Mid-morning. Odds and ends, breakfast and the paper. An article, “More people fight aging by going under the knife,” by Abby Ellin on page 3A of the Enquirer caught your eye, and a quote within from a professor at Harvard Medical School, Nancy Etcoff, caught your mind. “Part of our stereotype of old people is that they are social, warm and likeable, but powerless and sexless.”
At first it made me angry, but with time and consideration, I would say it is pretty accurate, at least psychologically. I never thought about aging as being powerless and sexless. Old and retired are certainly more powerless unless they have money. Maybe that is what it is about, at least in terms of family. I never really thought about that before either because I never considered money important beyond making a living and surviving retirement. I remember that in old age my father bought lottery tickets, hoping to make it big, but I think he was looking out for his wife and kids too, hoping they would gain from his lottery winnings. He never won that I know, and certainly not much, if he did win.
Do you ever play the lottery? – Amorella.
Rarely. When it’s worth millions and millions of people are also playing. Why not?
What would you do with it if you won? – Amorella.
I don’t know beyond giving 99 percent or so to wife/partner, Carol, who would no doubt give some to daughter Kim (with my wholehearted approval already understood); then, knowing Carol, she would invest it very conservatively. I would look for a restored 1965 green Beetle with a sunroof and FM radio with a rear speaker, like my first car. That would be cool. But then I would have to find some place to store it. So, with that complication, it might not be worth it. If I wanted a sports car and it was going to be a nice day, I’d rent one once in a while. I can’t think of anything I really need and not much else I would want. I don’t really want the Beetle that badly, it is more fun to think about than to actually own, otherwise I suppose I would have one now. I’d give it to Carol and let her deal with it.
I didn’t say if you won the big lottery, let’s say you won a thousand dollars, what would you do with it?
Give it to Carol to put in her budget – well, after I took out a hundred for myself. Why not? She would use it prudently. Look, Amorella, money is as bad as politics and religion. I am uncomfortable with all three. All three make me uncomfortable in being here, that is, existing in this universe. I know this probably sounds silly, because, well, here I am, just like everyone else. I’ve dealt with it, just like everyone else. Poor brain cell connections, who knows. A statement not a complaint. I’m done.
Post. – Amorella.
Why do you dig this stuff out of me? What good does it do me to see this in print?
Keeps you conscious of what is and what is not important in your life. – Amorella.
You were on Facebook, and reminded again of what is important in your life. First, is your partner without whom you would not have a child, Kim, a son-in-law, Paul, and a grandson, Owen. The photo was taken by Craig or Alta while on your recent trip to California. You hiked a mile off Route 1 and discovered the bench, wherein you sat. It is one of your favorite photos of you and Carol. Why not? Drop it in here and post. - Amorella.
Note: I think I have already used this photo. It fits in context though, so I'll leave it. - rho
After noon. Errands to run. – Amorella.
After noon. Errands to run. – Amorella.
Do you ever run errands, Amorella? What do you do (even if you are imagination) when we are not on the blog?
Are you out of your mind, boy? I don’t do anything. – Amorella.
That’s funny. You sound just like me retired. Now, that is something I can reflect on.
It is the only thing you can reflect on. You are no different than anyone else on that score. People who reflect on others reflect on themselves first. Dampens the process, even among friends. – Amorella.
That’s not nice. I don’t agree.
When have I ever cared whether you agree with me?
I don’t know. I could check – if it is so it is no doubt in my notes.
Twenty some years of this, only two on the Internet.
Later, after a late not too well prepared lunch at the rocking chair place. Running more errands and picking up corn on the farm north of town you read the newest Edge and the focus on “infinity” caught your attention. This is a selection from “Next Step Infinity” by Anthony Aguirre, PhD.
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. . . In this picture, dubbed the string theory “landscape,” inflation brings into being an infinite number of sub-universes with a diverse set of properties spanning the array of ways in which low-energy physics can emerge from high-energy unification. Inflation can spawn bubbles inside of which is inflation, which spawns bubbles, and so on. And the incredibly rich structure of this “multiverse” is that of infinitely many times, each forming infinitely many sub-universes, each of which is infinite.
4. This raises profound issues that we cannot ignore.
Infinity can violate our human intuition, which is based on finite systems, and create perplexing philosophical problems. A classic example was invented by the mathematician David Hilbert. Rather than imagining an infinite universe, imagine an infinite hotel, with all rooms completely filled. Though the hotel is full, you can accommodate infinitely many more guests by moving each guest into the room of twice its current number and adding guests in all of the odd rooms. Yet although you double the number of guests, the hotel looks exactly the same. Applying this notion to an eternally inflating universe, suppose the whole bubbling mess is infinite at some time. Although infinitely many bubbles have formed during some time interval, it is rather unclear that after this time the universe is actually any bigger!
The same example reveals problems for such naïve questions as “What is the chance that a randomly chosen guest is in an even-numbered room?” The seemingly obvious answer is 50 percent. Yet the number of even-numbered rooms is just as large as the total number of rooms in the hotel (since each guest found an even-numbered room to go to) and thus twice as large as the odd-numbered rooms (which make up just half of all rooms, remember?) This implies that a randomly chosen guest is twice as likely to be in an even-numbered room. Yet, by exactly the same reasoning, there are as many odd-numbered rooms as total rooms and twice as many as even-numbered rooms! Our intuition that the answer is “obviously” 50 percent arises from considering the first N rooms, then letting N approach infinity. But that’s only one way of comparing the number of even- and odd-numbered rooms, and different choices—that is, different ways of measuring—would give different results.
This “counting” or “measure” ambiguity afflicts infinite systems terribly and creates a nightmare in cosmology. If postinflationary regions can have different properties, and each possible set of properties is realized in an infinite number of such regions, there is a twofold problem. First, there is no unique prediction, from this fundamental theory, for what we can observe. This is a letdown but not fatal, since we would still hope to make probabilistic predictions. Yet the measure ambiguity suggests that the relative probabilities themselves depend on the particular measure we choose and there is no compelling reason to believe any one given measure. This measure problem has spawned a large amount of recent work in inflationary cosmology, and although there has been progress, it’s not clear that the progress is toward any particular resolution.
Another key aspect of infinity is that it is so much larger than anything finite. In particular, an infinite system including some randomness will tend to contain infinitely many realizations of any given finite subsystem compatible with the properties of the infinite one. This means that if we reside in an infinite bubble, then somewhere (incredibly far away) within it is another copy of the entire Earth, perfect in every detail. On a more personal level, there are infinitely many identical copies of you, as well as infinitely many of every possible small or large variation of you, some more common than others. What does this mean? If these other people are identical to you, are they you? What is your relation to them? If you were to suddenly cease to exist, should you take heart that “you” continue merrily along out there? Or would “you” simply find yourself to be one of them? (Beware: This possibility becomes more and more disturbing the more you think about it.)
Should we embrace the idea that our world is truly infinite, or should we look for some way to tame and regulate this infinity in our theories? It is difficult to say. What seems clear, however, is that infinity can no longer be safely ignored: beautifully constructed, empirically supported, self-consistent theories have brought infinity from idle curiosity to central player in contemporary cosmology. And if correct, the worldview these theories represent constitutes a perspective shift unlike any other: in comparison to the universe, we would be not just small but strictly zero. Yet here we are, contemplating—if not quite understanding—it all.
From: Edge. “Next Step Infinity” [Infinity can violate our human intuition, which is based on finite
systems, and create perplexing philosophical problems.] by Anthony Aguirre (Tuesday, 9 August, 2011) edge.org
Anthony Aguirre holds a BS (1995) in mathematics and physics from Brown University and a PhD (2000) in astronomy from Harvard University. He is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studies a variety of topics in theoretical cosmology, including the early universe and inflation, gravity physics, first stars, the intergalactic medium, galaxy formation, and black holes.
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I like this. The concept has potential to give us thought and pause. I like stuff like this.
Post. – Amorella.
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