The Infinity Hypothesis

A little less than a year ago I was in search of finding a professional calling. That's not to say the search has ended, or that it's even possible to complete it, but nonetheless it was prescient at the time. I was in Boston for the Sloan Sports Analytics conference. My latest, and to date final, attempt to find a role within the soccer industry.

One night I saw some old alums from Dickinson. All three very intelligent men. The first a beer lover, with intimate knowledge of the science and history of beer. The second a physicist, or studying to be one, spends lots of times in labs and in nerdy discussions with friends. The third a historian, or studying to be one. Something to do with Sicilian pirates during the Roman era. We had some quality discussion, and eventually things turned to methodology in each of our disciplines. I was ripped apart for my field. Not because philosophy has an inherently bad methodology but because of how I described it. We get hunches, and then try to see if they are correct via logic and thought experiments. Not very accurate or well described. But fast forward 9 months and I've achieved some clarity. Now coincidentally while reading a Chautauqua, I now see the need to employ some of it's mechanism (that is if I understand it properly).
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To get around to The Infinity Hypothesis I need to jump to another story. This time I'm in the kitchen with my father, an untrained but highly logical and intense intellectual adversary (I don't like this word because it has a negative connotation. Sparring partner might be more appropriate but wouldn't reflect the intensity with which we discuss.) We are discussing the Philosophy profession and he says that there aren't really new ideas. Everything is just regurgitation and re-framing of the old. An argument I've heard before. I had an inkling he was both right and wrong at the same time. (Those who know me well will say "not this again Joel".) Is something a new idea if it's 90% old, with 10% new? however that newness may occur whether it's an additional specificity, an original use of the analytical knife, a re-contextualizing of the idea? Is that new? I say yes because of The Infinity Hypothesis.

The Infinity Hypothesis is something I had been thinking about before reading this newest text. In fact, it something I've discussed with friends. I'm sure many others have thought about it as well. Yet the crystallization of it became clear for me upon reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Zen takes the time to spell out what I will encapsulate here. That those "hunches" Philosophers start of with are baby hypotheses that need time to be fleshed into fully grown hypotheses before being put up against tools and tests and analysis. And despite what Phaedrus thinks, we do gain knowledge from every hypothesis tested. Even when that knowledge is that the hypothesis is wrong. This is why Liam Kofi Bright's instinct that good philosophers are often "interestingly wrong" begins to hold up.

When it comes to knowledge, picture a planet. Call it Illevaihcam. Or Rides. Or Ossab. Whatever you like the name to be. On this planet there is a single bush with roots extending far across the planets surface. Currently, philosophy and science are obsessed with finding the bush and once grabbing a hold of a leaf on the bush trying to determine the rest of the bush and following the roots around the surface of the planet. But it's not a disservice to miss the leaf, or the bush, or the roots. In fact it's a service to miss. For if we were only repeating the same ideas, we would grab on to the same leaf or two. But this planet is vast and wide, and we want to get an accurate picture of the entire bush. So that person who you think is crazy is off digging nowhere near the bush trying to get at a root. If they miss that's OK. In fact, it's good for we now know not to look there again. But maybe they strike gold, or root, or whatever helps you make sense of this situation.

Now the analogy fails us. Because a planet is finite, but the search for knowledge is not. Even if we believe to have solved all of the riddles of existence, and facts of matter we will never be content. We will always be arriving at new ideas, just in case we missed something. Just in case we are missing an important root that shapes our fundamental view of the bush. This is The Infinity Hypothesis. The hypothesis that we will never run out of hypotheses, for we will always find new ways of combining, rearranging, looking at the world that will make us wonder. We will wonder if we missed something. And we will continue to search.

Liberalism v. Conservatism

I've been pondering some things recently about political correctness, and more specifically politics in general. In discussion of things such as the Black Lives Matters movement, the push for Gender Neutral bathrooms at Dickinson college, and many of the topics discussed this presidential election cycle.

I've never studied Political Political philosophy from the perspective of movements. Rather the one Political Philosophy I have taken focused on the philosophies of political structures. Those of Locke, Hobbes, Mill, and Marx to name a few. This is all to say, that very likely someone much smarter than me has already thought of this and provided much more detail.

Liberalism and Conservatism. Oft understood as Democrat and Republican in American society today. They argue over such this as gun control, abortion, tax policy, plus military spending and intention. The end results of this argument end up all over the map. As Jon Stewart has said



but that seems to miss the mark. There must be one common thread that causes this massive divide between liberals and conservatives. For example, libertarians simply say, less government is better government. A minimalist government is the the thread that connects the arguments.

So what is the thread that connects the liberals? What about the conservatives? They seem to be so at odds with one another that the essentials thread of each group must oppose one another. This is my attempt at discovering picking out the thread.

In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?

The two answers? Either ME or WE.

Perhaps this is an oversimplification but let's take a handful of examples.

Abortion
ME: I believe in MY religion. MY religion says all murder is a sin. Abortion is murder. Therefore we should not allow it.
WE: I believe OTHERS should make the choice that is correct for THEM.

Gun Control
ME: I want to own a gun for MY OWN PERSONAL use, so I can go hunting.
WE: I want to keep OTHERS safe, as guns can kill PEOPLE.

Gender Neutral Bathrooms
ME: Seeing someone who does not conform to MY gender makes ME uncomfortable.
WE: WE need to make sure EVERYONE has a safe space to use the bathroom.

These are obviously incredibly oversimplified arguments, but are rather meant to highlight the common thread in the more actual, real, and complex arguments.

In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?
Is it ME? Is it WE?

This is not intended to come to any sort of conclusion. But rather to open discussion about something that I believe answering could be of vital importance to this country's political health.

Is there a right answer to these question? Is it merely opinion? Ought the grounds of justification be morally-based or pragmatically-based? Some combination of the two? An alternative grounds not yet offered?

On Joint Carving

Sider seems to imply that there are theories that better outline the nature of reality by carving it at it's "joints". Yet isn't the purpose of metaphysics not to try to get "close" to outlining the nature of reality but rather create a full and vivid picture? Of course that's a metametaphyical question but one I need to ask. And now back to Ontological Realism. Yay.

Alternative Theory of Time

What if time is not analogous to space as philosophers and physicists suggest? What if we have a serious misunderstanding of time?

Time is not a road that we travel upon, but rather the library of all events ever. Every possible universe has a library of events not in sequential order but rather as a famous British scientist suggest wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff that is interconnected.

This would create an easier understanding for why Lewis (and I believe he is correct) one could not kill one's grandfather if they were to travel back in time. This would mean that as far as time is concerned there is no "past" or "future" rather all of time is the present. We merely believe that we are at a specific moment in time. When in fact all of time is occurring at once. The experience of being in the library of time, and understanding what time is are fundamentally different.

Going to flesh this out more but was distracted from Sider's Ontological Realism and had to write this out to continue my work.

Elevation

Recently I've been considering pursuing a PHD in Philosophy...I'm think about elevating the 'seriousness' of this space and publishing essays I've written, ideally only the good ones...of which there are at least a handful