Tal, a conversation with an alien Read online

  It's ok then really. I’ve had a long day. I’m tired and I don't need any more confusion than I already have. I try to avoid confusion as much as possible.

  Well, perhaps that is your first problem, but we can fix that. It looks like I have a lot of juice to drink, and a lot of talking to do.

  -- He either wasn't picking up on my annoyance and sarcasm or didn't care. He stood up, went over to my crate and took out another bottle of juice. Perhaps someone a little younger and a little bigger would have gotten fed up and demanded he leave immediately, but for the time being he was posing no threat to me, and I decided to continue my course.

  Paradigms

  All right, well do you have any super-alien-powers?

  I could tell you that I can teleport, time travel or see alternate dimensions, yet, how helpful would that be? You have read about all of these things in your fictions. Perhaps I could show you, but even then, if I did some fancy tricks; after I drank all of your juice and left; my tricks would just leave you completely confused. Tomorrow you would think it was all a hallucination or a dream. You would discount what you experienced, since dreams are not real. No, these days it is not enough to hear it, or to see it, you must understand it. I will teach you to understand, but you have to accept a few basic concepts about knowledge first.

  Okay.

  The first thing you need to know is that I know a lot. When one being who knows a lot attempts to communicate some of that knowledge to a being who doesn't, that communication must be in the language of the less informed listener. Imagine you are training a dog. You must speak to the dog in the language it understands, the language of bones, treats, and voice inflections. If you attempt to verbally lecture your dog about the many benefits of sleeping outside, your dog will simply sit, listen, wag his tail, and as soon as you aren’t looking, return to his bone chewing on your comfy couch. So it is with teaching humans. In your current scientific paradigm, humans take pride in dealing with complex concepts. You use deduction, logic and analysis to develop an understanding of complex concepts from more basic ones. These basic concepts are like building blocks. Once you understand the basic stuff, you can then take on larger structures. Like a child, humans take small blocks, combine them and create large structures. The smaller building blocks, the basic ideas, have to be valid and stable. If even one is incorrect, the structure will come tumbling down.

  I am aware of how logic works. I have read books by quite a few philosophers, from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell.

  Very nice. Fine fellows. Now understand that humans are social creatures and every human culture plays with its own building blocks. These blocks are called a paradigm. A paradigm is an accepted social understanding of how things and events are to be seen and understood. In a successful social group, all the people, or at least most, understand things in a similar way.

  Like common cultural customs or religions.

  Yes. I have been here for a very long time and have discussed all sorts of physical and metaphysical concepts with many individual humans throughout history, and with each, I have had to speak in the language and ideas of their paradigm. If I had a conversation with a catholic monk in the middle ages, I would need to describe myself in the language that such a person would understand. A spiritual, mystical language of angels, demons, and God. If I were to have the same discussions with a great yogi in a cave in the Himalaya, I would speak of the Vedas, of yoga, and of meditation. I certainly would not start a scientific conversation about neutrons, electrons or the theory of relativity. If I did, the yogi would sit and listen, smile, and as soon as I left, return to the quiet contemplation of the universe in his comfy cave.

  That makes sense. But what is your point?

  My point is that the building blocks of knowledge that I will work with when teaching you, are ones accepted and understood in the belief system of your paradigm, or as you said, your religion.

  Sorry, but I am not religious. I would say I am an agnostic, borderline atheist.

  That is fine, because here in your time, in your paradigm, the religion you believe in, you call science.

  Excuse me, but science is not a religion.

  I would say that it is. Like any good belief system, science is used in your society to describe the world around you, and to explain how and why things happen. The fact that science focuses more heavily on the how rather than the why, doesn't change that.

  But in science we prove things, we know them to be the truth, not just belief. Religion functions on faith, science functions on truth.

  Scientists attempt to build models and run experiments that reveal the truth. Yet what was proven by scientists as truth in their time was almost always incomplete and often just plain wrong. Think of the scientific truth that the earth was the center of the universe and the stars revolved around it. Or other famous scientific theories like the luminous ether, phrenology, or Newtonian physics. At no time has science been actually completely correct. Even in your current time, scientists argue, like a bunch of bickering Rabbis, constantly rewriting, and reinterpreting what the truth is.

  I agree, the truth is always changing in science, but isn't that constant rethinking and testing what sets science apart from religion?

  Think of the ethos that drives science, the scientific method. The method that seeks the simplest explanation, the most elegant explanation, the repeatable explanation. This ethos is itself not a universal truth. Humans could just as easily focus on the anomalous, the not so easily repeatable events of the universe, the way many religions focus on miracles to understand the world. What you consider important in science is not universal, it reflects human beliefs and opinions of your current time. How many interesting events, interesting results, have been discarded by science because they cannot be repeated ninety-five percent of the time in a laboratory; failing to stand up to that holy grail of concepts, statistical significance. Yet the threshold for statistical significance, and even the definition of proof, is bickered about not only between scientific fields but within the fields themselves. Humans have been around for a very long time, and only in the last few centuries has science become the norm. Before that, scientific thoughts and methods, like those of the Ionians in Greece, were tried and thrown out, or were considered helpful but subservient to already established religions. It is by no means the most natural way for a human to think, just one of many.

  So perhaps science is the popular mode of thinking now, but it is not a religion.

  In its structures and hierarchies it resembles the other religions of the world. Are not your scientists and mathematicians like high priests? The preachers and practitioners of a mysterious truth that most common people really don't understand but believe? Everyone goes to grade school, where just like in the local churches, the commoners learn the basic easy to follow and simple stories of how things work, and are told to believe them faithfully. While those seeking further knowledge must be accepted into the circles of the universities. And are those universities not like the monasteries of ancient religions, where the truly devout or curious go to learn the deepest truths? Where else but at the universities will you learn the mind boggling scientific theories of Einstein or Bohr?

  I suppose you are correct about that. What we learn in grade school is science of a hundred years ago, most of modern physics, for instance, is considered too weird to teach. Though you can find many books about advanced science in bookstores and libraries.

  Certainly there are plenty of books available on various topics of science and religion. That is a great advantage of your current paradigm, access to vast stores of information. However, the deductions that these scientific authors come to are based either on extremely complicated mathematical equations that are not usually included in the book, or on delicate experiments that you have not personally experienced. In the end, the vast majority of people believe in science by faith. They know things work, and science made it happen. Just as in other paradigms, where the people knew how things
worked and their gods made it happen. Notice also that just like almost all other religions, science is exclusive. If believed in zealously and without doubt, it leads the believer to the conclusion that all other modes of thinking are invalid. The scientific method supersedes all other modes of thought, labeling them illogical, unprovable, figments of the imagination; and therefore worthless, or downright dangerous.

  Many scientists would not call other religions worthless or dangerous.

  Just like the Priests, Rabbis or Imams of other religions, your scientists will run the gamut of opinions. From strict fundamentalists who believe non-scientific belief is the root of all evil, or at least pure foolishness, to liberals who try to find the benefits of all modes of thought.

  Yes, but science has made real progress in the furthering of man and his ability to change the world around him, to give us better lives.

  Again, you are expressing an opinion that comes from deep-rooted beliefs of your paradigm. If you could have lived through thousands of years of changes, of the coming and going of so many paradigms, you would see more clearly. The opinion that a culture that manipulates nature is superior to cultures that do not manipulate nature is subjective, many cultures believed you should not manipulate nature at all, but live in a symbiotic relationship with it. Granted, most of those cultures have been destroyed by the cultures that do manipulate nature, especially for their military benefit.

  Well is not that survival advantage then, desirous? Does it not show science as superior to other modes of thought? Evolutionally superior?

  Again, you opinion is very temporal. If one were to look at another time, say the 1940's, science had led to great discoveries like the theory of relativity, quantum theory, and inventions like cars, airplanes and rockets. This period also encompassed the rise of purely scientific and rational thought in Europe, Russia and America. Yet, the destruction and pain caused by the rational scientific people of that time, manipulating scientific theories like evolution to justify genocide and using scientifically derived weapons to carry it out, was destruction on a scale unimaginable by people of the past.

  I suppose that is true.

  Science did not lead to a fantastic world then, and who knows, fifty years from now, you may not be singing its praises. As far as a survival advantage goes, the advances of science are a double-edged sword. Yes, the life expectancy for an average human is higher now than in most cultures in history. However, people from other cultures would question the quality of that long life. And as far as pure species survivability goes, your scientific culture is only a few hundred years old, and has already been just a few unfortunate steps from complete destruction. Since the 1950's due to your ability to manipulate the atom, your culture is closer to complete annihilation than at any time in recent human history. Now your scientists have learned to artificially create anti-matter, which is many times more powerful than fusion or fission. And those are just the dramatic blow up the world threats that scientific advances have created. Manipulating the vast energy of the universe is a dangerous game when life is such a delicate thing. Thanks to science, the entire existence of the human race is always hanging on the edge of a precipice, something that has not happened in a very, very long time.

  -- At this point, perhaps he read something in my expression, which you can imagine was not a very pleasant one. He took another large gulp of juice and continued.

  Let us stop the direction of this conversation now, this tasty juice will soon run short, and it is not my point to, in your eyes, belittle the very foundation of your beliefs. I love science. It is exactly through the magnificent discoveries of science and mathematics that I will be able to describe myself to you in a way that pleases me greatly. I will be able to reveal aspects of the universe in a way that I have not been able to reveal to humans before. Even fifty years ago, the progress of science would make it difficult for me to describe my way of observing the world in much detail. Your culture's ability to manipulate mathematics and the very building blocks of matter and energy has led you to a very fortunate position of potential understanding. However, I also want you to understand that many humans, from many cultures and many religions over thousands of years of existence have thought, discovered, and felt deep truths about the universe, following their unique path, and using their own building blocks. So you should not feel superior.

  I suppose it is in our nature to want to feel better than those before us.

  Yes, that is indeed human nature. Hence the famous quote by George Orwell that "Each generation imagines itself more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."

  --I felt somewhat relieved. It was as if I was having an argument with one of those liberal philosophy students fresh out of college. But having a stranger in my house was still making me uncomfortable and my mind began to wander to my soon finished chess event, and my quickly emptying crate of juice.

  Twins

  Well thank you for that philosophy lecture, but can you get to the point? Aside from being able to live a long time, do you have other special abilities; I mean you said you could teleport and time travel. How do you do it?

  Yes, I can time travel. Though the first question you should be asking is how I observe time and the other dimensions of the universe.

  --This statement went over my head at the time, and I pressed him on my original point.

  So if you are a time traveler, can you travel into the future?

  Of course, but unfortunately for you, in your lifetime, your technology will not let you time travel. At least in any significant way.

  I understand that, but how do you do it?

  You still miss the point, it is not my ability to time travel, but my understanding of how the dimension of time works that should be important to you. But to answer your question, there are actually many ways of time traveling. The easiest for humans to understand and a method which has been proven and well understood for over one hundred years by your scientists, is the ability to travel into someone else's future. For instance, if I wanted to travel into your future, I could get into my space ship and fly off near the speed of light. I could travel near the speed of light for just a few minutes, but when I get back, you would be 60 or 80 years old, or even long dead; depending on how close to the speed of light I traveled. Yet I will only have aged those few minutes that I was flying. When I returned to earth, it would be many years later by your clocks, but just a few minutes by mine. I will still be young and you will be old. Therefore, I would have traveled into your future.

  Yes, yes, that is the famous twins example in Einstein's theory of relativity. One twin stays on earth and the other speeds off at near the speed of light. When the speeding twin returns in what to him seemed like just a few minutes, he sees that on earth many years have passed, and the twin who remained on earth is very old.

  Yes, Einstein was famous for creating imaginative thought experiments. They couldn't be proven in a laboratory at the time, but they expanded his theories into possible real life situations.

  I know this thought experiment well. Is there anything you can do that I don't know about?

  I can see you know of the experiment, but do you understand it?

  Well I can't say that I can explain why it happens, but I know that it is true.

  Then you don't really understand it, you simply believe it. The reason it is confusing to you, is because your senses give you a pretty good idea of the nature of space, but they completely mislead you about the nature of time. It seems to you that everything in the universe operates by the same time. You and I could be at different coordinates in space, and we can move through space at different speeds, but we all occupy the same time, this moment, and we all move through time at the same speed. This is actually an illusion. Just as there is no single point in space more important than any other, there is also no point in time more important than any other. That is an important idea in Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein explai
ned that time is a dimension, tied together with the three spatial dimensions you are aware of, scientists now call this concept space-time. In other words, you are not a three-dimensional being, you are a four-dimensional being. You exist in the three dimensions of space, and in the dimension of time.

  You said dimensions we are aware of. There are more?

  Yes there are more, but before I can explain any extra dimensions you don't sense, you need to fully understand the dimensions you do sense. If you really understood the dimension of time, the twins thought experiment would be very simple.

  I am not even sure why you claim that time is a dimension in the first place.

  I will explain why, but first you must understand what a dimension is. One definition of a dimension is that a dimension will give you a specific location in the universe. Generally, you think of a location in the universe as purely a spatial one, but it is more than that. We can do a little thought experiment of our own to make this clear. Let's imagine I write you a note that I am to meet you for lunch at a well-known location in the universe, let's say the Empire State Building in New York City. Do you know where that is?

  Yes, I have visited it before, it is at the corner of 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

  You begin to read my note and it tells you to meet me in the Empire State Building at 34th and 5th. When you arrive, you do not see me. How could that be?

  You have told me the avenue and cross street only. You could be in the lobby, or the 5th floor or the 105th floor. If you told me what floor, I could find you.

  Correct. You need to know the third dimension of space we are meeting at. You read the note further and see that is says: 34th street, 5th Ave, 50th floor. You take the elevator up to the 50th floor, but I am not there. Why?