Multiverse Part 1: Hell, Heaven, Pure Land

It can be depressing to think that if the multiverse is infinite, then all possibilities, no matter how small, no matter how bleak, as long as it is allowed by the laws of physics in that universe, will happen in a universe.

Plus this to the fact that multiple universes does not need to remain at the same time as our universe. Some universe out there are just a microsecond slower than us, or a picosecond, or any number of time one step beyond us, all people and events happening in the exact same way as our universe.

In fact, one can think of time moving forward faster as the mind moving from one of these slower universe to another faster one. Not faster in term of time moving, but in terms of phase. And one can think of all sorts of universes out there, one with good things happening to you, and one with all sorts of bad stuffs happening to you. And it all exist and some you in some universe will experience the worst thing that can happen that is possible. While some of you in some universe will experience the best joy in the world that can happen to you.

And which universe you'll go into, which one you'll transform into, which of these future universes (that already exist, mind you) will you guide your universe into all depends on your actions right now.

That's a scary thought. And an unfair one. Why do one of you have to suffer the worst of sufferings? Can I in good conscience direct myself to the best of all possible worlds knowing some other part of me will end up in the worst of universe? Who am I to compete with myself? Albeit the me from other universes, but still, me who shares the same memory, the same feelings, the same perception, the same consciousness, just not the same choice. For it is choice that breaks the universe apart, at least in the quantum physics version of the multiverse, assuming that some how it is quantum randomness that allows for non-deterministic free will to exist in the world.

Having that kind of thought, it is easy to lose track of the meaning of life, contemplating while you may work towards the best of universes, there exists the worst of universes somewhere out there. Some where out there, someone, maybe the alternate you, is suffering the worst that can happen to a person.

Yet, had not the religions told us that hell exist? The land where no happiness ever befell anyone who is in it. If the multiverse is true, then hell is true. Not only true, but must exist. That is a scary thought. A very scary thought. No wonder some bodhisattva vowed to empty all hells before becoming a Buddha. Such compassion! Well, on the other hand, if hell exist, then heaven must exist too. For in all these multiverse, there are some universe where everyone is good towards each other, maybe even the laws of nature will allow for fruits that come from little or no effort.

If the multiverse exist, then Pureland of Buddhism must exist as well, as it is conceivable that such a place can exist, therefore it must exist, because there are infinite universes. In fact, let's not get this to be for the advantage of Buddhism alone, in some other universe, one being may have complete control over everything in that universe, due to the strange laws of physics and whatnot, so that means in that universe, the Almighty God exist.

Of course, people are rarely satisfied with just one world, some would want God to be the creator over the multiverse and have power over all of the multiverse. Of course, then since evolution make sense, and it is possible to imagine an universe where God is not necessary to create everything or anything at all, and most likely is not all powerful, then those universe must not have an absolute almighty God.

Multiverse then seems fair, it gives everyone what they wanted. What's one universe to satisfy everyone's yearn when you have infinite of them? So what's the point? We are all living conditioned by the fact that we'll all be dead someday. That life is finite, therefore meaningful. If the multiverse exist and all things are possible, can happen, has happened, will happen, what is the point of doing anything at all? Some universe will have complete knowledge of the theory of everything, some will have destroyed itself, most will be lifeless. So what?

So what if we succeed in this universe? How many more are failing in their's? Such suffering it is to have the existence of multiverse to be true that sometimes I think no one wants to think this way when they think about the multiverse, or more likely, people subconsciously still resist this idea for the very foul implications that it brings to the table.

So, tell me if you feel for your alternate selves. If you care for them. If you give a thought about them.

Enderverse

10 books in about 1 and a half months.

The books written by Orson Scott Card, settings in the futuristic world of Enderverse where genius kids were being trained to become military commanders.

Blue are the novels, red are short stories.

Of these, not reading A War of Gifts has no effect on the overall story at all.

I choose to read in the chronological order, starting with the first novel.

1. Ender's Game
2. Ender's Shadow (Note: The first 2 books take place in roughly the same time period.)
3. Shadow of the Hegemon
4. Shadow Puppets
5. Shadow of the Giant
6. Ender in Exile
7. Shadows in Flight
8. Speaker for the Dead
9. Xenocide
10. Children of the Mind

And it is very nice to do so. I get the sense of closure.

Although I got introduced into this series by randomly picking up and reading Xenocide years ago, which then needed me to read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead to understand half of the relevance of the book, I disliked it due to the Catholic-based Community featured in Xenocide. That was the reason for me delaying reading the rest of the series until recently. I even was determined to not put any Buddhism inside my Science fiction at all. Make it as pure as Asimov's novels. I thought.

Well, at a reread, ok, let's start from the top.

Ender's Game is about military and genius kids. Military I do not like, I detest armies. They kill and do terrible things to fellow human beings. On the other hand, I like to know more about genius kids. How do they think? What are their psychological profiles? For one of my future novels. It turns out that the training is for defeating aliens, buggers (or formics) as they had invaded Earth twice. It mostly consists of playing a game in null Gravity in Battle School. Not only bearable, but interesting. Kid genius part, Ender is more that what you can ever hope for. I can identify with Ender a lot of the time. Feeling as he felt, seeing things as he does. He's so full of good and pain and love. Well, the movie version of it is finally coming out after 28 years after the novel.

Ender's Shadow is another good read, surprisingly fresh even just after reading Ender's Game. Same story, different main character. This time it's Bean we're following. A kid even more intelligent than Ender and a lot of gaps in Ender's Game are filled up with very logical portrayal that makes one love Bean, even if Bean is still learning how to love at that time. It just goes to show how Bean is even more clever than Ender and I love the way Card did it.

Shadow of the Hegemon tells of how Ender's brother, Peter became the Hegemon in name, and in the effort of becoming Hegemon in fact. And of Achilles, Bean's nemesis, as smart as the rest of the Battle School kids, but a being of pure evil as he killed anyone who has seen him in a helpless state. Even his surgeon that healed his bad leg. This is a story of how Bean saved Petra from Achilles. The plot was a bit slow, but the world politics was awesome. Along with the trill of the face-off between Bean and Achilles... it's worthy of a Death-Note-like battle.

Shadow Puppets shows the end of Achilles at last, but not before playing with the world politics and was making Peter a puppet. Peter's come back finally got some respect from the readers for him. Bean and Petra also had 9 children of their own. This tells more about love and the meaning of a human's life: to have kids. The pain of lost kids, the monstrosity of genetic manipulations on humans, betrayals and manipulation, world politics at the balance and the final, one cold blooded murder of an evil guy.

Shadow of the Giant was a very good ending to Peter's story as he finally united most of the Earth by the time he was old and was communicating with his brother, Ender. Ender who speaks his death by writing the Hegemon. Bean has to leave Earth with 3 of his children as they would never stop growing to finally die as a giant as a side effect of being the smartest humans on Earth, a genetic defect. Petra stayed on with 5 children for the one missing child and married Peter. This tale full of tears and compassion shows that to unite the world, one has to have the world's consent to want to be united.

Ender in Exile was a good comeback to the series with Ender in it and it shows just how lovable Ender is even after one get used to loving Bean. Ender found the missing child of Bean and reunited him with Petra via the ansible, instantaneous communication. Ender has to continue to travel from world to world in light-speed as he carries with him the last surviving formic hive queen known to us at that time, planning to restore her to life. This is full of subtleties of power and politics, one tearful letter from Ender to his parents, juvenile love, and how easily Ender disarmed Achilles II, Bean's son who believed that Achilles is his father.

Shadows in Flight is about Bean and his 3 kids investigating a formic ship and found-accidentally- the cure to their non-stop growing without having to give up the super intelligence. Such as it is that 6-year olds were doing genetic research, military strategies, and spaceship maintenance. Bean, a giant finally died due to his heart failure but not before he taught his kids to live like a civilised human community, even starting up a race of homo leguminensis (after Bean's name). A cool feature of the formic was revealed, and we got a very good ending of Bean. A tale about a father's responsibility and love. Especially delicious if you read this in parallel with Ender in Exile.

Finally, the main Speaker series: Speaker for the Dead.

Having read Xenocide, I was semi-familiar with the Riberia family and the Pequeninos, the second alien race to be discovered by humans, and Jane, the mysterious entity with god-like powers. But as I enjoyed the book, what little I remembered in Xenocide didn't matter much and the whole book just speaks out to me. It's as powerful as Ender's Game is even if it is of a different genre. Finally I get to see how the Pequeninos are like and marvel at Ender, 36 years old, handle things and made a covenant with the Pequeninos to live together in the same world, in the same universe.

Xenocide, the first one that I read, and it is very rewarding to reread it. It seems that all those things that didn't make sense then had a lot of emotional impact on the novel and those that I remembered was still as good. The people in Path, the Descolada, Faster than Light travel, even the Catholic background was nothing evangelical. I guess one has to be matured enough to know how to read these kinda things. It wasn't easy putting a religious community inside the novel, and Card did it just nicely.

Children of the Mind was literally about that. As we explore the lives of young Valentine and Peter created out of Ender's mind, we finally see the danger to Lusitania averted and 2 very happily married couple in the end. Unexpected outcomes, good read and also the end for Ender as we witness his funeral and his death spoken at the last chapter in this book.

The next book in the series is Shadows Alive, to put together these 2 lines of stories, where both the main characters are now safely dead, but their children lives on. It's one of the best Science Fiction series I had read, and also one of the longest.

As awesome as Foundation and Robot series are in ideas, but better than them in characters.

Updates on my life!

Hi all,

Another uninspiring title, but oh well, I got enough updates to make one more post! I better do it for there are many events I would like to be noted down here!

After the meditation retreat, I've been to facebook and meet one of the most interesting and coolest guy around: Tashi Pandito. He's an aspiring Bodhisattva and incoming physics major! Needless to say, I got him to want to join in SPS! (Or else very little chance to interact between us and also he can meet future people that will work in his company). He's the only one (who's junior of me that I know of) that has the closest in interest with me in Physics and Buddhism!

Ok, then I went to MDC on Monday night and share my experiences of the retreat that I just came back from one day before! That is after Xin Qin and Rebecca's sharing of their retreat experience, which I'm glad to find out that they got the inspiration from my going for the short term monkhood!

Then there's the upcoming MSL (Malaysian Student League) UFO (University Freshmen Orientation) that was ongoing and planning out. And also I've been to Nanyang Polytechnic Buddhist Society (before going to retreat) that was when I started to decide to take up NUSBS MC again (no small thanks to Carmen)! And then after the retreat, I've seen and feed on the food of Dharma good enough to start afresh! All those hard work during the past year... it was worth it!

On the 3rd July, I've tried to go to NTU to join in the Youth Olympic Games venue familiarization. However, I can't find the place for quite a long time and when I sms the organizer, she said they were at LT12, and there's only one LT 12, and the creepy thing is that I'm at the outside of LT12 and it's empty! Weird case of trans-dimensional communication? Maybe there's 2 worlds, and I'm communicating with the world where they are in LT12 but I'm in the world where they are not!

Anyway, it just got creepy because I was reading on this book in the NTU Library (Since I came to NTU): Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine By Jenny Randles. Strict Physicist Review: (almost) completely nutty. Not worth the read, made me glad I didn't buy that book a few years back.

Almost completely nutty- and this is from a physics undergrad student who spend 1 year on time travel research.

Most of the concepts there are better explained by other popular time travel books and some of them which are clearly crackpot cases, she puts it in a chapter and wrote as if they could become real anytime soon! There's even one chapter on using quantum entanglement to do FTL(Faster than Light)! Sorry gal, but I've been there, if Time travel is to be done it will be in GR, not quantum. Not worth the buy, almost not worth the read. Her last idea in the book seems good enough as an experimental observational study: to find out and examine events that might point to a naturally occurring time travel phenomena.

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku
is a more worthwhile read, providing many guidelines to my science fiction book!

Then after a trip to the library, a trip to a mall, I ended the day with a trip to the library with comic books as my companion! I like to read those Superheroes comics! They give such inspiration and wonder and exploration of the superheroes science fiction!

The next week was busy getting my presentation and programming done. And also to get one job off, the website for Valerio's group in CQT has been delayed! Then that weekend I missed!?!? the graduating ceremony of my fellow physics seniors! Sorry Ah Siang, gonna miss yours too.

Then the next day I'm in Poh Ming Tse, recapping and feedbacking on the possible improvements etc.... for the Awaken Challenge competition! There I've meet a lot of friends that I had meet in the Awaken Challenge and would meet again just a few hours ago in the Buddhism and Science Symposium.

Incidentally, that night was the Finals of the World Cup, which prompted my previous post! And then.... the MDC Monday night again was cool as it was about Jit Seng & co. trip to the Himalayans and also the 2 new people who took over Kai kok as the organizer for MDC!

Tuesday and Wednesday night I went to the MSL UFO (as stated earlier) and got bored after a while (cause there's no senior sharing session for course of study yet). Then I came back and finish up my presentation for the Wednesday's presentation to DSI! It was nice and fun! Then also Wednesday afternoon, my supervisor, Valerio, asked John Baez (who dabbled in Quantum Gravity!) to come and have lunch with us (his big group)!

Thursday I went to lunch with my DSI supervisor, Dr. Lee and we shared about our Buddhism Views. Then I went and joined the farewell party for Charles, who is leaving in 2 weeks time to the Swiss, Geneva, near LHC! And after that was a rush to the Buddhism and Science Symposium in Suntec City (first time I've been there)! You can only imagine my gladness to see familiar faces around that was the volunteers helpers! My NTUBS friends who also went for the Meditation retreat was there, one by one I saw them! Along with a few polyBS friends that I've mentioned, we all sat and listened to a wonderful 2 hours++ talk and Q&A by Dr. Alan Wallace, Dr. Paul Ekman, and Ven.(Dr.) Jing Yin!

Finally I had better sleep now! See ya all next time!

The myths of the World of Harry Potter

Intermixing myths with science is what we are free to think in the University Scholars Programme. The speaker uses myths as a metaphor to describe nature as physics does. I, however, think that myths can be made into reality not so far in the future. As Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Let’s take a look on the world of Harry Potter (Rowling, 1999) for instance, and try to take the magic out of it.
Firstly, dragons, fire breathing creatures that can fly, can they really exist? No fossil evidence is available, most likely they are figments of imagination of ancient people who stumbled upon dinosaurs fossils. But wait, if dinosaurs can exist, can we somehow modify them, using the recently new genetic engineering to create dragons? After all, what is life form but encoded information within the DNA? Just change a few genes here and there (provided prefect knowledge of DNA is present), and we can create dragons. All other mystical creatures like centaurs, unicorns, and even giants are then trivial and can be accounted for.
 What about magic wands then? How can technology possibly mimic them? Well, nowadays nearly everything from the television to the laptop are remote controlled, or capable of being remote controlled. And imagine combining all the remotes of the world into one Universal remote kind of like the movie “Click” (Coraci, 2006). Wouldn’t that be like a magic wand? Ok you may argue that only pre-programmed devices can respond to it, but there’s a technology called nanotechnology. Imagine using the remote to control a bunch of small invisible “tamed” nanobots not unlike those in the novel “Prey” (Crichton, 2002) to lift anything when you said, “Wingardium Leviosa” (Rowling, 1999)!
Finally, we’ll tackle the hardest problem of all, time travel! There are actually no physical laws that prevent time travel, contrary to common sense. In fact, from the framework of general relativity, the theory that Einstein is famous for formulating, there’s more than one way to time travel! The most probable way is through wormholes. Although our current technology is far too crude to create a stable wormhole, it is possible to think that advanced civilisations can create “Time-Turners” (Rowling, 1999) is able to generate a mini wormhole from “quantum foam” (Michael S. Morris, 1988) at will and transport the user back in time. Well, back up to the time the mini wormhole was first created anyway.
In short, there are many seemingly impossible myths that can be realised through the creative usage of technologies and this is the irresistible attraction of the future and of science.
Bibliography
Coraci, F. (Director). (2006). Click [Motion Picture].
Crichton, M. (2002). Prey. HarperCollins.
Michael S. Morris, K. S. (1988, June 21). Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition. Physical Review Online Archive , pp. 1446-1449.
Rowling, J. (1999). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. UK: Bloomsbury.

The Future of Reality

The talk mentioned about virtual environment and the real environment and mentioned it’s mixing, hence mixed reality. I am going to explore one possible future extrapolation of these concepts, which is towards a world similar to “The Matrix”. First, I’ll redefine real environment as the physical world, subjected to the laws of nature. And the virtual world is subjected to whatever laws the programmers can put in. I’ll define reality as whatever the five physical senses of the human body and the one mental sense that is the mind is in contact with. I’ll also assume that after each stage of advancement I list below, the generations of humans will be largely disconnected with the previous way of living and thus totally forget them.

Mixed Reality Labs had successfully integrated the sense of touch into Digital Medias, opening the path to wider internet uses such as communicating by touching instead of just video conference. With the advent of nanotechnology, it is possible to even integrate our sense of smell and taste into the internet, effectively immersing our five senses in the virtual world. When such techniques have been perfected, the only difference between the physical world and the virtual world can only be sensed by the mind. This is the 1st stage.

The signals of hunger, thirst and so on are detected by the mind and these would be the only reason that humans have to disengage from the virtual world where their jobs and play would be in. However, we can imagine that the future will develop up to a stage whereby all the bodily needs including humans’ replication are tended by machines that are self-sustaining. And therefore humans can stay inside the virtual world practically from birth till death. This is the 2nd stage.

To make the picture more complete, neurosciences would by that time enable us to connect our mind directly into the internet, thus fully liberating us to sense directly what other people think. This finally makes the distinction between the virtual world and the real world disappears, our reality is only the virtual world. Just imagine, humans now live in a world where the constant of gravity can be modified locally, allowing people to fly at their own will, not needing air to breathe, walking, no sliding without friction. The laws of nature are controlled by the individual! The need to eat and bath becomes optional, and with that, all social problems are reduced to zero, no more wars and crime. The Utopian state is at last achieved by the virtual world. This is the 3rd and final stage.

Almost like Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question”, humanity can now be considered to be integrated into one giant super being. It has almost omnipotent powers inside the virtual world, but perhaps virtually no powers at all in the physical world.