Sitting on my couch in hot, humid, muggy, and humid (yes it deserves it twice) Houston, I turned to TED Talks and Presidential Addresses to pass an evening between workdays. I admitted to Toni and Lincoln repeatedly during our "accidental" run-ins at TMI on Wednesday nights around 9:00 that I never really wrapped my head around the Global Paradigms unit of our Revolutions class. This TED Talk has helped and I only wish I had seen it before I wrote my unit paper. Hopefully it helps one of you guys piece together Einstein's Dream and Chaos Theory. Happy McBriding
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Thanks for this link Kit! One can never have too many TED Talks in their lives.
ReplyDeleteJim Holt touched on something I've been struggling with in my personal life. Living in a "generic reality" with a mix of chaos and order is a very balanced view, and mimics what we say in our daily lives- everyone knows that there is a full scale of gray on almost every issue. However, I am questioning his dismissal of the metaphysical. If "all possible realities actually exist" like one person wrote, wouldn't our generic reality be contained in that? How is that idea wrong? Or is it just not an important question because we are unable to directly interact with the other versions of reality?
Enjoyed the talk, although found it quite unconvincing. It seemed like more of an excuse for not having things figured out rather than providing an actual solution for existence. Perhaps that gives some solace to some, but I think it leaves a lot to be desired.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, he doesn't actually ever answer the question: why does the universe exist? So it exists in some mediocre capacity, in between ideal and nothing, but so what? That gives me no further explanation as to why the universe came from nothing. I understand that there is problems with our universe being an idealized one, but having it be "nothing special" tends to suggest that it arose from randomness? Something else? I'm not really sure what his point was.
Chaos theory would suggest that while there seems to be randomness, there is in fact some element of order. I'm not convinced that "a little good, a little bad", fits this explanation. The global paradigms of harmony, complexity, and unity seem to me to operate outside of the existence of a specific universe. As we've touched in class, these paradigms take on many forms, ones that I think operate regardless of the larger picture of the universe. Joni, I also think you raise a valid question, and one that I think is important. It will be interesting to see how this week's discussion on metaphysics gives insight into this topic.
I'm not counting out the possibility that our universe is indeed somewhere in between perfection and nothing, but I don't think his explanation gives any concrete reason as to why this should be the case over the others. Also, what was that ending? Seemed totally out of place. Thanks for sharing Kit, really did enjoy the concepts despite not agreeing with many of them.