a_0 =cH_0: "The Universe: Leading Scientists Explore the Origin, Mysteries, and Future of the Cosmos" by John Brockman

The matter originated in the Big Bang. Firstly as a soup of quarks, W's, Z's, electrons etc. As the new universe expanded and cooled, the quarks coalesced into particles like protons. As the expansion continued a point was reached where nuclei could trap electrons and make neutral atoms. This occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Once neutral atoms existed, the universe became transparent to photons, which we now see as the Cosmic Microwave Background. In our laboratories such as CERN we can recreate the conditions that existed about 0.0000000001 seconds after the Big Bang and study the processes that would have been occurring at that time.

I'd like to add something clever here. But I can't. There are ministerial posts crying out for people like me...I personally like Sir Roger Penrose's hypothesis. Conformal cyclic cosmology. Recent theoretical progress indicates that spacetime and gravity emerge together from the entanglement structure of an underlying microscopic theory. These ideas are best understood in Anti-de Sitter space, where they rely on the area law for entanglement entropy. The extension to de Sitter space requires taking into account the entropy and temperature associated with the cosmological horizon. Using insights from string theory, black hole physics and quantum information theory we argue that the positive dark energy leads to a thermal volume law contribution to the entropy that overtakes the area law precisely at the cosmological horizon. Due to the competition between area and volume law entanglement the microscopic de Sitter states do not thermalise at sub-Hubble scales: they exhibit memory effects in the form of an entropy displacement caused by matter. The emergent laws of gravity contain an additional `dark' gravitational force describing the `elastic' response due to the entropy displacement. We derive an estimate of the strength of this extra force in terms of the baryonic mass, Newton's constant and the Hubble acceleration scale a_0 =cH_0, and provide evidence for the fact that this additional `dark gravity force' explains the observed phenomena in galaxies and clusters currently attributed to dark matter.

Bow before Manuel, you puny Brockman and acolyte earthlings! Piece of advice: Stay in school kids. Would have been nice if they marked the beginning of the YouTube flatearthers on the timescale, to show how long it took for the pinnacle of dimwittery to find its natural home. This universe used to be part of a bigger union of universes and ours voted to leave and look what happened. There’s no one else around just endless empty planets. Kinda lonely. Sigh. (Scientist discovers oldest stars in universe. After having explicitly said stars could not be this old in current models of the BBT. Theory revised to incorporate failure of previous prediction...and hey presto! Great new success of model hailed in media. Salaries of all concerned to be doubled.)

Yeah, I cared to be an astrophysicist. Wanted to become an artist. And thought of brain surgery too. Finally I did none of these things. I have my reasons for this ... outcome!

Calabi-Yau Spaces: "The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" by Shing-Tung Yau, Steve Nadis

“The spaces Calabi envisioned not only were complex, but also had a special property called Kähler geometry. Riemann surfaces automatically qualify as Kähler, so the real meaning of the term only becomes apparent for complex manifolds of two (complex) dimensions or higher. In a Kähler manifold, space looks Euclidean at a single point and stays close to being Euclidean because when you move away from that point, while deviating in specific ways."

In “The Shape of Inner Space - String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions” by Shing-Tung Yau, Steve Nadis

“So what exactly had I [Yau] accomplished [proving the Calabi-Yau Conjecture]? In proving the conjecture, I had validated my conviction that important mathematical problems could be solved by combining nonlinear partial differential equation with geometry. More specifically, I had proved that a Ricci-flat metric can be found for compact Kähler spaces with a vanishing first Chern class, even though I could not produce a precise formula for the metric itself. [..] Although that might not sound like much, the metric I proved to be ‘there’ turned out to be pretty magical. For as a consequence of the proof, I had confirmed the existence of many fantastic, multidimensional shapes (now called Calabi-Yau spaces) that satisfy the Einstein equation in the case where matter is absent.  I had produced not just a solution to the Einstein equation, but also the largest class fo solutions to that equation that we know of.”

In “The Shape of Inner Space - String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions” by Shing-Tung Yau, Steve Nadis

“And it is within this circle of tiny radius that the fifth dimension of Kaluza-Klein theory is hidden. String Theory takes that idea several steps further, arguing in effect that when you look at the cross-section of this slender cylinder with an even more powerful microscope, you’ll see six dimensions lurking inside instead of just one. No matter where you are in four-dimensional spacetime, or where you are on the surface of this infinitely long cylinder, attached to each point is a tiny, six-dimensional space. And not matter where you stand in this infinite space. The compact six-dimensional space that’s hiding ‘next door’ is exactly the same.”

In “The Shape of Inner Space - String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions” by Shing-Tung Yau, Steve Nadis

Disclaimer: I don’t believe in String Theory being the TOE. Despite this, Yau’s book gives us a very thorough state-of-the-art compendium on String Theory (and M-Theory) and its connection with Calabi-Yau Spaces.

The current cosmology standard theory (Lambda CDM) is like a table with four legs; cosmic background radiation, inflation, dark matter and dark energy. The problem is, all four "legs" don't stand up to scrutiny. He is also right about cosmologist can't explain the one universe we have, so invest multi-verses and branes etc, which does little more than shift the problem elsewhere. For 200 years everyone thought that Newtonian gravity was correct, until Einstein proved it wasn't. Einstein's theory is also just a good approximation, and needs to be replaced.

Penrose's fashion-faith-fantasy strictures on "string theory" apply also to "black-hole theory", but the latter has its origins in his own topology of a surface-of-separation around the singularity. To some of us, including Einstein, this meant this class of solution is unphysical. Penrose would do physics a great service if he recognised this basic flaw in his early work and looked properly into the solution class with ultra-high gravitational fields replacing the matter-singularity (gravastars and collapsars).

Two battery chickens are chatting. The first says that he believes that humans have the power of life and death over them, and apparently infinite control over their well-being. He also believes that humans not only create amazing music, but care about the well-being of chickens, and indeed of every single chicken in their care. The second chicken tells him not to be so stupid, how can that be when they live in such awful conditions, wings and beaks clipped, force fed, only to be slaughtered and then eviscerated by hideous metal contraptions. I posit that there are only two possible ways out of this paradox. One is that humans either don't exist or don't have much control over the lives of battery chickens. The other will, I am sure, occur to you over time.

It's a question of probability. The odds of a randomly generated universe being capable of generating the stability and complex chemistry necessary for any conceivable kind of life is mind-bogglingly staggeringly small. Therefore our universe is mind-bogglingly staggeringly improbable. It's not "arrogance" to notice this and ask why.

Hawking's original explanation was that there are a near-infinite number of other universe that we can't see or detect in any way, and we just happen to live in one of the exceptionally rare ones that support life. But this is a highly speculative and unsatisfactory explanation precisely because we have no evidence that a multiverse exists. It's hard to imagine a more extreme violation of the principle of Occam's Razor.

How would a young Sheldon Cooper look alike answer this? I thought he'd try asking how a 5D AdS=4 CFT theory could exist in a 4D=3+1 D space as our world appears to be. Rather than fob him off with some slightly patronising "we can also build a 4D AdS theory!" the answer he'd be seeking was related to compactification of the extra 6=10-(3+1) dimensions so a 5D AdS theory can indeed fit into our (theoretically plausible) 10D universe, that appears 3+1 D to us, with some dimensions left over..

Perhaps Lee Smolin's Fecund Universe explains the String landscape. In his model, black holes create new universes, with differing constants of nature, so there is a "selection" effect, where "successful" universes are the ones that make the most black holes. Perhaps the String landscape of different ways to do Calabi-Yau manifolds is reflected in the different universes produced by black holes? I read somewhere these C-Y manifolds can be a way to do Brahms-Dicke theory which as my limited understanding is, is kind of a "generalization" of general relativity, where Newton's constant G is actually a variable. I always enjoy generalizations wherever possible so I like Brahms-Dicke, and the fact that it can be incorporated into C-Y manifolds is even cooler. So if the landscape problem is only real problem, than maybe this can be solved by the Fecund Universe model. However if it is true that the Large Hadron Collider ought to have found super-symmetries (not my area for sure) and they have not, that is more concerning than the landscape issue. Maybe string theory will turn out to be a piece of an even bigger picture which would explain this problem with not seeing super-symmetries. Having a computer science background, I know a bit about Set Theory, so I am naturally intrigued by Causal Set Theory though in fairness I don't know too much about it. Maybe Causal Set Theory can one day replicate in some way the predictions of string theory (or could be "boiled down" so to speak to a string model) but also solve the shortcomings re. Supersymmetry. Would love a video to explain more about Causal Set Theory or other possible candidates out there to solve these issues. There will be no resolutions to any issues until the questions are answered: why are Haag's and Leutweyler's theorems true in Relativity (where c < ∞) but not in non-Relativistic Theory (where c → ∞?) ... these are the two No Go Theorems that prevent a straightforward treatment of interactions (both classically and quantum theoretically) in Relativity and make necessary all the convolutions used in quantum field theory. The paradigms differ only in the value of c. Call them P(1/299792458² s²/m²) for Relativity and P(0) for non-Relativistic theory, the general case being P(1/c²).

What is the minimum value of 1/c² in which Haag and Leutwyler's Theorem hold in paradigm P(1/c²)? It can't be 0, because that would give (in principle) a way to measure a continuously varying quantity to infinite precision -- which is impossible. Just think of the cases of the paradigms P(1/c²) where 1/c² is so close to 0 that it is impossible to empirically distinguish it from 0 (i.e. the case where, non-relativistic paradigm holds for all practical purposes). One has a valid interaction picture there. That, of course, is expressed directly by Newton's Third Law ... and this is what's absent in Relativity (by virtue of the 2 above-mentioned No Go theorems).

Theory-Space must be continuous in its parameters. [In a way, this is a statement of the Correspondence Limit principle]. So, there should be some unifying framework Π(1/c²) that (a) upwardly extends P(1/c²) but (b) is free of the problems presented by Haag and Leutwyler for all values of 1/c² (thus enabling a more direct, straightforward treatment of quantum field theory), and (c) is continuous as 1/c² → 0.  Many have tried to tackle this issue; Dirac, Wigner, Feynman, and have all failed.

Yau’s take on String Theory is a very enlightening read, if nothing else, it sheds light on the musings of Mathematicians and Physicists of a certain philosophical leaning, and it also tries to answer the old Physics' question: "Why will some cats share litter boxes while others won't?"

The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI): "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III - Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family” by Peter Byrne

“This is the mystery: when we measure the position of an atomic particle we record it as existing in a definite place, not in all of the many places it occupies according to its smoothly evolving wave function. The emergence of a single position from the set of all physically possible positions is inescapable; it creates a logical discontinuity, a gap, a fissure, an interruption in the flow of the Schrödinger equation; it creates a problem.”

In “The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III - Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family” by Peter Byrne

I suspect that the reason why the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations of QM are the most well-known is that they are the easiest to explain in classical terms, and therefore most accessible to those who have not already completed an undergraduate level course in QM. You can also find a discussion of the different interpretations in The Road to Reality, by Roger Penrose, but it is heavy going and not recommended unless you have a background in Physics (or Math) to degree-level. Essentially, Penrose discusses both the two interpretations above and three other interpretations: environmental decoherence, consistent histories and pilot wave; and comments on the strengths and weaknesses of each. He argues that none of them adequately solve the "measurement problem" and that there must be another, either so-far undiscovered or incompletely worked out, interpretation to be found. [This is a serious simplification of what Penrose writes in the book].

Oh, and the proof for other intelligent life in the universe is simple- physicists tell us that nature is a wave particle duality, with particles being something like placeholders for natural forces, that is particles are not individual, every like particle is identical to every other like particle. the wave function that underlies reality means that events are a result of colliding wave fronts, thus they can't occur only once, events can be rare, they cannot be unique- therefore if life occurred here it has to have occurred elsewhere as a logical certainty, nature doesn't do anything just once, there are unique locations there are no unique events. The only way for intelligent if to have occurred only here would be a supernatural explanation.

Is reality the result of colliding wave fronts or entangled fields, being these fields the ones that engender elemental particles which are everywhere, and therefore the entanglement producing life must be everywhere as well? 

Not quite. It all depends on statistical probability. If the odds of a particle doing x is greater than the chances of it doing it in the lifetime of the universe, it may never do x. Me walking through a wall is a good example - all the particles in me and all the particles in wall would have to align so that none collide in the Very Long Time (for a particle or group of particles to remain in perfect alignment) it would take me to walk through the wall. The odds of that happening are greater than the lifetime of the universe (although it still could happen at any moment too...) When you're talking an almost infinite range of possibilities, but with a large, but still finite amount of matter/particles, there is plenty of room for unique events which might never repeat in the lifetime of the universe (or may repeat many times equally).

For any casual reader not familiar with the double-slit experiment, a laser beam is directed at a plate which is solid except for two parallel slits (for instance; there are many variants in the broader experimental realm). Then the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. These sorts of experiment yield much interesting (and initially much unexpected) data, and these data have helped to progress analysis of a variety of puzzles in physics.

So far, so good.

The problems arise when all sorts of speculations, far beyond the data, are developed into a quasi-religious dogma of reality, which can loosely be entitled the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. Just at the level of this simple double-slit experiment, without exploring the wilder shores of MWI, the devotees of the interpretation believe that the light passing through the apparatus of whatever configuration diverges into a vast / infinite number of other universes. That is, for one given experiment - one universe, world, lab, workbench, laser, plate, screen - the output of that local experiment diverges into an infinite number of universes. One photon emitted by the laser diverges into an infinite number of universes at the point of emission from the laser, and diverges again when it passes through the slits, and even diverges again if you close one of the slits. And that the combination (the cross-product) of all of these sets of an infinite number of universes is also then real. Don't underestimate what they are claiming, an infinite number of universes is created at this point, each new universe populated with a universe-worth of matter and energy which (somehow and “somewhen” undefined by the MWI) simply appears from nowhere.

I would respectfully suggest that the MWI devotees have rather over-interpreted the data from a laser beam passing through a slitted plate.

A final coda:

“Among Everett’s basement papers were notes that he had made after the American Institute of Physics asked him to prioritize his top five scientific capabilities. At the bottom of the list, he put ‘servomechanisms.’ Followed by ‘operations research.’ Skill number three was ‘relativity and gravity.’ Two was ‘decision game theory.’ And at the top of the list, in pride of first place: ‘quantum mechanics.’”

In “The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III - Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family” by Peter Byrne

Bottom-line: I explained Everettian theory much better when I reviewed Adam Becker’s “What is Real - The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics”. I’m not “in the zone” today…so, this is all you get for now. I’m moving on to finish reading Wallace’s “Emergent Multiverse” now.

Shut the Fuck Up and Calculate (Or Not): "The Nature of Space and Time" by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose

"I have emphasized what I consider the two most remarkable features that I have learned in my research on space and time: (1) that gravity curls up space-time so that it has a beginning and an end; (2) that there is a deep connection between gravity and thermodynamics that arises because gravity itself determines the topology of the manifold on which it acts".

In “The Nature of Space and Time" by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose by Stephen Hawking in the lecture "Quantum Cosmology"

"We should think of twistor space as the space in terms of which we should describe physics."

In “The Nature of Space and Time" by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose by Roger Penrose in the lecture "The Twistor View of Spacetime"

"These lectures have shown very clearly the difference between Roger and me. He's a Platonist and a positivist. He's worried that Schrödinger's cat is in a quantum state, where it is held alive and held dead. He feels that can't correspond to reality. But that doesn't bother me. I don't demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don't know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus pap. All I'm concerned with is that the theory should predict the results of measurements. Quantum theory does this very successfully. It predicts that the result of an observation is either that the cat is alive or that it is dead. It is like you can't be slightly pregnant: you either are or you aren't."

In “The Nature of Space and Time" by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose by Stephen Hawking in the lecture "The Debate"

Can I write a review on such a book? Hawking and Penrose... It's staggering...I don't even know what day the mailman comes...After having re-read this oldie after Hawking's passing, I'd say it depends on where you are in the universe, whether you're on/near some sizeable object (of mass), its rotation, distance from other masses, or whether you live in my neck of the woods...When in doubt I always follow "the flat earth" rule (Medieval behaviour is so "in" now). The world is the centre of (my own)) universe that you/I live in and it's getting flatter every day. Which hopefully means you can see further and observe when others perform the same behaviour. Or ask them. Preferably in a suit of armour while riding a horse. Possibly a lance too. (Until you understand the society you live in). I'm all for a flat and cubist planet! Our time is here! And it'd be easier to fence. And we could launch spaceships off the corners. Uncannily, the mailman knows when I'm on the phone, asleep or having a quiet moment on the throne...I sniff a time conspiracy here (*It'll End in Tears theme music*)

When it comes to Quantum Theory, the math in the book includes every possible outcome, and the predictions it makes are simply probabilities - e.g. there's a 1% chance X will happen, 90% chance Y will happen and 9% chance Z will happen. How you choose to interpret this is still up for grabs, if you go with Everett's "Many Worlds Interpretation" idea then all possibilities are equally real and actually happen in different universes; if you go with the Copenhagen Interpretation then the wave-function of "possibilities" collapses down to one single result. On a fundamental level, whichever way you choose to interpret it (there's about 8 main contenders for interpretation) the math remains unchanged, and the possibility remains that the math itself is the "truth" and there is no further interpretation, usually called the "shut the fuck up and calculate" interpretation (my favourite).

Bottom-line: This is not a book à la Smolin, i.e., it's not for laymen. I still remember some of the reviews I read in 2010 when the second edition of the book came out. Hilarious! E.g., "Clearly the work of two great minds" (possible Translation - "I didn’t understand the bits I speed read, but they looked dead clever and I have to say summat"...).

Grain Alcohol Physicists: "The Black Hole War - My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics" by Leonard Susskind

Mr. Leonard is head-over-heals enamoured of his views on string theory of being the underlying basis to a some greater reality and cannot in anyway be wrong. Einstein felt that way too, but there is a vast difference between Mr. Leonard and Einstein; most of Einstein's work could be for the most part tested in short order. The only detail left was gravitational waves which took instruments 100 years of development before being ready to capture their existence. With string theory the time scale before technology is advanced enough to test could be greater than the life of the universe. And of course if SUSY is not found at the LHC then string theory is so mathematically flexible that you can just claim "not enough energy". Maybe that is what Penrose is pissed at. The math puts forth unproven models as for example extra dimensions. No one sees this as puzzling but there is a huge chasm and string theorists fail to see it. Extra dimensions require faith? No way around it. The same faith one has in believing in a standard religion (I am all for religion). Religion transcends the physical but so do extra dimensions. They assume a fourth or fifth spatial dimension is as real as 3 dimensions without a physical way of seeing, feeling, testing or even imagining it. How is that for faith? You see my point. A particle moving in ordinary space has a considerable amount of information - its position in three dimensions, its velocity in three dimensions, its angular momentum about three axes, its mass, its charge, its spin, and so on. When it interacts with another particle, also with the same information set, the two particles information sets change, they go in different directions, for example. But from the new data sets, the old information can be reassembled. Nothing is lost, all the information about the original paths and particles is maintained between the two new information sets. In a black hole, this is not true (as previously understood). A particle entering a black hole affects the mass, angular momentum and charge of the black hole, and nothing else. Information about the linear momentum of the particle, for example, is lost. It makes no difference to the black hole which direction the new entrant was travelling in; the hole ends up exactly the same irrespective. By measuring the properties on the black hole before and after the new particle enters, we could determine what the mass, charge and angular momentum of the particle was. But nothing else. For reasons beyond any understanding, physicists call this the No-Hair Theorem. This is one of those areas of physics that gets... complicated. To put it mildly. Keep a bottle of Gem Clear handy for this next bit. You'll probably need it. An electron is a single, indivisible particle. Except that you're allowed to divide it. You can split an electron into two virtual particles. A virtual particle looks and behaves just like a real one, except that it's impossible. One of the virtual particles you get is a Spinon. That's pretty much all it is, spin. That's a particle of information. If you want a better explanation, take that bottle of Gem Clear and give it to a particle physicist. You can tell by googling about Spinons that nobody talks about them sober. Is the information now non-physical? For that, google "Mathematical Realism", the theory that physics, and the physical universe, is an emergent phenomenon from mathematics. At this point, please bear in mind that most of the scientists who developed these ideas early on all went completely insane...That's one of the reasons I gave up on my Applied Math College Degree and went into Systems Engineering...

Mr. Leonard's been going on about this for years (that information cannot be destroyed). In fact, Mr. Leonard insists that information cannot be destroyed, even by a black hole, which Hawking had argued did occur, at least back in the 70s (vide "The Nature of Space and Time" by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose - review in the works) or something like that. Reportedly, this argument will be taken up by the Ashley Madison lawyers in response to the class action lawsuit blaming them for not really erasing former member profiles. 

"We couldn't do it, the laws of physics stopped us!"

NB: His comments on Stephen Hawking's efforts are absolutely uncalled for. I won't bother looking them up, but they went on something like this (I'm paraphrasing): Hawking is a spent force. He hasn't come up with anything new in years. It is like Norma Desmond, retreating into her own world, watching old movies and dreaming of making a triumphant return. WTF! Basically, Mr. Leonard is full of shit: "My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics." Indeed.

Stephen Hawking, Good Luck, 1942 - 2018

"Whereas the rest of the animals were looking downwards at the ground,  he gave humans a raised face and ordered them to look toward the skies and lift up their erect head to the stars."

In "Metamorphoses" by Ovid

When Dr. Hawking's body started to fail him he said that one of the things he was challenged with was being unable to work out his formulas on a blackboard. He had to do them in his head instead.'fancy graphics and technology'? He was a physicist and mathematician. He had his brain. Very few of us can conceive of what that would be like.

I am humbled when I think of what this incredible human being achieved in his brief moment in time. He did not let the adversity of his infirmity detract from an incredible mind. He used his static position to explore the universe and bring the infinity of potential scientific knowledge to us mere mortals. He leaves an amazing legacy for the scientists of the future. And he showed that whatever comes our way, we all have something amazing to offer. As much as I beginning to admire Dr. Neil De Grasse Tyson (Saw Stephen Hawking on " Star Talk " with Neil Degrasse Tyson couple of weeks ago, the professor was very sharp and very informative), Dr. Hawking was one of the modern epitomes of the Theoretical Physicist (the other one is Roger Penrose). Hawking definitely believed his disability helped him mentally picture abstract ideas. How incredible to live to the age he did and what an extraordinary life. His cameo performances in the "Big Bang Theory" showed his sense of humour and took him to a younger generation of whom my daughters and son were one of them. Talking about multi-dimensional universes took the theory into possibilities rather than the pseudo-science it had always been dismissed as such. He was a definition of genius yet in his own universe he was a pupil looking curiously at the great design of the universe till the end of his last breath. It was curiosity to find reason behind a marvel that prompted him to go deep in sea of knowledge. All of his body was still as statue except upper important organ of human body that as his brain which gave us new dimensions, views and secrets of the universe, nature and stars!!!! But what makes Hawking a magician is a rare quality of him to dive in this universe which he has explored with the masses!!! He is solely responsible figure in modern times to bring science and especially cosmology to us! During the 80's people would buy and put "The Brief History of Time" in the home library without understanding; just to show-off that they did read Hawking! He was such genius who has made special space for science in the houses. Along with this, how can we forget to discuss his work which is a classic in itself? Even the name of his PhD thesis shows his mastery over a difficult questions of his time which is "the properties of expanding universe". Later on there was not a subject on cosmology that was left behind by Hawking like birth and death of black holes, possibilities beyond black holes, on the death and origin of our universe! Like millions of minds Hawking was also responsible to increase my interest in science through his famous discovery channel documentaries on questions of the universe titled as "Into the universe with Stephen Hawking". Today that man has died. And I am happy with this life who had given him and us such beautiful brain to shape us.

Everyone has the capability to find something in life that's worth living for. That doesn't mean people who don't are somehow weaker, or that they are failing, just that they have unfortunately been unable to find that thing. I my view, love is the thing that makes life always worth living, and I don't believe at all it was Hawking's exceptional mind that made life worth living. I think it was his exceptional love for science and the fact that he was still able to live for this love that meant his life continued to be one that is worthwhile. Love is not something that is inaccessible to those of us who are normal or not exceptional, love is something anyone can find in a myriad of different ways, but at the same time it can of course be nigh on impossible to see through the said despair. So unfortunately, not everyone finds a reason to live, but I still believe it means anyone can.

A personal note for what's worth. Hawking was one of the persons that made me believe there's God, as impossible as it may seem coming from an atheist Theoretical Physicist. He made me believe there's no way atheism stands up to any kind of scrutiny. Relativity demonstrates how space and time are observation dependent. Quantum mechanics demonstrates how our universe (a concrete noun) is built by abstract nouns. Abstract nouns are ideas and ideas don't "exist" without some thinker that is thinking of them. Every particle in the standard model, regardless of whether they are virtual or real particles are abstract nouns. This can be demonstrated by the double slit experiments. These particles are statements of probability until the observer changes their state of probability into a state of actuality. This implies that if we could eliminate all observers there won't be an actual universe. Obviously we cannot demonstrate that but atheism is based on the philosophical monism of materialism. Materialism cannot stand without local realism, non-local realism or naive realism being tenable. The violation of Bell's inequality renders local realism untenable and we, no doubt, know the rest. Religious believers have the satisfaction of thinking that their consciousness will be around to see themselves proven correct. Atheists believe that Stephen Hawking's consciousness is in the same place it was before he was conceived. Non-existence. That belief holds nothing to fear. There were nearly 14 billion years before he popped into existence, made the world a better place and increased our understanding of the universe. To each his or her own. 

It's amazing how a death of someone you don't know and have never met can still hit you. The guy was amazing in so many different ways. He understood things in a way most of us never will. Where many people would have given up on life battling those illnesses, Hawking continued on and adapted to continue learning and finding out new things. And among all this he still had the time and kindness to contribute to things like "The Big Bang Theory" on a few occasions where we've seen some fantastic humour from him.

How long until he is again "among" us...?

1. 9 years to track down and debate all of the greatest minds from the dawn of time;
2. 9 months of first hand studies on black holes, stellar phenomena, dark matter, worm holes, time travel, parallel dimensions, and the sub-subatomic intricacies of the multiverse;
3. 1 month cataloging alien civilizations that may try to wipe out humanity and sabotaging their efforts;
4. 1 month to locate the supreme AI in our galaxy, subdue it, make it his pet and name it Ezrium, and reconfigure it to prevent an Earth based AI from destroying all of the carbon units; 
5. 10 days to write his new book "The Mysteries of Other Side. I was wrong, so what?"; 
6. 10 days to debug the human genome, upgrade it and design a new corporeal biological domicile for his return;
7. 9 days to rest, relax, reflect and drink copious amounts of space beer on the sun drenched beaches of New Paleokastritsa which orbits the distant star Tau Ceti; 
8. 90 hours to study ancient Vedic knowledge, improve it, break the law of death and return to the land of the living.

I'd say RIP but I think he’ll not be resting but questioning and challenging. Good luck over in spacetime.

NB: In 2016 I had the fortune to be able to get my hands on his Reith Lectures. What a frigging book!

Deep Learning Architectures: “Life 3.0 - Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Max Tegmark

“Life 3.0, which can design not only its software but also its hardware. In other words, Life 3.0 is the master of its own destiny, finally fully free from its evolutionary shackles.”

In “Life 3.0 - Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Max Tegmark

See how good your PC is as it ages or you want to install a better graphics card, does the driver play nice with everything? Are you competent enough to sort it out or are you the sort of person who offloads that to IT? The guys in IT are like ducks or swans, all seems serene on the surface but underneath they are paddling hard to stay afloat. They are one badly written security update away from disaster. Do they install the latest security patch or wait for others to see what happens? Also, the more complex a system becomes the more subject it is to critical failures from minor changes, the more they become like having 100 spinning plates on the go at once. If your bank's computer goes belly up just as the proceeds from your house sale are sailing through the system from one solicitor to another is there enough of a data trail to prove it existed? Do you feel lucky? In this day and age, when the state-of-affairs is like the one I’m describing above, can we still talk about AI?

I remember reading Roger Penrose's “Emperor of the New Mind” a long time ago. It was a 500 page long systematic destruction of the claim that AI is even possible... which, as best as I could discern, concluded that AI was not possible because the neurons in the brain are quantum mechanical systems with quantum mechanical bridges, yielding inherently unpredictable outcomes as opposed to the 1s and 0s of then traditional computing. The problem with this, of course, is that we are now in the realm of quantum computing. More recently I read a couple of more recent books exploring the AI topic, one by Pedro Domingos called “The Master Algorithm” and the other by James Tagg called “Are the Android Dreaming Yet?”. What runs deep in Tegmark’s, Tagg’s and Domingos’ books is simply the fact that a lot of stuff being touted in the media as AI is not really AI. When you know the AI field and know how it works, human intelligence appears so superior still in so many ways. A lot of what is touted as AI is pretty much smoke and mirrors - relying on human intelligence to make it seem real. Yes, we have some impressive point solutions (image recognition, self-driving cars) and a couple of great neural approaches with more general applications (ConvNets, LSTMs), but the media have run away with the notion that we've cracked it. Not so. The trouble with informed predictions of the future is that they are almost always wrong. Remember the “End of History”? A book touting the final triumph of liberal democracy and rationality. That bit of prediction lasted 10 years before 9/11 changed the rules. All of data-ism ultimately rests on the willingness of people to buy things; it rests on the planet not burning up; it rests on modern medicine continuing to deliver the goods and antibiotics continuing to work. It rests on no disruptions caused by (say) mass migration due to war, water shortages and famine. The data network, like the financial system which has demonstrated its fallibility so clearly, is both immensely powerful when it works, and very fragile when hit by an external shock. In other words, prediction based on the assumption that things will continue as they are at the moment require a big leap of faith.

Can I 'opt out' of smart phones? I'm thinking it's going to become increasingly difficult to maintain that position of not using the smartphone to do transactions online as more and more 'transactions' are carried out using this technology. Responsive web-sites are already annoying because they are not really responsive, they are optimised for smaller screens (rendering their use on a 'normal' screen seem like playing at a Learning Centre). But looking at some of the financial transaction features that are being developed, I wonder how long I am going to be able to continue to use the old ways of doing things. If a shop decides to use this technology exclusively, then I can 'choose' another shop, if they all do it, I'm buying a smart phone whether I like it or not. To illustrate my point try bartering a sheep for a frock from FNAC. I’m not stating that people should return to bartering, i.e., I’m using its decline as an illustration of my point which is that that there comes a point where you can no longer opt out of things or choose not to engage. We reach a tipping point and you have to follow the crowd otherwise you cannot participate in society. For example: at the moment, I can do perfectly well without a smart phone for certain things. If smart phone companies make it too easy to pay for things with a smart phone (technology currently in development) and enough people use their smart phones to pay for goods in shops then some shops stop accepting payment by plastic card. Eventually all shops jump on the band-wagon and save the expense of a card reader. I can no longer opt out of a smart phone because I can no longer pay for goods in a shop. Viz, the last person who tried to go into a shop and exchange something for a sheep.

But can we objectify and/or replicate consciousness? That’s the name of the game! Consciousness is All. The motor of all manifestations in the material world. Matter and machines are simply among the densest forms and expressions of energy, frequency and vibration. As consciousness, you are the inner observer to the human that you (consciousness) physically appear to be, and that you (consciousness) experience the world through. As such, you are not the phenomenon, you are the noumenon as Kant would put it. You are not the appearance, you are the aware presence. You are not the manifestation, you are its essence. The eye cannot see itself; neither can the (intangible) mind. Mind is, then, like a sixth sense. The mind appears within consciousness—as all sensations and perceptions do. Mind is a phenomenal appearance within your presence of awareness, which is the noumenon of your entire sense-of-being. You are consciousness - not a body or a brain. Not a mind, nor its memories. Not its perceptions, nor its experiences—because all such things appear within awareness. As awareness, you are Absolute. The mind-body is an object of consciousness...

I do believe that AIs with "Deep Learning" architecture are and will continue to change everyday lives - some old jobs will go the way of the dodo, while other new jobs will emerge, and how people are educated will change, to name a few. However, and I say this as an avid SF reader, I find some of the points in Tegmarks’ book and its posturing quite fragile. No doubt, changes are coming. However, “Je mehr sich verändert, desto mehr bleibt sich gleich.” And, I will still enjoy a walk along the beach - however, no bundle of bits and bytes will be able to tell me why and which beach… At least it's fair to say AI will never feel emotions. I would love to see the world in 50 years from now; tiny internal chips encircling our bodies analysing our health, no physical money, people borrowing not from banks but direct from the Old Lady, alcohol banned and replaced by marijuana. A world where Internet scammers are hung drawn and quartered publicly. Ahhh Eutopia! With a surveillance camera in every room I will be able to take my little green pill and sleep well in the knowledge that Big Brother is watching over me.

I'm sure the universe and AIs entities will muddle along somehow once us pesky humans are gone.

The Nature of Consciousness: "Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? - Amazing Brain. Human Communication, Creativity & Free Will" by James Tagg

Disclaimer: I received a reader's copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

(The book was published on Jan, 2015; review written 10/05/2015)

“What is the physics that underlies human understanding?”

“Humans need around 10,000 hours of practice to become proficient at a skill. (“The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, but referenced by Tagg)

(my own 1991-battered copy of Penrose’s book)

I still remember the feeling I’d when I first read Penrose’s “The Emperor’s New Mind” for the first time in 1991. I’d just finished college. I was full of myself. After reading Penrose I came down to earth in a big way. My education was severely lacking in several “departments”. The impression this book had on me was so great that I still have it at home. I was perusing it after finishing Tagg’s book. 

I hadn’t “touched” Penrose’s book in a long time, but what still remains with me was his take on the nature of consciousness. Chapter 9 (“Real Brains and Model Brains”) to be exact, is full of my annotations. This particular chapter was so mind-boggling that I remember I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After re-reading this chapter in its entirety, and particularly the two main sections of it: “Where is the seat of consciousness?” and “Is there a Role for Quantum Mechanics in Brain Activity?”, and after more than 20 years, some of the assertions made at the time were as bit as polemic then as they are now, but I’m not so flabbergasted by Penrose’s theory of quantum consciousness of the brain as I was at the time. There are some serious flaws in it. 

Quantum theories of consciousness have to deal with the same difficulties as neural or computational theories. Quantum effects have some outstanding properties (e.g., non-determinism and non-locality: “I [ ] argue all human creativity is noncomputational; art, communication, understanding – all are based on non-algorithmic principles.” in Tagg’s words), and it’s only natural to hypothesize that these properties may have something to do with the explanation of cognitive functions, such as random choice, and this hypothesis cannot be ruled out a priori. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered. No theory I’ve read so far is able to explain this, namely Orch-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction by Penrose and Hameroff). 

Even admitting that Quantum Mechanics is somehow at the core of the theme, I still have trouble explaining how does the wave function stays together to go into an afterlife... When dealing with subjects mathematic-oriented, Penrose is always quite solid. Unfortunately when he delves into stuff outside of his field of expertise (like the "quantum nature of consciousness") than one needs to become aware of the less-than-fully-concocted nature of his ideas. Tagg is also a very strong proponent of this view: “Excluding exotic quantum effects, the main difference between computer and human brains is their processing architecture. Brains use slow, asynchronous logic to process information rather than the fast, synchronous type used in modern day computers.”

I’m still very fond of some of Penrose’s nutty ideas (and now Tagg’s). And because they’re nutty one can't automatically dismiss what he says just because the word "quantum" shows up. We still need evidence to corroborate his ideas.

Penrose's assertion that we are not bound by Godel's incompleteness theorems also seems very nutty at best. Tagg as Penrose did before him, bought into the so-called "libertarian free will", though I still haven’t seen any kind of evidence supporting its existence. This has led to claims, such as the assertion that photons registering in vision aren't absorbed by the retina, but unbind in the microtubules in the neurons of the brain… Evidence, that’s what we need! In this respect Orch-OR is still in the realm of pseudoscience. Whether the inner workings of neuronal processes in the brain are enhanced by quantum effects or not, I fail to see how this resolves the free will issue, as it still seems to require some external non-deterministic influence to determine each choice. 

I still haven't read a good argument why the neural networks of the brain are not sufficient to handle it without macro-scale quantum effects. By chapter two of Tagg’s book it was clear that he supported this notion as well, which was not a good omen to start with. Still, I persevered. At the end I felt the book had some interesting titbits, namely the chapters dealing with Computer Science (e.g., “Turing’s Machine”, “The Machine”, “Silver Bullets Can’t Be Fired”, “Hyper-Computing”), the chapter on how to bash Powerpoint (“Power corrupts, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely” – Ed Tufte), and Math (“The Game of Mathematics” dealing with Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s undecidable Theorem; Tagg makes a very clear explanation on how Turing proved that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem was unsolvable shattering Hilbert's dream in consequence). 

Bottom-line: Stating that quantum vibrations in microtubules have anything to do with consciousness is hocus-pocus. It's interesting as an idea, and it's also worth exploring, and frankly I think it would be very cool if it was true. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not just something casually related. Despite my misgivings I’m glad I persevered. Tagg‘s Computer Science book, albeit biased for the role of Quantum Mechanics in our consciousness, made for a very interesting reading.

On a side note, if it’s later proved that quantum theory has any kind of effect on the brain at a cellular or even on a molecular level, I will print out this review and eat it. Promise.

Life Is but a Dream: "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain" by António R. Damásio

(Original Review, 1994-11-17)

Dave Chalmers did a great job of making consciousness popular but his own view was 400 years out of date. Descartes is the real rigorous physicist here - he was after all one of the people who devised physics. What he meant by the soul and God being 'spirit' is that they caused matter to move. Matter for Descartes was just the inert occupancy of a space (extension). So physics consisted of the interaction of spirit and matter. We now call spirit 'force' or 'energy' and Descartes was quite right because thinking is all about electromagnetic fluxes - which in themselves do not occupy space or have mass. His mistake was to think that there had to be one special spirit unit. Leibniz sorted that out in 1714.

The problem with neuroscientific theories at present is that they are no longer rigorously mechanistic in the way Descartes was. They ignore the fact that consciousness is the property of having an input, or being influenced, or receiving information. All the current theories try to explain consciousness in terms of cellular activity or output, which makes no sense. Consciousness must be something to do with cellular input - in dendrites.

There is an intriguing reflection of this in the literature. Kripke suggestd that one form of consciousness, pain, might be C fibre stimulation (an input to C fibres) which is reasonable but he and everyone else expected the stimulation to be higher up. Then Papineau changed it to C fibre FIRING (an output) which no longer makes any sense. Pain is not me saying ouch! Percepts are not firings, they are stimulations of something.

If the neuroscientists took a bit more notice of 17th century philosophy and a bit less of 20th century then they might get on the right track.

I know that I am, but I do not remember how I started being. Was it like a switch being pulled, or a gradual transition? But even a gradual transition starts at some point... Similarly, how did the universe start existing? Even the big bang cannot fully explain it. What created the big bang? What created that first particle whose explosion caused the universe? Some theories say that new universes are being created all the time, but even that is just a way of describing a later stage, not the beginning. And if God created this universe, then who created God? It all comes down to the fact that something must have come out of nothing. It could be that we cannot explain that under our current scientific paradigm. It could also be that our brains will never be able to understand that.

Those are the fundamental questions. There is something to panpsychism, because if my consciousness and the universe were both created out of nothing, the elegant solution would be to declare them as being part of one thing. And I've been thinking, that if something must come out of nothing, then the most scientific explanation for such a phenomenon would be that nature abhors a vacuum, so that as soon as there is the tiniest space without magnetic fields/gravity/matter/energy then something is being created. This something would then have to be something very 'light', because as soon as it comes into being, the vacuum disappears and the process of creation stops. I could imagine that this 'lowest layer' of existence that constitutes our universe is a level of consciousness. Some would call this consciousness God.

I am sure that somewhere in the midsts of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Physics theory, Laws of Thermodynamics, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and String Theory and M-Theory, there has got to be at the very least one of the following...

Consciousness resides in molecules and billions of years from now those molecules could reassemble and the person could 'live' again as the Laws of Thermodynamics say energy cannot be destroyed just change form. Or at best consciousness goes to the extra dimensional worlds in M and String Theory and live there, a scientific 'afterlife', or the 90 odd % of matter known as Dark Matter and Dark Energy could also be a scientific 'afterlife', or Quantum Mechanics 'double slit experiment' observation mysteries could.

On the other hand, consciousness is an emergent property of, and therefore, reliant upon the human brain. Once the physical body and brain dies, the consciousness of the person ceases to exist.

All the research and evidence to date confirms consciousness is an entirely physical process residing only in the brain, therefore your research into "Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Physics theory, Laws of Thermodynamics, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and String Theory and M-Theory" to find this 'afterlife' is an exercise in futility.

Most neuro-scientists still use a very materialistic framework for trying to understand consciousness. I think Penrose had the right idea in trying to bring the idea of consciousness up to date with the latest view of the Universe in terms of Modern physics. I think that the problem is that most neuro-scientists do not really understand the implications of Quantum Theory and General Relativity and therefore still stick to what they have learned in High School. And of course they should also take account of the fact that consciousness is a non-computable process and is therefore quite distinct from a computer. I think the last people who should be talking about what consciousness actually is are neuro-scientists. They are far too limited in their intellectual framework (Penrose (or anyone else as far as I know) has failed to show that consciousness is non-algorithmic. [2018 EDIT: Whatever you think of him otherwise, Dennett covers these flaws very well in some of his books.]

I look at brain activity like a spherical sheet of graph paper. To get from one point on the periphery to another diagonally opposite there are myriads of pathways which we can use but there is one, usually the result of an epiphany, which is the most direct or shortest or most ergonomic. Once we have found that answer to the "hard problems" we inevitably wonder why it was so simple and we were so stupid as not to see it ages ago.

We often seem able to pass on this trick of a pathway to others and form a "collective consciousness" or "race memory". It may be the interconnectedness or integration that is suggested but it is organic and forever changing as circuits fail and generate.

It seems to me a more than hard question because if consciousness is a pathway that develops, decays and changes and because the only way to measure it is with that constantly changing measuring apparatus we will always get different answers for every person at every time.

Maybe someone will have an epiphany and we can all stop thinking and die out?

It would help if there were an accepted definition of the concept of "consciousness" - but, alas, there seems to be no agreement on the central tenets of what constitutes consciousness, and those promulgated are as numerous and varied as the people espousing them.

All the while people conflate the minds (emotional) response to, say, the landscape of Greenland with the mystery of "the soul" or invoke "spirituality" (that other favourite of people who have no understanding of science) then the rationalist world of biology/chemistry/physics will never get a look in.

It seems to me that a lot of those in favour of consciousness being seen as something "special" are in the same camp as the flat Earth brigade, those who favour the ideas behind "intelligent design", and those who regard Darwin as a heretic worthy of immolation.

The essence of the those who object to seeing the mind as a machine, that functions according to some unseen (if sometimes erratic) programme, seems to centre on the idea that it denies the idea of the uniqueness of the individual and the concept of free will. Yet the entire discipline of psychology is predicated on the notion that the human mind has any number of fundamental modes of action which are definable, repeatable, observable, and capable of being modified through a set of pre-defined external factors and stimuli.

The reality of current computer technology is that it cannot hold a candle to the sheer complexity and interconnectedness of the brains neural pathways. Until out technology starts to approach the level found in the brains of mammals, and we can begin to formulate theories that can be tested, there will those who will feel to need to resort to "mysticism" to explain the unknown. As the article makes plain, the human race has form for this, and the search for consciousness is just the latest example in a long line of allegedly insoluble problems that are the "meat and drink" of those intent on selling us "snake oil".

The human observes there is a river in a whirlpool. The universe knows no boundary between the river and the whirlpool - there is only the river. It gets worse - The universe knows no boundary between the human observer of the river and the river - there is only the universe. It gets a lot worse - the river, the whirlpool and the human observer are merely "data" "Zeroes and ones" (use whatever words you like - the universe can't actually be broken down into words. Human language is a fun tool inside reality but is not actually reality. The number 47 doesn't exist inside any universe - it is a man-made thing, a symbol.) They don't actually exist.

You're not a ping pong ball inside a box with 6 billion other ping pong balls bouncing around. You're the box itself - the infinite box which creates the ping pong balls. The human simply got confused by the body, possibly in very early childhood when it learns that it is <>> and mummy is <>. Mistaking each body for something that had to exist inside the universe but yet somehow separate from everything else. Observe your feet inside the universe - wherever you go they exist and yet if you chop them off, you will carry on - 100% actual hard proof there is no you contained within your feet.

This is your dream.

Probably.

Run the experiments on yourself to prove or disprove it for yourself.

And another thing:

Complexity does strange things. A random assortment of entities can seem to give rise to an entity. Something that is "one" - such as the random forces of tide and wind producing waves. Not the best example. Or the random collection of atoms that make up the sun. This is a thing which rises every day, lights the world, and goes back to bed again. And many civilisations have thought the sun had an identity, and a conscience. We have no extra esoteric spark of brilliant. We do have a magical identity which is the result of mind-boggling complexity. And how the sense of self appears when the brain gets into gear in the morning may one day be understood a bit better. My guess is there will be distributed activity through memory, senses and sensory input, and maybe motion that starts up and has the subject saying crap.

I think there are some quite muddled thoughts regarding "free will". I see it primarily as a question concerning the boundaries of the cognitive system that ends up making the choice. If it is primarily the stuff inside the limits of your body that processes the information and arrives at a choice, it seems reasonable to say that you made the choice "of your own free will": there was no coercing outside agent, for example.

But things can still get a little fuzzy. No man is a cognitive island; there will always be an information processing dance between the states in your brain and the state in the outside world coming in as sensory data. If I see an obstacle ahead and steer to the left to avoid it, one can make a strong case that it's the combination of me and the obstacle together that generated the action. But if we go down that particular path we may end up deciding that the universe as a whole is responsible for every action that takes place. From a certain point of view this is entirely true, but I'm not sure how helpful it is.

There are other curiosities such as the fact that if you were castrated you would start to make slightly different decisions, suggesting that your gonads were to some extent some "other", some outside agent influencing your decisions, rather than being a part of you. But, again, clear boundaries are hard to define. If a small chunk of your brain were removed, the exact same thing might be true. It is very hard to define the self as some single thing, some single point that is you.

They summed this all up years ago:

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

‘Hey, I'm awake now! Is there a cup of tea, somewhere?’

NB: Damásio is a fellow Portuguese.