On how complex the bookshelf is ..
Background on the book shelf
In the small family room in my house there exists a bookshelf... Its one of many that populate my house. This one in particular stands out for its diversity of its contents. As opposed to the other big bookshelves scattered along the house, this one contains it all. From classics by the Bronte sisters, Lewis Caroll and different Canadian and Nobel Laureates to the most boring books on cooking and travel... I have the habit of sitting to get some sun (when there is sun) opposite the bookshelf, and enjoy my cup of tea or glass of wine, and shamelessly talk on skype or the phone while secretly trying to read the titles of books from the distant couch. Some of the books' titles are covered by family photos and albums, and I am too lazy to go move them, so I play a game of guessing the rest of title or even make up potential names. Not once have I attempted the unwise move of pulling a book and reading it. I know how that will go.
Anyways, I love catching new names everytime I sit of my favorite place on the couch. and this is how my thoughts started to build up to the point that I shared them to my SO and now I am writing this because he suggested that I organize my thoughts.
Looking at the book and thinking small scale
A while back a friend of mine introduced me to the amazing fog of quantum mechanics. I say its fog because that's how my mind reacts everytime I hear the word Quanta ... or Quantum mechanics... just like how to word Copenhagen pops up in my mind ... just like how gravity looks like a spiderweb with a insects bending it everywhere ... I am digressing ... Anyways, the idea of probability waves is so beautiful that I always think of Quantum physicists as the people who are trying to convey to us how "its there but its not really there until we look at it" and in my mind's eye, I see them trying to teach is that "No... the person next to you is built of atoms, those have tiny tiny particles, but wait they are not really particles... and since that person is constructed this way then every person I see is - crazy as it may sound to someone else - is a multitude of probability wave ... mind you, she or he is not a giant probability wave,,, but each of those probabilities equates to a certain value that adds up to produce her or his shape and the the clothes and where they hand looks when they raise it and how their foot lands when they move it ... its amazing ... I can't do this all the time, but when a department colloquium is boring enough, I try to see the audience as probability waves ... I wonder how the sound waves travelling from the speaker would look like at the exact moments the vocal chords emit it... or how the brain waves look like while they are traveling through the probability waves that are the nervous system to reach the vocal chords.. Excuse my biological ignorance, although that may not be the exact way we generate sound waves, I am just trying to picture the mechanism by which sound waves will interact with probability waves ... may be they don't, but its fun to wonder about it ...
Anyways, the point I am trying to reach after all this is that while looking at the book shelf, I had the fascinating notion that first: these books are probability waves just like everything else ... and to extend this further ... in another dimension, this same bookshelf may look the same but slightly different.... then ..
Going big scale
The bookshelf is a humongous number of quanta, but it still is part of an insignificant house in an insignificant town, province, country,... etc in an insignificant solar system in a Galaxy with billions of stars with their own solar systems may be .. and it is literally not that interesting at all even by the standards of the mostly harmless planet that we live upon ... Once upon a time these books and the shelf that contains them were stardust, they were single celled organisms at one point ... they were trees or they were animal poop .. they were food on table or they were the containers that contained the food on the table ... those books and the bookshelves might have been you or I or Alexander the great .... they may have been anything physical ... or not .. depending on who is talking ...
An astronomer would sit on my favorite seat on the couch and think of the books as the insignificant blip on the blue dot that is totally insignificant ...
A physicist, a philosopher, an artist and a SETI scientist could have a very long and hot debate on how the object of my affection is merely a physical mass, information bits, something or nothing, our testament to the greatness of human mind, sociological view into the past and a compass to the future, and our best letter to our closest celestial neighbors and so on ... Sorry, this is very primitive a description but you get the picture ...I am just saying that on the macro physical level, any human mind can be as descriptive as one can get ...
Which leads to thinking about ...well...
Looking at the book and thinking multiple scale (present past and future --- multiverse)
the complexity of the bookshelf is not restricted to the now...
Going back in history: two days ago, two nights ago, a month ago, each of these books as they were being organized on the shelf by Jo-Ann ... each of the book as they were purchased by the late Professor Kane ... each of those books as they were stored as neuron transmissions in his amazing brain (but that's a different dimension) ... Each of these books as they were being written ... These are infinite (to my feeble mind at least) numbers of frames of past tense ... fast forward to the now, they are the bookshelf ... then look unto the future and the future might already be here.... just frames ahead of the me who is writing THIS very word ... This bookshelf is proving to be so interesting so far ... but I can play this game with anything really ....or can I?? But wait ... variation in time brings about thoughts about variation in space ... universe is us or multiverse? I don't know ...
The bookshelf and thinking human scale
When you put the bookshelf and its contents on one side, and we enter the realm of the human mind, it's an even more wow-inducing level ... on the level of the mind, we create stories all the time ... I think our perception of time is another story ... but moving on, stories and stories ... I can't think of a finite possibility ... these books are but a tiny sample from about a hundred or two hundred humans ... It adds up the level of the human synthesis ...Human interactions and history... Human psychology and behavior ... emotions ...
Evolutionary biology ...dreams? So many levels ...
Even better if we think that what .. crap I can't remember what I was going to write here because someone called me ... sorry about that..
Looking at the bookshelf and thinking simulation hypothesis scale
Yeah, that's my favorite part when you go complex enough ... Are we part of a simulation? If so, are books somehow a lower-level creation of the creation of the maker of the simulation? Do they reflect the higher level code, or are they just curious primitive attempts of the creation to become an "adult" and start afterwards to figure out what is this ... I can make many crazy assumptions and ask some weird questions here ... I will come back one day but I am in a hurry to write this and go pee..
At some point ... looking at things and I as the observer .. I end up with the infinitesimal level of quantum mechanics .. the atomic level .. the macro level ... astronomical level ... human cognition level .. human psychology level ... human creation level ... human interactions with the ecosystem level ... the other things like culture and history and economy and so many other branches get off ... and of course philosophically speaking this might all be a big pile of crap :)
If I - the boring geologist - got these many weird ideas in a mere 10 mins of string thinking (no math or meth were involved), and I am not known for my creative streak ... I wonder who and how took that idea and added the depth of knowledge about three or disciplines ..let's say biology, physics, and statistics ... and had a better grasp of logic, may be a language or two (which reminds me, add the complexity of languages and how we are limited by them in our thinking, and you get a whole new level of complexity - in my humble opinion) let's say computer language(s) and mathematics ... this person will have an amazing ground to build upon...
I wish I could add geology to the Complexity-riddle-tool-kit for beginners..
I would love to be in that person shoes ... to try and tie it all together ... So seriously ...
Who studies these levels of complexity simultaneously and have they figured out a way or multiple ways to link those different levels? Is there the odd link lurking somewhere within the building blocks of all of these levels??
Oh did I mention the quantum leap as an analogy to human's facial micro-expressions when they are talking to each other? This is total hocus bogus, but just saying :)
And finally the Black Hole analogy ... All of the book shelf with its 18 sections ... reminded me of my mental image of how the surface of the black hole looks like when you go and die on it :)
I hope I have more than 18 sections as a splatter of information on the surface of that crazy scary thing ...
That's an initial trial to organize my thoughts .... back to fucking correlating...
In the small family room in my house there exists a bookshelf... Its one of many that populate my house. This one in particular stands out for its diversity of its contents. As opposed to the other big bookshelves scattered along the house, this one contains it all. From classics by the Bronte sisters, Lewis Caroll and different Canadian and Nobel Laureates to the most boring books on cooking and travel... I have the habit of sitting to get some sun (when there is sun) opposite the bookshelf, and enjoy my cup of tea or glass of wine, and shamelessly talk on skype or the phone while secretly trying to read the titles of books from the distant couch. Some of the books' titles are covered by family photos and albums, and I am too lazy to go move them, so I play a game of guessing the rest of title or even make up potential names. Not once have I attempted the unwise move of pulling a book and reading it. I know how that will go.
Anyways, I love catching new names everytime I sit of my favorite place on the couch. and this is how my thoughts started to build up to the point that I shared them to my SO and now I am writing this because he suggested that I organize my thoughts.
Looking at the book and thinking small scale
A while back a friend of mine introduced me to the amazing fog of quantum mechanics. I say its fog because that's how my mind reacts everytime I hear the word Quanta ... or Quantum mechanics... just like how to word Copenhagen pops up in my mind ... just like how gravity looks like a spiderweb with a insects bending it everywhere ... I am digressing ... Anyways, the idea of probability waves is so beautiful that I always think of Quantum physicists as the people who are trying to convey to us how "its there but its not really there until we look at it" and in my mind's eye, I see them trying to teach is that "No... the person next to you is built of atoms, those have tiny tiny particles, but wait they are not really particles... and since that person is constructed this way then every person I see is - crazy as it may sound to someone else - is a multitude of probability wave ... mind you, she or he is not a giant probability wave,,, but each of those probabilities equates to a certain value that adds up to produce her or his shape and the the clothes and where they hand looks when they raise it and how their foot lands when they move it ... its amazing ... I can't do this all the time, but when a department colloquium is boring enough, I try to see the audience as probability waves ... I wonder how the sound waves travelling from the speaker would look like at the exact moments the vocal chords emit it... or how the brain waves look like while they are traveling through the probability waves that are the nervous system to reach the vocal chords.. Excuse my biological ignorance, although that may not be the exact way we generate sound waves, I am just trying to picture the mechanism by which sound waves will interact with probability waves ... may be they don't, but its fun to wonder about it ...
Anyways, the point I am trying to reach after all this is that while looking at the book shelf, I had the fascinating notion that first: these books are probability waves just like everything else ... and to extend this further ... in another dimension, this same bookshelf may look the same but slightly different.... then ..
Going big scale
The bookshelf is a humongous number of quanta, but it still is part of an insignificant house in an insignificant town, province, country,... etc in an insignificant solar system in a Galaxy with billions of stars with their own solar systems may be .. and it is literally not that interesting at all even by the standards of the mostly harmless planet that we live upon ... Once upon a time these books and the shelf that contains them were stardust, they were single celled organisms at one point ... they were trees or they were animal poop .. they were food on table or they were the containers that contained the food on the table ... those books and the bookshelves might have been you or I or Alexander the great .... they may have been anything physical ... or not .. depending on who is talking ...
An astronomer would sit on my favorite seat on the couch and think of the books as the insignificant blip on the blue dot that is totally insignificant ...
A physicist, a philosopher, an artist and a SETI scientist could have a very long and hot debate on how the object of my affection is merely a physical mass, information bits, something or nothing, our testament to the greatness of human mind, sociological view into the past and a compass to the future, and our best letter to our closest celestial neighbors and so on ... Sorry, this is very primitive a description but you get the picture ...I am just saying that on the macro physical level, any human mind can be as descriptive as one can get ...
Which leads to thinking about ...well...
Looking at the book and thinking multiple scale (present past and future --- multiverse)
the complexity of the bookshelf is not restricted to the now...
Going back in history: two days ago, two nights ago, a month ago, each of these books as they were being organized on the shelf by Jo-Ann ... each of the book as they were purchased by the late Professor Kane ... each of those books as they were stored as neuron transmissions in his amazing brain (but that's a different dimension) ... Each of these books as they were being written ... These are infinite (to my feeble mind at least) numbers of frames of past tense ... fast forward to the now, they are the bookshelf ... then look unto the future and the future might already be here.... just frames ahead of the me who is writing THIS very word ... This bookshelf is proving to be so interesting so far ... but I can play this game with anything really ....or can I?? But wait ... variation in time brings about thoughts about variation in space ... universe is us or multiverse? I don't know ...
The bookshelf and thinking human scale
When you put the bookshelf and its contents on one side, and we enter the realm of the human mind, it's an even more wow-inducing level ... on the level of the mind, we create stories all the time ... I think our perception of time is another story ... but moving on, stories and stories ... I can't think of a finite possibility ... these books are but a tiny sample from about a hundred or two hundred humans ... It adds up the level of the human synthesis ...Human interactions and history... Human psychology and behavior ... emotions ...
Evolutionary biology ...dreams? So many levels ...
Even better if we think that what .. crap I can't remember what I was going to write here because someone called me ... sorry about that..
Looking at the bookshelf and thinking simulation hypothesis scale
Yeah, that's my favorite part when you go complex enough ... Are we part of a simulation? If so, are books somehow a lower-level creation of the creation of the maker of the simulation? Do they reflect the higher level code, or are they just curious primitive attempts of the creation to become an "adult" and start afterwards to figure out what is this ... I can make many crazy assumptions and ask some weird questions here ... I will come back one day but I am in a hurry to write this and go pee..
At some point ... looking at things and I as the observer .. I end up with the infinitesimal level of quantum mechanics .. the atomic level .. the macro level ... astronomical level ... human cognition level .. human psychology level ... human creation level ... human interactions with the ecosystem level ... the other things like culture and history and economy and so many other branches get off ... and of course philosophically speaking this might all be a big pile of crap :)
If I - the boring geologist - got these many weird ideas in a mere 10 mins of string thinking (no math or meth were involved), and I am not known for my creative streak ... I wonder who and how took that idea and added the depth of knowledge about three or disciplines ..let's say biology, physics, and statistics ... and had a better grasp of logic, may be a language or two (which reminds me, add the complexity of languages and how we are limited by them in our thinking, and you get a whole new level of complexity - in my humble opinion) let's say computer language(s) and mathematics ... this person will have an amazing ground to build upon...
I wish I could add geology to the Complexity-riddle-tool-kit for beginners..
I would love to be in that person shoes ... to try and tie it all together ... So seriously ...
Who studies these levels of complexity simultaneously and have they figured out a way or multiple ways to link those different levels? Is there the odd link lurking somewhere within the building blocks of all of these levels??
Oh did I mention the quantum leap as an analogy to human's facial micro-expressions when they are talking to each other? This is total hocus bogus, but just saying :)
And finally the Black Hole analogy ... All of the book shelf with its 18 sections ... reminded me of my mental image of how the surface of the black hole looks like when you go and die on it :)
I hope I have more than 18 sections as a splatter of information on the surface of that crazy scary thing ...
That's an initial trial to organize my thoughts .... back to fucking correlating...
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