For centuries, our ancestors imagined that the Earth was flat. Various ideas arose as to what supported it and what made the sun rise and set every day. Some, such as Heraclitus, believed that each day bought a new sun, while others thought it was always the same. Aristotle was one of the first to realise that the Earth was spherical, but the flat Earth belief survived in China until Jesuit missionaries persuaded them otherwise in the seventeenth century.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus demonstrated that the Earth orbited around the Sun and not the other way around. And then Johannes Kepler worked out that the Earth and the other planets orbited, not with a circular motion, but with an elliptical one. Kepler’s discovery was the puzzling phenomenon that set Isaac Newton on the journey that ended with his Theory of Gravitation. Newton demonstrated that gravitational force was inversely proportional to the distance between objects, and he was able to demonstrate this by observing the orbit of the Moon. Astronomers started plotting the orbit of all the planets and, since Uranus had some anomalies in its orbit, it was deduced that the cause of this anomaly was the gravitational force of a planet that we had not yet seen. This led to the discovery of Neptune, and this was Newton’s eureka moment.
Newton’s theory was king until it was noticed that Mercury’s orbit had an anomaly: it didn’t orbit in a closed ellipse, but one that shifted slightly each year. This set astronomers on another journey: what caused the anomaly in Mercury’s orbit? Nobody knew that there wasn’t an anomaly in Mercury’s orbit. The truth was something unimaginable at the time – Newton’s Theory of Gravitation was wrong.
Albert Einstein’s theories of Special and General Relativity are theoretically derived from a very small number of empirical phenomena. Observation of the mutual orbit of twin stars demonstrated that the speed of light is constant in space irrespective of the relative motion of the source of propagation. This simple fact was inconsistent with everything that physicists thought about space and time. Einstein worked out his theory almost entirely by thought experiment and mathematics.
An unexpected consequence of Einstein’s theory was that light must bend when it passes through a gravitational field. Nobody had thought about this before. However, the effect is so small that to be observable we need a very large gravitational force such as the one that the Sun produces. We can only observe this during total solar eclipses because otherwise the light from the sun blots out the ray of light that we are trying to observe being bent. The astronomers Eddington, Cottingham, Crommelin and Davidson demonstrated Einstein’s prediction by observing the positions of fixed stars (that is, stars so far away that they appear never to move) during such an eclipse. Since the light of those stars had all been bent inward by the sun’s gravitational field, they all appeared to be further away from the sun than we would normally have expected to see them. This was Einstein’s eureka moment. Scientists could no longer doubt the Theory of Relativity.
Let us stop for a moment and think about this irrelevant little planet that we love because it feeds us. Let us hypothesise about how a trivial meteorological change on our planet might have affected the destiny of our species. Some of the time, clouds enclose us such that we cannot see beyond them. Let us imagine that this occurred all the time. We would never have seen twin stars, and so we would have no law of propagation of light, and therefore we would have no law of relativity. We would never have seen another planet, and so we would not know what an orbit is. Therefore, we would have no theory of gravitation. It really isn’t clear to me that we would have yet realised that our little planet wasn’t flat. In fact we wouldn’t know it was a little planet; it would be the entirety of our observable universe. We couldn’t have built a telescope in space because we couldn’t have got it up there without a theory of gravitation. In any case, we would first need to know that there was something out there to see. Otherwise, we would lack the curiosity.
Data is the life-blood of science. Science without data is like a plant without water; it cannot grow and eventually withers.
I have produced a philosophical theory of how a human algorithm works. I have explored the relationship between four phenomena: feeling, behaviour, language and belief. For two of these phenomena, language and behaviour, the data is visible for all to see. Scientists can construct experiments and can develop theories about them. However, I have also demonstrated that language and behaviour are affected by the other two phenomena, feeling and belief. In fact, each of the four phenomena is affected by the other three, with the possible exception of feeling, but this is the one phenomenon that poses the greatest metaphysical problem – what exactly is it? Sometimes we can mistake a belief for a feeling; it simply isn’t possible to be sure, so we can’t even make consistent observations about our own feelings. The scientists developing theories about the observable phenomena (language and behaviour) are going to be in a similar position to the pre-Einstein astronomers looking at Mercury: behavioural deception is corrupting the data they are trying to explain. However, the almost infinite variability of feeling and belief means that these scientists are going to be in a much worse position. The data that they observe is going to be pulled every which way in a pattern that appears to be random. It is no surprise that this had led some of mankind’s greatest thinkers to produce laughably absurd theories about souls, unconscious minds, irrationality and free will.
The two phenomena that are somehow internal, feeling and belief, are only represented to the outside world through behaviour and language, but both can be misrepresented. A scientist can examine his own beliefs and feelings, but how can he conduct experiments on them if he doesn’t know which beliefs are true? How can he conduct experiments on his feelings if he cannot measure them, or cannot be sure he remembers them accurately? He cannot be sure he can distinguish between feeling and belief, or that he correctly names his feelings.
Einstein worked out the Theory of Relativity from a very small number of observed phenomena. I too have a small number of observed phenomena: I have noticed that you occasionally make the same face that I make when I feel worried. From this, I deduce that you must be worried, but I cannot really be sure. Let us suppose that you and I agree that we will call the feeling “worry” when either of us makes that face. I know that when I feel worry, if I suppress the face, then you have no way of knowing that I am worried. I know this by hypothetical reasoning. I do not need to put human beings into a laboratory to check this. Similarly, without conducting any experiment, I know that if I affect the face, you cannot know that the feeling isn’t there. Once I have deduced a few relationships like this, is it possible that I can deduce the algorithm that determines every human action?
The method of hypothetical reasoning in this book has been philosophical thought experiments. Theoretical physics uses mathematical thought experiments, but I suspect that a better mathematician than I am could fully mathematicise this book. However, for this book to be scientific, it would need to be possible to use it to make predictions about human actions that can be tested by experiment. Maybe with a bit more analytical horsepower, it could be developed to the next level. And it could be predicted that at the moment the next lunar eclipse became total, a man would walk into a tobacconist on a certain street corner in Prague, pull out a Gauloise cigarette and ask a girl in a blue dress for a light. Astronomers and psychologists could team up for a famous experiment. They could set up listening equipment and sensitive instruments to test the colour of the dress and the chemical composition of the cigarette smoke. And when the prediction was found to be true, this theory would have its eureka moment. There would be ticker-tape parades, and nice people from Sweden would invite me to an awards ceremony. But don’t worry! I know this isn’t going to happen.
The only phenomenon I can currently predict is that because we have become so mesmerised by absurd hypothetical idols such as God, happiness and freedom that our entire species could self-destruct. Sadly, from a scientific point of view, the best that I can hope for is that this theory will be proved right after everyone is dead.
So some white-trash intellectual comes along. He tells you that some of your feelings are figments of your imagination; that you can be made to believe in anything, so some of your most axiomatic beliefs about yourself are probably crap anyway. Why should you care? Mankind might self-destruct, but it is unlikely to happen in your lifetime. It might happen in your great grandchildren’s lifetime, but they aren’t even born yet, and chances are you won’t meet them anyway. All that matters is that you are happy now.
If you are happy, you can ignore this book. You can join forces with all the Holocaust deniers and climate change deniers. You can raise your arms to heaven and sing praise to God. You can allow yourself to be swept up in the orgy of eye-swivelling virtual emotion and dance yourself into a frenzy as the wonderful light that is our species fades out to a dot. You can do this, but despite all the pseudo-ontological arguments about the existence of God, we have to determine our destiny on our own. The more we gaze into space through telescopes, the more we know that nobody will come to our aid.
If all of mankind is snuffed out in a cataclysmic instant then it actually only matters if someone is left to care about it. But the problem that does actually matter is not that we might ultimately self-destruct. It is the process of self-destruction that we need to worry about. This process is almost certainly going to become more evident during your lifetime.
Trivial meteorological events could dramatically alter the destiny of our species. Certain areas of our insignificant little planet that were previously able to support life might cease to be able to do so. As a result there would be colossal regional famines and massmigrations of people, which in turn would cause warfare on a hitherto unknown scale. Many of those who survived famine or war would be eliminated in inter-ethnic or inter-religious genocide of hideous brutality.
The theory of this book cannot be scientifically proven; it is just a tool for hypothetical reasoning. Our science permits us to predict the colossal events in our universe such as the tides, the appearance of comets and the timing of eclipses, but we cannot predict the insignificant little events like the extinction of our species. I have tried to explain that this could occur. It could occur because, since we developed language, we lost sight of our instincts, and ultimately this caused us to be driven by how we feel about ourselves and not by our survival.
We can only alter this course by the use of our rationality, but I cannot demonstrate to you that you should use your rationality. It is a strange fact that nobody can prove that rationality is a better course than simply trusting emotion because nobody can conclusively define the objective of human life. Darwinism tells us only one thing about the meaning of life – survival is all that matters. All other meanings are mythologies built from pretended emotional behaviour. We should therefore abandon all ideologies of emotional wellbeing and be satisfied with the modest objective of survival.
Let us be nostalgic for our future. Consider your children and your grandchildren and the great grandchildren that you might never meet. Think of how your beliefs are actually a product solely of your emotional aspirations as moulded by your cultural environment. Consider whether you could live another way. Could a simpler life bring you contentment? Because ultimately, all I can ask of you is that you consider these things and ask yourself: how does it make you feel?