The Paradoxical Universe

Posted on December 31, 2022 by Andrew Brooke

A paradox is a statement or idea that contains an inherent contradiction. Some examples are:

The paradox of choice: Buyers want choices, but too much choice is overwhelming and prevents buyers from making a choice.

The paradox of tolerance: A society that tolerates everything must also tolerate intolerance. Is a society that tolerates intolerance tolerant or intolerant?

The chicken and egg paradox: The classic biological paradox: which came first, the chicken or the egg? I’ve always wondered why chickens were chosen for this paradox. No one asks if the kitten or cat came first, the puppy or the dog, or the baby or the adult.

The machine-tool-construction paradox: This is similar to the chicken and egg paradox. Every machine that exists was built using tools made by other machines. How could the first machine have been built if there were no machines before it to make the tools needed to build the first machine?

Perhaps the simplest paradox is the sentence: This sentence is false. If it’s true, then it’s false, and if it’s false, then it’s true, in an endless loop.

A visual paradox – how does the water keep flowing?

Going in circles

One cause of this paradox is the fact that “This sentence is false” refers to itself in a strange form of circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a flawed argument where the conclusion of the argument is assumed to be true, and which then uses this conclusion to “prove” the premise.

Examples of circular reasoning are:

John must be guilty because he was arrested. This argument assumes that only guilty people are arrested, and that if someone is arrested, they must be guilty.

You should obey the law because it’s illegal to break the law. By definition, if you don’t follow the law, you are committing an illegal act, so this statement does not argue anything.

All circular reasoning takes the form: A = B because B = A. The sentence “This sentence is false.” is a one-sentence version of this form.

This is not a heading

One way to resolve “This sentence is false” is to declare it is not really a sentence, or at least not one with any meaning.

It is possible to group words together into a sentence that has no meaning. Noam Chomsky provides a good example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. This sentence is grammatically correct but meaningless. Therefore, we could say that the sentence “This sentence is false” is null and void. We thereby sentence this sentence to exile in the land of forbidden sentences.

However, this smacks of circular reasoning, because we’re effectively saying: This sentence is not a sentence because it’s not a sentence. Our desire to resolve this and other paradoxes reflects a larger world-view, that there should be no contradictions in life. However, our entire world is based on contradictions and paradoxes.

Let there be light

One of the most ubiquitous things in our universe is light. However, there is a fundamental contradiction in the nature of light. Depending on how you observe it, light is a wave or a particle. This contradiction in light’s structure is known as wave-particle duality.

Wave-particle duality relates to another area of physics, quantum mechanics, which has more paradoxes. A principle of quantum mechanics is that a particle can be in more than one place at the same time, a completely paradoxical existence.

It’s big, relatively speaking

Quantum mechanics is the study of the very small: atoms and their components. General relativity, by contrast, is the study of very large objects like planets and galaxies.

Because we live in one universe, there should be one set of rules governing everything. However, there are fundamental contradictions between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

In quantum mechanics, time flows consistently, whereas in general relativity, time can be bent using matter and energy. Quantum mechanics is based on the uncertainty principle, which states that you cannot know the exact speed and location of a subatomic particle at the same time, an idea incompatible with general relativity, where speed and location are both known.

Let’s get small

Quantum mechanics also includes the bizarre concepts of Planck length and Planck time, both enormously small units of measure.

A Planck length is 1.6 × 10⁻³⁵ meters or 0.00000000000000000001 times the size of a proton. If an atom was the size of the earth, a Planck length would be the size of a proton.

Planck time is one 10⁻⁴³ of a second. One unit of Planck time is to a second what a second is to 300 billion trillion years, a time far greater than the age of the universe.

Planck length and Planck time are thought to be the smallest possible intervals that can be measured. If you tried to go any smaller, the laws of physics would break down.

There are also limits on how large space and time can be. Although the universe is very large and very old, it is not infinitely large or old. It is estimated to be 93 billion light-years wide, and 14 billion years old.

The fact that space and time, the most elemental aspects of reality, have an upper and lower limit implies that there is a cosmic minimum and maximum resolution to the universe, much like a TV has a minimum and maximum image resolution, beyond which it cannot go.

Whether these limits are by design or simply an inherit aspect of our reality remains a mystery.

Applied science

Scientists are trying to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity into a grand “theory of everything” that would resolve the fundamental differences between them. Still, despite these differences, each area has led to amazing discoveries.

Applications of quantum mechanics include lasers, electron microscopes, solar cells and quantum computing. General relativity is applied to cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe), the study of black holes, nuclear fusion (a potential limitless source of clean energy) and GPS (Global Positioning Systems).

The application of GPS is particularly salient. A GPS helps us navigate through new and strange territory; to find our way. This is exactly what a grand unified theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics would do – decode exactly where we fit in the universe.

Scientists have made enormous advances using both these areas, despite the fact that they contradict each other. There is no conflict between progress and contradiction. Science takes the best of both worlds, large and small.

Feeling conflicted

Contradictions are useful not just in science but in life. We live with, indeed we thrive, with contradictions.

We must be assertive but flexible. We must be independent but social. We judge but are compassionate. We seek challenges but also comfort. We must fit within society but also question the status quo and change it. We have free will, but are strongly influenced by others and outside forces.

Through these contradictions, we grow and mature. We do not need to choose one or the other – we need both.

Intelligence 2.0

Both science and humanity are facing their own paradox with the explosive growth of AI (artificial intelligence). DallE and MidJourney AI create astounding images from descriptive text. ChatGPT gives detailed, coherent responses to questions and requests, including general queries, poems and short stories.

Here is an example of an image created using MidJourney:

Have cake, will eat it too

Depending on what output you are observing, AI sometimes produces superior output than a human can, and sometimes does not. To resolve this paradox, we can have AI and humans working together.

A chess player working with an AI will play better than a person or an AI separately. Doctors work with AI medical systems such as IBM’s Watson to diagnose diseases.

There is a particularly remarkable example of humans working with AI. Music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists created an AI to analyze Beethoven’s unfinished 10th symphony and all his other works. Based on the patterns the AI found, it generated a musical score on what it thought the remainder of the unfinished symphony should be. The musicians constantly reviewed and updated the AI’s score using their extensive human musical skills. You can see a portion of the remarkable final result here.

We can go even further. Humans are not only working well with AIs, they are combining different AI systems together to produce complex new forms. People have used ChatGPT to write descriptive stories, then copied these descriptions into an AI image generator, creating completely original graphic novels. Similar combinations of AIs can create sounds and videos. In the near future, we may be able to use a single AI to instantly create entire movies with coherent stories, images, music and sound.

I think, therefore I doublethink

As we’ve seen, in science and in life, we use contradictory approaches to solve problems and answer difficult questions. This is doublethink, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously, a concept from George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984.

Doublethink is illustrated in a scene in the novel where Winston, held captive by O’Brien, says that two and two are four. O’Brien calmly responds:

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

Doublethink surely is not a good thing, then, is it?

It depends – in fact, you can use doublethink to describe itself:

Doublethink is a dangerous form of thinking that leads to contradictory ideas.
Doublethink is a productive form of thinking that leads to new ideas and tangible benefits.

Both of these things are true, and not true.

The Big Question

Science uses doublethink to describe the nature of light and reality. But could doublethink answer the question of what gives life meaning and purpose, and whether God exists?

On these ultimate questions, the main belief systems include:

Theism – The belief that God exists and is the source of all meaning and morality.

Atheism – The belief that God does not exist. Life has no meaning or we must invent one.

Agnosticism – The belief that we cannot know if God exists or not. Life may or may not have meaning.

Humanism – The belief in the worth and dignity of humans individually and collectively, rather than God, with an emphasis on critical thinking, reason, individual freedom and free thought, and the scientific method.

Ignosticism – This is similar to agnosticism in that it states that it’s impossible to know if God exists. However, it goes further by saying that the question itself is meaningless, because it’s impossible to know exactly what God is or what the nature of his existence could be.

All these views have their strengths and weaknesses. For me, the three most compelling are humanism, agnosticism and theism.

But which one of these is “correct”?

Quantum theology

I suggest a new belief system, quantheism, which states that depending on the observer and the situation, God exists or does not exist.

When we observe the awesome complexity of the universe, the planets, stars and galaxies, the incredible variety of life, and the sense of community and history within our faith, God flows into existence.

When we see that most people, including millions of children and other innocents, suffer in poverty, misery, war, natural disasters and disease, often dying young, God slips out of existence.

When we recognize the challenge of knowing that there must be a right and wrong, but not having an outside source of morality, God flows into existence. When we observe that people can behave rightly or wrongly regardless of whether they are religious or secular, God fades away.

When we struggle between these two views, we are agnostic, and God moves into a quantum state, neither existing nor not existing.

Theism provides an order and structure to the world, a sense of wonder, a belief that there is more out there than what we experience with our physical senses; it give us a sense of hope, of connection to an infinite guiding force, and the knowledge that this life is not all there is.

Humanism gives us rational thought, the scientific method, personal freedom, tolerance, self-determination, and personal responsibility.

Agnosticism gives us the freedom to doubt, and freedom from absolutes.

So am I a theist, humanist, or agnostic?

Sometimes I am a theist. Sometimes I am humanist. Sometimes I am agnostic. Sometimes I am all of them at once.

It is not easy to become sane.

Deus Machina (The God Machine)

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Andrew Brooke

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed significantly over the past few decades. Proof of this is that some tools previously described as AI are no longer described this way. These include voice-to-text recognition and automatic spelling and grammar correction (used on large portions of this article) and optical character recognition (OCR), an application that converts images of text into editable text.

Mr. Watson, Come Here

IBM’s AI supercomputer Watson is used in medical diagnostics, education, advertising, law, risk management, customer service and business automation. It won on the TV quiz show Jeopardy, without even being connected to the Internet.

GPT-3 (so much better than GPT-2)

One of the newest AI tools is Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 or GPT-3, a complex neural network developed by Open AI research labs. Now in its third release (hence the number 3 in the name), this system generates text using algorithms which have been trained by gathering and analyzing massive amounts of text on the internet, including thousands of online books and the entire Wikipedia.

GPT-3 is a language prediction model. It takes a user’s typewritten input and tries to predict what will be the most useful output, based on the text that it has been fed from these other sources. It isn’t always correct and sometimes produces gibberish, but as it gathers and analyzes more text, it gets smarter.

GPT-3 can answer questions, summarize text, write articles (with a little human help) translate languages, write computer code and carry on an intelligent conversation. By doing so, it appears to pass the Turing test, which stipulates that if a person cannot tell the difference between the responses that a computer gives to that of a human, then the computer is exhibiting some form of intelligence.

Intelligence? There’s an app for that.

When you combine GPTA-3 with other applications, the results are astounding. One GPT-3 application allows people to correspond with historical figures via email based on their writings. Imagine emailing Einstein, Leonardo daVinci or Ernest Hemingway.

Dall-E uses GPT-3 to generate images based on a simple text input. For example if you enter: “a store front that has the word ‘openai’ written on it”, Dall-E generates these images:

You can see more examples here: https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/

AI & Big Data – They’re Going Places

AI learns by acquiring information. For this to happen, all of the world’s information first had to be digitized by being copied or scanned from paper and entered into a database, which happened with the explosive growth of the internet.

But it’s not just about the quantity of information. Modern AI systems can analyze this data and find connections. This involves Big Data, which should be called Big Learning. Big Data is the process of reading massive amounts of information and then drawing conclusions or making inferences from it.

Governments use Big Data to detect tax fraud, monitor and control traffic and manage transportation systems. Retailers use Big Data to analyze consumer trends and target potential users through social media and to optimize inventory and hiring. Health care uses it provide better personalized medical care, lower patient risk, reduce waste and automate patient data reports.

Brain, Version 2.0

The growth of the internet and Big Data mimics the growth of the human mind. A newborn’s brain works at a very simple level as the child learns to see, hear and move around. As the child develops, they learn to speak, carry on a conversation and interact with others in a meaningful way.

A person’s brain is their hardware. Their thoughts and all the information in their brain’s neural network (the brain’s internet) is the software. Just as AI is constantly learning and finding connections, so do we humans. We learn from our experiences and from the connections that we’ve made with other people and by learning more information. In doing so, we hope to get not only smarter but wiser.

Code Physician, Heal Thyself

Returning to GPT-3: there are GPT-3 applications that can write code and create apps. For example, if you enter “Create a to do list”, GPT-3 will instantly write the code and create a working “To Do list” application. Microsoft and Cambridge University have developed DeepCoder, a tool that writes code after searching through a code database.

Note that it is still humans who are writing these code-writing applications. That is, although AI systems can write code, they cannot yet write the AI code that writes the code. However, computer science contains the theory of self-modifying code: code that alters its own instructions while it’s running.

If self-modifying code was implemented in a high-level artificial intelligence system such as GPT-3, the result would be an AI system that continually updates itself. However, the amount of computing power required to do this would be enormous – enter quantum computing.

Quantum Parallels

Quantum computing is light years ahead of current or “classical” computing. Classical computing (the computers we use today) use bits of binary information stored as 0 or 1. Quantum computers use qubits, which can be 0 or 1 at the same time. This means that a quantum computer can work on multiple problems and calculations simultaneously, whereas a classical computer works sequentially, solving one problem at a time.

A simple example is solving a maze. A classical computer finds the solution by examining each path one after the other, in sequence. A quantum computer looks at all the paths at the same time, solving the problem instantly. Google’s quantum computer is about 158 million times faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Quantum computing could be applied to many areas including finance, medicine, pharmaceuticals, nuclear fusion, AI and Big Data. Medicine is a particularly compelling example. Vaccines usually take 10 to 15 years to develop. In the current pandemic, it took less than a year to develop a working vaccine for COVID-19. A quantum computer, by analyzing the structure of all known viruses and vaccines and how each vaccine treats each type of virus could design a new vaccine not in years, months, weeks or even days but in seconds.

Google, IBM and other companies are spending billions on quantum computing. In 2019, Google claimed its quantum computer could perform a computation in just over 3 minutes that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years. One year later, Chinese scientists announced that they built a quantum computer 10 billion times faster than Google’s, or 100 trillion times faster than the world’s currently most advanced working supercomputer. As Hartmut Neven, the director of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, said: “it looks like nothing is happening, and then whoops, suddenly you’re in a different world.”

Looping to the Infinite

Imagine a super-intelligent, self-learning and self-enhancing system on a quantum computer. Its basic functionality could be represented as this loop:

This system would continually:

scour the internet for information
look for patterns, structure and relationships in this information
study its own code to look for improvements
update and test its code
study its hardware design to suggest improvements

Any hardware updates would still have to be done by humans, unless this system controlled a maintenance robot in a super factory with access to the required materials.

The Machine Doubles Down

Because this system would be testing its own enhancements, and because this could potentially cause a system problem, it would be safer to have two AI systems working in tandem:

In this arrangement, the first AI system (system A) updates system B and then tests it. If the test is successful, the updates to system B are retained and also applied to system A. This process then repeats for system B, continuing in an endless loop.

To make the process more efficient, there could be multiple systems, continually improving each other in a virtuous cycle:

This example has five systems continually testing and improving each other, but one could have as many systems as required, if you could create the necessary infrastructure.

The Language of Layers

Although this system would initially be configured to continually improve the software and hardware, it could evolve even further. To understand this, you need to know how computers currently function.

Computer systems contain three layers of code:

Machine level language – the raw binary code made up of zeroes and ones that instructs the computer in its operation
Assembly language – code that uses short words to represent machine level instructions, making it easier for programmers to write machine level code
High level languages – programming languages that can be read and understood by programmers, including C, C++, Java and Visual Basic

Computers use operating systems (such as Windows, MacOS and Android) to manage the computer’s resources, and applications such as Word and Excel that run on top of the operating system. Operating systems and applications are written in high level languages, which are ultimately translated into machine level language that the computer can understand.

All code and software runs on hardware, which is the physical parts of the system including the motherboard, CPU, RAM and the various circuits. In addition, the operating system needs to tell the hardware how to communicate with the operating system and applications.

Summing up, current computer systems are built upon these layers:

machine level language
assembly language
programming language
operating system
applications
hardware

This is actually a simplified view – there are additional layers within some of these layers, but it’s a good overview. A sufficiently advanced self-improving system could, in theory, discover a way to merge these separate layers into one.

Compressed Computing

Just as companies become more efficient by removing unnecessary layers of management (a process called flattening the pyramid), an advanced computer intelligence could discover how to function as a hyper-advanced single-layer system, where the operating system and applications are intertwined directly with the hardware.

Because this would be a quantum computer, each bit of information could be stored at the smallest imaginable level: a subatomic particle. A basic element such as hydrogen contains billions of such particles in a cubic centimeter, and each particle would be a transistor – a single computing circuit.

The most advanced computer processor available today contains about 40 billion transistors. A quantum system could have trillions of transistors in a compact space containing a strange hybrid of software and hardware – a “quantumware” computer. It would be as if all of IBM’s 346,000 employees were replaced by one super-human.

The Runaway Intelligence Train

The question then becomes: at what rate would this system’s intelligence increase? Intelligence is a difficult thing to quantify and measure, but let’s conservatively assume that:

this system’s intelligence increases by 1% each cycle, starting with a cycle of one full day (24 hours)
the time required to become 1% more intelligent decreases by 1% after the first cycle and then continues to decrease by 1% after each cycle

After the first day, the system would be 1% more intelligent, and the time required for it to become 1% more intelligent would then be 99% of one day, about 23 hours and 45 minutes.

After 101 days, something remarkable happens. It would only take 1 second to become 1% more intelligent. Part way into this 101st day, this system would be 998 trillion times more intelligent than when it started. How large is 998 trillion? Counting one number per second, it would take about 32 million years to count to 998 trillion.

This system would be a technological singularity: an intelligent agent running an ever-increasing series of self-improvement cycles, becoming rapidly more intelligent, resulting in a powerful superintelligence that exceeds all of humanity’s intelligence.

Does all this sound like science fiction? In addition to building a quantum computer, Google has already taken the first step by investigating quantum artificial intelligence.

If developed, a self-learning quantum AI system would not be beyond our imagination. It would be beyond what we could imagine.

Final random thoughts

There’s an interesting Twitter feed with insightful observations of art and science such as:

AI will create jobs if it succeeds, and destroy jobs if it fails.
Illusion is the extension of unconsciousness into the realm of consciousness.
Art is the debris from the collision between the soul and the world.

These Tweets weren’t written by a person – they were generated by the artificial intelligence GPT-3 in its Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/ByGpt3

The singularity is approaching – are you ready?

Viral inversion

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Andrew Brooke

Welcome to the Third World War, where the enemy is not fascism, communism or any other “ism” but an object just over one 10,000th of a millimeter wide. In one of the greatest ironies of history, the world is being ravaged not by the very large (war, earthquakes, hurricanes, or nuclear weapons) but the unimaginably small.

Coronaviruses derive their name from the spikes that form a crown or “corona” atop their spherical body. These spikes are what makes the virus so lethal because they enable it to latch onto the cells of lungs, causing severe respiratory problems. In addition, many infected people don’t exhibit symptoms right away, if at all. These people continue to move about, unknowingly infecting others. The death rate is 1% to 10% – the ultimate “killer app”.

The war against Corona is unlike any other. In the last World War, half the world was fighting the other half. In this war, the entire world is united against one enemy. All the greatest minds (scientists, epidemiologists, medical specialists, software engineers, researchers and pharmaceutical developers) are working together to develop a treatment and vaccine. U.S scientists were able to decode the DNA of the coronavirus within weeks. Based on this DNA structure, they reversed engineered a potential vaccine by comparing the DNA of the coronavirus against a database of other vaccines and the viruses that these vaccines effectively treat. However, it could be up to 18 months before a viable vaccine is released. Why the delay? Any virus must first be tested on humans to verify its safety and efficacy. Software’s the easy part; the bottleneck is the “wetware” – that is, people.

Sadly, we knew this war was coming. Governments were warned repeatedly that an outbreak of this magnitude was likely, yet did little to prepare. Four years ago, Bill Gates prophesied this event in a Ted Talk entitled, appropriately enough: We’re Not Ready. In this talk, he describes in detail the plague that would occur just a few years later. He references the movie Contagion which also predicted current events. This film dramatizes a virus from Asia with a genetic component from a bat that rapidly spreads throughout the world. There are scenes of hoarding, panic and death, and references to social distancing. Just as a virus can mutate, this film has mutated from a fictional drama into a documentary.

Clearly, there was a delayed reaction from governments the world over. What’s disturbing is that this delay continues. There seems to be a two-week lag behind the actions that governments should be taking and the ones they are taking. That is, they are on a two-week time delay. It’s unfortunate that we cannot create a mini-time machine and force world leaders to travel just a little bit into the future. With our backs to the wall, we must go back to the future.

What the world is watching now with bated breath are the numbers. Specifically, everyone is closely following the number of new infections at the state or provincial and national level. As quickly has these numbers have grown, they will peak and then start to decrease. That is, the growth curve will begin to invert. It is the most important inversion in recent history, but it won’t be the first inversion to occur during this crises.

Many films (such as the previously mentioned Contagion) have dramatized an outbreak of this type, with startling scenes of deserted cities. Today, the entertainment world and the real world have inverted. Scenes previously filmed now occur in real life. Conversely, films and TV shows from the recent past have scenes of crowded streets, people in airplanes, taking cruises, and being close together, all things which used to be in the real world.

Social media has also been inverted. Previously, it had been criticized for being a poor substitute for personal contact; for leading to people being less social. Now, because people are unable to be physically together, social media, especially video chat, has finally begun to live up to its name. Like many others, I converse with friends, family and coworkers using video chat. While not as meaningful as in-person contact, it’s a powerful alternative; a generic drug substitute for human contact.

On the subject of social media: one expression I’ve always abhorred is “going viral”. Current events have taught us that “going viral” is not exactly a good thing. We’d never say that a tweet has “gone murder” or “gone genocide”, but felt comfortable saying it spread like a virus. May this expression die out as quickly as the virus itself.

But perhaps the two most important things that have been inverted are the significant and the trivial. Do you remember the news a few weeks ago? The U.S. presidential race? Global warming? The train blockades in Canada? Harry and Meghan relinquishing their royal titles? How utterly inconsequential these things appear now. It is a tragic law of nature that to refocus the world, calamity is required. The formula appears to be: humanity + calamity = humanity 2.0. The price for this upgrade is a heavy one.

In the end, we must have hope. We must recognize that although we’re powerless over this virus, we’re not powerless over how we act and respond to it. Social distancing is unpleasant, but better to be placed six feet apart horizontally on the ground than six feet vertically into the ground.

In the end, it is our thoughts that will keep us sane, and all thoughts spring from words. We can look again to the last Word War for inspiration. Winston Churchill concluded one of his famous speeches with these words:

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

Churchill spoke these words in 1941. Nearly 80 years later, we’re using new tools to fight a new enemy: the tools of medical science and technology.

These are the tools; let us finish the job.

Stay safe.

State of the World

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Andrew Brooke

Step into Liquid is a remarkable 2003 documentary of the worldwide surfing community. Watching surfers as they glide through water is visually stunning. Surfing is so mesmerizing because it transfers the act of movement on solid ground to liquid ground. The surfers appear to be not just on another plane but another planet.

Water is so essential that there are different words for its non-liquid states: solid water is ice, snow and sleet; gaseous water is steam, vapour, mist or fog. There are no other common words that describe something in three states; for example, solid butter and melted butter are both butter.

The three states are everywhere. A situation can be fluid. To experience flow is to be in a state of positive creative energy. A watered down version of something is weaker than the original. Thoughts and memories dissipate like gas until they are solidified through words, drawings, photographs and videos.

Investments are liquid if they can be easily solid. Cash itself is solid, but what it represents, its currency, is not. Aside from the contents of your wallet or purse, money does not exist physically but only as digits in a computer file. However, currency is a solid form of energy. We expend energy through our work. This energy is converted into currency. Therefore currency represents the solid state of our work. Like matter and energy, currency cannot be destroyed but only converted from one form to another: to products and services, or to another currency.

A dependable person is solid; one can be on solid ground, give their solid support or have solid knowledge of something. Someone may be adrift (as though floating through water), wet behind the ears, or drowning in work or debt, making them a real drip, which may get them steamed, and make their talk of changing their ways all gas.

There are other people between solid and liquid. They are flexible: solid enough to be relied upon, but not so solid that they are reluctant to experiment. They go with the flow but if they are too flexible, they become more liquid: they are soft, making it hard for them to give you a solid.

Time is an ever-flowing stream, a prisoner can serve hard time while an event may last three solid hours, although that may be stretching it. (I’m not sure what causes this discrepancy in time’s state but am sure there are solid reasons for it.) Einstein proved that time is relative. It can be stretched and compressed but we don’t notice it because the distortion is so tiny.

Time is not a liquid because liquids cannot be compressed: if you tried filling more water into a bottle than it could hold, the bottle would overflow or burst. However, you can compress steam into that same bottle. Therefore, time is like a gas; it can be compressed and is something we move through effortlessly.

Einstein also proved that space and time are two facets of the same thing: space-time, the fabric of our universe. Just as time is like a gas, so too is space, again, because we move through it with no resistance.

The world is fluid, while the earth remains solid. Both reside in that complex gaseous mixture of space and time. Such is the state not only of our world but our entire universe.

Occupation: Moonshot

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Andrew Brooke

Fifty years ago, man walked on the moon. This project was the most complex technological feat at the time. Over 400,000 people worked with 20,000 companies and universities at a cost of $153 billion US in today’s dollars. Sadly, it also cost the lives of 8 astronauts: 3 killed during the Apollo 1 flight test; 5 others perishing in training crashes.

Although the term astronaut has existed since the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1950 with the creation of the International Astronautical Congress that it began to represent an actual occupation. That is, it was not until 1950 that anyone could envision a technology that would allow people to fly into outer space. Space travel didn’t exist, but the idea of it did. The creation of the astronaut occupation preceded the technology required to make it possible.

The fact that occupations can be defined before they exist is important when trying to determine jobs of the future. One obvious method is to do what was done in the past: recognize emerging technologies then create occupations for these technologies.

Some of today’s emerging technologies are:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – machines that can think, reason and converse at the same level as a human
Genetic Medicine – creating tailor-made treatments for each patient’s DNA
Fusion Energy – harnessing energy by merging atoms together
Nanotechnology – manipulating matter on the atomic scale
Quantum Computing – computing technology with the potential to be billions of times more powerful than today’s supercomputers

Because these areas are still highly experimental, extensive job opportunities won’t be available for some time. It was over 10 years between the creation of astronaut as an occupation and the year that a person (Yuri Gagarin) first went into space. As the saying goes: some things are difficult to predict, especially the future. There’s no way of knowing exactly what kinds of skills will be required in these complex areas, because these fields are still extreme works in progress.

What’s needed today is a way to determine new occupations based on current ones. There are three techniques for accomplishing this:

Randomization
Meta-occupations
Extreme specialization

Randomization involves combining the two parts that comprise any occupation title: the Profession and the Field.

The Profession is exactly that: a specific job. Common examples include:

Accountant
Administrator
Analyst
Architect
Communicator
Designer
Engineer
Entrepreneur
Healthcare Provider (including doctors, dentists & nurses)
Instructor
Lawyer
Manager
Programmer
Scientist

The Field is the general area or industry that the Profession applies to. Major fields are:

Educational
Environmental
Financial
Industrial
Legal
Medical
Scientific
Social
Software
Technical

We can combine these 14 professions and 10 fields and generate the following 140 different titles: (Warning: This is a long list, but would be even longer if we were to add additional professions and fields.)

Educational Accountant
Educational Administrator
Educational Analyst
Educational Architect
Educational Communicator
Educational Designer
Educational Engineer
Educational Entrepreneur
Educational Healthcare Provider
Educational Instructor
Educational Lawyer
Educational Manager
Educational Programmer
Educational Scientist
Environmental Accountant
Environmental Administrator
Environmental Analyst
Environmental Architect
Environmental Communicator
Environmental Designer
Environmental Engineer
Environmental Entrepreneur
Environmental Healthcare Provider
Environmental Instructor
Environmental Lawyer
Environmental Manager
Environmental Programmer
Environmental Scientist
Financial Accountant
Financial Administrator
Financial Analyst
Financial Architect
Financial Communicator
Financial Designer
Financial Engineer
Financial Entrepreneur
Financial Healthcare Provider
Financial Instructor
Financial Lawyer
Financial Manager
Financial Programmer
Financial Scientist
Industrial Accountant
Industrial Administrator
Industrial Analyst
Industrial Architect
Industrial Communicator
Industrial Designer
Industrial Engineer
Industrial Entrepreneur
Industrial Healthcare Provider
Industrial Instructor
Industrial Lawyer
Industrial Manager
Industrial Programmer
Industrial Scientist
Legal Accountant
Legal Administrator
Legal Analyst
Legal Architect
Legal Communicator
Legal Designer
Legal Engineer
Legal Entrepreneur
Legal Healthcare Provider
Legal Instructor
Legal Lawyer
Legal Manager
Legal Programmer
Legal Scientist
Medical Accountant
Medical Administrator
Medical Analyst
Medical Architect
Medical Communicator
Medical Designer
Medical Engineer
Medical Entrepreneur
Medical Healthcare Provider
Medical Instructor
Medical Lawyer
Medical Manager
Medical Programmer
Medical Scientist
Scientific Accountant
Scientific Administrator
Scientific Analyst
Scientific Architect
Scientific Communicator
Scientific Designer
Scientific Engineer
Scientific Entrepreneur
Scientific Healthcare Provider
Scientific Instructor
Scientific Lawyer
Scientific Manager
Scientific Programmer
Scientific Scientist
Social Accountant
Social Administrator
Social Analyst
Social Architect
Social Communicator
Social Designer
Social Engineer
Social Entrepreneur
Social Healthcare Provider
Social Instructor
Social Lawyer
Social Manager
Social Programmer
Social Scientist
Software Accountant
Software Administrator
Software Analyst
Software Architect
Software Communicator
Software Designer
Software Engineer
Software Entrepreneur
Software Healthcare Provider
Software Instructor
Software Lawyer
Software Manager
Software Programmer
Software Scientist
Technical Accountant
Technical Administrator
Technical Analyst
Technical Architect
Technical Communicator
Technical Designer
Technical Engineer
Technical Entrepreneur
Technical Healthcare Provider
Technical Instructor
Technical Lawyer
Technical Manager
Technical Programmer
Technical Scientist

Many of these occupations exist today, including Industrial Designer and Software Engineer. Some need imagination to envision: an Industrial Communicator could be someone who specializes in communicating complex industrial concepts to a specific industry.

At first glance, some of these occupations seem to contain fields that are redundant to their profession, specifically:

Educational Instructor
Financial Accountant
Legal Lawyer
Medical Healthcare Provider
Scientific Scientist

Aren’t all instructors Educational Instructors? Aren’t all accountants Financial Accountants? All lawyers work in the legal profession, all Healthcare Providers work in the medical field, and all scientists are scientific. There seems to be no need to include the field for these job titles, unless you consider these meta occupations.

A meta occupation is one where the skills and knowledge of the profession are applied to the profession itself, including servicing others in that profession using those skills.

Returning to the examples above:

An Educational Instructor is an instructor who teaches others how to teach.
A Financial Accountant is an accountant who provides accounting services to other accountants.
A Legal Lawyer is a lawyer who represents other lawyers, including lawyers that sue other lawyers.
A Medical Healthcare Provider could be a psychiatrist that specializes in treating other psychiatrists.
A Scientific Scientist could be a scientist who uses the scientific method to study science itself or other scientists.

A meta occupation is an example of extreme specialization, that is, a career or job title that is a specialty within a specialty. By adding additional layers to the job titles created, we can create evermore specialized fields, such as:

Medical Software Designer
Financial Communication Manager
Industrial Design Lawyer

There’s practically no limit to the number of occupations that can be created, all of which fall under existing technologies.

As the world’s population increases and technology advances, more highly specialized occupations will be required. The journey in discovering which one fits you will be your own personal moonshot.

Chance Connections

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Andrew Brooke

Quantum computing is the latest and strangest development in supercomputers – computers that perform incredibly complex tasks. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke mused that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Quantum computing is not magic, but dangerously close. It is based on two bizarre principles: superposition and entanglement.

Superposition involves probabilities. Classical computing is based on the binary system of of 0s and 1s. All computer code and electronic devices run on this system; if you go deep enough into the code, all you will see are 0s and 1s (called bits), and nothing in between. A bit therefore is the smallest unit in a computer program.

Quantum computing uses a special type of bit: a qubit. A qubit, like a bit, can have a value of 0 or 1. But it can also have both these values at the same time. This is superposition – the ability of something to be in more than one state simultaneously. We can’t know what state it is in until we observe it; until then, all we can do is assign a probability of it being in a certain state.

Entanglement is an even more bizarre aspect of quantum computing. It refers to the phenomena that if you were to measure a qubit, it changes what you see in another, no matter how far apart the two are. For example, if you see that the value of one qubit is 0, then the value of another entangled qubit billions of kilometres away becomes 1. There appears to be a mystical force connecting the two particles. Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance”.

Quantum computing sounds like science fiction, but it is not. Companies including IBM, Google, Microsoft and Intel have built (or are developing) quantum computers. As with early classical computers from the 1930s and 1940s, quantum computers are beastly machines, with many wires and cables protruding in all directions. Additionally, they must operate at near absolute zero, (the temperature in outer space), about -273°C.

The potential applications of quantum computing are limitless. Because of their quantum nature, they will be billions of times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputers today. They will be able to solve problems or create applications that traditional computers simply cannot, including:

artificial intelligence & machine learning – systems that can think, reason, and make rational judgments and recommendations, including medical diagnoses, farming and energy efficiency
molecular modeling in chemistry and physics
cryptography – creating unbreakable online security
financial applications including investments,stock market and economic analyses
weather forecasting

To recap, qubits (the building blocks of quantum computing):

exist in many states simultaneously (superposition)
are mysteriously connected together (entanglement)

Because quantum computing is attempting to discover the underlying principles of reality, it follows that these two principles should reflect reality, that is, existence should also be based on the fact that things:

exist in many states simultaneously
are mysteriously connected together (even when far apart)

At first glance, this seems absurd. Our everyday experience tells us that things exist in one state, and that if you change something, it’s not going to change something else, especially if it is far away.

But if we look closer, we can see that these are the same principles upon which the greatest and most pervasive technological innovation is based. It’s the technology that has changed the world more rapidly than almost anything else. It’s the technology that has toppled governments and powerful leaders, established friendships, solved mysteries while creating new ones and caused untold heartbreak, joy, sadness and everything in between. It’s the technology that you are using right now: the Internet. While the Internet does not represent all reality, it has come to represent and directly influence a large portion of it. It has become, quite literally, the “new reality”.

On the Internet, the same website appears differently for each user, depending on the device they are using. On certain sites, different information appears. For example, travel sites will present different prices depending on a user’s location, computer, previous queries and so on. This is superposition: the ability of the same thing to exist in different states.

Online, we are all connected, regardless of distance. When you do anything online (make a purchase, send a message, check your banking transactions, and so on), it makes no difference where you perform this action. Cyberbullying is based on the premise that sending a hurtful email or text has the same effect whether the sender is 5 metres from the receiver or 5,000 km. An action in one area affects another area – there are are no distances online.

It’s therefore no surprise that IBM has developed an online quantum computer. That is, a computer that is based on the principles of superposition and entanglement now exists on a platform that is based on superposition and entanglement.

The answer to the age-old question what is reality appears close at hand: probabilities and connections. The question now is what will happen after we’ve built computers that are millions of times more intelligent than us?

Will it lead to a utopia where all of the world’s problems are solved by benevolent machines? Or will we end up in an Orwellian nightmare, where heartless machines enslave humanity, or, worst still, we use machines to enslave others?

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets…

No time for facts

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Andrew Brooke

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Physics strives to get it together, from the incomprehensibly tiny to the unimaginably enormous. Physicists are seeking to unify two major models of the universe: general relativity and quantum theory, in a grand quest for a Theory of Everything.

General relativity is the study of the very large: planets, solar systems and galaxies. Quantum theory is the study of the very small: subatomic particles, and particles within those particles called quarks.

The problem is that the laws for one of these areas don’t work in the other. The main conflict is that general relativity says that you can predict the behaviour of an object, whereas quantum theory says you cannot, that the best you can do is predict the probability of its behaviour. It’s as though there are two completely different civilizations within the same country, each with their own laws, yet somehow living together in harmony.

Related image The closest physics has come to a grand unified theory is string theory, which states that everything is made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy that exist in ten dimensions. The way that a string vibrates determines the type of particle it is, from an electron to a gravity particle. It’s a terrific theory; there’s just one little problem – there’s no way to prove it. This is because strings, if they even exist, are far too small to be detected. If an atom were enlarged to the size of our solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.

Image result for destroyed clock There is, however, another Theory of Everything proposed by British astrophysicist Julian Barbour. He believes, incredibly, that there is no such thing as time, that instead we live in an eternal series of moments he calls “nows”. As Barbour states: “If you try to get your hands on time, it’s always slipping through your fingers. People are sure time is there, but they can’t get hold of it. My feeling is that they can’t get hold of it because it isn’t there at all.” There is no past and future, just the present; time is an illusion. Removing time from the equations allows you to unify the two theories. Like string theory, this theory of timeless physics is fascinating and impossible to prove.

The world of information faces a similar unification challenge. As with physics, there are two types of information: small and large.

Small information includes all facts such as:

a person’s name
how to fix a computer
where New York City is located
your phone number
when you have to go to the dentist

Large information is comprised of all philosophy and wisdom including explanations of:

why we exist
our purpose in life
good and evil
right and wrong
whether God exists
what is love
whether there is a soul
what is reality
what happens after we die
the best way to lead a happy, meaningful life

As with physics, these two worlds of information appear completely incompatible. How could knowing how to tie one’s shoes have anything to do with knowing our purpose in life?

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The solution is to apply Barbour’s view and remove the time component from information. If you could know all the facts in your life at the same time, you would gain wisdom. What converts a fact into wisdom is the point in time that you gained knowledge of the fact.

To understand this further, we know that in life, often things don’t go the way we want, for example:

you’re stuck in traffic and late for a job interview
the person you want to date is not interested in you
someone is keeping you waiting

These are all facts, all small pieces of information.

Other facts are:

you didn’t get the job, but later got a much better one
you weren’t able to go out with the person you wanted to, but ended up with someone else who was a better fit
because someone kept you waiting, you avoided a car crash

The only difference between these two sets of facts is time. Now imagine if there was no time, and that you knew all these facts simultaneously. You would gain a much larger piece of information, which is that a negative event can actually be positive.

You may also gain the wisdom that:

More important than what happens to us in life is how we react to it.
Worrying about something does not help.
Everything happens for a reason, even though it may not be obvious at the time what the reason is.

People often lament: If only I had known then what I know now. A fact becomes important when we become aware of it in relation to something else. A person gains wisdom by making mistakes and learning from them, or by seeing others make mistakes and avoiding them.

Wisdom, therefore, is the knowledge and interpretation of facts outside of time. This is why certain ideas, such as love, goodness, charity, mercy, justice and fairness are considered timeless.

World on fire

A Portable Life

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Andrew Brooke

“Computer” did not always mean a thing that computes; as recently as the 1960s, it actually meant a person. The US military and NASA employed human computers to perform complex mathematical calculations. As electronic computers evolved, they replaced human computers, and replaced the definition of a computer.

The early electronic computers were enormous. ENIAC, (pictured right) one of the earliest all-purpose computers built in the 1940s, was 1,800 square feet and weighed nearly 30 tons. (Not exactly a laptop.) It took an army of people just to keep it running.

Later computers (such as mainframes) in the 1960s also required many individuals to operate. Starting in the 1980s, the personal computer took off. Today, most people own several computers in various forms. We have therefore evolved from:

many people for one computer
one person for one computer
many computers for one person

The primary computer types today are desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. All of these are “personal” computers, because the owner is highly connected on a personal level to each device, as though it was a physical extension of that person.

If you think I’m exaggerating, watch the look on a young person’s face if they have misplaced or lost their smartphone; it’s not quite an amputation, but pretty close. So much of a person’s life can be on a computer it quite literally becomes a part of them.

We can categorize computers as:

Non-portable: desktops
Highly portable: smartphones
Semi-portable: laptops & tablets

Given how personal “personal computers” are, it’s not a huge leap to correlate the type of computer to the type of person: non-portable, highly portable and semi-portable.

The Non-Portables

Non-portable people are the stable, steady stalwarts of society. They have established homes, travel little if at all, and are consistent, reliable, dependable and trustworthy. They may not always be creative, but are able to work with creative people to get the job done. They are conservative, resistant to change and comfortable in their routines. They may be perceived as cold and uncaring, but deep down can have big hearts. They just don’t wear their heart on their sleeve, but keep it safely tucked away, just in case. Their motto is: “If it ain’t broke, why even think about fixing it?”

The Highly Portable

Highly portable people are the dreamers and drifters. They move frequently, rent but never own, love to travel, and frequently change careers. At their worst, they may be unstable and flighty, but are also very friendly, outgoing and full of new and original ideas. They are always challenging the status quo, and in doing so, get the world of its comfort zone and move it forward. Their motto is: “Everything needs fixing.”

The Semi-Portables

Semi-portable people reside between these two extremes and are therefore more difficult to define. They can be very open and creative, and at other times closed and subdued. They excel as mediators and diplomats, bringing the other two types together and bridging the gap between them. They are the middle ground, the average, the in-between. Their motto is: “Let’s look together to see if it needs fixing.”

With AI (artificial intelligence) now developing at an astonishing rate, we are approaching the age where computers will be able to think and reason as people do. In what will be one of the greatest ironies of technological history, computers may again become persons. When that happens, your smartphone will indeed be “a portable life”.

Rounding up

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Andrew Brooke

Related image Rounding is a mathematical process in which a complex number is replaced with a simpler one, such as 1.343 rounded to 1.3. It makes numbers easier to communicate and work with. However, rounding applies not only to math but to all aspects of our existence.

Starting with the essentials (matter, space and time ): all matter is composed of atoms, which in turn are almost 100% space. If you could remove all the space between all the atoms of all the skyscrapers in New York city, they would fit within a matchbox. Why then do we perceive matter as solid? It is because our senses are simply not acute enough to detect the spaces. If we were much smaller (or more sensitive), we would see the spaces. Instead, we “round” the spaces up, filling in the gaps and thereby perceive matter as solid or liquid.

Related image Similarly, we round space. Again, because we cannot perceive vastly small spaces, we round up to the nearest perceptible unit, usually about 1 mm, depending on the situation.

Finally, we round time. When we say it takes 20 minutes to do a task, we generally don’t mean exactly 20 minutes but rather 20 minutes, plus or minus a few minutes. Even for events that we measure precisely, again, because of our perceptual limitations, we cannot perceive tiny amounts of time, such as one ten-thousandth of a second. We round to the nearest second, minute, hour or even day.

Image result for senses We also round our senses. No two people perceive colour, sound, smell, taste and texture the same way. As with matter, space and time, we perceive these things within a certain perceptible range. It would be impossible, for example, to differentiate two nearly identical colours, one .000001% brighter than the other; we round up the colours and see them as identical. You are rounding the text displayed here. Your eyes and mind fill in the pixels this text is composed of to see the letters and words.

Now, if such fundamental and seemingly objective aspects of our existence as matter, space, time and our basic senses are rounded, how much more so the less objective and more ethereal aspects.

Concepts, thoughts, ideas and feelings are constantly “rounded”. In fact, because these things are non-physical, it would be tempting to say that math does not apply and that they cannot be “rounded”. One could argue that it would be ridiculous to say that you could like someone 12% more than someone else, or that a political party is 14% better than another. That may be true, but you can measure aspects of these things. For example, like-ability by itself is not measurable, but surveys where each person rates or ranks their feelings to the other is. The moment you introduce math or statistics, you can have rounding.

Rounding therefore, is the process of taking something and replacing with something less precise but easier to understand and perceive. In that sense, it is one of the purest forms of technical communication. For it is the job of a technical communicator to take something complex and simplify it so that it can be practically understood by the reader.

It is a constant struggle to determine the degree to which content should be simplified. Simplify it too much, and you lose valuable information; simplify it too little, and the content becomes inaccessible. Because of rounding, no two technical communicators will ever document something the same way.

May all your content be well-rounded.

The 22 senses of technical communicators

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Andrew Brooke

Humans have five senses, right? Well, not exactly. It’s a common belief that the only senses are sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. But scientists now know that we have so many more senses including:

equilibrioception – the sense of balance, which keeps you from falling down
thermoception – the sense of hot and cold
proprioception – the sense of where your body parts relative to other body parts; this sense enables to touch your toes with your eyes closed
nociception – the sense of pain
chronoception – the sense of the time

Note that these are just senses that have names. There’s practically an infinite number of unnamed senses, including a sense of:

hunger
thirst
exhaustion
suffocation
pressure
danger
morality
intuition

Technical communicators have even more senses, 22 to be exact:

Senses related to basic informational elements:

fontioception – the sense of the correct font to use
titulioception – the sense of the correct heading to use
blancioception – the sense of the correct use of white space
graficioception – the sense of when to include an image in a document, and the formatting of that image
referencioception – the sense of when and how to use a cross-reference

Senses related to major informational elements and sections:

definitiocepetion – the sense of how to describe a concept, term, or idea
laboriocepetion – the sense of how to document a task
diagramioception – the sense of how to create a meaningful diagram
glossariocepetion – the sense of the terms to include in a glossary

Senses related to the structure of a document:

indicioception – the sense of what terms to index and how to correctly structure an index
partitioception – the sense of how to break up a large block of text into separate sections, or a large document into sub-sections
lexioception – the sense of what text to conditionalize
recylioception – the sense of what text to reuse or single-source
darwinioception – the sense of how to structure information using DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture XML language

Senses related to the reader:

humanioception – the sense of the typical reader of the document
intellengencioception – the sense of the reader’s intelligence
curiosoception – the sense of how the reader will search for information

Senses related to general communication:

practicaliocepetion – the sense of what is practical and meaningful information, and what is not
presentioception – the sense of what information is current and up to date
imperfectioception – the sense of information that is incomplete or inaccurate
obfusicatiocepetion – the sense of a lack of clarity or meaning
simplicitocepetion – the sense of simplicity in communication

The most important sense of all: clairitariocepetion – the sense of clear, effective communication

Andrew Brooke

Experienced Project Coordinator, Administrator and Business Communicator

Category Archives: science