Evolving Archimedes

There are moments in parenting that are not so different than moments in science; where a eureka type moment is really just an incremental progression of previous experiments, but feels all the same like a momentary revelation. Actually it is not so much parenting, but observing my children when this happens. I am an inactive guest at the museum of discovery.

My daughter Juliette has had 2 complete sets of foam letters and numbers in her bath for 3 years. She is in kindergarten so has progressed significantly as a reader and writer. The letters were used for pure abstraction last year. Earlier this year she went through a period of using them as tools for vocabulary. Now she has inventively moved them back to artistic and mathematical expression. First it was interesting groupings, and patterns, and as of last night she took the colored foam and arranged them as fascinating abstract sculpture, somehow without knowingly embracing the lessons off both Dadaism and abstract expressionism. Of course I likely exaggerate the import of the art itself, but the mental process of the 3 years to come to the formation of these sculptures is truly interesting to me, and when I consider it, not different at all than most things that I do unconsciously.

It occurred to me that there is something very much like foam letters in my life, and I am sorry if this thing is even less interesting than the letters. That is one of the only things in science that I think I know a lot about, dispersion of nanofillers in a rubber matrix. Not surprisingly I didn’t start out life with the goal of being an expert in this. In fact I still don’t really care that I am, except that by becoming proficient in something, it allowed me to see beyond the traditional uses of it. The measurement and comprehension of my subject is something that I started work on nearly 12 years ago, when my family business, Tech Pro, acquired a product called the disperGRADER from a Swedish firm called OptiGrade. Since my Dad and others at our company had a much better grasp of the rest of the instruments that Tech Pro made than I did, I spent most of my time trying to be the expert on this one. That time of my life was very much like Juliette with the foam before she could read at all. She was interested, and somehow could experiment with shape, but did not understand any symbolic meaning behind them. The disperGRADER is at first glance a simple instrument. It is a microscope that takes images of cut filled rubber samples, and does analysis on them. Of course to create something like this is not so simple, and now that I have worked in the microscope business I certainly give Optigrade a lot of credit. Still, the science seemed straight forward, yet the more I dug into it, the more I realized that there was still a lot to be learned about the way that particles behave in polymers, and there were not many people in the world working on these problems. Though this may sound boring, it wasn’t at all. It required me to learn quantum physics, and optics, and a number of other fascinating subjects. In a way it pushed me into grad school to get my Ph.D. because I wanted and needed to learn more. This was not so different than Juliette learning to use the symbols for what they were intended for. She knew how to create a word, and I knew what a filler aggregate was, and how to image it. Yet we both had not yet made a connection from these objects and the literal uses to more advanced thinking. For me it occurred because I actually did start to know enough about the basics of the subject. Actually that is not true, as I still have a lot more to learn, so it would be more accurate to say that I had started to see beyond the basics of the subject. Likewise Juliette can’t read Proust yet, but she is fairly proficient in foam letter words. So I took the experience with dispersion and developed an algorithm for a new microscope. This algorithm seemed like a eureka moment but was not. The entire time I had worked on imaging and filler dispersion I knew that if better tools existed, more could be known. I just didn’t know that I was seeking that solution. Juliette's sculptures to me are much the same. An evolution and a revelation, and to stick with tradition I have encouraged her to jump out of the bath and run around screaming Eureka.

Longevity in a Time of Certainty

The big news last week in science was the discovery of a gene that is believed to be linked to longevity. Though there is some disagreement about this finding, for the sake of this blog I will assume that it is valid research, and that indeed it is possible to find out if we carry the genes necessary to live to be over 100 years old.  On a personal note, while I would have this test or any genome analysis which would give me insight into my inner cellular self, I can be nearly certain that I do not have this enviable gene. I have had far too many illnesses which don’t seem to be purely environmental. Because of these illnesses I have wavered between two cliché philosophies on how to live. The first is the hedonistic, and second being the hypochondriac.  These may be opposites as one involves living only for the moment, and one is obsessed with having a future, yet both stem from my intimate acknowledgement that life will come to an end. The uncertainty of when it will end is what leads to the fluctuation of healthy and destructive habits. If for instance I knew that if I didn’t drink alcohol I would live to be 90 and that if I did drink alcohol I would die at 40, there is no question that I would not touch another drink. Unfortunately there has not been such information available. I may know that drinking is not great for me, but I also know that most people who drink fairly moderately do not die from complications related to drinking, so I continue on, as my inner risk assessment tells me that it is not so bad. All of my behavior including hamburger eating and stress probably does make a difference though; it is just that those differences are not quantifiable. That is they have not been quantifiable in the past. Genomics may change this.

I attended a wonderful World Science Festival event called Our Genomes Ourselves, which explored the state of the art and some of the philosophical implications of understanding our own genomes. This was before the longevity gene discovery of last week, but the concept of genetic information informing decision making was still a focus. A prime and rather moving example involved a family of women who had been tested for a genetic pattern responsible for breast cancer. It was a mother who had the cancer gene (and the cancer I believe) with three daughters in their late teens and early 20’s, all of which were tested for the genetic defect. The results would not only tell them the strong likelihood of whether they would develop breast cancer, but just as importantly give them options. They could for example make the radical choice of having double mastectomies before even having the cancer, guaranteeing that they would never get it. This is interesting in itself, but something even more psychologically intriguing to me happened when the daughters received the results. Two of them had the breast cancer disposition, and one did not. Immediately the one without started crying uncontrollably. She was apparently feeling a sense of survivor’s remorse, before the others had even gotten sick. This is touching and encouraging as it shows the power of human empathy. It is also an indicator of things to come as more such genome analysis reveals our futures.

I have spent a lot of time on the question of free-will and my belief that we essential live in a deterministic universe. I am involved in a movement called Applied Naturalism, the application being that by recognizing humans as a part of an ordered and determined part of nature, we can approach justice, politics, science and psychology differently. Essentially in my view it is the opposite view point of books such as The Secret, where power is assumed to be in the individual. I find The Secret model of existence to be harsh rather than compassionate, as it places a responsibility for action in humans which is impossible to achieve.

It is easy to see how Applied Naturalism and Genomics can be viewed through the same philosophical lens. That is, the breast cancer is predetermined. The young women tested could be said to have freewill to decide what to do with that information, but it could also be argued that the personalities and predispositions that they have will predetermine the action. Some people are just more likely to have extremely invasive preventive surgery than others. The issue of the longevity gene however is even more deterministic. The knowledge that you have a gene to live to be very old may keep you off of motor cycles with a knowledge that if you don’t die in an accident you will be around for a long time, but I think that is unlikely. People generally don’t ride motorcycles, nor goes skiing or any other dangerous activity thinking that it will kill them. More likely the information gained by knowing the longevity gene is more important in an existential context. 

The most profound aspect of Heidegger’s “Being in Time” in my view is when he describes the core difference between the authentic and inauthentic self (Dasein). There are many aspects to his long description but the one which remains for me is that the authentic self acknowledges life and death. This is not so different from the Buddhist key principle of emptiness. It is acknowledging that there is a frame in which we exist, and one in which we don’t. This applies whether we know when that end is, or don’t, but could be seen as easier to deal with if we do have an idea of when the end is. Suicide is generally an act of depression, but I don’t believe it always is. Sometimes it is just a way of framing life and death, so that it is not unbearably unknown. If both Heidegger and my hypothesis on suicide are right, then the longevity gene test could very well be the most important biological discovery of all time. With knowledge of our life expectancy we can frame a productive life, even though we may not live it all that much differently. We will view our illnesses, our accomplishments and our children in new, more enlightened ways. It is true that the test itself should not be necessary for this, but I think that it may be for a lot of us. The human desire for answers may be too great to overcome through philosophical revelations of Heidegger or any other philosopher. It may come only from an understanding of something deep within us. Something in our genes.

An Open Apple a Day

Probably the most over debated topic of the last month has been about Apple computer culture versus a more open computing culture. I have wasted my time on this on a number of websites. I think that the reason I became so interested in this is because somehow I was trying to work out for myself some more fundamental questions about  technology, art and modern society in general, which just happen to come together in this particular debate. The broader discussion has not been so much about the I-Pad versus a range of existing and potential competitors, but instead deals with something that we all feel much more personally invested in; expression. The argument can be boiled down to two philosophies, which I now maintain are less transparent than we think. Apple philosophy is based on control and intellectual property. This can be seen in three famous ways; the fee based system for buying media content, the Apple Apps system which prevents any application not approved by Apple to be used and Apple’s choice to not support Adobe Flash. This has been portrayed as an opposition to Google which promotes a more open culture in most ways. My instinct was to oppose the Apple closed structure. After all I love the idea that anyone can develop anything. I like the idea of an open internet culture. The problem I find though is that neither model is completely satisfying, as the fruits of contemporary content and creativity are now lost on opposing business models, rather than the creations themselves. There are two examples, both of which are personally both frustrating to me. The first is scientific knowledge.

Yesterday I spoke at a seminar with 5 other speakers in Paris, all of whom work in a very similar field to mine, which is the physics of polymers. I left the meeting with one thought, which is that everyone should be required to go to a scientific conference, regardless of whether they are scientists. In this group, despite the daily work I do, or Ph.D. I have, I was challenged and confused. The basic science of my field is so complex that no matter how much I work in it; there is an infinity of knowledge to be gained. By the way, it is not irrelevant to this that polymers like plastic and rubber (the things we were presenting on) make up so much of our world. It may not be important for everyone to understand the models, equations and experiments that all of these scientists were working with, but to know that there are people working on them at least gives the possibility of a deeper appreciation for them.

This reminds me of the Apple Google debate because our debating is basically from an uniformed user perspective. We don’t know how Apple or Google do what they do. We use these products every day, and even debate the validity of the ideology of them without understanding how the engineers and business leaders at these companies manipulate data and perception in order to profit. This is not to say that they shouldn’t be profiting, just that it is hard to judge a particular philosophy as superior if we come from a place of ignorance. Even if we look at what we do know the situation becomes more complicated than at first glance. Apple makes their money by selling products, whether it is I-Pads, I-Phones, and computers, or paid downloads of music, movies, apps and books. How and who makes these may be secretive, but what it is we are buying is not. Google by contrast gives away most of what it has. Google makes money through advertisement. This may seem innocent enough, but all of the algorithms Google uses for everything from search to books are controlled by proprietary algorithms, which if they are serving their customer (the advertiser) will benefit their customer (the advertiser). This example is to point out the complexity of choosing a moral high ground and the basis of openness. It is also to say that we should all dig a little deeper because it is interesting and enlightening to do so.

The second point is not scientific or economic at its core, but rather artistic. I am reading the book “You Are Not a Gadget” by Jaron Lanierhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/0307269647 I am not sure how much of this book I agree with, but it is very thought provoking. One of the points he makes is a criticism of open computing culture in its ability to generate and promote originality. He mentions a belief that the last decade has failed to produce a unique musical style, which has not been true in one hundred years or more. I agree with this, even though it is impossible to quantify. Generally the access to music has been good for exposure, but has created such a mix and remix of styles that even new music sounds retro. That is not to say that there is not new music or new styles available. I work with a group called Wake Up! http://www.wakeupnyc.com I think is very new. The problem is how that will be perceived when there is so much to sample. It is a game of statistics. The more music that is available the more the average will be the same. The outliers will be ignored, rather than seen as visionaries. This applies to the Apple Google debate as well, since the two models of music distribution will push listeners in one direction or the other. Wake Up! Seems to be trying to be a part of both camps, which is what it must do in order to be responsible to its own mission. They are giving their music away for free by playing in parks, and on their website. They are also selling it on I-Tunes. My worry is that neither system is supportive of the new; the hive mentality or the micro managed authorities. This makes the struggle to get new music heard exiting, as the possibility exists to work with and without the system, but the problem of finding an audience more difficult, as there is a new paradigm which is more concerned with the system of distribution than with the content itself.

This is all to say that I, and many others on the internet, am spending too much time arguing about how something is presented to us, than what is being presented. We care whether it is advertiser, stock market, or consumer based revenue, rather than the technology or the content. I don’t have answers, other than that we need to think and listen in retro ways. That is we need to look at the technology not just as users but as scientists. We need to listen to music and make music like people who love discovering music that represents us best. We need however to take chances in new ways. We need to ignore the new common wisdom, rather it is Google “openness” or Apple “sleekness”, and focus instead on what we want to say, see and hear. 

People Who Will Talk To Me (Part 1)

This is probably some very obvious advice that I am about to give, but I will give it anyway. When you are in an airport, or train station, no matter what country you are in, look around the waiting room for the person that you imagine to be least like yourself, and strike up a conversation. This is the surest way to remind yourself that the DNA, and neuro structure of everyone is nearly the same.

David Foster Wallace was not only the best writer of my generation, but also the most observant of the deeper experience of being my generation. One of the things he states in several essays is that a writer is sometimes the creepy figure on the subway who is watching you. He felt that writers were inherently voyeuristic, which may be right. He further expanded the voyeurism, by doing what he related to a mathematical function of integrating the American experience. This is a step removed from direct observation. Instead of watching real people on real subways, the first derivative of such spying is watching them on television. If watching people on television is the first derivative, then watching characters played by actors, who are commenting on real people is the second derivative. This is such a profound statement, as he realized the metavoyeurism of Americans, including himself, who spend so much time analyzing the analysis of human behavior. He elevates this to a philosophical conquest, and places our generation with the postmodernists of the 1960’s, since we are doing this complex structure for 6 hours per day on average (watching TV. This was 1993 that he wrote this).  I love this analysis, but am not a writer like Wallace, so did not want to be the first derivative of an American, but to see what an American really is. The strange discovery from all of this is that it is difficult to separate the two.

This might not be relevant here, but Wallace hanged himself 2 years ago.

I was sitting in the bar at New York LaGuardia airport, drinking a beer and looking for someone to talk to. It was not really the way I make it sound here. I wasn’t actually doing an experiment on Americans of 2010. Really I was lonely at the bar, and since I can’t seem to do anything without purpose(except drink the beer) I chose my purpose as this exploration of people that I think will be different than me. Just the quest in this instance is fun. I immediately thought about this from an outsider’s perspective, and realized that if someone were to do this same experiment in the bar, I would likely be the chosen subject, as I am wearing a 1940’s style fedora, a striped shirt with a plaid blazer, Woody Allen style glasses and white and gold sneakers. Taking notice of this I sat next to a 20ish year old man who was strong, tattooed with a flag tee tee-shirt, US Navy cap and military style shaved hair. Rather than tell you the conversation in prose form, here is a rough version of the conversation as a dialog:

Me: Hi. Are you taking that plane to Akron? If so we better finish these tall Coors Lights fast, because it will board soon. The plane leaves at 7:59.

Kevin: No I am going to Virginia. I will have one more beer before I go. (He downs the beer and orders another. I do the same.)

Me: Oh Virginia. I used to go to Virginia Beach when I was a kid. What time does your flight leave?

Kevin: 7:30. I drove through Ohio once. Virginia is such a bitch of a state. Too long.

Me: 7:30 is soon. Are you sure you have time for another beer?

Kevin: I haven’t had a beer in 6 months.

Me: Jesus Christ! That is a long time! Why not?

Kevin: I am in the Navy.

Me: Don’t they drink beer in the Navy?

Kevin: It isn’t allowed. On English ships they have a bar you know, but we can’t handle it.

Me: What do you think about Obama’s statement about Enriched Uranium getting in the hands of Al-Qaida being the most serious threat to world security?

Kevin: I don’t watch the news.

(There are 15 televisions directly in front of us. Of them, at least 6 are showing Obama making this very statement)

Me: What do you do on the ship while not drinking beer?

Kevin: We never drink beer. The English can have two each day.

Me: Right. What is your job?

Kevin: I run the machine shop.

Me: Really? That is interesting. Do you do make parts to repair the ship and the planes?

Kevin: Yes we have all a lot of good machines.

Me: CNC machines?

Kevin: Yes. And a stock of sheet metal, mostly Aluminum.

Me: Do the planes use any composite materials? I am a material scientist, and interested in these materials.

(He turns to me, clearly interested)

Kevin: Yeah. They are cool. They have five layers of carbon mesh, stacked on top of each other like this. (Shows me his fingers from both hands crossing each other) If part of one layer is damaged, it does not hurt the plane, because the next level will absorb the shock. They are also light, and faster than the metal planes.

Oh shit. My plane is boarding. (he drinks the lion’s share of the 22 oz beer in one gulp) I am Kevin. (he shakes my hand)

Me: Matthew. I am so interested in the composite airplanes. You know so much more about them than I do, and seem so much more into the technology than my colleagues’.  It's a shame that you have to go.

Kevin: Here is my e-mail address. (writes it on a napkin) Next time you come to Virginia Beach let me know. I can show you the planes.

Me: Thanks a lot. That is so nice of you.

(He leaves)

Genetically Modifying you and your Salad

A very frustrating part of having friends, who have such a wide range of metaphysical beliefs, is that a dinner conversation can become very long, and often end with misunderstandings or even anger. Though I am happy to have dinner party debates with friends of all types of religious and secular belief systems, I have tried to make my life a little easier, less stressful and more productive by not mixing in traditional religious fundamentalist. Certainly the combination of them and I make for fuel fired debates, but ultimately it becomes so personal that the evening ends with one of two outcomes. It is sometimes sadness, where the fundamentalist says something like “I feel so, so sad that we will not be spending the afterlife in paradise together. I really sympathize with the agony of the inferno where you will be occupying eternity”. The other side would be me causing rage, and maybe a full fist fight, when I say “go ahead and console yourself with those mindless, bigoted, pedophiles. That is a bunch I would want not to spend eternity with.”

As you can see, this is an example, one among many, of how a conversation like this can go wrong. Due to the severity of this, I avoid the party all together. Those people in general I spend only 5% of my time with. The other 95% of the time, I have two general groups of friends, who have a wide range of opinions, but whom we can make some generalizations about. The first group is the people I like in a deeply emotional way. They are often the people I cry with when I need to cry. They are passionate and dynamic. They cook well. They hike, and Kayak, and garden. They also see you as something greater than your material self. They are therefore classical Cartesian dualists, with some modern flair. That is they do believe that the mind is not the brain. It is a soul. Something which is either more important or responsive to our body, but exists separately or at least supplementary to it. The modern way of dealing with the soul is to erase some of the more dogmatic ideas of religion and search for truth outside of a religion. Many of these are great thinkers, poets or philosophers themselves. They intellectually and emotionally put together a treatise for existence based on multiple texts, from Eastern Religions and a general empathy with nature. This includes the avoidance of the suffering of animals, the elimination of pesticides, and the creation of natural temples of rocks, even in public parks, as a shrine to simplicity and nature. Thomas Jefferson was actually one of these types of people. There is another side of these friends that goes a step beyond what would appear to all of us non Osama Bin Laden, non Pat Robertson reasonable people. This other side is what is discussed in Michael Specter’s book “Denialism”. In this book, Specter looks at many claims of this group of my friends (well, he didn’t actually do this as a study of my friends, but I could have supplied him with some case studies) that when the scientific method is applied to them, the belief becomes just that, another faith based claim, similar to a fundamentalist claim. Examples of these types of claims are the use of vitamins, which science shows that 98% are completely useless. More importantly for my argument though is a dedicated belief in the wisdom of buying organically grown crops. The argument for this has its merits on some specifics. The use of pesticides is dangerous, and for me, the organic foods taste better most of the time. The argument though destroys a key desire of my friends, which involves connectivity and charity though a spiritual empathy with all other forms of life.

As a scientist and an artist, I feel the argument of my friends, but rationalize a completely other view. First I must say that being rational is essential for me. I just read from the Spinoza “Ethics”, and see that he has intellectual development as a progression, involving each step, from experience, to rational to instinctual. I get this very much. The goal would therefore be to have a great deal of experience with something, then work out why that thing happens, resulting in such knowledge that it then becomes instinctual. This is a wonderful design for an interpretive musician or for a scientist, and it is one that could be applied easily to the dualist viewpoints reaction to certain beliefs.

I would like to take just one belief of this generic stereotypical group, and one from myself, and my science friends. The first group might listen to the Deepak Chopra PodCast, while the second to “The Skeptics Guide to The Universe”. I want to look at how we perceive nature, because it is nature where both of the groups come together, in order to protect it. Both groups also claim to understand humans as a part of nature. When talking to the spiritual, organic food devotees, I ask if they are just uncomfortable with pesticides. If they say yes, I then say, “me too, they are dangerous in water supplies, and for the food chain”. If they say a more common thing though which is that they are against genetically engineered food, I become deflated, as my nature loving Chopraesque friends have lost track of truth. There have been literally billions of genetically engineered crops sold, without one instance of an illness ascribed to them. This is not even to mention that nature itself has been genetically modifying plants for thousands of years, especially if you consider humans a part of nature.

This is now an old argument. I want to introduce a new debate between these two groups, by first posting it here, and letting ideas form before we meet over wine and hydroponic winter melons. The concept is this; consider that we are all material parts of nature, and are either connected through a spiritual force as one group may claim, or through common elements as the other would claim. I think that no matter which philosophical leaning we are talking about, all seem to take some comfort, and understanding in the famous Carl Sagan quote that we are all “star stuff”. This is not just us, but all matter, and all life. So accepting this is not a stretch. Then consider biological sciences as it applies to human medicine. Most of us, all liberal politically, took the decoding of the human genome in 2000 to be a positive advancement, as it would help us not only understand existence better, but potentially cure diseases. We were also shocked and angered by the Bush Administration’s ban on government labs using embryonic stem cells, as the potential for those cells are so great. Just last month, now that Obama has ended this ban, an important study proved that embryonic stem cells injected into specific regions of the brain will create axons which reach a designated target. For example if the cells are placed in the visual cortex, an axon will grow to reach the optic nerve, potentially making the blind able to see again. This has been demonstrated in mice. Since axons can be so long that they can reach to the base of the spinal cord, this could one day be used for spinal cord injury. Paraplegics could walk again. Though this may be a while, it is on a testing regime that leaves many doctors and scientists hopeful. I would doubt that any of my friends would not be thrilled by this. Actually, the Chopra crowd also tends to fall into the old conservative jab of being “bleeding hearts”. This is likely the reason they are my friends. I want friends with empathy and compassion. So, stem cell research is a genetic engineering that we can all agree on. Which then gets me to what I would consider a double standard. If all life is connected, why is genetic engineering good enough for people, but not for plants? This seems surprising for two reasons. It is Genetic Engineered foods that will feed starving parts of the world. This should appeal to us bleeding hearts. It also makes for stronger crops, the way we are trying to make for stronger humans.

Excel or Regress

A truly disruptive technology not only changes the way we behave but also the way that we think. I like to imagine technologies of the past that meet this standard, and ones that don’t. My guess is that the automobile itself was less of a disruptive technology than good roads. Being able to move in a car changes the way we behave, but not necessarily the way that we think. By the time that cars were fast enough, cheap enough and roads were good enough cars made it possible to go places that we would never, or rarely go by ourselves. Once that was possible people must have thought about home, time and space much differently. I think the motion picture was disruptive as were airplanes, the phonograph and countless other technologies. During my lifetime, I have seen many such changes from the PC to the internet to MP3 players and e-books. Still the one I want to talk about here is perhaps more accepted as mundane than it is thought of as disruptive. That is the Microsoft Program Excel.

Excel is not the first computer spreadsheet to be invented, and it is generally considered to be very good. Still it is not considered by most people to be disruptive in the same way as the previous inventions I mentioned. Nearly everyone in nearly every discipline uses Excel; however it is not just using it that makes it important. It is disruptive because it changes the way that we think. This may or may not be a positive societal shift. I had always considered Excel to be as close to a perfect program that was possible. It is not self organizing, but it is self solving. It is always a highly functional tool, or even tool box, which didn’t tell me what to build, but helped me build it. This is still true of course, and I am glad that Excel exists. I don’t know how I (others certainly have) would do anything in science or business without it. This leads me to its ability to change the way we think. Excel gives solutions, not proofs. I have grown up with this tool, and my mathematical instincts have suffered from it. For instance, one of the most important things that scientist do every day is compile data points, which can be for example the results of a number of experiments. When a number of experiments are run there is generally some noise (also known as scatter). This scatter can be interpreted in thousands of ways. The first thing the scientists needs to consider, is rather it is noise at all, or actually a difference in data points, which are not just a statically anomaly. Traditionally this was done by plotting these points by hand, choosing the type of graph that seems most valid from your experience of doing this before, then calculating a statistical fit which is most representative. If you had no knowledge of how to do regression analysis, you would plot the points and connect them all. This would give in essence equal importance to every point, when in all likelihood some were outliers and should not be considered with equal weight. There are a number of ways to achieve this, by doing the simplest linear fit to a very complicated polynomial.

All of this can be done with a click of the mouse button. This inevitably makes those of us who were not math geniuses comfortable not only with math, but also something far more complicated. It makes us think we understand the probability of the calculated results. It makes us believe that we can take complicated noise which seems to us random, and fit it onto a graph, where no matter what chaos is inherent in the results, we can fit it in a smooth and simple to read curve. The problem with this is that Excel is a language in itself. It is a language none of us truly whether we have a mathematical background or not. For mathematicians, the way in which formulas are written is not the same as the mathematician formulates theorems and proofs. It is a special code, that requires help menus, or memorization. This is in contrast to the last 2000 years of mathematical processes that have had an organic progression from Euclidian Geometry, to Cartesian Coordinates, through Newtonian Calculus to Born Matrices. Those were all different and unique, but followed from logic and necessity, and from an instinctual desire to create an understandable code to solve the next questions nature presented itself with. Excel is not a new form of mathematics. It is not even a simplification of current mathematics. Instead it is tools, which in the process of helping us speed up complicated regression analysis, also leads to a different type of regression. It is a regression of critical thinking. It forces on us a deliberately bizarre way of following a formula, only to ultimately give us the solution we want, whether it best represents reality or not.

This all seems rather harsh words for one of the best computer programs ever written, and as a standalone criticism it is. Excel is not a problem, it is instead a symptom. I am not the kind of scientist who can do extremely complicated proofs, and equations on my own. I need tools, so Excel has been a constant companion for me. I am only raising a challenge to myself, my colleagues and my students to step back into the dangerous waters of nature, and scientific experiment, and see if we really have the answers.

Living a Dream

Free-will is one of the longest running philosophical and scientific struggles. I am certainly not an expert on the history of this issue, but have encountered it in a completely counterintuitive way with Physics, where Quantum Mechanics, possibly the most relevant set of theories to my field of physics, and Newton’s determinism collide. Determinism in my mind is the same as free will, though this may not be a proper philosophical comparison, as I am too uneducated in philosophy to determine that. Anyway, despite a Ph.D. in physics, I fail in a huge way. Neils Bohr, a founder of quantum mechanics said something like “if you are not shocked by quantum mechanics you don’t understand it”. Well, I am shocked. Certainly confused, if that is the same thing, but I am not sure if the destruction of Newton’s classical view of an ordered universe changed my perspective, as it is too damn difficult to comprehend. While this observer based world of quantum mechanics was taking shape, a larger natural prediction of the universe was putting to rest some very progressive ideas of free will. Mainly this is that we are a part of a natural system, which can be predicted, with knowledge of enough of the variables. This is understood in probability. We can think of ourselves as containers of atoms, all organized by our genome. While there is a lot of complexity in this system, it is one that has been recorded, and can be studied. Our brain is also a cluster of atoms, cells (neurons) that are bundled in convenient groupings to create extremely efficient processing. Also, this is not completely understood but, the concept is directly observed. In essence through both the understanding of the genome and neuroscience, humans are shown to be natural, in that they are no different than any other matter, plant or animal, and can be studied and observed in the same way. This bundle concept, that the body is arranged in bundles of atoms, including the brain, does away with the concept of the soul, as the soul no longer has a place to reside. Our atomic structure is interchangeable with all other atoms, whether they make up a rock or a cock roach. So, does a rock have free will? From everything we know about rocks it does not. It rolls with classical certainty, breaks from predictable forces, etc. The same is true of humans. So this now the excepted way of viewing the situation, but as with quantum mechanics, it just never felt right, and was shocking.
So I have been thinking about those two problems, both being problems of intuition, not problems of science. Science makes clear that quantum phenomena occur, and also that free will does not exist, in any spiritual sense. I have also, at the same time been haunted by something that seemed unrelated. I nearly always remember several dreams a night, and have since I was a young child. Like most people (so studies say) a majority of my dreams are nightmares. They seem to be lifetimes in themselves, and each time, I am relieved to wake up. Psychologists often say that nightmares are a productive way of coping with anxiety, but for me I think they cause more anxiety than they cure. None of this gets me anywhere with this thesis, but it does set up my state of mind, which in general has led me to not wanting to go to sleep at night. I take sleeping pills, but still have these worries about the dreams. Then it occurred to me that my philosophical lack of intuition where free-will is concerned might be in some way informed by my fear of the dreams. Since I remember my dreams so well, I realize that the thing that is most disturbing about them is that they are completely out of my control, completely me, and completely personal. Often the bad, or even in the rare case happy, ending of my dreams may be known to me, or my character as experienced in the dream, before the end of the dream, which make it all the more frustrating. Unless I am having my yearly wet dream. Why should conscious existence be any different from unconscious existence? Perhaps it is this determined, uncontrollable outcome of life that makes the dreams so upsetting. Maybe I now can intuit what existence and lack of free-will feels like. It feels like a dream.