Something And Nothing

When Lawrence Krauss made this presentation for the non existence of a designer (God) his assumptions are based on information that doesn't travel faster than light but that's changed in the last week so I don't need to make my case for semantic confirmation bias that I say he uses here and which is philosophical (not mathematical) and no stronger or weaker than his case. However Lawrence is still brilliant and one of the best arguments I've come across for a Godless Universe. It is essential to the debate.

Jay Weidner - Toroidal Vortices & The Gravitation Deception

I can't be arsed to tell you why this is such a great interview but if someone can confirm I got the Youtube playlist in sequential order (or not) I'll spill the beans in the comments. 

I made the title up but Jay 'n Tom 'n Ramone should be OK about it.

Nassim Harramein - Physics As You Go

I was listening to Stephen Hawking's sidekick Leonard Mlodinow being interviewed a couple of nights ago lamely defending CERN smashing stuff up to see what happens even though the standard model we currently use works just fine. He compared it to discovering antibiotics when any cretin can figure out the first people to confiscate the technology will be the Pentagon to blow even more shit up. In a world where famine is still rampant I'm appalled that materialist science is selfish, dumb and dangerous. (The Standard model is Lego for Freemasons but let's not give the kids a the bulldozers till more urgent problems are solved).

In contrast Nassim Harramein's latest presentation on a physics is exciting, forward thinking and spiritually integrated. His humorous and engaging style is refreshing with wry observations that in the world of conventional physics nothing actually touches each other at an atomic level. I'd love to see him and Maurice Cotterell discuss their respective understanding of the universe. They generally tip toe around each other's ideas but don't always agree.


Update: I was listening to a book review of How the Hippies Saved Physics and I understand Hawkins 'caved' to Susskind in which case it's unfair to describe him as a sidekick.

Quantum Mechanics & Mysticism

Just listened to this Gregg Braden on Jay Weidner's channel and it's worth posting. I like these guys that can flip flop effortlessly between quantum mechanics, string theory, the multiverse, multidimensional models and and living from the heart (as opposed to the duality of the brain) which is without doubt the strongest and most ubiquitous meme from the people who talk about and explore spiritual matters in these fast-moving times.

John Titor - Time Traveller On The Net Forums?

This threw a huge spanner in the works for me. I hadn't heard of John Titor until a few hours ago but my own private unified theory was doing very nicely for the next few years even though the Multiverse theory that science is increasingly strident about has been a good house guest when factoring in transdimensional disruptions. That has all changed on first hearing of the interview below. I really need to go back and do the legwork on what John Titor actually said as so far I've just listened to two interviews of authors who have written books about him. 

I could kick myself that I haven't rigorously factored in dimensional (time) travel given that the notion of time as exception to the Omniverse rule rolls off my lips quite frequently and that I'm comfortable with trans-dimensional intervention both conceptually and pragmatically. It just never occurred to me that a 21st century human would be the first credible encounter of the physics that the adolescents of exploding science at CERN are dicking around with.  

Until I reconcile this anomaly with all the other stuff that I've only scratched the surface of (and there's a slim chance John Titor is THE most creative idea media-seed I've ever seen planted), I'm in that somewhat uncomfortable zone of holding powerfully conflicting ideas in my head at the same time. It's spinning me out, but there are glimpses of potential for idea reconciliation, though at this stage the sheer renegade lone ranger factor is baffling me. Just the one off? How come? How so? Whatever the outcome I like this character a lot already. Like me he despises the excesses of consumer materialism that is the myopic hallmark of the morally diminished classes. The superficial materialists. The ones wittingly unaware(sic) that the clock's ticking.

Update: The more I watch the U.S. citizens apathy on constitutional changes to their rights over the National Defence Emergency Act, the more it looks like John Titor changed the dates from 2012 to 2008 to add some urgency to his message. Fascinating.

Ex Nihilo Nihilo Fit

David Albert Professor of Philosophy, Director of M.A. Philosophical foundations of Physics at Columbia University gives a great explanation of why a glass of water is a mystery to physicists along with an inquisitive, open and knowledge seeking approach as to why that may be. He's easy to follow and raises questions that go straight to the heart of why I reject scientific materialism more than than the material(ism) of consciousness. 

My own studies suggest that gravity seems to be a force that holds physics most tightly together yet falls apart at subatomic levels to the point where it may well be worth asking is gravity a good explanation but a bad theory? Or vice versa. Equally classical physics explanation of time comes across as dull, linear and unimaginative. Both these epistemological lynch pins feel like they may well be pulled from their respective grenades in coming years and I wonder if they will fizzle or explode.

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement gets a whole lot more intellectually concrete under these circumstances. It only takes 15 minutes or so of time and left me shaking my head for a few days but it is as it is, in so far as it's impossible to ignore. Unless one is materially  distracted.

Post-Materialist Science

I had a feisty old day today engaging with a materialist-science Twitterer. Well at least until it became clear that outside of a propensity for calumny there wasn't even a cursory grasp of 21st century historical reality.

As with most of my digital stalker detractors, it invariably becomes evident they are more obsessed with me than I am of them. 

Asymmetric love if I'm being kind. 

I only have two or three names of adversaries in my head that are worthy of a sliding tackle when the time arrives. The rest aren't up to standard. Sorry about that. I hope it stays that way too. If it gets to four or five names, a gentleman should ask himself if the problem is closer to home. 

However I didn't get a chance to demolish the 'Quantum Physics belongs to us' school of nonsense who I asset, understand no more than you or I about this fascinating life but demonstrably think they have a superior claim to intellectual ownership of life through old scientific thinking. 

I encourage you all to put a bit of Quantum real time search term feeds in your life because the point of it is not to understand. Which is brilliant really.

Not understanding is the foundation for true learning and is the start of a humble yet rewarding learning journey.

I counsel the less confident among you to reject those haughty bores and that you can spot the fundamentalist science frauds by their indignant shrillness that "normal" people don't get it. 

Neither do they none of us really do, but it's our willingness to admit it which makes a human being and not the atomic bean counters as outlined in today's New Scientist which is all you need to know. Do read it. It's double chocolate chip deliciousness.

Physicists don't, by and large, want to trouble themselves with philosophy. Questions over what, exactly, constitutes a measurement, or why it might induce a change in the fabric of reality, can be ignored in favour of simply getting a useful answer from quantum theory.

Unquestioning use of the Copenhagen interpretation is sometimes known as the "shut up and calculate" interpretation. "Given that most physicists just want to do calculations and apply their results, the majority of them are in the shut up and calculate group," Vedral says.

This approach has a couple of downsides, though. First, it is never going to teach us anything about the fundamental nature of reality. That requires a willingness to look for places where quantum theory might fail, rather than where it succeeds (New Scientist, 26 June 2010, p 34). "If there is going to be some new theory, I don't think it's going to come from solid state physics, where the majority of physicists work,"

Second, working in a self-imposed box also means that new applications of quantum theory are unlikely to emerge. The many perspectives we can take on quantum mechanics can be the catalyst for new ideas. "If you're solving different problems, it's useful to be able to think in terms of different interpretations"

Quantum Entanglement

When is empirical science going to wake up from it's measurable stupor to grasp the obtuseness of subject object delineation. That empirical science is intellectually asphyxiated. That dare we utter it.... all is indeed one and thus the end and the beginning are contiguous. 

That the temporal experience we enjoy as monkeys sitting around the planet, in our cotton underpants, arguing over who owns what, is an extraordinarily unique blessing not to be wasted.

We're making daily headway into the nature of our unique space time dimension. We haven't even scratched the surface.

Some deviant arsehole wrote that in the comments of the Quantum Entanglement article over on Wired. Anybody notice Graham Hancocks new book (his first work of fiction) is called Entangled? The word is popping up everywhere for me.


Update comment from a very knowledgable person:



When these scientists learn that there are seven dimensions that precede space-time, and time is the eighth dimension, then the source of entanglement occurs in the realm of rules, data, and patterns before ever projecting into space-time. Thereby, what is entangled are the patterns in those seven hidden dimensions that give rise to the "things" within space-time. Consequently, all entanglement by its very nature stretches through time before manifesting in space. Thereby, the definition of entanglement must include time for the concept to be accurate.


Just like an object-oriented programming language reuses code and objects, the universe reuses patterns within those seven dimensions. Learn to manipulate those patterns and you can cause effects anywhere in space-time, at will. The downside is that the consequences for error are far greater and idiot-humans would merely destroy themselves before having the chance to understand what went wrong.


Clean up your acts, and I'll teach you more. Try to use this now and you won't ever get the chance.


Here is Wisdom...

Dark Matter

One

This is the best I've seen yet (you generally know something is good on Youtube if it's under 50000 views and preferably under 5000). Sean Carroll is brilliantly lucid and engaging in this presentation.

Evolvify

Sure. He's a human and takes a shit like all of us on this painfully extraordinary planet but equally it's hilarious listening to Sam Harris trip over his snooty superiority and resort to ad homs on non locality plus I can't ignore that funniest for me so far (and thank you so much for putting this my way) is Michael Shermer answering the question of whether it's him or his x squllion neurons firing off when he's thinking and he replies it's his neurons. 

Chopra calls him a Zombie. The Scientist snookered on logic and the mystic hurling epithets? This is what Youtube was made for. 

Maddeningly frustrating is the inability not to join in and take both sides on as I have my own point of view which is deeper and darker heresy ;)

More over here

Extra Dimensional Advertising

In my mind, I'm obliged to write about the stark contrasts between video learning and the traditional education model. But as you don't know that I've been experimenting on my learning behaviour I can cut to the chase and come back to some really interesting revelations on learning modalities that I'm in the middle of.

OK so now you do know but let's stay on topic because I wrote this before my Quantum post and as I watched Inception two nights ago it's horrifying to me if people think I'm lifting ideas from movies, so now my policy is to get these posts out in a linear narrative fashion and as quickly possible.

Allow me to be a bit circumspect as it should, if I pull it off, cover my rear with the straights in the house, connect with the enlightened and curious, and also be generous for those in between. I will now adumbrate the connections between Aldous Huxley and Breakfast Cereal advertising.

Many people recognise that Special K is on the one hand banal and on the other deeply subversive. I'm going to exploit that subversive route by explaining that the dimensions  normally talked about in Special K are about an imaginary product with imaginary benefits that do more than watch your waistline. 

Imagine for example nobody informs you in your sleep that suddenly your right arm is two metres long and your left was the usual specifications. Imagine again, like me you're sprawled out on your bed, face down and both arms are touching the linen. You got that? Good, OK then the imaginary question is that if one were blind, there's no way of knowing through tactile sensory ability that the arm lengths are suddenly different. That is if you couldn't see your arms or were just waking up and alerted to their spatial pressure needed to push ourselves up you wouldn't know the difference. If the bed had mystically extended easily, then the feeling of having asymmetric arm lengths, wouldn't reveal itself. There would be no procrustean dissonance right? Ignore that link. I'm just pimping for Nicholas Talebs new book.

The point I'm trying to make is that tactile sensory experience doesn't involve or weigh largely on change of arm lengths.

That's the Special K breakfast experience messing with your head isn't it? That's one of the ways that Special K fools around with 4 dimensions while pretending to tackle the dimension it's advertising to do. Your girth for instance.

I've been thinking about how to explain this for a long time. But there's no way of making extra dimension references without being meaningless. That's because without the felt presence of immediate experience it's just abstract vocabulary.

So recently I've been trying to understand quantum physics' extra dimensions. The three dimensions are known to us quite well. The fourth is sometimes called time but not in the example below. As an aside I'd caution that time is the least understood. beginning, middle and end make a lot of sense to us but there's tonnes of evidence to suggest that it's the exception not the rule.

According to Quantum physics there are 11 dimensions. It's tough getting past the fifth dimension because the idea of meeting ourselves in folded dimensions is a bit heavy if not impossible. Unless Special K has done a scary on you at some point.

So while I was trawling through various explanations of extra dimensional space time (and neuro short circuiting too) I chanced across the most cheesy 70's style, but brilliant explanation of a way to observe that asymetric arm action outside of Special K space and time. 


I know it's Carl Sagan, don't be science snobby. I too was sniffy about indulging him at first, but this is bonkers clever at explaining extra dimensional understanding. He explains the Tesseract which is a four dimensional analog of a cube. I'll try to be creative here. It's like a 3D cube with it's insides sucked inside out to make sense in 4D.

The Tesseract is a shape impossible to illuminate fully in 3D. At best we could only glimpse it like those who believe in ghosts might envision spirits are lo fidelity spectrums in 3D. Here's Carl explaning it better than anyone.

Carl brilliantly uses the shadow of a perspex abstract of a Tesseract to explain how it would look in real life.

We clear?

Is this a good time to mention crop circles? I thought not. But let's face it. If the Tea Party can get away with racism, if the United States of America can get away with torture, if flying is still as cool as being a pimp then I'm damn sure I can go down this short cul de sac.

I don't really worry too much about individual definitions of crop circles. I'm inclined towards a Jungian analysis of what is the effect rather than the cause. So like y'all do on the quiet I've been tracking crop circles for the last two years. Mainly because the frequency is increasing year by year. The intensity of crop circles is only matched by the complete absence of farmer rage for people destroying their incomes.

2010 is no exception.

I've deliberately chosen this video for two reasons. I think it includes contributions from The Circle Makers who also go on to talk about some of the strange experiences they have had while recreating crop circles in England. It's because scepticism is almost preprogrammed into the crop circle phenomena that I've no interest in sharing my thoughts that are coalescing on this topic which if you've got this far, even if it's just one and half people (extra dimensional gag) then I'm doing well. The second reason for the video is the cutaway shot of a crop stalk with a bubble on it. Scientists have measured and recorded this in most crop circles. It's caused by heat swelling up the water on the joints of crop stalks. You should know this little discussed observation as it opens up possibilities a bit.

This isn't the time to go into crop circle trends but I'm disappointed so many planners aren't even curious about contemporary conundrums. Her Majesty's British government no less, legislated against dancing in fields through the 2004 anti rave legislation act, and yet to this day has no official line on trampling crops for geometric semioticians to get off on. I claim that to ignore this is to to be leading an unexamined life. Absence of theory is absence of creativity at the very least.

I should wrap up on this last one of the Tesseract because that's really the point of the post. A shape not possible in real life is now appearing in crop fields of England. What ever happened to a simple 'nonsense woz 'ere'? It's all very interesting.

Time Theory Part II

80's Music from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

This is kind of weird but when I mentioned to Marcus that I really liked what he said, I got an email pointing towards this video he made about it when he was going through his rubber gloves period. It's a fun way of reducing my self indulgently long and pseudo intellectual post about drugs and quantum physics. Marcus has a nice little body of social media work if you go into his video channel over here.

We also grew up about 200 metres away from each other in Southampton, hung out in the same parks yet never knew each other. Which is a good thing because I would have probably not appreciated him so much and I know my record of keeping contact with people from my youth is not strong. This is the quid pro quo of an international jet set gypsy lifestyle. There's always a quid pro quo.

Ontological Interpretations of Quantum Theory & Damn Fine Drugs

When I was younger I collected the entire encyclopaedic weekly publication of The Unexplained. My father must still have it I guess. I disappointed myself by failing to buy one or two issues out of hundreds so it's technically incomplete but actually it's a good primer on much of the unexplained which gripped me as a lad. 

It was all there. UFO's, spontaneous combustion and the like. I was a bit obsessed by it but then completely dropped interest until I think about 5 years ago when I started to question the veracity of 911 and then once again I was lurking about on some very unpolished websites where in one memorable instance I realised the content was so well researched but looked shabby so I emailed the author to beg him to stop using Times New Roman and to justify his columns as I do on my posts. You can take the boy out of advertising but you can't etc etc. 

Incidentally that site is now an' alt news-source' bible but I don't to want link to it because I think the onus is on all of us to not judge a book by it's cover but to assess information by it's internal logic, and qualitative dimensions such as credence, syntax and tone, not to mention supporting evidence and most importantly open receptive minds. That's a journey each must make for themselves. A resistance to heat is needed too. Fingers get burned all the time.

I'm not sure if that specific surfing pattern led to Doug Rushkoff but I definitely was introduced through his podcasts to Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson where I pretty much inhaled what I thought were all McKenna's available speeches online.

From there I learned a lot about entheogens, and ethnobotany of shamanism and all the other stuff that is pretty much thousands of years of history that contemporary living doesn't like to have a grown up conversation about. I think it was Timothy Leary who said "LSD is a molecule that causes insanity in people who haven't tried it". This is actually the case. People with no experience have virulent views. But let me tell you it's not the same as saying just because I've not been to Iraq doesn't mean I don't know what it's like. I'll elaborate more on that in a later post.

My own use of LSD when I was 18 or so, and later on when I was doing my degree were quite remarkable in so much as I had authentic revelations of a lucid nature about me myself and I. In my mind it seemed as revealing as modern therapy over extended sessions though I've never actually done that but listened to people who have. I'm not talking about flippant issues or fuzzy new age camp fire singing topics. 

No, I'm talking about the raw stuff of life. Sexuality, ego, morality and virtue etc. This isn't an attempt to suggest some sort of intellectual closure or elevated superiority. On the contrary I did too little and insufficiently strong enough doses to squeeze my way through the basics. I use that word 'squeeze' because the single most misunderstood point about effective-dose hallucinogenic experiences is that they are not necessarily fun. They can be extraordinarily hard work but there's gold at the end of them. They are most often powerful, boundary-dissolving ego-stripping processes.

I know a lot more now since reading up and listening on the subject of entheogens, DMT, Ayahuasca and Psyclocybin which living close to the New Forest in my youth, I've also had the blessing of trying. The latter is particularly satisfying in nature. The splendour of the complexity is profound and actually between you, I and the internet I'd eaten a dose Psilocybin when I did a bit of creative planning and got this tattoo on my chest. I don't recommend tattoos under hallucinogens. I can't imagine you would but if you really need to I have something to share that might help. But it's too private for here.

So getting back on track (as I obviously wanted to get that out of the way). I've been fascinated with Terence McKenna's experience of a transdimensional voice that shared something with him, under I think the effects of Psilocybin or DMT. (Very different durations those two. One is 3 to 5 hours. The latter 5 minutes or so.) I've been fixated on this voice not because it's necessarily real but because what it said is so compelling, so disruptive. The Logos said to him:  'What you call human we call time'. 

If we cut some big bang slack here i.e Pretend like Big Bang that it's so big and so bang that whatever the rationale it's a voice from somewhere else as opposed to borderline insanity; this actually makes a lot more sense if one were to consider the ontological interpretations of quantum theory. i.e The notion of for example trying to imagine a message being conveyed between say the 8th and 3rd dimension. It's simply not possible while shackled to three dimensions and a fourth of linear time.

OK that's a bit hard to convey without dipping in to string theory so I'll try and explain using dream analogy. Ever noticed that time is on a different level in dreams. It's not like that whole narrative you managed to remember takes place in a time anything like the way it does in a waking state. Some suggest it all happens at once. Or parts of it do. 

Think about that. 

It's part of the reason dreams so often frustratingly dissolve by the time we've hit the restroom in ten or 15 steps for our morning ablutions on awakening. It's frustrating but it explains why so much is lost or not even remembered in the first place. How can we lose that which we never recalled? The transfer doesn't compute into sentient space time. I'm sorry it doesn't. I don't make the rules...it just doesn't.

I've written another post about this sitting in drafts trying to explain what I've learned so far on this so I should finish that little fella off first, before going on and on here but I just wanted to finally share a story here because this post is about time.

I ask lots of people the same question about time. There's a reasonably consistent linear relativism argument which is always nice to hear articulated, because it's a conclusion I've reached too, in the past. It's quite exciting to hear a prior self-determined logic conclude by forcing it's way out from another person's voice as if proof that quite complex hypothesis can emerge from separate sources. A bit like magic.

 Some people call it 'great minds think alike'. I say great minds thinking alike is randomly meeting down the pub or something. This other stuff is more 'Have you ever thought that wearing sneakers inside super size Wellies keeps your feet dry and keeps a spare pair of footwear to chill out in the Saloon  without carrying anything seperately? Only to look down and see you've both done exactly that. OK that's a terrible analogy but if you have a better one I'll use it. Promise.

I digress. Let's wrap up. 

The thing is, I asked my friend Marcus Brown my usual question about time and he said something I've never heard before. You know, I don't really want to share it, but if you like ask him yourself for a robust explanation that time apparently really is speeding up outside of the oft concluded explanation I've just written about. 

I like Marcus explanation: It's allegedly stupid, but empirically bright. 

If that doesn't wet you're appetite to watch the video above then I've no idea what you're doing down here anyway and I've clearly just wasted too much of your rapidly diminishing time.