Quantum Fun-Times are Very Small

It always seemed a strange idea to go and buy a non-fiction book, particularly if it doesn't contribute to your resume.  If you want to know something you can look it up on the internet.

Then one day I bought a non-fiction book and now I have to remind myself to read other things, like fiction.  Perhaps not everyone has a depraved obsession for facts, but I actually find them calming.  There's something about a stockpile of potentially worthless knowledge that makes me want to burrow inside and hide in... like an igloo.

Every now and then I read something interesting, and I thought it might be fun to pass the knowledge around.  Like an even more fun version of chlamydia.

This is a paragraph from a book called "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which is a layman's guide to cosmology, quantum physics and string theory.  Somehow it's an absolute joy to read; there's even a couple of quotes from The Simpsons in there :D

"Averages are useful for many purposes but, by design, they do not provide a sharp picture of underlying details.  Although the average family in the U.S. has 2.2 children, you'd be in a bind were I to ask you to visit such a family...  So, too, familiar spacetime, itself the result of an averaging process, may not describe the details of something we'd like to call fundamental.  Space and time may only be approximate, collective conceptions, extremely useful in analysing the universe on all but ultramicroscopic scales, yet as illusory as a family with 2.2 children."

It's fascinating to think how easily an averaging process can throw off our perception of fundamental reality.


I was going to end the post here, but then I realised I had not yet included a rip on God, or a fart joke, so here is a section of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" that rectifies the situation.

The chapter is running through a series of historical arguments by Thomas Aquinas for God's existence, and showing how they can be refuted.

"4.  The argument from degree.
We notice that things in the world differ.  There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection.  But we judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum.  Humans can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in us.  Therefore there must be some other maximum to set the standard for perfection, and we call the maximum God.

That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness.  Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God.  Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion."