some thoughts on duality

Today I want to write about duality:

So many books I read in art, philosophy and science show our tendency to want to reduce things to black and white. Our need to understand the world forces us to simplify all that we see to help us cope with it and understand.

For example, for many years scientists argued about whether light was a wave or a particle. Debate raged with both sides wishing to force light to act in the way that they perceived it acted. Turns out light is both separate and connected to our understanding of it. Depending on the experiment being done on it, it acts as both a wave and a particle. It may act in other unknown ways we have yet to ask it to. Interestingly the “nature” of light depends on the experiments being done on light to test what “it” is. Likewise, the very act of observing matter is such that we can only observe and know its position or its momentum at one time and not both precisely.

Early Greek philosophers gave us the notion that the world is made up of physical atoms (literally meaning indivisible). More recent philosophers (particularly Descartes) have argued that there is a duality to the world and that you can separate life into “matter” and “mind”. This is because they do not know how to account for the mind that appears to be both a brain (which is matter) and a force that gives our body and brain purpose and understanding.

Surely this is exactly the same discussion as for light. Our universe consists of energy. Our minds consist of energy some of it in matter and some of it in waves.

Blake:

“Energy is eternal delight”

It can be negative and positive. It can be materialised as matter or act as a field (like waves of light propagating, gravity, consciousness).  Following on the work of Maxwell and others Einstein showed us that matter and energy are equivalent. That is we are all embodiments of energy. Likewise our thoughts and consciousness is matter unlocked, matter set free to move and act as a force.

Einstein:

“Make everything as simple as possible but no simpler.”

We don’t have to force this varied life into a box or a book or a simple position. There is no contradiction between mind and matter. Mind is really just electricity, disembodied matter – matter that has been given its wings.

Things that are are also not. Things that have been will be forever. There is no future or past, there is no purpose. There is only matter and energy acting over space between matter.

We must learn to perceive from eternity and all our contradictions will be exposed for what they are, problems of perception.

I am and I think. Wherefore the therefore?

Radiohead & Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing

Hello all,

Wondered if anyone had ever put those two things in this title together in the same post? another tailcast first….

Radiohead
Great night last night watching the stars and listening to my Radiohead playlist with Olli. Reminded me why I love their music so much. They aren’t scared to take risks to evolve!

Pete’s Radiohead favourites:
Best song (emotionally): Fake Plastic Trees (it still hurts listening to this all these years later)
Best song (technically): There There
Best soundscape: Kid A from Kid A?
Best Album: Kid A or In Rainbows

Finished off with People just ain’t no good by Nice Cave and the Bad Seeds. Does life get any better?

Amazon Elastic Fantastic
Reading through Amazon’s AWS (Developer Services) reminds me why I skipped advanced Physics. Even Catalin is struggling to work out what the F it all means (unusual!). Anyway, we are choosing Amazon to try and ensure we can scale our computing and storage capacity in case anyone out there likes our new site and feels like teeling digg, mashable, slashdot or any of those web 2.0 portals about it.

If anyone is interested then Cat may start to blog about it in the new developer section we will have on tailcast.com (ask nicely and be sure to attach some very hard metal/dance fusion music to the email).

Better go….only 9 days to go. Lord have mercy on our souls.

Hasta pronto

all content is from tailcast.com

What makes us human?

What makes us human and identifies us as distinct from other animals is our capacity to manufacture the future.

Our intelligence of itself is largely irrelevant. Since we can only guess at the mental processes of many higher intelligence mammals (such as whales and apes) it is safest to assume that the majority of humans are not inordinately more intelligent than some animal species (indeed many are arguably less so).

Humans have a kind of magical, as it must appear to an alien species, power to transform their physical environment. This practical intelligence is the defining characteristic of human history, in fact the possibility of “history” as a concept derives from the same practical capacity. With the ability and desire to change the future humans realised they required a past, that is they began to understand the concept of momentum. For other species the notion of momentum other than in a purely physical sense must be unimaginable.

What purpose would it serve to dream of new realities if you had no capacity to effect them?

The dreams, religions and myths we create all flow from this capacity to make changes to our future. These too may well then be the other half to our distinctiveness as a species. A necessary corollary to our practical intelligence.

Humans as story tellers

The artistic impulses to paint, draw, write songs and perform are the manifestation off our uniqueness as a story telling species. One that must mythologise events and create mythologies to manufacture new events. The success of human groups has to date largely been defined by those humans as the success of their own mythologies as much as any practical survival abilities. This fascination was most simply put when Christ allegedly stated that “man can not live on bread alone”. As a story telling species humans require new fictions and new fiction makers to make sense of their universe and to provide comfort in the certain knowledge and fear of uncertainty.

The need for irony
It is possible that this fear has led to our ironic abilities. Maybe irony is also a distinctly human characteristic of all the animals. It seems to me that where you have a species that knows it can change the future and also knows that the present has been manufactured by both sheer luck and the previous actions of its ancestors then you will need an ironic capacity to stay psychologically balanced.

Are we better than other animals?
I remember discussing this question at length with Andy (one of my best friends). Humans have often mistaken the ability to create myths with a superior view of what is their essentially animal behaviour. As William Blake said:

Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

‘And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.’

It seems to me that much of our lives is filled with love and the need for love like this and that such a need is no different to animals. Neither is this something to be lamented by humans. It is good that we recognise the animal nature in us for what it is. That knowledge has value in itself.

Being human does not make us better than other animals however it gives us God like opportunities, that other animals do not have, to change the world and the lives of all of the other animals. No other animal has this ability. The question is how should we use it?

Wolf or Shepherd
Shall we remain a wolf in sheep’s clothing or can humans finally take the the step to being a Shepherd?

The finally irony is that we will only be unique when we try to look beyond our uniqueness to the value of biological diversity. I hope the human race is destined to such superiority (if that be the right word).