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God's Debris
I like reading books that make me think, but not in the same way that I think when I'm at work or doing homework. When reading for pleasure, I want something that at first glance is so strange it's absurd, but at closer examination makes a tremendous amount of sense. That depth is the essence of Scott Adams' God's Debris, A Thought Experiment.
Adams is not known for writing super-intelligent commentaries on life, at least ones without a punchline or visual gag. Creator of Dilbert, his writing to this point has focused upon the world of cubicles and shifting organizational charts where engineers and management ('induhviduals' as he often calls them) square off in battles where the engineers are right and management is wrong. Very straightforward, enjoyable reading, but nothing compared to his latest work.
God's Debris was first published in May of 1999 as an e-book. It is sold by Digital Owl and can be purchased as bits for $4.95 or in hardcover wherever books are sold. The story focuses on both the physical laws of nature (relativity, gravity, the origin of the universe) and the psychology behind religion. The story is told by a fairly educated narrator talking to an unseen second character who seems to hold a deep understanding of the universe. As I read more, I found my own questions being raised by the narrator, and addressed by the other character. This arrangement makes for a very strange read, but the unusual format enhances the overall reading experience.
This book second guesses everything one learns in school, and comes close to succeeding. I cannot think of a single statement in the book that can be proven incorrect. To a college-educated reader like me, some of the assertions may seem totally ridiculous -- the problem is that they make just as much sense as Einstein's relativistic physics. In the introduction to the book, Adams observes the fact that ' ... the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be.'
The protagonist makes some very peculiar assertions throughout; My favorite is a statement he makes about the true nature of gravity, specifically that it is fueled by probability. The idea his advances is that all matter is constantly switching in and out of existence, and that is how objects move. The reason that matter appears to be attracted to other matter is that, according to the rules of probability, each piece of matter will inherently appear closer to massive objects the next time it comes back into existence. If you didn't understand that, and you'd like to, then you should read the book.
If you are a religious person, I can assure that this book will be disturbing. Although not told from an atheist point of view, the protagonist rejects the traditional view of religion. There are references to religious beliefs as 'delusions' only intended to allow the less-enlightened to live in relative peace in a world which has little. Taken as a whole, the views expressed can best be summarized ala Jesse Ventura, that 'organized religion is a crutch for the weak-minded.'
I'm purposely avoiding going into detail about the contents of the book. This is not only because a small piece doesn't make sense by itself, but also because most of the fun is in the discovery. Reading this book, you feel as if you are the first and only person to truly understand the world. I wouldn't want to spoil that for you. It's only 132 pages, broken up into very short chapters, and it can be read on your lunch break. I highly recommend it.
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And loved it. There's something in every chapter to make you think, and the source of the title, "God's Debris", left me stunned. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a complete "mind-job", and it contains a lot of new ways of looking at just about every aspect of life - from religious to physical to social.
READ IT.
That is all.
Last post!
I haven't read this book. However, Adams exposed his "serious writer" persona in the last section of "Dilbert Future", in which he talked about his personal observations on science and humanity. I found this section the weakest of the book -- it was poorly thought out and scarcely researched. Furthermore, Adams' smug writing style needs to be offset by humor in order to avoid seeming arrogant. Many of his claims about physics in "Dilbert Future" are easily disproven by anyone who can think critically. I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy this one.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It's hard to make any sort of statements on a book I haven't read... But that Gravity quote seemed sort of silly. It doesn't actually explain why matter inherently comes back into existence closer to large objects. Of course, there might be a lot more to the argument-- I wish more of it had been posted.
One might as well say that at an extraordinarily small scale, matter and energy actually consist of swarms of tiny carrier pigeons whose mating instincts are responsible for what we see as the peculiar behavior of the universe. Since nobody can really determine whether this is true or not, and the net result is that the explanation is as good as any other... Well, we should keep it in mind, I suppose, in case we ever find some way to prove or disprove it. But isn't there some old quote about a stampede of Zebras?
that's an astute observation, but it's an observation about a problem that you have, not a problem with Adams writing philosophy.
Liberty uber alles.
Several months ago I paid for and downloaded the DigitalOwl TitleVision ebook version of "God's Debris". I paid $5 for it.
I also downloaded the reader, installed it, and read the book, which was good. However, I didn't like the reader at all. So, using a screen capture utility, I took screen shots of all 90 pages of the book, saving them as .PGMs. Then I booted into Linux (I'd had to be in Windows to run the reader) and used gOCR and a shell script to do initial OCR conversion of all the images. Finally I spent a while with grep and a spell checker cleaning everything up. Overall, this took me about five hours.
Now I've got a 143KB ASCII text file with the same content as my 195KB encrypted .OWL file. I don't ever plan to give anyone a copy of my plain text version; I like Scott Adams and want him to get paid for his work.
If I assume that a professional "image -> OCR text -> corrected text" conversion specialist gets paid $10/hour, then the five hours it took me incurred about $50 in labor cost, bringing the total price to around $55. Not as cheap as the dead-tree version (<$15), but easier to grab quotes from. And of course I now have some valuable skills which I could use to help out Project Gutenberg.
I'm sure what I did would be considered illegal by Digital Owl (though probably not by Scott Adams). I'm just glad I won't have to try to hunt down a copy of the TitleVision viewer fifteen years from now just to read the book again.
And I'm glad that there's now a paper version so that most other people can obtain a less legally-encumbered version without having to do the grunt work I did.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
It's easy to make up 'theories' to explain phenomena... before Descartes and the Scientific Method theories were accepted based upon how good a story they were and how they appealed to various people -- reinforce existing beliefs and your theory is accepted. Descarte realized that hypotheses must be testable in order to decide if they're true or false.
...hmm and this idea has an implied conception of time that must be defined as well.
There are lots of neat ideas out there to explain various physical phenomena, but its hard to come up for tests for many of these... How would you test to see if matter is popping in and out of existence? What do you mean by existence anyway? What exactly does the word matter mean?
My point is, scientific facts must be tested and verified by experiment. Sure there are lots of other ideas that can't be tested.... but these fall in the same realm as religion and require faith. The so called Copenhagen interpretation is a prime example of this.
The Copenhagen interpretation claims that wave functions in Quantum mechanics collapse because they are effected by being observed by an intelligent observer. Supposedly you can see this by taking a large number of observations of photons or electrons or whatever and seeing the 'spike' from the wave function collapse. But wait, statistic's Law of Large Numbers says that if you take a large number of observations with random error you'll get this spike no matter what just because of the math - not because of some interaction between the particle and the observer.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This attitude is, of course, why a lot of writers have used pseudonyms. For example, if Charles Dodson had published Alice in Wonderland under his own name, it would have really discredited his mathematical publications in a lot of people's minds.
...
OTOH, I'd guess that Adams publishes such writings under his own name with the idea of publicly tweaking the dummies who pigeonhole writers. He would probably classify you as an "induhvidual",
and you'd deserve the name.
You should also read his "Dilbert Future" book. It's tremendously funny, and very serious at the same time. And he's starting to look like a real prophet already
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This book looks to be particularly dreadful, as it ignores the relative functional form of science. For instance, the review states that Adams believes that gravity is fueled by probability. It really doesn't matter whether he just made that up or it is the result of methodical analysis. Until Adams shows us how this 'new physics' can better send a rocket to Mars it is largely useless. Take a look at it this way. We have all sorts of alternative theories of gravity, most in an effort to reach a theory of Quantum Gravity. It each case, the authors try to find something that can be tested in a lab. For instance, we may generate black holes in the next generation of accelerators, and that will be interesting.
Some may invoke Thomas Kuhn and say I am being obstructionist. This is not the case. I am merely saying that it not so hard to write 128 of compelling fiction, and the fact that it is anti-establishment does not say anything about ir's correctness. It is true that many great discoveries were hard to believe. It is also true that most of these corrected severe defects in contemporary theory. We could not begin to simply explain the planets without Galileo. We could not explain black box radiation with Planck. We could not fully explain the planets without Einstein. Again, I want to see Adams tell us how to get to Mars faster.
I do have great respect for Adams. He is honest and straightforward about what he does and why he does it, much like Heinlein. He also has an ego bigger than Shatners, and it may be getting the best of him.
When Scott Adams first published God's Debris as an e-book, I refused to buy it because of the platform-biased and fair use-restricted nature of his chosen distribution technology. And I told him so. The conversation turned into a fairly in-depth conversation on the nature of e-publishing and software piracy. The results are on my web site as an e-mail exchange between us that he gave permission for me to post.
At least one person who has written me about the exchange felt that I gave up. I didn't really give up-- in fact I hadn't intended it to become a drawn out argument in the first place. But by the end I felt I had reached the point of diminishing returns-- it was clear that Scott didn't want to be convinced. I decided that the real argument would be won in the court of public opinion-- which was why I felt it important to end on a (superficially) conciliatory note and get him to give me permission to publish the discussion. If I had taken the last word, I think it unlikely he would have let me post our exchange.
To be fair, Scott made two points that bear further consideration:
1) E-books are not identical to executable software.
2) If free file sharing is ubiquitous, people will steal when it's easier than buying.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but briefly I would respond to both points by saying that non-executable media such as books, movies, photographs, and music need to have a new distribution infrastructure put in place where buying is actually easier than stealing, and quite cheap for the end user. I believe the future of electronic distribution will lie not in increasingly Draconian legal and technical barriers that fight against the paying customer, but in the ubiquitous availability of micropayments that make enjoying creative content painless and subject to the Free Market. I believe Scott would point out that that system isn't here yet.
In another unpublished conversation, Scott credits e-publishing in this matter with enabling him to land his print-based book deal. He's happy with the outcome.
Gandhi never said the Christian bible was any sort of manual for how to live. He did, however, esteem Jesus over any other historical/mythical/whatever person. I quote:
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
He saw the passion of Jesus as the ultimate act, and considered it the moment at which Jesus truly became human in sacrifice to God.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I know this is off topic and I will lose karma, etc.. but I need to get this off my chest.
Just because I need and use a crutch does not mean the crutch doesn't exist.
If I had a son that was totally dependent on me and "needed" me as a "crutch", does that prove that I do not exist?
Why couldn't a God create beings that need him?
I think Scott Adams and others will find that no matter how "strong" minded someone becomes, the intelligence does not eliminate the need for religion. There are blue collar who do not believe in God, and there are scientists who do not believe in God, just as there are blue collar who do believe in God and scientists who do believe in God. Strong or weak mindedness has nothing to do with it.
I find it interesting that a community that so strongly supports things like Napster and DeCSS so willingly condemns religion based on its misuse.
People commit murders all the time an account of such things as love and money; do you have a problem with those things as well? The fact that religion is often a motive for murder does not make religion in and of itself wrong or bad. Hinckley tried to kill Ronald Reagan for the sake of Jodie Foster. That does not mean Jodie Foster doesn't exist, nor does it mean the Jodie Foster Fan Club are inherently idiots.
I'd also like to point out that it was science and scientists that created those planes and buildings, not to mention those bombs, those poisonous gasses, those weaponized strains of virii, all those wonderful new ways to kill more efficiently and indiscriminantly. If we're going to attack the motive, let's not forget the method, too.
Cast the first stone, science.
The Marx statement is, I think, generally misinterpreted. Keep in mind that Marx made it in the early 19th century. At that point, opium was a key medical drug for relieving pain.
I don't really think that Marx meant to imply that religion put people into an unthinking daze in which they would be content with their situations. Rather, the focus was that such pain existed, in a social sense, and the fact that people needed something to help them deal with it was indicative of a real problem that needed to be addressed. In other words, the statement isn't a commentary on the merits of religion, but rather on the state of society.
(side note: if I recall correctly, I first encountered this interpretation in a book by Edward Hays)
If you truly have a difficult time taking Scott seriously, you haven't read any of his other (non-comic strip) books. In _The Dilbert Future_, especially, Scott reveals the depth of his intellect, and, more to the point, his great joy in tinkering with the established modes of thought. Scott likes to question not only social authority, but also our dogmatic approach to science. Even though I appreciate _Dilbert_ and the sardonic humor therewith associated (as someone else pointed out, BTW, Dilbert is _not_ satire, although some satirical elements do crop up from time to time), I enjoy even more Scott's critical give and take when he examines our beliefs and speculates on our future.
I don't expect Scott's style to appeal to or impress everyone. But don't make the mistake of dismissing him as a "mere cartoonist." In point of fact, it takes a fairly formidable intellect to generate graphic humor of this type, despite its superficial simplistic nature. I've examined a number of cartoonists in some depth, including Trudeau, Watterson, Breathed, Griffith, Sam Hurt (Eyebeam), and of course Adams. While most of them are egotists and some are rather disagreeable, all of them are quite intelligent.
While we can never really know with certainty what, if anything, can offer us spiritual salvation, I believe that the salvation of the earthly soul can be achieved through humor. With that precept firmly in mind, I celebrate Scott Adams and name him among my personal heroes.
As for the science vs. religion, I never understood the hypocricy of people who get angry about the past of religion's stupidity towards scientific discovery and the scientific method, yet then turn around and pull the same crap.
The intelligent reaction to religion's stupidty towards scientific discovery is to recognize that any belief that contradicts known facts is false, or at best, fantasy. Unfortunately, this renders Christianity into the realm of fantasy when taken literally. When not taken literally, the tenets of Christianity tend to become odorless, actionless, matterless, aetherial sort of things. That's how a rational person disagrees with religion.
Turning around and pulling the same kind of crap is when someone worships science. What a concept! True science is nothing but a bunch of facts. A good example is all of that eastern metaphysical shit that's in The Dancing Wu Li Masters, an otherwise good book. A lot of people "worship" the Theory of Evoloution, because they believe it's survival of the fittest, implying some sort of conscious choice.
This book sounds to me like a whole bunch of amusing psedoscience. Sure, perhaps it's meant to be taken seriously, or to make you question science, or something like that, and if that's true, well, then, to hell with it (I'm a proud scientist, thank you very much!). But it looks amusing. I'm interested. It sounds funny.
And to all the people lamenting Scott Adams' apparent lack of originality or creativity, this is sure gosh-darned creative.
I plan to give it a read, just because it sounds like a nice distraction.
Peace.