physics

The Difference Between A Car Enthusiast And An EV Fanboy…

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Ferrari has decided to stick with internal combustion engines rather than join the crowd.  The famed Italian supercar manufacturer is known for its shrieking V8 and V10 engines.  And, despite government pressure, will not force electric drivetrains onto their customers.  The sound is, after all, a big part of what makes them a Ferrari.

Under the article, there was a comment “a Ferrari that doesn’t win races isn’t a Ferrari” and went on to suggest that the tune would change “when their $600,000 works of art start getting blown away by an electric minivan full of kids, driven by a soccer mom sipping a latte and talking to her mom about her test results, and towing two jet skis.”

If owning a Ferrari was about winning illegal drag races, redlight to redlight, this is a valid point.  Obviously, being formidably fast is part of the supercar equation and electric does have a significant torque advantage right off the line.  Nobody who spent half a million on a vehicle wants to be dusted by a minivan full of kids.

The van was faster and legend is, in the book of Things That Never Happened, the guy with the McLaren traded it for the modded Honda.

However, the problem with this argument is that there are already muscle cars that will beat a Ferrari in a straight-line race.  And many mundane cars can be modified or tuned to at least give a supercar a run for their money.  But that’s not the point.  Nobody is going to trade their F50 for a Civic with a big turbocharger.  Why is that?

First of all, what it takes to win a drag race is completely different from being competitive in the 24 hours of LeMans.  

Currently, there is no EV in the world that has the kind of endurance to go full bore (or coil) for as long as a real track car.  The Tesla P100DL can only last a lap and a half before it must be pitted due to the batteries overheating.  But the main problem is simply that batteries do not store enough energy and take far too long to recharge to be viable in competition.

The huge advantage of petroleum is energy density.  This means both extended range and also lightweight.  This translates to better driving dynamics, and less demand (or wear) on brakes and tires, which is key to winning races.

And there is no magic wand that will solve these massive drawbacks of EVs either.  It’s just how the chemistry and physics work out.

Secondly, most people who drive a Ferrari aren’t racing them nor do they need to own the fastest car on the road.  They own the car for the same reason that a person buys a painting rather than a photograph.  Sure, the image a cell phone can produce is much more realistic than the artwork, but arguing that this makes a van Gogh worthless is silliness.  

Or, more to the point, a true aviation enthusiast isn’t going to turn down a ride in a P-51 Mustang arguing that commercial airliners are fast or that the jet engine made that V12 Merlin obsolete.  Sure, the car may have replaced the horse, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who enjoys these beautiful animals is Amish or a Luddite.  No, rather they enjoy the experience of riding a horse, being near something with a personality, breathing and majestic.

A pure driving experience is not about only the performance stats on paper.  No, it is about way more than that.  It is about how it feels.

There’s a reason why Mazda Miatas are a favorite and it had nothing to do with being able to blow the doors off all comers.  It was about those intangibles.  A combination of size and handling makes a driver’s car.

My Shelby GT-350 isn’t the fastest Mustang on the road.  The manual transmission makes it slower than it could be with the latest automatics.  But there is just something glorious about the whole experience that was not matched during my test drive of a similarly powered Mustang Mach-E. 

Sure, EV fanboys may only care about the 0-60 numbers.  But, if that’s all it is about, then why not buy the theoretical future EV minivan that accelerates like a top fuel dragster while pulling jet skis?  It’s much more practical than a Ferrari.  Why pay a premium for a less capable vehicle?

A car enthusiast knows the answer. They know why the old guy in the neighborhood putters around in their Model T Ford and they also understand why someone restores a vintage Porsche that’s not even a match for a family sedan. 

There’s no way to rank fine art.  It is all subjective, finesse and balance, what does it for you, those who want to turn everything into some kind of adolescent tool measuring contest don’t get it—they never will.

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What Are the Practical Implications of Consciousness?

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Have you ever pondered the complete impossibility of your existence as a finite conscious being?

Think about it.

What are the chances of your arriving at this precise moment of time given the infinite possibilities before and after?

Our existence seems finite.  We have vague memory of our beginnings as a sentient creature.  We were given a month, date and year of our birth; our first conscious moments arrived at some point in time before that (during the 24th and 28th week of gestation) in our mother’s womb.  All indications point to a beginning to our conscious existence and all things with a beginning will eventually end—or at least that is the pattern we can observe in everything in the universe.  (Well, everything besides death and taxes, both of those things apparently permanent fixtures…)

But, if we are finite, and time stretches infinitely in both directions from the point of our existence in this present moment, how did we end up here?  Why is it not a million, billion or quadrillion quadrillion years before or after this moment of now?  There is infinite possibility of it being any moment but now and yet inexplicably here we are contemplating our existence together.  How?

I believe the answer could be a matter of perception.  While it is true that what we perceive is our reality—there is a vast difference between our individual perception and reality as a whole.  For starters, as finite beings, we can only perceive an infinitesimally small portion of the universe we live in and can’t truly imagine anything beyond it.  And, beyond that, our perception is often skewed and distorted in ways we are unable to see ourselves.

One thing we do not perceive correctly is the reality that we are inexorably linked to the universe.  From our own perspective of consciousness we are something separate—an individual—and apart from everything else in the universe.  However, we did not just materialize out of thin air, every part of us was part of the universe long before it became part of us and will probably continue to exist long after our physical bodies die and become worm food.  Despite our perception of being something outside of the universe looking in, somehow a unique entity in our mind, we are still one with the universe and can’t be separated from it.

An immaterial soul, a part of us separate from the material universe and undetectable, is not required to explain our consciousness.  There is sufficient evidence to suggest that human consciousness is an emergent property of electrical activity in our brain.  And still, no matter how much science can explain, there’s a great mystery to our existence, as finite beings, at this time and place.

Timelessness and the divinity of Christ

At risk of being labeled heretic (not that anyone has the right to do that, especially not a Protestant armed with only their own opinion of the Bible and a denominational bias) I will postulate an idea about our consciousness and what it means.

Remember how Jesus turned the “you are gods” of Psalm 82:6 into a defense for his own claim of divinity?

Here’s the reference:

“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’?  If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? (John 10:33‭-‬36 NIV)

The interesting thing about the passage Jesus quotes is how it applies to us.  If Jesus is using this verse as a defense of his own divinity, then what does that make us?  Does receiving the word of God (via the Spirit) give us the right to claim divinity as well?

There seems to be no other logical conclusion besides our being in some way divine.  We are told elsewhere that “those led by the Spirit of God are the children of God” (Romans 8:14-17) and “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,” which is an astonishing claim.  It means that, through adoption, we are and will be fully divine, like Christ.

And this gets even more bizarre when you consider the further implications.  We exist in time.  However, God exists at the beginning and ending of time simultaneously and thus is outside of time as we perceive it.  Therefore, when we complete this process of divinization (or theosis) described throughout Scripture and become one with God, in timeless eternity will we save ourselves before we even existed?

Maybe predestination is our choice?

Only God knows…

So, what does divinization have to do with consciousness?

To exist in eternity future, a timeless infinite future, then one also pre-exist time.  In fact, words like “past” or “present” or “future” do not exist in a timeless reality.  Something that exists as both infinite and eternal can be (without contradiction) at all points (of space and time) while, at the same time, also at none.

Our linear perception of time comes from a limited perspective of reality and is a perspective that falls apart at the edges of our universe.  At the quantum level things become irrational from a time-based perspective; quantum particles borrow energy from the future, they are somehow entangled together across vast swaths of space, and this all strongly suggests there is something “off” about our intuitions.

Consciousness, on one hand, is an emergent property of our physical brain.  But it also seems to be more than that or how could we be experiencing the present moment given the infinite possibilities?  Time defines our conscious experience and yet our consciousness of time allows us to contemplate timelessness.

To follow after Jesus, take on the divine nature and be “children of God” requires that some part of our being must exist beyond time.  The question is, if this is true, do we even exist as a separate consciousness or are we already part of something bigger and divine?

Could our conscious mind, like the individual neurons in a brain that have no awareness of the whole mind, also be individually unaware of our own part in a larger consciousness?

Are we in some mysterious way already timeless and divine?

Are we gods?

Love: Feeling or Choice?

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This blog is about ideas and the idea that ideas matter.  I believe the ideas people have can dramatically influence the direction of their lives.  Our choices, based in our ideas, could actually help shape reality in a ways not previously understood.

The view that seems popular today makes people simply products of the universe.  We emphasize the role of genetics and the influence of environmental factors in shaping what a person is, which is an idea that is certainly not without merit.  We bear a close resemblance to our parents for a reason and had no choice in determining that.  There’s also a good explanation of why I am writing this in English rather than Chinese. 

Obviously we have a given nature and are influenced by the nurture we received, which could lead to a ‘it is what it is’ fatalistic view that we have no choice or free will and ability to determine the future.  But could there be more than that?  Is it possible that the universe is only an influence and not a dictator of our consciousness?  Could it be that our own consciousness acts as a co-creator of the future universe?

Advances in physics have opened a whole new realm of possibilities.  The wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics is a paradox that suggests there is a bigger picture of the universe and one that could put our own consciousness in a far more important role than previously understood.  If our observation actually shapes reality at a quantum level (collapsing the wave function) then the future may not actually be determined outside of our own mind and will as is a common assumption.

If the future is not a destiny and is in fact something we co-create, then that could change many things including our ideas on love, which leads to the question…

Is love an existent feeling or a willful choice?

Both religious and secular people have seemed to have embraced a fatalistic view of love.  We could be scientific and point to natural explanations like pheromones, cultural expectations, chance opportunity, etc.  It is basically to conclude that love is something pressed out of a myriad of factors that all combine at the right time—which is a view that makes love seem sort of like sausage.  The religious, on the other hand, may turn to a meant-to-be (or God-did-it) rational to explain love and downplay choice.

Our culture, religious or otherwise, tends to emphasize the feelings of attraction above all else.  Love is something we are told we should ‘fall’ into and that there is a ‘right’ person out there for everyone. The idea is that attraction produces a feeling that produces a choice that produces commitment and ends with happily ever after. 

Unfortunately, I believe this is a view of love that has produced a great deal of disappointment and disillusionment in our day. It doesn’t work for many people. For some the problem is that they never find someone who produces that feeling of attraction enough to make them commit and they remain single or go from one relationship to the next in search of it.  The problem for others is that they marry based in superficial feelings, eventually those feelings fade away and they want out of the commitment. 

In both cases (above) the idea of love centers around feelings of attraction and presents love as a product of circumstances outside of our own control.

But what if there is an alternative view? What if we flip the order of things and put commitment first? Or, rather than love being a fate produced by an initial attraction that eventually ends in commitment and happily ever after, could love be a commitment to love that lead to a continual choice that produces a deepening relationship that produces a feeling of love and marital bliss? 

It is my view that love is less of an ‘it is what it is’ fate and more an ‘it is what we make it’ choice.  I believe the idea of love as a choice would produce healthier more sustainable relationships than the current popular view.  We believe we would see a reversal in trends towards non-commitment if we stopped waiting for the ‘right’ feeling to come and started to be more actively loving to others even when the feelings do not exist.

What is the (proper) Christian view of love?

In the American church there is a heavy emphasis on experience and emotion in worship.  We want music, we want excitement and entertainment, because the more feeling we have in the moment the more we love God, right? 

Wrong.

Christian faith is not supposed to be primarily about feelings or ‘spiritual’ experience.  Christian faith should be about obedience to the Spirit of love and that is the true evidence of faith according to Jesus:

“A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:34-35)

Many Christians have confused positive emotions for spiritual depth.  A person who proclaims the loudest how great God is and puts on the biggest public display of praise is not necessarily the one who loves God the most.  The Gospel presents a different view of love that doesn’t resonate as well with our feelings based culture.  Jesus says, “if you love me, keep my commandments,” (John 14:15) and equates love with obedience.  

To obey Jesus means to love others as we wish to be loved (Luke 6:31) and to love perfectly like God does:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.  He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?  Do not even pagans do that?  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matthew 5:43-48)

If Christian love were a feeling and emotion how would it be possible to love our enemies?  Enemies are, by common definition, the people we do not love because they have in some way offended us or they are out to destroy us.  But, perfect love is not a feeling.  Perfect love is a choice to obey and love in action even when the feelings aren’t there.  Perfect love is a choice rather than a feeling, perfect love is the kind that sacrifices our own selfish ambitions for the good of others, and without that kind of love we are not actually true disciples of Jesus:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.  There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us.  Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”  (1 John 4:7-21)

Christian love is preemptive.  Christian love follows the example of Jesus who loved us BEFORE we loved him.  True love is not based in initial attraction nor does it wait in fear of not being reciprocated.  True love steps out in faith.  Perfect love is not a pursuit of an immediate feeling or instant gratification. 

Love is a choice to invest in the good of another person even when we do not feel like they are worth our investment.  Love means a choice to obey and the choice to obey is a choice to follow the example of Jesus.

So, if love is a choice, then feelings do not matter?

No, not exactly.  I do believe feelings do matter.  But, a love based primarily in initial superficial attraction is a shallow love and deep love is only possible with deep (and self-sacrificial) commitment.  Deeper love is a continual choice to love more than a fleeting feeling of love.  For that reason we should be emphasizing the choice to love over the feeling of love and not the other way around.

This is not to say that those who started with a feeling of superficial attraction never develop depth of relationship—some do and some do not.  But I will say that love that is a choice and a commitment in faith is starting at a deeper level.  The better love is not a feeling.  The better love is a choice to put aside fear (or hate) and invest in the betterment of another person.  It is a love that is based in faith rather than feeling.

If love is a matter of will rather than a determined or predestined fate, then when a person says that they cannot love a person what they are really saying is that they unwilling to love that person.  The feelings can never develop in a person who is not willing to step out in faith.  Therefore, if you want to find love, be willing to bring love into the world and give it away in faith.

Love first.  Plant seeds of love in the world.  Do not wait on feelings to arrive before investing in the good of others.  Do not expect the Spirit of God to come to you (or the world) unless you live in obedience to the command to follow Jesus and love self-sacrificially by his example.  Love before you expect love to arrive.  Yes, this is absolutely a paradox, a causality dilemma, but that is the nature of our reality in a quantum universe.

Do not be resigned to an idea that we are haplessly tossed about without a will of our own.  Instead, consider the last lines of Invictus, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”  Choose to love supernaturally.  Be a co-creator of a higher and deeper love rather than a mere consumer of the feelings produced by base human nature.

Elusive Inconclusive Thoughts

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I’m full of thoughts today. 

I begin to write them, but I only get so far trying to tether them to word before they float away and then I’m on to trying to nail the next one down.

Up above my head is a canopy of these balloons of topics.  The first of the day fading from sight, some with strings just escaped my fingers tips moments ago, and many in between as clumped together dots of varied color.

I started on theoretical physics.  With that was a thought about coincidence, a thought about fortune and the quote “there but by the grace of God go I.”  I found parallels to theology and scientific theory.  I considered the evidence of extra-dimensionality of the universe and the multi-verse theories as similar to concepts of spiritual reality.  I wanted to explain that science explains how and philosophy answers why.  I got started.

My mind drifted…

My thoughts later turned to cycles and equilibrium.  The need for both.  I listed examples from nature.  I wrote about the rise and fall of civilizations.  I had an idea about the interplay of people and history.  About the way living radical faith is eventually crowded out by dead religious tradition.  I pondered three different responses of reaction, reformation or reflection and denial.

This too escaped…

Perhaps these balloons will come floating back down to where I can grab them and anchor them to explanation.  But for now they remain abstractions not ready for words.  Themselves the topic for their stubborn inaccessible. 

I will let them play among the clouds for today, but eventually they must come down and earn their keep!