The Big Bang

The theory of the Big Bang is based on the assumption that once the universe with all its matter, energy and  pace was concentrated in a single point. Then it exploded in a Big Bang and during the following 13.7 billion years it formed the universe that we can see today with its planets, stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters.

It is today the most widely accepted theory about the origin of the universe and replaced earlier theories like for example the steady state theory, which assumes that the universe has more or less always been as it is today and has neither a beginning nor an end.

Although the Big Bang theory is today so widely accepted, it has still its problems that it cannot explain so easily. However scientists have always come up with new adjustments to this theory in order to save it from being falsified by actual observations.

First Problem: Missing Matter (Flatness Problem)

In order to determine the future fate of the universe, scientists wanted to measure the concentration of matter in space. If the amount of matter in the universe was more than a certain value, the universe would one day stop to expand, when the gravity of its matter would get stronger than the force that caused the Big Bang and its expansion. The process would then reverse and the universe would collapse in a Big Crunch. Would the amount of matter be lower than a certain value, it would forever continue to expand, since the gravity would never be enough to stop its expansion.

The third possibility was that the amount of matter would exactly be that value to be able to stop the expansion, but not enough to reverse it. In this case the universe would slowly approach its maximum extension, without ever reaching it or surpassing it.

Observations of the Hubble telescope finally allowed an estimation of the amount of matter in the universe. And the result was that the amount of matter was not just lower than the value needed to stop its expansion it was far lower. It was so low, that it couldn’t even explain, why the universe hadn’t exploded long ago and was still merely compact. In fact the amount of matter found was about 17% of the amount needed to explain how the universe would have survived for so long after the Big Bang. So the theory of the Big Bang was in big trouble.

But some ingenious scientist came suddenly up with the creative idea, that if there was not enough matter in the universe to support the Big Bang theory, there had to be some invisible matter that simply could not be detected. This matter was called with the mysterious name "Dark Matter".

No scientist can actually explain, what this Dark Matter is supposed to be, and why it is undetectable, although it makes for more than 80% of matter in the universe, but they came up with vast number of theories like Black Holes, neutrinos, "Dark Energy", or simply a hidden variable of space or gravity.

However thanks to this unproven speculation about Dark Matter or Dark Energy the Big Bang theory is still alive.

Second Problem: The Universe is too Big. (Horizon Problem)

Since nothing can move faster than light according to Einstein’s theory of Relativity and the Big Bang is supposed to have occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, there shouldn’t be any objects in the universe, which are more than 13.7 billion years away from each other. Unfortunately for the Big Bang theory, this is not how it is. There have indeed objects been observed on opposite sides of our horizon to be farther away from each other than light speed would permit. Once again the Big Bang theory was threatened. But scientists were quick to find a solution for this problem. They assumed that there was a phenomenon called "inflation" just shortly after the Big Bang when for some strange reason the universe expanded faster than light. The so called "Inflation" theory so once again saved the day for the Big Bang theory, although it created even more questions than answers. Simply introducing new parameters into an equation that have never been observed anywhere else is a very bad style. Apart from the "Inflation" theory there has never been any observation to support the assumption that space would be able to expand faster than light.

Third Problem: Where is the Antimatter? (Baryon Assymetry)

If all the matter in the universe was created during the Big Bang from an extremely hot state out of energy, then for every particle there must have been created its anti-particle. Elementary particles cannot be produced without producing their anti-particles. This means that there must be the same amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe. On the other hand the observation of the universe shows that there is no anti-matter in the observable part of the universe. Since matter and anti-matter would annihilate each other if they ever meet, there would need to be a vast amount of space between them. It can be calculated that in the whole universe there is no such area of empty space. Until the present day not even a single anti-helium atom has ever been observed, neither in space nor artificially created in a particle accelerator.

Therefore the matter of the universe cannot have been created by the Big Bang, if we don’t want to give up all the elementary principles of elementary physics and quantum physics.

So far even the scientists who support the Big Bang theory haven’t found a theory to explain this problem away. Some speculate about the CP symmetry of elementary particles being somehow incomplete (anti-particles having distinct properties from normal particles) without realizing hat they are questioning the basic laws of nature that hold our universe together as it is.

In fact the anti-matter problem is simply ignored when talking about the Big Bang and its solution is postponed.

Forth Problem: Objects older than the universe? (Globular Cluster Age)

Although the age of the universe has been calculated to be 13.7 billion years, the globular star clusters surrounding our galaxy seem to be at least 15 billion years old considering their star population.

This problem caused an immediate headache to all scientists supporting the Big Bang theory. But they saw their chance. The difference between the age of these star clusters and the age of the universe was rather small, so it was an observation, which could be discussed away with enough effort. And finally in the late 1990s they had had done enough fine tuning in some computer models, so that they turned out a younger age for the globular clusters. The results of these computer simulations are still disputed and it is obvious that the scientific method had been reversed in this case. The desired result of these simulations predated the actual experiment and had obviously an influence of it.  And even supposed that the results are right, there remains the question how these structures could form so early in the history of the universe.

Fifth Problem: A beginning without an end?

Since scientists found out that the expansion of the universe is increasing, instead of slowing down as one might expect due to the effect of gravity, the Big Bang theory has to assume that the universe had a beginning but will have no end, no Big Crunch. This rises first of al the question, if it is theoretically thinkable that thing have a beginning but no end. We would have a situation that an infinite and ever-increasing number of things would come into existence populating the world ad infinitum. Avery odd concept. 

However we could assume that the universe will finally come to an end when its expansion has become so fast that even the strong nuclear interaction would not be able to prevent the quarks of the baryons moving away from each other beyond their respective event horizon resulting in some kind of evaporation of the universe. This event, the so called "Big Rip" would be more than  years in the future (a 1 with 10⁷⁶ zeros, an unimaginable number for the human mind), long after the "Big Freeze" when all matter of the universe had turned into Black Holes. Then we would have to question why we are existing at a moment so close to the beginning of the universe, while we should expect to exist just in any random point of time during the lifespan of the universe. From a statistical point of view it has a probability close to zero that we live just 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang while the whole lifespan of the universe is close to infinitely longer. Even if we apply the highly controversial Anthropic Principle (that we can only exist when physical existence is  possible due to the physical conditions of the universe), there would be conditions for biological life up to 10¹⁴ years in the future. This means we would still be during the first 3 days of baby's life if we scale down the productive life of the universe to a human lifespan. This is still very improbable. 

Improbable doesn't mean impossible, but it makes the whole theory look very ugly. We should not settle for theories with a probability of less than 0.01%.     

Observations Supporting the Big Bang Theory

After reading about all these problems with the Big Bang theory one may wonder, why they came up with this theory in the first place.

Indeed there is currently no better theory about the origin of the universe and the steady state theory has its own unexplained problems, which are even more serious than those of the Big Bang.

Red-Shift

The key observation, which led to the development of the Big Bang theory, was the red-shift of the galaxies. The light reaching earth from galaxies far away is shifted towards longer wavelength (towards the red end of the optical spectrum). This red-shift is stronger in galaxies farther away and seems to be directly correlated to the distance of the object.

This red-shift was explained with the Doppler Effect. It is known that the wavelength from a source of a wave moving away from an observer is stretched longer than the wavelength from a wave with a source, which doesn’t move. We can hear this effect when a ambulance car is driving past us. First the siren sounds pitched. Then when it passes the closest point and moves away the sound seems to have a lower frequency.

The same would happen with light emitted from a moving object. Since the light of all galaxies has a longer wavelength then expected, they seem to move away from us. The only logical explanation was that earth would either be the center of the universe, from which everything moves away, which is rather unlikely, or that the universe itself expands creating more empty space between the galaxies.

If we extrapolate this situation, there must have been a point of time when all matter of the universe was concentrated at one single point and then started to move away from each other.

This is historically the beginning of the Big Bang theory.

But what if the red-shift is not caused by the Doppler effect? Are there other explanations possible for the red-shift?

Indeed there are.

And indeed the Doppler effect is a pretty bad explanation for the red-shift, since it contradicts astronomic observations. We know for sure that galaxies don’t necessarily move away from each other. We can actually observe a huge number of collisions of two galaxies throughout the universe. Even our own galaxy is not moving away from its closest neighbor the Andromeda galaxy. They are approaching each other and will eventually collide and merge. So, if we can actually see galaxies approaching each other and organizing in huge clusters and super-clusters, then this means the gravity between them is stronger than any other force, which is supposed to pull them away from each other. Our own galaxy and the local group are part of the Virgo super cluster. So why should they move away from each other, if they are obviously organizing themselves into super structures due to their gravity?

No, the Doppler effect doesn’t convince as an explanation for the red-shift of the galaxies.

What other explanations are possible then?

A red-shift means that the light reaching us from other galaxies has obviously lost energy, since the wavelength is reciprocally proportional to the energy of light. This means red light has less energy than violet light for example. But there are many explanations possible for this loss of energy. It actually seems quite logical that light would lose some energy on its long way to us. Although space seems to be empty, it is not an absolute vacuum. There is still some intergalactic matter between the galaxies in very low concentration, but nevertheless there is. And any interaction between the light and the matter between the galaxies would naturally result in a loss of energy, which would be given to the matter particles between the galaxies. What we would see in such a case is exactly the same red-shift that we can see today, and which was may be wrongly attributed to the Doppler effect.

The possibility that photons may not be that stable as we think, may also be considered. What if photons slowly decay in other photons with lower energy or other low-energy particles?

This loss of energy, no mater what its cause may be, would continue until the photon has reached an energy as low as the average energy of the universe, resulting in a diffuse background radiation. And this is exactly what we see. However the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation was interpreted differently in order to support the Big Bang theory.

Cosmic Background Radiation

Since the Cosmic Background Radiation was discovered in 1964, it has been considered the ultimate proof for the Big Bang theory, which had predicted it. It is a homogenous glow coming from every direction with a wavelength in the microwave spectrum equivalent of a thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of approximately 3 K. It is considered to be the remnant of the Big Bang, which has now cooled down to a temperature of 3 K.

Nevertheless the assumption that light emitted from galaxies far away loses energy on its way to us results in exactly the same prediction, so it is no proof for any of these theories.

In an infinite universe without beginning or end there has necessarily to be a homogenous background radiation coming from the infinite number of stars out there in any possible direction.

Why the Big Bang Theory?

Even the supporters of the Big Bang theory admit that there are still unsolved problems with their theory. But nevertheless nobody has come up with a better theory so far. The main problem of the steady-state model of the universe is the question why the entropy of the universe hasn’t reached its maximum meanwhile. In the same way the Big Bang theory can be asked why the universe has such little entropy in its beginning. But either way, there is in fact no conclusive model that could explain the origin and fate of the universe.

But why don’t we just say, we don’t know it? Why do we continue to work with a theory, which contradicts our observation?

It looks like the Big Bang theory cannot be falsified, which is part of the definition of the scientific method since Karl Popper. Whatever observation we make that contradicts this theory, some obscure new phenomenon is introduced to keep the theory alive, may it be Dark Matter, the Cosmic Inflation or violations of the CP symmetry. Scientists will cling to the Big Bang theory no matter what new observations they make.

This has little to do with science.

Why would scientists behave in such a irrational way?

There are several circumstances when we can’t trust scientists anymore. This is when politics, money, religion or social issues come in. In the case of the Big Bang theory it has nothing to do with politics, society or money. The issue is politically and socially irrelevant and can’t be turned into financial benefit.

But it has to do something with religion. And this is when the whole issue gets suspicious.

The biblical god creating the Big Bang

The Big Bang and God

Throughout human history the omnipotent gods have always been somehow hidden on remote places. This was necessary in order to make unproven claims about them and to empower a class of clerics. So gods have frst been placed on some high and remote mountains (Olympus, Mount Sinai). But some curious humans had soon verified that there were no gods.

Then they were moved to the sky above the clouds. And humans built planes and couldn’t find them there either.

Finally the god (meanwhile there was only one of them left.) was moved beyond the sky into outer space. But spaceships and telescopes couldn’t find him there either.

Next the god was placed into a hidden realm within nature where his spirit was supposed to be the driving force behind all life on earth. But the theory of the vis vitalis (life-force) crumbled and biochemistry was able to explain life without any divine interference.

Then, when there was finally no place left for the god to go, he was placed outside the universe as its creator as the cause of the primary cause of everything.

But therefore it was necessary that the universe had a primary cause, a beginning. And this is when the Big Bang theory was happily received by all those who wanted to belief in god. At last the god was safe from human curiosity in a place beyond scientific investigation. Through the Big Bang the god was able to do whatever he wanted. He could determine the primary condition of the universe, and everything what happened later would depend on it.

Therefore it shouldn’t be a surprise that the scientist who once came up with the theory of the Big Bang, Georges Lemaître, was also a Catholic priest.

Prelate Father Georges Lemaitre
Inventor of the Big Bang theory

So it should now be quite obvious why such a flawed theory as the Big Bang resisted any doubts and contrary observations. It will never be disproved, because those who support it are not willing to give it up. It is their last attempt to keep the idea of an omnipotent creator-god alive. Without the Big Bang there is no way how this god could fit in.

This would not make a difference for the majority of people with little or no scientific education who usually react with denial to inconvenient scientific facts, but it is a problem for the huge number of intelligent and educated scientists who also happen to believe in a god due to their indoctrination in early childhood. They depend on a rational explanation of the god and could not live without it.

Science is done by humans. So it suffers from their human weaknesses. This is why we should not have much trust in scientific results where human emotions are involved.

A final word: This article doesn't mean to state that the Big Bang theory is wrong. It only states that there is insufficient proof for this theory and that the theory is unable to explain even the most basic questions related to the nature of the universe. There is currently no better theory that I would have to offer. But this doesn't mean that we have to live with a model that contributes nothing useful to our understanding of the world. We should simply admit that currently we have no working model for the origin (if there is one) and the final destiny of the universe.

Dark Matter

Supposed distribution of dark matter in the galactic halo

Our series about ill-guided science would not be complete without discussing a very "dark" chapter of modern science - the topic of so called "Dark Matter".

After scientists found out that the measured density of matter in the universe could not explain its flatness and that there needed to be about ten times more matter than could actually be observed; that the observable matter could not explain intergalactic super-structures; and that galaxies rotated with such a high velocity that its matter would not be able to hold them together; it was obvious that there was something wrong with the existing models of the universe. But everybody had become so accustomed to the well-known models of gravity, the Big Bang and black holes, that nobody was willing to throw them over board so easily. Something needed to be done to save these beloved theories and reality could not be allowed to get into the way of such nice models.

So scientist introduced some mysterious variable into the equations. The "dark matter" was born. They could also have resorted to some supernatural power like a god who would keep things together and do what the missing matter in the universe was not able to do, but the term "dark matter" simply sounds more "scientific". People had already become used to things like "black holes", so "dark matter" fitted quite well into the faith of theoretical physics.

In fact "dark matter" has a lot of things in common with a god: First of all it is invisible. This is an important advantage, because it makes it difficult to disprove it. Second, since it is undetectable, you can give it any attribute you need to support your model of the world. So theoretical physicists were exactly able to calculate the amount of dark matter as 83% of the total matter in the universe, which was the amount they needed to save the existing models. Since there was no way to detect dark matter, there was also no need to measure this number, which is always quite convenient. Since nobody could see or understand this mysterious dark matter, the priesthood of theoretical physics had the sole authority to interpret and describe this esoteric substance.

Unfortunately some heretical astrophysicists have recently spoiled the fun for the theoretical physicists (http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.3924). They measured the dynamical surface mass density in the galactic neighborhood of the sun and found no indication for the presence of dark matter as common theories would suggest. This will probably not be the final death blow of "dark matter" and theoretical physicists will most likely come up with some adjustments to their theory, but it shows that a lot of those models of theoretical physics are just invented out of thin air and always circumvent any experimental proof.

If a measurement deviates a whole magnitude from the predictions of a theory, like the measured density of matter does, the normal reaction should be discarding the theory as useless. Why are theoretical physicists not reacting this way? If the observable matter in the universe is not able to explain the observable effect of gravity, then probably our theory of gravity is wrong. The scientifically correct attitude would have been to declare Newton's law of universal gravitation as wrong. 

Possibly wrong.

May be it is only an approximation for planetary distances but incorrect for interstellar or intergalactic scales.

We have no explanation for the surprising discovery that the universe expands at an accelerating rate, although gravity is supposed to slow it down. Perhaps gravity has a reversed effect over intergalactic distances. But this cannot explain, how galaxies are held together by such little matter. It seems that the effect of gravitation is higher than it actually should on a galactic scale. There are so many unanswered questions regarding gravity, that we should simply admit that we don't have a working model of gravity at the moment. 

Instead we invent theories of speculative objects like black holes and other singularities with arbitrarily extrapolated values of our flawed law of universal gravitation. May be there is an upper limit for the density of matter, perhaps in the magnitude of atomic nuclei, which is by coincidence also the density of a neutron star, an astronomic object that can actually be observed, different from black holes, which are just based on speculations. We even have theories about so called "Hawking radiation" that causes black holes to slowly evaporate and other descriptions of odd phenomena of singularities like wormholes, white holes etc. We have faster than light inflation of the universe in order to save the otherwise failed theory of a Big Bang, we have a string theory with up to 26 dimensions, of which only four are apparently observable.

When is it finally enough with such weird speculations? What does this have to do with science, which should primarily be occupied with explaining actual observations?

This has nothing to do with what science is supposed to be. This is at best some philosophical exercise. We need to bring back rationalism into scientific research. And we need to limit science to what we can actually observe. We should get our feet back on the ground, think about what we really know and only make research about subjects where we have an actual chance to find answers instead of inventing more or less unfalsifiable speculations.

Let's be honest. We have no idea how the laws of physics work outside our solar system. We have no idea about the origin or the future of the universe. We cannot jump to conclusions based on theories. We have to observe the world and then come up with possible models of our observations. As long as we haven't seen a black hole or some dark matter, we don't even need to ask a question about it.

Global Warming

The issue of global warming has passed from being a question of scientific interest to being a religious topic. It provokes strong emotions among believers and disbelievers and you better think twice before offending the religious feelings of one of the followers of this religion, since they can be very zealous defending their object of worship. The clerics of this new religion, the so called "climatologists" don't research to make new discoveries about this topic but to prove their opinion that they already had.

The opinion about Global Warming doesn't depend much on the information that people have acquired about it, but rather on their overall political stance. As a democrat they will most likely believe that it exists and is man-made, as a Republican they will probably reject one of these two claims.

The scientists that work on this topic are furthermore only interested in possible economic and political impacts of the phenomenon and not that much of its biological relevancy. Global Warming is depicted as a disaster scenario for the global ecosystem in order to exaggerate its importance. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Some basic facts of ecology are simply ignored. The question if Global Warming may be positive or negative for the ecosystem is not even asked. It is taken for given that it is something negative emphasizing the rather exotic examples of some individual arctic species or micro-ecosystems.

But when judging the impact of Global Warming on the sustainability of life on earth, we have to look at the big picture and recall some basic principles of biology that are actually well-known but totally overlooked.

The Temperature Problem

The temperature range in which organic life can exist on a planet is basically defined by the temperature in which water can exist in a liquid state. Under the pressure of earth's sea level the lower limit is 0° C and the upper limit is 100° C.

This can vary insignificantly depending on solvents in the water (Salt water freezes at lower temperatures.) but not by a large margin.

It was formerly thought that the upper limit was determined by the temperature above which proteins would be unable to maintain their folding structure, which was assumed to be around 60° C, but this was disproved by the discovery of thermophilic bacteria that can survive over 100° C. So the theoretical limits for the sustainability of life seem to be determined only by the freezing and boiling point of water.

Now earth"s average surface temperature is estimated to be about 15° C, which is apparently much closer to the lower limit than to the uper one. There is no place on earth were the upper temperature limit is reached, but the polar regions are far below the lower limit and can't sustain organic life. There are still some carnivores living in those regions but their food source is produced in warmer climates. Plants cannot maintain a higher body temperature than their environment and they are at the base of the food chain.

This means the temparature of earth is not optimal for organic life. Earth is on the lower limit with large areas being below it. Further cooling would be a serious threat for life on earth, warming can only improve the situation, because it would make new areas habitable, which currently aren't. But there is no place on earth where a temperature increase of 20° or even 30° would bring it over the upper limit for sustainability of life, not even on the equator.

If polar and sub-polar regions become warmer, life forms from moderate regions would simply migrate there. The vegetation zones of earth would shift, but life forms adapted to colder environment would not just die off and leave a deserted wasteland. The opposite is true. The bio-mass of earth would actually increase.

So there is no temperature problem.

The CO₂ Problem

Rising CO₂ concentrations are described as a problem. However for many plants on earth CO₂ is actually the limiting factor of growth. For this reasons many greenhouses artificially supply CO₂ to increase the growth of their plants. While the normal CO₂ concentration in the environment is 392 ppm, increasing the CO₂ concentration up to 1,000 ppm results in photosynthesis rates, which are 50% higher. This is a well-known practice in commercial greenhouses to increase the production of crops. 

The CO₂ concentration also was far higher in earth's geological past than today. During the Jurassic period  the CO₂ concentration was about 2,000 ppm, 5 times higher than today. During the Cambrian period it even reached 7,000 ppm (almost 20 times higher than today) Whatever fossil fuel we might burn today, it once was already in the atmosphere, because this is how coal, oil and natural gas formed in the first place. They are fossilized bio-mass made from carbon in earth's atmosphere. Man has no means to produce carbon artifically and introduce it into the natural cycle of the ecosphere. Man can only use carbon that has already been either in the atmosphere or in the oceans at some time in the past. A man-made catastrophic accummulation of CO₂ in earth's atmosphere is therefore technically impossible. We can only restore the CO₂ concentration to a level that it once was. And an increase of CO₂ would even be beneficial for earth's vegetation, since all carbon that is currently stored in fossil fuels had been taken out of earth's carbon cycle. By burning fossil fuels we only put the carbon back where it belongs.

The other question is to which extent CO₂ is the cause or the effect of Global Warming. We know that most of earth's CO₂ is in the ocean and that any warming causes water to release some of the CO₂ it contains. You can see it by comparing the CO₂ released by a warm and by a cold bottle of Coca Cola. So the question is, whether an incrase of CO₂ in the atmosphere is the result of industrial emissions or the result of the warming of the oceans rather than its cause. 

Either way CO₂ is no problem to worry about.

Rising Sea Levels

Global Warming will indeed cause sea levels to rise, which is particular problematic because of the population density along the coast lines. But there is a simple solution to it, which is migrating further inland into less densly populated areas. It will of course reduce the available land surface of earth and aggravate the problem of overpopulation, but the problem of overpopulation is first of all due to high birth rates and a low mortality. So a loss of land surface would only contribute insignificantly to this problem. If we seriously want to deal with the problem of overpopulation, we would have a far stronger effect decreasing the natality and increasing the mortality than preventing an insignificant loss of learth's and surface. 

There are however economic and political difficulties involved, since several countries are at risk of disappearing completely like the Fiji islands or Bangladesh. But this is not a scientific issues. Nevertheless it is one of the reasons why politics and money get ivolved in the issue of Global Warming. It would require a new distribution of available land resources among the existing nations. And another reason is that CO₂ emissions are closely related to the issue of energy resources. This makes it highly relevant for politics and economy.

For the global ecosystem itself it is irrelevant, if the ratio between water and land surface shifts a few percent, especially when at the same time vast land surfaces in formerly too cold latitudes get suddenly inhabitable.

For the global ecosystem rising sea levels are therefore no problem, but for the human economy and political entities they are.

As we can see, Global Warming is not so much a biological problem but a political and economic one. And these are the factors that provide the funding of scientific research. And at the same time these same powers have a vital interest in a particular result of this research. So every scientist working in this area will always be biased depending on those who sponsor his work.

It is also closely related to the general political stance of these sponsors as well as the scientists. Global Warming has become part of one's ideology. As such it must not be questioned and defended against all critics and doubts. The question of Global Warming is no scientific question anymore, it touches all you believe in. It is a question of faith.

Therefore we don't need to expect any useful data about this topic to be published. Just as religious writings don't contribute anything useful to questions about the nature and origin of the world, papers about Global Warming won't contribute anything useful to the question how the global climate will develop in the future.

But it is comforting to know that this question is no threat to the ecosystem anyway. It can only be beneficial.

The Post-PC Era

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, the leading manufacturer of so called »tablet computers« has recently announced the beginning of the Post-PC Era. What he rerers to is the increasing market share of mobile devices like smart phones and tablets in the general usage of computers. PC sales are relatively declining including laptops. This analysis is apparently confirmed by the new operating system Windows NT 6.2 (better known as Windows 8) from Microsoft, the leading software company for PCs. Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates had created the PC world. Without MS-DOS and Windows, the way we think about computers would not be the same. But the way how the next generation of the Windows operatig system targets primarily mobile devices like tablets instead of conventional PCs leaves a clear message: The PC is dying.

Even Microsoft surrenders to the tablet market.

What are the consequences of this development? 

The rise of the PC had turned every user into a little computer engineer. PCs were flexible and could do almost every job. They were highly customized and configured by their users for their particular purpose. And normal users acquired remarkable skills and understandings how computers work.

The rise of tablet computers changes this situation. The users are turned from little engineers into dull consumers. The users don't create anything anymore, they consume what others have created for them and communicate in a very rudimentary way. The language of SMS and emails has severely crippled human language.

As a consequence we will have two types of computer users in the future: The masses who have no or little understanding of these devices and  use them primarily for online dating purposes instead of real communication as well as consumption of multimedia products and advertisements. And on the other hand there will be a small elite of professional computer specialists who use real computers for very restricted work purposes. But these computers will have little in common with the accessibility and easiness of today's PCs. With Windows saying "good bye"to the PC market, Linux will probably take over as the predominant operating system on these devices.

We have already seen that there are little technological advances regarding processor capacity in recent years. Computers are generally getting more mobile but less powerful. May be some physical limits of conventional semi-conductor based processor technology is responsible for this shift in the direction of computer development. So maybe there is a tangible reason for it and not just a change in marketing strategy. 

It seems that the Golden Era of the PCs is indeed over. It had lasted hardly for 3 decades and had turned us all into engineers and scholars. Now we are becoming consumers again as we were before.

In some way Microsoft has turned us into geniuses, and Apple turned us into dummies again.

But is there any positive effect of this new trend at all?

Maybe yes. It will certainly solidify the job market for computer specialists. During the last decades there was not much special about these specialists. Programmers, network specialists and computer technicians had lost their magical aura, because everybody understood what they were doing and could do more or less the same with a little bit of training. But this situation will soon be over. They will soon get their status as the high-priests of the sacred and mysterious world of computer technology back, while the rest of us will be busy organizing their social life over the Internet, since smart phones and iPads have turned us all into Aspergers that lack the ability to do this in the physical world without digital help.

The Future of Humanity

There are lots of speculations about the future development of humanity: the economical rise of China, global warming and other ecological disasters, technocratic utopias or a new dark age etc.

Most of these scenarios are very narrow-minded because they extrapolate a single variable and neglect others. Making predictions for the future is so difficult because of the enormous number of variables that are to consider. Therefore predictions, which reach several millennia into the future, are impossible given the current speed, in which the human species is developing.

The Technological Singularity

But we don't need to go so far, because in a rather near future there will be an event that will cause a radical change, which makes most other variables irrelevant. This event has been called the 'Technological Singularity'. It is the arrival of a super-human intelligence on this planet. It is when the first computer is build, which exceeds human capabilities. We know that it is technically possible, because we are already very close to achieve this goal. The fastest supercomputers today have probably already the hardware capabilities of the human brain, when it comes to processor speed (Fujitsu K computer in Japan 10¹⁶ floating point operations per second, expected fully operational in Nov. 2012. The human brain is estimated to have 10¹⁴ - 10¹⁵ floating point operations per second). So it has come down to a software problem.

We know it is possible, and we know that it will happen. The only thing we don't know is, when it will happen. But realistic scenarios point approx. 30 - 40 years into the future. 

This is relatively soon and possibly within the lifetime of most of us.

When the singularity happens, nothing will be as it was. It will be a radical change for humanity and it will be a major step in evolution, a jump from organic, carbon-based biochemistry to inorganic technology.

In today's society humans spend about 20% - 30% in preparation for their purpose in society (education, school, university), then they spend the next 50% with productive work for the society and then they enter in non-productive retirement. Already today the only really productive work is done by the brain, not by physical strength, because machines have become the muscles of our society. Machines are physically stronger and far more productive. To use a human for work that can be done better and faster by machines is a disadvantage and mostly occurs in developing countries, which are not able to compete with the leading economies. Humans are only needed to control the machines because machines lack intelligence. Productive work has more and more become brain work.

But from the moment on that a computer has become more intelligent than any human being, there is no need for humans in the economy anymore. Humans will not be able to compete in productivity with computers and machines. Therefore humans can't enter a productive work in the economy anymore. They would only stand in the way of superior machines.  Not even decision makers in the higher management ranks will be needed, because a computer analysis will provide far more trustworthy data than a human decision maker can get out of his experience. We don't even need humans to design new machines, because the superior computers can design far better machines than any human could.

Humanity will be left without a job.

Impact on Society

It will have a major impact on human society, because the working class will disappear. There will be no employees, no managers, no executives in the administrations. It will continue a trend that has already started. The economy needs less people because it gets more and more automatized. However we will be left with a shareholder class that actually owns the machines and computers and makes them work for their personal benefit. It will be a very small elite of the society. This is a development that we can already see in today's society. A small part of society does no productive work but just moves money around and forms the ruling class of our modern society.

The vast majority of the future high.-tech society will be either depend on welfare or be left on their own, depending on the economical system (more or less socialist).

But there will still be a few people who actually work, because there are jobs where machines and computers can't replace humans, since these jobs don't require efficiency. These will be people who are somehow in the entertainment industry, like artists, prostitutes and athletes.

Art is an irrational métier that does not require any useful results. So we will still have musicians, writers, actors, painters etc. And they will still earn money with their work.

Although robots might eventually be able to replace sex-workers, for many people it will always make a huge difference if their partner is human or not. Therefore the market for sex-workers will also continue.

Sports has to do with physical work, but this work doesn't fulfill any purpose. And although somebody with a vehicle can drive faster than a runner, there are still competitions for runners. And the rules of a certain sport exclude the use of machines, even if they were more efficient. Athletes get paid by the people who want to watch their competitions.

Therefore these professions will be the last ones that don't become obsolete.

The Future Industrialized Society

There won't be much in the future industrialized society that we can't already see yet. 

We have a smaller and smaller upper class that doesn't actually work but lives from financial transactions. This includes politicians and shareholders. All the machines and computers work for them.

We have artists and athletes who earn more and more money, and of course we have the so called 'oldest profession of the world', which will even survive the singularity.

The employee class will cease to exist. So job training and universities become useless. Considering the little time that is most likely left until the singularity, it is already not recommendable to any child born  today to learn any job. Because when his education is finished there will be little time left that he could do any productive work before it is taken over by computers and machines.

Then there will be a huge class of recipients of welfare. It is necessary to continue the welfare program as long as there are so many jobless people in order to maintain social peace. Social unrest is a phenomenon that we can already see growing. And it might get worse. An entertainment an leisure industry is needed to keep this majority occupied when there is no work to do anymore.

With nothing left to do, ...
... future entertainment connected to cyber worlds

The lack of purpose for humans in the future high-tech society will increase psychological problems, depressions and drastically reduce fertility. It will only be a matter of time, when humans in these society stop reproducing. But it does not matter, because there is no need more for them. The economy will continue without them and the only use up resources. What will be left is an empire of machines and robots that is so sophisticated and advanced that we have no chance to understand it with our intellect. It will be the heir of human civilization. It will inherit all our achievements, our thoughts and whatever humanity stands for.

The Future Non-Industrialized Society

It is obvious that not all of humanity will take part in the computerization of the world. There will be countries that are just left behind. We already know more or less, which countries will dominate the future world economy and are developing technology at an increasing pace. Most of them are in Asia, like China, Japan, South-Korea etc. But also Russia, South- and North-America and Europe have a  certain possibility to take part in the technological singularity. Other regions like the Middle East, Africa, South Asia (Pakistan, Malaysia etc.) will be left behind, especially the rural areas.

And there will be others who are in the industrialized world but will reject the increasing computerization and this new society. It is a neo-Luddite that we can already observe today: the anti-globalization movement, the 'occupy'-movement, religious fanatics. These people don't want this new society, either because they feel that they are already not competitive in it or they foresee subconsciously that this development will mean that humanity will be replaced by computers.

Somehow the religious radicalization of the Islamic world is an expression of this resistance against the way that humanity is going. Radical Islam has more and more become a protest movement, a rejection of the modern world and all its aspects and an attempt to turn back time. They have often sympathizers from anti-globalist, anti-capitalist movements. The war on terror is a first phenomenon of this conflict between the rising high-tech society and the neo-Luddites.

However the neo-Luddites have not the means to stop the singularity. The technology they are up against is too superior. They have often to use the modern technology that they actually reject in order to be able to strike against the society, but in doing so they become part of what the are fighting against. Ultimately they will fail. But they will be the last biological humans that will be left, when the last humans in the high-tech society get absorbed into the computer civilization.

However these last humans will not be on the top of the ladder of evolution anymore. They will share the fate with the other animals whose natural environment is more and more destroyed. The same way as our human society today treats animals whose intelligence is lower than that of humans, so will the machine society treat the last remnants of humanity that did not integrate themselves into it. Where the machines will spread and will need new resources, biological humans will have to disappear.

It can't be predicted, if humanity will be extincted after the technological singularity, but it will not be the top of evolution on this planet. It will not be the supreme intelligence. It will be just one animal species among others.

Humans back on animal level - the future of Homo sapiens?

The Speed of Light

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236

"The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.
[...]
The experiments have been carried out by the Opera collaboration - short for Oscillation Project with Emulsion (T)racking Apparatus.
It hinges on sending bunches of neutrinos created at the Cern facility (actually produced as decays within a long bunch of protons produced at Cern) through 730km (454 miles) of rock to a giant detector at the INFN-Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.
[...]
When the Opera team ran the improved experiment 20 times, they found almost exactly the same result.
'This is reinforcing the previous finding and ruling out some possible systematic errors which could have in principle been affecting it,' said Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
'We didn't think they were, and now we have the proof,' he told BBC News. 'This is reassuring that it's not the end of the story.'"

If this proves to be true, it would have serious consequences. If the speed of light is not the limit, it would shake the principles of modern science. We would probably have to discard the Theory of Relativity. So everything written in Metaphysics Part IV of this blog would be void too. But the consequences could even go farther and affect quantum physics too. In this case we would effectively be thrown back to the 19th century and Newton physics as the best approximation to physical reality.
It's still to early for such a radical judgement, but modern science is in serious problems now. Physics could be far more complex as we assumed.
But we still have to wait for further verifications of the Opera measurements, which may take about one year or more. Then we will see if the Theory of Relativity can be adjusted to the new observations or has to be completely discarded. There might be something really big ahead of us and we might just have  scratched the surface. Or mya be it was just a systematic error of measurement. We will see.
But one thing is already sure: Modern physics has become to much dominated by speculations of theoreticla physics without enough experimental proof. Physics needs to rethink its approach. There are too many theories (String Theory, Superstring Theory, Big Bang Theory, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Black Holes and other singularities) without any experimental or observational proof. We have to go back to what we actually know and can observe instead of making new speculations based on previous speculations.
We have for example never observed a Black Hole, but the theory of Black Holes has spawned entire branches of physics. It is highly speculative to assume that the density of mass can be infinite. May be there is an upper limit, a so far unknown property of space itself (e.g. the density of Neutron Stars, which are among the most dense objects that have really be observed). We have not understood gravity, but we try to extrapolate by playing with numbers and speculate about singularities inside Black Holes and at the beginning of the universe. This is not how science should work. We have to calm down a little bit.

May be light speed is not the maximum speed, may be there is no such thing as an event horizon and the universe is bigger than we think. We will soon know more.
Meanwhile we should limit ourselves to what we actually know.

Considering the recent discoveries, there will be no further posts  in this blog on the topic of Metaphysics until the issue of light speed has been clarified. So let's get back to rather earthly topics.

Metaphysics Part VIII - Reality

What is reality? What are the requirements for something to be called "real"?

Let's consider an example. Would we call the tragical events at the end of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' real events? - Certainly not, because they were not historical. There were no persons called Romeo and Juliet in 16th century Verona who committed suicide because of their love.

However couldn't there be such a couple in a parallel world, which is completely separate from our world and unknown to us? The events of Shakespeare's novel are certainly consistent and theoretically possible. If nobody from this other world of Romeo and Juliet would ever visit our world and nobody from our would ever visit the world of Romeo and Juliet and no event in each world would ever affect the events in the other world, what would be the requirement for this other world to be considered 'real'?

We could say that it would only be real, if there was also some kind of consciousness in this other world that would be able to experience the events in this world. But even this requirement would be questionable. Is experience by a consciousness a requirement of reality? At least it seems to be a reasonable definition. Otherwise we would have to consider everything, which is theoretically possible and consistent in itself as real. Limiting reality to things that directly or indirectly affect the experience of a consciousness makes therefore sense.

However we have to ask, what makes another consciousness real for us? Would another consciousness in a world whose events never affect us and which is not affected by any events in our world be considered real? Such a consciousness would not even be in any time-related relation to us. It would neither be before, after or at the same time as us, because the concept of time is based on causality. Earlier events affect later events and can therefore be put in a temporal sequence. Event A is earlier than event B and may somehow affect the later event. Events or objects in two separate worlds that never affect each other cannot be put into a temporal order. There is no earlier and later because the temporal order of both events can never be compared and is therefore meaningless.

In the same way two separate consciousnesses in two separate words that never affect each other can never be put into a temporal order. None of the experiences of one consciousness can be considered earlier or later than the experience of the other consciousness. How can we therefore call the consciousness in this other separate world real or not real at all? What is the difference between these distinctions? In fact there is no difference at all. The concept of some consciousness in another completely separate word being real or not real is meaningless, because either option would make no difference for our consciousness. And the distinction between two things that are not different is meaningless, just as the distinction between mercury and quicksilver is meaningless. Mercury is quicksilver. Language allows us to call on thing quicksilver and the other one mercury but in reality it would still be the same. Therefore this linguistic distinction makes no sense. 

It is the same with reality. We can linguistically distinguish between something in a completely separate world that does not affect our world and that our world does not affect being real or not real. But this distinction makes no sense. It means the same. There is no difference between both statements making them meaningless.

Reality is always a subjective concept. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are not real in our world but Juliet is real in Romeo's world, although this statement is meaningless for us since Romeo is not real for us either. He might be real in another possible world, which is separate from us, but the distinction if such a possible world exists or not is also meaningless. If such a world is separate from us and there is never any form of interaction with us, then it is always not real and any further statement is meaningless.

Even the question if Romeo has a consciousness in such a possible separate world is meaningless, because consciousness is also subjective. One consciousness is completely separate from another one. There is no way how a consciousness will ever affect another one. My pain is not your pain, and your pain is not mine. You cannot feel anybody else’s pain. He can tell you that he feels pain and you might see him crying or reacting to a perceived pain but he might also just pretend to feel pain or be programmed to express pain under particular circumstances. His pain is not real for you. The distinction of him consciously experiencing pain or not experiencing it and just mechanically expressing pain is meaningless, because there is no difference between it. His pain is not part of your world and will never be. This pain is not more real for you than the pain felt or not felt in another possible world. The consciousness of others is not part of your reality. And there is no objective reality that would be universally valid. Reality is only a subjective concept.

This concept is far more basic then it looks like because it affects everything, our entire understanding of the world.

Commonly we think in objective concepts. But this is only a theoretical concept that has nothing to do with reality.

If two people look at a football field, which is in our objective model rectangular with angles of 90°. Both observers sit or stand in different positions around the football field. Neither of them sees a rectangular field but they see the playing field with the corner next to them and the opposite corner each measuring an angle close to 180° and the two other angles being extremely small. Since the perspective of each observer is different, they see all different angles. However both observers are sure that they are looking at a rectangular field, although they can’t observe it. Even if they went down right to one corner of the playing field to measure its angle, they would get this angle right but the other three angles would be distorted and differ from 90°. In fact nobody has ever experienced a football field having exactly 90°. It is distorted from any angle we look at it. The rectangular field is actually not real at all. It is a construction in our brain, a model that allows us to make calculations and estimates easier in order to orientate us in the environment. But this objective world, which has no particular observer and where the observer is only placed into it like a figure on a chessboard does mot exist. It is a model derived from our actual observations, which form the primary reality.

So the objectivist or materialist point of view is actually completely unscientific. They believe in the existence of an objective materialist world, where a soul or consciousness is only an illusion resulting from mechanical processes in the objective world denying any validity to subjectivism. However none of them has ever seen this objective world. Their only real observation was from their subjective perspective. So they derived a theoretical objective model in their mind and gave it more validity than their actual observation, which it is derived from. This results in some kind of circular logic that denies the existence of consciousness proving itself from its own conclusions without being based on direct observations. We observe actually only our mind and conclude that the images in our mind have some exterior reality as a cause. The objectivist assumes the exterior world as a given fact and doubts the subjective observation of the images in his own mind that led to the assumption of an exterior world in the first place.

Reality is the subjective distorted football field that each observer can perceive. The objective rectangular field is not real. It can never be observed. It is an abstract model in our mind that helps us to predict how reality will change when we change the relative position in which the observed object is oriented to us. What is real is the way the object is perceived. This is the real world. And our consciousness is the center of the world. What can never be perceived, either directly or through its consequences, is not real.   

If we accept this, we suddenly see that there is no actually difference between the different interpretations of quantum physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation means nothing different from the Many Worlds Interpretation. Every other possible world that departs from our world of reality in every moment is not real for us. The distinction between these other worlds existing or not is meaningless. Since they are separate from us and don't affect us they are not real anymore. They are not real just as anything else that can't affect our subjective world is not real for us. The other worlds of the Many Worlds Interpretation are not real in any way since there is no common universal reality where they can substantiate their 'realness'. The separate worlds of the Many Worlds Interpretation will never join together in some way. They are separate forever and therefore not real for us. Whatever we can't experience is always not real. Any further distinction between different forms of not being real is meaningless.

Metaphysics Part VII - Life and Beyond

Soul and Death

What are we? What is our essence? What is our self?

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics has already answered these questions to us. We are the center of observation. We are not part of the world, we don’t come out of the world, we create the world by our observation. We don’t depend on the physical world; the physical world depends on us. Without us as observers, the physical world would not be real.

We are located where past and future meet, where the wave function collapses, where possibilities become reality.

The past is the reality that cannot be changed, the future are the possibilities that have not become real yet. We are the present. The present is part of our essence. This is why consciousness cannot be imagined without time. This is why we have knowledge of time without the need of any physical senses. It is part of us.

We are what turns the possibilities of the wave function into reality. We are what creates past out of future.

But when we look back into the physical past, we notice that we have a beginning, that there was a moment, we call birth, when our existence in the physical world started.

So fearful we look into the future, when our physical existence will end, the moment of death. Therefore the question that worries us most is: Will it all end with death? Is there a way of existence beyond death? It seems far more important to us than the equally difficult question: Was there a way of existence before birth?

It is hard to investigate such questions, sine there are so strong emotions involved - the ultimate existential fear. But let’s try to look at the facts without emotions, without false hopes and self-delusions. 

What is death? Death is the coincidence of physical circumstances that make it impossible to maintain our existence in the physical world. It is the destruction of the physical body, which is the center of our observation of the physical world. The destruction of the physical body makes further observation of the physical world impossible for us. But does this include the end of our self, the end of the observer?

Physics is actually not able to define the concept of the observer, as it is introduced by the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This means the physical world is not able to explain, where the observer comes from and what it is. On the other hand we have seen that it is the observer that explains the physical reality. So the physical world somehow depends on the observer. But does this mean that the physical world is really incapable of having any influence on the observer?

We know that we can have a strong influence on the observer by destroying the physical senses of the body. Nevertheless the observer persists, even if we destroy his ears and eyes and any other perceptive organ of the body. But we can also have a strong influence of the ability to think by using drugs or destroying particular parts of the brain. So there seems to be some kind of influence from the physical world on the observer.

But all these examples were superficial. The process of thinking is a physical process of the body, while perception itself is different from this process. Can we completely destroy the perceptive capability of the observer by physical means? How far does the influence of the physical world on the observer actually go?

Let’s look at the most extreme situations that we can imagine, and we will see that there is some very strange mechanism in nature.

Whenever we are exposed to some really extreme negative qualia, like extreme pain, shock or horror; something happens. We become unconscious. We become suddenly disconnected from the perception of the physical world. The observer gets unplugged from the physical world in order to spare him an extremely negative experience. There is some kind of safety mechanism that protects our consciousness, when things turn really bad.

How can we explain this mechanism?

It is an illusion to think that there may be some scientific explanation for this mechanism, because consciousness cannot be fully explained by science, for the simple reason that the observer is not explained by quantum mechanics. So it is impossible to explain, why observation suddenly stops. We simply have to accept the fact that the observer is protected against really unpleasant perceptions. 

For the survival in the physical world such an inbuilt safety mechanism doesn’t actually make much sense. In a situation of extreme pain, it would be helpful to be fully awake and alert to be able to do something against the cause of the pain, instead of being unconscious and helpless. So why does such a safety mechanism exist, if it is not helpful? Obviously it is more important to protect the consciousness against the experience of pain than ensuring the survival of the body in the physical world. The convenience of the consciousness is given a mysterious priority over the survival of the body. There is an inbuilt safety mechanism that protects the observer from extremely unpleasant experiences. Can we therefore conclude that the survival of the physical body is not vital for the observer himself?

But where does the observer go, when he is not connected with the physical world anymore?

The answer to this question is not that difficult as it appears. In fact we all know the answer to this question quite well from our own experience. Because the observer disconnects himself from the physical world in regular intervals of more or less 18 hours. It is what happens when we sleep. Every night our consciousness disconnects from the physical world and is not present in the body. And nevertheless the consciousness returns every morning unharmed back into the physical body. We experience it every night that our consciousness is quite well able to exist without being connected with a physical body, although we don’t remember what happens with it in this state, since our physical memory is part of the physical body.

Sleep itself is a strange phenomenon. It has no biological explanation. Nevertheless most animals need to sleep. The purpose of sleep is not regeneration or the need to recover energy. In this case we would just have to eat more in order to have enough energy available to stay awake for 24 hours a day. However a human who is deprived of sleep will become more and more psychotic and finally die after about 11 days without sleep, as some Nazi experiments during World War II proved. So obviously sleep is vital for the consciousness, although there has not been found any evident physiological necessity for sleep. Sleep is even dangerous for the organism, since the lack of alertness exposes it to predators and turns it into an easy victim. This contradiction cannot be explained. The mysterious reason for the need to sleep can obviously not be found in the physical world. It must have to do something with the nature of consciousness itself. There is a need for the consciousness to withdraw from the physical world in regular intervals. It cannot stay in the physical world for an extended period of time.

Considering all these observations we can conclude that consciousness can indeed exist without a permanent connection to the physical world. We don’t know where the consciousness is and what it does, while it is not present in the physical body, but it is there somewhere, because it is able to return to the body after it has been disconnected from it.

But what happens, if there is no functioning body anymore, where it can return to, which is the situation that we call “death”? Since the consciousness can exist in a disconnected state from the body, and seems to be protected by inbuilt safety mechanism against any harm that is done to the body, it is reasonable to assume that consciousness does not cease to exist along with the body, which it is temporarily connected with. We don’t know where it is after death or what it does, but given the analogy to what happens during sleep, it cannot be much different from what it does, every night. Sleep and death both mean the same – the disconnection of consciousness from the physical world. In one case it has the possibility to return to the same physical body, in the other case it has not. This is the only difference between both states.

So death does not mean the end of our consciousness, just as sleep does not mean it. There is no reason to fear death more than we fear sleep each night. Neither death nor sleep is a diminished state of reality. The opposite is true. Reality is created by consciousness, not by the physical world. Consciousness is real and the physical world is its product. So when our consciousness is connected with the physical world it is actually not awake, it is in a dream that it is permanently creating. Since during death and sleep consciousness is not held captive by the physical world, which it has created itself, these states come closer to the state of being really awake. When we think that we are awake, we are actually dreaming and living in a self-created world with a limited grade of reality, while sleep and death are the exits out of this dream.

But whatever happens, when we are dead or asleep is unknown to us during our dream in the physical world.

The Meaning of Life

Considering that life in the physical world is not ultimately real, shouldn’t we been eager to leave this world as soon as possible, since there is no obvious sense in the physical existence?

This might be a wrong conclusion. There is absolutely no reason to assume that existence independent from the physical world is in any way more pleasant or worthwhile. Fact is that we return every morning back into the physical world. And there must be a reason for it. If there was a reason to prefer existence disconnected from the physical world to our current existence here, then it would not make sense for our consciousness to return back into this world again and again. It is unlikely that the physical world is some kind of malevolent prison for our consciousness, since there is some kind of safety-mechanism that withdraws our consciousness from the physical world when things get too ugly here. It is obviously taken care of our well-being while our consciousness is present in the physical world. So it is plausible to assume that there are benevolent reasons for our presence in the physical world. Being disconnected from the physical world may involve a higher grade of awareness, but this reality seems either to be far worse (boring, miserable, depressing or whatever) than our existence in the physical world or there are other unknown reasons that require our presence in the physical world. Our consciousness would not return into the physical world every morning, if it would not be worthwhile.

So even if we cannot say, what the meaning of our life in the physical world may be, we can be quite sure that there are good reasons for it to be just like it is. It would be a bad idea to aspire escaping from the physical world.

Therefore all efforts of Eastern religions to leave the world and enter Nirvana by meditation or other techniques are a wrong approach and work against the actual sense of life whatever it may be. We should not try to overcome our physical existence, but welcome it. Rejecting life and the physical world occurs out of ignorance.

Metaphysics Part VI - Materialism or Idealism?

Dream and Reality

To understand the concept of creating reality by observation, it is helpful to compare it with the process of dreaming. The physical world has more in common with our dreams than with the materialist concept of objective physical reality. In our dreams we create the world of the dream. We are not aware of it and believe this world to be real. We think we are subjected to it and mostly helpless victims of whatever happens to us in the dream. Only when we wake up, we suddenly become aware that we created the world of our dream ourselves subconsciously. Nothing in our dream was real, when we didn’t observe it. All the things and persons that we saw, all the events that occurred were only real as our observation. Our observation intentionally and subconsciously created them. In fact we controlled the dream without knowing it. 

The physical world is surprisingly similar to this situation. The difference is that the world of our dreams is created completely subjective, while the physical world is inter-subjective. In our dreams we are actually the only observer, while there are many observers in the physical world. Whatever we observe in the physical world, it must not contradict with the perception of other observers. Therefore there are certain rules to obey in the physical world. These rules are the probabilities of Schrödinger´s wave function. Furthermore we cannot change the state of an object after the wave function has already collapsed by the observation of another observer. The observers limit each other in their control over the physical world. We can intentionally create the outcome of an event in the physical world within the limits of the wave function, but we cannot control the outcome of an event that has already been observed either by us or by another observer. Within these limitations we control the physical world that surrounds us, like we control our dreams.

Consciousness and Body

The dualism of our self as mind and body was realized by all human civilizations from the earliest days of human history on and even before. It has been a main problem of philosophy. Are we essentially mind or body or both?

The belief that we are essentially a body and that the mind can be explained as a body function, is called materialism. The belief that we are essentially mind and that the body is an illusion or an idea of the mind, is called idealism. And the concept that body and mind are from distinct worlds, the physical world and the spiritual world, and have somehow been united to form living beings is called dualism. However it has been unclear how body and mind relate to each other (body-mind-problem) and which of them controls the other one. Is there such a thing as a free will? Or are all our actions subject of our biological needs?

From what we have learned now, we can try to answer these questions.

Apparently the materialist worldview has been proven wrong by quantum mechanics. The state of a particle depends on the observer. When there is no observer, particles have no particular state and remain as a wave function of probabilities with all possible states in superposition to each other. Therefore matter does not exist by its own virtue and only has a distinct state by observation. And since matter itself is not real, the fundament of the materialist concept has crumbled.

However the physical world is not totally an illusion. The mind does not arbitrarily create the physical world as a hallucination. The observer only controls the state of the particles of matter within the limitations of their wave function. This finally gives us an idea how body and mind interact and how our mind exercises control over our body.

As far as the extremities of our body are concerned, biology and medicine have discovered how electrical impulses in our nervous system make muscles contract and cause the movement of our extremities. In the same way sensations like pain are conducted by the nervous system from our extremities to the brain. So we have obviously only indirect control over the extremities of our body using biophysical mechanisms. Our control can easily be neutralized by external physical means like physical restrictions of our movement or severing nerve fibers so that we lose control of parts of our body.

Therefore we can conclude that the interaction between our mind and our body does not take place in the extremities of our body. They are simply part of the physical environment and not actually part of our self.

When we examine the structure of our nervous system, we find out that all electrical impulses that it conducts are centralized in our brain. Therefore somewhere within the brain there must be the place, where the interaction between mind and physical world takes place. It is inside the brain, where the measurements of our perceptive organs take place. It is the place in the physical world, where observation occurs. In some way our mind is able to observe the electrical impulses from our nervous system. And by observing them, we control them. If we look at the biochemical processes that take place at the synapses, where the nerves touch each other and where information is transmitted, we get indeed into a range where quantum mechanics becomes relevant. What exactly occurs within the molecules of the biochemical transmitters that travel between the microscopic gaps of the synapses of our nerve cells does not follow the macroscopic determinism. Its outcome is non-deterministic and only limited by the wave function of atomic and sub-atomic particles. If we assume that the observer intentionally determines the state of these particles by his observation, we have found the mechanism how our mind controls our body. Controlling the quantum mechanical processes in the synapses of our brain means controlling our body. And while our control of our physical environment is limited by other observers who already caused the collapse of the wave functions of almost all particles in the world around us, we are the only observer in the small area of the synapses in our brain. Only we control the collapse of the wave function there by our observation, because we are the only observer. This is why we have control over our body, but we don’t have in the same way full control over our environment. Only in or brain we are the only observers. Outside our brain, even in our own body, there are other observers. There are blood cells, body cells, and microorganisms. We don’t know what they observe. We don’t know what all the billions of macrophages in our blood vessels observe, what they feel, what they perceive. This is why we are limited there. We have only limited control there by the nerve impulses that work deterministically on a macroscopic scale. 

Macroscopic processes are not that easily controlled by observation, because they have many observers. The state of their particles is to a large extent already determined; their wave function has already collapsed into distinct states. This is why most macroscopic processes seem to be deterministic to us. We are not the first to observe them. They have already been observed, either earlier by us or by others. Their particles have already distinct states. There is not much space for randomness.

Objectivity

We have seen that the nature of the universe is not objective; it is subjective, or inter-subjective, if we assume that there are more than one observer. This is a very important fact. Actually it is quite obvious, because the way the universe is perceived is subjective. If the universe would be completely objective, then no point of view would stand out. The universe would be perceived from a third person view. But in reality we perceive the universe in a first person view. This means we don’t know how others perceive the world. We can only see it from our point of view. The concept of "qualia" is a subjective concept. It is limited to our own personal perception. 

What are qualia?

Qualia are all kind of perceptions, pain, lust, colors etc. We cannot describe them to others. This means we can give names to them, but we can’t know that others perceive them in the same way as we do.

Let’s take the color "red" for example. We can tell somebody that cherries are red, and the other will agree with us, but we can not be sure, if the other one has the same impression of red as we have. Maybe he has the impression that we call "blue". But since he calls his impression of blue "red", he will also say that a cherry is red, even if the impression that he has equals our impression of "blue". This is why colors for example are considered to be qualia. In fact we know for certain that not all human beings perceive colors the same way. There are people who are red-green colorblind. And only some sophisticated tests can reveal this abnormal perception. The person is not aware that he perceives red differently than other people. He still calls the color in which cherries appear to him "red". Nevertheless, it is not the same perception that others have.

This is the nature of qualia. It is a subjective perception. It cannot be described objectively.

This is just one example for the fact that the world is not objective. Quantum mechanics has taught us that the world is in an undefined state of probabilities, when no observer is present. The Schrödinger equation has no single solution. Only an observer can cause the Schrödinger wave function to collapse and an event to become "real". As long as the event is not observed, it is nothing but a possibility. 

And the Theory of Relativity has also shown us that the laws of classical physics only apply to the world as it is seen from the point of view of one observer. There is a huge difference in how two observers perceive the world if they are moving with relativistic speed in relation to each other. The world and the experience of time and space of one observer contradicts the world of the other observer, and there is no absolute and objective scale or coordinate system, which would allow us to make absolute and objective measurements. Every observer takes his own coordinate system of time and space with him. 

So if we take some space where only two observers are present, and they stand back to back to each other with focus of their attention directed into opposite directions, then this means that the space between them is actually in an undefined, unreal state. Their two subjective realities are separated by an area, which is not real. We can say that they live in two separate and independent realities (left picture).

This is why one observer cannot know, what the other observer perceives. This is the reason why our perception of the universe is from a first person point of view, not from a neutral and objective third person point of view. There is no objective point of view because there is no "reality" in the space between the two observers. Only when the observers turn their attention to each other, their perception overlaps and their realities become linked to each other.

So we see that the assumptions of one common reality is an illusion. There are only separate subjective realities, which sometimes may overlap (right picture).

This has far-reaching consequences. It means that the premises of all pantheistic religions are false. There is no such thing as "Oneness". We are not parts of one single Self, as many Eastern philosophies like Hinduism, Buddhism or Jainism assume. There is no such thing as the one common reality, the common self, which is the origin of all of us. In fact we are completely separate. We don’t share the same reality. Every individual supposed there are more than one, lives in its own separate reality. Separateness and subjectivity are the ultimate truth. Objectivity is an illusion. It is an illusion to please our fear of ultimate loneliness.

So any ideology or religion based on collectivism is based on an illusion. We are not part of something higher, a community or an all-compassing unity of the universe. We are individual observers. Sometimes our field of observation can be temporarily linked to the observation of other observers, but we will always be separate. Observers cannot merge with each other. They are always separate centers of observation, separate by their very nature.