The Science of Religion; the Religion of Science

[jducoeur]

One joy of being both an amateur science geek and an amateur student of religion is that I get to watch the two interact, spinning around each other in synchronicity.

Today, the missingmatter feed pointed to this fascinating article in Scientific American. It's basically a summary of all of the current major theories of parallel universes, and argues quite elegantly that it is easier to believe in them than not. Along the way, it argues that anything that is mathematically possible is, in a very real sense, "real". It doesn't quite come out and state that our universe is basically a giant equation (a position I've become increasingly attracted to over time), but provides all the necessary fodder to get there.

(The article is long, but well worth reading, BTW, and I commend it. It stays away from the hardcore math, and instead provides fairly intuitive arguments for no less than four different kinds of parallel universes, arguing that all four probably exist and all but one are terribly interesting. Heapum fun.)

The synchronicity comes in that I'm currently listening to the Teaching Company's course on Buddhism in the car. Which, in the course of discussing the Buddhist concept of "emptiness", makes essentially exactly the same argument -- that there is a level on which nothing is precisely real, therefore everything imaginable is possible. The mathematical concept of the "Level IV Multiverse" in the science article could practically be a rewrite of the Buddhist doctrine.

That's about as close to a true religious experience as I've come, and there's something delightfully inspiring about it. I sometimes think about how I've slowly gone from considering myself an atheist in high school, to pretty religious today, and this particular coincidence sums it up -- the thing that has changed is how I think about religion. For some people, it's all about meaning. I can sympathize with that, but it isn't actually what most drives me; instead, my strongest need is for explanation. Yes, I want the "why", but first things first -- I'd like some "what" and "how" to begin with.

I find it both wondrously amusing and comforting that today's science seems to be driving towards many of the same answers that the philosophers of two thousand years ago found. And the coincidences that surround it give me at least some small hope that "why" might actually be an answerable question...

Comments

[mindways]

That's really neat. :-) I'm interested in both topics; your comparison between them is interesting to chew on and fun to think about...

Hrr...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, I just read that article in my copy of Sci Am. As a scientist and amateur (very amateur, admittedly) philosopher, I see a few problems in that article. One is technical, the other two are more philosophical. I'll focus on the latter two for the nonce.

The first is a matter that science frequently runs up against when merging with philosophy and/or religion - the issue of falsifiability. Any proper scientific theory must be testable. It is not enough to be able to find data which is consistent with your theory. You must also be able to at least imagine an experiment that could be performed, the results of which could prove the theory could be incorrect.

When you posit the existance of a thing which, by it's very definition, you cannot observe, you risk throwing falsifiability out the window. The existance of Level I multiverses is reasonably falsifiable. However, at least at first glance, Level II may not be. Level III and IV are on even shakier ground in that sense.

Not that this means such alternate uinverses do not exist. Merely that their existance is not a matter of science. Simply put - we can posit the existance of things with which we cannot interact until we are blue in the face, but it won't get you very far.

The other is a more general philosophical issue - the matter of free will. Level III and Level IV alternate universes especially bring the existance of free will into serious doubt. If all universes that can exist do exist, if all things that can happen do happen, how can you ever be said to make a choice?

Need I mention how a lack of free will is a fast track to nihilism?

Again, that doesn't mean that these things do not exist. Merely that we are on philosphically awkward ground if they do.

Re: Hrr...

[jducoeur]

Interesting points. Taking them separately...

You're right that the article does have one real flaw: it wanders fairly haphazardly between science and philosophy, and doesn't differentiate between the two at all well. I think it makes fairly good arguments in both arenas, but they deserve to be separated more clearly.

That said, I don't think immediate falsifiability is the be-all and end-all of a valuable argument. It's worth exploring such an idea, if only because a good philosophical exploration can sometimes lead to novel approaches to falsifying the viewpoint.

Take the Level IV thing. While the existence of a Level IV multiverse is currently unfalsifiable, it does imply some predictions that are. For example, it implies that our universe isn't just described by a certain subset of mathematical equations -- rather, it implies that our universe essentially is math, and that all relevant math should apply to it literally. That's not a terribly intuitive viewpoint. I think that if you'd described quantum mechanics and some of the things it implies to a typical 19th century scientist, he would have pretty casually shrugged and said that this simply showed, as a reductio ad absurdam, that not all math should be taken literally.

And yet, it appears to be true. It seems (in my admittedly amateur understanding) that every time the math turns out some bizarre implication, that implication turns out to be literal truth, no matter how bizarre the ramifications. Which supports the hypothesis that our universe, at least, is simply the (or a) realization of that math, and provides at least supporting evidence (if by no means proof) of the Level IV view of things.

It's not the strongest argument, I'll grant. On the other hand, it's an off-the-cuff argument for a relatively new viewpoint of things. I'm willing to grant a decent chance that folks may come up with some realer experiments eventually. In the meantime, it's worth taking an intellectual wander through the idea, to provide some grounding for those experiments...

Re: Hrr...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Falsifiability certainly isn't the be-all, end-all of an argument. Much insight and inspiration can be found in non-scientific discussion, frequently such that you can turn around and apply the results to your science. Being "unsicentific" isn't a reason to avoid an idea.

What I take exception to is the false advertising. Science has proved to be a powerful tool. Powerful enough that simply slapping an implication of scientific rigor onto a topic lends strength to virtually any position. It is then important to note when the rigor really is present, and when it isn't. Especially considering the abysmal state of science education in the US today.

Case in point:
It seems (in my admittedly amateur understanding) that every time the math turns out some bizarre implication, that implication turns out to be literal truth, no matter how bizarre the ramifications.

This is a very false seeming, primarily generated by how scientific information makes it's way to the public.

By and large, you don't hear about the failures. Science is a process of trial and error. You develop a theory, test it, and discard or revise the theory if necessary. The public generally doesn't hear about the odd implications of the math until after they've been tested and proved true. In the cases where you do hear the implication before a test, when it proves to be false, you stop hearing about it, and it's quietly forgotten.

Re: Hrr...

[jducoeur]

Interesting. The question this raises is: does this mean that the math proves to not be a literal mapping, or is it simply difficult to interpret what the math means as physics? Are we talking about failures of interpretation, or cases where the math really appears to be contradicted by the physics? Coming from a layman's background, it's hard to know the state of these things.

As for the false advertising -- yeah, that's the primary failure of the article. It could have stood more rigor in the writing, to distinguish where each theory stands...

Re: Hrr...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

This perhaps goes without saying, but just to be clear - "the math" is a bit of a misnomer. It implies that it's singular, and that we all work with the same stuff. In the practice of physics, things are done with a variety of models, there are many maths. The models that don't reflect reality, whose implications are not seen in the physical world, are usually tossed out before you (meaning the general public) see them.

To answer your question: Frequently, it turns out that a particular model doesn't reflect reality in some way. There are lots of models, most of which fail in some manner. On occasion, we find that it's a matter of incorrect interpretation. I'll give a couple of examples, but keep the technical details to a minimum.

The incorrect model - Late 19th century, before quantum mechanics, before Einstein, scientists wondered about the nature of light. "Light is a wave," they said, "all other waves, like sound and water waves, travel through a medium. Therefore, light must also travel through a medium. We will call that medium the 'aether' or 'luminiferous aether'." The Earth must be moving through this aether, and we should be able to measure the speed at which it does so. This led to the "Michelson-Morley experiment" in 1887, where the two gents tried to measure this speed. They found that either the Earth was not moving relative to the aether, or there is no aether. Eventually, the aether hypothesis was dropped, and Einstein came along to tell us what was really going on with light.

The incorrect interpretation - Early on in the history of what qwe now call the "standard model" of quantum mechanics, they found a bit of a problem. They found common cases where particles should be radiating energy. Lots of energy. Literally an infnite amount of energy, but all at long wavelengths. The longer the wavelength, the more energy should have been emitted. Now, of course, this is absurd. There isn't an infinite amount of low-energy photons about. We had the ability to see this stuff, and it just wasn't there. In very basic terms, the math said that they had to divide by something that approched zero, causing values to diverge up to infinity (the problem thus earned the name "infrared divergence").

This was resolved by modifying the theory slightly. A very clever person discovered what we now call "renomalization" - in essence, if you restate your variables just so (and thereby reinterpret what they actually stand for), the division by zero disappeared. *Poof*. Gone. No more problem, and quantum mechanics goes on to help create better car radios.

Re: Hrr...

[jducoeur]

Continuing on (avoiding posting too much in the same comment):

I have two different arguments against the free will point. The minor one is that, while nihilism is certainly a danger of a lack-of-free-will viewpoint, I don't think it's by any means inevitable. There have been enough Christian sects over the centuries that did not believe in free will, and yet managed to maintain a decently sane existence, that I'd say there's a lot of room for interpretation.

More significantly, I don't think the Level IV multiverse does anything to harm the idea of free will, and I'm dubious that Level III does.

Consider: the idea of "free will" is all about identity. It isn't about whether a particular decision can be made by someone -- it is about whether I make that decision. I don't think Levels I, II or IV do anything to impact that idea. They imply that there exist others who make decisions differently, but those others are not me. They may be similar to me, down to the tiniest variation before they make that decision. And yet, they are physically, mentally and logically separate from me, and their decisions take nothing away from my own responsibilities in that regard.

Level III is a subtler problem, and the argument is less clear, precisely because the notion of identity gets very fuzzy in a world that is constantly splitting on the quantum level. If my decision causes the universe to bifurcate, what happens?

Even in this case, though, I think identity argues for an interpretation that the different decisions are made by fundamentally different people. You can just barely argue that the "me" who chose the left-hand path is the same one who chose the right-hand. But is that still the same "me" twenty years later, when the consequences of those decisions have played out? Worse, is the "me" that has made a hundred thousand little decisions the same as the one who made those decisions differently?

Really, the Level III multiverse argues fairly strongly for the Buddhist concept of "no-self" (as I understand it from my as-yet slight reading). This says essentially that identity is an illusion carried along through successive states -- almost an emergent property passed from one state to the next. In that viewpoint, the only identity that really matters is the sum of your past experiences, which is momentarily unambiguous from your own viewpoint. There might be an infinite number of versions of you that chose differently, but they aren't really you.

And then there's the statistics. The Level III multiverse is all about statistics and probability. On the one hand, absolutely every world of fantasy exists in it -- there's always the infinitesimal chance that quantum tunneling causes apparent magic to occur by a lucky stroke. But it's damned unlikely. So who I am now may not dictate with absolute certainty what decisions I'm going to make -- there exists a world where some electron went the wrong way in my brain and I did something unspeakably dumb for any possible decision. But who I am now certainly dictates the odds of which choices I make. I think one can take some comfort in that: I'm not simply a randomized robot, apt to go off in any old direction...

Putting all that together: I'll grant that the idea of free will gets kind of complicated in the infinite-multiverse cosmology. On the other hand, it isn't clear to me that it's any moreso than in the world with an omniscient, omnipotent and all-inclusive God...

Nihilism

[umbran.livejournal.com]

When I spoke of nihilism, I meant in the original, basic sense of rejection of value statements or moral judgements. If there is no free will, no choice, then human action has no more or less moral content than the falling of a raindrop. It is possible to maintain a semi-stable society with that as a basis, but it requires rather special circumstances.

I will agree that level I and II multiverses have nothing to say on the subject of free will.

Level IV most certainly does, however. If you say the universe is mathematics, you are by extension saying that the universe is deterministic - it is merely an alternate form of Newton's Clockwork. There is no free will, no choice, in a deterministic universe. Everything you do, say, think, and feel is implicit in that math. Justin = x². Have a nice day.

Level III is comprised of a few variations on the theme, but in general, they have issues as well.

Leaving Everett out for the moment, we can consider the basic, sci-fi concept of the quantum splitting of universes. Every tiem a decision is made (in fact, every time we would say more than one outcome is physically possible) the multiverse doesn't do only one. It does them all. All results that are physically possible do, in fact, occur.

Again, we are left in the situation where you (the person before the branch, who thinks he is making a decision) has no will. You don't make a choice. You take all possible paths simultaneously. You pet the kitten, and you kick it. It's the ultimate in waffling, really. No matter what, you have your cake and eat it too. It isn't a matter of statistics - the probability is an illusion. All results are reflected in the overall reality. And, if all physically possible results actually occur, how can we say you ever made a choice?

In addition, Everett's interpretation, where the universe is a wavefunction that evolves unitarily and never actually collapses has the same problem as Level IV, in that unitary evolution is deterministic. The beginning, middle, and end of the universe are all set in the mathematics. The fact that you are in the frog perspective, and see only a small fragment of the whole does nothing to alleviate the fact that the whole, all paths inclusive, were pre-ordained. Justin = x². Have a nice day.

You're correct that some versions of Level III multiverses are very lke the Bhuddist "no self". However, I'd maintain that it, and every philosophy that holds that the self is an illusion, is inherently nihilistic.

Re: Nihilism

[jducoeur]

Level IV most certainly does, however. If you say the universe is mathematics, you are by extension saying that the universe is deterministic

Really? That isn't how I take it. I mean, I consider Level III to be a subset of Level IV -- that is, part of the mathematical underpinning of this particular instantiation of Level IV is its probabilistic nature. Probability is part of mathematics as much as determinism is. (Indeed, one of the points in the article, which I take to be a good one, is that a Level IV multiverse could include instantiations that are strictly deterministic. That doesn't imply that ours is, though.)

The fact that you are in the frog perspective, and see only a small fragment of the whole does nothing to alleviate the fact that the whole, all paths inclusive, were pre-ordained.

But the key question here is, is it reasonable to define "you" as anything other than the frog perspective? I can agree that the unitary bird's-eye view of "you" takes all possible paths -- it just isn't clear to me that that definition is useful or meaningful.

However, I'd maintain that it, and every philosophy that holds that the self is an illusion, is inherently nihilistic.

This is really the rub of the argument, and I suspect we may have to agree to disagree about it. Living in an oddly hazy space between faith and unfaith, I've gotten myself fairly comfortable with this philosophical view; indeed, part of what I'm liking about my nascent studies of Buddhism is that I find it rather intuitive. And at that intuitive level -- which is the true seat of morality, regardless of what we may tell ourselves intellectually -- I don't find any particular contradiction between that view and a moral outlook.

Yes, I'll grant that one can make an argument in that direction. But I don't find that argument any more convincing than, eg, the argument that atheists cannot be moral because there is no outside power enforcing that morality. Morality is not something so easily defined, and I find most reductionist arguments of this sort more facile than useful...

Re: Nihilism

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Really? That isn't how I take it.

Read the article carefully:
"a mathematician with unlimited intelligence and resources could in principle compute the frog perspective - that is, compute what self aware observers the universe contains, what they percieve, and what languages they invent to describe their perceptions to one another."

That is determinism - the fall of every sparrow, the yearning for chocolate ice cream you're about to have, whether you choose to buy roses or petunias for your mother-in-law, all fall out of the math. There is no choice, no randomness, abosolutely nothing that isn't in the math.

I consider Level III to be a subset of Level IV -- that is, part of the mathematical underpinning of this particular instantiation of Level IV is its probabilistic nature. Probability is part of mathematics as much as determinism is.

Not really, on a couple of levels.

First, if you look at Everett's hypothosis that they discuss for Level III, there is no randomness at all. All events which are physically possible do occur. It's not that there's a 50% chance of heads, 50% of tails. It's 100% chance of heads and 100% chance of tails. Instead of choosing randomly, the universe (or multiverse, if you will) does both. You only interpret what you see as "randomness" because you who saw the coin come up heads cannot communicate with you who saw the coin come up tails.

Then, in a more general sense - mathematics can measure or compute probabilities, but it cannot actually generate randomness. By it's nature, mathematics runs by algorithms. If you start the system in a particular state, and let it run forwards under the same algorithm, you end up at the same exact state at the end. No variation. Period. Full stop.

It is for this very reason that so many physicists and mathematicians like Everett's hypothesis. If they are stuck with working with collapsing wave functions, then at some point on the blackboard they must stop and write, "And then a miracle occurs" (literally, I had one prof do that to illustrate the point). It's not that we don't know the math to do it - it is something that cannot be done, even in principle. That bugs the heck out of many researchers, so they look for models like Everett's, where no actual random events occur.

But the key question here is, is it reasonable to define "you" as anything other than the frog perspective?

I should think that's a matter of taste, and what you intend to accomplish. There's meaning to be found in both perspectives. Whether you find that useful is another matter.

And nobody ever said the truth was guaranteed to be useful :)

As for the final points - so far, nobody who has ever tried to describe a "the self is illusory" philosophy has ever been able to describe to me how a thing can not exist and still have a moral quality to it. Perhaps it is something not partiularly easy to state in English.

In the end, I suppose one person's facile argument is another's simple logic. Personally, I've never seen the "self is illusory" position put in other than a facile way. An illusion requires perception. Perception requires one to percieve. If there is no self, then who or what is doing the percieving? *shrug*