slightly more articulate version of my post a while ago on prayer/quantum physics

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Brain and Cognitive Building, like any good brain, is split between tactile neuroscience and the more ephemeral cognitive science, but unlike the brains dissected in class, it has a piteously thin corpus callosum, with little or no communication between the two sides. The Cartesian notion of a spiritual mover of the physical realm was long ago abandoned by science, and the study of the brain is crippled by the brain’s inability to truly trust its own mechanisms of introspection. While some scientists cling to ideas of spirituality, these doctrines are largely sequestered from the workday experience. Especially as arguments against free will have arisen from quantum physics, the movement to truly connect body and mind has seemed utterly hopeless. However, if a few fundamental assumptions are made about the requisite nature of a spiritual realm, quantum physical arguments for indeterminacy can be used to develop a new metaphorical argument for free will based on observation and the collapse of probability waves.

In order to understand how consciousness could arise from spirituality, it must be established that the spiritual realm encompasses and supersedes the physical realm. One way of showing this is an unorthodox application of Godel’s second incompleteness theorem. This theorem, originally a mathematical construct concerning natural numbers, is relevant in its statement that a system of truths, whether they are arithmetical or, as in this case, physical, cannot prove its own consistency. One physical example of this is that the human mind cannot prove a ubiquitous defect in human thought. The consistency of the human brain has to be proved from outside of the system of human consciousness. Thus, if spirituality is proposed as a system to explain the natural laws of the universe, in order for spirituality to be complete, it must contain the physical realm within it. Another indirect argument for an overriding spiritual realm is the inability of science or any observation in the physical world to disprove anything purely spiritual or religious. According to the laws of mathematical set theories, if the spiritual realm were a product of human thought rather than an independent and encompassing space, its existence would be possible to prove or disprove within the larger mathematical system, or the system of human knowledge. Because such a proof has been impossible, it is mathematically more likely that the physical set is contained within the spiritual set. Although it could be argued, given this hierarchy, that applying human topological knowledge is applying specific rules from a subset to a set in which they may not apply, mathematics itself seems to be the one exception to Godel’s theorems: it is absolute, despite the fact that is a human creation. Thus it can be safely applied throughout all sets. A final argument for the extension of the spiritual beyond the physical is historical precedent. Although this argument is weaker than a mathematical theorem, most peoples and religious denominations have assumed that the spiritual realm exists beyond the physical realm. Given the protests of scientists against the existence of a spiritual realm, no arguments have been made for the embedment of the spiritual within the physical. Thus it is reasonable to continue with the status quo. Using Godel’s incompleteness theorems, the inability of science to prove or disprove religion, and the historical precedent, it can be hypothesized that the physical world exists within the spiritual world.

Despite this hierarchy, quantum physicists have argued that the physical properties of diminutive matter make spiritual interactions with the physical world, and thus free will and directed consciousness, impossible. Physicists have made this argument based on the inherent randomness of the action of subatomic particles. For instance, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know the exact position and momentum of a particle simultaneously, and measuring one property eliminates the possibility of measuring the other. This quality arises from the probabilistic nature of particles. While matter on an atomic scale behaves in a predictable, Newtonian manner, quantum matter exhibits irregular properties as a wave in probability space. It lacks definable qualities, and can be nudged to act in any way by physical surroundings. It has the potential to possess a great many qualities, but does not actualize any of them. Human observation of a quantum particle actually sets these qualities. What makes these particles so random is that they don’t actually have qualities that require observation to determine; the act of observation actually determines their quantum properties. In that manner, the human being truly changes the essential nature of the particle simply through observation. While old arguments against free will contended that the chemicals in the brain were deterministic on the atomic scale, new arguments put forth by quantum physicists rely on the random properties of particles to argue that all that is human is truly arbitrary, if at the deepest level all human decisions result from randomly collapsing probability waves of subatomic particles.

While both deterministic and quantum randomness arguments are difficult to resolve, quantum effects can provide a metaphorical explanation for free will as the spiritual self observing the physical self and thereby collapsing probability waves. It must be admitted that in the physical world, events are apparently determined on an atomic scale and are random on a quantum scale. However, as was established, the physical world is only a set within the spiritual world. Thus it is possible that there is more to the situation than meets the physicist’s eye. In fact, the very arguments for randomness that he employs against free will can be used in its support. When these arguments are applied to a more holistic view of the universe, a universe including both a physical and a spiritual realm, one can view the spiritual self as an observational mechanism similar to the machines used in quantum physics experiments to view particles and consequentially to set their parameters. In this interpretation, the physical human being is a complex probability wave of unrealized states, a superposition of possible outcomes. It is from this superposition that physicists draw their arguments for randomness or determinacy. However, where they err is in assuming that the human outcome superposition collapses randomly, or according to physical laws. Because the universe has a spiritual element, and because free will is an unexplained phenomenon, it is much more likely that a free action originates from the spiritual realm acting on the physical realm. Moreover, just as in quantum physics, it is likely that this is similar to an observational action, in which the spiritual self observes the physical self, thereby collapsing the probability wave and causing the physical self to pursue a singular course of action. While this explanation is similar to Descartes’ explanation for free will, it better accommodates contemporary scientific arguments. In this interpretation, it is still possible to view actions as scientifically determined or random because science is only a set within the larger spiritual set, and thus is incomplete. Therefore this explanation better addresses scientific arguments while still providing a spiritual explanation. Quantum effects themselves provide a metaphor for the mechanism of free will.

Based on a knowledge of the hierarchy of the spiritual and physical realms, quantum physics arguments against free will can actually provide a platform upon which an argument for free will can be constructed on the basis of collapsing probability waves. While this theory leaves no hope for a scientific discovery of the mechanism for free will, it provides hope to all of those beleaguered scientists who put on a tie to go to church on Sunday and then head back to the neuroscience laboratory on Monday. Separating the fields of neuroscience and cognitive science is counterproductive and false, and only a more accommodating picture of human consciousness can thicken that corpus callosum.

the things we learn

Today I went to part of church (made a deal with God), and I'm really glad I did if only for the observations I made on the bus.

First, there was a man with some kind of mental disability. He sat down next to these kids, appeared to have some kind of panic attack, started freaking out, took out a stress ball, and started squeezing it. Then he asked the kids (my age), completely out of the blue, if they were getting married, and the boy said "no sir, we're not" (I think they were just friends). Then the man started asking them all these questions (seemingly to distract himself from whatever was giving him the panic attack), including what the boy was majoring in, and the boy was majoring in philosophy. So then the guy started asking the boy all these questions about different philosophers and political philosophy. It was a very interesting conversation.

I realize that I grew up with a lot of powerful stigmas that I really want to get rid of, including a lot of judgmental ways of looking at people with severe mental illness and homelessness. Because in my hometown I saw very little of either and all depictions were radicalized descriptions fed to me through the media (not an excuse, but still), I developed a very negative view of either class of people. Not a consciously negative view... I mean, I was always taught to be sympathetic to people in those situations. But more of a visceral rejection of those people as being *different* from me, an automatic judgment that I have nothing to learn from them. As I came to Boston and started volunteering at homeless shelters, and as I started working with severely mentally ill people back home, I realize what an error in judgment this is. I have *so* much to learn from people that I used to just dismiss without a conscious thought.

I guess what I'm saying isn't that I judged them, because I never viewed them as bad or not as good as me or anything, but that I otherized them. I made them the class into two divisions, people like me and people not like me, and homeless people and "crazy" people got lumped into people not like me. But now I'm realizing that dividing the world into two classes of people is very idiotic because we're all the same inside, and we all have so much to learn from each other. Assuming that we have some privileged knowledge a mentally ill person doesn't is a huge mistake. There's always something to learn from someone else.

Anyway, it is difficult, at the age of 20, to change this about myself, but I am glad I have finally recognized it and addressed it as the serious problem that it is. Because I think that in order to be a successful psychiatrist, I have to be the kind of doctor that relates to my patients on a personal level rather than adopting a separatist, holier-than-thou attitude (who wants to believe they're broken? everyone has fixed and broken parts inside of them).

So that was just one observation on the bus, and it's one complicated, semi-selfish goal of my volunteer work in homeless shelters. I guess it's both selfish and unselfish. I mean, I want to quit otherize people and improve myself as a person, which is selfish, but I want to do this so I can relate to people and help them more when I'm eventually in a position to do so, which I think is unselfish. So like everything, it's a bit of both.

Other interesting bus observations: a woman wearing sweatpants carrying a very expensive-looking camera and a very hairy dog, occasionally taking pictures of it (she even gave it its own seat on the bus until the bus became too busy).

And, the one conversation I am always sick of having: so I was somehow squashed on the way home from church between this girl who smelled like cigarette smoke which was giving me allergies and this man who smelled like alcohol (or maybe I was imagining that? But I swear he did, and he was practically sitting on top of me even though he could have had way more room if he'd sat in the seat adjacent to the one next to me). When I pressed the stop for MIT, he said,
"So, you go to MIT?"
"Yes,"
"You must be very smart."
Why is this everyone's first reaction???? I mean, I know it's a good school, but please people, give a little thought for the sake of conversation. What is the other person supposed to say to this? I mean, I don't think I'm very smart. But even if I did, what am I supposed to say, "Yes, thank you, why yes, actually I am"? No of course not! So anyone is cornered into responding, as I did, with some variant of,
"Ha, not really..." which just sounds like false modesty even if it's (as in my case) true.
I've just had this conversation so many times. I'm sure anyone going to a decent school has to deal with it. But it's just ridiculous. People don't think before they open their mouths. I mean, there are some conventions to polite conversation, are there not? One does not give complements that so effectively trap the conversation partner into such flimsy modesty. It's not considerate. Sigh.

Also, the truth is, nothing makes a kid feel dumb like MIT. We might have felt smart in high school, but here, almost all of us feel dumb. So it doesn't really make us feel better to have the whole smart card pulled on us. Usually.

I don't know. Now I sound ungrateful. I really am not ungrateful. I'm not, I swear.

centuries of catholicism destroyed by pedophilia?

Not that this pedophilia thing is anything new (reports have been surfacing on Catholic etc clerical leaders for years), but CNN seems to have just caught on, and all the lawsuits are starting to become critical. Anyway, the cumulative effect is that I think the church can no longer keep it under the wraps, at least not in countries like the US or the UK.

I think that to say this is the death of catholicism, as one Irish priest said in an interview, is a really Ad-hominem thing to say... I mean, maybe it's the death for the time being of organized Catholicism in Ireland, but if people really believe in the church, then the moral qualms of its leaders shouldn't affect the veracity of the church's teachings, should it? I think that in a perfect world, it shouldn't. Of course, we don't live in a perfect world.

My argument against Catholicism is that celibacy was just never the greatest idea, and it's their own fault if it's backfired. It's not doctrinal. It says nowhere in the Bible that priests need be celibate. It was never spoken by Christ or a prophet. It's probably another one of those Nicaen doctrines they decided at one of their medieval conferences (sorry I know I sound slightly disrespectful... please consider these words with all due respect to Catholicism). But anyway, sex is a biological need. It's driven by *hormones.* And no matter how much people try, they can't really control their hormones. While I think I would be capable of living my life without it, that's not for everyone. If becoming a priest was an entirely self-selective process, it might be okay. But there's a ton of selective environmental pressure put on those guys, so sometimes people become priests who maybe shouldn't have. And then we get issues of people abusing those in our society who are small enough and vulnerable enough to keep quiet (since if anyone found out about the infidelity, that would be the end of that priest's priesthood... or so we hoped until CNN told us that actually wasn't the case in the Catholic church; apparently the priests just got moved when they were found out). Anyway, it led to child abuse is what I'm saying. And really, that makes a lot of sense, all things considered. It certainly doesn't excuse it, but it's just as much an organizational issue of the Catholic church as it is a serious issue of the child molesters in the church who have been getting away with this for years (and who need to be removed from office right away).

I don't know. I just don't think God would ask someone to do something so distinctly anti-human that made him so... unhappy, unless that person really wanted to do it. Which is why I don't believe in the Catholic brand of celibacy. Of course my Mormon brand isn't extremely improved (aka if a Mormon doesn't get married, his shots aren't great either), but it's less restrictive I think and the view of sex is a lot more healthy anyway.

If the reason priests are supposed to be celibate is to keep them from thinking about sex, I really don't think it's working. Look at CNN for evidence.

As for whether this is the death of the Catholic church? I hope not. I mean, if real Catholics do exist, the church will go on even if it's leaders do not. That's the way a real religion should operate. If religions are only dependently true, they can't really be true. They have to have independent truth. That's the point of religion. It stands beyond all human logic. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, religion hears it.

:-)

That made sense to me anyway.

my own kind of tsunami

Yes, this does feel selfish when people out there are facing some things so much larger... but I am a spoiled rich white kid... even if I get out of my bubble, volunteer at homeless shelters, want to crack the the shell, I'm still me.

Interesting thought (rather personal for this blog, but the other blog has become a bit caustic so here it goes):

So if you are a quantum physicist, you believe that reality actually doesn't have a certain state until you measure it. Schroedinger's quantum cat actually is in a probabilistic haze of life and death; he isn't alive or dead until the box is opened. It isn't simple that we as people standing around outside the box don't *know* whether he is alive or dead inside the box; he actually isn't either until we ourselves somehow make him one or the other by observing his state. It sounds like fantasy, but it's actually physics.

So I am a scientist, I truly am. I know a lot about neuroscience and biology and organic chemistry, and I know more than the average Joe about physics and most other topics in science. But, being the odd one that I am, I am in the anomaly: I believe in God. I believe He is all-powerful. This leads me to do something which most people would probably view as highly strange and irrational; most people, that is, except the quantum physicists, which is perhaps why I don't view it as so irrational because quantum physics doesn't seem so weird to me after all these years of books about it.

Namely, I took the MCAT a little over four weeks ago. As soon as I left that testing center, my score was arguably determined. The computer had already scored my multiple choice questions, and by now some lady named Edna from Atlanta who likes cats or whoever it is has scored my essays. Arguably, this is a fatalistic venture and really there hasn't been anything I could do for the past month of agonizing waiting. And yet, I haven't just been inert. I've been doing what I always do while waiting for test results: praying madly. And why? Because I don't believe the wave has collapsed yet.

See, very small things have this principle that arises from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which is that we can't know their position and momentum simultaneously, and once we measure one we lose the other. The larger something gets, the more it loses its wave-like properties, and the less applicable Heisenberg's principle becomes. Thus although it's technically true that I exist as a probabilistic wave function, it's much more correct to say that I'm laying on my bed right now, mostly stationary. The error is much, much, much ^ trillion smaller for me than for some tiny particle. But for Schroedinger's tiny cat, as long as the box is closed, he exists as a probability wave of all of his possible states of momentum and position (a superposition wave) rather than a single position or momentum. When we open the box, we with our eyes (we actually ourselves, somehow) change things by seeing the cat; isn't that crazy! We change an electron just by observing it! That's insane! Anyway, so that's the quantum theory.

So why can't this apply to my spirituality? My idea is that if God is all-powerful, he probably has a handle on quantum principles. Thus perhaps he can somehow extend them to my test. Then until I view my test with my own eyes, it exists as a probability wave. Edna may have graded the essays; the computer may have graded my test; but in my mind, I have no score. It is still possible, until I see the score, break the uncertainty principle, and collapse the probability wave, for God to change things. And I actually do believe that He could (much to my atheist and agnostic friend's consternation).

It actually has some doctrinal justification too. I mean, according to scripture, we're destined to do something, but we have the choice to do it or not. Thus it must be kind of like a probability wave that we can choose to collapse in some fashion. God must know the probabilities, but we must have the observational powers that collapse the waves.

And you thought people that prayed about things like that were just being stupid. See, there's a rationality to everything.

analytical solution to membrane potentials

I asked today in class why they can't come up with some decent analytical solutions to the differential equations for neuron membrane potentials, but my professor didn't really give me a good response (he also keeps telling us we should say "yes to drugs" aka TTX and wears multiple tie-dye Grateful Dead T-shirts, so I'm still skeptical).

I know there's a bajillion variables involved, and perhaps interpolating better accounts for environmental factors, but seriously after all these years and all these membranes, you'd think someone would have spent a little time on an analytical solution. I want a real reason why. But I don't want to research it so I just want someone to tell me.

I also want some quantum entanglement miracle to change my MCAT score so I don't have to take the blasted test again. I'm so sick of studying for it and I'm so sick of the dumb thing. I hate it. I really, really, really don't want to take it again. It is truly unfortunate the so much of my future depends on my performance on it. I'm not sure who came up with this standardized system, but he and I are having a little talk once we get to heaven.

division lines

I think that I once read that in ancient times the Olympic games were used as a mode of political union, a way to bring the separating factions of the world together again.

I was watching the parade the other day, and I realized that while it may be nominally possible for all the different nations to march in some form (I'm glad Taiwan got some form of representation out of China for instance), putting labels on things can't really fix things anymore. Some prejudices run too deep. I think we've come too far to fix them with a parade or some games. But I don't know what the solution is. It makes me sad.

My x-boyfriend's sole goal in life is to unify the Middle East. I wouldn't tell him this (although I'm sure he suspects it), but I don't think he'll succeed, even though he is one of the most compassionate, determined people I know. And that also makes me sad.

philanthropic obligation

Somewhere in the world, hundreds and thousands of bodies are lying in the streets, being shoved into once-sealed crypts, and millions of living people are sleeping on the concrete mourning those they love. And what am I doing? Sitting in my nice house, studying for the MCAT (which will kill me someday, quite soon actually).

A lot of people, usually those that are affluent, don't feel any real obligation towards those less fortunate, or at least they don't act on it, so they can't take it that seriously. I think the wealth disparities in the world, especially the differences between third world countries and countries like the United States, but even the difference between poverty and affluence in the United States, are proof of that. People think that if they work hard for their money, they deserve it. A lot of people also seem to subscribe to the "rags to riches" belief that anyone, through hard work, can rise from poverty (like in "the pursuit of happyness"). While that is true on rare occasions with individuals that are poor due to a fixable bad work ethic, so many people are bogged down by circumstances that go beyond what they have power to change. Although most people look down on homeless people as being alcoholics and drug addicts, 1. those aren't easy addictions to kick and there's no reason they should be denigrated for having a hard time with it and 2. they often have mental issues that make kicking such habits or holding a job difficult.

Anyway, what I mean by all this and which I must say before my broken-fan computer explodes is that I do believe everyone who has a cent more money or an hour more time than his neighbor, whether that's his neighbor in the US or in some other country, has a moral obligation to give. Not even just a little, but a lot. People look down on my "socialist" ideas, but quasi-socialist countries have been deemed the happiest on earth (I think I'm speaking of Sweden). I am leery of pushing my moral ideas on others, but I think that philanthropic duty is a moral absolute. That being said, I think that only each individual can decide how much he can feasibly give, and that his choice should be respected without question. In the end, I'm not the judge. In my opinion, we'll eventually all face God. But even if you take God out of the picture, I think that we should all love each other, and if we love each other, donating time and money is a logical conclusion.

Not that I'm really acting out my philosophy at the moment, but considering all my money for school etc comes from my parents still, and considering I need an MD to do what I want to do (doctors without borders), I don't have a ton of money to spare. But I really want to start volunteering at the homeless shelter I go to with more of my time and spending less of it on me.

My singular new year's resolution this year is to be less selfish. While I know that's a terrible resolution because it has no tangible benchmarks or definable ending, I believe that I know myself well enough to tell whether I am progressing, and things like spending more of my time volunteering are realistic outcomes of my goal. But it's not just volunteering... it's volunteering unselfishly and for the right reasons. I don't think it's a moral action just because it's a utilitarian outcome; the intent has to be there.

It's all very difficult, and the more I try to act unselfishly, the more I fear my motives are selfish. It is my life goal to eradicate my selfishness and self absorption. That is also something only I can keep tabs on. But I fear that right now I am far from my goal.