Re #8 I once knew a man who taught people how to bend spoons with their mind. Not everyone could learn, but I did.
Re#3. I nodded in agreement as I read. And yet, there is one parking lot that is so sparely used that I allow myself to break the rules (after double and triple checking for other scofflaws). I think it’s good for the soul.
When I think of spoon-bending, my only frame of reference is 76-year-old Uri Geller (who did so in the '70s, and even recorded an album!), and unless I've missed it, I haven't seen anyone mention him here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller That's all I've got!
I still remember the moment when I was a kid and I realized that "life on other planets" doesn't have to mean humanoid Marvin the Martians, but could mean bugs, or microscopic creatures, and how likely it was that there was life like that. (And also realizing how human-centric so much of my world view was.)
And for multiverse stuff, my favorite multiverse art is the book Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore. I think about it all the time still -- although I'm not sure because I'm thinking about the multiverse bits or just being in awe of how good it is (each of the different timelines is written in a different genre, it's amazing). You might like it!
The occipital lobe in the brain processes everything that comes through our retina. Doctors have been able to capture the resulting electrical signals in real time and decode them into blurry pictures. Faces are easier. Text is harder. There are videos on YouTube. This can't be done with memories because our brains aren't like a solid state drive. When you create a new long term memory it's as if all of the contents of the drive are rewritten into different addresses. That's why memories can't be reconstructed visually. In a sense the secret decoder ring password changes constantly. So whatever you see that is stored is for your eyes only... for now 😉
The multiverse concept that will really cool your noodle is the idea that your consciousness always flips to whichever parallel reality survived fatal encounters. Something like you're in a car accident: all versions of you that died just jump to all versions of you that survive. Any of those times you really thought you would die, infinite iterations of you really did. Sometimes things that would never make you think about death, infinite iterations of you died: going to the supermarket, a brick falls off the roof in one variant. You "live" in the tracks that didn't.
This means that the life you experience may be the longest possible life of all universes.
I kind of love this idea because it implies that all the versions of you could survive in and through other versions of you. I sometimes feel disquieted when I wonder: if you *could* shift or slip into another parallel universe to escape a bad situation, what would happen to the *other* you who was there before? Would you force them into your prior (bad) reality? Otherwise, who would take your place back in the bad-situation universe? And I find that really disturbing, so I love the idea that multiple versions could survive together.
#1 is truly #1....agree whole heartedly and thanks so much for the reminder...we all need it when media and news remind us of doom and gloom....the world is always made better by those believe in the power or learning and change....changing..... :) hopefully first themselves...
As a librarian, looking stuff up to cheer myself up isn’t always effective (probably because it’s my job?). But the idea isn’t bad. Worth a shot, anyway.
I sometimes drive through an empty parking space to park in the empty parking space on the other side of it, so that when it's time to leave I can just drive out instead of having to go into reverse. Don't think I've thought of going through empty parking spaces just to reach another part of the parking lot.
I also think there was a moment where I was so pissed off at a game's bad portrayal of Tezcatlipoca that I picked up my research book on him to continue reading it.
These shared ideas kept me thoroughly entertained! Number four made me laugh because it's hard to imagine how many people in the world must be sitting in front of a computer screen right now 😅
Okay Mark, one at a time, but a general comment first; don't sweat the small stuff! Let the aliens come to us.
1. I am a bibliophile, as you know. I've even made my nominal contribution to the world's libraries - almost 5000 of them now, actually, speaking of preening in the mirror - so I would echo this advice for any person, young or old. As Andy Partridge sang, a book is a 'wisdom hotline from the dead back to the living'.
2. I do this about half the time myself and yet I am aware that it is highly annoying. This may be an opening ambit to many other kinds of more serious misbehaviors that many of us do and know we shouldn't. Speeding is a common event of this type, for instance, but so is 'glancing' at other people who are out of bounds, so to speak.
3. I'm too old to be actually staring at myself in the mirror; I'll let my work do it for me.
4. If the open-world interpretation of quantum theory is correct, then god help those other worlds. But on this one at least, I very much doubt there is anyone else out there who does what I do each day.
5. Ditto from #4.
6. Bryson is a bona fide pessimist and seems unaware of the facts. The barest look at the history of technology shows an accelerated pace that skews off the charts as we approach our present day. There is no reason to suggest this will not continue apace, unless we destroy ourselves along the way.
7. Ditto from #6. Aside from this, we already have the standard technology to communicate across vast distances. It is simply a matter of patience in terms of time and scope of study.
8. Asimov's now proverbial comment on 'sufficiently high technology' coming across as magic comes to mind here. We are magicians yet, its just that we can explain our own magic and generally, are not trying to be taken as other-worldly, as the shamans thought they needed to be.
9. Three is a famous number in Hindu cosmology so there may be some referents out there that suggest its interest. For me, as an aging metalhead, 666 is the only number that matters(!)
10. This is actually MY job. But seriously, no, it is the birthright of every human being to engage in this journey of questioning towards a deeper self-understanding. Its just that I used to get paid very handsomely for doing so and now I don't.
11. Amusing (and amazing) how that one-liner from 'This is Spinal Tap' has had such longevity. Even the CBC used it for an episode title in 'Murdoch Mysteries'. But if you really want to see the real thing, Marshall amplifiers of the UK has actually made one and it shows up in Sam Dunn's 'Metal Evolution' series on one episode, I don't recall which.
Anyway, you asked! Hope you're doing great, BTW, and I continue to be in your debt for that interview you did. Let me know if you ever want to do it again on a specific topic, like education, for instance, as I have a brand new book on teaching out. - Greg
Hey Greg, great feedback! About Bryson's book, it's certainly possible he was just trying to stir the pot with his comments about being stuck in the solar system and he shouldn't be considered an expert but holy cow, there's an immense number of problems to be solved to achieve the dream of interstellar travel. Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson, breaks it down in detail in his story of an interstellar mission on a generation ship.
Clarke! Clarke said it, my bad. Not Asimov. Should have looked that one up. Some scholar I am. Anyways, you must have heard of the nanotech mission to the Centauri system, near light speed with none of the big issues that a Star Trek style vessel would entail.
The thought of someone sitting on their knees, upper half slumped over the bed reading your work in another universe or even on the other side of the world, will now stay etched in my brain for the rest of the day.
Love all the things you talked about. Very thought provoking. But for #8 in your list ... for some reason the number "23" ... not a single digit kept showing up for me! The reason is when playing the lottery many years ago, when they didn't have the "high" numbers they do these days, I was trying to stay under whatever the biggest number was. So I came up with the idea to add up the numbers in my birth year: 1949 ... is 23. Okay. My birthday: 8/15 ... adds up to 23! Then I thought what about the year I graduated from high school: 1967 ... guess what? it is 23! The day I married my now husband, May 23! Kind of weird! So I usually use that number when my husband wants me to pick numbers... I always use 23 as one of them! Just funny and weird to me.
Yeah, even if we can figure out warp speed, then there’s the technology to keep us from turning into goo at said speeds (or “chunky salsa”, as a former physics teacher used to say when we asked him what would happen to the human body in the scenarios he’d cook up in his word problems). But I’ll choose to believe that we just haven’t come up with the answer to that problem yet, and keep enjoying Picard S3 (the number 3!) 🖖🏻
Picard S3 is a lovely nostalgia fest if nothing else! Star Trek's answer to the acceleration/deceleration problem was some kind of magic device called an inertial dampner, I believe, which must be magic indeed.
Oh I do engage in some careful space hopping across the carpark... it feels like cheating in monopoly to make the game quicker. I only enjoy being an odd number but if the first digit is odd it sweetens the pain and my increasing age lessens the actual caring or remembering of how old I am.
Just a little FYI: in #2, you say, "I’ve also seemed to notice that people who do this tend not look about their surroundings very well" ... it appears you forgot the word "about" between "feel" and "people" in the first part.
Also, just because I like to throw this out there when I get the chance - Multiverse theory is not possible (#3) for one main reason: if every possibility is being played out across an infinite number of realities, then one of those possibilities would have to be that there ISN'T a multiverse... which makes the entire concept unworkable.
I've been thinking about your take on multiverse theory, which I don't agree with. Consider the following scenario: if I have an infinitely large deck of cards and somewhere in there is a card which says "actually, an infinitely large deck of cards is impossible, ha ha", does that make the deck of cards disappear?
I think you're misunderstanding my comment. I didn't claim an "infinite" set of anything was impossible, nor that its impossibility makes anything else disappear.
The basic gist of MVT is that there are an infinite number of universes playing out an infinite number of possibilities. In one universe you might be fat, in one you're skinny, in one you're a billionaire, in another you're homeless.... and in one you don't exist at all, but because *you* aren't a theory on multiple versions of you existing, there is no change in the other universes.
If there is a universe for every possible scenario to occur, then one of those possibilities is that "Multiverses don't/can't exist"... and unlike the previous example, multiverses not being a thing would mean they cannot exist outside of that universe.... if they *did* exist, then that contradicts the idea of EVERY POSSIBILITY getting a shot in one universe or another.
It's basically the same concept as "Could God make a rock so heavy that even he couldn't lift it?"
If there isn't a universe where MVT isn't real, then every possibility isn't being played out. If Multiverse theory is real, then in one of the possibilities is that it isn't real... which means that universe is the only universe that *could* exist.
Libraries used to be a great way to lighten one's mood - until the card catalogue was replaced. Now you have to wander the stacks, which works - but only until someone wonders what you're up to.
Re your carpark concern ... my issue is less with people driving across empty spaces than with those who find it necessary to back into spaces rather than just pulling in. The time it takes them to do the 12-point turn, the traffic flow they block ... Ugh. 'Backer-inners' are the bane of my weekly shop!
Rant over.
Great post as usual. I know you're busy now - but know the regular HAT articles are missed!
Re #8 I once knew a man who taught people how to bend spoons with their mind. Not everyone could learn, but I did.
Re#3. I nodded in agreement as I read. And yet, there is one parking lot that is so sparely used that I allow myself to break the rules (after double and triple checking for other scofflaws). I think it’s good for the soul.
Do you still bend spoons in this way?
Not 100% of the time, but if I really focus on the experience I can.
When I think of spoon-bending, my only frame of reference is 76-year-old Uri Geller (who did so in the '70s, and even recorded an album!), and unless I've missed it, I haven't seen anyone mention him here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller That's all I've got!
I still remember the moment when I was a kid and I realized that "life on other planets" doesn't have to mean humanoid Marvin the Martians, but could mean bugs, or microscopic creatures, and how likely it was that there was life like that. (And also realizing how human-centric so much of my world view was.)
And for multiverse stuff, my favorite multiverse art is the book Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore. I think about it all the time still -- although I'm not sure because I'm thinking about the multiverse bits or just being in awe of how good it is (each of the different timelines is written in a different genre, it's amazing). You might like it!
Thanks for the recommendation!
The occipital lobe in the brain processes everything that comes through our retina. Doctors have been able to capture the resulting electrical signals in real time and decode them into blurry pictures. Faces are easier. Text is harder. There are videos on YouTube. This can't be done with memories because our brains aren't like a solid state drive. When you create a new long term memory it's as if all of the contents of the drive are rewritten into different addresses. That's why memories can't be reconstructed visually. In a sense the secret decoder ring password changes constantly. So whatever you see that is stored is for your eyes only... for now 😉
Fascinating!
The multiverse concept that will really cool your noodle is the idea that your consciousness always flips to whichever parallel reality survived fatal encounters. Something like you're in a car accident: all versions of you that died just jump to all versions of you that survive. Any of those times you really thought you would die, infinite iterations of you really did. Sometimes things that would never make you think about death, infinite iterations of you died: going to the supermarket, a brick falls off the roof in one variant. You "live" in the tracks that didn't.
This means that the life you experience may be the longest possible life of all universes.
I... can't... even...
I kind of love this idea because it implies that all the versions of you could survive in and through other versions of you. I sometimes feel disquieted when I wonder: if you *could* shift or slip into another parallel universe to escape a bad situation, what would happen to the *other* you who was there before? Would you force them into your prior (bad) reality? Otherwise, who would take your place back in the bad-situation universe? And I find that really disturbing, so I love the idea that multiple versions could survive together.
#1 is truly #1....agree whole heartedly and thanks so much for the reminder...we all need it when media and news remind us of doom and gloom....the world is always made better by those believe in the power or learning and change....changing..... :) hopefully first themselves...
As a librarian, looking stuff up to cheer myself up isn’t always effective (probably because it’s my job?). But the idea isn’t bad. Worth a shot, anyway.
This was pre Internet era so maybe it was harder to find the bad stuff?
Flicking through the card catalogue is fun, but I don’t know if it’s enough…
1. I didn't personally do this, but would recommend they research how to deal with rejection. It'll come in handy throughout life.
2. I don't think it's a good idea...particularly when random shopping carts are positioned around the parking lot.
3. Only thought of this a couple times, but doesn't seem weird to me.
4. I'll bet there's a lot more than just one person doing what I'm doing.
5. I'm guessing there's only one alternate reality, but open-minded enough to believe there could be more.
6. I don't think we'll make it that far.
7. I totally believe there's life out there...somewhere.
8. No, I never had enough confidence.
9. I don't have any connection with specific numbers, but you should check out what numerology says about '3.'
10. Absolutely! - Thanks for sharing!
I sometimes drive through an empty parking space to park in the empty parking space on the other side of it, so that when it's time to leave I can just drive out instead of having to go into reverse. Don't think I've thought of going through empty parking spaces just to reach another part of the parking lot.
I also think there was a moment where I was so pissed off at a game's bad portrayal of Tezcatlipoca that I picked up my research book on him to continue reading it.
These shared ideas kept me thoroughly entertained! Number four made me laugh because it's hard to imagine how many people in the world must be sitting in front of a computer screen right now 😅
Fair point!
Okay Mark, one at a time, but a general comment first; don't sweat the small stuff! Let the aliens come to us.
1. I am a bibliophile, as you know. I've even made my nominal contribution to the world's libraries - almost 5000 of them now, actually, speaking of preening in the mirror - so I would echo this advice for any person, young or old. As Andy Partridge sang, a book is a 'wisdom hotline from the dead back to the living'.
2. I do this about half the time myself and yet I am aware that it is highly annoying. This may be an opening ambit to many other kinds of more serious misbehaviors that many of us do and know we shouldn't. Speeding is a common event of this type, for instance, but so is 'glancing' at other people who are out of bounds, so to speak.
3. I'm too old to be actually staring at myself in the mirror; I'll let my work do it for me.
4. If the open-world interpretation of quantum theory is correct, then god help those other worlds. But on this one at least, I very much doubt there is anyone else out there who does what I do each day.
5. Ditto from #4.
6. Bryson is a bona fide pessimist and seems unaware of the facts. The barest look at the history of technology shows an accelerated pace that skews off the charts as we approach our present day. There is no reason to suggest this will not continue apace, unless we destroy ourselves along the way.
7. Ditto from #6. Aside from this, we already have the standard technology to communicate across vast distances. It is simply a matter of patience in terms of time and scope of study.
8. Asimov's now proverbial comment on 'sufficiently high technology' coming across as magic comes to mind here. We are magicians yet, its just that we can explain our own magic and generally, are not trying to be taken as other-worldly, as the shamans thought they needed to be.
9. Three is a famous number in Hindu cosmology so there may be some referents out there that suggest its interest. For me, as an aging metalhead, 666 is the only number that matters(!)
10. This is actually MY job. But seriously, no, it is the birthright of every human being to engage in this journey of questioning towards a deeper self-understanding. Its just that I used to get paid very handsomely for doing so and now I don't.
11. Amusing (and amazing) how that one-liner from 'This is Spinal Tap' has had such longevity. Even the CBC used it for an episode title in 'Murdoch Mysteries'. But if you really want to see the real thing, Marshall amplifiers of the UK has actually made one and it shows up in Sam Dunn's 'Metal Evolution' series on one episode, I don't recall which.
Anyway, you asked! Hope you're doing great, BTW, and I continue to be in your debt for that interview you did. Let me know if you ever want to do it again on a specific topic, like education, for instance, as I have a brand new book on teaching out. - Greg
Hey Greg, great feedback! About Bryson's book, it's certainly possible he was just trying to stir the pot with his comments about being stuck in the solar system and he shouldn't be considered an expert but holy cow, there's an immense number of problems to be solved to achieve the dream of interstellar travel. Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson, breaks it down in detail in his story of an interstellar mission on a generation ship.
Clarke! Clarke said it, my bad. Not Asimov. Should have looked that one up. Some scholar I am. Anyways, you must have heard of the nanotech mission to the Centauri system, near light speed with none of the big issues that a Star Trek style vessel would entail.
The thought of someone sitting on their knees, upper half slumped over the bed reading your work in another universe or even on the other side of the world, will now stay etched in my brain for the rest of the day.
Multiversal newsletters? There's a story there, I just know it!
Love all the things you talked about. Very thought provoking. But for #8 in your list ... for some reason the number "23" ... not a single digit kept showing up for me! The reason is when playing the lottery many years ago, when they didn't have the "high" numbers they do these days, I was trying to stay under whatever the biggest number was. So I came up with the idea to add up the numbers in my birth year: 1949 ... is 23. Okay. My birthday: 8/15 ... adds up to 23! Then I thought what about the year I graduated from high school: 1967 ... guess what? it is 23! The day I married my now husband, May 23! Kind of weird! So I usually use that number when my husband wants me to pick numbers... I always use 23 as one of them! Just funny and weird to me.
I'm sure there's not a lick of science or proof in any of this but strangely enough seeing threes in different numbers is comforting.
Yeah, even if we can figure out warp speed, then there’s the technology to keep us from turning into goo at said speeds (or “chunky salsa”, as a former physics teacher used to say when we asked him what would happen to the human body in the scenarios he’d cook up in his word problems). But I’ll choose to believe that we just haven’t come up with the answer to that problem yet, and keep enjoying Picard S3 (the number 3!) 🖖🏻
Picard S3 is a lovely nostalgia fest if nothing else! Star Trek's answer to the acceleration/deceleration problem was some kind of magic device called an inertial dampner, I believe, which must be magic indeed.
Oh I do engage in some careful space hopping across the carpark... it feels like cheating in monopoly to make the game quicker. I only enjoy being an odd number but if the first digit is odd it sweetens the pain and my increasing age lessens the actual caring or remembering of how old I am.
Just a little FYI: in #2, you say, "I’ve also seemed to notice that people who do this tend not look about their surroundings very well" ... it appears you forgot the word "about" between "feel" and "people" in the first part.
Also, just because I like to throw this out there when I get the chance - Multiverse theory is not possible (#3) for one main reason: if every possibility is being played out across an infinite number of realities, then one of those possibilities would have to be that there ISN'T a multiverse... which makes the entire concept unworkable.
I've been thinking about your take on multiverse theory, which I don't agree with. Consider the following scenario: if I have an infinitely large deck of cards and somewhere in there is a card which says "actually, an infinitely large deck of cards is impossible, ha ha", does that make the deck of cards disappear?
I think you're misunderstanding my comment. I didn't claim an "infinite" set of anything was impossible, nor that its impossibility makes anything else disappear.
The basic gist of MVT is that there are an infinite number of universes playing out an infinite number of possibilities. In one universe you might be fat, in one you're skinny, in one you're a billionaire, in another you're homeless.... and in one you don't exist at all, but because *you* aren't a theory on multiple versions of you existing, there is no change in the other universes.
If there is a universe for every possible scenario to occur, then one of those possibilities is that "Multiverses don't/can't exist"... and unlike the previous example, multiverses not being a thing would mean they cannot exist outside of that universe.... if they *did* exist, then that contradicts the idea of EVERY POSSIBILITY getting a shot in one universe or another.
It's basically the same concept as "Could God make a rock so heavy that even he couldn't lift it?"
If there isn't a universe where MVT isn't real, then every possibility isn't being played out. If Multiverse theory is real, then in one of the possibilities is that it isn't real... which means that universe is the only universe that *could* exist.
Libraries used to be a great way to lighten one's mood - until the card catalogue was replaced. Now you have to wander the stacks, which works - but only until someone wonders what you're up to.
Re your carpark concern ... my issue is less with people driving across empty spaces than with those who find it necessary to back into spaces rather than just pulling in. The time it takes them to do the 12-point turn, the traffic flow they block ... Ugh. 'Backer-inners' are the bane of my weekly shop!
Rant over.
Great post as usual. I know you're busy now - but know the regular HAT articles are missed!