Going back in time and inhabiting my 15 year old body

I'm just wondering what I would do if, say tomorrow, when I woke up I bizarrely found myself in my 15-year-old body back where I used to live in Wolviston Court Estate, Billingham. But I have all my present memories, my present intelligence etc.

After getting over the complete shock, what the heck would I do? I couldn't tell anyone, at least not at first. It's absolutely, completely unbelievable. And is it temporary? Or permanent? Do I go to school (Northfield Comprehensive)?? I can't even remember what time school starts! Either 9am or 9.15am. I remember where to go, though — the registration class. Would my friend at the time, Gary Dix, think I am being a bit weird and strangely intelligent when I start talking? At that age I was starting to talk about all the things I do now -- the Universe, God, life after death etc. But my thoughts have somewhat developed since then!

Do I go to lessons? First thought is obviously not, I nick off and explore this world of 1977! On the other hand, it might be fun to attend school for at least a day and give the teachers a piece of my mind. I could explain to Mr Lonsdale, my physics "O level" teacher, that he is naively pre-supposing our physical theories depict a literal state of affairs, and it is difficult to reconcile this supposition with the underdetermination of theories by evidence i.e for any macroscopic state of affairs a unlimited number of theories can be dreamt up employing wildly differing entities to explain that state of affairs. Yep, see how long the condescension by teachers towards me lasts! (some teachers used to mock my ability).

Then I'll nick off the next day and forevermore after that (assuming this is a permanent state of affairs, and I'll continue to exist in my 15-year-old body). I should be able to use some of my knowledge of the future to make money. But how would I affect the future? There's the Butterfly effect.

Oh yes, and I would go over to Andrea Stark and tell her that I'm not gay! 😂 (I found out a few years ago that she thought I was gay at the time).

The fine-tuning of the Universe

Suppose someone -- let's call him Peter -- were kidnapped, and the kidnapper is a psychopath and sets up some explosion device that is tied to Peter. The device is programmed to shortly generate 10 random numbers from 0 to 9. If the numbers so generated are anything apart from 10 zeros, it will instantaneously explode, and hence kill Peter.

So Peter thinks, well this is it then. The chance of me surviving is 1/10^10 or 1 in 10 billion. Astonishingly though, much to his delight, the contraption duly displays the 10 zeros!

So he says to the psychopath "you had me worried there, you must have programmed it to display 10 zeros!"

The psychopath responds, "no, no, not at all! It was completely random and you're just incredibly lucky. Don't forget, if it had been any other combination of numbers, you would be dead and wouldn't be here to think about it. You can only live in a world, and hence contemplate your situation, where 10 zeros come up.

Of course, this sounds preposterous, and we would surely conclude the psychopath is lying. But does his argument have merit?

This is not just an idle question. It has direct applicability to the fine-tuning of the physical constants of our Universe. Or indeed the fact we were actually born, rather than any of the countless potential human beings that could have been born in our place. Or the fact that the human race came into being due to all the improbable events that were required, e.g. the meteor impact 66 million years ago etc.

A spiffing idea for a novel

I think a spiffing idea for a novel would be if a group of people want back in time to the age of the dinosaurs, say about 80 million years BC. Talk about their survival, building a shelter etc. Then eventually they discover intelligent dinosaurs walking on their hind legs approximately the size of us humans that communicate with speech to each other! The humans eventually end up getting captured, and the dinosaurs don't initially believe that the humans are intelligent. Until they discover that the humans communicate with speech, and they have strange devices on them, and formidable weapons.

I'd write it myself, but I'd be no good at writing novels.

Do animals experience jealousy?

From the following article:

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals To Experience Jealousy — Dogs Do, Too

It says:

Jealousy is a fairly common human emotion — and for a long time, it was presumed it truly was only human. Some have argued that jealousy, with its focus on social threat, requires a concept of “self” and a theory of mind.

Anyone who's had a dog as a pet knows that dogs feel jealousy. We don't need to look at any studies. It's clearly the case that a dog doesn't have to have a concept of self, it just has to know that another animal is receiving affection and it isn't. Apparently, people are "anthropomorphising" in assigning emotions to animals. That's right, we are! If an animal behaves in a very similar manner to a human being who's in a certain emotional state, it is rational to assign that emotional state to the animal too. Any sane person would, but unfortunately many scientists have a propensity to believe the most preposterous stuff imaginable.

Life back in 1300

I have no idea what peoples lives were like centuries ago. Say in 1300 or whenever. Were the common people mostly hungry all the time? Constantly suffering from plague, disease, illness? Was life short, nasty and brutal? How did they entertain themselves? They didn't have the Internet, nor TV, nor books (and they couldn't read anyway). And what would they think of our modern world?

And if I went back in time to 1300, what would they think of me? Would I be able to blend in? Would they think I'm weird?

The fetishizing of work

I read the following article:

The Cult of Busy-ness

The author says:

[Steve Jobs] was a man who lived a life almost completely devoid of any reason to be alive. His renowned ascetic existence was grey and cheerless and boring beyond endurance. And… well… he’s dead. How is this success?

Our culture has a fixation on work. Success and worthiness, one's standing, have been defined by how hard one works and how much money one earns. For many people, work becomes the point of their existence. Without it they would become lost, be forced to look inside themselves and face the inevitable existential angst. We all need goals, and the goal of being a "success" and held in high esteem by others has a certain appeal.

Newton and a smartphone

Imagine if you went back in time to 1770 and showed Isaac Newton a modern smartphone (obviously can't make calls, but the camera, torch, chess programs etc would work). Would he think it was magical, produced by witchcraft or whatever? Or would he understand that the regularities (physical laws) describing reality are much more intricate than he might have supposed. Regularities that can be utilized to produce such a wonderous device?

I think the latter.

Chatting about other people

I've heard it claim that two-thirds of human conversation is gossip about other people. Surely not?? Anyway, I scarcely ever talk about other people. It's just not something that interests me. I'm extremely bad even by male standards.

This is problematic because it's how many people bond. They don't like talking about intellectual stuff, they like talking about whatshecalled been up to. "She did what?? Ooh, well I never!" Well, at least some women talk like that, if not men!

Anyway, more seriously, as I said it helps to bond people together . People like to share their experiences of others, especially negative experiences. They want sympathy, they want to express how they feel about others. I think it's disadvantageous having little interest in such stuff. Oh well, I've always been different.

By 2404

I really have no idea what the future might be like in, say, 400 years time or so. What will the world be like in 2404? What will have happened to the climate? They'll have been mass migration from the hot areas of the world to Europe by then, since these hot areas might be too hot for human beings to exist. People will start living in Antarctica.

What will technology be like? Probably we will have a shared virtual reality pretty much indistinguishable from real life. We'll have robots that maybe look like us and on a superficial level behave and speak like us. But they still don't fool people that they are sentient for any appreciable length of time as there's something off, weird, unconvincing about them.

And will people still subscribe to philosophical materialism? Next 100 years the mainstream view might be some type of materialism, but not by 2404.

If I'd never been born

What would the world be like if I had never been born? Exactly the same as very few people have known me and even those that have never listen or read anything I say? I don't think so. Infinitesimally small changes in the world lead to larger and larger effects without end, leaving nothing untouched until the whole world is changed. I reckon if any one of us had never been born, the world would be different, perhaps very different.

A trip to the supermarket (fictional).

I was just thinking. Suppose I went into a supermarket, a large one to shop for my groceries. It's fairly quiet as it's early evening and there's only about a 100 people in. Suddenly, as I'm walking around holding my basket, I hear a loud boom and I feel the floor move beneath my feet and I almost fall over. I look around, wondering what the hell happened there. There's a couple of people near me who likewise appear bewildered.

A few seconds later, from the front of the supermarket near the entrance, I hear a bewildered shout followed by a babble of confused voices. The shouting and confusion soon gets worse -- much worse bordering on hysteria. I make my way to the front of the supermarket. Out of the windows I see that the world has completely changed! Instead of a car-park filled with cars and nearby buildings, they've all been replaced by a lush, vibrant green forest.

We all pour out of the entrance. The cacophony of confusion, bewilderment, and hysteria continue. Suddenly, we all hear an almighty, huge roar. It's a tyrannosaurus Rex, attracted by the noise and feasting its malevolent gaze upon us! We all panic and there's a stampede to get back into the supermarket, jamming the door in the process. Thankfully, we all manage to get back inside before it reaches us.

Oh well, plenty of tins of food to consume for the near future, and also shelter provided by the supermarket. Pity supermarkets don't sell guns though.

Think will continue getting my groceries delivered.

We cannot see the self

The fact that you can’t see your eyes doesn’t mean that you don’t have any. Likewise, the fact we cannot see the self doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The self is that which perceives, it's not itself a perception.

The Wisdom of the Cherokee

 

Yes, precisely. The issue of rights and the associated notion of pursuing one's own self interests is often to the detriment of society as a whole. The tragedy of the commons illustrates this. It serves to alienate us all from each other, to view others as competitors. Contrariwise, obligations serve to bind us together, to care for one another. This leads to close-knit communities that are not only beneficial to the local environment and ultimately the planet, but leads to fellowship, a sense of belonging, contentment.

In 2062

I wonder what the world will be like in 40 years time in 2061. Be interesting to travel forwards in time to that date, although not so good if I can't get back.

Will anyone have set foot on Mars? I doubt it. Will we have conscious computers? No.. Will autonomous cars dominate the roads? Ugh . . difficult one, level 4 yes that can drive in prescribed areas, but not level 5 cars that can drive anywhere. Will we have a theory of everything (TOE)? No. Will we be able to upload our minds? No. Will virtual reality have become a big thing by then? Yes.

Education and Indoctrination

It has been said that indoctrination and education are polar opposites and absolutely incompatible.

In an ideal world, but certainly not in practice. To a large measure, education indoctrinates us into believing that our modern "scientific" picture of the world has more or less given us a correct picture of what reality is with only the details needing to be filled in. Thus, there is no God, no afterlife, no magic, no ghosts, no psi, no objective morality, no "free will", no ultimate given purpose to our lives, no colours, sounds or smells in the external world.

I surmise my "education" has been very poor since I believe in all of these things (possibly not magic, I lack sufficient information to reach a conclusion here).

It's a bizarre situation we find ourselves in

It's bizarre enough that we find ourselves existing on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an eternal nothingness. But, arguably, what's even more bizarre is that no-one questions it. Everyone thinks it's normal. 

We need to take a step back and just consider how utterly strange is the situation in which we find ourselves. Are we all being deceived? Are our lives akin to some strange dream, and when we die we'll realise how preposterous it all is? I don't know.

Existential thoughts and Depression

I've noticed since first coming on the Internet (back in 1999), that when I express certain existential thoughts e.g. what does it all mean etc, people think I'm depressed.

Nothing could be further from the truth! It's because I'm excited. My thoughts are bubbling to the surface. I'm fascinated by what it all means (if anything).

Either the Universe and our lives are absurd. Or there is some ultimate purpose (which suggests a "life after death" and all that might entail). But either possibility is mind-blowing.

In my heart of hearts, I'm convinced there's an ultimate purpose to it all. But I assure people I'm not depressed when I express such thoughts. In fact, if anything, I'm feeling pleasantly . .um . . wistful . . awed by it all?? Certainly not depressed, though!

Absolute wealth or relative wealth

Jus' thinking. Which would people prefer:

a) To get paid £100,000 a year for a specific job whilst everyone else earned £50,000 a year.

b) To get paid £200,000 a year for a specific job whilst everyone else earned £400,000 a year.

I think people would tend to say "b", but in reality would feel happier with "a". To be better off than others gives people satisfaction, but to earn less than everyone else is not good for one's self-esteem. Of course, ideally, we ought to be solely interested in our absolute wealth.

Conventional Wisdom

A woman said on Facebook, "I love people who challenge conventional wisdom". I certainly fit into that category. However, I seem to do it a tad too often.

I reject the conventional wisdom that we are just here for the ride and there's no "life after death". I reject the wisdom that robots will eventually become conscious and be a threat to humankind. I reject the wisdom that capitalism and democracy are the ideals that society should strive for. I reject the wisdom that in the next couple of decades or so we will detect alien civilisations. I reject the wisdom that morality is merely a reflection of one's culture and there is no objective morality. I reject the wisdom that we are what our environment makes us, and people aren't born nasty. I reject the wisdom of the desirability of compelling children to attend school 35 hours a week from the ages of 4 to 18. I reject the wisdom that the more people go to University, the better. I reject the wisdom that to be ambitious is extremely desirable.

Am I a maverick purely for the sake of being a maverick? I don't think so . . but ...

Our lives are ultimately mysterious

Our whole lives and all things are pervaded with ultimate mystery. I sometimes feel as if I'm in something akin to a dream. That when I wake up I'll understand everything, perhaps when I die. That at the present time my mind is effectively wading through sludge.

When I die

I feel that when I die I might enter into infinity and encompass love beyond compare, beyond comprehension. All memories will come flooding back. I will meet my soulmate, who I had long forgotten. A mutual, infinite love and empathy that will turn my soul inside out. I will feel I have finally come home, at last know who I truly am.

The best way to die?

People say that when it's their time to go they'd just like to go quickly rather than hearing they have some terminal illness. I completely identify with that. I would feel terrified if I learnt I had a terminal illness. Much better to go quickly -- not endure those months of fear leading to one's eventual demise.

And yet . . and yet . . I think that after the initial shock and stultifying fear; the subsequent reminiscing about my life; what it all means; whether I might survive my death and if so what I might experience; writing down these thoughts in one of my blogs, perhaps even relating any anomalous experiences I might have e.g. deathbed visions, then perhaps this might be a desirable option. At least if any pain could be minimised.

The Emperor has no Clothes

The origin of this phrase comes from a Hans Christian Anderson's fable The Emperor’s New Clothes. A vain emperor spends a vast amount of money on clothes. One day a couple of con men pay him a visit and offered to make him the most expensive clothes ever which would have a magical property of being invisible to those unfit for office or who are simply stupid. So the emperor ordered that they be made. Of course the con men made nothing at all, but pretended they did. Since no one wanted to appear to be incompetent and stupid, everyone, including the emperor, pretended they could see the clothes. But one day a small child piped up that the emperor has nothing on. The bubble of pretence burst and everyone then admitted they could see no clothes either.

We pay lip service to certain ideas because everyone else seems to subscribe to them, and we don't want to appear to be idiotic, or even a loon. But then certain ideas are perpetuated, not because of their intrinsic merit, but because no one dares say anything.

The Metaphysics of Horror

I read a very interesting article:

The Metaphysics of Horror

The article says:

What would your feelings be,” asks Ambrose in Arthur Machen’s novel The House of Souls, 

“… if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents?” He goes on: You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?" 

Machen’s examples are disturbing, but it’s not immediately obvious why. It’s not that they’re frightening, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word. Normally, we’re scared of things because we think they pose a physical danger to us, but singing roses don’t pose any such hazard, so why is the thought of them so nightmarish?

This is interesting. A singing rose would indeed fill us with horror. Scientists and others might likewise be horrified by the paranormal for similar reasons. Certain bizarre phenomena might discombobulate us, confuse us, shock us. We need to feel that we can grasp the world, at least to a certain degree. But something super-strange happening upsets everything we thought we ever understood. It fosters the feeling that anything might happen. We feel a loss of control over reality.

I am going to die sooner or later

I am going to die sooner or later. I don't know what will happen. Whether I'll just descend into eternal nothingness -- and wouldn't that be so boring, and bizarre? It would mean our lives are absurd, and all things are absurd. That our lives and all things are a joke. Or I'll ascend into some new reality. That's also bizarre. So many questions like what the heck will I experience, how will my mind states change and so on. But, regardless, death will happen to me -- it will happen to all of us. Then my questions may be answered. Either that or an eternal sleep.

If everyone died at once

Just thinking if there were a worldwide calamity, and humanity -- 8 billion of us -- all died at once. And let's also suppose there's an afterlife. Suppose that would be better than an individual dying alone. I mean, 8 billion of us floating up to some afterlife realm or realms. 8 billion bewildered souls in telepathic communication with each other asking where are we, what is this, where do we go? Be less scary than if one just died by oneself.

Instant liking of others

It's funny how some people really connect. I think it happens when they share the same values, ideas, what constitutes fun etc. It could be 2 knuckleheads who think that life is all about screwing as many women as possible. Or it could be 2 people that are "woke". But there's that connection there, an immediate liking of that other individual who is so like them in so many ways.

But what about the poor unfortunates like myself, who are utterly unique?

Dr. William B. Province's view

Dr. William B. Provine, now deceased but who used to be Professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University, once said the following:

There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

Well, thanks for letting us know, William! No purposes? No goal directed forces of any kind? Hmm... so how do iPhones come into existence? By sheer happenstance?

Good looking women

Why do guys act so sycophantically around good-looking women? Get sick of hearing stuff like:

You have intelligence, courage and a keen sense of self and your place in the universe. You're a very feisty lady that can handle pretty well any challenge that is thrown at you, dare I say you have inspired me with how you live your life? Your awesomeness emanates from your very being, it is almost a tangible thing! OK . OK . .I made that last sentence up.

Dwelling on our mortality

Some people dwell -- unduly in my opinion -- about their own deaths and the meaning of it all. Yes, we are all going to die -- just as ~ 100 billion people did before us (this is a rough estimate of the total number of human being who have ever died).

We either survive, or we don't. If we don't then it will be exactly the same as the time before our lives. It will be akin to deep sleep. If we survive? Then it's an adventure which will happen at some unspecified time in our futures. Meanwhile, let's just lose ourselves in our lives. Enjoy ourselves.

Life is interesting. Existence is fascinating. Let's not lose sight of that.

20,000 years ago

I'm just thinking what would happen if I accidentally walked through a time portal and went back in time 20,000 years? Would I eventually meet other human beings? Would they be hostile? Would they think I'm strange? What would my life be like?

Not that I believe that backwards time travel is possible; indeed, I believe it's metaphysically impossible. But I might be wrong, and besides, it's interesting thinking about such things.

Enjoyable work

What makes one's job enjoyable? What makes us work hard? I think essentially, one needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product you're creating or the service you're providing.

Our society tends to assume how hard we work, how much effort we put into something, is closely related to how much we get paid for that work. I disagree. I reckon what motivates people to work hard is not so much how much you get paid, but rather the sense of achievement in producing something that other people really appreciate, together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do what you've done. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will make one very much enjoy the work they're doing.

But much work under capitalism tends to be repetitious, just doing one task. You're not creating the object, only part of it. Hence, you're a cog in the overall machine. And the object is not ours. It belongs to someone else. Hence, we are alienated from that we are creating, or the service we're providing.

The Voyager Spacecraft

From here.

NASA placed a .. message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. 

It’s almost certainly the case these records will never ever be listened to or viewed. The spacecraft will be drifting through space long after the extinction of humankind. It will drift for countless trillions of years. All other signs of the human race will have long since been obliterated. In fact, the whole Earth will have been swallowed up by the death throes of the Sun as it expands into a red giant. Just those discs that no-one and nothing will ever view or listen to as a lasting memento of human culture and life on Earth.

Are our lives for the purpose of soul-making?

People tend to either think that their lives are purposeless in the sense of absurd, or that our existence is a process of "soul-making" -- that we're here to learn lessons and for our souls to thereby develop to become better and more enlightened beings. I used to think the latter, but now I reject this dichotomy.

Much of what we do in our lives we do purely for the experience. That might be something as trivial as having a good night out and getting pissed (i.e. affected by alcohol). Have any lessons been learnt? Has our soul developed during that one night? Probably not, so why should it be any different for a whole life?

However, that's not to say our lives are purposeless. It is perfectly possible for there to be some ultimate purpose to our existence, some ultimate reason, without thinking that life is like school whereby we are required to progress to some specific end. What this ultimate purpose might be, I don't know, though. I'll leave it to those who have had mystical experiences to answer that one.

The end of the age of the dinosaurs

If the asteroid that hit our planet ~ 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, had hit the planet perhaps as little as 2 seconds later, it might have fallen into the ocean instead of shallow water. Hence, the consequences would have been very different. There would have been vastly less vaporised rock, and sunlight could have still reached the Earth's surface in the following weeks and months. Hence, the temperature all over the planet wouldn't have catastrophically fallen. Hence, the dinosaurs might not have been wiped out. Hence, human beings might never have evolved.

The fact that human beings ever came into being is an extraordinarily unlikely series of events. But then, what do we make of the notion that there is an ultimate purpose to our lives? That we were born for some ultimate purpose? On the surface, it might seem incompatible with any such purpose, since we're here by sheer colossally unlikely blind happenstance. 

There's stuff here I think that we're simply not understanding. Perhaps if dinosaurs had survived, they would have evolved into intelligent creatures comparable to our intelligence? Perhaps our souls might have inhabited these dinosaur descendants? Lots of questions, lots of speculations. But all very interesting -- well... at least I find it interesting!

An all pervasive spiritual force

From here:

Completely independently, many indigenous groups developed concepts of a fundamental ‘spiritual force’ which they perceived as pervading the whole of reality. ... As these peoples perceived it, this force is not a personal being such as a deity, who watches over the world and requires human beings to worship it. It is usually seen as an all-pervading force or power, with no gender or personality.

Yes, I think this is pointing along the right path. Reality as a whole is somehow infused with awareness, and indeed a manifestation of awareness? And all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be, is infused with ultimate meaning. A meaning that eludes us in our daily day-to-day existence, but whose existence might be very briefly glimpsed with peak experiences and mystical experiences. Jus' thinking aloud.

A Sobering Thought

Sobering thought to think that by around 2150 I will have been completely forgotten -- as if I had never existed. Unless my blogs survive, or my Facebook posts etc, which I doubt.