How I Learned to Stop Worrying

After a long bout of laziness and transport hang-ups I finally started attending Skeptics in the Pub again. For anyone unfamiliar with these types of event they are casual / enjoyable / laid back lectures and presentations on a variety of science and sceptical-based topics, the ones I previously attended discussed alternative medicine and psychic conmen.

The talk on Monday was titled ‘Progress in Astronomy’s Big Questions or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the 21st Century’ and was presented by Chris Lintott, an astronomer who works on the BBC’s Sky at Night. Chris was personable and engaging, and made what could possibly be very tricky information understandable and clear. The talk touched on a lot of topics within astronomy, which was great for an astropleb like me, though anyone more familiar with the subject may not have learned much, but that is the risk with any talk, I suppose.

Physics, with astronomy in particular, have a weird effect on me. This effect is characterised by i) existential dread, which then morphs slowly into being ii) seriously chilled out. Had I gone expecting this ‘drop tower’-style ride of emotion, I would not have been disappointed.

Some of the current theories and hypotheses of astronomy seem custom made to blow minds. The observation that only around 4% of the Universe is made from regular matter is deeply, deeply odd. It also suggests that use of the term ‘regular matter’ is ill-advised, given that since it’s in the minority that kind of matter is actually highly irregular. It is currently thought that 23% of all stuff in the Universe is dark matter, which is stuff that we cannot see, but whose effect is observable on ‘regular matter’. That is to say if a certain planet should be moving in a perfectly circular orbit (illustrated here O) and it isn’t, it follows that there is some invisible matter whose gravity is affecting it. Having climbed up to this level of understanding, it is then necessary to make another difficult clinb. We have matter: stuff we can see, dark matter: stuff we can’t see, and then in order to make calculations work in simulations, we get dark energy. We cannot directly observe dark matter, and from my understanding we don’t even know where or what dark energy is, how it works or where it’s coming from. However, when factored into calculations, we end up with models that correlate almost entirely with the Universe we see, which strongly suggests that dark energy is in fact there, and it makes up over 70% of what makes up the Universe.

It is this sort of information that leads to what I mentioned in point i). How am I meant to shield myself from complete intellectual meltdown when the vast majority of the Universe is made from something no one understands? I dabbed at my ears with a kerchief to stem the flow of brain (there’s little more embarrassing than rogue brain matter in a beard) and continued to listen as the topic changed.

So, according to Google the speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s, and I have no reason to distrust Google, after all it knows everything, and is my friend. And, of course, as we all know, nothing can go faster than the speed of light, right? Wrong, apparently. By this time my poor kerchief is aflood with grey matter, so fully has my brain been blown. According to observations, distant galaxies are moving away from us very fast indeed, of this much I was aware. However, I was informed, these distant galaxies are in fact moving away from us at around 40 times faster than the speed of light. I would have thought this would have been a problematic observation, but the solution to it is akin to stepping outside of the Matrix. The speed of light is not the fastest that anything can travel. The speed of light is the fastest that anything can travel THROUGH SPACE. The answer is that because space itself is expanding, this is contributing to the speed at which those distant galaxies are moving away. The speed at which space is expanding is not subject to the same limitations as are things moving through space, so it seems that it can expand however fast it bloody well wants to. At this point I’ve run out of brains and it is the actual structure of my skull that is now crumbling.

So with all the factors contributing to seemingly insurmountable levels of i), how does astronomy bring it back around?

The answer is stunning pictures and videos. Since Chris is a working astronomer, some of the talk was able to focus on very recent research, footage and images. He talked of the Sloan Survey Telescope in New Mexico which created a 3D map of large tracts of the local areas of the Universe, and we were also treated to images from the Hubble Deep Field telescope, which are always a delight. It is in these images that I find myself becoming ii). Such a simple technique, a pull back and reveal, applied to these pictures of such enormous complexity and depth, is so immeasurably soothing. As the picture pulls out, revealing layer upon layer of blips, swirls and clouds of light, each individually a galaxy, and as you focus on the foreground all the galaxies we have previously passed form a majestic, near infinite cloudscape in the background. Stunningly, stunningly beautiful. So, why does this in particular chill me out so much?

Perhaps the most fallacious component in the human psyche is our own inflated sense of self importance. It is very difficult for us to view any state of affairs from anything other than an anthropocentric vantage point. This is where all religion comes from in my opinion. We look at the world and from our observations we see a world, and in fact a universe, that doesn’t care about us at all. Humans indiscriminately die for no moral reason, simply due to the chaotic nature of things. This is an unpleasant situation to consider, and so there is no end of imagination and wish-thinking that we will go to in order to convince ourselves that this isn’t the case. For me, the deep field astronomical images are the perfect remedy for this problem. When confronted with this reality, it is impossible to countenance our wishful thinking. It isn’t negative to be freed from our fantasy in this case, for while it strips us of the false comfort of eternity and supernatural protection, the simple vastness of the scope of the Universe, for me at least, is an incredibly comforting thing. In my life I worry about a lot of things. Some of these things it makes sense to worry about: whether there is enough food to eat, a place to sleep, people around that I can rely on and whose company I enjoy. However, there are a large number of things I worry about that aren’t of any use. Wandering around alone in public I find myself very self-conscious, though in attempting to define the exact nature of that anxiety I find it difficult to actually explain. Am I anxious about people watching me, judging me? I think that is part of it. Also, days are filled with numerous unimportant encounters which, if you allow them to, can colour your life, bogging you down in petty concerns. These are the anchors which those images cut loose, for me anyway. I am vastly cheered by those pictures, because I can go about my business far happier, for a short while at least I am possessed of a fresh perspective which allows me to discount events and concerns for which there is no reason or function in allotting any importance.

I have been really cheerful ever since Monday, because I spent some time bathing in images of other galaxies.

Also I learned a little about the Universe where we live, in the company of pleasant people, and it only cost £3. All in all, time, money and effort well spent.

I believe a talk is planned for December if possible, though none is currently booked in. The next talk on the books of Cardiff Skeptics in the Pub is on Monday, February the 20th and is titled ‘Why Nothing Matters’. That sounds like I’ll be so chilled out afterwards I might need assistance leaving the building.

http://cardiff.skepticsinthepub.org/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/123642454331540/

The Reason of Reason

I recently watched the documentary 'Collision' which charted correspondence between and a subsequent debating tour by Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. I am very interested in the work of Christopher Hitchens, who is a highly-regarded journalist that is also well-known for his participation in public debates. It is my interest in Christopher Hitchens which led me to find this film. The topic of debate was 'Is Christianity Good for the World?', with Hitchens, an atheist/anti-theist, arguing the negative and Wilson, a Christian theologian, arguing the positive.

It was a very interesting piece, with fascinating footage of the debaters off-stage which provided some insights into their characters, and helped to humanise them both, which I felt was valuable in an arena where it's easy to demonise the individual who is proposing the world-view counter to your own. Also, seeing the two men treating each other with grace and politeness was very heartening, proving, to me at least, that the effort was to actually engage in a logical process of understanding, and not shout each other down or out emote each other, although bits and pieces of these behaviours do crop up in the piece, though that is human nature I suppose.

If you have the variety of nerditry that I possess, namely the enjoyment of debates, and you have viewed a fair amount of these, you will quickly find that a number of the arguments and refutations become repetitive very quickly. This is largely, I would speculate, due to one side thinking that a point is valid, with the opposing side considering it as solidly debunked and vice versa. This ensures that a vast amount of debates, specifically on the topic of religion/atheism (i.e. the existence / non-existence of god) I should perhaps specify, often cover the same ground. Therefore it is a joy to discover an argument that you've never come across before, it is like finding a free toy in a box of cereal which isn't even promising a free toy (I used to like the holographic pictures). Such was the case in this debate.

In actuality I just clicked through the film again to find an exact quotation of what was said, and I was unable to find the question I was thinking of. I have watched a large amount of such debates recently, which leads to the possibility that I heard this argument elsewhere, so I won't attribute it to Douglas Wilson in any concrete way, but I will present it nevertheless.

Now I should say in advance that this argument is perplexing to me, because my instinct tells me that there is some fundamental fallacy taking place, but after playing with it in my mind all I have managed to achieve is a headache. In questioning the mandate of morality in a world where there is no ultimate moral creator, we must suggest another way of justifying the importance of morality. In my memory of this argument, 'reason' was suggested to justify morality. Using reason we can come to the agreement that murder, perjury and stealing (three things that are often considered as being immoral in every human community that has ever been observed) are immoral because were they practised widely, the community in which they were practised would fall apart under it's own lack of solidarity. If there was a community who did not consider these things immoral, that community would not survive. Taking the argument a level further, and this is the point which perplexed me, is that on what terms are we judging the efficacy / mandate / importance of 'reason'. The proposition was that if we are judging the process of reason using the standards of reason that this is a circular argument and therefore null. My own personal reaction would be to suggest that the effort and the process of reason has been proved time and again to work, the only concrete and clear understanding and achievements we have achieved as a species have come from the application of reason. The process of faith has never once enabled a human to fly, though some would claim, ludicrously, otherwise. It is only reason, specifically scientific endeavor with reason at its core, that can claim that accolade. The counterargument to this claim is that the process of judging the merit of a process by its achievements is itself the use of reason, and so it is, again, circular reasoning. It was at this point that I fell prey to a frustrating headache.

Of course the argument also applies the other way around, I would argue, as if you say "you can only see the merits of reason by using a process of reason" then similarly "you can only see the merits of faith through having faith". The only way to avoid this that I can see would be to claim that the value of reason must be self-evident, which I would be wary of stating, as clearly there are a large number of people who seem to abstain from reason, and if not in every aspect of life then they seem alarmingly able to partition their lives into a) problems that can be solved with reason, usually in the material/scientific realm, and b) problems that can not be solved by reason, which usually land in the supernatural realm and sometimes the moral. I am skeptical of the existence of a supernatural realm because it, by its very nature, cannot be verified or observed using scientific means, which, as techniques and tools improve, has been able to verify and observe more and more. Of all the things we previously believed to be supernatural in origin and now understand, the supernatural claims were proven correct 0% of the time. Zeus threw the lightning until we figured out what was really going on, the world was flat until we figured out that it was actually a sphere, and while we may not yet understand precisely how the Universe came into being, precisely how life arose from non-life and precisely how morality emerged I am confident, because of our reason-based problem solving past record that we will eventually come to know the answers. Even if this is not the case, and we cannot know as a species how these fundamental processes began, then that is still no reason to hypothesize a solution that would be contrary to everything we understand about the nature of existence, which is what a supernatural creator would entail.

Some would also feel that a morality that exists simply as a survival mechanism because of evolution would be devalued, but I would argue that that is simply not the case. Though we arrived at our current state due to evolution, our possession of sentience means that we can evaluate, using reason, what is of value and what is not, what is good and what is not, so while morality evolved for survival reasons, we can understand that it is of more fundamental value. Simply because we have discovered that morality has it's origin in natural selection does not devalue its importance, just as understanding that love developed in because it helped propagate genes doesn't devalue or lessen the impact of love.

I fear I have drifted slightly askew of topic there. The core point of this entry was to discuss the idea that justifying the importance of reason using reason was a circular argument. In the brief discussion I had regarding this it was pointed out to me that this is perhaps an epistemological issue, which is an area I have not read into, so I will be endeavoring in that direction soon.

Headache.