It’s a confused and disjointed article burdened with irrelevancies and embarassing ignorance (on the solution to Zeno’s Paradox). But Anderson gives instructive examples of how money has been made out of free giveaways. Entrepreneurs take note.

What these examples exemplify is this: giving something away can induce people to buy things they don’t need. It expands the conscious menu of purchasable choices. It creates more in the world to buy.

Buying generates economic activity. General prosperity rises with commercial bustle. Economic activity produces jobs, consumes resources, generates waste and yields an increase in the level of general satisfaction. In good times even art and philosophy prosper. Thus the creation of a ‘desire to buy’ makes society wealthier! Wired Magazine rejoices.

Merchants prosper and order goods. Manufacturers buy materials and hire workers. The money paid out empowers consumers to generate further economic activity. And so wealth grows. When wealth grows we’re having ‘good times’.

Why can’t we have unending good times?

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You are a seeker. You have heard of an enlightened one. He is a hermit who lives in a cave in the side of a mountain. You must struggle to get there. The arduous climb symbolizes the struggle to attain nirvana - become enlightened. In clothes befitting the nakedness of your soul and your readiness to become a devotee you ascend the mountain. And, at last, just over the last ledge your struggle is to be rewarded. You will see the enlightened one, an ascetic bearded prophet of great age.

Instead you see a 40 year old hairy man dressed in woman’s underwear, wearing a wig and made up like a hooker, sitting in the lotus position. But then, this astonishingly silly figure speaks the words that his appearance illustrates. And these turn out to be the most profound words imaginable: Disillusionment is enlightenment!

Disillusionment, something mourned by many as the loss of innocence, is declared to be the kernel of enlightenment. By a man whose very appearance embodies disillusionment to the seeker.

The power of this cartoon is of biblical proportions. It is Michaelangelo’s David of cartoons. A masterpiece. Because it speaks profundity through humor.

The pealing away of illusion is surely enlightenment.
And the pealing away of illusion is what disillusionment means.
Disillusionment is enlightenment.

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I conclude that people need guided ceremony. And they need prayer: something to offer consolation in times of despair and celebration in times of joy. There exist organizations that offer prayers. Besides the prayers of traditional religions, there are many groups offering non-denominational prayers. Unitarians do this. I googled non-denominational prayers and was led here:

theGreenBelt blogspot, Non-denominational prayer

This site gives some examples of non-denominational prayers. I find them quite poetic. What disturbs the rather astute writer of that excellent greenbelt blog is the futility of the prayer not so much the references to deity, God and Creator.

Let us pray. We meditate on the transcendental Glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of the Heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds.

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/why-is-there-anything/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/encyclopedists/ http://divineneutrality.org/encyclopedists/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:10:11 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/encyclopedists/
I applaud three truly remarkable men who are so bold as to categorize and explain, mostly in their own words, vaste stores of knowledge. They are David Darling, Glyn Hughes and Frank Smitha: internet encyclopedists.

David Darling offers us his INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE. Because he, himself, writes many entries and passes judgement on the rest, he must take personal responsibility for all the entries. Specialist experts are the contributors in normal encyclopedias. Darling offers us what he, a non-expert, understands of each subject. And he writes charmingly and imaginatively. He takes evident pleasure in making ideas assimilable. Something experts often fail to do.

Glyn Hughes, in his SQUASHED PHILOSOPHERS, encapsulates for us the wisdom of the western world’s philosophers! Who would have thought it possible?

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/encyclopedists/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/what-is-a-measurement/ http://divineneutrality.org/what-is-a-measurement/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:26:05 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/what-is-a-measurement/ I am reading some wonderful papers on the Measurement Problem.

What strikes me is how measurement is visualized. It is visualized as taking place in a laboratory. The system - an isolated entangled state - encounters a macroscopic measuring device. In doing so the Hilbert Spaces of the two become entangled. Somehow a pointer state of the device must result. This is the scheme set down by von Neumann in 1932 and lucidly explained and expanded upon by Schlosshauer in a well written review article. Another gripping article is by Geoffrey Sewell, who says, effectively, that there is no measurement problem.

But is measurement about laboratories?

In the laboratory a photodetector signals the arrival of each photon and a counter accumulates the counts. It works because the photon is absorbed, ejecting an electron. (A current of electrons moves pointers.) The reaction

(photon + electron) yields (electron*)

is what marks the measurement.

But is not any green leaf a photodector? The photon gets absorbed via photosynthesis. The leaf’s vitality is a photon count accumulator. The reaction

(photon + water + carbon dioxide) yields (sugar + oxygen)

marks the ‘measurement’.

Surely every chemical reaction that goes to completion is a measurement event; the reactants disappear and the products appear. Isn’t every inelastic scattering a measurement event? In every such event the original quantum system is destroyed and something new emerges. It is just the property of any chemical reaction.

What, then, constitutes a measurement?

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/what-is-a-measurement/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/on-wavelet-transforms/ http://divineneutrality.org/on-wavelet-transforms/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:02:48 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/on-wavelet-transforms/ In the October 2007 issue of Physics Today beginning on page 78 there is an article on Wavelets by Ivan Selesnick, son of my friend Stephen Selesnick. He must be a very proud father.

I read the article. I wish I understood what I read. What does sparse mean?

Here is my picture of the story: A fourier transform tells us to what extant the signal is periodic; it displays the frequencies embedded in the signal. Signal polution ‘has no frequency’ - white noise - yielding small amplitude at all frequencies. Thus it can, in the transform, be distinguished from what we are looking for - periodicity. A spectrum shows us what frequencies are present.

But signals may have distinguishing features other than frequency for which we want to search. The idea is to create a transform to display the distinguishing feature we wish to favor and to blunt what we wish to devalue. Wavelets are the transforms that do this: enhance what we favor, blunt what we devalue.

Is this a valid overview? Have I got it right?

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/on-wavelet-transforms/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/out-of-the-mud-comes-the-lotus/ http://divineneutrality.org/out-of-the-mud-comes-the-lotus/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:04:06 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/?p=5 “May all that have life be delivered from suffering”
Gautama Buddha

“Is it possible to conquer all suffering? Is that conquest even a rational idea?”
Marvin Chester

The foundational structure of Buddhism is enunciated in THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS:

1. The world is full of suffering (dukkha).
2. Suffering is caused by desire (attachment, craving: tanha)
3. If one can eliminate desire, one can eliminate suffering.
4. The Noble Eight-fold Path can eliminate desire.

Buddha’s idea:

• Suffering is no good.
• It’s caused by desire.
• Eliminate them both.

Is this a sound philosophy? Does it even make sense?

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/out-of-the-mud-comes-the-lotus/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/measurement-problem/ http://divineneutrality.org/measurement-problem/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:03:11 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/?p=4 A commonplace computational practice in quantum mechanics generates the most profound conceptual challenge to the theory. The challenge is called the measurement problem. Here are some quotes summarizing the problem.

“The quantum measurement parodox.. stated succinctly… In quantum mechanics all possibilities… are left open whereas in … experience a definite outcome always (occurs).”
A. J. Leggett in Foundations of Physics. 18, 939 (1988)

“How is the measuring instrument proded into making up its mind which value it has observed?”
Bryce S. Dewitt, Physics Today 23, 30 (1970)

“Some explanation must be provided for the fact that the Hilbert—space vector… collapses onto a certain eigenvector during a measurement process…”
J. Bub, Nuovo Cimento v. 57, Nr.2, 503 (1968)

The probability amplitudes evolve deterministically until a measurement is made: the measurement stops the evolution. What is the essential element that changes the evolution of the system from being in a state
|S> = (superposition sum of many states |n>),
into being in a state, say, |n=3>, one from among the many in the superposition?
Marvin Chester, never published

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]]> http://divineneutrality.org/measurement-problem/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/the-problem-of-evil/ http://divineneutrality.org/the-problem-of-evil/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:01:57 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/?p=3

Is there a “Problem of Evil” when there is no God? i.e. Is there evil in the world? Can any act be said to be evil, the concept being completely subjective? Do people who do evil agree that they are doing evil? Why then do they do it? What does evil mean?

Was it David Hume, the eighteenth century British philosopher, who best stated the logical problem of evil, in the following inquiry about God?

Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.
Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

How do you measure evil?

If free will is an illusion then so is evil. They are both the result of natural process in the individual experience.

]]> http://divineneutrality.org/the-problem-of-evil/feed/ http://divineneutrality.org/ants-world-view/ http://divineneutrality.org/ants-world-view/#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:10:31 +0000 Marvin Chester http://divineneutrality.org/ants-world-view/ The interesting thing about suicide bombers is this: that they are so dedicated to their community - islam, anarchism in a former time - that they kill themselves for it.

Let us distinguish the practice from the mechanisms by which they are persuaded. The mechanism requires a world view - a belief in the supernatural, in an afterlife, in unseen powers around us which we must placate, a belief in a greater good.

What persuades the ants to kill themselves for their community? Do ants have a world view?

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