Dark Reality: Beyond symmetry, Beyond Consistency, Beyond Science
Dark Energy and Dark Matter were fitted in our world view as an act of worship of the Jesus of science: symmetry, and an even deeper worship of her divine father: mathematical consistency. Science is blind towards the exapnse of reality beyond this act of worship.
Dark reality surrounds us. We are drenched in it, and we are clueless because we are committed to our God — symmetry and consistency. Indeed, we are worshipping our own shadow.
The high priests of catholicism spoke among themselves in Latin which then they reduced to simple stories in everyday language. The high priests of physics speak among themselves in mathematics, which then they reduce to simple stories in everyday language. Faith, absolute faith is the foundation for both.
If you recite “A is bigger than B, and B is bigger than C”, and then conclude “A is bigger than C” — then you are displaying your solid faith in math, science and logic.
But if you conclude that “C is bigger than A” — then you are an heretic. You may even be put in an asylum, branded as an idiot and disregarded in every way. Why? Because you are dangerous. You are a threat to the very fabric of society. The ‘logical’ conclusion above cannot be proven, it has to be repeated, and illustrated until accepted. But for the heretic A, B, C are suspended in a cosmic equilibrium, since A has something smaller than itself, and B has something smaller than itself, then it is obvious, logical and clear — the dictate of the cosmic equilibrium — that C has to have an element smaller than it, and A is the only one that can take this role. To the heretic that is beyond obvious, simplicity itself!
Much as you will wonder how doesn’t the heretic see what is so patently obvious, so would the heretic be shocked how you fail to see the obvious cosmic equilibrium he argues so eloquently. It is a stalemate.
A third contrarian will dismiss both reasonings, and argue that every set of elements require one relationship of equality to give it standing. This equality relationship being built into the concept of a set. It is such an obvious observation that there is no need to explain, and since A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then necessarily A=C. End of discussion. Triple Stalemate.
On it goes a fourth contrarian will say that “if A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C then A and C are too far apart to be comparable in any way”. And she too will repeat, and shout, and speak louder, slower, and repeatedly until this premise is accepted.
We manage to run a society (more or less) because Darwinian evolution has built us similar enough to each other that most of us coalesce around the premise that “If A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then A is bigger than C”. This agreement serves as a limitation on our view of reality.
Are those people whose brain is wired to operate off the consistency-grid, a bunch of sorry misfits, or do they hold the key to exposing vast territories of reality that our Darwinian brain is strictly blind towards?
Come to think about it, by its very process of evolution our Darwinian brain is blind to any part of reality which does not contain a particular class of threat to the evolving population.
Mortal threats coming on not too fast and not too slow are the engine that makes evolution happen. These particular class of threats has built our human brain — packed with its inherent limitation. It is a depressing thought that the very procedure that is responsible for building us up to the wonderful bio creatures that we are, is also the same procedure that conferred upon us the damnation of non-negotiable blindness to the rest of reality. Darwinian evolution is a cruel taskmaster, one can say, allowing no sensation, no recognition, no observation, no understanding of any part of reality that does not pose a risk to our procreation. Even those among us who are personally humble and timid flare with hubris and arrogance over the grand achievements of humanity as a whole — science, math, art, social order and everything else. Alas, in the big picture we regretfully conclude that altogether we hold on to a fraction of what there is. We proclaim smarts, wisdom, we assert our comprehensive understanding of everything, declare conquering nature to its last law. But in truth, and objectivity, we are in a state of unbound ignorance.
Threats that emerge too fast — evolution cannot handle them; threats that encroach too slow, evolution does not detect them. Only in-between threats which emerge slow enough for evolution to act are driving our evolution forward. We are here, because no fast threat killed us, yet, and any slow progressing threat has not finished its job. And we are here next to a vast territory of reality which harbors no perfectly sized threats that push evolution forward. Such reality will not spur us to evolve sensors to notice it. Remember, all our five senses were developed by the particular class of threats that allows for generational evolution of these sensors. There is no other force, no grand designer, we believe. So no threat — no detection. How much is out there swiveling around us unnoticed. Not dark matter, no dark energy — dark reality!
Our reasoning, our sense of logic, our comfort with consistency are all part of the neural system we call our brain, and every cell of it was created by the not-to-slow-and-not-too-fast threats we faced in our evolutionary path. How limited is the range this brain of us can take us through? How many conclusions, how much insight is to be had, by a brain evolving from encountering a richer field of threats?
It was a calamitous crisis early last century when light could not be reconciled to either clamps of matter or to spreading waves. The math we use for describing light must rely on both models. Physicists bend themselves like a pretzel talking about duality, and waves of probability, reluctant to conclude that our Darwinian brain limits our imagination to our ordinary human experience with rolling balls and undulating sea waves, none of which is a good model for electromagnetic waves. Similarly math gives us spatial dimensions we cannot imagine. In the front edge of science math and observations jive, while our imagination and explanation are stuck behind. Math may take us a little bit beyond our Darwinian limitations, but only if we realize these limitations.
And here is a curious thought experiment: suppose we roll back evolution, (time goes both ways Einstein taught us), so humans return to monkeys, monkeys roll back to sponges, down to the early carbohydrate molecules that organized life. And then kick-start evolution again. How different will be the outcome? Probably as different as one random sequence is from another. It is unsettling to realize how happenstance we are, how particular, and parochial, how non-core, non-centric is our being. I have come upon these sobering thoughts while designing AI entities, with an effort to emulate and accelerate Darwinian evolution. Can we put forth seeds of evolutionary intelligence that will be driven by Darwinian evolution to territories of reality, we humans will forever be blind towards? Or will we be constrained by our Darwinian selfishness to insist that artificial intelligence will remain the servant, not the master of natural intelligence?
