a subjective world… I do care!

Since almost nobody answered my question of his/her idea about the importance of considering the universe in which we are living to be objective or subjective, I am not planning to go into the details. However, just to clarify my viewpoint on this particular subject I’ll go briefly through it.

Taking the Daemon as a way to explain the possibility of existence of an omnipotent god can be easily falsified by its consecutive paradoxes. However, the question of the universe being a simulation of a computational device with limited power is yet to be addressed.

It is indeed a defining assumption both in philosophy and science. The philosophical arguments are way easier in this sense, so I just bring two scientific examples to show the difference:

This one contains a little bit of philosophy too. The question is whether the computer which is simulating our virtual reality is a deterministic computational machine or a probabilistic one? This is important, because we have free will only if the computer is probabilistic!

The second question is this: Are the laws of nature subject to change? Roughly speaking, our presumption is that the laws of nature are constant and we are making our laws of physical sciences more accurate to get closer and closer to the natural laws. If the laws of nature are subject to slight changes, what would be the new definition of the incompleteness of the science.

Hundreds of other scientific and philosophical questions could be asked. However, the greatest dilemma is whether we can have access to the daemon’s mind or not.

a subjective world… Who cares?

Those of you who think the idea behind the movies such as The Matrix and eXisteZ are so original should read the Descartes‘ Evil Deamon. The question reduces to this: Is there a possibility that everything we see is just a set of subjective concepts which do not necessarily have any objective counterparts? i.e. We and the world around us are something like a virtual reality in a super powerful computer or We are just the thoughts of a crazy daemon?

One odd answer to that is this: Does it really make any difference? Cuz even in that case we can find the laws of physics of the daemon’s mind and live our lives as we do in an objective universe! In this case, this idea seems to be just a change in name, say from objective to subjective!

I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with the statement above. I’m just curious to know about your ideas…

My 2nd letter to God!

Dear God,

I hope you are not well! I was taught not to wish bad things for people; but in this particular occasion, I hope you are suffering a terminal illness! I was planning to discuss some issues about general theory of relativity in this post. However, since statistics show that people enjoyed my last letter to you more than the special relativity, I shall continue my prayers and leave Einstein alone until some other times!

I promised to show why I believe people have created you. Therefore, here I’ll waste my time, explaining them for you…

If you were the god that your slaves (poor people who happily call themselves slaves) think, your existence might not be led to any paradox. Now listen to these:

1. Paradox of the state of being infinite and almighty:

Religious people claim that you’ve told them you are infinitely good and you are not improving! Well, it sounds that you’ve not understood that meaning of infinity! When we say a quantity tends to infinity, we literally mean that it does not have any limits. If something does not have any limits, it does not have any end points. If it doesn’t have any end points, it should always improve! So you cannot be almighty! Easy discussion, wasn’t it?

2. Paradox of being omniscience and allowing free will:

Some of your believers say that you know everything from the past, now and the future and you’ve also gave them free will to do what we want during our lifetime! Well, if you (or anybody else) know the future deterministically, then it was determined before. So they can’t have free will! Again you’ve lied to them!

3. Paradox of justice vs. creation:

You’ve told them that you have justice! Justice is defined as judgment involved in the determination of rights and the assignment of rewards and punishments. Nobody has told me about my rights in against you and I don’t remember being asked about what I promise to accomplish as my mission in my life! So if you punish me for what I did in my life you don’t have justice.

On the other hand, even if you don’t punish me or give me reward for my actions in your world, again you don’t have justice. Worst than that, if you’ve created us and you do not allow us to get out of your authority, you can never have justice! So your existence contradicts with your justice.

4. The problem of theodicy:

Some of your sheep say that you have created everything from nothing. OK, so you have created wicked things and you have to punish yourself, not your sheep! This is another version of justice vs. creation.

These are a few reasons I believe the properties that make you God leads to contradiction. I’ve just mentioned a few, because I know sometimes you are very lazy to read a lot and really don’t bother thinking! Nonetheless, there are tons and tons of them! Could you please tell me what remains from you without any properties??!

Your enemy,

Sina

Physics is the mother of all sciences!

Before the next serious post , I wish to update you about the current state of  My f***ing VAIO. The cursor went upside down again! Besides, this time sometimes it randomly behaved madly and started bouncing all over the screen and clicked randomly! Moreover, the left mouse button stopped working! In the new situation of living in the Pounds Country (!), I decided to become a laptop doctor and repair it by my own! So I opened it as you see below:

cleaned the trackpad’s board and changed the faulty button! And all done!

Conclusion: If your VAIO went mad, simply open and clean the bloody trackpad! Everything’s there! Your guarantee service centre might tell you that the control chip was faulty, but that’s a lie to take some money from you!

P.S. I’ve chosen that title, because I am a physicist!

And here are some not much related random pictures of my favourite Jazz club in Manchester. It really worth spending a night there!

As you can see the saxophonist puts much effort to do it well!

An open letter to God

Dear God,

Thanks for letting me out of your authority finally after 22 years. Now I’m free and I can write against you! However, I know your faithful troops are always ready for Jihad. And I know that my home country is still under your dominant. But I want to write how I feel about you…

Some people say I don’t believe in you! That’s obviously wrong! If I didn’t believe in you how could I write to you? The only question to ask is whether you were the creator or us?!

Yes you got it. Initially we made you up to fill the gap of our knowledge about our origins. At that time you were such an innocent kid, like a lightening; you remember?! But then we gradually evolved you and made you more complex to fit the improving human society. You helped people control each other… You’ve become opiates for the masses, such that they couldn’t imagine their existence without you…  People started killing each other because of your delusion! More you’ve become complex more your believers become dangerous! Now there are a group of them who has a book, which they think, is sent from you and every single verse is literally true and unchanged! This is the dodgiest thing a society can believe in! Because as soon as they believe they are totally right and the others are totally wrong they’ll become to enemies and they’d fight! No, you are not doing well mate! You are definitely not! So I want to fire you from our world!

Having said this introduction, I shall explain why I think you are such a delusion. Then I’ll survey different religions and I’ll explain why I am not a believer in any of them. Nevertheless, to make the entries readable,as you are not that almighty to be able to read it all at once, I’ll publish each part separately. In this post, I’ll mention some of the contradictions of the existence of God of religions. I’ll explain them in the next post. Then I shall describe the reasons I don’t believe in any other Gods. Finally I’ll end with an argument about the reason that none of the religions could be brought by a supernatural creature!

To explain why the God of religion do not exists, I have to bring some contradictions in the properties of such a God. Here is the first one:

1. Paradox of the state of being infinite and almighty
2. Paradox of being omniscience and allowing free will
3. Paradox of justice vs. creation
4. The problem of theodicy
5. Relatively minor questions such as “Does it give any useful explanation?” and “Does it make any good contribution?”

Later for the discussion about all other Gods, I’ll ask the theists for their evidences. Then I shall repeat part 5 above for this case.

Finally, I’ll choose two of the religions which have the largest number of adherents, namely Christianity and Islam. And I will explain why their arguments are not valid. Why the scientific facts in Qur’an are either coincidence or misconception. And interpretations of Bible are just complications in human’s mind…

Barclays’ Rubbish – continued

The first day I wanted to open an account in Barclays I simply walked into a branch and asked one of the staff about the different accounts they have and their offers. She told me that the only free of charge one is our Cash Card. But you can only use it in the cash points. For your online banking you need the other one which will cost you just 5 pounds per month. I accepted because I knew that HSBC will charge me 8 pound so I asked her to book an appointment for me. Keep this in your mind, I shall come back to it at the end…

This afternoon, I walked into the branch in which I had my account. I went to the branch manager’s office, showed the letter to him and started complaining about the contents of it… “What’s this? You are irresponsible! This is irrational! This is ridiculous! I don’t have any correlation with the government! It’s not about the sanctions! You can’t do this … Blah blah blah…” He just replied: “I know, but according to the rules…” but I was so angry, so I interrupted: “Rules? Which rules? That’s all about the government! I am an ordinary Iranian national!”. Again he replied: “No, it’s about the Iranian nationals!” I shouted: “If you you don’t know the rules, I suggest you go and read them! Anyway, I myself now want to take my money out of here…”

Then I just did the process and went to another bank called Royal Bank of Scotland. I explained the situations for them and they told me they’ll open a bank account for me for free and I can do anything, including the online banking with it. At least they treated well. I emphasized: “I am an Iranian national. Are you sure I won’t have any problem with this account?” and she replied: “Sure! We have many Iranian clients”. So I asked her to book an appointment for me!

Just to check some other banks I went to the Lloys TSB. They gave me the same answer. They told me they don’t know why Barclays has done this and this is not a law coming from the higher authorities.

Finally I went to another branch of Barclays and told them I want to open an account and I am Iranian and I’ve heard that we can’t have an account here because of the sanctions! They told me: “No, you definitely CAN open an account here. But you can only have a Cash Card in our bank.” I told him: “But I want to do online banking!”. “Yes, you can!”, he replied!

I came back home and checked the Barclays website on the internet. Apparently I can do online banking and all with a Cash Card. I deduced that the banker deceived me for 5 pounds per month in the first day! So I shall transfer all my money to the RBS. Moreover, this is an irresponsible action of the Barclays or any other banks to close certain clients’ accounts only because of their nationality!!!

Barclays’ Rubbish!

I’ve just received a letter from Barclays, the bank in which I made this mistake and opened an account, which says we’re gonna close your account in 30 days!!! It says “we have decided that we are no longer in a position to be able to offer services to clients who are resident in a number of countries, including Iran”!!!

What the hell is that? I have never had any correlation with the government of Iran. I have always  been under pressure of the Iranian government when I was in Iran. I have never committed any illegal activity. The sanctions are supposed to do  nothing to the Iranian people, but the government. Why should they close my bank account? Why should I suffer more?

OK, tomorrow I’ll walk into the bank and happily take my money off this crap! But I am so worried that I have the same problem with the other banks!!!

Special Theory of Relativity

Let’s have a physico-philosophical quiz for today! The first part will be so simple, especially if you are a physicist, but the second part needs a little more care!

The two postulates of the special theory of relativity are as follows:

Postulate 1: The laws of physics are the same in any inertial reference frame.

Postulate 2: The speed of light (or any other massless particle) in vacuum is the same an all inertial frames of reference and is independent of the motion of the source.

As you see both of them are talking about inertial reference frames. And if you don’t believe that the Earth rests on the back of an elephant, which stands on the back of a tortoise, then another choice is to believe that it orbits around the sun!!! If so, you must accept that it does have a centripetal acceleration, and hence is not an inertial reference frame…

Question number one: Do we have to conclude that the theory of relativity doesn’t work for us who live on the Earth?!!!

Question number two:  In the theory of relativity we don’t have the absolute space! We also know that fixed stars are not really fixed! Define inertial frame of reference, before you come up with a definition of the special theory of relativity!

Should I become a scientist or a philosopher?!

This entry and its proceeding one will be two of the most interesting posts I’ll ever publish in my weblog. The reason is that these posts aim to clarify the crucial criteria, one needs to consider when he wants to decide between becoming a scientist or a philosopher when he is young; say in the age between 18 and 22. Nevertheless, despite my career in science, these criteria have never become clear enough even for me! Here I have asked Amyr Anvary, a friend in philosophy side, to write an article describing why he is more interested in philosophy. In the next post I’ll explain the reasons I preferred science for myself.

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I have always been more drawn to Philosophy than Science. That is because I find philosophical cognition more authentic and genuine. in order to explain my viewpoint and this make this post easier to read I decided to talk about what I think Philosophy is (Part One), discuss Science in contrast with Philosophy (Part Two) and name two reasons why I think scientific cognition is neither complete nor satisfying (Part Three) separately.
1.
Although people usually define Philosophy by its ‘subjects of concern’, I am more comfortable with my own definition (which is of course a work in progress). Philosophy is a unique way of talking about potentially everything using reason and intuition and coming to a result with which one can rest satisfied. I purposefully use the word ‘talking’ –and not thinking or study- because I believe Philosophy is a form of discourse. This does not necessarily mean that a philosopher is talking -directly or indirectly- to someone. What I want to imply is that Philosophy is a language-dependant phenomena and it happens with motives of communication. The uniqueness that I pointed out in my definition of Philosophy is because of doubt. Same as Science and unlike engineering, Doubt is a crucial method in Philosophy and since you don`t have a ‘unified reality’ -in a philosophical sense- to measure yourself with, doubt plays a more important role in Philosophy than Science.
2.
Science and Philosophy have more in common. They are both concerned with understanding of Nature, the difference is that in order to understand Nature Science tries to understand how it works but Philosophy takes a more ‘ontological’ approach. Meaning that while the main objective of Science is to understand Nature, Philosophy tries to use what is so far grasped about Nature and talk about concepts like existence and reality. Especially in recent decades Philosophy has been influenced by Science more than ever. Philosophical ideas also play a big role in evolution of Science; since many of scientific assumptions are backed up by huge philosophical backgrounds. Let us discuss this further.
Any scientific cognition takes place in a well defined consistent and arguably complete axiomatic system. Meaning there are fundamental and mostly philosophical concepts on which our further definitions and theories depend. How are these propositions, which we label as axioms or assumptions, philosophical? To answer this let me point out the difference between two kinds of axiomatic systems. In a mathematical axiomatic system such as Euclidean Geometry or Group theory axioms are interchangeable with other proposition within the system. These axioms have been selected from a bunch of basic propositions because they contain all the information we need in order to define the structure of our system. They can be replaced by other propositions. Galois came up with most of fundamental definitions and statements of Group theory without even formalizing axioms of Groups. But in Newtonian mechanics, for example, existence of space without quantification is assumed. ‘Existence of space without quantification’ is a statement which cannot be replaced by any proposition within the Classical Mechanics. Beside axioms, in a scientific axiomatic system, some other propositions are assumed (consciously or not). Even though this sort of assumptions might look like physical statements but they are backed up by many controversial philosophical ideas, some of these assumptions include determinism, causality and existence of mathematical discipline beneath any physical phenomena. Any scientific revolution happens exactly by challenging these philosophical assumptions. That is why I think any scientific cognition evolves in a world provided by philosophical ideas.
3.1
How is reducing a phenomenon to mathematical formulae providing us with some sort of satisfying cognition? Science has proved to be successfully able to predict and use Natural phenomena. But how is this helping us understanding Nature?
3.2
In 17th century René Descartes used the term res extensa (thinking subject) in opposite of res cogitans (read physical reality); although his intentions were towards discussing individualism somewhere along the way he formalized something much deeper and more profound, by separating the thinking subject and the physical reality, Philosophy and Science became two separate entities and went their separate ways. As a result Science became incapable of knowing itself and even scientifically understanding itself. This is the main reason behind the creation of some schools of Philosophy such as epistemology or phenomenology.

Quote of the day

Quantum mechanics is much like religion. In both cases you have to believe in some unseen facts. As soon as you see them, there are no morals!