Higgs boson explains why other particles have mass

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6244899.stm
Experts home in on 'God particle'

Cern's Atlas detector will search for the elusive "God particle" (Image: Cern/Maximilien Brice) Enlarge Image

Scientists may be closing in on the most sought-after particle in physics.

The hypothetical Higgs boson, often dubbed the "God particle", is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe but has yet to be detected.

Now, data from the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab, in the US, has enabled the most precise calculation yet to be made for its predicted mass.

And this, the international team says, narrows the window in which to locate the elusive particle.

Adding weight

The Higgs boson has been proffered to explain the mystery of why other particles have mass, and forms the missing piece in the puzzle that is the Standard Model - the current theory used to describe the fundamental nature of matter.

For years, researchers have been searching the sub-atomic "soup" created when particles are smashed together in colliders - but no sign of the Higgs has been seen.

In obtaining a more precise predicted mass for the Higgs, the particle's existence can be confirmed or ruled out within two to three years, scientists believe.

The calculation has been done by making the finest measurement to date of the mass of another elementary particle, one that is well known, the W boson.

After more than 10 years, we are now homing in on the Higgs Dr Mark Lancaster

The W boson is the carrier of weak nuclear force, one of the fundamental forces in nature, and its mass is believed to be linked to that of the Higgs'.

Using this new measurement, together with the calculated mass of another fundamental particle, the top quark, the Fermilab team has worked out a new predicted mass for the Higgs boson, discovering it might be lighter than previously thought.

Dr Mark Lancaster, UK spokesman for the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), from University College London, said: "These findings narrow down the mass region that we expect the Higgs to appear in.

"After more than 10 years, we are now homing in on it."

And searching data within this region at Fermilab's Tevatron and Europe's Large Hadron Collider at Cern, which switches on next year, could reveal whether the Higgs boson is present or not by the middle of 2009, he added.

"And if we don't find it, it is going to be back to the drawing board for particle physics."

The Standard Model is a theory devised to explain how sub-atomic particles interact with each other There are 16 particles that make up this model (12 matter particles and 4 force carrier particles). But they would have no mass if considered alone The Higgs boson explains why these particles have mass. Particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson.

Diameter of Stars and Planets

Planet / Star	Diameter km	Relative to Earth
Mercury	4,880	.4
Mars	6,784	.5
Venus	12,104	.9
Earth	12,756	1
Neptune	49,532	4
Saturn	108,128	8
Jupiter	142,984	11
Sun	1,392,500	109
Sirius	2,506,500	197
Pollux	6,962,500	545
Rigel	86,335,000	6,768
Beteigeuze	905,125,000	70,956
Antares	1,108,430,000	86,894
My Cephei	3,481,250,000	272,910
W Cephei	3,676,200,000	288,194

Consciousness Without Faith - use words like "spiritual" and "mystical" in scare quotes

by Sam Harris

Reposted from:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,497,n,n
Why not share your comment on the article there as well? CLICK HERE
Reposted originally from:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com
Why not share your comment on the article there as well? CLICK HERE

my highlights in blue

I recently spent an afternoon on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon. It was an infernally hot day, and the sanctuary was crowded with Christian pilgrims from many continents. Some gathered silently in the shade, while others staggered in the noonday sun, taking photographs.

As I sat and gazed upon the surrounding hills gently sloping to an inland sea, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an "I" or a "me"—vanished. Everything was as it had been—the cloudless sky, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water—but I no longer felt like I was separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained. The experience lasted just a few moments, but returned many times as I gazed out over the land where Jesus is believed to walked, gathered his apostles, and worked many of his miracles.

If I were a Christian, I would undoubtedly interpret this experience in Christian terms. I might believe that I had glimpsed the oneness of God, or felt the descent of the Holy Spirit. But I am not a Christian. If I were a Hindu, I might talk about "Brahman," the eternal Self, of which all individual minds are thought to be a mere modification. But I am not a Hindu. If I were a Buddhist, I might talk about the "dharmakaya of emptiness" in which all apparent things manifest. But I am not a Buddhist.

As someone who is simply making his best effort to be a rational human being, I am very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions from experiences of this sort. The truth is, I experience what I would call the "selfessness of consciousness" rather often, wherever I happen to meditate—be it in a Buddhist monastery, a Hindu Temple, or while having my teeth cleaned. Consequently, the fact that I also had this experience at a Christian holy site does not lend an ounce of credibility to the doctrine of Christianity.

There is no question that people have "spiritual" experiences (I use words like "spiritual" and "mystical" in scare quotes, because they come to us trailing a long tail of metaphysical debris). Every culture has produced people who have gone off into caves for months or years and discovered that certain deliberate uses of attention—introspection, meditation, prayer—can radically transform a person's moment to moment perception of the world. I believe contemplative efforts of this sort have a lot to tell us about the nature of the mind.

There are, in fact, several points of convergence between the modern sciences of the mind—psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, etc.—and some of our contemplative traditions. Both lines of inquiry, for instance, give us good reasons to believe that the conventional sense of self is kind of cognitive illusion. While most of us go through life feeling like we are the thinker of our thoughts and the experiencer of our experience, from the perspective of science we know that this is a false view. There is no discrete self or ego lurking like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. There is no region of cortex or stream of neural processing that occupies a privileged position with respect to our personhood. There is no unchanging "center of narrative gravity" (to use Daniel Dennett's fine phrase). In subjective terms, however, there seems to be one—to most of us, most of the time. But our contemplative traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) also attest, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser precision, that this point of view is vulnerable to inquiry.

Consider, what the brain is doing, as a matter of conscious representation. What are we conscious of? We are conscious of the world; we are conscious of our bodies in the world; and we are—we think—conscious of our selves in our bodies. After all, most of us don't feel merely identical to our bodies. We feel, most of the time, like we are riding around inside our bodies, as though we are an inner subject that can utilize the body as a kind of object. This last representation is an illusion, and can be dispelled as such. Selflessness is a quality of consciousness that can be subjectively discovered. Indeed, it is in plain view in every present moment, and yet it remains difficult to see. If this seems like a paradox, consider the following analogy:

The optic nerve passes through the retina, so as to create a point in each of our visual fields where we are effectively blind. Most of us had this demonstrated to us in school: one marks a piece of paper, closes an eye, and then moves the paper into a position where the mark disappears. Of course, only a small minority of people in history have been aware of their blind spots. And even those of us who know about them go for decades without noticing them as a matter of direct perception. And yet they are always there, available to be noticed.

There is an analogous insight into the nature of consciousness—too near to us, in a sense, to be easily seen. For most people it requires considerable training in meditation to catch a glimpse of it. But it is possible to notice that consciousness—that in you which is aware of your experience in this moment—does not feel like a self. It does not feel like "I."

As a critic of religious faith, I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer is: many things and nothing. Nothing need replace its ludicrous and divisive elements. Nothing need replace the idea that Jesus will return to earth wielding magic powers and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire. Nothing need replace the notion that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are baseless, dangerous, and demeaning ideas. But what about ethics and spiritual experience? For many, religion still appears the only vehicle for what is most important in life—love, compassion, morality, and self-transcendence. To change this, we need a way of talking about human well-being that is as unconstrained by religious dogma as science is.

As I write, the second in a series of meditation retreats for scientists is just getting underway, sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute. One hundred scientists will spend the next week in silent meditation, to see whether, and to what degree, this technique of sustained introspection can inform their thinking about the human mind. There are also several neuroscience labs now studying the effects of meditation on the brain. Western interest in meditation has opened a dialogue between scientists and contemplatives about how the data of first-person experience can be brought into the charmed circle of third-person experiment. The goal is to understand the possibilities of human well-being a little bit better than we do at present.

I believe that most people are interested in spiritual life, whether they realize it or not. Every one of us has been born to seek happiness in a condition that is fundamentally unreliable. What you get, you lose. We are all (at least tacitly) interested in discovering just how happy a person can be in such a circumstance. On the question of how to be most happy, the contemplative life has some important insights to offer.

Posted by Sam Harris on January 6, 2007 5:34 PM

"On Faith" panelist Sam Harris is the author of the best-selling books Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and The End of Faith (2005), which won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into many foreign languages.

**************

Select comments from http://richarddawkins.net/article,497,n,n

1. Comment #16573 by Stephen on January 7, 2007 at 12:17 pm

Sam Harris is a great writer, speaker, and critic of religion. The spiritual or mystical experiences he speaks of, I believe, do occur, but I also believe that he should stop using those words. They have too much baggage attached to them from centuries of religious use.

I think a good example of the experiences he speaks of is when you find yourself just staring off into/at nothing, not thinking, not observing, just there. For that brief moment there is a realization that you were not thinking, something that rarely happens. Thats my interpretation at least. If that is the case (or something very simliar to it), I think Harris should stop using terms like "spiritual" or "mystical", or, at the very least, always and only use them with quotation marks--that way readers know that he doesn't mean to use the words in the sense that is normally thought. Still, since in speeches and interviews he uses the terms quite often, quotation marks just won't cut it. He either needs to drop the terms, replace them, or just find a better way of explaining exactly what he means by his experiences and the terms. I think he could do a little better in explaining scientifically these experiences also, so they don't come across as sounding so religious. Even in essays like this one (in which he explains that he doesn't interpret the experiences religiously), his way of speaking about them flirts a little too closely with religious "mysticism" and "spirituality" in the way most people think about the words.

7. Comment #16597 by Jack Rawlinson on January 7, 2007 at 2:25 pm

I have no problem with this, although like Stephen, I worry about the use of words which carry a weight of historical religious baggage. Using such words to describe real-world, non-supernatural experiences carries the same risk as Einstein's use of "god" - it throws the hungry religious believer a bone.

13. Comment #16620 by Don'tForgetToBreathe on January 7, 2007 at 4:24 pm

I like this essay quite a bit. On the issue of words like spirituality and mysticism, I have mixed feelings. To begin with, when people say they're spiritual but not religious, it just annoys me - no real rational reason behind it - more so in the way an annoying fad can get under my skin. So that's a personal quibble that's easily ignored. I don't think dropping the words altogether would serve much of a point though.

What Harris (I think) and people like myself want to do is have an open and honest inquiry into those experiences without the experiences being attached to a religious dogma or superstitous belief. However, to disregard those words (and make up new ones I assume?) seems to be giving too much to the religiously inclined. Why is it they can have a spiritual experience and I cannot? The word still maintains the gravity regardless of if atheists are using it or not.

For me as an atheist to say that I do not have mystical experiences can be misleading and (given their knack for twisting words) further prove to theists and believers in the supernatural that removing spirituality and mysticism from one's experiential vocabulary also removes the depth and profundity that accompany such experiences.

If our goal (I know mine is) is to open eyes and minds - certain things must stay simply so that they can be used as an easier way to bridge the gap between supernaturalists and naturalists. I'm not saying we should compromise the integrity of investigation into the truth - but to grind the world down into a purely scientific and practical vocabulary seems a bit much and surely won't encourage the religiously inclined to shake the bonds of religious belief in favor of reality. I hope I said what I was trying to say well enough and I'd like to hear what other people think.

14. Comment #16622 by Pilot22A on January 7, 2007 at 4:30 pm

I find it somewhat odd that Harris has added a dimension to humanity that doesn't exist. If one is to take evolution back to it's origin, one would have to conclude that for the most of human history (as we can see in the flora and fauna about us) there was no self-awareness/consciousness.

That said, consciousness must have occurred slowly and over a great deal of time for evolutionary purposes.

I don't know what the purpose was; religionists "believe" that the reason we reason is so we can go to some idyllic place and be happy after our brains electrical/chemical processes end. (We die.)

A better answer for Harris's feelings of euphoria/happiness would be pared down to the idea that happy humans don't commit suicide and/or involve themselves in risky activities thereby breeding and advancing the race.

Anything else smacks of silly spiritualism or fantasy.

13. Comment #16620 by Don'tForgetToBreathe on January 7, 2007 at 4:24 pm

You make some good points. I agree with you (and Harris) that atheists can have "spiritual" experiences and that they have nothing to do with the supernatural. Still, I feel the problem with using words like these is that religious people tend to interpret them in their own terms and, even among atheists, seem to flirt with having a supernatural meaning.

Then again, maybe Harris is starting something of a meme of his own, like the Bright movement. Maybe he's just reclaiming such words for naturalistic use.

18. Comment #16648 by John Pritzlaff on January 7, 2007 at 9:31 pm

I'm glad Harris wrote this article, because it clarifies a lot of his positions. I'm noticing more people "taking his side" on this one. I think he explained himself well.

Whether we drop the terms or keep them, we're going to run into problems. Saying atheists aren't spiritual is misleading, but saying they are is also. The problem is that there are two types of spirituality here: rational and irrational. That's the message we need to get out there, and I'm not quite sure how.

20. Comment #16656 by Aussie on January 7, 2007 at 11:20 pm

The problem with many atheists is that we are still struggling with the ongoing effort of trying to throw off a whole lot of superstitious garbage that has been shoved down our throats for many years. As a result we can have a negative knee jerk reaction to anything that even suggests the supernatural. This can force us into becoming very one-dimensional in our world view.

However, we really have to be careful about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Imagine what the reactions would have been in 1900 to anyone trying to explain the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Even when I was studying it in 3rd year University physics in the 1960s it blew my mind and I initially found it very difficult to accept because is smacked of the metaphysical. My gut reaction was similar to that of Einstein who could never entertain the idea of probabilities in the Heisenberg sense. Now everybody accepts the Uncertainly Principle as a standard part of physics. Even more bizarre now are the bases and conclusions of String Theory, parallel universes and so on that are currently becoming so popular.

Many people here I should imagine have not yet experienced the phenomena that are being described by Sam and are somewhat bemused and afraid of what is unfamiliar to them. In the same way we can become afraid and suspicious of String Theory because we do not have the background to understand it. Apart from attempting to be rational we should also understand that it is important to be open-minded and unafraid of exploring all sorts of issues including those that challenge our current world view.

Although I am regarded as the arch skeptic in my circle, because I will not accept anything at face value, I have nevertheless actually experienced some of the phenomena discussed by Sam above and am enthusiastic about his attempts to understand these experiences in rational terms. In contrast to some of the comments here I find that Sam's approach actually complements Richard Dawkins' approach rather than opposes or diminishes it. To give you an example my brother, who is a actually a professional theologian, finds Sam's philosophy very close to his own and because my brother is also a contemplative like Sam he clicks in with Sam's approach to the degree that he agrees with almost everything that Sam says.

The reality is that there are a small percentage of religious people out there, who have had experiences that most of the rest of us have never had. These experiences are nevertheless real and unless you can address them in the way that Sam has then these people will continue to equate these experiences to something supernatural or religious which they are not.

Richard Dawkins' approach appeals very much to my own scientific background and mindset while Sam's approach strikes a chord with my brother who has himself written books on spirituality amongst other subjects. We need both approaches because different people are persuaded by different arguments.

I cannot praise Sam Harris' article above enough because he is addressing a most important issue that Richard's book does not and it is a market segment that is huge and exceedingly important.

23. Comment #16683 by Ironwolf on January 8, 2007 at 3:50 am

Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's collaborator and widow) is another prominent thinker who feels that the word "Spiritual" should not be ceded to supernaturalists. I have quoted a relevant passage from an interview she recently did for the Point of Inquiry podcast on my blog here:

http://ironwolf.dangerousgames.com/blog/archives/243

24. Comment #16697 by zoro on January 8, 2007 at 5:20 am

With respect to terminology, then along with the word "meditation" to describe the process (which, by the way, Sam used in his article at least six times), I would vote for the word "enlightenment" or "awakening" to describe the experience ("satori" in Japanese, "wu" in Chinese). As for the entire "discipline", it's part of Zen, about which D.T. Suzuki wrote:

"When it is said that Zen has no philosophy, that it denies all doctrinal authority, that is casts aside all so-called "sacred literature" as rubbish, we must not forget that Zen is holding up in this very act of negation something quite positive and eternally affirmative… We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way."

And with respect to the good points well made by Aussie (Comment #16656), I'd like to add the following quotation from an article entitled "Our faith in science" written by Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama). The full article is available at many locations on the web (e.g., http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/13/opinion/edgyatso.php)

"For many years now, on my own and through the Mind and Life Institute, which I helped found, I have had the opportunity to meet with scientists to discuss their work. World-class scientists have generously coached me in subatomic physics, cosmology, psychology, biology. Our discussions of neuroscience have proved particularly important. From these exchanges a vigorous research initiative has emerged, a collaboration between monks and neuroscientists, to explore how meditation might alter brain function.

"The goal here is not to prove Buddhism right or wrong but rather to take these methods out of the traditional context, study their potential benefits, and share the findings with anyone who might find them helpful. After all, if practices from my own tradition can be brought together with scientific methods, then we may be able to take another small step toward alleviating human suffering.

"Whatever the results of this work, I am encouraged that it is taking place. You see, many people still consider science and religion to be in opposition. While I agree that certain religious concepts conflict with scientific facts and principles, I also feel that people from both worlds can have an intelligent discussion, one that has the power ultimately to generate a deeper understanding of challenges we face together in our interconnected world…

"By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry… Rather, I am speaking of what I call "secular ethics," which embrace the principles we share as human beings: compassion, tolerance, consideration of others, the responsible use of knowledge and power. These principles transcend the barriers between religious believers and nonbelievers; they belong not to one faith, but to all faiths."


Humanity has lost so much--life, happiness, dignity, productivity, progress to the poison that is religious superstitions. We must not let the religites have a monopoly on spirtuality. I focus on the 'spirit' part of the word. Here are some definitions of spirit:

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/spirit)

The vital principle or animating force within living beings.

A person as characterized by a stated quality: He is a proud spirit.

A particular mood or an emotional state characterized by vigor and animation: sang with spirit.

To impart courage, animation, or determination to; inspirit. The essential nature of a person or group.

A very small number of the definitions under spirit pertained to the supernatural. Supporters of religious superstitions believe that only they have the key to open the door to something special, worthwhile, and awe-inspiring. Instead, in reality, they are not opening that door, not even a crack. Let the secular humanists give out the keys to that door for everybody; don't hamper their inspired and courageous attempts to remove the last scrap of imaginary, tattered fabric off the delusion of a nude religious emperor--that they are the ones that are not spiritual. They are, in effect, spiritually bankrupt. They are like the proverbial rich person who is impoverished and don't have a clue.

Selected comments from: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com

Anonymous:

Wow, no hateful invectives in the comments! I got here early!

Like Sam, I am an atheist who practices "Buddhist" meditation. (Incidentally, I'm also considering doing a PhD in neuroscience.) It's interesting how many people see this as a contradiction. Religious people of course are outraged--how dare you attack our religion as an atheist, and then say another religion is better? What surprises me is how many atheists are put off by this, rejecting meditation in what seems to be a knee-jerk reaction against anything vaguely reminiscent of religion, without excercising critical thinking in being able to see important distinctions.

IMO, the problem is this: to see Buddhism as "a religion" is to misunderstand it. Fundamentally, it is a system of methods for the purpose of effecting specific changes in our psychology. Meditation (like all of our experiences) literally rewires the brain.

I'm excited that science is finally beginning to look into this. Buddhism has made important discoveries about psychology and consciousness that could make valuable contributions to our scientific understanding of the mind. Hopefully, we will be able to divorce "spirituality" of religions encumbrances.

Erradicating the "ego" is a vitally important task for all of us. Egoic thought is a hindrance is many practical ways. For example, the samuri, somewhat ironically, coopted Zen in order to make themselves better warriors. Ego also is the chief impediment to rational thought. We cling to our opinions as if they were limbs, and respond to disagreement as if our "opponent" were about hack them off with an axe. Reason demands that we consider all things with dispassion; if we are in fact in error and someone points that out to us, they have done us a great favor.

Posted January 6, 2007 9:33 PM

Tom:

The spiritual atheist is not a contradiction. We do know this. We can be godless,and we can be spiritual without gods.
Thanks Sam.
Tom

Posted January 6, 2007 10:30 PM

James Conrad:

This is all well and good, I suppose. I've never felt what Sam is talking about, and frankly, I'm glad. What people like Harris and Dawkins should be focuing on the real harm religion does. Just turn on the TV for pete's sake, people are killing themselves over who should be considered the proper descendent of "the prophet." One goes for his brother-in-law (the Shiites) and the other for a friend of "the prophet" (the Sunnis.) Religion is rarely more than an excuse for killing others--yes, even Buddhists do it. People should be made to understand that RELIGION IS THE BANE OF MANKIND. Save for some decent painting and music, I can see no purpose to keep it around.

Posted January 6, 2007 10:33 PM

anne greene:

Many thanks to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins for their courage and steadfastness. Many thanks to all the others who have posted on their sites in support of them and the coming-out party now in effect on the net. Humans invented 'god(s)' to explain things and comfort them in their fear of each other and the world around them. Each successive generation has been indoctrinated from infancy, perpetuating the myths. Isn't it time we stopped pretending there is a scientific/biological need for 'god'? Isn't it time to move on with ethical behavior and a moral code based not on pious self-righteousness and the adulation of some all-powerful Supreme Being, but on what will benefit the majority of humanity in this life? Keep the discussion going!!

Posted January 6, 2007 10:59 PM

Aaron:

Yes, I totally agree with Harris. I am a meditator as well and I have had experiences such as this and I do not believe in any religious dogma. I truly agree with Mr. Harris that if there is a future for humanity on our current trajectory, such (hopefully) dogma-less contemplative practices will be the spirituality of the future. Let us hope so anyways. It is sad that other atheists assume that any contemplative experiences not refinable to "rationality" are useless. This is another form of dogma.

Posted January 7, 2007 12:21 AM

GAD:

Hum, replace Sam Harris' name with Jesus or Jerry Garcia in a lot of the these posts and it's kind of freaky. As an atheist I agree with and support reasonable people and ideas, but I don't worship them.

Anyway, I agree with Harris on religion, it is a really bad head trip, but I wholly disagree that meditation is anything less then just another way to head trip. Can meditation rewire your brain, change your personality etc. sure why not, but so can your environment, drugs, trauma, or any religion. So we can screw with our brains if we try hard enough, big deal, to what end. So that life is more beautiful, so that the good things are better and the bad thing more tolerable, how wonderful, right up till the point you die and you and the thought of every rainbow you every saw disappears in to oblivion with you. We came from nothing and we return to nothing. Thinking that changing your brain patterns around is somehow going to change that fact seems silly. The beauty of life IS life, and this is our one shot out it in an unsympathetic universe. Everything we do should be about building towards our own immortality as a species, fighting and kicking all the way, not laying on our backs watching clouds go by blissfully waiting for our end. There are no gods to give us immortality, but we can reach it for ourself if we love life enough to fight for it!

Posted January 7, 2007 3:34 AM

RB:

I am speculating that the experience Sam describes is bio-chemically induced.

When I run (jog) for an hour -- which I'm about to do -- I often, but not always, experience a detachment from self. Indeed, an absence of self. Some have called this "runner's high," itself an indication of the effect of "drugs."

The best of these experiences lasts 30 to 40 minutes. I'll glance at my watch about 8 to 10 minutes into the run (through piney woods) and then the next thing I know, I glance down and the stopwatch says: 51 minutes have elapsed, but to "me" no time has passed.

Where did "I" go? Don't know, don't care. But often there is another tangible by-product: if I start the run thinking about some tough design problem (engineer) that I'm stuck on, when "I" come back from the runner's high, I often have the answer. I can see the best choice.

I don't know if this is the same experience Sam describes, but clearly the rigorous exercise -- and the focus on breathing that begins each run -- changes my blood chemistry, if only by bringing on oxygen saturation. While I do not meditate in a formal way, I do know that those who do concentrate on breathing.

So I suspect a connection exists. Anyway, for those of you curious, try some rigorous exercise. You may not experience anything like I describe, but at least you can justify that slice of key lime pie!

Posted on January 7, 2007 08:57

robertdfeinman:

Sam Harris continues to muddy the water with his choice of terminology. Spiritualism or a spiritual feeling (or goal) has long been associated with "spirits", that is supernatural beings.

This is not what Sam is trying to convey so he should chose a word with less baggage.

I suggest disembodied. What he is trying to achieve is a feeling that he has moved beyond his usual mental state of self awareness. Many people associate this feeling with a religious experience, but it is well known that it can happen under many conditions. Activities like marathon running, acting and taking certain drugs have all developed terms to describe the feeling. If Sam wants to use meditation to get to this state that is his right, but don't use an emotionally charged term for it.

Why we are having these public debates about religion (again) is because those who wish to control the lives of others are using religion as their source of authority. It's hard to debate someone who claims he does what he does because he has orders from above. This is a dangerous revival of a condition that recurs from time to time.

The real villain is authoritarianism which uses ideology to support its power. Throughout history the ideology was mostly religious but as the 20th Century has shown other cults of personality can be just as damaging. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and many others caused millions of deaths because they got people to follow their ideologies. Telling people there is no tooth fairy will not solve the greater problem. The world needs to face up to the issue that sociopaths can grab power and then use the devastating power of modern militarism to cause great harm. Even "democratic" regimes are not immune to this take over.

If we are going to find a way to head off a repeat of the wars of the 20th Century we need to design new political systems which are more resistant to misuse. People's intellectual and emotional state hasn't evolved over the past two millennia but our technology of death has.

Posted January 7, 2007 9:46 AM

nicholas:

Sam,I try to read everything you write.
I believe religion is tearing the world apart and until you Dawkins and Dennett came along I was beginning to despair for the future of our world.
Its very disappointing that there's so much religious belief in the U.S. when in most other ways
the U.S.is ahead of the game.
In the U.K. recently a Guardian poll shows that only 13% of Brits visit a place of worship at least once a week. 82% feel that religion is divisive,and 63% say they are not religious.
Americans,it seems,work hard to indoctrinate their children into believing in the supernatural,with a lot of help from Hollywood,where the supernatural is commonplace,as it is on American television.
It must be difficult to grow up in America unindoctrinated.Its much easier in the U.K.and in Europe to grow up with a mind of ones own.
Lets hope that in this century with the help and influence of yourself and other free thinkers religion may finally be put to rest everywhere.

Posted January 7, 2007 11:51 AM

Robert Wexelbaum:

Aye, Sam and others who may not see "spirituality" in the same way that I see it...because I see it as being beyond rational human stability or in any event not normally natural. People can experience things when under the influence of drugs or alcohol which I don't believe are part of natural stability...So can Yogis and Shaman, who actually can alter their mind and body perception and physical metabolism to work with a different time clock. This is not spiritual...It, especially if self imposed, is straining the normal functions of mind and body to exist in an unnatural time platform. The mechanical analogy is found in electronic systems that have feedback loops such as those of analog follow up servos. Humans can build a feedback path that can put their minds in a loop...and in doing so they can go into mental regeneration that may run beyond stability. It can cause permanent damage or it can seem to be an out of body experience but there is logical scientific explanation when a human mind is forced into this feedback and it runs out of control like a never ending echo that blocks out reality. Is it spiritual?...Nah...It is either drug induced or self induced feedback that produces what may be a bad trip for some temporary euphoria for others...headache and nausia for many...but not a spiritual experience.

Posted January 7, 2007 9:52 PM

How the Universe inevitably winds down

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_16.html
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GEORGE F. SMOOT
Cosmologist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Recipient, The Nobel Prize For Physics 2006; Coauthor, Wrinkles in Time

Correggio Domani e for peggio! — Courage for Tomorrow Will Be Worse! (The Words of a Born Optimist)

A careful assessment and years of experience that show that the long-term future is most bleak: Entropy will continue to increase, and a heat death (actually a misnomer as it means the degredation of usable energy in a dull cooling worthless background of chaos) is the very likely fate of the world. This is the fate that awaits us, if we manage to work our way past the energy crisis that looms as the Sun runs out of fuel and in its death throws expands as red giant star likely to engulf us after boiling away the seas before it collapses back to a slowly cooling cinder eventually to leave the solar system in cold darkness.

This energy crisis will eventually spread to the whole Milky Way Galaxy which will use up its available energy resources in a time scale of roughly ten times the present 14 billion year lifetime of our observed Universe. In that same time the accelerating expansion of the Universe continually reduces what we can observe and potentially access until in the distant future only the cinders of stars in our own galaxy are left. Argument goes on whether a sufficiently advanced intelligent society could manage to live (continue to have experiences and process new information and create new things) indefinitely in such an environment taking on the most carefully constructed and extreme measures that are physically possible. The chances of success look relatively low for even the most optimally managed and intelligent society.

Given this and the history of human society in cooperatively plundering the resources of a meager but beautiful planet with currently abundant resources, who can possibly be optimistic about the long-term future of humanity? How many examples do we have of humans addressing global problems in an efficient way and with enlightened self-interest? Historical experience is that humans have generally been engaged in warfare, exploitation for personal gain and religious strife. Real issues are generally not addressed until they become serious crises and often not even then. We could mention here, various episodes of genocide, large-scale pollution, and ecological devastation, which are often interrelated.

In this background the rise of culture and science is remarkable. That is until we understand their usefulness. In our modern world it is clear that material rewards and political power accrue to those that have the most scientific and technological knowledge and the educated workforce with the cultural background of hard productive work as part of a larger system. Such societies have economic and military success and large tax revenues.

Is it this culture and knowledge that offers us hope to be at least as successful as the dinosaurs which dominated the Earth for nearly 100 times as long as humans have held sway? It is often said that the United States systematically underestimates the stubbornness preventing the peaceful resolution of long-term ethnic and tribal conflicts — perhaps because of being the melting pot of waves of peaceful immigration — less a few Indian wars. However, could humans share the planet with reptiles? Or how about intelligent machines? Could they share with us?

Now leaving cultural and religious value systems aside, let us move to realistic assessment of the title "Courage for Tomorrow will be Worse". Every physical process in the Universe follows the second law of thermodynamics. That is in every process entropy (a measure of disorder which equals loss of information and usefulness) will tend to increase for the Universe as a whole. No process decreases the entropy of the Universe. Only completely reversible processes leave it unchanged. All living things and all man-made machines operate with processes that increase the entropy of the Universe.

One cannot live by the Hippocratic dictum "Do no harm". But the best one can hope for is the weak mantra "Do minimal damage". I was often bothered by this inevitable conclusion and tried to see that if one could write a great work of literature, make art, or most optimally a great science discovery could one objectively leave the world better than one found it? Each time I worked out an example, the impact was negligible however great it was found by human culture compared to the damage done by mere existence. The only discovery that would make a difference called for repealing or avoiding the laws of probability or making a whole new universe. Both of these are quite extreme. Perhaps the discovery of extra dimensions would allow some leeway in what otherwise seems an inescapable doom after a long period of unrighteous degradation of the universe. We face a continuous downward spiral of no return. This is not a moral or ethical statement only an engineering evaluation though it is some indication of original sin. So even living one's life as a vegetarian that only eats fruit dropped into one's hand by a willing plant is only going so far as to be very kind and considerate to other beings that are also worsening the universe for the sake of a little more order in their own self.

With such sure knowledge of one's own impending demise as well as for all humanity, how can one get up and face each day with any hope? Well in science it is a central tenet to be skeptical and to question and as certain as this seems, one could cling to a shred of hope that there is some trap door of escape that will be found and opened either because of the greatness and infinite flexibility of mankind or our incredible ingenuity under extreme pressure. I suspect that the odds of winning the lottery are higher — much higher.

"perchè sai che domani sarà impossibile anche alla tua astuzia." (poet Eugenio Montale)

"because you know that tomorrow it will be impossible no matter how astute you are." (translation by Jody Fitzhardinge & Lorenzo Matteoli)

Instead one might look to the definition of courage and optimism and go forth cheerfully and eagerly even when there isn't the smallest sliver of hope and still do great and glorious deeds, build great civilizations even in the face of their inevitable doom.

It takes real optimism and courage to go forth when the inevitable course for the universe is downhill and knowing that all humanity has done or is likely to do will probably have less impact than a footprint on sand after a few dozen or thousand waves pass over it.

I am from the very beginning an optimist and remain so right to the very end.

I invest time and effort into my work, my health and fund my retirement plan fully.

I even write articles and spend much of my days training and educating the next generation. Why do I do this? Because I think that the future, on my human and longer time scale, can be very bright as long as humans work well and intelligently.

I look forward to the immediate future as a part of the long human slog towards a better culture and society in spite of the constant flux of misguided craziness.

New Prospects of Immortality

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_16.html
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MARVIN MINSKY
Computer Scientist; 1st Generation Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, MIT; Author, The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind

New Prospects of Immortality

Benjamin Franklin: I wish it were possible... to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But... in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection.
—Letter to Jacques Dubourg, April 1773

Eternal life may come within our reach once we understand enough about how our knowledge and mental processes are embodied in our brains. For then we should be able to duplicate that information — and then into more robust machinery. This might be possible late in this century, in view of how much we are learning about how human brains work — and the growth of computer capacities.

However, this could have been possible long ago if the progress of science had not succumbed to the spread of monotheistic religions. For as early as 250 BCE, Archimedes was well on the way toward modern physics and calculus. So in an alternate version of history (in which the pursuit of science did not decline) just a few more centuries could have allowed the likes of Newton, Maxwell, Gauss, and Pasteur to anticipate our present state of knowledge about physics, mathematics, and biology. Then perhaps by 300 AD we could have learned so much about the mechanics of minds that citizens could decide on the lengths of their lives.

I'm sure that not all scholars would agree that religion retarded the progress of science. However, the above scenario seems to suggest that Pascal was wrong when he concluded that only faith could offer salvation. For if science had not lost those millennia, we might be already be able to transfer our minds into our machines. If so, then you could rightly complain that religions have deprived you of the option of having an afterlife!

Do we really want to lengthen our lives?

Woody Allen: I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

In discussing this prospect with various groups, I was surprised to find that the idea of extending one's lifetime to thousands of years was often seen as a dismal suggestion. The response to my several informal polls included such objections as these: "Why would anyone want to live for a thousand hundred years? What if you outlived all your friends? What would you do with all that time? Wouldn't one's life become terribly boring?"

What can one conclude from this? Perhaps some of those persons lived with a sense that they did not deserve to live so long. Perhaps others did not regard themselves as having worthy long term goals. In any case, I find it worrisome that so many of our citizens are resigned to die. A planetful of people who feel that they do not have much to lose: surely this could be dangerous. (I neglected to ask the religious ones why perpetual heaven would be less boring.)

However, my scientist friends showed few such concerns: "There are countless things that I want to find out, and so many problems I want to solve, that I could use many centuries." I'll grant that religious beliefs can bring mental relief and emotional peace—but I question whether these, alone, should be seen as commendable long-term goals.

The quality of extended lives

Anatole France: The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.

Certainly, immortality would seem unattractive if it meant endless infirmity, debility, and dependency upon others—but here we'll assume a state of perfect health. A somewhat sounder concern might be that the old ones should die to make room for young ones with newer ideas. However, this leaves out the likelihood that are many important ideas that no human person could reach in, say, less than a few hundred well focused years. If so, then a limited lifespan might deprive us of great oceans of wisdom that no one can grasp.

In any case, such objections are shortsighted because, once we embody our minds in machines, we'll find ways to expand their capacities. You'll be able to edit your former mind, or merge it with parts of other minds — or develop completely new ways to think. Furthermore, our future technologies will no longer constrain us to think at the crawling pace of "real time." The events in our computers already proceed a millions times faster than those in our brain. To such beings, a minute might seem as long as a human year.

How could we download a human mind?

Today we are only beginning to understand the machinery of our human brains, but we already have many different theories about how those organs embody the processes that we call our minds. We often hear arguments about which of those different theories are right — but those often are the wrong questions to ask, because we know that every brain has hundreds of different specialized regions that work in different ways. I have suggested a dozen different ways in which our brains might represent our skill and memories. It could be many years before we know which structures and functions we'll need to reproduce.

(No such copies can yet be made today, so if you want immortality, your only present option is to have your brain preserved by a Cryonics company. However, improving this field still needs further research — but there is not enough funding for this today — although the same research is also needed for advancing the field of transplanting organs.)

Some writers have even suggested that, to make a working copy of a mind, one might have to include many small details about the connections among all the cells of a brain; if so, it would require an immense amount of machinery to simulate all those cells' chemistry. However, I suspect we'll need far less than that, because our nervous systems must have evolved to be insensitive to lower-level details; otherwise, our brains would rarely work.

Fortunately, we won't need to solve all those problems at once. For long before we are able to make complete "backups" of our personalities, this field of research will produce a great flood of ideas for adding new features and accessories to our existing brains. Then this may lead, through smaller steps, to replacing all parts of our bodies and brains — and thus repairing all the defects and flaws that make presently our lives so brief. And the more we learn about how our brains work, the more ways we will find to provide them with new abilities that never evolved in biology.

The Power of Our Creative and Analytic Abilities

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_16.html
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BRIAN GREENE
Physicist, String Theorist, Columbia University; Author, The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Power of Our Creative and Analytic Abilities

As I help raise my two year old son, I witness a basic truth familiar to parents through the ages and across the continents — we begin life as uninhibited explorers with a boundless fascination for the ever-growing world to which we have access. And what I find amazing is that if that fascination is fed, and if it's challenged, and if it's nurtured, it can grow to an intellect capable of grappling with such marvels as the quantum nature of reality, the energy locked inside the atom, the curved spacetime of the cosmos, the elementary constituents of matter, the genetic code underlying life, the neural circuitry responsible for consciousness, and perhaps even the very origin of the universe. While we evolved to survive, once we have the luxury of taking such survival for granted, the ability of our species to unravel mysteries grand and deep is awe inspiring. I'm optimistic that the world will increasingly value the power of such rational thought and will increasingly rely on its insights in making the most critical decisions.

Corrective Goggles for Our Conceptual Myopia

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_15.html
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COREY S. POWELL
Senior Editor, Discover Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Science Journalism, NYU; Author: God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion

Corrective Goggles for Our Conceptual Myopia

Broadly speaking, I am optimistic that the world's current crises look terrifyingly large mainly because of our conceptual myopia. It is practically a truism to say that every era tends to regard its troubles as uniquely daunting, but I think that accelerating news cycles make the current generation particularly prone to this error of judgment. Making my best attempt to put on corrective goggles and take the longer view, I see a half-dozen areas where we are on the verge of major advances in our ability to expand our control over our environment and ourselves, in way that will be largely or entirely beneficial.

• I am optimistic that technology will soon show practical ways to eradicate the twin problems of carbon emissions and fossil-fuel scarcity. In the nearer term, carbon dioxide will follow the path of CFCs, acid-rain-causing sulfur oxides, and nearly all automobile tailpipe emissions. Nay-sayers warned that all of these would be difficult and economically disruptive to tackle; in every case, the nay-sayers were roundly proven wrong. Carbon sequestration is the most obvious technology for offsetting carbon emissions. Here's a firm prediction: If the world's leading economies set tough emissions standards for CO2, or establish a serious carbon tax, industry will find astonishingly inexpensive ways to comply within a few years.

• Farther ahead, new energy sources will begin to make serious contributions to the world economy long before fossil fuels run out. My bet is still on fusion energy, despite its perfect, five-decade record of never fulfilling any of its promises. I seriously doubt, though, that commercially viable fusion energy will look anything like the huge and hideously expensive magnetic-confinement test machines (like ITER) now being built or planned. More likely it will take the shape of a compact, laser- or radio-driven linear accelerator using exotic nuclear reactions that spit out protons, not neutrons; send the protons flying through a copper coil and you have direct electricity conversion, with no boiler, no steam, no turbine, no dynamo.

• I am optimistic that we are on the verge of developing the tools to program biological systems as effortlessly as we program digital ones. Synthetic biology, a field spearheaded by George Church, Drew Endy, and Jay Keasling, will be key to attaining this goal—and it is now in transition from theory to reality. Rather than snipping genes from one creature and clumsily inserting them into another, future biotechnicians will consult a master database of DNA sequences and specify the traits they want, whether to insert into an existing organism or to create in a brand-new one designed from the ground up. (A corollary is that these tools will finally allow effective stem-cell therapy, which leads to a related prediction: Thirty years from now, the current agonies over the ethics of stem-cell therapy will look as quaint as the hand-wringing over "test tube babies" in the 1970s.) Synthetic biology in its fully realized form will also be a dangerous weapon. A related part of my optimism is that it—like electricity, like radio, like all genetic research so far—will prove far more useful for positive applications than for negative ones.

• I am optimistic that young adults today will, on average, live to 120 and will remain healthy and vigorous until their final years. Researchers like Leonard Guarente, David Sinclair, and Cynthia Kenyon are zeroing in on the chemical and genetic basis of aging. Immortality is a long way off, but drugs and genetic therapies that hold back age-related diseases are coming soon. Treatments that slow the aging process as a whole will follow closely behind. Ultimately these will lead to a wholesale reordering of the pace of life and the social structures based around certain biological milestones.The child-bearing years may extend into the 60s; people may routinely continue working into their 80s or beyond. With this expanded timeline will come all kinds of new possibilities, including vastly expanded periods of intellectual creativity and a softening of the irrational behaviors that arise from the universal fear of death.

• I am optimistic that the longer life of the body will be accompanied by enhanced powers of the brain. We already live in world where it is getting harder and harder to forget. A simple Google search often revives long-lost trivia, historical experiences, even the names of long-dead relatives. What we have today is but a tiny taste of what lies ahead. Computing power is now so cheap, and wireless communication so effortless, that a person could easily wear a microphone (or even a low-res video camera) at all times and compile a digital database of every word he or she uttered.

In the future, many people will choose to do so; we will all have personalized, searchable databases at our commands. Rapid advances in brain prostheses mean that soon we will be able to access those databases simply by the power of thought. Within a couple decades, the information will be beamed back in a form the brain can interpret—we will be able to hear the playback in much the manner that deaf people can now hear the world with cochlear implants. Vision is slightly more difficult but it too will be reverse engineered. That will undoubtedly give space exploration a tremendous boost. Earthbound scientists will be able to "inhabit" robotic explorers on other worlds, and any interested participant will be able to log on passively to experience the adventure. Humans will venture into space physically as well but at first that will happen primarily for sport, I expect.

• I am optimistic that researchers, aided by longer careers and computer assistance, will crack the great twin mysteries of physics: the nature of gravity and the possibility of other dimensions. Here I'm talking not just about theoretical advances, as may occur at the Large Hadron Collider after it revs up in late '07, that could bolster the theory that gravity, unlike the other forces, has the ability to transmit out of the three dimensions of human experience. I am also talking about a kookier optimism that our discoveries will have practical consequences. It may be possible to build instruments that can sense universes lying outside of our dimensions. It may be possible to manipulate gravity, turning it down where convenient (to launch a rocket, for instance) and cranking it up where desired. It may even be possible to create a new universe as a laboratory experiment—the ultimate empirical investigation of the Big Bang that started our universe.

• Finally, I am optimistic that with all of these intellectual and material achievements will come a science-based spiritual awakening. Back in the 1930s Albert Einstein spoke of a "cosmic religious feeling" and tried to convince the public (with painfully little success) that scientists are every bit as spiritual as are the world's religious leaders. It may not look that way now, but I think Einstein will soon be vindicated. Longer, more connected lives will eat away at the religion of fear, the rudimentary form of faith rooted in anxiety about loneliness and the apparent absoluteness of death.

More important, the next round of scientific discoveries promise a powerful new sense of our connection to the rest of the universe, and even to universes beyond our own. One of the most potent knocks on science is that it, unlike religion, offers no sense of purpose. That has never been true—what greater purpose is there than intellectual exploration, the key trait distinguishing us from the other animals—but now more than ever science has a chance to make its case. It needs to develop more of a communal structure. It needs to develop a humane language, expressing its findings explicitly as triumphs of human achievement. It needs to celebrate our ever-expanding dominion over nature while articulating a humble appreciation that nature is, indeed, where we all came from.

Above all, science needs a face, a representative (or representatives) as charismatic as Pope Benedict XVI or, er, Tom Cruise, who can get rid of all those "it"s in the pervious sentences. Right now, the faces of science are selected by book sales, television specials, and pure self-promotion; its elected leaders, like the heads of scientific societies, rarely function as public figures. Surely there is a better way. Any suggestions?