MtH #23 Relativity Speaking

MtH #23    Relativity Speaking

I was feeling a little funny about the “Benevolent Universe” thing I got into a few weeks ago. 

“What was I smoking?” I thought, “my readers are going to mistake me for a sensitive new age guy”. 

After a few attempts at reworking it I thought “screw it” and resolved to delete it the next time I was in edit mode.

I have a quirk. I have a few actually, but I’ll leave that for a future post. My family (brother and two sisters) know that whenever I work on anything, whether it’s trying to find something or assemble something or whatever,  and I get frustrated and say “That’s it folks” meaning “I give up”,  that I’m just about to solve the problem.

One of Albert Einstein’s most famous and misinterpreted quotes was the one that concluded with “God does not play dice with the universe”. 

It was in response generally, to the new Quantum Mechanics and specifically, to Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which held that it’s not possible to know, at the same time, both the velocity and the position of sub atomic particles. All that could be determined were probabilities, hence the dice playing that Einstein was referring to. 

Some of you are thinking that in trying to prove I’m not a mystic trend jumper, I’m simply digging myself in deeper. Is my Benevolent Universe a thinly veiled reference to God? No more so than Einstein’s crap shooting metaphor.

Okay, on the count of three, everybody now….. One, Two, Three:   HEFFERNAN, YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT 

Aha!……. Right back at you, those who question my credibility. Refer to my last post MtH #22 Alternate Reality and check out the cover image again. Print it and paste it on your drivers licence.

Because old Albert used the famous quote again, in a somewhat different way and it’s within this context that I find relevance and resonance.

“I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

“For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

“If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

“But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.”

“God does not play dice with the universe”

Albert Einstein

Me again:

I avoid proselytizing like golf and sharp 11 chords but I will say it again, this time unabashedly and without reservation:

I believe in a Benevolent Universe  

 And it wouldn’t hurt if you and everyone else did too