I have something to say

There is no god. The universe is a material thing. There is no supernatural. There is no higher being. Mankind is not special.

The universe has a set of rules. We do not yet know all of these rules, but we are working towards that goal.

A human being is a material being. It is made up of material components, and is a part of the universe. There is no supernatural component in a human being.

I wish to be quite clear. The universe has a set of rules. We may not know those rules, but there are rules. And every person, with no exception, is subject to those rules.

The rules are well understood. Humanity has expended much effort into understanding the universe, and has a long way to go still. The rules we have discovered, within their realms are incredibly accurate and precise.

But these rules are not the full story. We understand how to work with one particle. That is easy. We understand how to deal with two particles. This we can do exactly in almost every circumstance. Three particles is a different story. There we have to make approximations. We have to do mathematical tricks. We have to divide time into discrete chunks. We have to make approximations.

Everything we experience is a collection of billions upon billions of atoms. For some things, new approximations come into play, and again we can be exact. The motion of an object in the gravitational field of the earth can be described simply and elegantly by a mathematical equation. The behaviour of gases and other materials can be described by the rules of thermodynamics.

These rules are not derived from the behaviour of individual particles (although I would like to think that some general principles could be derived, and indeed may have already been derived from quantum theory), but are what are called emergent phenomena. One could study quantum mechanics for many lifetimes, but would not necessarily predict the phenomena of superconductivity. This is because superconductivity is a property of a collection of particles. No single particle by itself can superconduct. It is the collection of particles, interacting with each other, which creates this new, unpredictable phenomena.

And so it is with humanity. The human mind is a collection of particles, amazingly organised, which together exceeds the sum of its parts. The rules of the universe set the ways in which two particles interact, and these interactions are incredibly limited. There are merely four ways in which particles affect one another. But the rules describe the interactions between just two entities. And so, when a collection of particles interact and affect each other, the outcomes can be something which someone who studied the rules for millennia would never consider.

Emergent behaviour is something with which we are familiar. John Conway's Game of Life is a set of simple rules that apply to a two dimensional grid. Looking at just the rules, you could not predict the existence of patterns which not just sustain themselves, but produce other entities which endure in the universe of the Game. But such patterns exist.

And so it is with out universe. There is a set of rules by which all particles abide. But the behaviour of a collection of particles may follow those rules in ways no one could predict or expect.

And so it is. Without any intention of anthropomorphising, matter has found a way of organising itself which no longer believes itself bound by the rules of the universe. Human beings, and other creatures to a varying extent, are not just chunks of matter, but matter organised in such a way as to be self aware. To be able to think.

This is an awe inspiring thing. To consider that a set of rules that rigidly define the interactions of any two given particles, when applied to billions upon billions of particles acting upon each other gives rise to such amazing complexity and originality is mind boggling.

This is not something to be treated lightly. The ability to think, the awareness of one's self, the ability to weigh the consequences of ones actions and change them accordingly is a rare gift. It is something to be treasured.

The entire human condition is something of a contradiction. We are a material being, made up of material components which follow rigidly defined laws. But, the collective of matter displays properties which would never be predicted just by looking at the laws of nature. The Schroedinger equation, while being the fundamental underpinning of all the universe, does not answer all the questions.

But just because we are a collection of material parts, does not mean that humanity is not important. Actually, it does not mean that sentience, awareness is unimportant. The ability to think, to reason, to plan, to consider ones situation, to reflect on the past and hope for the future is a treasure.

It is not something to be thrown away lightly. Every human has these abilities to varying degrees, and different animals also have these capacities, although at the moment to a lesser degree than humans.

Intelligent life is precious. It is precious because it is able to recognise what it is, and to value itself. A rock can not do this. A plank of wood can not do this. At this time, a computer can not do this. But a human being can.

This capacity for thought, this behaviour which while following the rules of the universe, is not explicitly defined by the rules, is what is exceptional, is the thing which is to be treasured.

Life is precious. The idea that a collection of matter is able to arrange itself so as to be aware of itself, to think, to reason is extraordinary. It is to be revered. And so too is the universe which allowed such complexity to exist.

The universe is an amazing place. It is so full of wonder, of possibilities that the human mind reels away when considering the full grandness of it. When compared to the idea of a complex universe such as the one we live in, the idea of a supreme being tinkering with dials to make sure the universe is just right for humans seems small minded and self centred.

I will say this: Human beings are special. But so to is any creature who is aware of itself, who can reason and think, as would be shown by its actions. It is through this emergent behaviour, this going beyond the simple rules and finding new patterns of existence that can endure and spread that we rise above the simple rules that govern matter and become worthy of recognition.

Simply to be aware of oneself is a wondrous thing. Nowhere in the rules of the universe is such a thing described, but still it exists. It is a marvel of the universe that it can produce such things.

But, it is not a contradiction of the rules of the universe. The interactions of the particles in my mind, in any mind, follow the rules of the universe. By working together they can behave in complex, unpredictable ways, but each individual particle follows the rules of the universe.

I feel this has been somewhat of a rambling post, but let me summarise. The universe is purely material. The material universe follows a set of rules, which we do not as yet fully understand, but they do exist and we are trying to improve our knowledge of them of. The human mind is a collection of material components which exhibit behaviour that while not described in the rules, does not contradict the rules. Such entities which display such behaviour are rare, and deserve to be treated as special and important, despite the fact that they are merely a collection of matter.

End Post
Writing time: 1 hour 21 minutes (I'm not at my most coherent right now)
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Limits and Morality

One of my housemates has a habit of getting somewhat philosophical when he gets drunk, and recently this has got me thinking about a few things a bit more than I would usually.

The most recent position he put forward was that the ultimate aspiration/achievement is the freeing oneself of all limitations up to and including morality and the laws of physics. This is achieved through enlightenment, which apparently you only get when it happens, and is not able to be worked towards. Of course, you know you've been enlightened because that's part of the knowledge you get with enlightenment. And no one else can verify this, because enlightenment comes from within, and cannot be taught or worked towards.

He acknowledged that this is very much like traditional religious faith, and occasionally he has delusions of being the antichrist. We have very different notions of truth (For me, truth is the external reality, observable by all). He thinks truth is something internal, individual, and not able to be directly compared with others truth. And that this internal truth outweighs any other evidence if you feel it to be true enough (very much along the line of Stephen Colbert's Truthiness).

But the thing I've been thinking about the most is the whole freeing of all limitations. My thinking crystallised on watching a trailer for the next season of Battlestar Galactica, which was "Somethings you just don't do, colonel. Not even in war."

The idea I have is that being moral takes two steps. The first step is deciding what is good and what is bad. This should always be under consideration, and open for debate, etc. But the second part is then saying, these things I consider bad, I will not do. You limit the things that you are willing to do, based on what you think is good or bad. People will disagree with the what you might think is good or bad, but the restricting yourself to only doing good things is an important part of being a good person.

One other important aspect is that these limits are self imposed. You have decided not to do these things. Being forced to do things by others is still not good. The society you live in and your experiences will obviously have a strong effect on what you choose as good and bad, but ultimately it is your own choice what your actions are.

This idea of good people limiting their action came up on an episode of Penn Jillette's radio show about why should America obey the Geneva conventions, and one of the callers put in a similar idea, that because America wants to be the good guys, they need to live up to a higher standard of behaviour, one that includes not torturing prisoners, not attacking civilians, etc. This again is the idea "I want to be a good person, therefore I will not do bad things".

It does come to mind that this leads to a rather passive idea of good being the avoidance of bad rather than a goal in and of itself. You could look at it a bit like the Hippocratic oath "First do no harm", start out by not making things worse, then actively try to improve them.

In conclusion, I think that to be a moral person one needs to place limitations on themselves.

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Technorati tags: Philosophy, Limitations, Thoughts