Reflections about "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama - Part 2

I have been finding this book to be extremely interesting.  Reading about a person's love of learning warms me.  Seeing that person reflect upon the ideas and actually wrestle with them instills both happiness and bitterness in my mind.  This makes me realize I have much to learn about teaching, for I am not achieving the love of learning from my students.  Enough emotional hour - let's get to the content.

The Dalai Lama attempts to explain the relationship between the scientific concepts of the big bang and Darwin's theory of evolution to Buddhism.  One of these I agree with him, the other I do not.  If you have read my other blog posts, you should be able to guess which one is which!

From this reading, I am assuming only the popularly held scientific ideas were discussed at the Mind and Life conferences (which I would love to attend).  The big bang theory being discussed in this book contains the idea of a singularity point.  This point signifies a beginning; supposedly there would be no laws of the universe within the singularity point, meaning everything (matter, laws of physics, etc.) would need to be "born" from this point.  Both the Dalai Lama and I dislike this idea on very similar philosophical reasons.  I defend my logic by concluding there would be no reason to unbalance; the singularity point would be in perfect harmony and would never break that perfect harmony.  The Dalai Lama defends the notion that a singularity point would require a god, which would turn into circular questioning of where did the god(s) come from.  Not only are those answers unattainable scientifically, but metaphysically.  A very interesting point the Dalai Lama brought up is how these questions do not achieve the goal of Buddhism: happiness.  He made the analogy of how someone impaled with an arrow would not want to know all the facts of the attack (bow type, string type, method of the arrow's creation, etc.) before the arrow could be removed to understanding the origin of the universe before one "continues" living.  Thoughts of these kind would consume the person's mind, thus not allowing the potential of happiness to be achieved.  An interesting view on the question, How did the universe begin?, if I do say so myself.

Evolution in the popular view is so wrongly held.  I can tell it was explained accurately to the Dalai Lama, but I sadly predict his discussions with other religious scholars have skewed his views on the subject.  The most widely held misconception is that evolution explains the origin of life; it does no such thing.  What disgusted me was the admittance by the Dalai Lama of this fact, but the choice to ignore it.  His choice may lay in the difference in the scientific definition of life and the Buddhist definition of life.  The distinction lies in consciousness; plants are not thought to be conscious if viewed through the lens of Buddhism, thus plants are not considered living.  So possibly the biggest argument by the Dalai Lama is the inability, currently, to explain consciousness scientifically.  I am going to leave consciousness for another post, but I do want to highlight the fact plants are not considered alive; I need to research Buddhist thought on "nonliving" life.

The Dalai Lama attacked the wording of the theory of evolution by natural selection which I need to defend.  He argued life changes by impacts other than competition; one such impact is altruism.  He disagrees that the current explanation of altruistic behavior, for example the pea aphid sacrificing itself for the offspring, belongs under the heading of competition.  I disagree whole-heartily, as losing one versus losing all potential offspring is clearly advantageous and is a "winning" action if one wants to refer back to evolution being a competition.

What about human altruism?  We have no competition.  There are some extremely nice people that neither have children nor plan to (I put myself in this category, though that may be egotistical of me).  How is that explained in terms of evolution?  I believe people need to want to live in order to live happily (I had to include happily because I do not want to get sidetracked into the what if game).  By being altruistic, it gives people self-worth.  A community of some sort is required for this to happen; if I am the only altruistic being and I try to be nice to a murdering psychopath, then I probably would not continue to be alive.  Thus, I think it is fair to argue that altruism, even in the smallest form, is a necessity for any community to exist.  In fact, I would argue altruism is inherent in life, for reproducing in any way is a net loss of personal resources.  Funny.  I was going to explain altruism as a requirement for maximum happiness, but now I just find it inherent in nature.

Inherent altruism makes sense according to the second law of thermodynamics.  Large groups have the greater potential to cause entropy and you acquire large groups by being altruistic.  Thought experiment time!  Say we never got past our barbaric history of fighting over territories.  We would be spending much more time fighting than learning other things.  This would impede on advances in technology, which we can argue would avoid any worries about global warming (due to that technology causing it not existing).  So if we would have continued fighting, our planet would be in a more stable state.  So one might argue that altruism is inherent in nature, for our altruistic behaviors have led to a planet with greater entropy.

I realize I just argued that being nice increases the rate of our demise.  Too bad being happy is far too enjoyable - sorry species! :)

Extraterrestrial intelligent beings!? Sorry. Not likely.

I love the idea of meeting an ET alien, but the odds are extremely low.  Meg Urry sums it up in her interesting blog about finding Earth-sized planets.

Sadly, although life is likely to exist on exoplanets throughout our Milky Way galaxy, intelligent life is another thing altogether. Humans have lived at most a few hundred thousand years out of the Earth's 4.6 billion year history -- or less than 0.006% of the available time. In contrast, simple single-celled organisms probably formed several billion years ago, and thus have populated the Earth for more than three-quarters of its existence. This means it is overwhelmingly likely that the life we find elsewhere will be extremely primitive.

 I will say I hope we send messages toward any planet found in the "Goldilocks Zone" in other solar systems!  Just because the odds aren't high doesn't mean they can't happen!  Look at us!

Look at me falling to what I will call the "experience fallacy".  I know there is a name for this type of thought, so I apologize to the psychologist I am forgetting.

Reflections about "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama - Part 1

One of the first arguments made by the Dalai Lama attacks the "blindness" of scientists.  I will describe how I am using the word "blindness".  Blindness here refers to the fact that scientists depend upon data and that data is human created.  The biases of humans must be present in any data collected due to it being created and measured by humans.  So the very first argument presented is the fact that people should not believe solely in science for it must have errors.  I find this idiotic.  Yes, science is done by people.  Yes, people make errors.  However, the knowledge and findings by science are not done by one person; people not only review the work of others, but repeat the experiments.  This replicability of science makes it the best way to construct knowledge, for ANYONE can participate and either attempt to provide more evidence for or refute the claim(s).  Science can be done individually for one's own sake, and it is; science is how people learn, period.  This is where errors can arise, for all people have different prior experiences, or biases.  Once peer review occurs, meaning discussing one's findings and letting others attempt to figure out the puzzle, the probability of error is reduced, and reduced greatly if a large number of people partake.

This makes me want to break apart what is commonly known as the scientific method.  I would break it into "individual science" and "community science".  Individual science is the interplay of questions and physical observations to explain natural phenomena for an individual.  Community science is the interplay of questions and physical observations to explain natural phenomena interpreted by a group of individuals.  Thus, community science is where the ultimate power comes from, for individual biases diminish, especially if the size of the group is very large.  I needed to break this apart for part of the scientific method commonly described in textbooks is the sharing of results.  This only happens in community science.  People need to understand that everyone is constantly doing science, for we are always collecting data and attempting to use it to understand the world around us; our brains are hardwired to do it.  Nowadays people assume scientific knowledge is correct, but if one deeply understands science, they UNDERSTAND that humans constructed the knowledge and that humans have biases.  We have moved passed the once common knowledge that the sun orbits the Earth and will continue to move pass other common misconceptions, especially with the amount of people partaking in scientific research!

That was only chapter one.  Dalai Lama vs Rob Round Two coming up!

The depths of the hot tub...

While hot-tubbing tonight with two of my sisters and one of my sister's boyfriend, a discussion about consciousness took place.  One of my sisters was arguing that animals (non-human) were never behaving, but reacting.  I instantly pointed out the flaw in her logic, but she still did not agree with me.

How is an animal acting scared different from a human acting scared?  We were discussing one of her old dogs and how it would make a mess and act scared upon our arrival.  I argued this was a learned behavior because the dog knew we would not be happy, most likely from some sort of punishment.  She argued this was not a behavior because the dog would have no control over doing the initial "bad" action.  I think my sister is failing to make a connection that her dog's reaction (behavior) changed.  It was not always a scared dog when we returned, even if it did the bad action.  The dog's pattern changed, which is evidence for it learning or, in other words, being able to predict a future scenario.  What I must make clear is that any reaction to a stimulus is a behavior.  Also, any organism that shows a change in behavior to repeated patterns of stimuli would, to me, be evidence of learning and consciousness.

Another interesting comment from my sister was that my obsessiveness with science hinders my ability to view and understand the world.  She then started to argue about morality and how being moral is incomprehensible if one only believes in a life explained strictly by evolution.  I have plans to cover this in depth; I have thought about writing a book on the subject.  I will say that if you cannot see the benefits of caring for one's species in nature, then you are blind to evidence.  All you need to do is spend the time and learn about almost ANY species.

  

Tribute to Christopher Hitchens

I haven't had time to appreciate the life of Christopher Hitchens properly, yet.  I did not know him personally and I only learned about his existence this year, yet he quickly garnered my respect.  His linguistic skills became the example I am striving to achieve.  Being able to speak and write with such accuracy is a skill not respected in today's society, which I feel is a huge drawback.  Christopher Hitchens also stood for science and logic and was unreserved when confronted with anything but.

He also is a great example for how even people of logic act illogically at times.  He drank and smoked heavily, even with all the evidence of those leading to poor health.  He also claimed to be a humanitarian but was for the war in Iraq.  I see these as faults, but view them as articles worth pondering.  How can someone so brilliant and logical fail to use evidence correctly?  How many things in my life do I do that are illogical, yet believe are needed for my sanity?  Tough questions, but I give credit to the life of Christopher Hitchens for exposing them to me.

Lastly, I will share links to some of his debates just so anyone interested can witness his verbal skills and passion of reason individually.  You may not agree with him, but you cannot help but to respect his aura.

Debates Boteach
Debates Sharpton

I will forever remember the impact Christopher Hitchens played in my life.

Cheers to life!