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"God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide
nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being
played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn
up... Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see
which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good;
and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your
happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason
is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of
necessity choose... But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in
wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose
nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
My $0.02 worth: Wow, that was exactly what I had deliberated about on some previous lazy afternoon. Talk about great thinkers think alike.
But then, with so many choices, there is the problem of which God should you choose? If we follow Pascal's proposition, let's put the chance that He exists as 50%. Then the chance that we just might hit the jackpot and receive eternal bliss will of course be significantly lower than this 50%. Say, considering the major religions around the world, which includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Taoism, etc, etc, you may get something close to 10% as the final straw. Anyway, I guess that is the point of Pascal's argument. Believe, you may get your 10% chance. Don't, you get zero.
Then, there's these paradoxes that intrigues me. The one about Schrodinger's cat is by far the most interesting, followed closely behind by Zeno's paradoxes on motion.
In Schrodinger's cat, it involves a thought experiment that includes a cat that's put into a box. A small sample of a radioactive material is then put together with the cat into the box, as well as a detector that detects whether or not atoms are emitted by this piece of sample. If it does detect some stray atoms, it will break a vial of cyanide gas inside the box, that kills the cat.. Kinda cruel, but then its only a thought experiment. Come to think of it, great thinkers have somewhat twisted minds.. So, if the chance that atoms are emitted by this sample is 50%, then, without opening the box and inspecting the content, at any instant the cat will be, literally, half dead and half alive. Thus, the paradox.. How to have some kitty dead and alive at the same time?
My other $0.02 worth: The point about this experiment is that quantumatically, you cannot be sure what will be the physical outcome of particles or atoms, until you observe them with your own eyes. That is, you wouldn't know whether the cat is 100% dead or alive, until you peek at the box. Before you peek, you can only guess, and hence before you see, the cat is half dead, half alive. The use of a cat, or the cyanide gas, or the box is totally insignificant, I think. The experiment can jolly well proceed with any other animals, or any other methods to kill the cat.. So if you really can't find any cat around, a dog will also do..
The cruelty of this experiment is probably the mental impact Schrodinger wanted to instill to its audience. Since the novelty of quantum mechanics is hard to grasp and even more harder to accept, an interesting anecdote will keep the interest in his audience, and do the job better.
Actually, to see how the cat is doing is not the correct word in the quantum sense. Since light will be reflected from the particle into your eyes in order for you to see the particle, the momentum light photons possesses would have displaced the particles from its original position. Hence, what you see now is not the position of the particle at this instant.. In fact, if you had studied quantum physics in college, most likely you'll know that on a quantum scale, you cannot know exactly where a particle will be at a specific instant. Instead, PSI functions are used to find the probability at any instant a particle will be. Thus, my guess is that the cat here resembles the particle. You cannot perfectly know whether the cat's state, that is, whether its alive or dead at any instant; you can only use probability to guess. Then again, it will be meaningless when you use your eyes to see whether the cat is alive or dead, since state of this cat may not be its state at the instant you had peek.. Thus the paradox is not why the cat is alive or dead, but that one can only guess whether the cat is alive or not.
Chim right? Anyway, don't quote me.. Its Junjie the philospher at work.. and I'm only a year one Uni undergrad.. Engine student some more..
The one about Zeno's motion paradoxes.. They deal mostly with relative motion, and the what's if and what's not. Its discomforting to know that people long ago, through mathematical logics, had already grasp the concept of relativity, space-time and all those Einstonian thoughts. Clever right? Someone says, if people had pay more attention to Zeno's thoughts, we now could have nuclear weapons in stock at the Seven Eleven near you.
All these great thoughts about life aside, I'm working in Sony factory right now. Not a tough job, but mentally shag.. Imagine a job that is 12-hours shift, in which you only work 7 hours and idle the rest. The idle part is the mentally shag part. Anyway, here's a paradox of my own: Working inside a Sony factory so that I can earn enough money to buy a Sony PSP.. Heck, I can jolly well steal one while I'm at it.. But then I could have be a great philsopher in the future.. Cannot let such details taint my eulogy right??
Also bought Tao Ze aka David Tao's latest.. Wasn't as strong as his last.. He shouldn't have reprimanded Jay Zhou's albums, when he himself couldn't make breakthoughs. Also bought Love Phychodelico's "best of" album. The tunes are great, but the lyrics.. crap. Japanese should stop inscribing english words or phrases into their tunes.. It ruins them..
The last time I count, school is still eons away. Let's keep it this way. Anticipation is half the pleasure, as I always said.