The Religious urge for Multiverse

The Constant Reader may remember that I have problems with the current craze for resolving every ambiguity of physics with the concept of "multiverse."

Now, Lee Smolin, a founding member and research physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has challenged other physicists to work out the implications of a single universe:

Smolin explains how theories describing a myriad of possible universes, with less or more dimensions and different kinds of particles and forces, have become increasingly popular in the last few years. However, through his work with the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Smolin believes that, despite there being good reasons for the conclusion that we live in a timeless multiverse, those theories, and the concomitant assumption that time is not a fundamental concept, are "profoundly mistaken".

Smolin points out why a timeless multiverse means that our laws of physics are no longer determinable from experiment and how the connection between fundamental laws, which are unique and applicable universally from first principles, and effective laws, which hold based on what we can actually observe, becomes unclear.

Smolin suggests a new set of principles that he hopes will begin a fresh adventure in science where we have to reconceive the notion of law to apply to a single universe that happens just once. These principles begin with the assertion that there is only one universe; that all that is real is real in a moment, as part of a succession of moments; and that everything that is real in a moment is a process of change leading to the next or future moments. As he explains, "If there is just one universe, there is no reason for a separation into laws and initial conditions, as we want a law to explain just one history of the one universe."

If we embrace the idea that there is only one universe and that time is a fundamental property of nature, then this opens up the possibility that the laws of physics evolve with time. As Smolin writes, "The notion of transcending our time-bound experiences in order to discover truths that hold timelessly is an unrealizable fantasy. When science succeeds, we do nothing of the sort; what we physicists really do is discover laws that hold in the universe we experience
within time. This, I would claim, should be enough; anything beyond that is more
a religious urge for transcendence than science."

And it is this final sentence that looses the arrow: "...anything beyond that is more a religious urge for transcendence than science."

Precisely!

Randism

The wonderfully named Scott Galupo writes that conservatives should get over their fascination with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Best line:

"Indeed, Miss Rand's writings are catnip for those who seek to deflect any and all blame for the current economic crisis away from the private sector. Like the airtight religious belief system that it essentially is, Randian capitalism can never stumble or fail — it can only be betrayed."

Heh.

I first read The Fountainhead, then Atlas Shrugged when I was in my late 20s with a wife and two children to support. I found them an odd mix of stilted didactic text mixed with heaving-bosom "woman's fiction." I was entertained by how she walked her characters through their set pieces, but not swept up by thier wooden speechifying.

I guess you have to read Rand while in your teens to really be ruined by her books.

A Rogue Agency

Just sent:

The Honorable Rick Larsen

Sir;

I am very troubled about the statements by the House Speaker, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, about whether or not the CIA mislead her during briefings about enhanced interrogation techniques. The issue is much deeper and more dangerous than any particular interrogation techniques by agents of the CIA, it is a claim that the CIA has slipped from the reigns of congressional oversight, that we have that most frightening of spectres: a rogue secret intelligence agency.

These claims must be investigated to clear either the CIA or Speaker Pelosi. Secret agencies are a regrettable necessity, so we allow them to operate only under the oversight of our elected representatives. I ask you to call for an investigation of these claims, and to join with other representatives in calling for this investigation.

I will watch in the next few months to see that the American people and their freedoms and safety are guarded.

Do You Have Any Standards at All?

Orson Scott Card, Democrat and newspaper columnist, takes local newspapers to task for being in the tank for the Democrats:

...These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
...
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
...
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

Is that gonna leave a mark? Unfortunately, no. The only thing that will change the media in this country is the ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the newspaper industry.