a few atoms changing state but one day, the machinations of our well-oiled societies will be be dictated to by faded stars in their death throes.
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Are you master of your domain?

"I must be walking in my sleep, but how can I be walking in my sleep if I know enough to KNOW I’m walking in my sleep? Ha, ha, ha, tsk, tsk, tsk. The strange things people do in their sleep … especially when they’re awake." – Daffy Duck

In 1911, French physician Edouard Claparede reported the case of a female patient who had lost her ability to create new memories. Each time Claparede walked into the room, he had to reintroduce himself to her, as she had no recollection of ever having met him – even though she may have spoken to him moments earlier. One day, he decided to do an experiment. As usual, he entered the room, and held out his hand to greet her, and as usual she shook his hand. But this time, Claparede had concealed a tack in the palm of his hand, and pricked her with it – obviously a painful experience. The next time he returned to the room, she still did not recognise him but she refused to shake his hand; she did not know why she wouldn't shake his hand – she just wouldn't. She had subconsciously learned that shaking hands with Claparede would cause her harm, and her brain – in fact, her subconscious mind – stored the bad experience in memory, to prevent the painful experience from reoccurring (even though she consciously had no recollection of what caused the unpleasantness).


Clarapede's patient, and even Daffy Duck, are extreme examples which illustrate that there are things going on in our minds that we are not aware of. If I may steal yet another quote from Seinfeld, we are not really "masters of our domains".

Psychologists have long been aware that small, unnoticeable stimuli often fail to be consciously perceived, yet may lead to a behavioural response. Fifty years ago, Vance Packard, with his bestseller "The Hidden Persuaders" popularized this "subliminal perception" with the famous story of the messages "DRINK COKE" and "EAT POPCORN" flashed briefly on the screen during a movie at the cinema. This messages were flashed so quickly - only for one third of a millisecond - that the viewers did not consciously perceive them, but the intention was to get the viewers to consume more coke and popcorn. Did it work? Well, it was claimed that Coke sales increased by 18 percent and popcorn sales increased by 58 percent after this experiment, although there are doubts about these claims.

In his book "The Secret Sales Pitch: An Overview of Subliminal Advertising," August Bullock argues the case that subtle kinds of subliminal messages certainly do affect behaviour and they are widely used by advertisers to try and subvert our free will. Bullock argues that , since the 1950s, optical illusions and double meanings have been secretly embedded in mass media in order to manipulate the public unconsciously.

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising and, indeed, there is little evidence that subliminal stimuli can influence our actions or attitudes. But scientific studies - particularly those conducted by Anthony Marcel in the 1970s - have established the phenomenon in a well-controlled way. Marcel found that words presented to too fast to be consciously identified are still processed in the brain, at least to the level of meaning. For example, if the word "river" is flashed for a very short time , a person will deny having seen anything. But if this person is then asked to choose a word that goes with "bank", he or she is more likely to choose "boat" instead of "money". Brain scans have shown that weak stimuli of short duration activate particular brain regions without a person being conscious of them.

Examples of subliminal perception can be found in people with neurological damage - much like in the example of Clarapede's patient. One example is a syndrome called blindsight. Patients with blindsight have damage to the primary visual cortex - just where the optical signals reach the cortex. Blindsight patients receive visual information from the world, but they say they are not conscious of it. If you show them an object they claim not to see it; yet forced to guess, they are surprisingly accurate. They can reach for the visual object, point to its location, and even track it with their eyes. Yet, they vehemently insist that they have no visual experience of the object. Another neurological syndrome in which subliminal perception occurs is prosopagnosia or face agnosia. Patients with prosopagnosia are unable to recognize familiar faces. Although they may be aware that they are looking at a person's face, they are unable to say who the person may be. Prosapagnosics report that they have no awareness of perceiving any information regarding whose face they may be viewing. Yet, despite this absence of conscious awareness, some patients with prosapagnosia are able to choose which of two names goes with each familiar face that they claim not to be able to recognize.

Much of what we do is unconscious. When you and I read a sentence such as this one, there is much more activity going on unconsciously than consciously. But try reading this sentence upside down, and you will probably become conscious of reading every word ... you may even be talking to yourself as you're reading it. If we could take a scan of your brain as you are doing your upside down reading, we would see much more intense activity than if you were to read right side up. Any skill that you have to learn - driving a car, or a new language, or upside down reading - becomes automatic when practiced for a long time, until it becomes second nature to us, and most of the activity unconscious.

Since so much of our behaviour and activities are handled unconsciously, how can humans ever claim to have total free will? How can we say that we are truly masters of our domain?
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Brahma's home

There is an interesting Hindu story about Brahma, the God who created the universe. A king named Kukudmi had a beautiful daughter named Revati who attracted many male suitors. Kukudmi wanted to make sure that his daughter would make the right choice in choosing a husband so he decided to consult Brahma. He went to Brahma's home together with his lovely daughter. Brahma was very busy with some God business and asked Kukudmi to wait a moment. A moment later, Brahma came out and asked the king the purpose of his visit. Kukudmi explained the situation, and asked Brahma for advice about selecting the right man from all those suitors. Brahma laughed and said, "All those suitors are dead and gone. Although you waited at my home for only a moment, during that period, thousands of years have passed on Earth". As you may well understand, the king was speechless. However, Brahma was able to at least solve one of Kukudmi's problems: "Go back to your kingdom", Brahma said, "and there you will find a suitable boy called Balarama for your daughter."

Presumably, Kukudmi and Revati returned to their kingdom thousands of years after their departure; they had travelled forward in time.



Time travel raises a number of strange issues and paradoxes. For example, somebody might travel into the past and murder his mother when she was an infant. If the infant dies, she can never become the mother of the time traveller. But that would mean that the time traveller was never born, so he could never go back to murder his mother.

Another oddity that can arise from time travel is illustrated by the following example: A man travels 1 year into the future and reads an article, in a scientific journal, about a revolutionary theory that unifies relativity and quantum theory. Our hero then returns to his own time and teaches the theory to his student, who then writes it up in a journal. The article written by the student is the very same one that the time traveller read. So where did the the revolutionary theory come from? Not from the student; the time traveller gave it to him. Nor did it come from the time traveller; he merely read it in a journal. The theory seemingly came from nowhere. How bizarre!

Of course this is science fiction. Although Einstein's equations do not disallow time travel into the past, there is as yet no physical evidence to show that it is possible. But time travel into the future is indeed possible and has been observed. Anybody who is even a little familiar with special relativity has heard about the "twin paradox". It goes like this: Betty and Bill are twins. Betty gets into a spaceship and travels at high speed to a nearby star and then turns back and returns home. On her return, she finds that 10 years have elapsed on Earth, but only 1 year had elapsed in Betty's spaceship during her journey. Bill (her twin brother) is now 9 years older than Betty, even though they were both born on the very same date. This is due to time dilation, which occurs when motion occurs at close to the speed of light. We never notice it because we move at much slower speeds, but the phenomenon of time dilation has been tested with atomic clocks which shows that time is really slowed by motion. It can also be seen with particles. A muon has a half-life of around 2 microseconds, but when sped up to close to the speed of light, the muon's half-life has been seen to increase dramatically. So time travel to the future is a proven fact!

Another way to travel forward in time is with gravity. Gravity slows down time; time on the ground floor of a skysscraper runs slower than on the 40th floor, but the effect is neglibile and unnoticeable. But on the surface of a neutron stat, the gravity is so strong that time slows significantly - by around 30-40 percent. To observers on Earth, the clocks on a neutron star will appear to go slower than those on Earth. Obviously there are no clocks on any neutron stars - this is just an analogy - but how do we know for sure? Well, instead of comparing clocks, we see changes in the frequencies of spectral lines, which reflect the changes in the atomic systems at the source. The frequency of light from the neutron star will appear reduced, and the increased wavelengths will shift toward the red end of the spectrum. This is the so-called gravitational red shift.

I won't say that Brahma lives on a neutron star - it's not massive enough to slow time down in the way suggested by the story - but maybe he has a holiday house not far from a black hole.

‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

A Whole Lot of Nothing

In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld try to sell an idea for a new TV show to an NBC executive:

GEORGE: I think I can sum up the show for you with one word: NOTHING.
NBC BOSS: Nothing?

GEORGE: (Smiling) Nothing.
NBC BOSS: (Unimpressed) What does that mean?
NBC BOSS: The show is about nothing.
JERRY: (To George) Well, it's not about nothing.
GEORGE: (To Jerry) No, it's about nothing.

George then continues to explain his idea to an increasingly annoyed NBC boss, and the dialogue continues:

NBC BOSS: How is that a show?
JERRY: Well, uh, maybe something happens on the way to work.
GEORGE: No, no, no. Nothing happens.
JERRY: Well, something happens.
NBC BOSS: Well, why am I watching it?
GEORGE: Because it's on TV.
NBC BOSS: Not yet. (in a threatening tone)

I know a guy who has dedicated a whole blog to the concept of nothingness but what is exactly Nothing, and where can we find it? We are told that there are regions in outer space where there is nothing - a void; is this really true? Is it possible to find the void closer to home - say, on Earth?

Believe it or not, the void constitutes a big part of the structure of everyday things. Let's consider an atom; if we were to magnify the size of an atom so that it has a diameter of 100 metres, it's nucleus would have the size of a billiard ball. So the main constituent of an atom is ... well ... nothing. Everything that surrounds us - people, diamonds, and even mother Earth herself is made up of empty space punctuated by atomic nuclei and electrons. If we were to take a skyscraper, and remove all the empty space that exists in its constituent atoms, we would be left with an object the size of a marble with a mass of 50,000 tonnes; who would've thought that a skyscraper could be so heavy. But is this empty space really empty? Is it a true void?

Aristotle said that nature abhors a vacuum, but vacuums are everywhere - e.g. in light bulbs and in the cathode ray tubes of out televisions. There is no doubt that a section of space can be cleared of all ordinary matter. But even after all solids, liquids and gases have been eliminated from a container, the remaining space still has a complex structure; it is filled with electromagnetic radiation. Part of this radiation is of a thermal nature and can be eliminated by lowering the temperature. Other sources of invisible radiation are apparent as soon as we turn on a television or a radio: signals of TV shows such as Big Brother and the six o'clock news can be found even in a vacuum. What if all the man-made sources of radiation were to be switched off? Would we then have a perfect vacuum in our frozen container? There is another form of energy that is intrinsic and cannot be eliminated. It is the so-called zero point energy. Evidence of the existence of zero point energy has been found with the Casimir effect, and its effects are observable in the problems it causes in nanotechnology. The origin of this energy is the quantum fluctuations. In the quantum world, the uncertainty principle allows for particles and antiparticles to suddenly come into existence and then annihilate.

So the void is not really empty. Is there really such a concept as "nothing" or "zero"? Sure, it has been suggested that the mass of a photon or of a graviton is in fact zero, but this is yet to be proven. Has Nothing ever existed? It has been said that the reason why there is Something rather than Nothing is that Nothing is unstable. Did the universe begin with nothing? St. Augustine said that God made the world from "prope nihil" - i.e. almost nothing. This seems to correspond with modern cosmology; it is believed that after the big bang, matter and anti-matter almost annihilated one another and we almost had nothing but there was a slight imperfection in symmetry - there were slightly more quarks than anti-quarks - and this slight imbalance was enough to make possible life, the universe and everything.

It appears that there is no such thing as Nothing. Aristotle was right (for the wrong reasons) that nature truly does abhor a vacuum; the total absence of matter and energy is impossible to obtain. However, attempting to come as close as possible to a state of void is important if we are to understand the nature of matter - particularly at the particle level. This is done by using huge particle accelerators, where particles are made to smash against one another at high velocities and energies in order to study the results of such collisions. Naturally, the paths of these speeding particles should not be impeded by any pesky unwanted particles so, for this reason the tunnel through which the particles are accelerated, is made to be as perfect a vacuum as possible. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is due to be operational in 2008, and it is hoped that the mysterious Higgs boson (dubbed the "God particle" by Leon Lederman) will be detected ... but only after particle collisions are made in a tunnel filled with near-nothingness.
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Mysterious Energy of the Cosmos

It is claimed by a lot of spiritual and religious teachings that there exists a mysterious psychic or spiritual energy that pervades the entire universe - for example, the Tao of Taoism, the Absolute in Hinduism, and the Void of Buddhism. We may sit back and ridicule such scientifically unproven concepts but, throughout the ages - from ancient times to the present day - science has invoked similar concepts - albeit by rational thought.


The ancient Greeks proposed a mysterious substance that was thought to fill the universe above the Earth. This was the classical aether and, after air, earth, fire and water, it was the fifth element. Aristotle believed that this fifth element was the main constituent of the heavens. He thought that this element was at its purest in the celestial regions, but becomes adulterated in the region below the moon.

In 1748, Georges Le Sage proposed that the force of gravity is the result of tiny undetectable particles or waves moving at high speed in all directions of the universe - a kind of gravitational aether. This theory was discredited, most notably by James Clerk Maxwell.

In the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell needed a medium to support his electric and magnetic fields, so he adopted the aether - in this case, the luminiferous aether - in which electric and magnetic fields can vibrate, in the same way as sound waves propagate through the air. In fact, just as the vibration of air is sound, it was thought that the vibration of the aether was electromagnetic waves. This aether was indeed mysterious: it was totally transparent and undetectable, yet it was everywhere - even in a vacuum.
The Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 showed that the aether had no effect on light waves, and Albert Einstein dealt the final blow to the concept of a luminiferous aether when his special theory of relativity of 1905 showed that the aether was not necessary.
But this was not the end of aether-type concepts. In 1952, in an effort to explain the particle-wave duality in the quantum world, David Bohm came up with the Guided Wave Theory (GWT). According to Bohm, particles are never waves. However, associated with every particle is an undetectable quantum potential which guides the particle's motion - a guiding wave or pilot wave in an unobservable quantum field. This quantum field permeates all of spacetime but it doesn't diminish with distance and exerts no force. It is a quantum potential that binds the entire universe together into what Bohm called a seamless unbroken wholeness. How does it explain the wave-particle duality? Well, in the case of the famous double-slit experiment, each particle goes through only one slit, but its pilot wave goes through both. And, get this, the pilot wave is able to guide the particles without ever exerting any force on them. Understandably, many physicists do not find GWT very convincing - particularly since it invokes a mysterious field that permeates the entire universe - but mainstream physics tells us that a vacuum is not really empty; it is filled with many virtual particles (quantum foam). And what about the mysterious Higgs field? The Higgs field is a quantum field that allegedly permeates the entire universe and mediated by the hypothetical Higgs boson as a messenger. According to the theory, all particles get their masses from interacting with the Higgs field. Hopefully, when the Large Hadron Collider is up and running in 2008, we will be able to have evidence confirming or denying the existence of this mysterious field.
Even cosmology has its own mysterious, undetectable energy. In 1964, the cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered - a radiation that is thought to be observable everywhere in the universe. This radiation is almost exactly (to 99.999% accuracy) the same temperature of 2.725K everywhere in the sky. According to the Big Bang model of the 1970s, points in the universe that have never been in contact have the same temperatures. This homogeneity is remarkable when it is considered that Einstein's special relativity disallows information transfer faster than the speed of light. How can photons across distant regions of the universe (that have never been in contact) have practically the same temperature? A solution to the problem was proposed in 1981 by Alan Guth, with the Inflationary model. Problem solved (or at least explained). But suddenly a new problem emerged. Inflation predicted a flat universe (referring to its curvature), but astronomical observations revealed that the amount of matter in the universe (baryonic and dark) accounted for only 30-40% of the critical density required for a flat universe. It was also observed that the universe expansion is currently accelerating. The only way to reconcile the inflationary model with the energy density measurements is to introduce a kind of repulsive gravity. Adding this repulsive gravity - or dark energy - gives us the critical density required for a flat universe. This dark energy is a very mysterious field and we have no idea what it could be (some might justifiably say that it is a fudge factor and that there is something wrong with the Big Bang model). The universe seems to be permeated by a matter field with a non-zero potential energy, whose only role seems to be to drive its accelerated expansion.

I wonder if all these undetectable energies and fields - Higgs, GWT, quantum foam, and dark energy - are all one and the same phenomenon. Or do we need to wait for a super genius of the likes of Einstein to explain them away and come up with new and revolutionary ideas?
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Free will and Quantum Mechanics

Before quantum mechanics showed up on the physics scene, life was literally more predictable. Classical physics gave us a deterministic view of the universe and it seemed that, if we somehow knew all the variables in the universe, we could predict what would happen in the future. It was as if God created the universe with a predetermined set of starting conditions and variables, and then left it to run its deterministic course - just like a mechanical clock after having been wound up. But if all is predetermined, what can we say about free will? Does it mean that no matter what we do, our future has already been determined? We may have the illusion of free will but is it just that - an illusion? Then along came a saviour, in the form of quantum mechanics. With quantum mechanics' statistical view of the world we suddenly had indeterminism. For example, if we have a box full of atomic nuclei, we can predict a time when half of them will decay, but we cannot calculate precisely when an individual nucleus will decay. Also, we cannot precisely know both the velocity and the position of an electron, so we can never know the exact starting conditions of a quantum system. Albert Einstein refused to believe in a statistical universe - he thought that quantum mechanics was incomplete and that there were "hidden variables" that could account for the quantum weirdness. John Bell's theory in 1964, followed its experimental confirmation in 1982, has shown us that there are no such hidden variables, and we must live with the weird world of quantum mechanics. But there are still some die-hard physicists that hope for a "classical system" to explain the statistical nature of quantum mechanics. One such physicist is Nobel Prize winner Gerard t'Hooft. In 2006, he wrote a paper The Mathematical Basis For Deterministic Quantum Mechanics where he suggests that, even though particles appear to behave unpredictably, we could indeed predict their behaviour by tracking their underlying states.
When this paper was released in 2006, the magazine New Scientist reported that, if t'Hooft's theory was correct, it would spell an end to the concept of free will. I will assume that the current prevailing view of quantum mechanics is correct and that it is, indeed, probabilistic ... but it doesn't matter.

How do we define free will? One way is: A decision that is not strictly determined by what has gone on before.
British mathematician Roger Penrose linked quantum mechanics to consciousness by proposing that quantum behaviour in the protein structures found in cells (including brain cells) can give rise to consciousness. And consciousness is needed in order for us to have free will. I would like to write a little about Penrose's theory in a subsequent post. But suppose that a decision in my brain is triggered by a quantum event. Since this event is purely random, how could it be due to my free will? By trading determinism with quantum uncertainty, we have transformed the decision from a causal one to a random one. Furthermore, other questions arise when we try to link quantum mechanics with free will:

Even though quantum mechanics may not be deterministic, it does have causality - i.e. there is always a reason or a cause for any phenomenon. For example, if we fire an electron through a double-slit system towards a screen, we will have no idea where precisely on the screen the electron will end up - no matter how carefully we aim (in fact, we don't even know through which slit the electron passed through); but we do know that the electron has ended up on the screen because we caused it to go there. So life is not completely random.

Although, at the quantum level, particle interactions are probabilistic in nature, on larger scales the effects of the uncertainty principle become negligible so that interactions in the macro (real) world become deterministic. Our brain cells as a whole are not of a quantum nature so we don't expect them to behave randomly.

If t'Hooft's theory is correct, and there are hidden variables, then quantum randomness is ruled out but not free will. Something can be deterministic but not computable. Even classical mechanics, with its much-vaunted determinism, is unpredictable. An example is the n-body problem of determining the behaviour of n interacting masses where n is equal to or greater than 3. These masses can be billiard balls or heavenly bodies or anything. We cannot compute with exactness how they will behave. So even a supposedly deterministic system has elements of unpredictability (randomness?).

So, in my opinion, we cannot draw any conclusions about free will from quantum mechanics, and I can't understand why people continue to link the two concepts together.
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The Best Book to Read?

Many, many years ago, when I was 6 years old, I attended a public primary school. It wasn't a religious school but we kids were required to attend weekly "religious instruction" classes. Even as a 6 year old kid, I found these classes unpleasant and boring. The teacher would say things like, "God made everything in the world - He made that table and that chair and this classroom ...". I knew very well that a carpenter made tables and chairs and, when the teacher overheard me telling one of my classmates my theory of table creation, she quickly tried to set me straight by gently asking me, "Well, if you're so smart, who do you think made the wood? And who made the carpenter?". I had no answer to such deep questions.
We were told how God somehow allowed his son to die for our sins, but it was never explained why He did such a thing to His beloved boy. And it always worried me that people spoke of somebody called "God", but nobody had ever seen him. I just had the feeling that there was something untruthful and dodgy about religious instruction.

On top of all that, those classes were irritating to me. Apart from having to recite John 3:16 every week, the most irritating thing about those classes was a particular song that we were all required to sing. To this day, I still cringe when I think about it. Here are the words I remember:

The best book to read is the bible
Oh the best book to read is the bible
If you read it every day
It will help you on your way
Oh the best book to read is the bi...ble

This is pure indoctrination and, thankfully, religious instruction is no longer taught to little kids in public primary schools in Australia. I was raised in a non-religious family and I didn't for a moment believe that the bible was the best book to read; I much preferred to read The Cat in the Hat where at least the words rhymed and it reminded me of my pet cat. As I got older, I started to ponder some serious questions, such as: "who really created the carpenter?"; "what was God doing before he created the universe?"; "In Noah's Ark, what did the anteaters eat?"

I haven't got answers to those questions (and neither have you), but one question that can be answered is: "Is the bible the best book to read?". Does the bible really deserve the "good book" label? Is it really a moral guide that will "help you on your way"? Here are a few reasons why I have doubts (note, I use quotes from the New International Version of the bible).

The bible routinely condones slavery:

Leviticus 25:44: "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves". Great! The bible says it's okay for me to capture some New Zealanders and enslave them.

Exodus 21:20-21: "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."

Exodus 21:7: "If a man sell his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as men servants do." Yes, the bible has no problem with parents selling their daughters into slavery.

Hey, if you're a married man and want some variety in your life, maybe a second or third wife would do the trick. What does the bible say about polygamy?

Judges 8:30: "He had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives."

1 Samuel 1:1-2: "... (Elkanah) had two wives; one was called Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah."
Looks like there are no problems with polygamy, as far as the bible is concerned. How about corporal punishment?

Proverbs 26:3: "A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools."

Proverbs 22:15: "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him."
So, there you have it: a sure cure for foolishness is to beat the hell out of children.
Even the Almighty is not averse to handing out a beating.
Psalms 89:31-2: "If they break my decrees, and fail to keep my commands, I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging."

If you happen to be a homosexual, don't expect much support from the bible:

Leviticus 18:22: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." Other versions of the bible use the word "abomination" instead of "detestable"

Okay, that's the Old Testament. However, the New Testament is supposed to be full of love, forgiveness, not to mention Jesus' admirable philosophy of turning of the other cheek. So the New Testament is the one to look to for moral guidance, right? Yes, but proceed with caution; and if you're a kid, get some parental guidance. For example:
In Matthew 15, Jesus displays a shocking racist side to his personality when he refuses to help a non-Jewish woman and says, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs" thus comparing gentile women to dogs. Jesus is normally portrayed as a gentle, mild young man who spreads the philosophy of love and forgiveness; do you feel the love in the air?

How about the following quote from Matthew 23:33: "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell". Quite the acid tongue, Mr. Christ.

Environmentalists would probably not be too happy with mild-mannered Jesus either. In Mark 11:12-21, Jesus uses his divine powers to put a curse on a fig tree ("May no-one ever eat fruit from you again."), which causes the tree to whither and die. Jesus was certainly no tree-hugging greenie.
Nor is he an animal lover, as seen in Luke 8:27-33 where he exorcises demons from a "possessed" man. The demons beg Jesus not to order them to go into the Abyss. "A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into them, and he gave them permission. When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned."

The bible gives a lot of sound advice regarding morality and ethics, but be careful how you read it. Depending on which parts of it you read, the bible can be seen as allowing mistreatment of children, animals, trees, non-Jews and homosexuals. In Matthew 4:6, the devil himself quotes scripture to back up his own arguments.

Moreover, the whole idea of atonement, which is the centrepiece of the New Testament, is questionable. Jesus - the son of God (or was he God incarnated?) was brutally executed on the cross in atonement for the original sin and for mankind's future sins. In other words, justice was done by sacrificing the life of an innocent person for the sins of the guilty. That's a nice lesson to impart on our children ...
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

Brahma's Dream

This week in the press, there was a report about a new theory of the origin of our universe; read about it by clicking HERE. The theory says that the universe goes through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. According to conventional science, if we go back in time - way back - and approach the time of the big bang, we will come to a singularity, in which density, temperature and curvature become infinite; a point where all the laws of physics break down. This is very troubling since infinities are not very welcome in physics equations. However, using the concept of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), it has been shown - by running the LQG equations backwards - that the singularity can be avoided. As the universe collapses, it reaches a point in which it bounces back in a big bang, and the process repeats with the universe expanding. In an endless cycle of big bangs and big crunches, no two universes will ever be the same. The big bang and big crunch cycle is not new; what is new is that, according to this theory, the birth of our universe is not associated with a singularity and every successive universe is different from the one that preceded it.

But what is LQG? LQG competes with string theory as a "theory of everything" and, like string theory, is an incomplete and unproven (unprovable?) theory. It was developed by rewriting the equations of general relativity in a quantum structure. In this framework, spacetime is made up of tiny loops of 10^-35 metres in diameter. Spacetime is a network that links these loops together in an abstract way. How do we avoid a singularity and why is each universe different? Well, I'm not a physicist and I'm not familiar with the mathematics behind LQG, but I think I can guess how it works. In the case of a big crunch, as the volume becomes ever smaller, it reaches the point of the big bang. Since the universe is composed of finite loops, there can never be a singularity. When the universe reaches its most compact state, it bounces back and forms a new expanding universe. But it will be different from its predecessor. This is due to the uncertainty principle. At the time just before the "big bounce" - when the universe is very small - the amount of uncertainty is very different from that at the time after the big bounce, so the new universe will be different. To understand better how the uncertainty principle brings about a universe that is different from its predecessor, imagine a thought experiment in which we have a bunch of atoms moving around in a closed box. Let's say we try to reverse the motion of every atom at the same time, so that they all return to their starting positions. This makes no sense because we need to know the position of every atom precisely; its velocity must be precisely determined and then reversed while the atom stays in the same position. But Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle tells us that this is impossible; it says that we can never simultaneously measure the position and speed of something to perfect accuracy; this is an intrinsic uncertainty and it has nothing to do with the way physicists conduct their experiments or the accuracy of their instruments. So a system such as our universe is, in fact, not reversible because of the uncertainty of the starting conditions.
What does this say about the possibility of life emerging in our universe? Albert Einstein once said, "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world" (of course he was not referring to a personal god). Indeed, slight changes in the constants of nature - constants such as the strength of gravity, the speed of light, the masses of subatomic particles and the strengths of the weak and strong forces - could have made a completely different universe to the one we know and love - perhaps one where life could never arise. Given that there have been many cycles of big bangs crunches and bounces, this universe may have "won the jackpot" where all the constants of nature are set such that the conditions are just right for life to arise and for you and I to be born.

If you are a Hindu philosopher, none of the above should surprise you. Hindu philosophy has always accepted the notion of an alternately expanding and contracting universe. In his book Cosmos, Carl Sagan pointed out how, in Hindu cosmology, the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths, and its timescales are in the same ballpark as those of modern cosmology. Here is a quote from Cosmos:

"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater. It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."

So, according to Hinduism, the universe is a dream of some god. In my experience, no two dreams are precisely the same, and most of my dreams are of implausible scenarios.

To get an idea of the Hindu timescales, here are some figures: The smallest unit of measurement is the yuga - or era. Each yuga is preceded by a dawn and followed by a dusk which constitute the transition between them. A complete cycle - a mahayuga - consists of four yugas of unequal length. The longest yuga is the first one in the cycle and the shortest is the last one. I won't go into the meanings of each yuga - suffice to say that we are in the last yuga, called the kali yuga. It is believed that we entered the kali yuga in about 3200 BC. Here are the lengths of each of the 4 yugas in solar years:
Satya yuga: 1,728,000 years
Treta yuga: 1,296,000 years
Dwapar yuga: 864,000 years
Kali yuga: 432,000 years
The cycle repeats itself and there are 1000 mahayugas in one day in the life of Brahma (Hindu god). This day of Brahma is called a kalpa and, if you've done your arithmetic, it is 4.32 billion solar years long. Another kalpa is a Brahma night.
In terms of the age of our universe, these Hindu units of time are similar to those of modern cosmology (scientists say that our universe is around 15 billion years old). Compare this with the Christian fundamentalist view that the Earth is a mere 6000 years old. Hinduism is the only major religion that accepts the idea of universes that undergo cycles of expansion and contraction. If we take away all of the mythological nonsense from Hindu religion and replace it with mathematical nonsense, we come very close to the modern religion of cosmology. If you like, we are characters in Brahma's cosmic dream, and we are trying to understand his mind by analyzing and interpreting his dream.
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!

The Placebo Effect

"It's not a lie if you believe it" - George Costanza from Seinfeld

In his book "Six Easy Pieces", the late Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote:

" ... psychoanalysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease - lots of different 'spirits,' etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand, his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment, and there is no way to find a list of the number of cases in which it works, the number of cases in which it does not work ..."

He was writing about psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has been called "quackery" and "pseudoscience" and, as Richard Feynman suggests, it has little or no scientific basis; yet it has been successful in helping a lot of people to overcome debilitating mental issues. How is it that it works? It has been suggested that the success of psychoanalysis can be attributed to the placebo effect.

The word "placebo" is Latin for "I will please", and has come to refer to a treatment or substance which is pharmacologically inert (such as a sugar pill) but which may produce therapeutic benefits based only on the power of suggestion; the mind can heal. The opposite of this is "nocebo" - Latin for "I will harm" - where a substance may cause harm based only on the power of suggestion; the mind can incite both physical and mental illness.
The late Arthur Shapiro was a professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and an expert on the placebo effect. In an essay that he co-wrote in 1995, he wrote: "until recently, the history of medical treatment is essentially the history of the placebo effect". He was suggesting that, before the advent of modern medicine, almost all of the myriads of remedies were placebos. Shapiro also noted that patients tend to respond better to new drugs than to older, more established drugs. He argued that a brand new wonder drug draws high expectations on the part of the patients and doctors, and these expectations can become self-fulfilling.
An example of a placebo cure was a cure-all called theriac, which consisted of a large number of ingredients, including opium, hemp and viper flesh. Greek physician Galen was probably the first to describe this medicine, and one of his patients, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, took it regularly. Galen himself realized that the most important ingredients of such remedies is faith - the patients' belief that the treatment will work. Galen wrote: "He cures most successfully in whom the people have the most confidence".
There are modern examples of confirmed cases of the placebo effect in action.
In 1950 in a New York hospital, a group of pregnant women were given a drug by Dr. Stewart Wolf, and told that it would cure them of persistent nausea and vomiting. Sure enough the drug worked like a charm (so to speak) - the women were nausea-free and the only thing that spewed from their mouths were cries of joy. The problem was that the drug they were given was syrup of ipecac which is used to induce vomiting. Thanks to the placebo effect, it actually had the opposite effect.

One of the most incredible examples in the history of medical science is the so-called "mammary artery ligation" procedure which was used by cardiac surgeons to relieve the pain of angina. This involved making incisions in the patient's chest and tying off their mammary arteries (these are arteries just below the ribs). The idea was that if the blood flow through these "superfluous" arteries was stopped, there would be more blood available to flow to the heart and, bingo!, no more pain. The operation had a high success rate over a few decades, with many happy customers reporting improvements. However, it was later found that an even higher success rate was attained by receiving only a simple incision without tying off any arteries, and nothing more. Behold the power of the placebo effect.

This powerful placebo effect is probably one big factor in the diffusion of remedies of questionable efficacy, such as faith healing, homeopathy, new-age holistic healing, vitamins, acupuncture, magnetic pain-relief bracelets and alternative medicines. As mentioned earlier, it has been suggested that psychoanalysis is nothing more than a placebo; in fact, psychoanalysts can enhance their effectiveness by appearing authoritative and knowledgeable - for example, by having their impressive-looking medical degrees and qualifications on display in their consulting rooms.

So how does this placebo effect actually work? Some people have tried to explain it by invoking the concept of classical conditioning. At the turn of the 1900s, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist who experimented with animal behaviour, discovered classical conditioning when an animal learns to associate 2 events - one neutral (the conditioning stimulus) and the other meaningful (the unconditioned stimulus). The animal learns to respond to the normal event even in the absence of the meaningful event. In Pavlov's most famous experiment, a bell was rung just before a piece of meat was given to a dog. At first, the dog did not salivate until it got the meat. Once the dog was able to associate the bell with the meat, it would salivate at the sound of the bell - even if no meat was forthcoming. The bell is the conditioned stimulus, and the meat is the unconditioned stimulus. Eventually, the effect would wear off - the dog would stop salivating at the sound of the bell unless meat was sometimes offered.
Classical conditioning is linked to the "subject-expectancy effect". For example, I might visit a professional healer - a doctor or a psychoanalyst or a counsellor - with a particular issue. The healer might provide some treatment or advice and explain, in an authoritative manner, how my issue will be alleviated. If the healer is convincing in his or her attempt in instilling hope in my heart, my expectations of being cured become high and the good-old placebo effect will kick in and aide me in my recovery. If, on the other hand, the healer is not very positive about my prospects of recovery, there will be a negative expectation on my part and I may become a victim of the nocebo effect.
Another possible explanation might be the power of positive thinking. Positive emotions have been linked to better health. Being in a happy state of mind is associated with decreases in cortisol (the stress hormone implicated in heart disease and cancer) and increased immune function. Being in a positive state of mind also seems to improve treatment outcomes in a lot of chronic ailments.

The placebo effect is best known in relation to pain. People have been known to report a reduction in pain when they think that they are taking a medicine they believe is effective - even though it may just be a sugar-coated tic tac. In such cases, it has been shown by using PET brain scans that this effect is caused by our own brain's production of opioids called endorphins, which reduce pain by plugging into mu-opioid receptors - in much the same way that morphine does. In this scenario, our brain produces pain-dulling chemicals in much the same way that Pavlov's dog salivates at the sound of the bell.

Classical conditioning might explain how the placebo effect is triggered, but it doesn't tell us about the mechanisms that give us the therapeutic benefits.
These days, placebos are commonly used when testing new drugs. Trialling of a new drug usually involves testing on 2 groups of human guinea pigs where one group takes the drug and the other group takes a placebo. Neither group knows what they are taking and, in the case of double-blind trials, neither do the testers. For example, in a trial of a blood-pressure drug in 2000, one third of those who took the placebo reported a reduction in blood pressure. Those who took the drug had a higher success rate, but maybe that was an enhanced placebo effect: they felt a little different after taking the drug, so they truly believed that it wasn't a sugar pill and expected to have an improvement.

Placebo effects have been seen in "cures" for high-blood pressure, cancer, depression, ulcers, and heart disease; how does the placebo effect work in these cases? I don't know, and neither do you. There is a lot of research going on into the mystery of consciousness, but much of what goes on in the brain is unconscious - it happens without our being conscious of it. Knowing about the unconscious - or private life of the brain - could tell us more about ourselves than unlocking the mystery of consciousness. And there is so much we don't know.
‎ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST!