Spiritual Warfare, Free Will, Types of Christians
I’ve been thinking about spiritual warfare. I’ve been asked what it is and have had a bit of trouble defining it. It’s not like we actually do suit up in armor and go out swinging our Bibles as swords. That’s just allegory. So I thought maybe I’d try more allegory to attempt an explanation. I know this still won’t answer fully, but hopefully it gives some perspective. It will also touch on some other subjects.
God gave us free will. This is a pivotal point for Christianity. I’ve used my free will to choose to serve God. It is my choosing that makes it meaningful. If God made us praise him what value would that praise have? Not everyone will make this same choice. I don’t like that. I don’t think God likes that, either. It is his will that all be saved, that he have an intimate, personal relationship with each and every person ever born. By giving us free will he has allowed that some will walk away from him. These people are headed for hell, a place not made for them. This breaks God’s heart, and should break ours. We should be devastated when we think of people who haven’t accepted God’s gift of grace. That’s everything you need to know to understand spiritual warfare. Of course, I haven’t arranged it and made the right explanations. So here that comes.
Outside is a desolate wasteland. It’s cold and raining all the time. Food is scarce so there is fierce competition for anything that is available. This is just a hostile environment to try to live in. God has provided a place for people, this is his house. It’s warm and dry and comfortable. There’s plenty of food and places to sleep and we’re welcome here. This is the place designed with us in mind. God made this place for us to live in for all eternity. I’m a Christian, and I’ve chosen to live here. But that’s not the case for everyone. Some people have rejected God and live naked out in the cold and rain. Those people huddle under small rock overhangs trying to stay as dry as possible. In order to eat they have to hunt, and that means leaving the overhang and going out into the cold rain. They stumble barefoot across the rocky crags and get soaked through, suffer hypothermia and risk death just to find a rabbit or a turtle or a squirrel to feed themselves and their family. But there are other dangers beside the cold. Other people are also hunting to feed their families. With so little to go around, encounters with other people can turn deadly. Then there are the roaming packs of wolves. They’re hungry and whether they take a rabbit, an elk or a man doesn’t matter to them. These are people in need. In God’s house we find two basic types of Christians. Remember that God designed his house for us to stay in, so some Christians come here and like it so much they never leave. They sit by the fire and tell stories about how nice God’s house is. They eat at the table and talk about how plentiful the food is. They wear the clothes and talk about how good God’s provision is. They sleep in the beds and talk about how God made everything so perfect. I’m of the other sort. I know that God’s heart is breaking for those outside, just as it broke for me when I was out there. I remember what it was like and my heart breaks for them, too. So I, and others like me, go out after them. God won’t let us drag them in, they have to decide that this is where they want to be. We can only tell them about this place, and the one who prepared it for us. We know all the dangers, so we put on the full armor that God provides for us, and we go out armed. Our armor protects our feet from the sharp rocks we walk across, and from the wolves who sometimes attack. We’ve had to wield our weapons on occasion to fight off those devil dogs. We use our shields to block the cold rain, but we don’t stay completely dry. We often slip and fall, and it hurts. When we travel together we have someone to help us back to our feet, but we’re often alone, searching for someone who’ll accept our help. When we come across people who live out here it’s not our armor or shield or sword we use but kindness and love. We always take a little food from the table and we offer it to them. We tell them the same stories I told you about earlier, but we tell them to those who need to hear and not to someone who’s telling the same stories. We invite them back with us, to come inside and meet God. Sometimes they just take our food and want to hear nothing of God’s love. Sometimes they listen to what we have to say but then ask us why, if God loves us so, is it so cold and wet, and they can’t see past their circumstances and shoo us away. But sometimes they want to come home with us. These we lead, and sometimes carry if we have to. Too often we come back alone to eat, sleep and get warm so that we’re ready to go out once more and try. And that’s okay with me. I’ll go out into the discomfort, but I’ll go out warm and rested and fed. I’ll go out into the danger, but I’ll be equipped to handle it. I’ll go out into the need, but I’ll go with provisions. And I’ll keep coming back to rest, eat and recuperate. Because I’ve seen what happens to those who try to do more good by staying out and living among those people. Sometimes I find them, too, huddled in a rocky cave, trying to stay out of the rain, ready to go out on the hunt.
Spiritual warfare is leaving the safety and security of our church culture and braving the nasty, dangerous world outside for the sake of the people Christ died for.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Religion 6, Christian Stupidity and Creation/Evolution
For cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/03/1101860 / The Expelled Evolutionist
Well, I started to read the whole blog before commenting, but first it didn't seem worth it, next it seemed not worth it. I do have a favorite entry, it's 6/4/08 1033. Scott's a scientist. There is a physical limit to how far back in time we can see. It has to do with distance. Big Bang light has long ago passed by any place Earth will ever be. Can't see it.
A lot of (real) scientists are so smart that all they can see is how stupid a lot of Christians are.
So Christian Education might be the best place to start. Some inherently stupid Christians take a literal reading of Genesis to mean that God created the heavens and the earth in the first 24 hour period. Now, you may ask, why is that belief inherently stupid. There is a Hebrew word translated in this passage as “day” that leads to this uninformed belief. It gets there through the fact that our day is roughly 24 hours so that must be what it means in Genesis. Genesis speaks of the darkness and the light of that, and following days. I can’t pretend to tell you what that light was, but I can tell you that it wasn’t light from the sun. Before you call me a heretic, stupid Christian, read what happens on day 4. For the first three days there was no sun, so I can tell you that this light of creation wasn’t sunlight, so the “day” wasn’t based on a solar day and the premise of 24 hours flits away. Next is the “day” itself. “Day” is a perfectly acceptable term in English for the term used in Hebrew in some circumstances. There are other perfectly acceptable terms in English in their circumstances. The term in Hebrew refers to an unspecified but definable period of time, and once the period is defined it becomes specified. Loosely explained, I’ll do to it sometime. Sometime is really vague. If I do it on some particular Thursday afternoon then sometime gets defined and specified – a year and a month and a date from 1 pm to 2:30 pm. The Hebrew term could mean the time of planting or the time of harvest, the reign of a king, often stated as “the day of King So and So”, the day of your destruction, the time when angels were making babies with those sweet looking human women, the day of our Lord, he does get more than 24 hours right? It can mean suppertime, it can mean an era. It can mean the time when God created the heavens and the earth. Now it’s defined. In Biblical terms there was darkness and there was light, during that time God created the heavens and the earth. It doesn’t say what the darkness means, it doesn’t say what the light means, and it doesn’t give us a time reference except the context. So, I tend to think that the darkness is down time, there’s God, bored, bored some more, bored too much, maybe he’s hanging out with the angels, no reference to when they were created, maybe they were before everything else, but finally … I tend to think that the light of the creation story is the creative action of God. So, in the light of the first day God created stuff. How long did that first day take? Well if God has always existed, and preexisted the things he made and didn’t speak himself into existence when he said “Let there be light” and if I’m right about the down time then the first day took all of eternity before creation plus however long God decided to take from “Let there be light” to the formation of Earth. Forgetting about the first part and focusing on the creation part, this could be a millisecond, it could be billions of years. God acts in ways that are right and just and holy. He could have taken the billions of years way, created heaps and gobs of, presumably, 12 basic building blocks of matter, let them interact according to the nature he gave them – which we call physical laws. Then, billions of years later, some dust coalesced into the earth. Or, maybe God created an entire, formed universe, with an earth that contained fossils that appear to be from animals and plants that never really existed, like a book written by a writer using a nam de plume. The fictional author was never born, never lived and hasn’t died. Maybe the fossils, or frozen “remains” have always been there since that instantaneous creation. So maybe he created using processes, or maybe he created all at once with the allusion of process. Considering the rest of the creation story, which is step by step and not the creation of all things at the 6th day state, I’m going with God is a god of process, which based on the evidence left by the process, infers billions of years. So day one is defined by the time from the first instant of creation to the formation of Earth, and that definition specifies a start and a stop point, except for the difficulty if you include the eternity before. The second day is defined by the end of the first day until the waters were separated, and that definition specifies a start and stop point. Now, we may not know what the exact dates specified by the definition are, but we know that they exist and are discreet. The time between them, certainly not eternity, probably not billions of years. Then the creation of plants and animals. Sure, God could have created them in a finished state, but I think he’s a god of process. What way did God choose to create, what process did he, in his holy wisdom, use? And what name would a scientist put on that process? And that’s the key point. If God created in an instant but created evidence that creation took billions of years then we know two things about God. 1) He’s deceitful. 2) He’s impatient. I don’t believe either of those two are true about God. If the evidence of creation says it took billions of years. There’s nothing in the Bible that says otherwise. This will be argued by the stupid Christians who think that the first day was marked by the darkness and the light of the sun three days before it was created.
So that key point, the crux of the argument. Actually, the reason there is an argument: The Bible says that God is creator and the evidence of God is all around for every man to see. That is, all around us is the evidence of creation. Scientists look at the evidence all around us and say billions of years. Stupid Christians look in the Bible and say days because they are stuck on a bad translation and accept the translation of the word as the word. Please see the aside below. I guess that would be an aunder. The stupid Christians call the scientists heretics and won’t listen because they won’t compromise their beliefs. And it’s just that, their beliefs. If they believed the world was the center of the cosmos and the sun went around the earth then don’t confuse them with the facts, it’s what they believe. If the evidence that God left behind, that extols his wonder, power and wisdom, is contrary to their belief then keep it to yourself. They want to hold steadfastly to their belief more than they want to actually learn about God. When our very public, very loud church leaders are, as has widely been the case, stupid Christians who say creation happened in days not billions of years, the scientists who look at the empirical evidence decide that the religious view must be wrong. If the Bible is wrong on this then it may be wrong on any or everything, so it is not to be trusted nor believed. The Church, at large, denies the science because they’re ignorant of what their Bible actually says, they’re lazy Christians who won’t bother to search it out and find it’s true meaning, not even the true meaning of it’s words. The scientific community denies the Church because so many church leaders speak in ignorance and arrogance, passionately misrepresenting God’s word because they’re too lazy or too busy or too important or too humble to search out the truth of God’s word.
As a Christian I say this. The argument is the fault of Christians. Those who say that the evidence of creation is all around but then refuse to look at it. The science is no more, and probably far less, imperfect than the religion. The imperfection of Christianity is revealed by Christianity. One faction says gays have no place in the church, another says the place of gays in the church is preaching from the altar. These views are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be right, but they can be, and I think are, both wrong. In any event at least one is wrong on this point. There are many other points. Some points may be just preference but many are matters of holiness or unholiness. Where these differences occur, at least one denomination is wrong, or unholy. I think that probably every denomination is wrong on something or other, so just a little unholy, and that’s unintentional. But we see that Christian character stand up where we’re going to stick to our convictions no matter what. No matter what the evidence God leaves for us says, no matter what the Bible actually says, no matter if God himself stands before us and screams the truth at the top of his lungs. Baptists are devoted to being Baptists and Presbyterians are devoted to being Presbyterians and in the process we’ve proven that we can’t stand to the rigors of scientific scrutiny and like any ridiculous theory we’re cast aside. By our ignorance and through our arrogance we’ve denied the gospel to thousands. I don’t want to stand before God and hear him say, “I spent billions of years creating, you called that truth a lie and pushed away all these people that I was seeking. They never came to me and shortly I will cast them away into the lake of fire because my righteousness demands it. It’s time for you to give an account. Why was it more important for you to hold to your institutional beliefs than to bring that one soul to me?”
The aside (aunder)
There are oodles of Christians who swear that the KJV is completely accurate. These two things kill me. In Luke 14:26 Christ says that you can’t be his disciple unless you hate your parents, siblings, etc. So if you want to follow Jesus, it’s not that you have to hate sin, it’s not that you have to hate “the world” in the way we commonly use that phrase, you have to hate the people themselves. You have to honor your parents, but you have to hate them. You have to hate your wife, so all those people getting divorced, those must be the Good Christians. Second, “Thou shalt not kill.” Now, here it says kill, period. Shalt not, strongest possible phrasing. Under no circumstance is it allowed to kill. Part A. It doesn’t say what you’re not allowed to kill, just that you’re not allowed to kill. So can you kill the sacrifice? No. God directed the Hebrews to do it but it’s a sin. KJV of altar sacrifice – sinning for atonement for sin. Part B. Saul was king. He’s directed to kill everyone and everything of the enemies. He comes back with the king as a trophy and animals that will make great sacrifices – the sinning for atonement for sin. Got got pissed because he hadn’t killed (sinned) enough. Moral, you have to sin completely and thoroughly to please God. Deduction – God delights in our sin.
Well, I started to read the whole blog before commenting, but first it didn't seem worth it, next it seemed not worth it. I do have a favorite entry, it's 6/4/08 1033. Scott's a scientist. There is a physical limit to how far back in time we can see. It has to do with distance. Big Bang light has long ago passed by any place Earth will ever be. Can't see it.
A lot of (real) scientists are so smart that all they can see is how stupid a lot of Christians are.
So Christian Education might be the best place to start. Some inherently stupid Christians take a literal reading of Genesis to mean that God created the heavens and the earth in the first 24 hour period. Now, you may ask, why is that belief inherently stupid. There is a Hebrew word translated in this passage as “day” that leads to this uninformed belief. It gets there through the fact that our day is roughly 24 hours so that must be what it means in Genesis. Genesis speaks of the darkness and the light of that, and following days. I can’t pretend to tell you what that light was, but I can tell you that it wasn’t light from the sun. Before you call me a heretic, stupid Christian, read what happens on day 4. For the first three days there was no sun, so I can tell you that this light of creation wasn’t sunlight, so the “day” wasn’t based on a solar day and the premise of 24 hours flits away. Next is the “day” itself. “Day” is a perfectly acceptable term in English for the term used in Hebrew in some circumstances. There are other perfectly acceptable terms in English in their circumstances. The term in Hebrew refers to an unspecified but definable period of time, and once the period is defined it becomes specified. Loosely explained, I’ll do to it sometime. Sometime is really vague. If I do it on some particular Thursday afternoon then sometime gets defined and specified – a year and a month and a date from 1 pm to 2:30 pm. The Hebrew term could mean the time of planting or the time of harvest, the reign of a king, often stated as “the day of King So and So”, the day of your destruction, the time when angels were making babies with those sweet looking human women, the day of our Lord, he does get more than 24 hours right? It can mean suppertime, it can mean an era. It can mean the time when God created the heavens and the earth. Now it’s defined. In Biblical terms there was darkness and there was light, during that time God created the heavens and the earth. It doesn’t say what the darkness means, it doesn’t say what the light means, and it doesn’t give us a time reference except the context. So, I tend to think that the darkness is down time, there’s God, bored, bored some more, bored too much, maybe he’s hanging out with the angels, no reference to when they were created, maybe they were before everything else, but finally … I tend to think that the light of the creation story is the creative action of God. So, in the light of the first day God created stuff. How long did that first day take? Well if God has always existed, and preexisted the things he made and didn’t speak himself into existence when he said “Let there be light” and if I’m right about the down time then the first day took all of eternity before creation plus however long God decided to take from “Let there be light” to the formation of Earth. Forgetting about the first part and focusing on the creation part, this could be a millisecond, it could be billions of years. God acts in ways that are right and just and holy. He could have taken the billions of years way, created heaps and gobs of, presumably, 12 basic building blocks of matter, let them interact according to the nature he gave them – which we call physical laws. Then, billions of years later, some dust coalesced into the earth. Or, maybe God created an entire, formed universe, with an earth that contained fossils that appear to be from animals and plants that never really existed, like a book written by a writer using a nam de plume. The fictional author was never born, never lived and hasn’t died. Maybe the fossils, or frozen “remains” have always been there since that instantaneous creation. So maybe he created using processes, or maybe he created all at once with the allusion of process. Considering the rest of the creation story, which is step by step and not the creation of all things at the 6th day state, I’m going with God is a god of process, which based on the evidence left by the process, infers billions of years. So day one is defined by the time from the first instant of creation to the formation of Earth, and that definition specifies a start and a stop point, except for the difficulty if you include the eternity before. The second day is defined by the end of the first day until the waters were separated, and that definition specifies a start and stop point. Now, we may not know what the exact dates specified by the definition are, but we know that they exist and are discreet. The time between them, certainly not eternity, probably not billions of years. Then the creation of plants and animals. Sure, God could have created them in a finished state, but I think he’s a god of process. What way did God choose to create, what process did he, in his holy wisdom, use? And what name would a scientist put on that process? And that’s the key point. If God created in an instant but created evidence that creation took billions of years then we know two things about God. 1) He’s deceitful. 2) He’s impatient. I don’t believe either of those two are true about God. If the evidence of creation says it took billions of years. There’s nothing in the Bible that says otherwise. This will be argued by the stupid Christians who think that the first day was marked by the darkness and the light of the sun three days before it was created.
So that key point, the crux of the argument. Actually, the reason there is an argument: The Bible says that God is creator and the evidence of God is all around for every man to see. That is, all around us is the evidence of creation. Scientists look at the evidence all around us and say billions of years. Stupid Christians look in the Bible and say days because they are stuck on a bad translation and accept the translation of the word as the word. Please see the aside below. I guess that would be an aunder. The stupid Christians call the scientists heretics and won’t listen because they won’t compromise their beliefs. And it’s just that, their beliefs. If they believed the world was the center of the cosmos and the sun went around the earth then don’t confuse them with the facts, it’s what they believe. If the evidence that God left behind, that extols his wonder, power and wisdom, is contrary to their belief then keep it to yourself. They want to hold steadfastly to their belief more than they want to actually learn about God. When our very public, very loud church leaders are, as has widely been the case, stupid Christians who say creation happened in days not billions of years, the scientists who look at the empirical evidence decide that the religious view must be wrong. If the Bible is wrong on this then it may be wrong on any or everything, so it is not to be trusted nor believed. The Church, at large, denies the science because they’re ignorant of what their Bible actually says, they’re lazy Christians who won’t bother to search it out and find it’s true meaning, not even the true meaning of it’s words. The scientific community denies the Church because so many church leaders speak in ignorance and arrogance, passionately misrepresenting God’s word because they’re too lazy or too busy or too important or too humble to search out the truth of God’s word.
As a Christian I say this. The argument is the fault of Christians. Those who say that the evidence of creation is all around but then refuse to look at it. The science is no more, and probably far less, imperfect than the religion. The imperfection of Christianity is revealed by Christianity. One faction says gays have no place in the church, another says the place of gays in the church is preaching from the altar. These views are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be right, but they can be, and I think are, both wrong. In any event at least one is wrong on this point. There are many other points. Some points may be just preference but many are matters of holiness or unholiness. Where these differences occur, at least one denomination is wrong, or unholy. I think that probably every denomination is wrong on something or other, so just a little unholy, and that’s unintentional. But we see that Christian character stand up where we’re going to stick to our convictions no matter what. No matter what the evidence God leaves for us says, no matter what the Bible actually says, no matter if God himself stands before us and screams the truth at the top of his lungs. Baptists are devoted to being Baptists and Presbyterians are devoted to being Presbyterians and in the process we’ve proven that we can’t stand to the rigors of scientific scrutiny and like any ridiculous theory we’re cast aside. By our ignorance and through our arrogance we’ve denied the gospel to thousands. I don’t want to stand before God and hear him say, “I spent billions of years creating, you called that truth a lie and pushed away all these people that I was seeking. They never came to me and shortly I will cast them away into the lake of fire because my righteousness demands it. It’s time for you to give an account. Why was it more important for you to hold to your institutional beliefs than to bring that one soul to me?”
The aside (aunder)
There are oodles of Christians who swear that the KJV is completely accurate. These two things kill me. In Luke 14:26 Christ says that you can’t be his disciple unless you hate your parents, siblings, etc. So if you want to follow Jesus, it’s not that you have to hate sin, it’s not that you have to hate “the world” in the way we commonly use that phrase, you have to hate the people themselves. You have to honor your parents, but you have to hate them. You have to hate your wife, so all those people getting divorced, those must be the Good Christians. Second, “Thou shalt not kill.” Now, here it says kill, period. Shalt not, strongest possible phrasing. Under no circumstance is it allowed to kill. Part A. It doesn’t say what you’re not allowed to kill, just that you’re not allowed to kill. So can you kill the sacrifice? No. God directed the Hebrews to do it but it’s a sin. KJV of altar sacrifice – sinning for atonement for sin. Part B. Saul was king. He’s directed to kill everyone and everything of the enemies. He comes back with the king as a trophy and animals that will make great sacrifices – the sinning for atonement for sin. Got got pissed because he hadn’t killed (sinned) enough. Moral, you have to sin completely and thoroughly to please God. Deduction – God delights in our sin.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Educating Carlton: Part 3
Dimensional perspective
There’s a lot to consider in physical dimensions. Let’s look, in turn at 1,2,3, and 4. Let’s do it as a being in each dimension.
So we’re a one dimensional being, we live on a line along with billions of other one dimensional beings. We know two of them. We’ll call them Left and Right. While we live on the line Left is always on one side of us and Right is on the other. That is the extent of our ability to measure our surroundings. We may be able to expand ourselves from one inch to one light year, but all we know of our surroundings is Left is on one side and Right is on the other. If the line curves in 2 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed at all. If the line coils in 3 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed at all. If the line hoop-di-doos, or whatever it does in 4 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed.
Now let’s be two dimensional and live in a plane. Now we have a much greater ability to measure the world around us. We can significantly change our experience by moving through our world, which we could not do in line. Ownership becomes relevant because we can own a large or small area of our plane. This is much like our experience on the surface or earth, or, perhaps more so, as a boat on the ocean where we’re limited to the surface. We can move around freely left, right, fore and back and can’t even imagine and up or down (unlike the boat on the ocean where down is a frightening thought). If our line had been like a piece of string that we could lie our straight or curved on our desktop, or wrap around our finger, then our plane is like a piece of cloth. If our plane lies flat then our experience is left, right, fore and back. If our plane hyperboles then our experience is still left, right, fore and back. If our plane is wrinkled our experience is still left, right, fore and back. We would be completely oblivious as we went on about our lives. But in our plane we can measure. So we take a line and we turn it back on itself, we put in a bunch of beings to take up a fixed area inside the bite, so now the line surrounds roughly a circle. We post a few beings where the line comes together to keep it pinched in, it looks kind of like the Mississippi near New Orleans. We can measure the amount of line around all these beings and mark the line off in feet. We start our measurement at 0 feet and go around the loop, where the line comes back to itself is 1000 feet and we have a fixed area inside of that 1000 feet perimeter. Now we pull the line. Something amazing happens. We still have the same, fixed area inside the loop but the marked off measurements are moving past our stationary observers where the line comes back to itself. Those inside the loop can measure out their area and it is the same. Those outside the loop can measure the area and it is the same. To those making measurements the line may have appeared to stretch, but only where it encloses this area not in the straight parts they’re pulling on. Perhaps the measurements at the observers are now 10 and 990, 0-10 is 10 feet and 990-1000 is ten feet, but 10-990 is a perimeter around an area that takes 1000 feet to encompass. As three dimensional observers we can see that the plane puckered. To do this experimentally at home take a plane (cloth) and run a line in a circle (weave a thread through in a circle) then pull the ends of the line (thread). This will approximate what happened in the two dimensional world. But generally the experience in the plane didn’t change, left, right, fore and back. There was an observed anomaly, which could be explained away as stretching, even though you and I know the line didn’t stretch, the world puckered.
Now let’s be a being in three dimensions. This one shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine, as we actually are beings in three dimensions. We have left, right, fore, back, up and down. We can measure, we get volume this time, or space. No matter what we do, our experience of left, right, fore, back, up and down are the same. Here’s where I need to interject. We’ve all seen the drawings of space being warped around a black hole. Looks like graph paper on LSD. But really, if we take a cube 10 light years on a side it contains a volume of 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around “empty” space its volume is 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around a star its volume is 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around a black hole its volume is 1000 cubic light years. Those grid lines don’t mark off distance, they represent a gravity well. They deal with lines of trajectory of a particle (or photon) in free fall near an object with mass. Our measurements of space remain the same. These lines only describe what will happen to our travel through space. For all we know turning on the TV creates a field that warps our three dimensions, we just don’t see that warping because our left, right, fore, back, up and down are experienced the same way to us.
Now to instantaneous travel across warped dimensions.
If our one dimension warped around and touched itself we may be able to transfer to a new spot on the line. We’re going along like always, the line warps, we can’t tell, it warps more, we still can’t tell, it touches itself, nothing happens and we can’t tell, it wriggles, we can’t tell, then it touches itself again and suddenly we’re between Sam and Ted instead of Left and Right. Hello.!?
In our two dimensional world we could travel from point A to point B. We’d go by a route that had some distance and we’d travel at some speed which would mean it took an amount of time. If that world warped over and A touched B we could be at A one instant and then at B the next instant. Travel time of 0. The same amount of time it takes me to travel from here one instant to here the next instant. None. We would go point to point. No route. No speed. Technically not infinitely fast because, no route, no distance travelled. The distance between the points may be great, but still 0 meters travelled in 0 seconds. Some might want to say that is 0m/0s and it is division by 0 and therefore infinite speed, however my here to here in no time is the same and I am definitely not moving at infinite speed. This is also not travelling through a third dimension. We’re not being taken off the plane and placed back on it somewhere else. We never leave the plane, just go from one place on it to another, non-adjacent place. This will become important when we get to “Windows and wormholes” a little later. An important thing to remember is that, except for non-adjacent places touching each other making them the same place for an instant, the distance between those points is constant in the plane. They never get closer to one another except in a third, unknowable dimension.
Now we get to three dimensions again. There’s really not much to say now. You either get it or you don’t. Warping space could make two places closer in a fourth dimension, but not in these three. This may have application in wormhole technology. More on that in the next installment. Space warping back and touching itself may “open a window” between two points that we could step through. More on that in the next installment.
There’s a lot to consider in physical dimensions. Let’s look, in turn at 1,2,3, and 4. Let’s do it as a being in each dimension.
So we’re a one dimensional being, we live on a line along with billions of other one dimensional beings. We know two of them. We’ll call them Left and Right. While we live on the line Left is always on one side of us and Right is on the other. That is the extent of our ability to measure our surroundings. We may be able to expand ourselves from one inch to one light year, but all we know of our surroundings is Left is on one side and Right is on the other. If the line curves in 2 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed at all. If the line coils in 3 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed at all. If the line hoop-di-doos, or whatever it does in 4 dimensions Left is on one side and Right is on the other, our experience hasn’t changed.
Now let’s be two dimensional and live in a plane. Now we have a much greater ability to measure the world around us. We can significantly change our experience by moving through our world, which we could not do in line. Ownership becomes relevant because we can own a large or small area of our plane. This is much like our experience on the surface or earth, or, perhaps more so, as a boat on the ocean where we’re limited to the surface. We can move around freely left, right, fore and back and can’t even imagine and up or down (unlike the boat on the ocean where down is a frightening thought). If our line had been like a piece of string that we could lie our straight or curved on our desktop, or wrap around our finger, then our plane is like a piece of cloth. If our plane lies flat then our experience is left, right, fore and back. If our plane hyperboles then our experience is still left, right, fore and back. If our plane is wrinkled our experience is still left, right, fore and back. We would be completely oblivious as we went on about our lives. But in our plane we can measure. So we take a line and we turn it back on itself, we put in a bunch of beings to take up a fixed area inside the bite, so now the line surrounds roughly a circle. We post a few beings where the line comes together to keep it pinched in, it looks kind of like the Mississippi near New Orleans. We can measure the amount of line around all these beings and mark the line off in feet. We start our measurement at 0 feet and go around the loop, where the line comes back to itself is 1000 feet and we have a fixed area inside of that 1000 feet perimeter. Now we pull the line. Something amazing happens. We still have the same, fixed area inside the loop but the marked off measurements are moving past our stationary observers where the line comes back to itself. Those inside the loop can measure out their area and it is the same. Those outside the loop can measure the area and it is the same. To those making measurements the line may have appeared to stretch, but only where it encloses this area not in the straight parts they’re pulling on. Perhaps the measurements at the observers are now 10 and 990, 0-10 is 10 feet and 990-1000 is ten feet, but 10-990 is a perimeter around an area that takes 1000 feet to encompass. As three dimensional observers we can see that the plane puckered. To do this experimentally at home take a plane (cloth) and run a line in a circle (weave a thread through in a circle) then pull the ends of the line (thread). This will approximate what happened in the two dimensional world. But generally the experience in the plane didn’t change, left, right, fore and back. There was an observed anomaly, which could be explained away as stretching, even though you and I know the line didn’t stretch, the world puckered.
Now let’s be a being in three dimensions. This one shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine, as we actually are beings in three dimensions. We have left, right, fore, back, up and down. We can measure, we get volume this time, or space. No matter what we do, our experience of left, right, fore, back, up and down are the same. Here’s where I need to interject. We’ve all seen the drawings of space being warped around a black hole. Looks like graph paper on LSD. But really, if we take a cube 10 light years on a side it contains a volume of 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around “empty” space its volume is 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around a star its volume is 1000 cubic light years. If that cube is around a black hole its volume is 1000 cubic light years. Those grid lines don’t mark off distance, they represent a gravity well. They deal with lines of trajectory of a particle (or photon) in free fall near an object with mass. Our measurements of space remain the same. These lines only describe what will happen to our travel through space. For all we know turning on the TV creates a field that warps our three dimensions, we just don’t see that warping because our left, right, fore, back, up and down are experienced the same way to us.
Now to instantaneous travel across warped dimensions.
If our one dimension warped around and touched itself we may be able to transfer to a new spot on the line. We’re going along like always, the line warps, we can’t tell, it warps more, we still can’t tell, it touches itself, nothing happens and we can’t tell, it wriggles, we can’t tell, then it touches itself again and suddenly we’re between Sam and Ted instead of Left and Right. Hello.!?
In our two dimensional world we could travel from point A to point B. We’d go by a route that had some distance and we’d travel at some speed which would mean it took an amount of time. If that world warped over and A touched B we could be at A one instant and then at B the next instant. Travel time of 0. The same amount of time it takes me to travel from here one instant to here the next instant. None. We would go point to point. No route. No speed. Technically not infinitely fast because, no route, no distance travelled. The distance between the points may be great, but still 0 meters travelled in 0 seconds. Some might want to say that is 0m/0s and it is division by 0 and therefore infinite speed, however my here to here in no time is the same and I am definitely not moving at infinite speed. This is also not travelling through a third dimension. We’re not being taken off the plane and placed back on it somewhere else. We never leave the plane, just go from one place on it to another, non-adjacent place. This will become important when we get to “Windows and wormholes” a little later. An important thing to remember is that, except for non-adjacent places touching each other making them the same place for an instant, the distance between those points is constant in the plane. They never get closer to one another except in a third, unknowable dimension.
Now we get to three dimensions again. There’s really not much to say now. You either get it or you don’t. Warping space could make two places closer in a fourth dimension, but not in these three. This may have application in wormhole technology. More on that in the next installment. Space warping back and touching itself may “open a window” between two points that we could step through. More on that in the next installment.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Educating Carlton: Part 2
Thinking outside the box
In part 1 I talked a bit about Boss-Einstein Matter. Producing it required temperatures on the scale of 1/1000th of a degree absolute, maybe even colder. In the box thinking says that to make something cold use something colder. If I want cold tea I start with tea at 78F and add ice at 20F and wind up with tea pretty close to 32F. In the northern latitudes this is easy. Put out water in winter, get ice. Making things colder than anything we have presents a problem for in-the-box minds. How do I get ice at the equator? Here we begin with those outside thinkers. Someone observed the cooling nature of evaporation. Water evaporating cooled some amount. Ammonia evaporating cooled more. An enclosed evaporating system was produced that could make ice at the equator. Be careful about leaks. But then we wanted something colder, and colder, and colder. We can produce a really cold artificial heat sink to draw heat off of our matter, but still can’t get to the necessary temperatures with evaporation. (notable: this has become inside the box thinking, but that’s only because it has become common.) To get even colder let’s break away and talk about sound. Let’s say we want it to be quiet. In-the-box thinking says we stop the sources of noise. If you’re driving in the car and need to talk on the phone, park the car. Thankfully, there are those outside thinkers. To make things quiet add sound. Not intuitively obvious. Noise cancelling technology adds in a sound that nullifies ambient noise. A brilliant application of wave theory. When an unwanted sound wave is producing a pressure on your eardrum have a speaker produce a sound wave that applies a negative pressure of the same magnitude. The net is zero pressure on the eardrum and virtual quiet, even though it’s really quite loud. To get colder than we can through evaporation we do the same thing. Except with lasers. And it’s cumulative. So I’d better break away again. We’ve all seen boxing. Boxers train. They use heavy bags. Heavy bags swing. So let’s say there’s a heavy bag swinging and you want to stop it. There’s a pendulum thing going on here, and you have a flexible rod. There’s only so much force you can apply with it, because it flexes. As the bag swings up toward you and gets almost to the top of its arc hit it with the rod. You just imparted a little bit of energy on the bag that acted to lessen it’s overall amount of energy. The bag’s backswing will now be a little less than it would have been, so will the next fore swing. Again, as it nears the top of it’s swing hit it. Keep doing this. The bag will come to a stop. Same bag, same initial energy. Without you hitting it with your little rod it will come to a stop – due to air resistance and friction in its chain – in, let’s say 100 swings. With you hitting it, at appropriate times so that the energy you add works against the system energy and has the effect of lessening it, the bag stops in 70 swings. So adding energy to a system, in the correct way, can cancel some of the system energy. Back to our lasers and cold. Temperature is a measure of the random motion in a system. In our really cold system that is atomic oscillations. Those oscillations are at a fixed frequency. Think cesium oscillations for an atomic clock. Using lasers tuned to the correct frequency we get photons striking the atoms at just the right time to dampen the oscillations. By dampening the oscillations we lessen the amount of random motion in the system. Temperature is driven down below the temperature of anything we have by adding energy to the system. We have achieved what is impossible to the in-the-box mind. Get out of the box. It is errant thinking to say “we can’t” based on “we haven’t.” Instead go with the truth: “we haven’t, yet” because “we haven’t, yet.”
In part 1 I talked a bit about Boss-Einstein Matter. Producing it required temperatures on the scale of 1/1000th of a degree absolute, maybe even colder. In the box thinking says that to make something cold use something colder. If I want cold tea I start with tea at 78F and add ice at 20F and wind up with tea pretty close to 32F. In the northern latitudes this is easy. Put out water in winter, get ice. Making things colder than anything we have presents a problem for in-the-box minds. How do I get ice at the equator? Here we begin with those outside thinkers. Someone observed the cooling nature of evaporation. Water evaporating cooled some amount. Ammonia evaporating cooled more. An enclosed evaporating system was produced that could make ice at the equator. Be careful about leaks. But then we wanted something colder, and colder, and colder. We can produce a really cold artificial heat sink to draw heat off of our matter, but still can’t get to the necessary temperatures with evaporation. (notable: this has become inside the box thinking, but that’s only because it has become common.) To get even colder let’s break away and talk about sound. Let’s say we want it to be quiet. In-the-box thinking says we stop the sources of noise. If you’re driving in the car and need to talk on the phone, park the car. Thankfully, there are those outside thinkers. To make things quiet add sound. Not intuitively obvious. Noise cancelling technology adds in a sound that nullifies ambient noise. A brilliant application of wave theory. When an unwanted sound wave is producing a pressure on your eardrum have a speaker produce a sound wave that applies a negative pressure of the same magnitude. The net is zero pressure on the eardrum and virtual quiet, even though it’s really quite loud. To get colder than we can through evaporation we do the same thing. Except with lasers. And it’s cumulative. So I’d better break away again. We’ve all seen boxing. Boxers train. They use heavy bags. Heavy bags swing. So let’s say there’s a heavy bag swinging and you want to stop it. There’s a pendulum thing going on here, and you have a flexible rod. There’s only so much force you can apply with it, because it flexes. As the bag swings up toward you and gets almost to the top of its arc hit it with the rod. You just imparted a little bit of energy on the bag that acted to lessen it’s overall amount of energy. The bag’s backswing will now be a little less than it would have been, so will the next fore swing. Again, as it nears the top of it’s swing hit it. Keep doing this. The bag will come to a stop. Same bag, same initial energy. Without you hitting it with your little rod it will come to a stop – due to air resistance and friction in its chain – in, let’s say 100 swings. With you hitting it, at appropriate times so that the energy you add works against the system energy and has the effect of lessening it, the bag stops in 70 swings. So adding energy to a system, in the correct way, can cancel some of the system energy. Back to our lasers and cold. Temperature is a measure of the random motion in a system. In our really cold system that is atomic oscillations. Those oscillations are at a fixed frequency. Think cesium oscillations for an atomic clock. Using lasers tuned to the correct frequency we get photons striking the atoms at just the right time to dampen the oscillations. By dampening the oscillations we lessen the amount of random motion in the system. Temperature is driven down below the temperature of anything we have by adding energy to the system. We have achieved what is impossible to the in-the-box mind. Get out of the box. It is errant thinking to say “we can’t” based on “we haven’t.” Instead go with the truth: “we haven’t, yet” because “we haven’t, yet.”
Educating Carlton: Part 1
Can we trust Einstein?
Boss-Einstein Matter
The best test of a theory is not whether it can describe what we already know, it is can it describe what we do not know. Einstein developed some theory. It described a lot of stuff we already knew and did a pretty good job of it. It also described a lot of stuff we didn’t know, and who can say how good a job it did there? Much of that unknown stuff is still unknown. However, … In the 1920’s (?) a theorist named Boss proposed a new state of matter. The nature of theoretical physics is this: It’s tough. Boss was visionary, but wasn’t scientist enough to confirm what he thought, even theoretically. That’s no slam on Boss. As I said, theoretical physics is tough. Probably harder than Mt. Everest. A lot of people can make theories about reaching the summit, few can actually do it. He did the reasonable thing, he sent his theory to Einstein. Einstein ran it through and proved it, theoretically. Big deal, lots of people can make a theory and who can say how good it is? Over 30 years later technology had advanced enough to produce, for a short time, the first (probably ever in the entire universe) BEM. It has now been produced using several different elements, enough to say that it is not anomalous. It has probably never occurred naturally because it only exists at extremely cold temperatures. So cold that wherever there has been matter to be converted to this state it has been too hot to do so. By “too hot” I mean 1/100th of a degree C absolute. Way hot. Make a mental note because I’m sure to come back to this for “Thinking outside the box,” a later installment. The important thing here is that Einstein’s theories predicted not just a reaction, but the existence of something that had never even been observed. Kudos to the scientists that came up with air conditioning. They theorized ways to produce cold air and make ice and, and, and. But they knew that cold air already existed. They had handled ice from nature before they manufactured it. Einstein’s theories predicted something that had never been and proved out to be correct. His theories may not be perfect, even he thought this, but they do pass muster. Einstein was able to work out those theories – such ability being a mixture of science, art and magic – to predict BEM. For this reason we can trust the theory. Others have those capabilities and have been able to work out the theory to predict plenty else. Because these predictions are legitimate resolutions of the same theories we can trust them as possible.
Boss-Einstein Matter
The best test of a theory is not whether it can describe what we already know, it is can it describe what we do not know. Einstein developed some theory. It described a lot of stuff we already knew and did a pretty good job of it. It also described a lot of stuff we didn’t know, and who can say how good a job it did there? Much of that unknown stuff is still unknown. However, … In the 1920’s (?) a theorist named Boss proposed a new state of matter. The nature of theoretical physics is this: It’s tough. Boss was visionary, but wasn’t scientist enough to confirm what he thought, even theoretically. That’s no slam on Boss. As I said, theoretical physics is tough. Probably harder than Mt. Everest. A lot of people can make theories about reaching the summit, few can actually do it. He did the reasonable thing, he sent his theory to Einstein. Einstein ran it through and proved it, theoretically. Big deal, lots of people can make a theory and who can say how good it is? Over 30 years later technology had advanced enough to produce, for a short time, the first (probably ever in the entire universe) BEM. It has now been produced using several different elements, enough to say that it is not anomalous. It has probably never occurred naturally because it only exists at extremely cold temperatures. So cold that wherever there has been matter to be converted to this state it has been too hot to do so. By “too hot” I mean 1/100th of a degree C absolute. Way hot. Make a mental note because I’m sure to come back to this for “Thinking outside the box,” a later installment. The important thing here is that Einstein’s theories predicted not just a reaction, but the existence of something that had never even been observed. Kudos to the scientists that came up with air conditioning. They theorized ways to produce cold air and make ice and, and, and. But they knew that cold air already existed. They had handled ice from nature before they manufactured it. Einstein’s theories predicted something that had never been and proved out to be correct. His theories may not be perfect, even he thought this, but they do pass muster. Einstein was able to work out those theories – such ability being a mixture of science, art and magic – to predict BEM. For this reason we can trust the theory. Others have those capabilities and have been able to work out the theory to predict plenty else. Because these predictions are legitimate resolutions of the same theories we can trust them as possible.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Educating Carlton: Preamble
Some time ago there was a news story about an astronomy feature that elicited quite a bit of chatter in the discussion that followed about Einstein’s theories. As is the nature of such public things, there was a lot of useless input from people who couldn’t possibly understand the ongoing discussion, so they couldn’t possibly have input, so they did what they could do, distract. There were, however, several people with meaningful input. Among that group is Carlton. Carlton is an amateur astronomer and seems pretty well versed in the down to earth, practical sciences. Of course the discussion deals with a lot of theoretical physics, which is anything but down to earth and practical, being theoretical and all. I thought it might be nice to set out some things that might bring people up to speed, if they are as interested and already knowledgeable as Carlton is. This is by no means a substitute for real instruction. I’ll treat things with broad strokes, so a lot of explanations won’t stand under scrutiny from someone who really knows this stuff. It’s not written for the instructor. I’ll use a lot of examples from more everyday life and hope that the lines are close enough to parallel to make sense of things. I don’t know how long this will take, nor how long between installments. I also don’t plan on staying up nights to make progress here, so if anyone is actually reading this and doesn’t think I’m posting fast enough, you can always get a podcast for a dozen or so courses on math, physics, astronomy, etc. and then once you’ve gotten a bit of mastery over the understood aspects, get some on theory, method, development. You’ll be better off going that route, I assure you.
Monday, January 21, 2008
MLK day.
I was just talking to a friend in the coffee shop. He asked what I think of Martin Luther King (Jr.) day. I made a gesture with an accompanying noise. Many would think it inappropriate because they wish this day to honor the man. I have no problem with the man. I like what he stood for. I like what he did. I would consider it an honor if I were able to befriend him. Of course, I can’t. It’s the day I have a problem with. I also have a bit of a problem with the people who treat it like a holy day.
My grievances.
Although Mr. King’s political views were visionary and extended far past the problems of black Americans. His efforts, though, were focused there for all but the end of his life. All of his successful efforts were also in this area. Had he lived, had he not been assassinated, those efforts and his successes would almost certainly have broadened. However, that was not the case. Why single out this man for a day, that day being all about him. Many others have had outstanding personal beliefs. Many others have put themselves in mortal danger for the benefit of those oppressed. Many did this without any public recognition. They, in fact, risked everything for no personal benefit other than the good feeling of having done what is right. Mr. King enjoyed notoriety and political clout. His actions were indirect, and the importance of them is due to the enormous quantity of people that acted behind those actions. Had it been Mr. King espousing his beliefs without that backing I dare say he would have been completely ineffectual.
Gandhi was a great figure in the arena of equal rights. Why do we not celebrate MG day? To this question my friend pointed out that that was a global issue, not a national one. For us to have a federal holiday it need to be a national issue. I can see the logic in that, Christmas and Easter aside.
We don’t celebrate the efforts of untold numbers of persons who individually made an impact in the lives of black Americans. Many times that impact was the saving of their lives. Doctor King’s efforts resulted in black to drink from the same fountain I drink from. The efforts of those who operated the underground railroad resulted in blacks being able to breathe the same air that I breathe. The right to life, in the non-abortion related sense, is greater than any other right we enjoy. What we celebrate on this day is the celebrity of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is not a celebration of human rights. This celebration is set around his birthday, although it is adjusted to a Monday so that it’s a long weekend. It’s not to commemorate any other event in the struggle for human rights than the birth of this figurehead in that effort.
My solution.
Prior to the civil rights revolution in the United States an interracial relationship in the south could get both parties killed, again, the right to life being the most supreme of our rights. The defining difference that Dr. King made was in the lives of the post Civil War southern blacks, who were so terribly and unjustifiably oppressed, and that difference is most evident in the freedom of interracial relationships. If you want to celebrate the difference that this man made in America, celebrate it by a public display of affection with a member of another race. A white man (/woman) walking down the street holding hands with a black woman (/man) is the legacy of Martin Luther King. Feel free to do so today.
My grievances.
Although Mr. King’s political views were visionary and extended far past the problems of black Americans. His efforts, though, were focused there for all but the end of his life. All of his successful efforts were also in this area. Had he lived, had he not been assassinated, those efforts and his successes would almost certainly have broadened. However, that was not the case. Why single out this man for a day, that day being all about him. Many others have had outstanding personal beliefs. Many others have put themselves in mortal danger for the benefit of those oppressed. Many did this without any public recognition. They, in fact, risked everything for no personal benefit other than the good feeling of having done what is right. Mr. King enjoyed notoriety and political clout. His actions were indirect, and the importance of them is due to the enormous quantity of people that acted behind those actions. Had it been Mr. King espousing his beliefs without that backing I dare say he would have been completely ineffectual.
Gandhi was a great figure in the arena of equal rights. Why do we not celebrate MG day? To this question my friend pointed out that that was a global issue, not a national one. For us to have a federal holiday it need to be a national issue. I can see the logic in that, Christmas and Easter aside.
We don’t celebrate the efforts of untold numbers of persons who individually made an impact in the lives of black Americans. Many times that impact was the saving of their lives. Doctor King’s efforts resulted in black to drink from the same fountain I drink from. The efforts of those who operated the underground railroad resulted in blacks being able to breathe the same air that I breathe. The right to life, in the non-abortion related sense, is greater than any other right we enjoy. What we celebrate on this day is the celebrity of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is not a celebration of human rights. This celebration is set around his birthday, although it is adjusted to a Monday so that it’s a long weekend. It’s not to commemorate any other event in the struggle for human rights than the birth of this figurehead in that effort.
My solution.
Prior to the civil rights revolution in the United States an interracial relationship in the south could get both parties killed, again, the right to life being the most supreme of our rights. The defining difference that Dr. King made was in the lives of the post Civil War southern blacks, who were so terribly and unjustifiably oppressed, and that difference is most evident in the freedom of interracial relationships. If you want to celebrate the difference that this man made in America, celebrate it by a public display of affection with a member of another race. A white man (/woman) walking down the street holding hands with a black woman (/man) is the legacy of Martin Luther King. Feel free to do so today.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Various thoughts on IQ
I have noticed in the past several months an interest in IQ, level of knowledge, level of education, correctness, vocational success, life success, etc. all tied together with a mixture of assumptions about what one means to the others. I have fielded questions, I have read questions in forums, I have listened to stories told by friends about what people have asked them recently. I don’t watch much tv but imagine that there is some emphasis put on intelligence this season. Perhaps a lot of people are left feeling dumber than a 5th grader.
Here are my thoughts, far from perfect. People want to measure IQ, but want to do it by measuring knowledge. They are different things. I think IQ has a positive relationship to a cap on knowledge. The average IQ is 100, by definition. So let’s call an average level of knowledge 100. An IQ of 150 is genius, an IQ of 50 is, well, not. The person with an IQ of 150 will have a cap on attainable knowledge higher than the person with an IQ of 50. That is to say, there’s a whole lot that the person at 50 will never be able to learn, a lot that the person at 100 will never be able to learn, and some that the person at 150 will never be able to learn. The relationship isn’t necessarily linear, it may follow Gaussian rules (the bell curve) or it may be exponential. I’m going with time biased Gaussian, and saying that there are different learning characteristics at different IQ levels. So we divide our bell curve into different areas. The lowest represents knowledge that is so rudimentary that it is known by all: pain hurts. The middle part is known knowledge. It graduates from accepted to revolutionary and controversial. Arithmetic is accepted, string theory is revolutionary and controversial. The earth is round and not the center of the universe, these tidbits were revolutionary and controversial, but are now accepted. This is an example of time biasing and I will let that serve as close enough to a definition. The upper end taper is unknown knowledge. It was not known that the earth was not the center of the universe before that known knowledge was revolutionary and controversial. Another example of time bias. This had to be discovered. This bell curve can be used as a rough guideline for the cap on attainable knowledge when it is lined up with the IQ curve. But it has to have wiggle room when we go from theoretical to practical. We would expect that the 150 IQ would have more knowledge than the 50 IQ. We would also expect the 55 IQ to outdo the 50 IQ. In practice we often see a person with a slightly lower IQ posses a slightly higher level of knowledge compared to a counterpart. How do we account for this. And now we get to the meat.
Drive and Opportunity. These make the difference. No matter how hard the 50 tries at the very best schools, he’s never going to understand the things the 150 struggles with in the same classes. There is a marked difference, however, between the level of knowledge actually attained by a 100 who is stranded alone on an island and one who has a burning desire to learn and is at a fantastic school. If we accept that this is, in fact, a marked difference then we must concede that the same marked difference in a 99 will overlap most of the 100’s range. Since we’re using an IQ scale anyway let’s use a Standard Deviation of 15. Disregarding the island scenario, I feel comfortable with the idea that a lazy 100 will achieve the same level of knowledge as a progressive 85. That would give a level of knowledge range of +- 7.5 from nominal. In normal situations there is only so stupid a smart person can ever be. Some of the things the 50 could never understand the 120 can’t help but understand. A 120 will be able to learn a substantial bit that a 100 never could. This must be tempered, of course, by specialization. To this point I have addressed the ability to learn in general terms. If you go to college and pursue a major, you get information in small chunks that you can digest, incorporate into your existing knowledge base and then build on. This is the same as time bias but on a personal level. It is also the technique used by cults to indoctrinate people. Provide false knowledge, drive it in until it’s accepted and trusted then provide more. I’m thinking Scientology in specific terms, but the method is used elsewhere and this blurb has broad application. Remember it is not how many people who endorse it, nor the qualifications of the presenter or originator that make information valid or knowledge correct. These are intrinsic values. Now I’m thinking different Christian churches and can homosexuals be pastors or not, same bible in churches that say yes as in churches that say no, and their leaders are all well qualified. The ultimate truth is true because it’s true. A personal truth is honesty and isn’t always true. That just means that honest people aren’t lying, they’re just sometimes wrong. Now I’m back on Scientology. And now I’m back on track. Discovering new knowledge will be almost exclusively the realm of the upper echelons. Once discovered that knowledge will be absorbed by the many more eager smart people, then disseminated to the average, then to the sub-average. This process of a population assimilating new information will almost always follow this chronology. I think it has to do with language. The brilliant speak a different English than the dull. The average can translate. We all have trouble learning things we don’t believe. It would be very difficult for me to learn that 1 + 1 = an apple. I don’t believe it. Very few can recognize, and so be able to believe. Many can grasp an explanation and believe, often to their detriment when the explanation is false. Others can only decide that everyone else believes it so it must be alright. In this construct the motivated 110 could appear to be a 115 and may seem smarter than a 120.
Mostly so in testing. As I said, we want to measure IQ with level of knowledge. A large part of the flaw in this is that when you learn how to take the test or learn how to figure out the answers you display a higher level of knowledge, even without changing that level. So what is IQ? The ability to learn? The ability to problem solve? The ability to figure out what IQ is? I think yes, kind of. Of importance is the idea that there are multiple intelligences. I am relationally stupid. I know a lot of people who are relational genii. I know people who can only make a pile of books, never a stack. I know people who are incredible engineers. Some people can hunt deer with a sharp stick, some people can’t order off a menu. We mostly recognize the areas from school. We also don’t give much weight to other areas. I’m good at math, engineering, science, etc. but don’t have a lot of traditional fun. I’m not much of a partier. I have a great time sitting in the coffee shop talking with people who “get it.” People who have something to say that isn’t gossip or a synopsis of a movie. These people stimulate my mind and leave me feeling invigorated. Some people are only ever invigorated by who said what about who and did you know he’s sleeping with her behind his girlfriend’s back. That seems to correlate on those curves, too.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about IQ, intelligence distribution, differing mental capability at different IQ levels and the interpretation of those differing capabilities follows. Most people exist in the middle region. They may not agree with each other but they can understand the thought processes of those near their level. The people in the higher end of the bulge normally rise above those at the low end. So most of the supervisors and managers will be in the 115 area. Lets say that they can at least see the logic, faulty as it may be, within a SD, that’s down to 100, up to 130. This person will know that they have better ideas, and more sense than the low end of normal, that’s 90 – 100, who’s ideas and interpretations just don’t make sense to the 115. those with an IQ between 90 and 100 represent 25% of the population. The next SD away, 75 – 90, accounts for another 20%. Beyond that are people who inspire a sense of pity instead of frustration. That’s almost ½ of the population that doesn’t even make sense to him, and that because they are ‘relatively’ stupid. Now let’s look the other way. That 1st SD that makes some kind of sense goes to 130. The total percentage of population above that is 2%. Nearly that entire amount, all but about 1/10th %, are in the SD of 130 – 145. That top 1/10th % are the revered genii. (I’ve used that twice, hopefully someone gets it.) Here’s the thing. The 115 isn’t equipped to make the distinction between 90 and 140. He simply doesn’t understand the logic of either. So where is that 2% categorized? Approximately 47% of the population doesn’t make sense to this guy and isn’t obviously mentally approximating a rock. (It only sounds disrespectful because it has to for this rant.) When they can’t distinguish the difference there is no distinguishable difference. This means that either they treat that 45% as smarter than they are or the 2% as dumber. How many people in charge remain in charge if they treat the ideas of that 45% as superior to their own? I think none. Even if they own the company, because they go bankrupt. The mentally superior are grouped together with the stupid in the course of day to day life. I have watched businesses unnecessarily falter or fail and will watch a friend die because I am ‘obviously’ stupid. It is unfortunate to see something bad happen to someone you care about, it is sorrowful when you know it could have been avoided, it is frustrating when you saw it coming but your warnings were dismissed.
Then there are pet peeves. Mine, I mean. I try to stay out of public forums. People will spontaneously vomit a post. I was recently lured into an astrophysics board following a news article. I was lured by some brilliant comments by a guy defending a fringe theory that is generally dismissed, but has a lot of merit. I’m familiar with the theories, but don’t understand them. See above 1 + 1 = an apple. There’s just too much weirdness or maybe just not enough preconditioning (keep in mind the cult danger) for me to get it. The article has a picture of a double Einstein ring. It’s pretty. The article is not about it’s aesthetic value. The discussion should not be about it’s aesthetic value. How many posts are about it being pretty? Too many. How many posts aren’t even related as remotely to the subject as how it looks? Too many. I wish people who can’t possibly take part in a conversation just wouldn’t. Barring that, I wish moderators would take out the nonsense. I must admit at this point, this is hard to accomplish in a generalized discussion that wanders through different aspects of different scientific fields to bring up a sentient point, and this one does. By that I mean that how many people know whether a discourse on quantum mechanics and it’s effect on matter-antimatter pairs has anything to do with Einstein rings? It doesn’t directly but some aspects of it transfer laterally into the discussion, so it’s not nonsense. Even if a moderator doesn’t understand it or realize that it is pertinent, at least they should know that it’s scientific and must mean something to the people that are in the real, relative conversation. Hopefully that same moderator would realize that a post about I showed it to my art teacher and they liked it doesn’t belong. Or posts just bashing the guy who wholeheartedly believes in the fringe theory don’t belong, even though they don’t have language that would make a sailor blush. So a pet peeve in this realm – injecting the non-sequitur into a forum. Another is people who don’t care enough about the subject to learn anything about it but want to ask questions. In a discussion about the practical application of the Mandelbrot set questions about what is convergence or how does a derivative work are not valid. Do a Google search, read some introductory material, download podcasts of entire lecture series. Do not hope to start from scratch and get a 4 year degree from a 20 line response to a lame question.
Here are my thoughts, far from perfect. People want to measure IQ, but want to do it by measuring knowledge. They are different things. I think IQ has a positive relationship to a cap on knowledge. The average IQ is 100, by definition. So let’s call an average level of knowledge 100. An IQ of 150 is genius, an IQ of 50 is, well, not. The person with an IQ of 150 will have a cap on attainable knowledge higher than the person with an IQ of 50. That is to say, there’s a whole lot that the person at 50 will never be able to learn, a lot that the person at 100 will never be able to learn, and some that the person at 150 will never be able to learn. The relationship isn’t necessarily linear, it may follow Gaussian rules (the bell curve) or it may be exponential. I’m going with time biased Gaussian, and saying that there are different learning characteristics at different IQ levels. So we divide our bell curve into different areas. The lowest represents knowledge that is so rudimentary that it is known by all: pain hurts. The middle part is known knowledge. It graduates from accepted to revolutionary and controversial. Arithmetic is accepted, string theory is revolutionary and controversial. The earth is round and not the center of the universe, these tidbits were revolutionary and controversial, but are now accepted. This is an example of time biasing and I will let that serve as close enough to a definition. The upper end taper is unknown knowledge. It was not known that the earth was not the center of the universe before that known knowledge was revolutionary and controversial. Another example of time bias. This had to be discovered. This bell curve can be used as a rough guideline for the cap on attainable knowledge when it is lined up with the IQ curve. But it has to have wiggle room when we go from theoretical to practical. We would expect that the 150 IQ would have more knowledge than the 50 IQ. We would also expect the 55 IQ to outdo the 50 IQ. In practice we often see a person with a slightly lower IQ posses a slightly higher level of knowledge compared to a counterpart. How do we account for this. And now we get to the meat.
Drive and Opportunity. These make the difference. No matter how hard the 50 tries at the very best schools, he’s never going to understand the things the 150 struggles with in the same classes. There is a marked difference, however, between the level of knowledge actually attained by a 100 who is stranded alone on an island and one who has a burning desire to learn and is at a fantastic school. If we accept that this is, in fact, a marked difference then we must concede that the same marked difference in a 99 will overlap most of the 100’s range. Since we’re using an IQ scale anyway let’s use a Standard Deviation of 15. Disregarding the island scenario, I feel comfortable with the idea that a lazy 100 will achieve the same level of knowledge as a progressive 85. That would give a level of knowledge range of +- 7.5 from nominal. In normal situations there is only so stupid a smart person can ever be. Some of the things the 50 could never understand the 120 can’t help but understand. A 120 will be able to learn a substantial bit that a 100 never could. This must be tempered, of course, by specialization. To this point I have addressed the ability to learn in general terms. If you go to college and pursue a major, you get information in small chunks that you can digest, incorporate into your existing knowledge base and then build on. This is the same as time bias but on a personal level. It is also the technique used by cults to indoctrinate people. Provide false knowledge, drive it in until it’s accepted and trusted then provide more. I’m thinking Scientology in specific terms, but the method is used elsewhere and this blurb has broad application. Remember it is not how many people who endorse it, nor the qualifications of the presenter or originator that make information valid or knowledge correct. These are intrinsic values. Now I’m thinking different Christian churches and can homosexuals be pastors or not, same bible in churches that say yes as in churches that say no, and their leaders are all well qualified. The ultimate truth is true because it’s true. A personal truth is honesty and isn’t always true. That just means that honest people aren’t lying, they’re just sometimes wrong. Now I’m back on Scientology. And now I’m back on track. Discovering new knowledge will be almost exclusively the realm of the upper echelons. Once discovered that knowledge will be absorbed by the many more eager smart people, then disseminated to the average, then to the sub-average. This process of a population assimilating new information will almost always follow this chronology. I think it has to do with language. The brilliant speak a different English than the dull. The average can translate. We all have trouble learning things we don’t believe. It would be very difficult for me to learn that 1 + 1 = an apple. I don’t believe it. Very few can recognize, and so be able to believe. Many can grasp an explanation and believe, often to their detriment when the explanation is false. Others can only decide that everyone else believes it so it must be alright. In this construct the motivated 110 could appear to be a 115 and may seem smarter than a 120.
Mostly so in testing. As I said, we want to measure IQ with level of knowledge. A large part of the flaw in this is that when you learn how to take the test or learn how to figure out the answers you display a higher level of knowledge, even without changing that level. So what is IQ? The ability to learn? The ability to problem solve? The ability to figure out what IQ is? I think yes, kind of. Of importance is the idea that there are multiple intelligences. I am relationally stupid. I know a lot of people who are relational genii. I know people who can only make a pile of books, never a stack. I know people who are incredible engineers. Some people can hunt deer with a sharp stick, some people can’t order off a menu. We mostly recognize the areas from school. We also don’t give much weight to other areas. I’m good at math, engineering, science, etc. but don’t have a lot of traditional fun. I’m not much of a partier. I have a great time sitting in the coffee shop talking with people who “get it.” People who have something to say that isn’t gossip or a synopsis of a movie. These people stimulate my mind and leave me feeling invigorated. Some people are only ever invigorated by who said what about who and did you know he’s sleeping with her behind his girlfriend’s back. That seems to correlate on those curves, too.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about IQ, intelligence distribution, differing mental capability at different IQ levels and the interpretation of those differing capabilities follows. Most people exist in the middle region. They may not agree with each other but they can understand the thought processes of those near their level. The people in the higher end of the bulge normally rise above those at the low end. So most of the supervisors and managers will be in the 115 area. Lets say that they can at least see the logic, faulty as it may be, within a SD, that’s down to 100, up to 130. This person will know that they have better ideas, and more sense than the low end of normal, that’s 90 – 100, who’s ideas and interpretations just don’t make sense to the 115. those with an IQ between 90 and 100 represent 25% of the population. The next SD away, 75 – 90, accounts for another 20%. Beyond that are people who inspire a sense of pity instead of frustration. That’s almost ½ of the population that doesn’t even make sense to him, and that because they are ‘relatively’ stupid. Now let’s look the other way. That 1st SD that makes some kind of sense goes to 130. The total percentage of population above that is 2%. Nearly that entire amount, all but about 1/10th %, are in the SD of 130 – 145. That top 1/10th % are the revered genii. (I’ve used that twice, hopefully someone gets it.) Here’s the thing. The 115 isn’t equipped to make the distinction between 90 and 140. He simply doesn’t understand the logic of either. So where is that 2% categorized? Approximately 47% of the population doesn’t make sense to this guy and isn’t obviously mentally approximating a rock. (It only sounds disrespectful because it has to for this rant.) When they can’t distinguish the difference there is no distinguishable difference. This means that either they treat that 45% as smarter than they are or the 2% as dumber. How many people in charge remain in charge if they treat the ideas of that 45% as superior to their own? I think none. Even if they own the company, because they go bankrupt. The mentally superior are grouped together with the stupid in the course of day to day life. I have watched businesses unnecessarily falter or fail and will watch a friend die because I am ‘obviously’ stupid. It is unfortunate to see something bad happen to someone you care about, it is sorrowful when you know it could have been avoided, it is frustrating when you saw it coming but your warnings were dismissed.
Then there are pet peeves. Mine, I mean. I try to stay out of public forums. People will spontaneously vomit a post. I was recently lured into an astrophysics board following a news article. I was lured by some brilliant comments by a guy defending a fringe theory that is generally dismissed, but has a lot of merit. I’m familiar with the theories, but don’t understand them. See above 1 + 1 = an apple. There’s just too much weirdness or maybe just not enough preconditioning (keep in mind the cult danger) for me to get it. The article has a picture of a double Einstein ring. It’s pretty. The article is not about it’s aesthetic value. The discussion should not be about it’s aesthetic value. How many posts are about it being pretty? Too many. How many posts aren’t even related as remotely to the subject as how it looks? Too many. I wish people who can’t possibly take part in a conversation just wouldn’t. Barring that, I wish moderators would take out the nonsense. I must admit at this point, this is hard to accomplish in a generalized discussion that wanders through different aspects of different scientific fields to bring up a sentient point, and this one does. By that I mean that how many people know whether a discourse on quantum mechanics and it’s effect on matter-antimatter pairs has anything to do with Einstein rings? It doesn’t directly but some aspects of it transfer laterally into the discussion, so it’s not nonsense. Even if a moderator doesn’t understand it or realize that it is pertinent, at least they should know that it’s scientific and must mean something to the people that are in the real, relative conversation. Hopefully that same moderator would realize that a post about I showed it to my art teacher and they liked it doesn’t belong. Or posts just bashing the guy who wholeheartedly believes in the fringe theory don’t belong, even though they don’t have language that would make a sailor blush. So a pet peeve in this realm – injecting the non-sequitur into a forum. Another is people who don’t care enough about the subject to learn anything about it but want to ask questions. In a discussion about the practical application of the Mandelbrot set questions about what is convergence or how does a derivative work are not valid. Do a Google search, read some introductory material, download podcasts of entire lecture series. Do not hope to start from scratch and get a 4 year degree from a 20 line response to a lame question.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Holidays -- Christmas
Maybe it's just because I'm not showered in gifts anymore, but I've come to really not like Christmas. What's it all about? "Jesus is the reason for the season." A slogan that used to be plastered all over. But what are we celebrating? It's different with Easter. There's a biblical basis, a command to celebrate, and a timeframe for that celebration. First, because it's easiest, the timeframe. We have no real idea about when Jesus was born. Not only are we completely unable to determine what date, or month -- ours or Jewish, or season -- was he born in spring or the dead of winter or fall, but we can't even determine the year with any certainty. Personally, I have to go with Clement on this one, but I'm partial. On all of the celebrations dictated by God, at least to my knowledge, he tells us when. He also tells us to. Celebrate, that is, he tells us to celebrate, and how. And how to celebrate. There's instruction. Not with Christmas, though. It's no more a spiritual celebration than Thanksgiving. And I'm not knocking Thanksgiving. Now biblical basis. Christ was born. That's about it. But even that isn't so remarkable, at least as births go. Great miracle, conception. If you want to celebrate the power and love of God, it's the conception of Christ you're looking for. We also lack command or time for this one, though. Why not his first miracle or teaching in the temple or calming the storm or being recognized as Messiah in the womb by John, also in the womb or ... Even more importantly, on a Christian basis, Christ says that the current era, what we call the age of grace, began with the time of John the Baptist. Forget Christ being born, the big thing is the transition to the age of grace. That's what's important. John beginning his ministry, and ushering us into this age, celebrate that. It's much more religiously important. Then we wouldn't get so caught up in gifts, and extension of Christ's birth brought to us by three? wise men from Orientar, as the song goes. I can't find Orientar on the ancient maps, though. So what's it all about. Family, good will toward others, stressing out over getting just the right present, or not caring whether it's right or not and just getting something -- after all, it's the thought that counts. And this gift says I gave you a cursory thought. My closing thought on Christmas, the gifts the wise men brought after, probably well after, Jesus' birth had a divine purpose. Those gifts financed the families flight from the authorities. Pull that crap now and yule go to prison.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Religion (5), Miracles
"Those with exceptional ability have exceptional responsiblity." It's a tenet taught in some circles of society. The doctrine of those who can must. It is the people with some special talent or skill or opportunity. It may be nothing for them to do, but impossible for others. For those waiting outside the meeting place in the cold rain and wind the locked door presents an impassable obstacle. The janitor comes with the key, opens the door and lets all inside. He's the hero of the hour, but to him he just did what anybody with the key would do. Mundane, simple, unexciting.
People get excited about miracles. They are things we cannot do. Does God get excited. Is he amazed at what he was able to do. What is to us a miracle is just God acting, God doing. Whenever God acts, whenever he does, there is a miracle. I have mostly noticed two distinct human reactions to this. Some people are amazed at what God can do, like they didn't expect it, can't believe it would really happen. I think to them it's new, novel, weird, out of the ordinary. I don't think they see it a lot. There is another group that sees a miracle and takes it in stride. There reaction is something like, "What do you want to do for lunch?" I think this group considers miracles normal activity for God. Normal because they see it. Often. I think that's an indicator that God is in their life as a matter of routine. If you're around God often you see miracles often and it's the way things are. If you're surprised by miracles the, obviously, it's the way things aren't.
People get excited about miracles. They are things we cannot do. Does God get excited. Is he amazed at what he was able to do. What is to us a miracle is just God acting, God doing. Whenever God acts, whenever he does, there is a miracle. I have mostly noticed two distinct human reactions to this. Some people are amazed at what God can do, like they didn't expect it, can't believe it would really happen. I think to them it's new, novel, weird, out of the ordinary. I don't think they see it a lot. There is another group that sees a miracle and takes it in stride. There reaction is something like, "What do you want to do for lunch?" I think this group considers miracles normal activity for God. Normal because they see it. Often. I think that's an indicator that God is in their life as a matter of routine. If you're around God often you see miracles often and it's the way things are. If you're surprised by miracles the, obviously, it's the way things aren't.
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