What is Language?

I was writing about the use of analogies and some of the dangers in using them to describe astrophysical (or quantum) properties. This got me thinking about mathematics and how we use it to keep our minds working at purely abstract levels. When I think about something, I like to boil things down until I can ascertain the essentials… what is the simplest, most general description of something. When I applied this analysis to the concept of mathematics, I came up with the fact that it is, first and foremost, a language. In the end, I began to think hard about what a language really is and how our brains use it. This led me to start anew and delve into the more general concepts of what a language is and then analyse the specific case of mathematics.

When studying anything uniquely human, there some inherent difficulties that one would not find with other subjects. Obviously, there is no way to step outside ourselves and become objective…ensuring a certain level of bias. Another issue is, as far as I know, there are no other instances of sentient, language-capable beings that we could study in order to provide contrast or comparison. With language, the difficulties are even more so, since there are very few examples of humans without a primary language. There are a few, third-world instances of deaf children being left to develop in silence and isolation. I recall the stories of so called, “wild-men,” who developed without any human contact. However, these stories are few and far between and often suspect.

What is the most general definition of language?

“A structured set of instructions detailing the interconversion of information to and from a more ordered state of representation”

“A structured set of instructions, common to, two or more distinct systems, detailing the interconversion of their own internal logic to and from some intermediary form of information exchanged between them.”

That seems like a fair enough generalization… now to drill down to the specific case of Human Language:

“A structured set of mutually understood signals, capable of being transmitted and received by two or more persons.”

“…for the purposes of information exchange”

The human ability to use language is best understood as a evolutionary trait, unique to the human species and emerging sometime after our divergence from our primate progenitor… roughly 1 or 2 million years ago. The ability to utilize language has proven to be one of the most successful adaptations ever selected for by the process of evolution. Our ability to cooperate and communicate is most certainly at the core of our success as a species.

Without a significant amount of mental rewiring, the evolutionary process is very unintuitive and there are many misconceptions about it. It is ironic that our inability to intuitively grasp the vastness of evolutionary time, is in fact, a byproduct of evolution itself. Evolution, through the process of natural selection, is nothing magic… you can’t read any purpose or grand design into it. It is simply the fact that genetic accidents happen, most of which are detrimental but on the rarest of occasions, it might produce some trait which increases the odds (however slightly) of its barer reproducing and thus, endowing all offspring with a similar, cumulative, statistical advantage. Therefore, the end result are not necessarily the best mechanism for accomplishing a given task and/or the most efficient… but rather, the culmination of a series of useful accidents. God does play dice with the universe…except that he can keep rolling until he wins and his losses disappear before his next turn.

OK… what does language do for us?

The human brain has the ability to use language at a very low level, such that it is deeply integrated into our mental processes. Acquisition of a primary language occurs at a very early stage in our development and from that point on, we encode and process most thoughts as language. Whereas, a computer must constantly translate to and from a higher language, to an unintelligible, intrinsic logic before being able to process information…the brain uses the same language for processing as it does for communication. The fact that we can think in a common language means we can receive, process and transmit language seamlessly and efficiently. This suggests that we are “hardwired,” for social interaction, able to interface and cooperate with our fellow humans on a fairly deep, intimate level.

The utility of language extends far beyond communication… it is also the software our minds use to catalog and index information. When we encounter something in our environments, we have various sensory and emotional indices from which to search. If we had only sensory-derived pictographic, auditory and/or tactical criteria for which to organize information, we would be severely limited. Language gives us added layers of descriptive power for which to describe and thus, index information.

There are certain concepts and ideas which transcend the tangible, concrete world on which we live. There are more esoteric… more abstract concepts which do not lend themselves to material descriptions or analogies. These things have no physical form and thus, the mind has no way to grasp the concept without language. Without language, our minds would be incapable of forming abstractions and our reasoning would be forever bound by the limits of our senses. Thus, language enriches our minds and empowers our species to conceptualize the world with added detail and clarity.

Our animal nature has an intrinsic ability to store emotional data along with our more objective perceptions. We are able to function as would any other animal, intuitively grasping certain cues from our environments without rational efforts. We know when we have seen a given thing before; when things just aren’t right; when we are in danger and a host of other intuitive perceptions about the world around us. Just because we have some increased capacity to think, and use language, does not entitle us to think of ourselves separate and distinct from the animal kingdom. Whereas lower animals have only their intuition, we possess the additional capability of employing rational thought and strategy to the problems we encounter. This is who we are, like it or not. We have limitations and if you really think about it, they make perfect sense if you consider where we came from.

Our lower natures inform our higher reasoning and visa-versa… they do not operate completely independent of one another. When we are forced to reason abstractly… especially with things outside of our earthly dimensions, our animal natures begin to cry out. We are forced to constantly suspend the feeling of disbelief in order to continue reasoning with unphysical or unearthly concepts. Our minds have certain intrinsic assumptions about the world which are deeply ingrained and, quite possibly, organically encoded in our species. There are also concepts and behaviors which our minds are programmed to forcefully reject. Even though our language may permit us to describe and encode a given far-out concept… there is a large component of intuitive, visceral information which is absent or contradictory.

The loss of our intuition is registered as a feeling of discomfort and vulnerability. When we lose our intuitive grasp on something, most of who, and what we are is forever denied access to that information. Our primitive brain can not use that information to make a better sense of the world around it, recognize danger or aid in our survival in any way. An important distinction worth noting is that our rationality and ability to reason are adaptations to a antecedent animal precursor brain… not the other way around. There is no inherent sense of self, residing in our higher centers of reason. Thus, pure abstractions… things without form or substance are often perceived as unreal and/or superficial. For things that have some road back to an objective reality, there are mental tools we can employ such as analogies and substitutes. However, for things like cosmological space-time, quantum effects and extra dimensions… there is no clear path to the familiar. For such cases, we humans have developed a special language called mathematics.

Mathematics is a language, such that it fits the general description that I laid out:

“A structured set of instructions, common to, two or more distinct systems, detailing the interconversion of their own internal logic to and from some intermediary form of information exchanged between them.”

It is also a human language, such that:

“A structured set of mutually understood signals, capable of being transmitted and received by two or more persons.”

“for the purposes of information exchange”

However, this language is much more specialized and can be described as:

“ …describing the evolution of quantitative relationships between components of a dynamic system”

More specifically:

“A logical framework, beginning with axioms from which all things must follow, such that a clear, logical line of reason exists between any derivation, back to some fundamental axiom. “

Once a derivation has been proven to be true, it may then be added to the lexicon and from that point, assumed to be true in all applicable cases (until proven untrue). This framework establishes ever-more complex, encapsulations for witch, future users may simply assume to be true… without the need to prove (or understand) the inner logic therein. Since mathematics is a logical language, each new encapsulation invariably yields a definitive increase to the descriptive power of the language. Whereas, verbal languages are subject to obfuscations, ambiguity, drift and a whole list of interfering factors….the rigor and precision of mathematics ensure that there is always a unambiguous, incontrovertible, and reproducible result.

Most mathematical concepts have no corporal form and it is extremely difficult to conceptualise such things on a intuitive level. There is a certain sense for small quantities, such that we know when we see a pair or a group of three, four and maybe a few more. However, beyond that there is no intuitive grasp of large quantities. There are also concepts that have absolutely no basis in reality, like zero, infinity, imaginary numbers, negative numbers, and so on. Thus, operating with mathematics is a purely rational exercise and our animal brains have almost no mechanism to grapple with such abstract concepts.

Another problem with the human brain is that our higher centers of reason have a very limited ability to calculate. Our short-term memories (STM) are both shallow and transient, such that we can only store a few independent facts, at a modest level of precision, for a very short amount of time… and without constant rehearsal, these facts rapidly fade away. What is worse, is that our ability to perform conscious, rational thought is strictly a linear process, such that we can only focus on one problem at a time. Thus, the unaided human brain is wholly inadequate to the task of performing complex operations, or keeping track of more than just a few, relatively imprecise values… and really falters when trying to simultaneously track values and perform operations.

Due to the intrinsic difficulties of our brains in dealing with complex reasoning, Mathematics is almost always done in written form however, any mathematical statement is also a completely valid sentence in when spoken aloud. The act of writing it, allows our feeble minds to break down complex problems into manageable parts and keep track of arbitrarily large sets of discrete values, with any desired precision.

We humans have also developed technological tools in order to perform laborious and/or difficult calculations. As the these tools get faster and more capable, the descriptive power of the language become ever-more comprehensive. Without human frailties working their way into calculations, the confidence in our calculations, level of precision and speed at which we can arrive at results has revolutionized human society.

Until recently, mathematics was in the sole domain of mathematicians, who were called upon to give mathematical rigor to existing classical ideas. Most of today’s scientists are first and foremost, mathematicians, who work within a specialized mathematical framework, specific to their scientific discipline. Long gone are the days of the Philosopher-scientist, who applied pure reason and thought experiments to the pursuit of knowledge.

Today, a theory not expressed in the language of mathematics would not be taken seriously and quite possibly ridiculed by the scientific community. Even expressing classical ideas in mathematical form would be inadequate, if it was evident that a mathematical framework did not underlie it’s formation. The scientific community believes that invention and discovery have progressed to such a point, that our evolutionary constrained brain is incapable of making sense of these crazy-new realities. Thus, the conventional wisdom is that only through the rigors of mathematics, can we rise above our organic inadequacies, ensure our human frailties do not skew our thinking, and only then can we make progress.

Anyone feel like this some days?

Have you ever felt this way?

Cold-Hard Universe

Why have I been born into this incalculably-vast universe for this infinitesimally-small sliver of time? What is the point of having the intellectual Ware-With-All to conceptualize my absolute insignificance to the universe and my inescapable erasure from it?

There are hundreds of billions of stars in just this galaxy…. and then, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The cold-hard truth is that: nothing anyone can ever do, or has ever done, in the history of life on this planet, can ever have the possibility of being significant enough to leave, even the slightest trace, that any of us ever existed. What’s worse: even if some other being in the universe had the knowledge of our existence, the entire universe will (without question) eventually burn out, disintegrate and decay out of existence. The only shred of hope is the slim chance that there are multiple universes. That being true, the probability that another, life-supporting universe would intersect this one, is minuscule. What is worse: is that even in the unlikely event that all of these preconditions were somehow met, it is currently believed to be impossible to access (or even share information with) another universe, given our current understanding of the laws of physics.

With this in mind, I see no good reason to get out of bed and expend my hard-won energies on lessening the entropy of this ungrateful universe.

A Conservative, Christian, Agnostic?

I was born with 5 feeble senses and have had to do my best to make sense of the world through them. Luckily, my fellow humans have devised tools in order for me to extend those senses into realms which would otherwise be inaccessible. My evolved brain gives me the ability to employ reason and deduction which allows me to compensate for the inadequacies of my innate senses. The problem I have, is that much of my society expects me to forgo the uses of my senses and reason and accept certain paradigms as unquestionably true.

At some point, I was informed by my fellow humans that there was a realm beyond my senses regardless of the enhancements I might employ. There was a supreme being who created the heavens and the earth. Two thousand years before my birth, he sent his only son to instruct mankind in his expectations and requirements to be employed from that point forward. This messenger amassed a group of followers who in turn, recounted their impressions to a variety of authors, who in turn transcribed them onto a written record. These various records were combined into various compendiums as time progressed and finally reworked into a tome of collected works which we call the Bible. The conventional wisdom is that this book, though written by man, was directed by the divine influence of the creator and thus, accurately details the requirements and expectations of God.

According to many Christians, the passages in the bible are historically accurate and verbose and their meanings are absolute… therefore not subject to a large degree of interpretation. They also tend to believe that bible is transcendent and the passages can be interpreted irrespective to the time and/or context which it was written.

There is little question in my mind that I would be happier if I could get past some of these sticking points. I have a great admiration and respect for my country, the United States and am a firm believer in the ideals, values and goals held by it’s forefathers. I wholeheartedly believe that the success of this country was derived from it’s Judeo-Christian underpinnings and the further we stray from those values, the closer we come to it’s undoing. I identify with religious conservatives and find it easier to live with and trust them. I share most of their values and agree with almost all of their views on society. Conversely, I find secularists and other left-leaning ideologues loathsome, for the most part, and even dangerous when it comes to sociological issues. I believe that belief in God is benifical and intergral to the continued success of society.

So therein lies my dilemma… I am a conservative Christian trapped in the mind of a secularist. Most conservative Christians find my agnosticism utterly horrifying and repugnant (when i choose to reveal that fact). I am either rejected by my peers or relentlessly proselytised by them.

On the other hand, when I reveal my conservative beliefs to a liberal-minded secularist, they find it equally repugnant and horrifying. I suffer an equal loss of social standing and am subjected to an equivalent degree of intellectual admonishment.

Therefore, I am left to conceal the fact that I am agnostic… and clandestinely search for the intellectual bridge which can span the gap between reason and divinity. I have seen things in the world which make me wonder, which make me challenge my doubts… but it has never been enough to get me all the way there. Conversely, I have never came across anything which is incompatible with God or even much in the way of contradictory evidence. At the limits of what is knowable… there is plenty of room for a God… therefore, I am convinced that the two intellectual pursuits are completely compatible.

If there is a God, and he endowed us with senses and intellect and placed us in this universe… surely he meant for us to employ those senses in every way possible and uncover everything we could about his creation. If at some point, we discover something which is contradictory to the Bible… then we can either accept it’s limitations as a work of man, or in man’s interpretation of the work of God… but it makes no sense to discount new information.

Since God created the universe for us, surely he wrote things in the stars for us to someday read. Thus the heavens herald the word of God just as loudly and accurately as the Bible. When faced with new, objective information found in God’s creation… as measured by the senses he endowed us with… I can find no good reason not to update, append or correct previously held beliefs. Maybe the author of that verse in the Bible interpreted God incorrectly… maybe we are interpreting the author incorrectly; maybe it was written allegorically instead of literally; maybe the meanings have changed since that time… I don’t know, there are many explanations.

I also find it difficult to accept some commonly held beliefs as to God’s purpose for us all and I also have difficulty to the extent, which he intervenes in peoples lives. I would be more comfortable with a God who snapped his fingers at the birth of the Universe, setting in motion all of the matter, energy and time… possibly with the foreknowledge that we as his children would emerge from the chaos and eventually develop into loving, free-willed beings. It seems to me that a supreme being would want his children to adopt his wisdom, his love and develop into beings who were independently capable of expressing those qualities without regard to the promise of eternal euphoria, or eternal anguish. That choice would be meaningless if there weren’t diametric qualities which one could adopt just as easily. I also believe that merely cloning the qualities of the creator without individualizing them in some unique way would be also meaningless (certainly boring). Therefore, it stands to reason that a creator would want his children to merge, re-express and dare I say, improve upon those qualities which he espouses. Given the equal levels of undesirable qualities one could choose from, it must be expected that a continuum of individuals must emerge, few of which expressing entirely god-like qualities and equally few expressing entirely ungodly qualities. Where is cutoff? At what point does God decide that you have too many ungodly qualities and then… what does he do with you? Does the creator expect you to devote a significant portion of your limited life on worshiping him? Or, rather is life a gift for you to enjoy and the creator gains satisfaction from the way you live it and how you discover an employ those god-like qualities on his other children. Can it be that a failure to be “saved,” or failure to recognize some abstract truth be a deal-breaker for God? Maybe he wants you to just do your best, enjoy life and be kind to his other children rather than sing,chant and repeatedly thank him for the gift. Maybe he just wants children who he can have a meaningful, enriching eternity with especially if they are a unique, free-willed being who may not be exactly like him… but enriching eternity none-the-less.

Curiosity

I have a certain curiosity about the world around me… I need to know how things work. Regardless of the scope or dimension of a thing, I can’t stand to have it function before my eyes without knowing the inner workings. This holds true for the smallest constituent of matter to the largest conglomeration of the cosmos and includes everything in between. As a child I would have said this curiosity was insatiable… evidenced by the fact that very few things were spared from my propensity to disassemble. Reassembly was not always my strong suit but after a lifetime of being scorn for such behavior, I have had to learn, to both: resist the urge and become more adept at putting things back together. As technology has progressed… things have gotten cheaper, more brittle and, unless I am mistaken… booby trapped by the manufacturers. So it seems that all the forces of society conspire against this kind of curiosity and actively discourage us hands-on types.

I have never been particular comfortable in an academic setting… though I muddled my way through quite a bit of it. It was the thing to do… it is what was expected of me and has given me credentials to earn more money than I would have had I not gone that route. I was exposed to literature and concepts which I might not have been exposed to otherwise… and for that I am grateful. However, with respect to the science and mathematics that I spent so much blood, sweat and tears to learn… I can remember nothing of it. Not only can’t I remember the details but when faced with learning anew, this same subject matter today, I find no shortening of the learning curve… no benefits from ever having know it. I find this fact both ironic and upsetting. What a colossal waste of time and money!

Though the world has taken it’s toll on my curiosity and society has yielded little time to devote to such impractical matters, there exists a yearning deep within my soul to discover the universe. I hear voices in the back of my mind telling me that such fruitless endeavors are indulgent and not productive. Knowing how the world works will not make me wealthy or allow me to retire young. The fact that no matter how much time and effort I devote into these pursuits, nothing I can unveil will compare to those persons who have devoted their lives to these subjects. The level of mathematical training required to understand, let alone contribute to the cutting-edge subject matter requires years of formal training, built upon some sort of organic talent. Unless I had some sort of freakish aptitude for mathematics… which I don’t seem to… getting there is impossible at this point.

So what? Why even bother? Why don’t I try to find something which suits my talents better? Something for which my unique way of thinking can be better utilized? Something which can even make me wealthy? The truth is: I can find nothing which interests me or holds my attention like the universe. Maybe it’s the fact that it is at the threshold of my abilities which makes it so tasty? Maybe it’s the fact that the conventional wisdom is convinced that I can’t do it? or am I just oblivious to the concept of futility and have some sort of self-destructive psycho-pathology? Who knows?

Rommel: Analysis

I recently took up reading about Erwin Rommel, the German Field Marshall nicknamed: The Dessert Fox. He was arguably the best military tactician who ever lived. It seems that just about anyone who faced him in combat, quickly gained a healthy respect for his abilities. The book I am now reading, is a sort of “lessons-learned,” critique of his own exploits during WWI. In reading this, I am gaining an appreciation of just how he learned his art.

The book is a dispassionate account of his first battles as a young officer with the 124^th infantry regiment, during WWI. Though what he was describing represented the most desperate of circumstances, you do not get that feeling from his words. The most harrowing of circumstances are set fourth in succinct, dispassionate terms, which belie the seriousness of what he must be experiencing. However, what he lacks in emotion, he makes up for in terms of clarity… he imparts only the pertinent information, critiques his performance and then summarizes the important lessons that he learned. This style would not work for a lesser man than he… it is only because of who he is, and the absolute intensity of what he is describing that I find it enjoyable. I want to know what he knows: but first, I must understand the man and how he came into being. His writing accomplishes this effectively.

In the end, regardless of all that he accomplished… he lost. His forces were eventually routed from North Africa. His defense of France did not stop the allied invasion. His half-hearted support of the plot to assassinate Hitler resulted in Hitler’s continued reign and Rommel’s coerced suicide. In his defense, he was given impossible tasks against an overwhelming force with a madman at the helm of state. He fought harder and more skillfully than most could have in his place and there are few who disagree… least of all, those who battled against him.

Russian Bloggers: Shut Up!

I am reading mainstream, Russia-Press excerpts, suggesting that Dick Cheney created the Georgian situation to influence the US Presidential election. The blogosphere is overflowing with Russian and American backers of this theory.

You know what Russia? I am just not in the mood for your leftest, “bushaphobia,” right now… I have had my fill of that particular psychosis from my own countrymen. If you think Putin has some sort of moral superiority over Cheney:

I would tell you to ask Alexander Litvinenko, however he somehow inhaled a lethal dose of Polonium-210.

Maybe you could ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky what he thinks… if you can find whatever prison he is locked away in…. and if he hasn’t already had an unfortunate accident.

Ivan Safronov … oops, he “accidentally,” fell out a window

Paul Joyal: shot and killed while shopping. (Still alive, my bad) (he was walking on his driveway)

Anna Politkovskaya: gunned down.

You Russian bloggers have got to be kidding… worry about your own guy.

Russia, Georgia and Soviet Union Redux

The Russian bear has awakened from it’s post-Soviet slumber. The Georgians find themselves in the unenviable position of being the first meal of a very hungry bear. The fall of the greater, Soviet Union was strictly a matter of economics… not an ideological collapse, as is commonly believed. I suspect that very few of the ruling class have had ideological epiphanies in the intervening years. Certainly what has ensued since the fall of the Soviet Union has not been a stunning example of the advantages of free-markets and/or democracies. The same people who brought you the KGB, re-education camps, gulags, proxy wars, expansionism and the cold war… are still there albeit 19 years older.

Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, is masterfully positioned to be the dominant supplier of Europe’s energy needs. The recent spike in oil prices, has given Russia the one thing it really lacked: cold, hard cash.

With this new infusion of cash, all of the ingredients now exist, and another incarnation of the evil empire, is about to emerge. Putin spent the better part of this decade, consolidating power within his own country and now it appears, that the time has come to consolidate power throughout the region.

Unfortunately, the Georgians somehow convinced themselves that they were ready to take on the Russians and oust them from their ill-gotten, national territory. This is not to say it wouldn’t have happened anyway… but in this case, it certainly looks as though the Georgians gave them the excuse they needed. Maybe in forcing the Russian’s hand, so early in the game, the west will be shaken from it’s post cold-war euphoria, before it’s too late.

Simply training the Georgians was obviously a mistake… maybe we showed them one too many Rambo movies. I would have to guess that the Georgian leadership allowed emotions to rule their military and political judgments. What else could make a 19000 man, ill-equipped, militia… take on a 650000 man, professional army with thousands of advanced jets, tanks and precision munitions? Whomever came up with that battle plan should be shot. This is yet another reason I would like to cite when I read the, “where is America,” comments in the news reports. You want us to put our children in that situation? American soldiers fight alongside other professional soldiers, in matters of national interests and security. The Georgian army went into South Ossetia, did some horrible things of their own (to civilians) and then went to pieces when the Russian army came to throw them back out. That is not the behavior of a professional army… we couldn’t have taught you that! God, I hope the Ukrainians have better leaders and/or better soldiers than that, otherwise, I hope you all remember how to speak Russian.

I envision a much friendlier Europe in the coming years. Our post-cold war position of, “most evil country,” will soon be replaced with the unspoken title of, “lesser of the two evils.” I kind of missed Russia all of these years… it was nice to have a sane, rational enemy who you could count on. These intervening years of fanatical terrorists and bomb-laying Iraqis, has not had the same ambiance as did the Soviet days. No one pretended to like us as they did when you were around. Being the most evil country just hasn’t given us the same thrill as it did you. I guess every ying needs it yang?

Quantum “Reality…” as I see it anyway.

The quantum world is an elusive, strange place, which doesn’t appear to resemble the one in which we live. All things in this world sit atop the bubbling froth of Plank-scale, space-time, and is not unlike the white-speckled static seen on a television with no signal. A confusing level of reality, which blurs both time and space to the macro-world observer. Time jumps around randomly, both forwards and back, resulting in a blur of recent-past, present and near-future. Euclidean concepts such as up, down, back and fourth are scrambled into a blurry cloud. If you think of it as a blur in space-time, you needn’t concern yourself with the quasi-realistic precepts of the Uncertainty Principle. Suffice to say that nothing you might divine from a given state of a quantum mechanical system will predict any future state of that system. One can only say that a given state, has a certain likelihood of being found, within the scope of all possible states, at any given instant. This says nothing about what the object is or exactly how it works only how it and others exactly like it should behave.

 

 A quantum mechanical object has a physical manifestation in the macro-world sense. It is a bit of matter which occupies a given point in space-time. It’s proximity to the quantum froth distorts it’s existence with respect to our, macro-world, point of view. It’s macroscopic manifestation is best understood in terms of a cloud or field, such that the “bit” of matter is occupying a range of space-time, with near simultaneity. The complete description must take into account it’s macroscopic, cloud manifestation and it’s quantum-world, point-particle manifestation.

 

As an exercise, think of space-time as a body of clear water, having an observer at the surface, and another at the bottom…the water being agitated by a vibrating force, which causes the light rays travailing through the medium to become erratic. The two observers have not changed, but to the other, each appears as a distorted jumble of color. If these vibrations were regular enough and applied equally throughout the entire body of water, the patterns of distortion would become fairly uniform. The distorted images, though not an accurate representation of the original object, will distort the real picture, in a constant way. Each observer would be able to create some sort of representative, albeit distorted model of the other side.

 

Extending this analogy to our experience of the quantum world: quantum fluctuations distort the true nature of whatever quantum object we are observing, in some sort of universally-regular way; that rather than representing a illusion of light which could be swept aside, with no real-world consequences; the distortions we observe in space-time are in fact real consequences which can not be swept aside. When two objects in the water world come together, the apparent distortions eventually disappear as they approach each other and they simply interact as two macroscopic objects normally would. When a quantum object interacts, the space-time distortions do not disappear, and in fact, are/become reality… therefore, the object interacts with other things as both the macroscopic manifestation (field/cloud) and the microscopic manifestation (Particle).

 

Quantum mechanics requires a random, chaotic, universe to explain it’s predictions. This is antithetical to the placid, smooth, space-time for which Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity requires. He once asserted that,”god does not play dice with the universe.” In fact, this very divide still exists today and renders quantum mechanics and general relativity, mutually-exclusive to each other. Either one, or both of these theories must be incomplete. There has to be something missing… something more fundamental to at least one of them. Einstein worked on this problem in the latter 1/3 of his life, taking the fruitless effort all the way onto his deathbed. The unification of these two theories, yielding a complete description of the universe is the, “Holy Grail,” of physics, still today. It is sometimes called, “The Theory of Everything (TOE).”

 

 Another consequence of the quantum mechanics is a bizarre interconnection found to exist between certain spatially-separate, quantum-mechanical systems. Quantum Entanglement, as it’s called, has been demonstrated experimentally. Einstein sarcastically refereed to this as “spukhafte Fernwirkung (translation: “Spooky Action at a distance).” His theory of Special Relativity placed an absolute speed limit on the universe: 3.0 x 10 8 m/s/s (aka: speed of light). The problem arises with the instantaneous nature of the entangled relationship… how do the two systems know what the other is going to do? He even stated that he would rather be a cobbler, than a physicist, if this universe were truly this way. Einstein was convinced that entanglement was nothing more than an error in the mathematics, which would eventually be discovered.

 

 Quantum Entanglement has walked the gauntlet of science since that time, and has taken it’s place as a distinct sub-set of theoretical physics. In recent years, there has been an unparalleled effort to exploit this phenomena by scientists and industry alike. The computer-chip manufacturers have considerable interest in this area.

 

 Computer-chip manufacturers have doubled the speed, resolution and capacity of computer components about every two years (More’s Law). Manufacturers have already began to run into roadblocks, stemming from the physical laws, which govern the macro-universe. Speed of light (relativistic) issues, entropy(order)/enthalpy(heat) issues (thermodynamics), and quantum mechanical limitations all stand in the way of progress. The speed of computer processors has already began to approach these limitations, forcing manufacturers to concentrate on distributing tasks to multiple, parallel, processors instead. It won’t be long before this approach reaches it’s limitations. The quantum world provides the only known hope in circumventing the relativistic limitations which surely apply here, in the macro-world. Entanglement theory boasts the most obvious breach of relativity and therefore, is a good place to begin looking. Many, if not all of the largest manufacturers have teamed up with academia to investigate this and other quantum phenomena.

 

 Quantum Information Theory (QIT) as it’s called, is a collaboration of Academic Physicists, Academic Computer Scientists, Computer Software Companies and chip manufacturers. The goal of this effort it to exploit quantum effects, and make a faster, more powerful computer. Theoretically, processing would not be restricted to the normal linearity of normal space-time, operations could occur in the cloud of quantum-mechanical space-time. This would allow for simultaneous operations to occur in a distribution of time around a given moment, instead of the restrictive, sequential nature of time that applies to the macro-world. Entanglement might allow for instantaneous, wireless communication; possibly allowing separate quantum computers to act as one. The possibilities are numerous and exciting however, there is no guarantee that any of this effort will pay off.

 

 There are few other human endeavors which require the better part of one’s lifetime to learn and, probably the rest of it fruitlessly toiling away, in obscurity. The investments in material and resources to merely make an attempt to detect things in the quantum world are outside the means of all but the wealthiest nations. All of this investment must be made knowing full and well that the thing you spend your whole life and national fortune on, may have never, really existed in the first place. Even worse (and much more likely), you will never get close enough to the object of your quest, to determine if it is real or not. Failure is not just a possibility but is mostly probable. In spite of all these things, there are individuals and societies willing to make these sacrifices for the greater good of mankind. This is not to say that the payoff wouldn’t be monumental and deservedly so, but to devote an entire life or an entire fortune in the pursuit of these elusive concepts is quite a tall order indeed.

The Dawn

As the majesty of the starlit heavens give way to the azure dome… there is the dawn: the smoky -gray curtain slowly obscures my window on the cosmos… forcing me back into the world. This is not to say that the dawn is without it’s beauty but rather, it has lost it’s allure to me long ago. It was my time in the Army, during my youth, which forever tainted the dawn. Fear of the dark is the naive irrationality of a child whereas… fear of illumination is something only the military can instill.