WHY?

I recently watched a program on PBS “World Channel" about "the Meaning of it all”—those who ask “why” is there “something" out there vs. “nothing" out there.  The discussion featured two particle physicists talking with each other.

Expecting a substantive reply presumes the existence of a sentient (self-aware) creative force (“God”?) that possesses a reason for doing it a certain way.  “Because” is the expected answer.

“Because” further implies a detailed explanation for thus acting.  So far as I know, there is no “scientific” way to provide such an answer.  We may know HOW it wound up the way it is,  but not WHY.  Each of us is on his/her own.

Interestingly, this comes up often in the context of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), the quest to have computers mimic human thought.  I am personally skeptical and have been so at least since the early 1970s.  Sir Roger Penrose, the Oxford mathematician who published The Emperor’s New Mind about AI in the late 1980s and who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021, is also skeptical.  I struggled to read his book and did not understand much of it, but I got some “gist” about his thoughts on AI. 

In the early 1970s, while in law school, I was consuming rather large quantities of locally-grown marijuana ("Rockbridge Red”) and listening to “Firesign Theatre” (two of whom are now dead) comedy records.  Their album, I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus, features a trip to the “future” for a bus-load of Bozo clowns, all honking their “Clarabelle” (mixed-metaphor) horns every time the word “Bozo” is sounded.  (Yes, I know it’s puerile.  So what?  It was very funny at the time!)  One of their number, named “Clem,” is invited to an audience with "The President" who, by that time in the future, has evolved to be a computer with a canned voice that sounded strangely like Richard Nixon (also very funny)!  "The President” insists that "Clem” ask him any question; any question at all, and he (the President) will answer it!  So Clem asks, “Why does the porridge bird lay its egg in the air?”  And the computerized President has a meltdown!  BECAUSE (as a really stoned classmate immediately pointed out to me) a computer CANNOT answer a “why” question!  "The President” was completely done for.  As some character on the record yelled, “You broke the President, Man!” we howled with laughter.

I had been screwing around with computers since the mid-1960s and had NEVER thought of that before!  Roger Penrose never pointed that out, either, but I think it is instructive.  BECAUSE “why/because” can only be fathomed by a sentient intelligence that does NOT rely on some mathematical calculation to provide the answer.  In fact, I doubt mathematics (the functional guts of all computer programming) will ever provide such an answer.  Fashioning a motive, a “reason,” is a purely human act (I suspect).  I doubt that our dogs or cats worry about “why/because.”  I doubt that chimps, monkeys, whales, sharks, or alligators worry about it.  My own belief is that the Universe is eternal and infinite, and it has ALWAYS been the way it is, following AND ILLUMINATING the eternally established physical laws and requiring no one's initiating purpose or “reason.”  I could be wrong, of course.

But, I doubt it.  I think it is utterly pointless, even conceited, to dither over why “something” is “out there.”  Most likely, it just “IS."

See you on the fun-way!

12/17/21