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Dear Professor Rickles.

I found reading your essay was a truly awesome educational experience, and I do hope that it does well in the contest.

You wrote: “Personal experience (the stuff that matters most to humans) has been eroded from science.) Fortunately for us all, it has not eroded from non-scientists with common sense such as myself.

Based only on my observation, I...

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Dear Professor Rickles.

I found reading your essay was a truly awesome educational experience, and I do hope that it does well in the contest.

You wrote: “Personal experience (the stuff that matters most to humans) has been eroded from science.) Fortunately for us all, it has not eroded from non-scientists with common sense such as myself.

Based only on my observation, I have concluded that all of the stars, all of the planets, all of the asteroids, all of the comets, all of the meteors, all of the specks of astral dust and all real things have one and only one thing in common. Each real thing has a material surface and an attached material sub-surface. All material surfaces must travel at the constant “speed” of light. All material sub-surfaces must travel at an inconsistent “speed” that is less than the “speed” of light. It would be physically impossible for light to move as it does not have a surface or a sub-surface. Abstract theory cannot ever have unification. Only reality is unified because there is only one reality.

I use the term “speed” of light merely to make it easier for the reader to understand my theory. Actually light cannot move because it does not have a surface. Light is the only stationary substance in the real Universe. The proof of this is easy to establish. When one looks at an active electrical light, one must notice that all of the light remains inside of the bulb. What does move from the bulb is some form of radiant. The radiant must move at a rate of speed that is less than the “speed” of light, however, when the radiant strikes a surface it achieves the “speed” of light because all surfaces can only travel at the “speed” of light. When it strikes a surface, the radiant resumes being a light, albeit of a lesser magnitude. While it is true that searchlights, spotlights and car headlights seem to cast a beam of light, this might be because the beams strike naturally formed sub-atomic particles prevalent in the atmosphere that actually form a surface.

In the Thomas Young Double Slit Experiment, it was not direct sunlight that passed through the slits. Light from the sun is stationary and it cannot move because light does not have a surface. Radiants emitted from the sun went through the slits and behaved like wave radiants.

Einstein was completely wrong. His abstract theory about how abstract observers “see” abstract events differently is wrong. This is what every real observer sees when they look at a real light. They see that all of the light remains near the source. The reason for that is because light does not have a surface, therefore it cannot move. This happens to real observers whether they are looking at real fabricated lights such as neon, incandescent or LED. This also happens when real observers observe real natural light such as from the real sun or reflected from the real moon, or light caused by a lightning bolt, or from real firelight, real candle light, or light from out of a real lightning bug’s bottom.

Respectfully,

Joe Fisher

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Dean,

Your essay seems resonant with much of the wisdom expounded upon by the Rishis and Lamas of the world: all of humanity's problems have their foundation in undisciplined human nature and the way to mitigate these problems is to simply transcend this undisciplined nature. There is a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ancient yoga and meditation...

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Dean,

Your essay seems resonant with much of the wisdom expounded upon by the Rishis and Lamas of the world: all of humanity's problems have their foundation in undisciplined human nature and the way to mitigate these problems is to simply transcend this undisciplined nature. There is a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ancient yoga and meditation practices in this regard. In fact, in my essay I reference "Contemplative Practices and Mental Training: Prospects for American Education" by child psychologist, Richard Davidson, and his colleagues, mainly from the Mind and Life Institute, which argues for the introduction of modified versions of these practices into the public school system; Davidson refers to this in his own work as "mental education." There is also a growing body of scientific evidence, due to researchers such as Herbert Benson and Sarah Lazar, that compassion, what you refer to as empathy, can be cultivated using these ancient practices and that said cultivation correlates with significant alterations in specific regions of the brain. Perhaps this, like your Asperger hypothesis, could potentially be a key element needed for improvising the future.

With regards to QBism, perhaps you would be interested in the work of Kevin Knuth and his associates. In their paper,"Foundations of Inference", Knuth and his associate, John Skilling, combine and significantly refine the Kolmogorov and Cox formulations of Probability Theory resulting in a very general foundational theory with broad scope. Knuth and his associate, Philip Goyal, then use this foundation to derive Feynman's formulation of Quantum Theory from a common algebra. They define series and parallel operators on the space of experimental outcomes which allows them to define the common algebra. Knuth summarizes their work in his recent paper, "Information Physics: An Observer-Centric Foundation".

With regards,

Wes Hansen

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Dear Dean,

I enjoyed very much your very profound, well thought and well written essay. I think it captures a (if not "the") central problem by which the individuals allow bad things happen. Indeed, it is important to understand and continuously be aware that we can affect the future. We have free will.

I find very interesting the connection you point with Qbism. Of course, the...

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Dear Dean,

I enjoyed very much your very profound, well thought and well written essay. I think it captures a (if not "the") central problem by which the individuals allow bad things happen. Indeed, it is important to understand and continuously be aware that we can affect the future. We have free will.

I find very interesting the connection you point with Qbism. Of course, the temporal myopia you mention is not due to the ignorance of this interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Most people suffering from temporal myopia don't even know or care about things like determinism, presentism, Bayesianism, Quantum Mechanics etc. On the other hand, scientists tend to be more disciplined and suffer less from temporal myopia. That is, no matter whether they believe in realism (even hidden variables) or Qbism or if they don't care.

My belief is that the cause is an ignorance of causal relations. "Ignorance" both in the sense of "not being aware of" and of "not caring of". In other words, I would say that "temporal myopia" is a particular case of "causal myopia" (in absence of a better term). This includes the "spatial myopia" which allows us to ignore the problems in distant countries. It also includes the social class: for example, the rich may perceive the poor as the sole responsible for his problems, and the poor may perceive the rich as selfish, only interested in financial gain. Also, since you mention neglecting "the Earth and its non-human animals", here I think is the same problem. We like to eat meat, without even thinking that this means killing other living beings, but we would have totally different thoughts about this if that animal would be our pet.

I think the common denominator is the ignorance of the relation between cause and effect. And I think that education can help with this. Explaining children what are the consequences of their actions, teaching them to think at this. They will learn to be nicer with one another, to be more responsible (even with their homework), to understand their colleagues, teachers, parents, siblings, to think about their future. The point is that we have the power, but also the responsibility of choosing our own actions.

Some may say that such things like caring an being responsible can be taught in religion classes, without which children would not have a moral compass. But I think the idea of cause an effect is more useful than the idea of a God punishing or rewarding our actions. Understanding cause and effect affect not only ethics (which is usually taught at a too abstract level), but all other chapters of our existence. And the lesson we learn is not moral judgement, but practical, efficient ways of reaching our goals.

In the same way I advocate a notion of cause and effect uncorrupted by religious interpretations, I would also advocate its neutrality with respect to a philosophical doctrine, or to a particular interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Some claim for instance that QM gives us the free will, by giving us randomness, as opposed to Laplacian determinism. But merely randomness doesn't mean freedom of choice, neither responsibility. In fact, the feeling that life is random makes people feel powerless, so they choose alcohol or drugs. Free will is not guaranteed by randomness, and is not forbidden by determinism. Determinism is compatible with free will (and I don't mean "compatibilism"), if we allow the choice of the initial conditions to be delayed. Moreover, classical causality is challenged by QM at deeper levels than just by introducing randomness. And Qbism, by removing altogether the notion of reality, doesn't make the things better.

To be fair to QM, indeed, realism seems to be rejected. Even the macroscopic realism. So, with this, perhaps causal relations fail too. But I would take a middle way, for practical purposes. Accept realism, at least macroscopic, to allow us to think in terms of cause and effect (the randomness introduced by QM is by all means dominated by the randomness due to ignorance of all conditions, and by the lack of means of taking all them into consideration and predict the effects). And accept that by the very violation of realism, QM gives us the freedom to participate to reality.

But I think, as far as common people are concerned, we would better maintain a pragmatical position about cause and effect, and avoid mixing it with the interpretations of QM.

Regarding your hypothesis about Asperger's syndrome, I would be interested into reading more, if you have written, or plan to read more about it.

These being said, I want to thank you for this excellent essay, which I liked very much.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

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Dean,

As you point out, we develop habits which might offer short term gratification, but long term trouble and even when we realize this, cannot easily change course. As is said of drunks, sometimes they just have to hit bottom before they can see the light of day. It seem humanity as a whole is headed toward that situation and so the question then becomes, how do we then change our...

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Dean,

As you point out, we develop habits which might offer short term gratification, but long term trouble and even when we realize this, cannot easily change course. As is said of drunks, sometimes they just have to hit bottom before they can see the light of day. It seem humanity as a whole is headed toward that situation and so the question then becomes, how do we then change our ways?

As I see it, there are a number of conceptual issues which we naturally take for granted, without fully examining their nature and so if we were to reach a point of serious soul searching, it might well be a matter of more than just promising ourselves to do better next time. I think there are fallacies built into some of our central beliefs, but they are not factors which can be changed prior to some significant punctuation of the equilibrium, So I'm just putting them out for consideration.

We look at time backward. Since we exist as individual points of perception, we experience change as a sequence of events and so think of the present as moving along a vector from past to future events. Physics then distills this narrative effect to measures of duration to use in its equations. The underlaying reality is that the changing configuration of what exists, turns future into past. There is no dimension along which these events exist, they simply form and dissolve. While this results in a present oriented reality, it also means we need to navigate the many obstacles, or we too rapidly recede into the past.

In a sense then, time is much more like temperature, than space. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. With temperature we think in terms of the overall effect, even though it is created by lots of individual velocities/amplitudes. With time we think in terms of the particular actions/rates of change, yet can't seem to find that universal clock which keeps everything synchronized. That is because, like temperature, universal change is the cumulative effect of those many rates.

So the future is not determined, since probability precedes actuality and the input into any event only happens with its occurrence. Nor does the past remain probable and branch out into many worlds. We are a factor in the equations and affect our reality as it affects us.

Another fallacy built into our current thinking is that we treat money as a commodity, when in fact it is a contract. It is backed by public debt and debt is a promise, a contract. Given everyone, rich and poor alike, want to accumulate as much as possible, there is overwhelming pressure to create as much notational value as possible. The problem is the basis of this currency is the health, wealth and productivity of the country issuing it. Since the only way to store this wealth is either to remove it from circulation, or to invest it in some way that will at least produce a return commensurate with the risk, this creates two unhealthy processes. If it is removed from circulation, then more must be issued in order to keep the system functioning. Also investing eventually creates bubbles and pyramid schemes, as the amount of productive forms of investment are limited by physical circumstance, so the 'greater fool' method of speculation takes over.

We have alleviated some of this by having the government borrow up enormous amounts of this capital, but that is creating an ever larger bubble which will potentially destroy the currency on which all these other forms of financialization are based.

Consider that when Paul Volcker 'cured' inflation, he did so by restricting the flow of fresh money into the system, with higher interest rates and selling debt used to create the money in the first place. The problem is that higher interest rates reward supply and punish demand and since the problem is oversupply of capital, this is counterproductive. It only seemed to work by 1982, by which time the Federal government was borrowing upwards of 200 billion a year and that was real money in those days. It was this extra borrowing that provided the demand for capital that finally dried up the surplus and brought inflation under control.

Remember that when the Fed sells debt to draw in excess capital, it is selling to those with a surplus in the first place, so by this logic, excess capital is in the hands of those with an excess, not what is being used to lubricate the economy. Obviously those with an excess would prefer not to think of it this way and so having the government borrow it up for any number of uses, such as extraneous wars and large militaries, works just fine. The problem is that these are not productive investments that will produce a return on the money, yet the public still has to pay them off, which serves to siphon value out of the economy in general and thus weaken the basis for the currency.

Now if we were to truly treat money as the contract between a community and its constituents, that it is, we need to understand how it all functions. It is an economic medium, like a road system, or blood in the body, or water in a convection cycle. As such it is most productive and effective when it is most evenly distributed and large reservoirs do not overwhelm the system, such as hundreds of trillions in derivatives etc, on a world economy valued in the tens of trillions. Now one of the primary reasons most people save money is for time when they need extra, so other systems have to incorporate these needs as a form of shock absorber. For one thing, we often view social relations and environmental resources as sources of value to be mined. Yet if we understood the monetary medium as a form of public utility and do not actually own these notational units, anymore than we own the section of road we might be using, there would be far greater reluctance to sacrifice tangible, near term relations and resources to convert into currency. So such things as education and care for the young and old become much more of a social function that doesn't need nearly as much monetary input, or possibly forms of local currencies would grow up to serve these local needs. Conversely, those caught hoarding or otherwise abusing the system would have their store of notes penalized and this would further encourage alternate stores of value.

Then banking would be much more of a local and civil function and as it developed foundational strength, then broader regional cooperatives could develop, with the understanding the structures can only be as big as the foundations can support and blowing up enormous functionally illusionary bubbles, even if they seem all sweet and inviting to begin with, are to be viewed with concern regarding structural weakness they might be hiding.

This might all seem far fetched at the moment, but even bubbles as big as the one we are currently experiencing, do eventually pop and then we will have to start over again, without nearly as much raw materials as last time.

Regards,

John Merryman

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Dear Dean Rickles,

I have returned to planet Earth. Upon my return I have reread your essay. It is as if I were reading it for the first time. I was wrong. I apologize for what I wrote. Your essay was not a superficial indictment of the human race. My reading of it was a superficial and represented what I was thinking in my mind rather than what I was reading. Now I think that I learned...

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Dear Dean Rickles,

I have returned to planet Earth. Upon my return I have reread your essay. It is as if I were reading it for the first time. I was wrong. I apologize for what I wrote. Your essay was not a superficial indictment of the human race. My reading of it was a superficial and represented what I was thinking in my mind rather than what I was reading. Now I think that I learned what you were teaching. Picking out a few quotes::

"And so on... There is a sense in which agency is at the root of measurement outcomes: it is a creative process. This subjectivity—putting agents at the heart of world-building—can play a vital role in linking us to our shared future. As Chris Fuchs so nicely expresses it: “our actions matter indelibly for the rest of the universe,” for quantum mechanics “signals the world’s plasticity ... [w]ith every quantum measurement set by an experimenter’s free will, the world is shaped just a little as it participates in a kind of moment of birth” ([13], p. 172). This strikes me as the kind of mindset that could evade the presentist, fatalist thinking that is damaging our world."

"Quantum mechanics gives some creativity to humans, as we have seen. They can carve reality. If humans had the belief that they were involved in the creation of reality, they would be more committed to their future and forge a third way. If one is aware that each action is creating the future, and creating a future self and a habitat for that future self, then one is liable to be more committed to making that future the best possible. In this case, the direct link between now and the future is bridged: a world of humans that are constantly aware of carving out their future selves and experiences."

"Combined with a perspective shift loosely informed by Qbist-type stances, and non-presentist thinking, we can allow humanity to steer itself out of danger—though ultimately, this viewpoint suggests that ‘steering’ is the wrong metaphor, since that implies a fixed, ready-made terrain through which one steers: I prefer the metaphor of improvising the future."

What I think I do see very clearly is that your rating is highly inappropriate. Your high quality analysis of the human condition and a path toward its improvement rates a 'ten'.

James Putnam

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