Vegas!

I spent a recent weekend in Las Vegas. That town always feels surreal, almost like anything can and probably does go. What seems most interesting to me is that people genuinely believe in fate and anthropomorphizing the casinos. It's really strange to me that otherwise intelligent people suddenly feel that the casino and even each slot machine are willing them to win or lose with each pull of the slots or roll of the dice. To me gambling is an entertainment. Without a well rehearsed strategy in the right game, the house will win in the long run.



We walked up and down the strip lots of times, so I had an opportunity to think about why the group I was with used luck to decide what casino we would visit. The first thing that I thought of was mere wishful thinking. Maybe they were just hoping to win, but I think they wouldn't have felt the need to debate the previous "luckiness" of the casino in current decisions. Maybe the size of the buildings causes some sort of reversion of their mental state to childlike levels, where the world is filled with magic and controlled by the Fates. I think it's a legitimate scenario, but I also think it's a symptom of a less educated populous.

Rather than taking the time to think about the probabilities of a game, most people seem to want to believe that the casino gods smile or frown on their weekend based on what cocktails they drink in which corner of a given casino. People don't want to be depressed by reality. They want to retreat to a mystical world far outside their control. It is odd to me that people demand free will, yet pretend to live in a world controlled by exterior forces with mysterious motives.

Hello!

I guess this introduction comes one post late. It's probably a good idea to lay out what I hope to make of this blog. I am an atheist scientist, two unfortunately negatively perceived social groups. The villainous word liberal can be applied to either. Given my stereotypes, I'd like to develop some of my ideas on atheism, science, and the intersection between science and religion here. And maybe some of my technophilia will bleed through.

So I'll pretend that I wrote this introduction a post ago and attempt to post more frequently. Ideas are constantly flowing in and out of existence on the foam of my mind, I just need to catch them before they are annihilated.

Predetermined?

I was listening to the excellent WNYC Radio Lab podcast about time, when I came to an strange thought. Some theoretical physicists and some conservative Christians happen to have in common that they believe the universe is predetermined.

The Calvinists and some other groups believe in a system where their god has predetermined their entire lives and all of time. Similarly, some physicists believe that time is more of an illusion than a reality, we may be living in a rolling "now." Each moment of our past and future may be static, "eternal" instants. Instead of time moving past us like a river, we may in fact be traveling through time. The word eternal loses a little meaning when time is erased.

It's not so much of a revolution to know that some religous groups believe that free will doesn't exist. It's a wonderful excuse for sins of all kinds, since they are not in control, God is. But for physics to predict that our own free will is an illusion is a strange thought. For some reason, the concept makes sense to me. Perhaps because of my long running fascination with time scales of all sizes. Either way, I don't think a predetermined future relieves any of our responsibility for our present acts. The fact that our future, or any possible future (if you believe the multiverse theory) exists means we would have chosen to do it.

None of this may even be a reality, it is theoretical physics, but it is an interesting idea that relates some conservative Christianity with some liberal physics.