Archives for posts with tag: space

Hypogea

July 12, 2026 //
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‘Beneath the earth’, in Greek.

Prehistoric people have found shelter in caves. People recreating their experience still do.

Ancient people have started to built their own ‘caves’. The Nuraghe in Sardinia are a less known example. Yet just as impressive as the Egyptian pyramids, for example. Sardinia, an island, boasts more than 7000 megalithic structures, built some three and a half millennia ago. Egypt, a centralized empire stretching roughly 1500 km along the Nile, built a few humongous pyramids. Three of them still standing.
There’s no agreement about what the Nuraghe were built for. Meeting places, defensive purposes, symbols of any kind… Anyway, they were too small to serve as dwelling places for those who had built them.
You found out, and we learned from you, that the Egyptian Pyramids were tombs. Artificial caves used to shelter dead bodies.

So, prehistoric people have used natural caves as shelters. Learned from that situation and started building more or less permanent dwellings above the surface. Using, what else, ‘earthly’ materials. Wood, stone, clay and even animal hide.
Ancient people have continued this tradition. Continued to build houses. Houses to live in.

But also took this tradition one step further. Building oversized tombs for the ‘significant’ among them. Erecting ‘symbolic’ structures. The Stonehenge ‘thing’ is but one of the many examples crowding our memory.
Very soon they got back beneath the surface. The Nile Valley is dotted with three pyramids and hundreds, if not thousands, of tombs which had been ‘built to last’. Not to ‘transition’ the deceased body from this world and to ease the soul into the next one but to conserve both for the ‘resurrection day’. (Semi-permanent) houses for the dead versus transitional shelters.

Taking further this line of thinking, the Ancient People have been the first to make the symbolic distinction between being temporarily alive and striving for the eternal life. And they have materialized/objectified this difference by creating special places/spaces for each of these ‘stages’.
Dwellings for the living, mere holes in the earth for the regular dead and ‘eternal tombs’ for the ‘deserving’ amongst them.

Another step forward (?) was made by the Romans. The Ancient ones.
The Roman arenas – the Colosseum being the most famous one – had a ‘backstage’. Also called a Hypogeum. Simply because it was built beneath the ‘stage’. Beneath the place where the gladiators fought for their lives. Beneath the place where Christians were fed to the lions…

We’re almost sure you’ve already figured out what we want to convey.
That people do build spaces according to their ‘needs’. Real needs – shelters, homes and even regular tombs… And also symbolic needs. Temples of all sorts and denominations.
Each of these spaces being built to satisfy the purpose for which it was designed.
Neither of this places evade the natural laws while each of them underline the rules imagined by the builders, according to their goals.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, effective communication, evolution, In English, Rule of Law, skin in the game, teleology

Trapping.

November 5, 2025 //
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“WE ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON SOLVING PROBLEMS
FOR HARDWORKING AMERICAN TAXPAYERS”
“LEADER JEFFRIES“

(You might want to read my previous post before this one.
If you haven’t already done that, of course…)

Democrit’s atoms come with a clear cut set of rules. ‘Trapping’ them into a very predictable ‘future’. ‘If conditions are such and such, each of them atoms will do this and that’.
Furthermore, and as far as we know, that set of clear cut rules is valid everywhere. Was since the start of time and will remain valid for as long as the world will remain ‘as such’.
Our current understanding of the world – leaving aside various religiously motivated cosmogonies – actually depends on that set of clear cut rules being consistent over space and time.

At some point in time, and space, another set of rules had appeared. Even if we weren’t there to notice the event… Meaning that that appearance was a natural occurrence. We don’t yet know how that happened – not exactly, any-way – but we are satisfied that the first set of rules didn’t have to be broken in order for the second to appear. We consider that no miracle was necessary for life to happen. That happenstance and the first set of rules are a sufficient explanation.

This second set of rules is somewhat laxer than the first one.
It still traps those who have to obey it into a certain behavior but those respecting it enjoy a way wider ‘lee-way’ than Democrit’s atoms. The second set of rules makes it possible for evolution to happen.

While the individuals involved – atoms in the first case and individual living organisms in the second – don’t have any say in the matter, the first set of rules is consistent in space and time while the second one depends on the specifics of each region of the space and evolves in time.
Still trapped, but differently. The limitations pertaining to the first set of rules are drastic – life needs a very ‘narrow’ ‘window of opportunity’ in order to remain viable – yet the second set of rules ‘enshrines’ a certain amount of ‘individual freedom’. In the sense that individual living organisms do have a certain say when it comes to their own survival while the individual species have the ability to adapt to whatever changes happen where they have to survive.

Very recently – in the cosmological time-frame – yet another set of rules. Opening yet another space/place. Consciousness.
Not unlike a Matryoshka…, the first set of rules ‘opens’ the space where everything happens. Exists, but somehow ‘insulated’ when it comes to the passage of time.
The second set of rules opens a ‘narrower’ space. Narrower in the sense that life needs a very ‘narrow’ set of temperature, atmospheric pressure and the presence of certain substances. But a lot wider in the sense that the individuals involved have a certain autonomy and a certain sensitivity in the passage of time.
The third set of rules, the one opening up the space we call ‘consciousness’ is ‘written on the go’.

It does have a certain consistency.
For the simple reason that it is ‘written’ by statistically similar ‘authors’.
Take language, for example. One of the sub-sets belonging to the third set. It is shared solely by members of a single species, wielding more or less similar brains. OK, different languages have appeared in different geo-historical conditions but every human being who happens to be alive is potentially able to learn any of the languages ever spoken on Earth…
This third set of rules is usually referred to as ‘culture’. In the wider sense of the word. Information which is passed from one generation to the next one. Information which, shared among the members of the living generation, makes them conscious human beings.

I know, this is a startling manner of looking at things.
Please allow me to shed some light on the matter from another angle.
We have – we have noticed, more exactly – a ‘First Set of Rules’. FSR, let’s call it. Ingrained into the building blocks of the ‘real world’. Which rules will, hopefully, remain as they are for the entire foreseeable future… otherwise life, as we know it, will cease to exist in a jiffy.
We have also noticed, while attempting to understand ‘life’, a SSR. Second Set of Rules. Describing/making possible what we call life. Which life is, by nature/definition an evolving process. Hence the rules themselves not only allow a certain lee-way but also are bound to be rewritten whenever possible. Whenever the ‘altered version’ doesn’t jeopardize the survival of the individual harboring that version.
And whenever the accumulated alterations happen to be beneficial … a new rule is in place. Or a new species, according to the biologists.
The TSR is a work in process. A lot more so than the SSR. In the sense that each individual ‘rule’ – piece of information added to the corpus of work usually known as culture – has been put there teleologically. On purpose. Never fully aware of all the implications but always as the consequence of a conscious act.

This being the moment when I remind you that this blog is about “exploring the consequences of our limited conscience”.

https://books.google.ro/books/about/What_Evolution_Is.html?id=i8jx-ZyRRkkC&redir_esc=y

https://constructivist.info/1/3/091 regarding self awareness/consciousness

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Opening up

November 1, 2025 //
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“Weaver pointed out that the word “information”
in communication theory is not related to what you do say, but to what you could say.
That is, information is a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message”

Space is where ‘evolution’ happens.
Where interaction shapes whatever is.

For space to exist, something must be there. Space needs ‘limits’. Which define it.
‘There’s a gap between these two bricks’.
‘This pile of bricks blocks the way’

‘Space’ is, simultaneously, a place, a concept and a word.
We, writing and reading about it, exist. Somewhere. Somewhere in ‘space’…
We’ve realized that. That we exist. Hence we came up with the concept.
We needed to share that knowledge. To discuss it. We needed the word!

A wise man, using tools crafted by his predecessors, has calculated that whatever exists in space shapes its form. The heavier the object, the deeper the dent.
Which depth of the dent influences the flow of time…

Time… the metric we use to measure ‘evolution’. The order and speed of happening…
Time… Another ‘thing’ which exists, simultaneously, as a ‘reality’, a concept and a word.

Einstein, the wise man with the calculus, did his thing trying to understand. To put together an explanation for everything.
Reading his findings, the results of his calculating, we can push our imagination.
How about switching time for space?

How about considering ‘time’ as being the place where events exist? Interact, producing the ‘space’ needed for that process?
Where the ‘weight’ of events, their ‘importance’, shapes the form of time. Which form of time influences the space ‘becoming’ as a consequence of those events existing/interacting in the place called time…

My point being …
You see, Einstein’s predecessors had developed what we call ‘mathematics’.
Our predecessors, also called ‘ancestors’, had developed a thing called language. Used it to communicate.
Among themselves, as individuals, and among themselves – as a cultural species – and the surrounding reality.
Language as the tool we use to digest and reshape the reality… Before we ‘do’ anything, we think about it. Using language to parse pertinent information stored in memory. Using language to consult with others. Using language to coordinate with others…

One of the languages we’ve developed is mathematics.
Einstein, using this language, reached a ‘conclusion’. Wrote a story. Others call it a theory.
Convincing enough for interested people to try. To try to prove it, to try to disprove it. To attempt to implement it into practice…

We exist.
In space, using whatever resources we can identify and building time as a consequence of our actions. We do this using language. To explore, think and coordinate.
That’s how we’re calling things. Space is where things happen and time is the ‘conclusion’ of whatever we do. Mathematics suggest that time and space are interchangeable.

So what?!?

Have we already solved all our immediate problems?

After all, we’re the only adults in the room. In the limited space called planet Earth.
Or, at least and for all that it might matter, we’re the only adults in the room who care. Who should care about our own fate…
Time’s running out, faster on the route we’re currently using!

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Temperature

August 3, 2025 //
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Where things take their places

In 1995, University of Colorado Boulder physicists observed BEC, a fifth state of matter that only exists within a sliver of absolute zero. At such a low temperature, individual atoms overlap so much that they collapse into a single quantum state where they collectively act as a single entity.

Positing that ‘space is where things happen’ is nothing short of stating the obvious.
It does have some merit, though.
It leads to the real subject of today’s post.

When no temperature is present – 0 degrees Kelvin – there’s no interaction between the things which happen to be there.

So whose temperature are we measuring?

The temperature of the space? Of the place harboring whatever happens there? Or not…
The temperature of the things happening to be there?
Or the amount of interaction between the things populating that place?

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Categories complementary ways of attending knowlege, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, re-definitions

Where?

April 2, 2024 //
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What? When? Where?
Opportunity Evolving in Time.

‘OK, I can accept the concept of opportunity evolving in time.
After all, the whole thing is nothing but a truism.
Opportunity is fluid by definition. Evolution is its natural destiny. And time is the natural consequence of evolving opportunity.
But where does this whole process take place?!?’

In our heads, where else….

Opportunity, evolution, time and, yes, ‘space’ are concepts.
Ideas coined by us, conscious human beings acting as thinking agents who use contextualized observation to further our understanding of what’s going on around us.

‘Huh?!?’

Consciousness is a state of mind.
A mind is like an AI machine. Something more than a live brain but not yet a wake, conscious, entity.
The closest thing to a ‘mind’ is a sleeping human conscience. Sleeping – hence not doing its ‘thing’ – but able to be awaken. Able to do what it’s capable of doing.
A brain is nothing but hardware. A mind is like a computer. Hardware and software put together. The only difference between a mind and a computer is that a mind is an expression of natural evolution while a computer is an expression of human ingenuity. Another thing minds and computers have in common is that both need a will to start them. To point their attention towards a goal.
This being where consciousness takes over. A mind which is aware of its own ‘wokeness’ is a conscious mind. It can pay attention, do things and generate meaning.

‘Hardware, software, natural evolution… aren’t you throwing too much ‘content’ into a single post?’

I’ll try to keep it simple.

We, humans, are the pinnacles of ‘natural evolution’. According to our interpretation of the information we have gathered until now.
As you already know, a pinnacle is a small thing perched on top of something way bigger. And for pinnacles is far easier to notice other pinnacles than to perceive what lies under them.
Our bodies – including our brains – depend on what’s going on ‘beneath’ us. In fact, ‘our’ whole world – the world we depend on, the one we live in – is working ‘in the back ground’.
Yet most of the time we’re interested only in what the other ‘pinnacles’ are doing… ‘Cause they are the ones which grab our attention!

Well, the ‘cool’ fact is that this is only ‘natural’.
In the sense that this is how we’ve become human in the first place. That’s how our minds got their ‘software’.
We’ve learned self-awareness by interacting with other human beings. We’ve built our culture by remembering the lessons learned by our ancestors. And we’ve built our civilization in concert with our brethren.
Individually, we may know little. But together we can move mountains. As we did.

And got cocky.
Our success has narrowed our attention span.

Somewhere inside the book which metaphorically recounts how we’ve learned self-awareness – the Bible – Mark, one of the evangelists, quotes Jesus:
“Because of your unbelief; for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place,’ and it shall remove. And nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
I’m not a psychologist. But I find this idea as being very explicit regarding the manner in which our minds work.
We cannot start anything, in a voluntary manner, before ‘believing’ in the outcome. We need to have ‘faith’ in that action. No matter how simple.

How do we get that faith?
We don’t get it, it’s being built into our conscience during the process. Continuously.
There are two factors which build our faith. Experience and reason. Past interactions we had with the wider world and the meaning we’ve derived from them. Putting it bluntly and oversimplifying things, based on previous experienced we convince ourselves, involuntarily, that it was us who were entitled to claim the merit for what had happened. Either we’ve done something right, ‘believed’ in the right things/gods or both at the same time.

Up to not so long ago, we have evolved in a religious manner.
In the sense that faith was shared amongst us. We used to share a ‘core faith’. That things not only work in a certain manner but also that things should go in a certain direction.

Success has changed that.
We’ve become so confident in our ability to generate meaning that we have emptied what’s left of the core faith.
We, the pinnacles, have reached such heights that we’re no longer aware of our link with the rest of the mountain. We’re racing ourselves for the top forgetting that we need fuel and spare parts. That our very racing completely changes the ‘racetrack’. For better or for worse…

And everything described here takes place inside our heads!
Happens inside our heads and changes, through our actions, the very world which keeps us alive.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

2.5

March 4, 2024 //
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Life needs ‘thickness’.
As suggested in the drawing above, if animals had only two dimensions they would have had to make do without any digestive systems.

Hence we live in a 3 dimensional environment.
But we, the only fully conscious beings on Earth, live ‘on a surface’.
We’ve learned to fly rather late in our evolution. Most of us behave as if able to fully process only two and a half dimensions. We make good use of height and length, the things we ‘face’, but depth is rather tricky for most of us.
OK, we’ve climbed up and down trees and mountains since only ‘god’ knows when but we’re basically runners. And runners run on a surface. Runners run along a mostly linear trajectory which happens mostly on a surface. This whole thing takes place in a three dimensional environment, true, but our ‘running’ nature has left some influences on the way we think.

The most obvious one being the discursive nature of our reasoning. We start from ‘premises’, go along a logical path and end up with conclusions. We very much like the things which fit into a narrative. And we hate going back to reconsider our ways.

Since Einstein has noticed that things were ‘relative’ – to the manner in which we measured them – we have started to add dimensions. To the previously 3 dimensional environment into which we used to live.
The first dimension which had been added was time.
Nowadays, many scientists believe that ‘the universe operates with 10 dimensions but 6 of them are very tiny‘.

I’m not going to contradict them. For the very simple reason that I don’t know – and don’t care – about the other 6. Dimensions. I’m sure that they are out there, somewhere, and that those who have discovered those dimensions knew what they were doing.

What I’m going to do is to propose a new manner of counting. ‘Dimensions’.
Redefine them, first, and only then (re)count.

What do you think about mass? Is is a dimension?
How about energy? ‘White’ (aka ‘visible’), ‘dark‘ … whatever…

Since the ‘jury is still out’…

I’m going to pause the narrative here to make a point.

‘The jury is still out’ means two things.
The obvious and the one which stops us from sleeping at night.
The fact that the jury – us – hasn’t (yet) been able to fulfill the task.

Back to our main thread.

How about we return to our good old 3 dimensional Universe?

Where space is what separates ‘things’, time is what separates ‘events’ and opportunity is what sets the stage for ‘things’ to evolve into ‘events’?

Easier said than done?
In the sense that it’s very easy to put it into words but there’s no mathematics available to describe in ‘absolute’ terms what I’ve just narrated?
They key word hasn’t been mentioned in the phrase above.
There’s no mathematics available yet…
The mathematics used by Einstein to demonstrate his theories wasn’t available to Newton…
Mathematics – a form of artificial language – is invented by those capable to do that as soon as the opportunity arises.
As soon as there’s a need for new ways to express new perceptions of reality.

And no, don’t expect me to come up with new mathematical expressions of anything.
I’m no artist. I have enough trouble expressing my using with mere words.

Since this post is about dimensions, not about my limitations, I’ll end up remembering the three (meta?) dimensions. In a more ‘natural’ order.

Opportunity.

Anything which makes things possible.
Mass – visible and/or dark, energy – visible and/or dark – and anything else which ‘works’ in this sense.
I’m going to make a second – and a lot shorter – ‘transgression’ here and remind you how ‘relative’ things are. How right Einstein was. We speak about visible matter being “normal” and about “dark” (invisible to us) energy/matter having to exist in order for us to be able to make sense of the Universe as we are able to perceive.

Space

Whatever it is that separates, and also harbours, ‘islands of concentrated opportunity’. Mainly ‘mass’ but who knows (yet) what else might be ‘separated/harboured’ by space. Energy – as we know it, is somewhat distributed ‘along’ space rather than ‘separated’ by space.

Time

Whatever it is that separates, and also sequences, events. Happenings.
‘Notable’ ‘intersections’ between matter and energy.
Here, again, we have a difference between matter and energy. While matter seems to ‘survive’ better ‘in time’, energy seems to be more ‘vulnerable’ to the passage of time. Entropy….

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, physics, Psychology, skin in the game, yes but

Space as a place

April 29, 2020 //
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Nothing will ever happen unless:

– There’s enough, and suitable, space.
– There are enough, and suitable resources. In that place, of course.
– Something starts it.

Trivial?

Good!
What you’ve just read being trivial for you only means you’ve already figured this out.
That you cannot master anything
– which happens outside your consciousness,
– you don’t really understand,
– you haven’t set your mind on.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, man as a measure for all things, Psychology, skin in the game

Manicheism

September 21, 2018 //
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“….a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark…..”

“And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil”  Genesis 3:22

Light and Dark, Good and Evil… sets of two different things which exist by themselves but make no sense until somebody sees the difference between them.

A wall has two sides.
A room – four walls with a floor and a roof, determines an inside and an outside. Because the walls have two sides and because somebody built it.
A room is empty when nobody is inside it and ‘disappears’ when nobody remembers its existence. Even if its walls continue to stand …

Two points are distinct if there is some space between them.
Two points belong to the same line if the distance between them is full of other points.

Matter is discrete.
Even atoms, which have long been considered as impossible to be divided further, are constituted of smaller components. Electrons, protons, neutrons, … quarks… all the way ‘down’ to quanta …
All this discreteness is made possible by space.
Which simultaneously encompasses each of the discrete pieces of matter and separates them.

On the other hand, matter is discrete in yet another manner. In time.
Manny trees live longer than us and mountains last way longer than trees.
Yet nothing is forever. Nor have existed for always. Not our Sun nor even the small pieces which inhabit the subatomic world.
Each piece of everything comes into existence and decays into oblivion.
Each organism is born into this world and eventually dies – releasing its components for further use.
All this discrete becoming being made possible by time.
Which simultaneously encompasses and separates each event.

Similarly to the aforementioned room, neither matter, space or time makes any sense on its own. Not even together.
They might exist but they have no significance until noticed.

By us, by God…

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Categories Bounded rationality, collective identity, evolution, physis

small Bang.

February 13, 2015 //
3

“Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.”

Ever since Man became aware of the world around him he tried to find explanations for each and every individual occurrence that  grabbed his attention.
Eventually he became aware of the various links that exist between ‘things’ so he started to look for a ‘theory of everything’.
Right now Man seems stuck in the middle of the road.
I’ll assume the presumptuousness of my proposal but what about getting out of this sink hole by giving up mathematics as the main tool of investigation into the matter?
After all mathematics is nothing but just another language. A special kind of language, OK – a lot more precise than all the others, but still a language – nothing but another medium for rational thinking. And just as it happens in any medium/language, nothing can be expressed in that medium before it has been ‘grappled’ with the mind.
Of course that I don’t propose to give up mathematics altogether, that would be both ludicrous and absolutely inefficient.
The problem with our over-dependency on mathematics is that we no longer think first in words/concepts and then translate those into mathematical equations for verification but proceed the other-way around. We first ‘do our math’ and only then try to describe with words whatever imaginary place we have arrived at by using calculus. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Specially if one looks at it from this angle…
So what do we know about this so called Big Bang?
– Planck says that things cannot be divided further than 1 quantum.
– Heisenberg says that we cannot calculate anything with absolute precision.
– Einstein says that everything is tied together – ‘relative’ to each other.
– Stephen Hawking demonstrated – using calculus, of course – practically the same thing as Einstein when he convinced us that black holes are not exactly one way highways to nowhere. The implication of what Hawking says being that the ‘known’ Universe is somehow encapsulated towards the rear and has only one ‘open side’, the one that faces towards the ‘future’ – whatever that means.
And we still look desperately for a precise description of what happened during and even before the ground/moment 0… Really?!?
How about adopting a more practical attitude and accepting that each level of organization implies a certain amount of “in-determination”, the equivalent of those demonstrated by Heisenberg for the sub-atomic ‘world’ and by Schrodinger for ‘cats’ in general?
Maybe this way it would be easier for us to accept not only that we’ll never be able to find out what existed before the ‘Big Bang’ (if anything even imaginable in our terms) but also that it would be absolutely useless – my hunch being that we cannot ‘go back’ completely through a ‘layer’ of in-determination. A plastic analogy would be that we can see through a soap bubble but we cannot actually cross it and a more scientific one that Hawking taught us how to calculate what happens inside a black hole but never advised us to go there and check for ourselves…

And now, that we have reached this point, here is my scenario for what happened during … call it what you like.

At first there was nothing. No space, no time, no matter/energy of any kind.
‘Nothing’ in the sense that everything that existed – and that still exists – was so ‘indiscriminate’ as to be completely uniform. The pure bred scientists would use ‘congruous to itself’ to describe this state. Amorphous would be a very weak term for what I have in mind.
White light is a very pointy thing while pitch black is a lot more than its opposite. Light creates shadows, black creates opportunities. There can be ‘nothing’ between a light source and the observer while absolutely everything can hide in the dark.
That was that existed ‘before’. An immense ‘black nothing’.
Everything started/changed when the first ‘symmetry’ crashed in shatters – and who really cares about the ‘why’ of the matter since there was, by definition, no possible cause for anything, for nothing existed yet? I don’t know which symmetry and, again, I don’t really care. For me it is enough that from then on the continuous nothing became divided into ‘quanta’ that started to simultaneously aggregate furiously among themselves and disperse wildly.
The aggregation process gave birth to what we now call ‘things’ (mater, energy) while the ‘dispersion’ gave birth to both space and time.

Coming back to where we started from – ‘math can explain only what happened…’ – I must remind you that math cannot explain anything. Only people can do that, including through the use of ‘math’.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html#jCp
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Categories physics, physis, The kind of world we live in