A Purposeless Existence?

At the following link in the comments underneath a lady called violagirl says:

After my husband died of a 13 year illness I spent a lot of time reading, meditating, doing yoga, hiking, etc and here's what I learned; life is purposeless and meaningless. When we die it is over unless there was something huge we did. My husband was a brilliant NASA engineer, but his work is not "his", it belongs to NASA. We live then we die and it does not matter one little bit what we do in that time. It would be nice to think we would at least aspire to be moral and ethical, but greed and stuff are what is lauded and that is another reason humans and their lives do not matter.

I feel for her and I understand why she and so many others feel this way. Her sentiment is due to the underlying message that our culture is giving us -- namely that we are biological machines with no set purpose apart from living this one life. The Universe just is, there's no meaning behind it, there's no reason for it. We live our very brief lives, and that's it.



But I think she is very wrong. I feel that our lives and the Universe are ultimately mysterious, and we are all on this adventure. That perhaps part of the mystery will be revealed when we die. I feel that life is exciting and even though it may appear to be dreary and monotonous, that this is illusory. We get a brief glimpse of how things truly are during moments like mystical experiences.

Teaching philosophy at school

Utterly ludicrous philosophy isn't taught at school. It will teach people how to think rationally. And the kids will love questions such as what's the purpose of life, why does the Universe exist, why should we act morally etc. It will generate loads of spirited debates. No kid would say "awesome, I have chemistry next!", but they will philosophy.

A Girlfriend

I don't like having to chase after women, I like them to chase after me. But only if they're hot, enigmatic, strangely alluring, and intelligent.

Peoples indifference to the coronavirus

It almost feels like I'm in a dream and that I'll wake up at some point then tell everyone on Facebook that I had this bizarre dream -- a worldwide pandemic, people confined to their homes, empty streets, supermarket shelves empty. Then my next-door neighbour starts to cough (which he has) . . the dreaded cough, signalling he's one of the infected... But then I wake up! Or, perhaps I'll wake up after completing this blog post...



It's extraordinary that we've found ourselves in such a mess. This needn't have happened.  Back on the 24th January on Facebook, I said:

"if it's possible that millions might die, it is surely sensible to completely terminate all international flying".

Unfortunately, the vast majority of other people simply didn't share my assessment of the danger.  For example, here's a screenshot of another Facebook post regarding the virus one week later on the 31st of January.

I've rubbed out the names and photographs of the 3 comments made by 3 different people, but they are all good Facebook friends of mine who usually tend to be levelheaded and whose opinions I value. Just in case the comments can't be read, they are as follows:



Person 1:

Whatever happened to "Keep calm and carry on?"

Person 2

This virus is no worse then the flu. It’s much ado about nothing.

Person 3

Incredible amount of sensationalism. The question I'm asking is who benefits from all the hoo-ha? You might want to read this Ian.

My Response:

I make no claims about how much this virus will spread and how many will die. I have absolutely no idea. The one worrying thing is the claim that people can pass it on when displaying no symptoms themselves.

Following from my comment back then, we now know that many people who get the virus -- perhaps as many as 50% -- do not have any symptoms, yet they can still pass the virus on! This is the key to the spread of this virus. What is also extremely important is that each infected person infects on average 2.5 others. Contrast this with seasonal flu where each person infects on average only 1.3 others. Hence, the claim that many people make -- at least until very recently -- that this virus is no more worrying than seasonal flu, is simply preposterous. I elaborate on why it's preposterous here.



All this information was known back in January.  So why on earth was allowing people to gallivant around the planet more important than taking the appropriate measures back then to snuff out any possible danger?  Of course, we didn't know it would end as bad as this, but it was always on the cards.



Even now people are being highly irresponsible.  Last weekend, when it was sunny, many people were visiting seaside resorts.  Many young people justify such behaviour by saying that they'll be unlikely to die.  This misses the point.  Even if they suffer no symptoms whatsoever, they will infect others.  These people will be indirectly responsible for killing many others. They need to dwell on this, they need to grok this.



Yes, it's difficult not socially interacting, especially when we might have to forfeit this pleasure for possibly many months.  I suffer from social anxiety and will not be as anywhere near as bothered by it as others, but even I miss the occasional visit to the pub etc.  But, unless we try to limit our interactions, then the number of infected will continue on its exponential growth rate and the NHS and other countries' health services will be overwhelmed.  If this happens millions could die.  We need to do the right thing and to isolate.

Something to do whilst quarantined.

Quarantine day 11:
pic.twitter.com/eKsR0tureq

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) March 22, 2020

The new VR Half-Life game is out

Half-Life Alyx is out. Somebody playing it here. As I've said before, I think virtual reality will eventually become really huge. I think this game could kick-start its popularity.

Mind you, I think I'd prefer a VR game set in some tropical paradise like "far cry", rather than some urban dystopian sprawl. Or, better still, set in 100 million BC with dinosaurs and stuff. Make a good VR game.

Herd Immunity and the Coronavirus

This is essentially an expansion of a Facebook post I wrote today. Also, see another post I wrote about the Coronavirus.



Today I saw the following screenshot of a spreadsheet that extrapolates the number of infections on a day by day basis in the UK from the 6th March to the end of April.







So, according to this, in the UK there will be almost 28 million people in the UK who have either recovered from the virus or who still have it by the end of April. The total UK population is around 65 million, so around half of us will have at some point have had the virus by this time.



However, this doesn't seem to me to be correct.

According to a certain Dr. Stephen Gluckman -- an infectious diseases physician -- for other coronaviruses, immunity for most people is conferred after being infected once and having recovered (from here). So this current coronavirus, Covid-19, will likely be the same in this regard. And let's hope it is!



From what I've read, each infected person infects approximately, on average, 2.5 other people. But, this rate of infection won't be kept up indefinitely. Consider when half of the population has at some point been infected and recovered. If these people cannot be infected again, then an infected person will only infect half the number of people compared to the scenario where he is the only infected person. So, in other words, once half the population has been infected, an infected person will only infect half of 2.5 people, or in other words 1.25 people. Note that should this figure drop below 1 then the infection will die out since the virus will then be infecting fewer and fewer people as time goes by. When the figure drops below 1, even though a substantial proportion of people will have never been infected, the virus will nevertheless peter out. This phenomenon is labelled herd immunity.



In fact, I suspect that since a good proportion of the population will tend to avoid much contact with others over fears of the virus, that once around half of the population has had the virus and recovered, the rate of infection might well be around 1 rather than 1.25. So when around half of the UK population (or indeed world population) has had and recovered from the virus, this will represent the peak of the infection, and from then on it will gradually diminish. When will this occur? Well, not by the end of April since the person who compiled the spreadsheet assumed a constant exponential rate of 2.5. It'll be one or two months after that at a guess, perhaps around June or July?



I did some Googling after I wrote the condensed version of the above on facebook and came across this article. The article says that The UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, has given an estimate of 60% for herd immunity. More than my estimated 50%.

How has he derived this figure? I guess by the following reasoning. If each person initially affects 2.5 others, then once 60% of the population have been infected and recovered from it, then we only have 40% of the original 2.5 figure remaining that have never been infected. 40% of 2.5 = 1. So, on average, once 60% of the population have been infected and recovered, each currently infected person will infect only 1 other person i.e we reach herd immunity with 60%.



It seems, though, that he's assuming the population will all behave the same, a supposition I would dispute. I still reckon herd immunity will kick in around 50% rather than 60%. Of course, these figures are parasitic on the initial 2.5 contagion rate being anything like correct.

27/03/2020  Update.  I've heard the number that each infected person infects is now estimated to be slightly over 3, let's say 3.2.  So this would mean 69% would have had to get the virus before herd immunity is reached.  But I think it will be less than this, say 60%.

Rainmakers

Just read the following article. It says: 

When rainmakers recite incantations, sacrifice goats and chickens, throw cowries into the air, go into frenzied dances and blow white powder into the atmosphere, they are communicating with “unseen” reality.

So I wonder if it might possibly work and is due to those actions?

Before you think this is weird African thinking, you must know that this belief is not drastically different than the Western metaphysical philosophy of occasionalism, popularized by Nicolas Malebranche and George Berkeley.

Which held that there is no material causality, God does everything. Not a notion that is popular in the modern west, but that's not an argument against it. I wrote a blog post on Berkeley's metaphysic.

John Grisham’s 1995 book, The Rainmaker, contributes in large part to our current understanding of the term – a person who comes in when hope is out of the door and causes a windfall.

Never come across this definition! My understanding is that it is someone who causes it to rain through anomalous means.

The Coronavirus

The news at this moment in time is dominated by the coronavirus. How worried should we be? Should we trust virologists who generally regard this virus as very worrying and who suggest we need to take appropriate, and perhaps even radical measures, to combat it? Or should we trust many of those on the net and TV who say this coronavirus is only a little more worrying than flu?

Well, regarding the latter claim, how on earth are these people reaching their conclusions since the number of people dying from this virus is roughly 10 to 20 fold more than those who get flu, and is considerably more contagious to boot? We are experiencing a roughly doubling of infected people every 6 days. Hence, we can also expect the number of people who will die from this virus to also double roughly every 6 days or so. If no action is taken we can surely expect this exponential growth of the infected to continue. This conceivably could result in millions of deaths within the next 3 to 4 months. So, what are their arguments in the face of these facts? All they ever seem to say is to point out that scarcely anyone has of yet died from this virus. But that's because it hasn't had time to affect more than a very small proportion of the world population.

I think part of the problem here is that the general populace does not have a good grasp of the implications of exponential growth such as exhibited by this virus. Consider a sheet of paper. Now imagine if we kept folding it in half so that it's thickness doubles each time. Obviously, we can only do it around 6-7 times or so before it becomes too thick and stiff to fold any further. But, imagine if we could keep folding it 50 times with each fold doubling the thickness/pile of paper. After folding it 50 times how high will the pile of paper be? A few inches? A few feet even perhaps? No, it would be vastly higher than that. In fact, the pile of paper would be taller than any building on earth, taller than Everest, it would even extend past the orbit of the moon. In fact, it would extend to somewhere in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

I submit that the claim this virus is no more worrying than flu is a preposterous position. In contrast, virologists have provided what I consider to be compelling arguments that we shouldn't be complacent. If we wish to avoid the death of millions, it seems to me that other countries need to follow the examples set by China and Italy and implement the appropriate radical measures.  Of course, this will immensely disrupt our lives, and economies will be hit hard, but the consequences of not taking such measures might be even more calamitous.

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 ...

Who's to say what's extraordinary?

Somebody who had spent her whole life in a tropical climate with no contact with the rest of the world would regard the notion that water could turn solid as being contrary to everything she had ever discovered about water. Water simply doesn't, and couldn't, do that sort of thing.



Our science is only applicable to a given domain. With the very fast, or the very small, different laws are required. And I suggest our contemporary physics only applies to non-conscious reality. We need new laws to understand consciousness and how it relates to (fits in with) the rest of reality. Once we have those new laws, once we know how consciousness fits in with the rest of physical reality, then we can say whether psi is to be expected, or a "life after death" etc. But, until that moment, we're simply not in a position to declare psi or an afterlife are extraordinary claims.