Godly Gambles

Albert Einstein is famously remembered for this sound-bit of dogma, “God does not play dice.” Oxymoron in Einstein’s metaphor that he was, might have been illumined by none other than the Reverend Newton.

A capable Sir could prove in principle the outcome of every cast of die to be completely predictable. Were it possible to calculate every factor—initial position, initial rotation, initial velocity, the makeup of the surface upon which the dice lands and rolls, the plethora of resistances and pressures, etc. and any changes in those conditions during the toss—we could determine every outcome every time. Of course in order to calculate every factor in such an episode would require a God-like observer, one whose act of observation has no impact upon the results.

Such God-likeness has always been a practical ideal driving human scientific endeavor. If the past century has taught us anything it is never to say "never" (or "always") of human scientific formulation. Physical law after physical law, upon closer inspection, has admitted of exception. In the fullness of time, computing capability appeared, accelerating science's ability to model complex systems. When our grandchildren carry processors capable of processing tredaflops per second equipped with then-generation sensors, will quantum uncertainty, that bane of Einstein's genius, appear quite so uncertain?

Without resorting to anything as silly as supernature we are fully justified to expect the dawning of a glorious future day Einstein might have called Immanuel, a glorified humankind in the image of the Gods they once upon a time imagined for themselves. We may cast gowral into our midst, and all its decision is our own... as our laws and prophets foretold "We are all gods."

A Child's Miracle (for Zenhumans)

Now we are convinced
No “miracles,” intrusions of supernatural
into natural world, have ever occurred
What, now, might we mean by the word?
The unlikeliest of unexpected windfalls?
The most fortuitous of improbable occurrences?
The eucoincidence of eucoincidences?
On the tongue can the word continue now to carry
the same sense of wonder and magnificence?
It must… Now, it carries much more.

Poeticism

Adrift alone, to my conscious some curious curve of cosmos
Presents.
My surge to catch with nets of words forms stormy waves sweeping
Past,
Rhythmically crashing against old cliffs of Idio’, bursting prismatic
Futures,
And impact by impact reshaping the lines of shore.

Reconstituting Goldilocks

A certain myopia inheres the popular astrobiological notion of the “Goldilocks zone.” Apart from its grossly homocentric (life-as-we-are-familiar-with-it) assessment of “just right,” drawing a green circle around a solar body grossly oversimplifies the equation. Even if we take the survivability of the range of earth-life with which science is familiar today as paradigmatic for life elsewhere, ring-around-the-sola is a case of extraterrestrial child’s play. The set of conditions conducive to earth-like life—including sufficient chemistry, energy, equilibrium, etc.—can exist elsewhere than on blue marbles.

“Worlds” is a better designation than “earths” in this kind of contemplation since conditions on moons or dwarf planets could prove “just right.” Energy can be supplied by sources other than suns; by geothermal, by gravitation, by chemosynthesis, by radioactivity, etc. Greenhouse gases can warm up worlds distant from their suns. “Dark sides” or “perpetual dawn” regions of hot worlds can be quite stable. Subterranean environments can provide stable conditions where surface conditions are unsuitable. Thick atmospheres can behave like oceans.

If the adaptability and tenacity of life on earth is in any way indicative, worlds which fluctuate between habitable and inhabitable could support earth-like life the likes of which are capable of migration or stints of suspended animation. Worlds on which conditions change gradually (e.g. heat up or cool down) could also allow earth-like life to adapt accordingly. Once upon a time our Earth would have appeared uninhabitable by our present standards of habitability. Radiation resistances, pH resistances, pressure resistances etc. are achieved in earth-life in high degrees.

And we have yet to entertained the anthropic principle. If the life that evolved on earth was that life which was suited to earth-conditions why could not that life that evolves on other worlds have evolved to suit its conditions, conditions we consider “too hot” or “too cold”?

Scary Machinery: Retiring Turing

Within an hour of first reading Turing’s famous 1951 article, I had conceived a machine capable not only of passing but of surpassing Turing’s imitation game. My machine surpasses Turing’s hypothetical machine because it allows me to remove the veil of secrecy between the judge and the machine. My machine surpasses Turing’s hypothetical machine because it would fool all human judges all of the time. The machine? It is a scarecrow with a fan behind it blowing its right arm back and forth.* From a sufficient distance any human observer would instantly judge that scarecrow to be intelligent.

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* A more macabre instantiation of this machine might use a cadaver, positioned standing erect with its right hand raised, moved back and forth by an electric motor. Playback of a recorded human voice might be included in order to prolong the subterfuge.

A Very Google Christmas

Suppose Google were to compile a list of its most valued customers—say all those who made Google their default search engine, Chrome their default browser, Google Earth their default mapping engine, G-mail their default mail server, Google Health their medical records organizer, Picassa their default photo editor, Blogger their default blog, and Youtube their default video outlet.

Now suppose Google were to institute a policy of sending a holiday gift to its all of its valued customers, the value of the gifts were proportional to the value of the data collected from these applications use over the course of a year. Suppose the gift chosen by Google was based on a tally of that data, processed through a series of hierarchical algorithms in order to determine what their valued customers most desired (or needed).

For how many of these valued customers would Google’s gift become the one to which they most looked forward to opening?

Supernatural or Extraterrestrial

Given the current estimate that there are 10²² solar systems in the known universe (give several orders of magnitude), and given the expansive definition of "life" and "intelligence" of present-day biology, given Susan Blackmore's perfections on Drake's Formula, applying the anthropic principle to non-earth-life as we do to earth-life, and acknowledging the apparent possibilities of future technology--many of the brightest big-picture thinkers of our day consider it a virtual statistical certainty that we are not alone in the universe.

Given the widespread ancient belief that the heavens are the domain of the gods, what are the possibilities that the angels/demons, gods/devils of religious mythology are based on historic alien visitations in humankind's past? These extraterrestrials would, of course, have been natural beings; but would have appeared supernatural to our human ancestors; their langauges, like ours, incapable of expressing unfamiliar phenomena except in terms of the familiar, by metaphorics, the likes of which are preserved in the god-traditions which survive to this day. An alien species capable of interstellar travel would have appeared omniscient, omnipotent, immortal, irresistible, inscrutable, capricious... perhaps even benevolent.

Be advised: in many of the accounts, the gods promised to return.