Blind spots and concepts out of our humanly reach

I was having a conversation with a colleague today about the usefulness of Johari windows in self reflection - in particular dealing with our own blind spots when my mind turned to something I have been giving a lot though to lately; our blind spots arising from a lack of mental architectures dealing with concepts out of our present reach.

This might include, for example, obscure items or concepts such the obvious difficulty we have;

• Visualizing the fourth dimension (or any dimension higher than 3), 
• Thinking about a time before time, 
• Coming to grips with the capacious atom, 
• The shape of the universe, 
• Space-time singularities (read we have no clue) and even
• Imagining alternate and/or co-existing universes. 

I usually, and privately try to make sense of the such through the lens of the anthropic principle.

Driving home, I wanted to hold on to Johari windows, blind spots and see if I can weave a thread that might run through those notions currently out of our reach; In particular the idea of the multiverse (hypothetical set of multiple possible universes). There are currently 3 multiverse models that are not related and it goes without say they are not seen.

Follow the link below for a far better explanation that I’m capable of;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywn2Lz5zmYg&list=PLED25F943F8D6081C&index=1

God does not play dice

God does not play dice

Probably the most bizarre (I’m still tossing up the double-slit experiment and measurement) prediction quantum mechanics makes is entanglement. As we know entanglement occurs when particles such as photons interact physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical state, which is indefinite in terms of important factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.

Entanglement was of course not always used as further proof of quantum theory. In 1935 Einstein who was not convinced that quantum theory was complete and thought he had finally devised a construct (EPR Paper) that would show quantum theory for what it was – in his opinion so bizarre, so counter to all logical views and experience that it would have to be incomplete. When Einstein died in 1955 he was still very much convinced that quantum mechanics offered at best an incomplete theory. And so with his passing it remained to be seen how, when and if he would be proved right.

I first read John Bell’s 1964 paper “On The Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox” (follow link below for the article) some 15 years ago. At the time I didn’t quite grasp the historical, and more importantly it’s profound implications in helping decide, despite the weirdness of entanglement, to be indeed accurate. For this obscure paper written by a relatively unknown Irish physicist presenting a method to break the deadlock between Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretations of quantum mechanics (that quantum mechanics does not yield a description of an objective reality) and Einstein’s views. Through the work of John Clauser and others entanglement has been shown to be a principle that underpins our understanding of the universe and our perception of reality.

So the [new] contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from the classical physical world on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena (the measurement problem). The new principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. If the neural basis of behaviour can generally posits brain mechanisms that explain psychologically described phenomena – quantum mechanically based causal mechanisms frameworks have to be understood in order to achieve an adequate theory of the neurophysiology of volitionally directed activity.

http://philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/TexteHS10/bell1964epr.pdf

Transpersonal psychology & quantum weirdness

Re-reading Ken Wilber’s Spectrum of Consciousness again, now when a little older, a little wiser (one hopes) has helped me better appreciate the significance of Wilber’s 1977 book. This is specially the case as I’ve been brushing up on the strange world of the quantum in the last couple of years.

Wilber attempts to integrate transpersonal psychology into a comprehensive new world view drawing on vast variety of areas and disciplines, ranging from psychology, anthropology, sociology, mythology, and comparative religion, through linguistics, philosophy, and history, to cosmology, quantum-relativistic physics, biology, evolutionary theory, and systems theory.

Transpersonal psychology is concerned with the study of humanity's highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness.

Quantum theory has been said may help us understand consciousness and, more so, perception of the objective world, and the meaning of reality. A small example is the original work undertaken by Scully and Drühl that shook the physics community when it was first published in 1982. Essentially they demonstrated the possibility of simultaneously observing both particle-like and wave-like behavior of a quantum via quantum entanglement. The which-path or both-path information of a quantum can be erased or marked by its entangled twin even after the registration of the quantum.

This is weird because, in simple terms, an electron [somehow knows] that in the future the information about which slit it went through will be erased, and decides to act differently in the present moment.

From the double-slit experiment we know that when a particle is observed it behaves like a ball of matter since two bands are formed on the back screen. However, if we remove this information by making it uncertain again an interference pattern reappears (this is because an observer does not know through which slit the particle went when information about the path it took is removed). Amazingly an interference patterns appears even when the which-slit information is removed in the far future! It is as if the electron knows that in the future the information about which slit it went through will be erased, and decides to act differently in the present moment.

The great Richard Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of the double-slit experiment.

13 most important numbers and our perception of reality

Ever science I can remember I was fascinated by the idea that if an ant was to crawl around the inside of a clock – if it or its ancestors would ever understand the passage of time as we interrupt the it. Time tightly coupled with space and affected by relativistic factors. I guess I have overtime refined my thinking to consider whether man can ever really comprehend the complexity of the universe - everything.

1^st Movement

We don't after all expect dogs or cats, to be able to figure out everything about the universe. And in the sweep of evolution, I doubt that we are the last word in intelligence. There might well be higher levels of intelligence later, which again, are unable to understand everything. Complexity may be logarithmic and approach infinity rendering it just un-understandable.

A proof for the 1637 theorem (Fermat’s last theorem) was finally published in 1995 despite the efforts of countless mathematicians during the 358 intervening years. The unsolved problem stimulated the development of algebraic number theory in the 19th century and the proof of the modularity theorem in the 20^th. And yet, Fermat's Last Theorem would fade in comparison to the infinitely complex and wondrous universe.

2^nd Movement

Having said that it is amazing just how much we have gleaned about the universe from a tiny distant and largely insignificant vantage point. Which brings me to my next and related fascination.

That is - does the universe even exist if mankind isn’t there to perceive it? I know this type of a question has been asked in many forms over the centuries, including for example; If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound – a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality.

So without a conscious observer  [us] does the universe exist?
 Quantum physics has taught us that reality is not what it seems. Sub atomic particles for example are believed not to hold a position in space until they are observed.  Their location otherwise is governed by a probability wave. The more we discover about the location of an electron (say) the less we can know about its mass and speed. QED goes much much further.

Now this has some interesting implications that inspire all sorts of theories. One such theory is that everything that is possible does happen in one dimension or another simultaneously (parallel universe) which places "responsibility" on the observer to interpret which "reality" or "universe" is manifesting. A consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness is probably (philosophically) impossible. You need an observer who looks at the universe. This includes of course universal constants or important numbers.

3^rd Movement

Physics, in particular cosmology is full of physical constants or physical quantities that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. Some of the most widely recognized being the speed of light in vacuum c, the gravitational constant G, Planck's constant h, the electric constant ε₀, and the elementary charge.

So, once again, are these empirical truths that have been discovered or if it is simply invented by us to co-construct reality. The Classical Greek philosopher Plato was of the view that math was discoverable, and that it is what underlies the very structure of our universe. He believed that by following the intransient inbuilt logic of math, a person would discover the truths independent of human observation and free of the transient nature of physical reality.

So the question remains; if a mathematical theory goes undiscovered, does it truly exist? Maybe this will be the next “does a tree falling in the forest make any sound if no one is there to hear it?”

4^th Movement

What follows is the 13 most important numbers in the Universe based on James D. Stein's Cosmic Numbers - Popular Mechanics. But the numbers on this list are of cosmic importance— they are the fundamental concepts that define our universe, that make the existence of life possible and that will decide the ultimate fate of the universe

1.    The Universal Gravitational Constant

2.    The Speed of Light

3.    The Ideal Gas Constant

4.    Absolute Zero

5.    Avogadro's Number

6.    The Relative Strength of Electricity and Gravity

7.    Boltzmann's Constant

8.    Planck's Constant

9.    The Schwarzschild Radius

10. The Efficiency of Hydrogen Fusion

11. The Chandrasekhar Limit

12. The Hubble Constant

13. Omega

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/13-most-important-numbers-in-the-universe#slide-7