These are the end times, but not for the reasons you think.
Western culture is in the process of ending. I think I can make a fairly convincing argument for it. It has to do with the cultural singularity (a term I prefer in contrast to technological singularity because, though it is driven by technology, it's effects are widespread to areas beyond technology), and an idea I've attempted to communicate before a number of times, but I think I have kind of a fresh perspective on it after some things I've read today. Inspiration hit while I was listening to the soundtrack for Across the Universe, a movie which is basically a rock opera about American and (to a slightly smaller extent) British culture in the 1960s set to the Beatles' music.
The spaghettification of western culture really took place in the 60s. Spaghettification is a highly technical term, I know.
Actually, it is. Physicists use it to describe something that happens to you (or body bigger than a few million molecules) as you fall toward the gravitational singularity at the heart of a black hole.
First let me summarize the idea of a singularity, and how the cultural singularity is similar to a gravitational singularity.
A gravitational singularity is called such for a number of reasons. The most obvious being it's size and composition. It's practically infinitely small, which is impossible, but that's ok for a reason I will explain subsequently. A singularity is also basically only comprised of mass. I mean, sure particles fell in it, and are those particles still there making up this thing? Well, no, not really. Particles are made out of forces and energy, and they're arranged in certain patterns that make them what they are. A hydrogen particle is a proton with an electron orbiting it. If you take separate the proton and the electron, you don't have a hydrogen particle anymore, but you still have the electron and the proton. The singularity strips off your protons and your electrons, and then it gobbles them up. It doesn't even leave you with your building blocks. It crushes them down to its infinitely small state and the only thing that's left behind is their mass, exerting an ever greater gravitational force on everything else the black hole is eating up.
Before I get nerd-corrected, their electromagnetic charge is also preserved and transferred to the entirety of the black hole, but in my above hypothetical story an electron and a proton are both being devoured, and so there is no net gain or loss of electromagnetic charge. Hush nerds.
Also, I will use the term 'observation principle' a number of times. Get over it.
Is this like the coming cultural singularity? That's difficult to say, since the cultural singularity is a metaphorical singularity, and not a physical phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theories that we can do math to. Or can we? Probably, we can do math to anything. But I digress. The important thing is that we can't really predict what the cultural singularity will be like, and that's significant because of the second reason singularities are called singularities.
They are singular. As in: peculiar. That seems like a vague adjective, but it's actually pretty profound. When I call the cultural singularity peculiar, that is really just me being vague because I don't know what the hell is going to happen. BUT, when physicists call a singularity peculiar, that's very important. Physics isn't a subjective language of subtlety and metaphor. It discusses only hard values and measurable phenomena, but when you get to a black hole singularity something terrible happens. The laws of the universe themselves break down. Impossible things seem to happen. Remember how I said the singularity was infinitely small, and that is impossible, but that's ok? Yeah. It has to do with quantum physics and the observer principle. You are likely aware that light can't escape a black hole, but have you also considered that even once you're inside the black hole no light can approach you from the center? That thing in the middle is the reason light can't escape, and there's no reason you'd be able to see it once you were inside the black hole itself. Not even once you're an inch away. Not even when you're 1x10^-6000 inches away. (That's a really short distance, by the way, and you'd already be dead by then anyway.)
The point is, nothing can ever receive information from a black hole singularity. Not because we don't yet have the technology or understanding; the basic makeup of the universe just doesn't allow it. Singularities do not transmit information. You can never see what it is doing, therefore it is free to do anything.
There's a trick in quantum physics thanks to the observation principle. You can break the laws as long as no one finds out. 'No one' constitutes any other particle in the universe, however.
So, the cultural singularity is like a black hole singularity in that way. Let's talk about spaghettification. As you fall toward a gravitational singularity (have you picked up yet that a black hole singularity is the same thing as a gravitational singularity?) this dirty thing starts to happen to you. Your vertical axis, relative to the singularity, begins to elongate, and your horizontal axis starts to compress, because every particle in your body is being drawn toward this infinitely small point.
Another thing about your particles, they're all held together by the electromagnetic force on the molecular level and the strong nuclear force on the atomic level. Those forces are way stronger than gravity. Way stronger. Like, make a graph and put those three forces at the top of each column. Now put a 1 under gravity. That will represent the strength of the gravitational force. Now put 1 under electromagnetism. Now put 18 zeros after it. That's a lot of fucking zeros, right? Now put a 1 under the strong nuclear force. Now put 40 goddamn zeros after that. Yeah. Fuck gravity.
Except you aren't falling toward an electromagnetic singularity, and you aren't falling toward a nuclear singularity, and neither of those things probably even exist in the universe, and we've found countless goddamn black holes just with our shitty human telescopes. So, what gives? It turns out that gravity gets stronger the closer two massive particles get together. Massive particles like the particles you're made of and the singularity. How close can you get to an infinitely small particle, anyway? What's that? Infinitely close? So this force can be infinitely strong? That sucks. Sounds like we broke the universe. Good thing quantum physics is here to say, "Pics or it didn't happen." Literally.
But I was going to talk about spaghettification. It isn't just about elongation and compression. At a certain point the force of gravity that's pulling you toward the singularity becomes stronger than the electromagnetic force holding your molecules together. Guess what happens then. Something dirty, like I said. YOUR BITS PULL APART! And then they keep falling, and their bits pull apart, and so on until there are no bits left.
What does this have to do with Across the Universe? I'm glad you asked, one to three people who've actually read this far. I'm glad you don't have jobs. For the last century, we've been thinking in terms of decades. You can probably imagine how the 20s were different than the 30s without googling anything, and you can probably tell the 1940s' WWII patriotism from the 1950s' paranoid nationalism if you're American and you've ever read a book in your life. But the 60s were radically different from the 50s, and the 70s were (admittedly less) radically different from the 60s, and the 80s were just like... fuck... then the 90s, holy shit. Now we're living in 2012, and someone could conceivably hack an unmanned drone aircraft to missile strike a department of homeland security base. Not only would that sentence not have made any kind of sense 30 years ago, it would not have caused this post and everyone reading it to appear on a terror watch list. (Sorry I'm not sorry. Everybody who's anybody is on a terror watch list. Get with it.)
So, just as a black hole singularity will start to pull your particles apart as you fall closer to it, the cultural singularity has been pulling our culture apart as we approach it. Think about the world your parents lived in when they were your age. Is it connected to the world you live in now? I imagine that it very well may not be.
That takes care of the elongation metaphor, but what about the horizontal compression metaphor?
Well, you can buy a Big Mac in Kansas City. Can you buy a Big Mac in Beijing? Maybe our culture has gotten more narrow, then.
That's just a thing I'm suggesting.
But now I'm drunk and sleepy.
G'night, Livejournal.
You're better than tumblr.
The spaghettification of western culture really took place in the 60s. Spaghettification is a highly technical term, I know.
Actually, it is. Physicists use it to describe something that happens to you (or body bigger than a few million molecules) as you fall toward the gravitational singularity at the heart of a black hole.
First let me summarize the idea of a singularity, and how the cultural singularity is similar to a gravitational singularity.
A gravitational singularity is called such for a number of reasons. The most obvious being it's size and composition. It's practically infinitely small, which is impossible, but that's ok for a reason I will explain subsequently. A singularity is also basically only comprised of mass. I mean, sure particles fell in it, and are those particles still there making up this thing? Well, no, not really. Particles are made out of forces and energy, and they're arranged in certain patterns that make them what they are. A hydrogen particle is a proton with an electron orbiting it. If you take separate the proton and the electron, you don't have a hydrogen particle anymore, but you still have the electron and the proton. The singularity strips off your protons and your electrons, and then it gobbles them up. It doesn't even leave you with your building blocks. It crushes them down to its infinitely small state and the only thing that's left behind is their mass, exerting an ever greater gravitational force on everything else the black hole is eating up.
Before I get nerd-corrected, their electromagnetic charge is also preserved and transferred to the entirety of the black hole, but in my above hypothetical story an electron and a proton are both being devoured, and so there is no net gain or loss of electromagnetic charge. Hush nerds.
Also, I will use the term 'observation principle' a number of times. Get over it.
Is this like the coming cultural singularity? That's difficult to say, since the cultural singularity is a metaphorical singularity, and not a physical phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theories that we can do math to. Or can we? Probably, we can do math to anything. But I digress. The important thing is that we can't really predict what the cultural singularity will be like, and that's significant because of the second reason singularities are called singularities.
They are singular. As in: peculiar. That seems like a vague adjective, but it's actually pretty profound. When I call the cultural singularity peculiar, that is really just me being vague because I don't know what the hell is going to happen. BUT, when physicists call a singularity peculiar, that's very important. Physics isn't a subjective language of subtlety and metaphor. It discusses only hard values and measurable phenomena, but when you get to a black hole singularity something terrible happens. The laws of the universe themselves break down. Impossible things seem to happen. Remember how I said the singularity was infinitely small, and that is impossible, but that's ok? Yeah. It has to do with quantum physics and the observer principle. You are likely aware that light can't escape a black hole, but have you also considered that even once you're inside the black hole no light can approach you from the center? That thing in the middle is the reason light can't escape, and there's no reason you'd be able to see it once you were inside the black hole itself. Not even once you're an inch away. Not even when you're 1x10^-6000 inches away. (That's a really short distance, by the way, and you'd already be dead by then anyway.)
The point is, nothing can ever receive information from a black hole singularity. Not because we don't yet have the technology or understanding; the basic makeup of the universe just doesn't allow it. Singularities do not transmit information. You can never see what it is doing, therefore it is free to do anything.
There's a trick in quantum physics thanks to the observation principle. You can break the laws as long as no one finds out. 'No one' constitutes any other particle in the universe, however.
So, the cultural singularity is like a black hole singularity in that way. Let's talk about spaghettification. As you fall toward a gravitational singularity (have you picked up yet that a black hole singularity is the same thing as a gravitational singularity?) this dirty thing starts to happen to you. Your vertical axis, relative to the singularity, begins to elongate, and your horizontal axis starts to compress, because every particle in your body is being drawn toward this infinitely small point.
Another thing about your particles, they're all held together by the electromagnetic force on the molecular level and the strong nuclear force on the atomic level. Those forces are way stronger than gravity. Way stronger. Like, make a graph and put those three forces at the top of each column. Now put a 1 under gravity. That will represent the strength of the gravitational force. Now put 1 under electromagnetism. Now put 18 zeros after it. That's a lot of fucking zeros, right? Now put a 1 under the strong nuclear force. Now put 40 goddamn zeros after that. Yeah. Fuck gravity.
Except you aren't falling toward an electromagnetic singularity, and you aren't falling toward a nuclear singularity, and neither of those things probably even exist in the universe, and we've found countless goddamn black holes just with our shitty human telescopes. So, what gives? It turns out that gravity gets stronger the closer two massive particles get together. Massive particles like the particles you're made of and the singularity. How close can you get to an infinitely small particle, anyway? What's that? Infinitely close? So this force can be infinitely strong? That sucks. Sounds like we broke the universe. Good thing quantum physics is here to say, "Pics or it didn't happen." Literally.
But I was going to talk about spaghettification. It isn't just about elongation and compression. At a certain point the force of gravity that's pulling you toward the singularity becomes stronger than the electromagnetic force holding your molecules together. Guess what happens then. Something dirty, like I said. YOUR BITS PULL APART! And then they keep falling, and their bits pull apart, and so on until there are no bits left.
What does this have to do with Across the Universe? I'm glad you asked, one to three people who've actually read this far. I'm glad you don't have jobs. For the last century, we've been thinking in terms of decades. You can probably imagine how the 20s were different than the 30s without googling anything, and you can probably tell the 1940s' WWII patriotism from the 1950s' paranoid nationalism if you're American and you've ever read a book in your life. But the 60s were radically different from the 50s, and the 70s were (admittedly less) radically different from the 60s, and the 80s were just like... fuck... then the 90s, holy shit. Now we're living in 2012, and someone could conceivably hack an unmanned drone aircraft to missile strike a department of homeland security base. Not only would that sentence not have made any kind of sense 30 years ago, it would not have caused this post and everyone reading it to appear on a terror watch list. (Sorry I'm not sorry. Everybody who's anybody is on a terror watch list. Get with it.)
So, just as a black hole singularity will start to pull your particles apart as you fall closer to it, the cultural singularity has been pulling our culture apart as we approach it. Think about the world your parents lived in when they were your age. Is it connected to the world you live in now? I imagine that it very well may not be.
That takes care of the elongation metaphor, but what about the horizontal compression metaphor?
Well, you can buy a Big Mac in Kansas City. Can you buy a Big Mac in Beijing? Maybe our culture has gotten more narrow, then.
That's just a thing I'm suggesting.
But now I'm drunk and sleepy.
G'night, Livejournal.
You're better than tumblr.