Joseph F. Smith had a classical understanding of time, and that is important

In 1918 Joseph F. Smith had a revelation on the Savior's visit to the spirit world and the redemption of the dead. Leading up to this revelation he had many questions weighing on his mind brought on by recent family deaths and his own reckoning with mortality.

While explaining his thinking leading up to the revelation Joseph F. Smith said,

25 I marveled, for I understood that the Savior spent about three years in his ministry among the Jews.... 27 But his ministry among those who were dead was limited to the brief time intervening between the crucifixion and his resurrection; 28 And I wondered at the words of Peter—wherein he said that the Son of God preached unto the spirits in prison... and how it was possible for him to preach to those spirits and perform the necessary labor among them in so short a time. (D&C 138:25-28)

Part of what made Joseph F. Smith ask his questions in the first place was the fact that he could not see anyway for the Savior to have sufficient time to preach to so many people who had already died. Without realizing it Joseph F. Smith had certain implicit metaphysical assumptions that determined what kinds of questions he would ask and what kinds of answers he would look for. Joseph F. Smith operated with a certain subconscious understanding of time that created a paradox that necessitated an answer.

If Joseph F. Smith had lived much later in our day and had asked the same question, "How could the Savior do more in three days than he had done in three years on Earth?" he would have different options available to answer this question regarding time. But for him, this question presented an unresolvable paradox. If members of the Church did not have the benefit of Joseph F. Smith's revelation and asked the same question today, a number of people would probably invoke the principles of relativity and relative time.

Possible answers could have included things like, "The flow of time is different in the spirit world.", or "Time is only something relevant to mortality, so the Savior was not bound by time constraints in the spirit world." Any of these answers would have lessened the urgency of resolving the three day time constraint on the Savior, and could have possibly lead Joseph F. Smith to consider his questions differently, or even a different set of questions.

Because of the proliferation of Einstein's theories of relativity we have a very different fundamental understanding of time than people previously had. Generally we do not even realize the immense difference in how we collectively understand time compared to even 100 years ago. The idea that time can flow at different rates, or that time is relative to the observer, has so permeated our society that major Hollywood movies can use the idea as a crucial plot point and we do not even consider how strange a concept it is for time to flow differently or fail to grasp the relative nature of time. Even the concept of time travel is a relatively modern concept that we do not realize entirely depends on certain crucial ontological concepts of time that have only entered our collective consciousness in the past 100 years.

For Joseph F. Smith his subconscious concept of time worked very differently from ours. He was not acculturated to a relative or even a dimensional understanding of time. For him time was the same for everyone, everywhere including the spirit world, and, even though it was subconscious and unintentional, how he understood time was central to the paradox that he faced. If he had a different subconscious concept of time then his approach to the question of how did the Savior accomplish in three days what he did not manage to do in three years would have turned out differently. Perhaps he would not have pondered the question in the same way, or he would have gone looking in different directions for different answers to resolve the issues that weighed on his mind.

My point is, when Joseph F. Smith was faced with certain questions, the ones that were the most paradoxical for him and presented the greatest challenge, were the ones that were only present because of how he subconsciously viewed time. The implicit cultural assumptions he unintentionally held placed boundaries on the kinds of questions he would ask, and the kinds of answers he sought. His ontology (his fundamental understanding of the nature of existence) informed the structure of the questions and paradoxes he faced.

In this case the unstated, and unintentional, prepositions of Joseph F. Smith lead him to a question that could be answered by revelation. In fact, his assumptions about the nature of time made his questioning possible. If he had a different understanding of time then he may not have been forced to reckon with his uncertainty in the same way. So his subconscious assumptions on the nature of time were beneficial and greatly simplified the issue he was considering. But it does not always turn out that way.

Quite often we are faced with paradoxes or questions we cannot find an answer for. Frequently the paradox only exists because of the subconscious, unintentional choices we have made in understanding the world. Many times I see people of faith asking some form of the question, "How does XYZ work if ABC?" or, "How can XYZ be true when ABC is true?" For them these are paradoxical questions for which there is no solution. But quite often the paradox only exists because of unstated assumptions they have made without even realizing it. Many such questions, such as the relationship between science and religion, are entirely dependent on subconscious assumptions we have made regarding the nature of science, scripture, authority, and revelation (not to mention epistemology, language, metaphysics, and God himself).

Sometimes the answer to someone's question simply requires the right information with an acceptable explanation. But other times the paradox lies entirely in unstated assumptions the person has made. These are the most difficult to address, because recognizing our own unstated assumptions about reality, and identifying them as the source of our confusion, is perhaps one of the most difficult human tasks in existence. It is easier to change someone's behavior than it is to make them realize that the intractable paradoxes that seemingly have no resolution are the result of unintentional assumptions they have made about the nature of reality itself. And the most difficult of these already difficult conflicts are the ones that are most closely bound to someone's identity.

In summary, I have used the example of Joseph F. Smith and the questions he faced about the spirit world to point out certain assumptions he had about the nature of time that may be very different from our assumptions today. Using this, I introduced the idea that the assumptions we unintentionally and subconsciously make can, in part, determine the types of questions we ask, and what we might consider to be an intractable paradox. Some questions can be answered through discovering new information, but other more paradoxical questions can only be resolved by considering what underlying assumptions we have unintentionally made about reality. Addressing these more paradoxical questions is a difficult endeavor that takes patience, experience, and practice. But by first recognizing that these unstated assumptions exist we can be more aware of assumptions that make some questions seemingly unanswerable, and ultimately give us a path towards resolving these paradoxes. Sometimes finding the answer to a question requires realizing that we are asking the wrong question.

Questions to Ask Before Asking Questions About Genesis

 A few questions people have posted online recently have prompted me to write this. This started out as a response to someone's thoughts on reconciling the story of the creation in Genesis with what we are figuring out from modern science.

 Before asking any questions about Genesis it is best to first ask yourself a few questions.

1. Who wrote the Bible?

More specifically, who wrote the book of Genesis? The easiest thing to do is assume that it was Moses. But how does that fit with what we know from an LDS perspective? In the Pearl of Great Price the Book of Moses is Joseph Smith's "translation" of Genesis chapters 1-6 up to verse 13. So the Joseph Smith translation took 5 and 1/2 chapters in Genesis and expanded them into 8 chapters for the Book of Moses. There are a couple of different ways of looking at this.

The material added by Joseph Smith could be divinely inspired or mandated material added to the original text by Moses. Or it could be material that originally was in the book written by Moses and later editors removed it when writing the "Reader's Digest condensed" version of Genesis. Either way the implication is that just the text from Genesis was not considered complete and additional revelation was needed.

This all of course assumes that Moses was the one who wrote the version that we have in Genesis. If you start looking into that question just realize that the answer gets very complex very quickly, and it does nothing to make the question "Who wrote the Bible?" any easier.

From the Book of Moses we learn that what was written about the creation and the Garden of Eden was shown to Moses in a vision. The story of the Garden of Eden was not written down by Adam. The story of the flood wasn't written down by Noah. If we assume that Moses wrote Genesis, and there are arguments that he may not have (or there may have been many editorial revisions), then whoever wrote Genesis in the form that we have now was writing 1,000-4,000 years after the events in the Book of Genesis. 

In so many ways the question of who wrote the Bible leads to the next major question that you have to ask.

2. What language was the Bible written in?

Anyone who has learned a second language knows that translation is not always as simple and straight forward as you might think. For many years my dad taught Spanish and something he always told his students was, "Spanish is not translated English!"

Yes, words like "que" are usually translated into English as "what". But "que" does not mean "what". The word "que" has its own meaning and use in Spanish that does not always correspond to "what" in English.

But it gets more complex from there. In most universities, and even in some high schools, students are required to take a few classes of a foreign language. In some cases taking advanced math classes counts towards the foreign language credit. This actually makes sense because as anyone who has suffered through several math classes knows, math is a foreign language. You have to learn how to read, write, and speak math. It's deceptive because math can use all English words and numbers, yet still be a completely foreign language.

The same is true of science. Science has its own language. Many people are completely unaware of this because if you pick up a book on physics or chemistry there will be mostly English words in there (or Spanish words in Spanish speaking countries, or Mandarin words in China, or etc.). But learning the language of modern science is literally like learning a foreign language.

So this brings us back to the question of what language was the Bible written in. Was it written in English? Why not? Other than the obvious fact that English didn't exist yet. Back when Moses was alive alphabets were still being invented!

Not only did Moses not write the Book of Genesis in English, but God didn't even speak to Moses in English! God spoke in a language that Moses understood! ("well duh qleap42, get to the point.")

God didn't speak to Moses in modern English because its not something Moses would have understood. In the exact same way, God didn't speak to Moses in the language of modern science. He spoke to Moses in a language that Moses could understand. Many people will say that if God had shown Moses the creation in vision, then God had to have shown Moses "the correct" way creation happened. Anything else would mean God was deceiving Moses. 

But these things were shown to Moses in a vision. Lehi in his vision of the tree of life saw the love of God as a tree with fruit on it. The vanity of the world was a great and spacious building without foundation. Did God deceive Lehi by representing "the love of God" as fruit on a tree? Or vanity as a "great and spacious building without foundation"? In the Book of John's Revelation, John saw many things, all of which were symbolic. Did God deceive John by showing him symbolic events about the end of the world?

Furthermore, what is the "correct" scientific understanding that God is supposed to have shown to Moses to not deceive him? The scientific understanding during the 18th dynasty in Egypt? Or was it the science of 7th century BC Babylon? The science of 3rd century BC Greece? 3rd century AD Rome? 11th century China? 16th century Europe? Science of the 19th century? The 20th, or the 21st? Perhaps better the 22nd? Or the 31st?

It's awfully presumptuous of us to think that God should have explained things to Moses in a way that Moses couldn't understand just so that we could. It's awfully presumptuous to think that we currently understand the universe correctly. That the way we see things is the way God sees them. It's awfully presumptuous to think that God can only explain things to people in a way that fits with our understanding of reality. Anything else is wrong and would mean God is deceiving them. That's an awfully prideful way of looking at things.

In the Doctrine and Covenants it mentions that in the last days everything will be reveled, including how the earth was made and the power by which it came to be. An interesting corollary of that is the idea that how the earth was made has not been revealed! That means the story in Genesis is not the story of the literal creation of the world, but symbols in a vision given to Moses so that he could understand. In that way God taught Moses how he, Moses, sits in relation to God. When Moses saw that he realized "that man is nothing, which thing [Moses] never had supposed."

Perhaps we should keep that in mind as we use science to learn things about the universe and how vast it is. When we consider the size and the true scope of reality that we are just now beginning to understand through science, we learn things we never thought possible. The size and scope of the universe is something that I literally deal with on a daily basis. Whenever I see someone, especially Latter-day Saints, insist the earth is only 6,000 years old, or that the earth was created in six 24 hour periods, I just think about just how big the universe really is. I think about how complex it is, from the creation of elements, the formation of stars and galaxies, the complexities of nuclear reactions, neutron stars, gravitational collapse, supernovas, neutron star mergers, basic chemistry, the time it took life to evolve, the complexities of life, the intricacies of evolution, evolutionary niches, the complex reactions that govern our bodies, the chaotic neuron cascades in our brains, not to mention the complexity of history, language, science, culture, and human societies. And there at the center of it all a God who knows and understands it all. Whose hand can hold millions of earths like this. Who watches as millions of earth come into being and millions pass away. God is someone who can know all that, and wants to teach us all of that, but first we have to learn how to understand what He is saying.

In all the vastness of creation it is awfully presumptuous of us to presume that we know how God made the earth because we read something in a book and assumed that we understood what it was saying.

Before we ask questions from Genesis, perhaps we should ask ourselves some questions.

We Already are in Hell

In this past conference Elder Dale Renlund spoke on a topic that is very familiar to anyone who has spent time studying theology, the problem of evil. He told of a conversation he had with a man while visiting Rwanda. The man asked the classic question,

“If there were a God, wouldn’t He have done something about [the genocide]?”

Elder Renlund explain the issue in this way, "For this man—and for many of us—suffering and brutal unfairness can seem incompatible with the reality of a kind, loving Heavenly Father.... This dichotomy is as old as mankind and cannot be explained in a simple sound bite or on a bumper sticker." Elder Renlund spoke about specific examples of unfairness and how to keep our faith in the face of such terrible evils. So while he spoke on examples of evil in the world, he didn't address the context of how we view the world.

Inherent in the man's question is an assumption about this world and the role and nature of God that he expected God to just do something to prevent the evil in the world. If there is something I have learned many times over, it is that the hardest mental exercise is recognizing and challenging our own assumptions. Almost everyone who considers the question, "Why does God allow such terrible things like the Rwandan genocide to happen?" fails to follow that up with the question, "What is it that makes me think that God should do anything about it?"

The simplest answer to this is that God is good, and good people should stop evil from happening, and God has the power to stop it. But the issue for the believer is that God is still there and loves us, but did not stop the evil. So from the perspective of a believer how should we resolve this issue.

To start I will ask a question to consider, and finding the answer will be left up to the interested reader.

The more interesting question is not, "Why does God allow evil to happen?", but,

"What is God doing to fix the evil that exists?"

When believers are faced with the problem of evil we seem to forget that God has already given us a framework to understand the problem of evil. Perhaps because we are so prone to view the story of Adam and Eve as a literal story that we fail to consider the symbolic meaning of the story.

Fundamentally we find ourselves in a fallen world. The name Adam in Hebrew is literally the word for humanity. From story of the Garden of Eden we learn that we, all humanity, are cut off from the presence of God. We are quite literally left to ourselves. Perhaps we do not consider the full implications of that. We, humanity, are responsible for all the evil that we do. We cannot say that we live in a fallen world, cut off from the presence of God, and then expect God to actively take charge of everything that happens in the world.

The story of the fall, especially as it is reiterated in the temple endowment ceremony, is trying to teach us the reality of the world we live in. As believers we must confront this fact, in this world there exists both good and evil, and whether we have more good or evil depends on us. In the endowment ceremony God himself does not come down to confront the evil of the world, but sends messengers.

We say that we currently live in a telestial world, and we must consider the implications of that statement. In D&C 76 we learn that those in the telestial kingdom do not experience the presence of celestial beings, but only receive "through the ministration of the terrestrial." Those in the telestial kingdom are "they who are thrust down to hell."

This means that the telestial world we live in is literally the location of hell.

In classical Christianity the standard view is that there is the earth, and then there are heaven and hell. The usually unspoken assumption is that earth is the middle point of glory. In Dante's Inferno the earth (or at least the surface) is the dividing line between heaven and hell. But in LDS theology our view is a little more lopsided. True to the view presented in the story of the expulsion from paradise, we live in a "fallen" world out of the presence of God. As explained in the Book of Mormon, separation from God is a kind of death, and "hell", or the second death, is a permanent separation from God.

From this perspective our current state is not that different from those who are "thrust down to hell." In the revelation on the Degrees of Glory the telestial glory, or our current temporary state, is the lowest degree of glory. There is not much below us since we have "fallen" after all and considering all the terrible depravities committed by humanity there is not much further for us to fall.

The classical idea of heaven and hell have worked its way into LDS theology in how we talk about the spirit world. There we speak of spirit paradise and spirit prison, but those ideas are not really found in our scriptures. In D&C 138 it mentions that all spirits, including the righteous considered their state as being in prison or bondage. It was not until Jesus appeared to the saints gathered together awaiting his coming were they given the hope that they could be released from their "prison". Even in the spirit world all of humanity was cut off from the presence of God, and we would have stayed that way if it had not been for Jesus Christ. Thus everyone, including the righteous found themselves in "spirit prison" or "hell" after their death.

This is rather interesting because in the Old Testament it does not mention separate places, such as heaven and hell, for the righteous and the sinners. There is only one place, sheol, where all the dead go. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus could there be a division in the world of spirits to divide the righteous in the presence of God from those who are not. This means that for those who die there is no real change in their spiritual state. Thus "hell", or spiritual separation from God, is simply a continuation after death of our current separation from God.

With this context we can return to the original question, "How can God allow evil in the world?" The simplest bumper sticker answer is, "Because this world is Hell." With one exception there is nothing lower in glory, or goodness than this world. We are the furthest we can get from God.

This view of things should change how we view the world we live in. The amount of goodness or evil in the world depends on us. Through the ministering of angels, prophets, and apostles, we are shown what we must do to rise in our progression from a telestial world with all its pain and evil to a celestial and more perfect world. This is the symbolic teaching of the endowment ceremony. Because we are already out of the presence of God there really is nowhere else to go but up.

Many believers have it in their mind that God will come and cast out the wicked and thrust them down to hell. But right now, before the final judgement, there is not really anything worse than living in a world outside the presence of God. There is no worse hell to be thrust down into than to be left to witness the worst depravities of humanity. We already are in hell.

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ perhaps our message should not be "Repent or you will be punished and thrust down to hell!", but it should be, "Repent and fix the world you live in or you will be forced to continue to live in the hell of your own creation."

Whether we live in paradise or hell, that depends on us.

A New Christian Symbol

Last night President Russell M. Nelson announced a new symbol for the Church of Jesus Christ to use. The new symbol has a depiction of Jesus under an arch symbolically representing the tomb. He is standing upon a corner stone with the name of the Church on it. If we take the simplest form of this symbol there are many other meanings that we can give it. Like many symbols of religions through out the world it is very simple, but can contain intense meanings.

Here are possible interpretations of this symbol:

• It is the door of the empty tomb after the resurrection of Jesus.
• It is an open door to the Church, inviting others to enter.
• It is gateway leading us into the path of Eternal Life. The gateway is baptism, which is symbolic of the grave and of resurrection.
• It is the windows of heaven.
• It is a doorway to a new life.
• It is an open door of fellowship and friendship. Our door is always open.
• The stone is the corner stone representing Christ.
• The stone is the Rock upon which we should build.
• It is the foundation of the Church and the Gospel.
• It is the welcome mat to our homes.
• It contains the steps to the doorway to heaven.

It's a very simple symbol but can have many meanings.

What stays the same when science changes?

"Science always changes so there's really no way know what is correct. Years from now everything we think we know could be wrong." -- Anonymous Internet Philosopher

That statement is so generic and I have seen so many countless permutations of it that I have no practical way of counting them. Every single time I have seen statements like that it is a subtle way for the person to say, "I don't want to talk about this anymore and no matter what you say I won't listen to you." This post is not for people like the anonymous commenter, but for people who have sincerely asked the question, "If everything in science can change, then what can we trust?"

So in the midst of the constant change of science what stays the same? Or does anything stay the same?

Let me give an example (I may have shared this story a few years ago). One day I was talking to an acquaintance and he asked me "What if it turns out that gravity isn't real?"

My response was simple, "Rocks still fall down. The Earth continues going around the sun. Gravity doesn't change."

What he was really trying to ask was, "What if gravity doesn't turn out to work the way we think it does?"

There is a difference between the two questions. One deals with what we observe, the other deals with our explanation of why it happened, and how we can predict future events. The former never changes, the latter can change.

One of the earliest explanations of gravity (that we know of) came from Aristotle. His explanation was standard explanation for almost 2,000 years. When Galileo first measured how objects accelerate due to gravity, and Riccioli confirmed his theory and made refinements to his measurement, the universe did not suddenly snap to conform to the new understanding. Things fell towards the Earth as they always had. Their motion remained the same. If you dropped a stone one day and then dropped another the next day the same thing would happen.

These basic observations are the things that do not change when science changes. Over 2,000 years ago Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth and also proved that it was a sphere. Since then our understanding of the shape of the Earth has not changed drastically. We still call it a sphere or a globe, but we have also found that it is not perfectly spherical. It bulges slightly at the equator. Our understanding of the shape of the Earth will change and grow as we make more observations, but our new observations will not change our previous observations. We will still view the Earth as roughly spherical.

What will NOT happen is we will wake up one morning and find that the Earth has been a flat disk all along. It won't suddenly become a doughnut shaped object. So when we say that science will change it means that our previous observations will only become more refined.

This brings us to the age of the Earth, which is almost always the topic that prompts the comments like the one I started with. In the years to come there will be changes and refinements to our understanding of the age and formation of the Earth, but just like the globe, we won't suddenly wake up one morning and find that scientists have figured out that they were wrong all along and that the Earth is actually 6,000 years old.

When changes in science come the changes must explain and agree with our previous observations. If we change the way we view the formation of the Earth, or how life evolved, what won't change is the rocks and fossils we analyzed previously. There are plenty of ways that our understanding of evolution may change in radical ways, but what won't change is the fact that it took millions of years, and that we have a part in it. Any new explanations we have must explain the evidence we have and what we currently observe.

Our explanations will become more refined and there may even be major shifts in our understanding, but the evidence will stay the same. Too often we fall into the trap of wanting the evidence to fit our worldview, but we must first make sure our worldview can accommodate the evidence.

The sentiment expressed by the quote at the beginning is a wish that in the future evidence will be found that makes everyone else conform to the worldview of anonymous, rather than a desire to find a worldview that accommodates all the evidence.

Parallel Lines and Broken Symmetry

Broken Symmetry

When I took this picture I was trying to capture the vanishing effect of two parallel lines. But the road wasn't quite straight, and the effect is interrupted by nonsymmetric elements such as the break in the green plants on the left and the log a little beyond that. There are further subtle imbalances that make the image just slightly asymmetric.

There is something in our nature that looks for this symmetry and balance in the universe and tries to find meaning in it. Some have taken this to the extent that they think that the only true forms are the ultimate reality in the universe. Everything, they assume, is a reflection of the perfect forms. It is in a sense a very comforting approach to the world since it appeals to that part of us that looks for perfect conformity to what we know.

But this approach seems a little odd to me since it fundamentally assumes that the true reality of existence is not found in existence. That reality is only a reflection of reality. That the universe does not adequately demonstrate what it is.

Recently I was attended an astronomy seminar where we discussed recent progress in the area of cosmology. One researcher mentioned how she had been trying to fit certain data to a Gaussian profile, but after an insightful question by a colleague she readdressed the problem with a different approach. She found that the data would fit a slightly asymmetric Gaussian, which would explain in some small way why the universe appeared the way it is.

And this brings us back to parallel lines and broken symmetries. Sometimes in our search for meaning we think that everything; the universe, each other, what it means to be perfect, or even God himself, must conform to our ideas of what is perfect and proper, or what appeals to our sense of balance and symmetry. But if we look hard enough we will see that nothing ever conforms to what we think things should be like. Everywhere we look the universe will remind us that what we think is perfect and symmetrical is not how things really are. Even though it did not turn out the way I wanted it to, I like the picture I took because it reminds me that in reality there are no parallel lines.

Using the Proper Method of Proof

A while ago someone left a comment on my blog challenging me to use Baye's Theorem to find the probability that the Book of Mormon is a historical document. At the time it struck me as odd that some one would insist on using Baye's Theorem to prove a historical fact. But it prompted me to do some reading on Baye's Theorem and I found that there are a whole group of people who try to use Baye's Theorem to prove all sorts of things (there are also a great number of people who say they are wrong in doing so).

The reason why he insisted on using Baye's Theorem stems from the fact that all things pertaining to numbers and math are incontrovertible, at least to rational minds. The thinking goes that no rational person can deny that 1+1=2, and by extension, if something can be proved using math then no one can say otherwise (we'll just ignore the incompleteness theorem for now).

So there is a general feeling that if something can be proved or disproved, or found probable or improbable using math, then no one can say otherwise and every rational person must accept the same conclusion. Thus the thinking goes, "If person X is a rational person then they will apply math to problem A. X applies math to A and reaches conclusion Q. If X accepts Q then they are rational. If X rejects Q then they are irrational."

So when the commenter left his comment challenging me to use Baye's Theorem to find the probability that the Book of Mormon is a historical document his thinking probably went something like this, "I am a rational person and I know the Book of Mormon is not historical. Therefore if someone else uses math on the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and they are rational, then they will come to the same conclusion that I did." (I would be surprised if he actually thought that.)

The tendency is to consider something we know to be true, and because we think we are thinking rationally, we conclude that if someone else uses a rational thought process they will always come to the same conclusion. If they come to a different conclusion then we tend to conclude that they are irrational, especially when there is *math* backing us up.

So I was challenged to use Baye's Theorem in the hope that I would come to the exact same conclusion that he did. Fortunately that is not how proof works. As Aristotle put it:

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

Sometimes people try to describe this and say, "The truth is messy." or "Proof in history/religion/field-of-study-that-is-not-based-in-math is messy." I prefer not to think of it in that way. Understanding the different methods of proof requires a certain level of humility and maturity of thought. When humility, maturity and direct experience with the subject matter are achieved then any proof is easy and flows naturally. It is only pride, immaturity, and inexperience that make any proof hard.

When we have gone through similar mental processes and have had similar experiences then arriving at the same conclusion is easy and natural. If not then proof is hard, if not impossible. This is perhaps what Wittgenstein was thinking when he wrote:

"This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts.... Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding."

If we are to prove something to anyone else we must recognize that it is not so much about the method of proof, for no single method can be used for all truth. You can't throw math at everything and think it constitutes proof. I think there is something inherent in all intelligence that requires personal experience for any proof to be accepted.

Expecting Perfection

I found this little nugget of wisdom in a journal kept by Joseph Smith (written by others) from December 1841 to December 1842. This entry is found on October 29th, 1842.

"[Joseph] said he was but a man and they must not expect him to be perfect; if they expected perfection from him, he should expect it from them, but if they would bear with his infirmities and the infirmities of the brethren, he would likewise bear with their infirmities." [Source]

How often do we demand perfection from our leaders, but we complain and protest when the same is done to us?

Stories from My Mission: "La paciencia es la ciencia de la paz."

When I was in the city of Eldorado in Misiones I met a wise old farmer who once shared with me a tidbit of wisdom that has stuck with me ever since.

"La paciencia es la ciencia de la paz."

Literally this means, "Patience is the science of peace." But it has a much better ring to it when you say it in Spanish.

Reapplying the Basics

When I was finishing up my undergrad degree I was part of a group of physics majors that had spent several years doing our homework together and studying for every test. One night someone observed that in all of our physics classes that we had taken we had learned nothing new since taking the first four introductory classes.

After some point we had not been taught any new physics. Our classes simply consisted of learning new ways of applying the same basic principles to ever more complex problems. Even today with my research I am not using a different set of basic principles. I am just applying the same basic principles to extremely complex situations.

To someone who is just starting their education it can be hard to see that the more complex problems are simply a different manifestation of the same basic principles and not a complete change of basis. Sometimes those who get too deep into the complex problems lose sight of the basic principles and are surprised when basic principles suddenly pop out of complex problems.

In my experience, both in my own personal gospel education and observing others who struggle with problems, the two things that cause more problems than anything else is either forgetting basic principles when confronted with a difficult problem or failing to see that the things that we don't understand can be solved by applying basic principles. On the one side if the fault of "knowing too much" and on the other the fault of "not knowing enough".

We can get too obsessed with complex that we lose sight of the basics and dismiss them, and we can fail to see how basic principles apply to complex situations and judge them to be inadequate and dismiss them.

Update to a previous post.

I have an update about a post that I wrote last year called "Orson Hyde and the Fourteen Articles of Faith". When I wrote it I could not find any place that had an image of the original except for one anti-Mormon website, which I didn't want to link to. The original appeared in a newspaper called The Frontier Guardian, which was published by Orson Hyde in Iowa from 1849-1851 (then taken over by others and published until 1853). In June of this year the original newspaper was digitized and uploaded to the website of the LDS Church History Library.

I have updated my original article with a link to the images, and with a citation to the original. It turns out that the copy of The Frontier Guardian in the Church history archives was owned by President Willard Richards, since it has his name handwritten on the first page (I assume it was his copy, it has his name on it).

There are some other interesting articles that I saw while looking at the full newspaper. Perhaps I will do a transcript of one or two of them.

Key Differences in the BoM and Isaiah Texts

[This is a cross post from my other blog where I am doing a side-by-side comparison of Isaiah chapters and quotes found in the Book of Mormon.]

After doing a side-by-side comparison of 21 Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon I noticed a few interesting things about the variations in the texts. There are many very minor variations between the two texts, but there are also some major variations that quite significantly change the meaning. There are some differences that can obviously be attributed scribal error, on the part of Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery (or others, such as the printer) that were never found or corrected. Still there are others that point to a difference of translation, and still others that indicate a fundamentally different text from the ones used in translating the Bible. I will try to give examples of each of these interesting differences below.

I was also impressed with how consistent the two texts are, even though there are obvious differences. After going over the two texts from the Book of Mormon and Bible, I could tell that the text found in the Book of Mormon was not a simple, sloppy, or ignorant attempt at plagiarism of Isaiah found in the KJV Bible. The differences and distinctions are too nuanced, and even when they differ the differences are too unintentional that it would take a world class scholar to produce them, or a very inspired man.

In no particular order here are a few of the interesting differences.

Difference in Translation

Differences in the text are marked in RED. Variations in the text are marked in ROSE. Mosiah 14:9	Differences in the text are marked in BLUE. Variations in the text are marked in GREEN. Isaiah 53:9
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no evil, neither was any deceit in his mouth.	9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

In these verses there is one difference, the word violence is replaced with the word evil. While we may at first assume that this is a difference in the original texts, instead this appears to be a difference in translation. If we compare many different English translations of the same text almost all of them use the word violence, but if we look at a Bible commentary on that passage we find that the same Hebrew word used in that verse is alternately translated as wrong in other verses in the Bible. When Peter quotes the same verse in his first general epistle he uses the word ἀμαρτία which translates, usually, as sin. Also Jesus himself uses a paraphrase of the verse to defend himself as recorded in John 8:46, with the word in question is again translated as sin. So ultimately what we have here is a rather interesting difference in translation. It is a subtle difference but I think that it is still a valid translation of the original concept.

Scribal Error -- The wrong word

2 Nephi 24:19	Isaiah 14:19
19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and the remnant of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet.	19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.

I was surprised and intrigued when I found this difference. At first I thought that it could be a difference in translation, much like the previous example, but I looked up other Bible translations and it quickly became apparent that the concept bound up in the original text strongly implied raiment and not remnant. In context, and comparing other similar passages from Isaiah, I am inclined to think that this difference is due to a scribal error. Considering the fact that the two words are very similar when spoken aloud (at least with your standard American accent), and considering the fact that Joseph Smith was dictating the text, it would be very easy for this error to happen. Also because the word remnant makes sense in context this would not be an error that would be easily found and corrected without a review of the original text.

Additional Text -- Slight changes in meaning

2 Nephi 24:2	Isaiah 14:2
2 And the people shall take them and bring them to their place; yea, from far unto the ends of the earth; and they shall return to their lands of promise. And the house of Israel shall possess them, and the land of the Lord shall be for servants and handmaids; and they shall take them captives unto whom they were captives; and they shall rule over their oppressors.	2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

In several places there are whole phrases or sentences added that expound on the meaning of the original text. In the verses above there is an additional sentence that adds additional information about what is meant by the verse. There are a few other seemingly minor differences later on in the verse but when they are considered in conjunction with the earlier addition, the subtle changes made to the content is consistent and insightful.

The Missing Words -- Italicized text

2 Nephi 15:28-29	Isaiah 5:28-29
28 Whose arrows shall be sharp, and all their bows bent, and their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind, their roaring like a lion.	28 Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind:
29 They shall roar like young lions; yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry away safe, and none shall deliver.	29 Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.

After doing a few chapters I decided that I needed to keep track of the italicized text in the Bible. For those who don't know, in the KJV of the Bible there are many words that are in italics. These are words that do not appear in the original Greek or Hebrew, but must be added to make it grammatically correct in English. For any one who has learned a foreign language this is something obvious about translation. Sometimes certain words (pronouns, participles, adverbs etc.) are not needed in another language, but are needed in English. After a while I noticed that a number, but not all, of the italicized words in the KJV were either missing or different in the Book of Mormon. This would indicate a slightly more literal translation was used for the Book of Mormon. That was a particularly remarkable realization and changed the way I viewed the basic text of the Book of Mormon.

Also there were a few cases where a phrase that appeared in a previous verse was moved to the next verse in the corresponding chapter and verses. The two above verses are an example of that.

Joseph Smith's Commentary

1 Nephi 20:1	Isaiah 48:1
1 Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness.	1 Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness.

The very first chapter that I did, the very first verse, turned out to be one of the most interesting in terms of providing insight into not only how the translation process worked, but also Joseph Smith's idea of what it meant to "translate" something. If Joseph Smith had ever had the opportunity to attend a real university, and if he had taken a class on Biblical Hebrew then he surely would have failed the class and would have driven the professor to the point of insanity. Joseph Smith's idea of "translation" was to say or write down whatever he thought it meant, not what it actually said.

Fortunately Joseph's translation of the Book of Mormon was more of a revelatory process and not an academic process, which is what most people think of when they hear the word "translation". Most people think that Joseph sat there and translated, in an academic sense, the etchings on the gold plates, which would have required him to actually learn Reformed Egyptian. But from the many accounts of people who witnessed the translation process, the translation was more of an inspired revelation that utilized the resources of Joseph's mind to formulate the text into English. It was by all measures quite remarkable.

So why this little rant of mine? Because of the phrase "or out of the waters of baptism". That phrase does not appear in original manuscript, nor in the printer's manuscript, nor in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, but it does appear in the 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon. What that phrase appears to be is a "prophetic commentary" by Joseph Smith. It is something that he apparently had no problem adding to the text as he considered it his job to "translate" and to expound scripture, but it is something that would make academics working on a translation tear out their hair and curl up in a ball in the corner of the room and cry for hours on end. It is a major indication that Joseph Smith did not understand translation in the same way that you and I view translation. Upon finding out that he would change the text like that some people would, and do, criticize him for improperly changing the meaning, but as far as we can tell this is the only instance of "prophetic commentary" by Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon. The rest of the text seems to be as it was on the gold plates.

Conclusion

To be honest I was never wild about Isaiah like some people are in the Church. It never crossed my mind to take the class Writings of Isaiah at BYU. I did, and still do, read Isaiah in my personal scripture study. I think that by far my favorite chapter in all of scripture is 3 Nephi 22, which is also Isaiah 54, so it cannot be said that I dislike Isaiah, it's just that never felt an intense desire to take a class devoted to Isaiah, or to write a book about him. So it may be a little odd that I spent, and will still spend so much time on this project. Still, I think I learned more about Joseph Smith and how he translated the Book of Mormon than I did about Isaiah by doing this. It definitely changed the way I view the actual text found in the Book of Mormon and it gave me a greater appreciation of how real, and in some cases, how literal the text is. I think the translation is a very good one and will stand the test of time.

Don't forget what it means to be Christlike

As I was sitting in church today one of the speakers mentioned how she was continuously working on being more Christlike. As she said it my mind immediately began to turn and to think about the term "Christlike" in an analytic way (it's just the way my mind works). I thought about how it is a very nebulous term that is at the same time very specific and intuitive while being fraught with difficulties and misunderstandings. I recalled how I had heard people use it in such a way that it was basically reduced to a platitude, i.e. their interpretation was so wide just about anything could be considered Christlike.

My train of thought wandered back and forth considering all the ways that I had heard people refer to being Christlike. I remembered people telling me (not me personally, but to my Sunday School class or Seminary class) years ago when I was a teenager, "Jesus spent all his time going about and talking to people and helping them, so that's what you need to be like, and that is being Christlike." Effectively what I heard was "Jesus was a big time extrovert, like me, so if you want to be Christlike then you need to be an extrovert, like me!" (For some reason extroverts tend to think that everyone should be an extrovert like them. I'm sure that there are many introverts who also think that everyone should be introverts, but because they are introverts they don't tend to go around telling people about it.)

At one point during my train of thought I decided to write a blog post about what I was thinking. My initial thought was to title the post something like, "When being Christlike becomes meaningless" but then I quickly realized that I would probable spend most of my post explaining that I am not implying that we should not be  Christlike, but that we should not use the term "Christlike" in a way that it removes all meaning. That's when I decided to change my approach and settled on the current title.

The term "Christlike" is rather simple in its meaning but complex in its application. If you look up the word in a dictionary you might get something like this, "resembling or showing the spirit of Jesus Christ". Unfortunately too many references to being Christlike focus more on personality than on specific acts of kindness or forgiveness. Sometimes we spend too much time saying that we need to be Christlike but fail to identify specific examples of how we might be Christlike. Perhaps if we realize that we are getting caught up in the trivial we should reorient our approach and think more on our relationship with Christ because after we have recommitted ourselves to Christ and his atonement, then being Christlike comes more easily and the attributes of living a Christlike life will flow easily to us. First come the Christ and then be Christlike. It is something that we must do again and again. It is not a one time event, but a continual process.

If at any point we feel that "being Christlike" has become a trite saying that is said because it needs to be said we must first come unto Christ and that will remind us what it means to be Christlike. A good place to start is to return to what has been called the Constitution of a Perfect Life, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The key is to remember that I should not become a platitude to say that we are working on being Christlike.

This comes from a talk given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland back in 2006.

Misconceptions of Misconceptions of Physics

Finally I am posting something about physics! Don't leave just yet. I will try to keep it on a general level.

On YouTube there is a channel that I like to watch called MinutePhysics. Normally the short videos are pretty good and the channel creator does a good job at explaining some common (and some uncommon) physics in a short and intuitive way. So I was rather surprised when he posted a video about common misconceptions in physics that itself perpetuated common misconceptions in physics. Here's the video for you to watch so I can refer to it.

There are two things that are problematic in this video that I want to address. I will give a short explanation here and then a longer explanation further down.

1. Teaching Newtonian gravity is not lying. He is trying to make the point that light, even if it is massless, is still affected by gravity, which Newtonian gravity does not predict. True, but he makes his point by saying that teaching Newtonian gravity is lying to students. Newtonian gravity is still alive and well and is fundamental to of almost all undergraduate and even graduate (and post graduate) areas of study. The idea that teaching Newtonian gravity is wrong is a big misconception and this video simply perpetuates the misconception.
2. Just because you have an equation that you can stick numbers into and a calculator to calculate it out to an arbitrary number of digits of precision does not mean that it has have physical meaning. I have to fight this misconception every semester with almost all of my students. It is harder to fight this misconception than it is to fight the "misconception" of a Galilean vs. Lorentz transformations.

1. Teaching Newtonian gravity is not lying.
The misconception that Newtonian gravity is fundamentally wrong, and therefore useless, is so prevalent among people that when mostly well informed individuals ask me about my research they are shocked to learn that I still use Newtonian gravity. They usually say something along the lines of, "I rememeber learning about Newton in high school/college, but you are probably way beyond that." They would be even more shocked to learn that most of the cutting edge research in physics uses Newtonian gravity and not relativity. It seems like every semester I have at least one or two students who express the idea that everything undergirding Newtonian gravity is wrong and that therefore all the collective wisdom, intuition, insight and knowledge of people who have used Newtonian gravity, or even Newtonian physics in general, is somehow invalid.

2. An equation and a calculator do not make reality.
Every semester I have to fight a major misconception with my students. I don't mean the pre-meds who take the introductory physics classes, or the "I don't know what I'm doing with my life students, but I have to take this class to get some sort of degree." students. I mean physics majors who are in their senior year and who have been through many physics classes already. I have to fight the misconception that just because the students have an equation and a calculator or computer that can calculate something to an arbitrary number of digits, that the result, to that precision, has meaning for the real world. This is a misconception that physicists of all stripes have to fight every day. And unfortunately this short video perpetuates this myth.

Let's take the sheep example. He gives an example of a sheep riding a train and says if you have a train going 2 mph and a sheep on the train is moving forward at 2 mph with respect to the train then,

2 mph + 2 mph = 4 mph

which he promptly declares to be false. He then proceeds to give a short explanation of how to add velocities in special relativity and produces the equation for adding velocities in special relativity (for those who want to know he is merely pointing out the difference between a Galilean vs. a Lorentz transformation. One assumes light has no speed limit and the other one does. But, by his definition what he presents is also false, since a Lorentz transformation is also incomplete, so he merely traded one misconception for another. Fail.).

But, according to him, if we want to be honest we have to use the special relativistic equation and see that the sheep is only moving 3.999999999999999964 mph. That is a difference of 0.000000000000000036 mph. The problem is, how did he measure that? No really! That is a perfectly valid question in physics, I am not just trying to ask a trite, funny question. If he claims that the sheep is actually moving 0.000000000000000036 mph slower than it should because of special relativistic effects then he will have to actually measure that. The problem is (as many, many, many, many of my professors over the years have pointed out), the sheep is made up of atoms. You can't calculate something, get a result and say, "This is how the world works." because you are ignoring the fact that everything is made up of real matter. You can't separate that fact or you will end up in trouble.

To give you an idea of why this is problematic let's take our result, the difference of 0.000000000000000036 mph, and see what this means. Suppose the sheep and the train move together for one hour, what would be the difference in how far they have moved based on this difference?

0.000000000000000036 mph x .44704 (m/s)/mph = 1.61e-17 m/s

(that's meters per second instead of miles per hour)

1.61e-17 m/s * 3600 s = 5.8e-14 m

So if you let the sheep walk on the train and let the train go for one hour, then after one hour the difference that you would expect between using a relativistic vs. a non-relativistic calculation would be 5.8e-14 m or about 60 femtometers. To give you an idea of how small this is that is about 4 times larger then the nucleus of a uranium atom. Not 4 times larger than a Uranium atom, 4 time larger than the nucleus, which is very, very, very small. This distance is still about 3000 times smaller than the radius of an atom.

So is it wrong to use Galilean transformations and Newton's laws? No. If you can find me a wooden meter stick that has tic marks that go down into the femtometer range then you could say that Newton was wrong. But if you can't actually measure that accurately then it is wrong to say that the standard way we think about adding velocities is wrong. Just because someone came up with an equation and you can stick the numbers into a calculator and get a result does not mean that it has any real world interpretation.

Now, as a physicist I am well aware of relativity, but this is an abuse of it. To say that Newton (and Galileo) were wrong because they didn't have access to a meter stick which measured femtometers, is itself wrong. To ignore real world considerations and then calling people who have to (and had to) deal with those real world considerations wrong is to ignore something fundamental about physics, and that is we live in a real, physical universe. And you can't ignore that fact. Even when teaching relativity.

[PS: If you want to see another example of abuse of equations, consider "Why Pigs Don't Diffract Through Doorways".]

My comments on the election and other thoughts

Today I voted. I did my research, looked up the candidates, all the way down to the local county elections, considered the options and implications and voted based on what I thought best.

Now without saying who I voted for I will explain four things I thought about before and while I was voting.

First, government debt.

Some people will read that and instantly try to put me somewhere on some insane left-right spectrum so first I will tell a little story. While I was on my mission in Argentina, the first little town I was in was called Bella Vista. It was a tiny town of perhaps 5,000-10,000 people, depending on the time of year and the expected harvest from the surrounding farms. In Argentina fútbol (soccer) was very popular. In some cases it was considered a religion. After being in the country for a few months there were only three teams I had ever heard about: Boca, River and Newell's Old Boys. The town seemed split down the middle. Half the town were Boca fans, the other half were River fans and everyone hated Newell's Old Boys.

I was unfamiliar with Argentine professional sports (I barely know anything about American professional sports) so I was wondering how they could have a championship play off with only three teams in the entire country (I later learned about other teams it's just that no one in Bella Vista talked about them). I thought Argentines were very weird. At one point River managed to win the national championship and half the town was out in the streets celebrating. There were car horns blaring, firecrackers going off, music blasting and people driving through the streets with people standing on the roof of their cars waving River flags.

About four weeks after this happened we heard on the street that Newell's Old Boys had played River and had beaten them. Everyone was shocked. That's when I decided to become a fan of Newell's Old Boys. That way I could have my "team" but my choice of team would not immediately alienate me from half the people we talked to. At about that same time I had a rather interesting conversation with a child of about 8 years old. My companion and I were talking to his family and all the little kids gathered around to ask "los americanos" some questions. The 8 year old looked at me and asked with great earnestness "What is your team?" I told him I didn't have a team. He thought for a second and came to the conclusion that I didn't understand the question. So he asked the question again. Again I told him that I wasn't a fan of any team. He was not satisfied so he rephrased the question and asked again. At this point I remembered that Newell's Old Boys had just beaten River so I told him that I was a fan of Newell's Old Boys. He gave me a look of exasperation and said, "No. WHAT IS YOUR TEAM! BOCA OR RIVER?!?" I told him that neither one was my team and that I was a fan of Newell's Old Boys. At that point he gave a frustrated sigh and concluded that this delusional American was too stupid and could not speak and understand Spanish so it was useless to continue the conversation.

When people ask me if I am a Republican or a Democrat, or if I am conservative or liberal the image that comes to my mind is that frustrated 8 year-old boy who had to deal with an American that was too stupid to know that there were only two choices and you had to be one or the other.

So, government debt. Government debt is a dangerous thing. It has all the dangers and negative consequences of normal debt, but it carries with it the enforced mandate of government. It is not something that can be done away with without undermining the foundation of government. To fail to honor a debt is to acknowledge that there has been a failure with the person who has the debt. For a government to fail to honor a debt is to acknowledge that the government has failed, which is to acknowledge that the fundamental structure of our society can no longer hold us together. It is quite a scary thing.

The thing to realize with debt (any debt whatsoever) is that the overall effect of debt on out society is to take money from poor people and give it to rich people. That is, debt makes poor people poorer and rich people richer (this is not just a trite saying this is something that has been shown with statistics and computer models of economic conditions, see this link for more information and some references). In computer models where the financial transactions of people are modeled we can reproduce roughly the income distribution that we see in US census records (see below).

As the above graph shows the modeled behavior (black line) closely follows the data from the US census. In these models we find that if we allow for debt (with interest!) then that line gets shifted so that there are more people who are "poor" and the "rich" people get richer (see below).

The end result of debt is to make poor people poorer and rich people richer. In these models if we allow for infinite debt (i.e. no bankruptcy) then the amount of debt that some people have will become infinite  and the amount of money that rich people have will also become infinite. Either way the system become unworkable and it eventually collapses. So how do you counteract the inflationary tenancies of debt? With taxes. Just as the models show that debt (with interest) can be fundamentally unstable, taxes tend to have the opposite effect. As debt makes rich people richer, and poor people poorer, as long as you have a minimally fair tax code (as in everyone gets taxed and then everyone benefits from the taxes), then it has the effect of decreasing the number and wealth of rich people and increasing the wealth of poor people. That is, it moved the bottom end of the curve up and counter acts the negative tendencies of debt.

Up until now I have just been talking about debt in general, which includes mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, education loans etc. But government debt is slightly different. Because it is backed by the thing that creates the monetary system in the first place. While government debt can help in extreme circumstances it has the tendency to act just like normal debt except that now everyone has to pay it, just like a tax. Taxes take money from all sides of the spectrum but it redistributes it in a way that poor people become a little less poor. Government debt is essentially the opposite of taxes. It takes money from everyone and transfers it to rich people (to understand this consider this: How many people who make less than $40,000 have bought a government bond? How many people who make more than $100,000 a year are invested in such a way that they make money off of government bonds? Who ultimately pays for government bonds, including the interest? and who ultimately benefits from the interest generated by government bonds?).

So having a consistent, and persistent, deficit in government spending, and then using the issue of more debt to fund the debt is perhaps the most destructive and immoral thing that can be done to people who can be considered "poor". Government debt is perhaps the only legal and socially acceptable method we have of grinding upon the face of the poor.

If you want to help poor people the best thing that the government can do is to balance the budget. Until you do government debt will make us all poor.

Second, oil.

I don't think we all need to give up our cars and use only *non toxic* non-petroleum products (the non-toxic part is sarcastic). Nor do I think that global warming will get so bad that the earth will punish us with a series of super storms, or that we need to give peace prizes to people who bake up a bunch of facts and scare the easily manipulated. What I am saying is that right now in our history oil tends to cause too many wars. It is an out sized portion of our economy and we should find a way to get along with less of it, if only to decrease the likely hood that we get involved in more wars because of oil.

Third, are the people competent for the job.

The Republican candidate for Secretary of State in North Carolina may be a good neighbor, a good farmer, a good father and a generally good man. But the more I looked into his experience and what he was proposing to do as Secretary of State I don't think he knows what a Secretary of State does. If you look at his campaign website he mentions the most important issues that he "promises" to address. The only problem is that all the things he brings up are things that can be addressed in the state legislature, but not by the Secretary of State. He seems a little confused about what the Secretary of State can and cannot do. I would not vote for him.

There was a similar case for several judges that were on the ballot. In North Carolina the election of judges is non-partisan, but there were two Republicans and one Democrat who were challenging the incumbents for no reason, apparently, other than they were of the opposite party and they wanted to make a partisan race about it (even if they knew nothing about being a judge). I didn't vote for any of them. That doesn't mean I voted for the incumbent, but it means I particularly did not vote for the challengers.

Fourth, basic morality.

Over the last while there is a disturbing trend in our society that belittles and scoffs at basic morality. Anything that might possibly require that someone use self restraint and hold to some "old fashioned" moral principles is roundly dismissed as ignorant and oppressive. I will not go into it in this post, but there is very little that voting can do to counter this trend. Still I look for men and women of good character, who have a desire that others also be men and women of good character.

With those four things in mind I went to vote. I marked my ballot and turned it in. I was number 108 at the polling place that day.

Quick thought on particle-wave duality

Just a quick thought on particle-wave duality today.

So how should we think about fundamental particles? Are they points in space or are they waves of probability? One person I read recently said that it just depends on the type of experiment. If you want a wave then make a wave experiment, but if you want a particle then make a particle experiment. This may seem like a simple explanation except for the fact that in some cases they behave like particles in wave experiments and also behave like waves in particle experiments.

So how do I think of particles in the particle-wave duality debate? The way I see it, they behave like waves when they travel, but they behave like particles when they interact with other particles. So when I explain it to students I say, "It travels like a wave, but interacts like a particle."

As a side note, this is an interesting way of looking at it since it would seem that particles travel like they have mass, but when they interact, they interact like they have no mass. Hmmm... so the wave nature of particles give them mass? There's an interesting thought.

Why Google+ Gets Human Relations and Facebook Fails Miserably

A couple of years ago I signed up for Facebook. I had been resisting it for a while, even when people kept asking me if I was on Facebook and promptly treating me like a leper when I told them I wasn't. It wasn't until one of my roommates (who was also staunchly anti-Facebook) got on Facebook that I broke down and got my own account. For a while I only had one Facebook "friend" (my roommate) but eventually I got more. At first I was slightly amused, but mostly annoyed with the trivial tripe of Facebook such as the pokes, surveys, polls, games and flashing lights (some of that has toned down over the years).

But eventually I sort of stopped using Facebook because really it was just one more thing to bother with when I had other things (such as two blogs) to think about, and that fulfilled my "social networking need". So I kept up with a once yearly update on Facebook and called it good, and if I ever needed to actually get in contact with someone, I could look them up on Facebook and find their email address. That worked for me.

One of the things that I could never really get into with Facebook was the way everyone I knew was thrown into one big pot. Everyone, from my wife, to my parents to my in-laws, to high school or college friends to that random guy in my class were put into the same big pot of "friends". It was kind of like Facebook couldn't conceive of anyone having any relation other than "friend". At some point they kind of implemented this thing where you could declare someone as part of your "family" but other than being cosmetic I could see no use to it.

If I wanted to post a status update I had to keep in mind that everyone from my parents to high school friends to graduate students that I work with could see it. If I wanted to post about family reunion stuff, why would my high school friends want to read about that? Everyone was being blasted by the same fire hose and there was little that could be done to redirect that stream so that it could be manageable. Over time Facebook was working on improving that but it seemed that they still functioned with one driving principle in mind, that one person had one status and one stream of thought to the entire world. And that all human relations are fundamentally equal and indistinguishable. That there is nothing inherently different in a human relation between a parent and a child than there is between two associates at work. Human relations, according to Facebook, are a nondescript pipeline of information flow (or at least a flow of stuff, if you don't want to call what happens on Facebook information) with information constantly flowing from one person to another, and the more the information flows the stronger the human relation.

This way of thinking may make sense in a college setting where everyone is meeting someone new and people are forming new relations, but in the real world there are pre-made relations that are formed for different reasons. Some relations are not based on information flow but on other things, such as marriage or blood relation. I may be "friends" with my wife's aunts and uncles on Facebook, but I would not characterize our relation as one based on information flow, or even on a desire to network. I have interactions with them because I married their niece, not because we met and decided that we should be "friends" (that doesn't mean  I have a problem with them, it just means that the connection was made for reasons other than the ones the Facebook team think of as being fundamental to human relations). The thing is Facebook fails to comprehend this. To them the connection to my wife's cousin's husband (who I have never met in person) is considered to be of the same order, or importance, as the connection I have to a roommate that I lived with for 3 years, or that mission companion that I was with for 3 months, and survived dog attacks, torrential downpours, floods, cold weather, broken ribs, and several unforgettable teaching experiences with. How does that compare? Yet Facebook fails to understand that and just wants to lump everyone into one big group of "friends" and you are given one fire hose to turn on them and drench them with your pictures, status updates and stuff.

Today when I got onto Google+ the first thing I noticed was that I could very easily put people in different categories. I could also control the streams of status updates, photos and stuff. I could separate the photos of family from friends, and from acquaintances. That way the pictures of my nieces and nephews would not be mixed in with the pictures of "that one guy" from high school playing guitar at some random party. In short, the Google team made it so that my interactions on a social network could be organized into real human relations that reflect the real world. That right there puts them light years ahead of Facebook.

I don't know much else about how Google+ works, but that one feature of being able to separate friends from family, acquaintances from people I know from work, and my 20+ aunts and uncles-in-law from my cousin that I haven't seen for about 20 years, is enough to make me want to give it a shot. And I might just stick with it because it may actually be useful.

"Ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention"

In light of the current events happening in the Arab world I thought that this short passage from The Book of Mormon was particularly applicable.

16Now I say unto you, that because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a ^aking or kings to rule over you.

 17For behold, how much ^ainiquity doth one ^bwicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction!

 . . .

 21And behold, now I say unto you, ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous ^aking save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.

 22For behold, he has his ^afriends in iniquity, and he keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;

 23And he enacteth laws, and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he ^acauseth to be destroyed; and whosoever doth rebel against him he will send his armies against them to war, and if he can he will destroy them; and thus an unrighteous ^bking doth pervert the ways of all righteousness. (Mosiah 29:16-17,21-23)

 I think that the events of recent weeks, especially in Libya, prove the wisdom and truthfulness of these words. While many people, countries and nations have looked to kings, or strong autocratic rulers, as a solution to their current problems. Unfortunately the end result is usually more hardships and trouble for the people. In the end it never turns out to be a solution.