Waffle on determinism, free will and morality.

In a blog by a particle physicist where the words 'particle' and physics' are most often conspicuous by their absence, this is the most absurd post yet. Previously I've offered thoughts on the philosophy of science when discussing science and religion in relation to Stephen Hawking and earlier Richard Dawkins, and ranted about political issues like unfair immigration restrictions, thrown out fully deserved abuse to Melanie Phillips. As a scientist, migrant worker and voter I can at least offer a useful "hands on" perspective on those issues, but today I'm writing about the determinism and morality, which have no relation to any expert knowledge I have nor any bearing on my life and, as you will see, a subject I have done no research on.

Maybe one day I'll get around to particle physics again, but for now those of you who prefer to read blogs on topics where the author actually has some expertise, I hear jester has restarted blogging at Resonaances and has interesting comments on a very new idea. Today I just want to throw this out to the wolves because I like writing and learning by getting corrected can be fun.

My position on determinism and free will is very simply. I do not consider a persons "free will" to require that their actions cannot be predicted. Put beer in front of me and you can predict I'll drink it, hand me tasty food and I'll eat etc, but these are still free choices, there are plenty of options available to me which I could choose had I different desires. That my desires are a function of a deterministic world and can be predicted (in principle) from before I was born doesn't change this. I am as I was made and these are my desires. It is not the predictability which removes free will but restrictions on your ability to act differently, were your wishes and desires otherwise. If I were a slightly different person who had a distaste for alcohol I could choose not to drink. However if someone was controlling me like a robot, then irrespective of whether I wanted to drink or not I would do as controlled. Only in the latter do I lose free will.

Although one can of course choose a different definition (my point is essentially semantic), this has always seemed much better matched to my intuitive notion of free will and I've found it difficult to understand why others consider free will to require non-deterministic behaviour. I really struggle to see why anyone would worry about deterministic behavior, since it doesn't stop you from choosing to do what you want. In fact it is non-deterministic behavior I find tricky conceptually. I am now very used to the probabilistic determinism of quantum mechanics, but true non-determinism still seems like a very strange idea.

Recently I've been wondering if the difference between my view of free will and others might come from attitudes to morality. That would explain why I missed it, as I don't believe in any morality.

My perspective is very simple, maybe too simplistic. I only think in terms of empathy and never refer to any form of morality. There are things I don't like happening and want to stop, like murder, but I never consider them to be "bad" or the people responsible "evil", terms I'm not sure I even understand. If someone is killed I fell empathy for the victim and his/her family. I also feel empathy for the murderer who has probably just screwed their life up, and the murderers family too. The only reason I want the murderer caught and jailed is to prevent further murders, by protecting the public and deterring others. Perhaps this is silly and inconsistent in some way I haven't considered, if so feel free to let me know :).

Due to this attitude I rarely consider moral implications of determinism, but lets consider the consequences for morals from god. If you have a deterministic universe controlled by god, then, while all your actions may be free choices according to my definition, since god set things up such that there would be no possibility for you to behave any differently, god also appears to be responsible. So how god can then judge your actions against His moral code. Of course religion needn't assume determinism, or that god makes moral judgements and I think there are ways round this issue even if it does, though I won't continue the theological meanderings further.

I am simply wondering if this is the real issue behind the supposed conflict between determinism and free will. Do people really mean the ability to make bad moral decisions against the will of god? Otherwise I really can't fathom why any would have conceptual difficulties with living in a deterministic universe.

If you managed to make it through this tortuously ill informed post and want to enlighten me or point me in the direction of actual philosophical literature which explodes or explores the ideas here, please do.

Hawking, Mlodinow, the media and god.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have written a new book called The Grand Design. The publication of extracts from the book in The Times has unleashed a media storm with headlines like Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe and Why God Did Not Create the Universe.

First lets be clear that they are not saying God is ruled out. While most (but not all) articles managed to avoid claiming that, the lack of clarifying details , sloppy phrases used and tedious discussions about what this might mean for religions allowed exactly such a confusion to spread.

Phrases like "God did not create the universe" do appear in many newspapers, implying that any universe creating God is ruled out by science. This is not what Hawking (or Mlodinow) actually said. In phrasing it this way the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Daily mail, CNN, and many more are misrepresenting what Hawkings and spreading misinformation. Richard Dawkins, a famous science communicator, also seemed to have an exaggerated view bof the statements religious significance in a debate. Some newspapers, like The Telegraph and The Huffington Post, report "there is no need for a creator" much closer to what Hawking appears to have actually said.

The other big confusion spread by the press is that this is a reversal of Hawking's previous position. For example the BBC state

In his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time, Prof Hawking appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the Universe. "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God," he said.

apparently missing that Hawkings was using god in a metaphorical sense, and was not suggesting that a physical creator god made up part of his understanding of the universe.

The actual statement which does appear to originate from Hawkins and Mlodinow is:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

To me the god reference seems merely an attempt to express the grand scope of their claim. Hawking seems to think there is a now a theoretical framework which provides a satisfactory natural description of the universe coming into existence. Seeking natural models to describe physical reality is what theoretical physicists (religious, agnostic and atheist) do and from a science perspective this is a very interesting statement, and while I suspect I may not be as convinced as Hawking I nonetheless look forward to reading his view. But what about all the religious ruminations discussed in newspapers?

The first point to make, almost entirely absent in the newspaper coverage, is that Hawkins argument involves many elements not tested experimentally. Believers can still think that god created the universe without conflicting any observational evidence. They simply can't state there is no framework in science which could explain the universe existing to motivate their belief. Therefore there is still no inconsistency between science and a creator god.

Secondly God didn't really have a role in science prior to Hawking's statement, because to invoke god as a solution to existence involves infinite regression and of course makes no testable predictions. You may as well just postulate the universe exists as postulate god exists then created it. The absence of satisfactory physical model of how the universe came into existence motivates scientist to investigate the question, it does not motivate god. This does not mean one cannot believe in a creator god, but the motivation should not be the lack of a fully fleshed out competing theory.

So on the religion side nothing has really changed. But this has not stopped many angry responses from religious people. And for many others correcting these misunderstandings has been a huge distraction; Jon Butterworth paused while writing a paper to clarify the situation for channel 4 news.

So who is to blame? The press have certainly been irresponsible, both in misrepresenting Hawking and treating his words in a popular science book as prouncements of "What The Science Says", without ever wondering what scientific papers are behind the comments. So far it sounds like the media are entirely responsible, but it is difficult to be sure to what extent this was fed by a publicist promoting the book or even by the authors themselves. There is also the question as to what extent they explained that much of the physics used to construict this argument, like M-Theory is not confirmed experimentally. And while their words have be taken out of context perhaps Hawking and Mlodinow should have realised this might occur when they agreed to have the extracts published in The Times. I'll leave those questions to people who are more media wise than I am though.

Finally some brief, wild speculation on the physics. Since i don't actually know what the Hawking has really talked about in the book I am simply going to discuss some of the ideas which try to explain our universe and why I am skeptical that we really have a good explanation for everything. Sean Carrol made a nice video post trying to explain the physics which may have inspired Hawking's statement. My comments here are really tangential to this, based more on the idea of a theory of everything. Please read this with the 'rant' title of my blog in mind :) and remember I am talking a little outside my area of expertise now.

String theory is probably the best candidate for describing gravity at small scales, thus allowing a theory of everything. There is however an alternative of loop quantum gravity and also the possibility that we haven't invented the right model yet. M-theory is a unification of the 5 different types of superstring theories (the 'super' stands for supersymmetry, which is needed to describe matter as well as forces but don't worry too much about this) and a nice candidate for a theory of everything.

String theory now sadly seems to make few real predictions because there are 10^500 vacua with all kinds of different physics. Many string specialists talk about exploring the string landscape, and some think this is a positive development, but I find the lack of predictivity disappointing. Of course I am not a string expert and they might say I am missing the point.

Quite a long time ago Andre Linde proposed chaotic inflation where you have lots of "bubble universes" forming a multiverse. The model was not arbitrarily invented and was motivated by problems with the standard big bang theory. Unfortunately once again there are difficulties in testing many aspects of this model since the other universes are not observable. This model and the string landscape do fit together well and give a rather nice picture of how our universe might have appeared but the difficulty of testing these ideas remains.

Now if you hypothesise lots of possible physics in different universes then you can always end up with the features we need for life etc, even if the parameters look really fine tuned. Therefore some claim this is a "natural explanation" for all observable features of our universe.

However they are essentially invoking the anthropic principle (we are here and therefore our universe must have the parameters we require or we wouldn't be around to observe it). To me this is not an explanation, since it relies on an untestable hypothesis, much like god, to evade the question. This does not make the model wrong or even a bad idea, but I do not consider it a satisfactory explanation our universe without some experimental confirmation of the different universes, which seems to be a fundamental stumbling block.

Beauty, beliefs and GUTs

When I discuss a previous blog on the controversial topic of religion and science, the issue of belief without evidence sometimes comes up. Some people take the viewpoint that you should not believe in anything without evidence (I might caricature this as militant agnosticism :P), but this strikes me as a bit over constraining and does not really match how scientists actually behave.

Although we must try and objectively assess the evidence and make clear scientific statements about it, this does not mean we have to be opinion less about everything else. Indeed my experience of scientists is they are more likely to be opinionated (I am for sure ;) ) than opinion less. But even with regard to the science, when we are doing research at the frontiers of knowledge we do not yet have scientific evidence to know what will be the right approach, how nature will have solved the problem we are interested in. What motivates us in our work can be opinion based on our expectations about nature, and this is why different people look at different possibilities to solve the same problem.

In particle physics, for example, I have a (fairly dilute) belief in both Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) and Supersymmetry (SUSY). Others have a stronger belief, while some seem sure they are not realised in nature. Nonetheless everyone in the field knows that ultimately these are scientific theories which need to be tested. But where does our prior belief or theoretical prejudice spring from?

I have already talked briefly about motivations for supersymmetry so I will focus on GUTs here. As I previously discussed the Standard Model of particle physics describes three fundamental forces (strong, electromagnetic and weak) through gauge symmetries. The different forces have different 'strengths' by which the fundamental particles interact, and the fundamental particles are sensitive to different forces. Quarks, the particles which form hadrons like the proton and neutron, are sensitive the all three forces, while leptons, like the electron, to only the electromagnetic and weak forces. The fact that the strong force is much, well... stronger than other two explains why quarks are confined into hadrons and cannot be observed as free states.

So we have three (not counting gravity which is so weak we don't notice it) different forces with different strengths and fundamental particles which interact with different forces. This description matches the data incredibly well giving some of the most precisely tested predictions in all of science. But why do we have these different forces? Perhaps nature is simply like this, some scientists may well believe that is all there is to it. But for me this seems to leave nature looking rather arbitrary and messy.

Grand Unified Theories are a possible explanation for where these different forces come from. In these GUTs the different symmetries are embedded into a larger symmetry group which unifies all forces into a single unified one. All fields describing matter particles then transform together under this larger symmetry and interact via this single force. The different forces can then arise as a consequence of the breaking of this GUT symmetry. Additionally the larger symmetry of this gauge group means it has fixed charges, allowing for the possibility that the different values of electric charge we observe at low energies (unexplained in the SM) are fixed by the breaking of this GUT.

The simple elegance and beauty of Grand Unified Theories fits well into my expectations about nature. There is no proof that nature can be described in increasingly simple ways (the idea that it can is often called reductionism) but the aesthetic beauty of it appeals to me. As does my hope that I can explain or understand the forces and the electric charges we observe in nature.

This hope may seem in stark contradiction with the observation of three separate forces with different interaction strengths. However the vacuum is not empty but filled with 'virtual' particle and anti-particle pairs which are being created and annihilated and when particles interact across the vacuum such virtual particles are affected. For the case Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED) the positively charged particles in the vacuum are drawn closer towards a negative charge and vice versa, and this effectively screens the interaction strength from the charges between two particles separated across the vacuum. The further apart the particles are the weaker the interaction strength. Since how close together particles can get in collisions depends on how energetic they are, interaction strengths depend on the energy at which the interactions take place.

For more complicated symmetries describing the weak and strong force there is a similar effect, but one also gets anti-screening from the gauge bosons so that interactions interactions can either increase or decrease with distance depending on the particle content of the model. This is the basis for having quarks which are confined into colorless hadrons at low energies while behaving like free particles at high energies, known as asymptotic freedom, for which the 2004 nobel prize for physics was awarded.

This also allows for the possibility that the separate three forces we observe at low energies have a common interaction strength at higher energies. This possibility is precisely realised in models with Supersymmetry at the TeV energy scale (the scale we are probing at the LHC), as is shown by the red lines in the figure to the left.

To motivate Supersymmetry I previously described the hierarchy problem and pointed out that this motivates new physics at the TeV scale based on our lack of understanding as to how two unrelated masses could be tuned to be incredibly close, but not equal. While this is not a fundamental proof of new low energy physics it is at least a physical question which we want to understand and the Supersymmetric solution is very elegant and therefore in my mind compelling.

I am personally very attracted to this picture of a simple Supersymmetric Grand Unified Theory at high energies which as we move down to lower energies has some of it's elegant symmetry spontaneously broken, leaving us with the complicated set of massive particles with different interactions which we have already observed. I find this idea beautiful, fascinating and compelling.

Others do not find it so convincing, but that is fine. This does not make either them nor me poor scientists who misunderstand the evidence, we simply have different theoretical prejudices based on our expectations of nature. Ultimately questions like this will be resolved by data and this is what we excitedly await from the LHC.

In search of reason: Melanie Phillips

So previously I briefly blogged about a rather repugnant attempt by Melanie Phillips to use Dawkins mistakes to slur all of science. I wrote about her in a colourful hyperbolic way, hopefully reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, whose books I love. However as I acknowledged at the time this was not written in a way which would persuade any fans of Melanie Phillips or indeed anyone who did not already share my view of her. Let me address this now, because while my previous comments were cartoonish exaggeration, her writing is insidious and her suggestions dangerous.

We all remember the well known adage, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. And there is truth in this in the sense that words rarely represent any direct physical threat, and this is part of the reason we support freedom of speech. Nonetheless words do have power because they can persuade people to change their ideas, make different life choices and interact with each other in different ways. Words can guide the most important decisions we make, such as whether or not to go to war and whether or not to invest in hospitals to save lives. Melanie Phillips' words direct people in the wrong direction in this respect and as such could cause a lot of harm if taken seriously.

I hope that people are able to evaluate arguments when exposed to reason and favour the more rational, while discarding those which don't make sense. But it is only hope really, I can neither be sure that people will favour logic over exciting rhetoric nor even that producing increasingly rational justifications will lead to a "correct" answer. Nonetheless I do wish it to be true and suspect that a presentation of rational arguments at least helps.

Science, however, is something more than this. It is based on objective experimental evidence, with postulates which are linked to empirical predictions by rigorous mathematics. No matter how silver tongued and slick a theorist, like me, presents his or her ideas, if they are falsified by the evidence we know they are not realised in nature and reject them.

Melanie Phillips has her own ideas and she thinks they trump science. It doesn't matter that scientists say, based on evidential studies, that there is no basis to believe that MMR vaccine causes autism , based on isolated case studies and her wisdom, she knows better. It doesn't matter that intelligent design (ID) cannot be falsified because it makes no specific predictions and can fit any evidence, Intelligent Designers are making scientific arguments and ID came out of science. Evolution "is not a fact. It is a theory with holes in it." It is irrelevant what the scientific consensus is and what Britain's chief scientist states, Melanie knows that "there is no firm evidence that warming is happening; even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-made causes".

It is very difficult for people with science backgrounds to read Melanie's articles and not cringe. It is not just that she takes a contrary viewpoint on so many different issues, but the that she so forthrightly insists that the expert scientists are wrong and she is correct; her continued misuse and misrepresentations of scientific literature and her ridiculous claims that scientists are dogmatic and ignore evidence.

In addition to this she writes many articles on other subjects which I find offensive for non-scientific reasons. She frequently stirs up hatred towards Muslims, takes very strong pro-Israel stances and attacks not just those who take equally strong pro Palestine positions (which I would also criticise) but also moderate Jews who criticise some Israeli government policies (you can read her words first hand here and read the mission statement of the people she is insulting here). She also argues against gay rights, accused Obama of promoting revolutionary Marxism through community organisations and was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq.

It is ironic that I'm writing this to clarify why I dislike her after writing what should have been clearly exaggerated and comical description of her, and then read articles titled "Jews for genocide", which I do not believe was intended as a joke. I think she genuinely believes that criticising the Israeli occupation of Palestine and calling for human rights on both sides top be respected is equivalent to supporting genocide of Jews.

While I am sure there are many intelligent people who hold some (or all) of her political views I expect their arguments would be more nuanced and careful. Normally I would rather challenge those people rather than pick a soft target like Melanie Phillips because it is more interesting and intellectually challenging (and there is always the possibility they'd respond with something which changes my mind). To be honest I find what I have wrote here all rather obvious and boring, but felt the need to explain why I dislike her so virulently since a few people have asked me about this. So one time only, here you have it.

Anyone but England

Not posted in a while. Too busy, in part, because I've been watching the world cup in my spare time. A few Germans have asked me why I am not supporting England, while at the same time I've noticed some English people working themselves up into a fury when they find Scots cheering for their opponents, so I will talk about this.


When Andy Murray said he was supporting "anyone but England" (which he now claims was a joke) some were outraged. The Daily mail is apoplectic with rage at the selling of t-shirts with Murray's words as the slogan, with accusations of racism being thrown about. This sentiment is certainly based on the arbitrary nationality of the players but so is all support for your national team. Complain if you will that this is divisive and could encourage nasty nationalism, but please don't rant about Scotland fans supporting England's opponents while waving the England flag with a St George's cross painted on your face.

There are of course those who genuinely hate English people, but they are a very small minority and they don't represent the rest of us, just like English people who hate all foreigners don't represent the majority of England supporters. Beyond this there are many reasons why Scots don't support England.


The Media
In Scotland we broadly share a media with England and we watch the British/ English coverage of the world cup. The patriotic fervor built up in the newspapers and various sports comments are often over the top and jingoistic, especially in the build up to games with Germany and Argentina. The actual in game coverage is very England centric with the commentators making many references to England during the games and this can be annoying, especially (but maybe not only) if you are not English. The expectation that England should be the best team in the world and always succeed is ridiculously unrealistic (most o0f the time) and very annoying to constantly hear. Then when England play there is undoubtedly bias towards them from the commentators (true of Scottish commentators for Scotland games but not quite as bad), calling fouls when there was none and berating the other team for faking when they actually got clobbered. All of these complaints may well be true for most countries, but Scots don't have to listen it from them in order to follow the world cup or keep up to date with current events.

The Politics
There are large differences in political tendencies between Scotland and England, indeed between Scotland, Northern England, Wales and the South of England. It is the south if England which consistently votes conservative in large numbers and ensure that for Labour to get into power post Thatcher they had to move much further to the right. Since the all Tory MPs were vote out in Scotland in 1997 there has only been one constituency (Dumfries and Galloway) where the Tories have gotten an MP elected and this remains the case now that we have a Conservative government again. While of course only Tory voters can be blamed for this the geographical distribution of votes breeds resentment amongst Scots which can find release through sport.

Local Rivalry
I think above and beyond those motivations though it is just a local rivalry. Local rivalries are fairly common and Scotland definitely think of England this way, there even used to be an annual England-Scotland game. I doubt many Rangers fans cheer for Celtic when they are not playing each other, or vice versa, despite sharing a city. And I believe it is similar in England. Do Man City fans cheer for Man Utd? And I'm not sure how many English club fans cheer on their rivals English club rivals when they play in Europe

The History
Driving this rivalry is Scottish history. International football is about nationalism, as silly as that all is and England are the Auld Enemy. While English kids might grow up reading propaganda stories about Wellington fighting Napoloean or the great achievements of the British empire, Scots grow up with propaganda stories about Scotland fighting off the English to remain a "free" independent nation. Our heroes are William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie, all famous for wars with England. Our adopted national anthem, Flower of Scotland presumably references the battle of Bannockburn, one of Scotland's most famous victories over England.

So tomorrow I will be cheering on Germany and I can't understand why anyone would expect Scots to do anything else. But if this isn't enough for you and you still want to shout at me, call me bitter or fulliminate about how awful it is that we don't all support our fellow Brits, then in the words of Rab. C. Nesbit "Get it right up ye!"

Why God made YouTube

Recently I've been giving tutorials for Quantum Theory and since starting this blog I've been thinking a bit about physics communication. As a result I had a look at Leonard Susskind's lectures on Quantum Mechanics available on you tube and was reminded again just how nice they are.

I sometimes get annoyed with popular communicators in my field, though perhaps this is unfair because I am not their target audience. I might blog on my feelings on this at some point. However I have nothing but good things to say about Susskind's lectures and for non-physicists who really want to learn something I highly recommend them. They are not designed to teach undergraduates physics, but what he calls continuing students, apparently older students attending mostly from interest. They provide an incredible amount of insight with minimal (but seemingly sufficient) mathematics.

While I would never consider this minimal maths route appropriate for undergraduate students who need to really learn the mathematical techniques to understand derivations and perform the necessary calculations, as a supplement to a standard education these could be great and for people who are just interested in the subject this is one the few ways where you can really get the a proper understanding without actually going off and doing a physics degree.

All of the videos can be found at Stanford's you tube page and are linked from the wikipedia page on Leonard Susskind.

Melanie Phillips and Richard Dawkins

Melanie Phillips is a disgusting, puss filled, barely human wretch that every now and then crawls up from the underworld to spew faeces onto the pages of tabloid newspapers, magazines and sometimes our tv screens. Recently she wrote a vitriolic anti-science pile of poo here.

Normally I can't be bothered writing about such feeble minded drivel. I think mistakes like this are only worth discussing if there is a possibility I could be challenging an otherwise intelligent person's thinking. However what got my attention here me here is that she is using Dawkins' anti-religious rants to paint all scientists as irrational.

``For example, Professor Richard Dawkins' told me he was ‘not necessarily averse’ to the idea that life on earth had been created by a governing intelligence — provided that such an intelligence had arrived from another planet. How can it be that our pre-eminent apostle of reason appears to find little green men more plausible as an explanation for the origin of life than God?

The answer is that in certain areas science has overreached itself by trying to play God, and as a result has turned into an ideology.''

When I wrote my blog criticising Dawkins some people defended his inaccuracies saying they they wouldn't do any harm and they didn't understand why I was so annoyed. Well here is one reason why. It isn't the best example and I am sure there are plenty of others but i don't exactly read trash news very often and rarely get a chance to write about it, so I thought I'd take the opportunity here, along with a chance to try out a Hunter S. Thompson impression in the first paragraph.