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“Bone conduction technology.
“And so as a programmer, I have to ask myself: What kind of bizarre operating system would create such illogical output? If we could look into the human mind and read its operating system, we would find something like this.” Four words appeared in giant text overhead. DESPISE CHAOS. CREATE ORDER.
Our predisposition to organization is written into our DNA, and so it should come as no surprise to us that the greatest invention the human mind has created is the computer—a machine designed specifically to help us create order out of chaos.
“For the human brain,” Edmond explained, “any answer is better than no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with ‘insufficient data,’ and so our brains invent the data—offering us, at the very least, the illusion of order—creating myriad philosophies, mythologies, and religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world.”
“The age of religion is drawing to a close,” he said, “and the age of science is dawning.”
bestselling book The God Particle
THE BIG PICTURE FORCES OF NATURE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS OUR FINAL INVENTION
Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
One day you’ll tear this down. As king, Julián knew he would probably not have
massive cupola. Rumored to have more total square footage than St. Peter’s in Rome, the underground mausoleum
Jeremy England’s theory, if Langdon understood it correctly, was that the universe functioned with a singular directive. One goal. To spread energy.
we may be surprised to see so many examples of molecules organizing themselves.”
“All of these,” England said, “are examples of ‘dissipative structures’—collections of molecules that have arranged themselves in structures that help a system disperse its energy more efficiently.”
“Simply stated,” England continued, “matter self-organizes in an effort to better disperse energy.” He smiled. “Nature—in an effort to promote disorder—creates little pockets of order. These pockets are structures that escalate the chaos of a system, and they thereby increase entropy.”
To efficiently create chaos, Langdon realized, requires some order.
“As it turns out, life is an exceptionally effective tool for dissipating energy.”
“A tree, for example, absorbs the intense energy of the sun, uses it to grow, and then emits infrared light—a much less focused form of energy. Photosynthesis is a very effective entropy machine. The concentrated energy of the sun is dissolved and weakened by the tree, resulting in an overall increase in the entropy of the universe. The same can be said for all living organisms—including humans—which consume organized matter as food, convert it to energy, and then dissipate energy back into the universe as heat. In general terms,” England concluded, “I believe life not only obeys the laws of
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If deep-ocean sulfur vents created areas of boiling water, life would materialize in those locations and disseminate the energy.
“It is my hope,” England added, “that one day we’ll find a way to prove that life indeed spontaneously emerged from lifeless matter…a result of nothing more than the laws of physics.”
Fascinating, Langdon mused. A clear scientific theory of how life might have self-generat...
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entire operating system of the cosmos could be summed up by a single overriding command: spread energy!”
“DNA,” Edmond announced, freezing the model midframe. “There it is. DNA—the basis for all life. The living code of biology. And why, you ask, would a system build DNA in an effort to dissipate energy? Well, because many hands make light work! A forest of trees diffuses more sunlight than a single tree. If you’re an entropy tool, the easiest way to do more work is to make copies of yourself.”
magical…Darwinian evolution took off!” He paused for several seconds. “And why wouldn’t it?” he continued. “Evolution is the way the universe continually tests and refines its tools. The most efficient tools survive and replicate themselves, improving constantly, becoming more and more complex and efficient. Eventually, some tools look like trees, and some look like, well…us.”
Edmond now appeared floating in the darkness of space with the blue orb of earth hovering behind him. “Where do we come from?” he asked. “The truth is—we come from nowhere…and from everywhere. We come from the same laws of physics that create life across the cosmos. We are not special. We exist with or without God. We are the inevitable result of entropy. Life is not the point of the universe. Life is simply what the universe creates and reproduces in order to dissipate energy.”
The Seventh Kingdom. Awestruck, Langdon watched as Edmond delivered the news to the world, describing an emergent kingdom that Langdon had recently heard about in a TED Talk by digital-culture writer Kevin Kelly. Prophesied by some of the earliest science-fiction writers, this new kingdom of life came with a twist.
“What you are seeing here is a rare evolutionary process known as obligate endosymbiosis,” Edmond said. “Normally, evolution is a bifurcating process—a species splits into two new species—but sometimes, in rare instances, if two species cannot survive without each other, the process occurs in reverse…and instead of one species bifurcating, two species fuse into one.”
New technologies like cybernetics, synthetic intelligence, cryonics, molecular engineering, and virtual reality will forever change what it means to be human. And I realize there are those of you who believe you, as Homo sapiens, are God’s chosen species. I can understand that this news may feel like the end of the world to you. But I beg you, please believe me…the future is actually much brighter than you imagine.”
wisdom of Churchill, who warned us: ‘The price of greatness…is
responsibility.’ ”
Edmond closed his eyes and spoke slowly, with startling assurance. “May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies. May our compassion keep pace with our powers. And may love, not fear, be the engine of change.”
Stephen Hawking materialized on the wall, his unmistakable computerized voice proclaiming, “It is not necessary to invoke God to set the universe going. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing.”
“Evolution favors religion,” a minister was saying. “Religious communities cooperate better than nonreligious communities and therefore flourish more readily. This is a scientific fact!” The minister was correct, Langdon knew. Anthropological data clearly showed that cultures practicing religions historically had outlived nonreligious cultures. Fear of being judged by an omniscient deity always helps inspire benevolent behavior.
The laws of physics alone can create life. Edmond’s discovery was enthralling and clearly incendiary, but for Langdon it raised one burning question that he was surprised nobody was asking: If the laws of physics are so powerful that they can create life…who created the laws?!
Human intellect has always evolved by rejecting outdated information in favor of new truths. This is how the species has evolved. In Darwinian terms, a religion that ignores scientific facts and refuses to change its beliefs is like a fish stranded in a slowly drying pond and refusing to flip to deeper water because it doesn’t want to believe its world has changed.”
words of our countryman Jorge Santayana—” “ ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’
“And history has proven repeatedly that lunatics will rise to power again and again on tidal waves of aggressive nationalism and intolerance, even in places where it seems utterly incomprehensible.”
I’ve had the gut sense that there’s a consciousness behind the universe. When I witness the precision of mathematics, the reliability of physics, and the symmetries of the cosmos, I don’t feel like I’m observing cold science; I feel as if I’m seeing a living footprint…the shadow of some greater force that is just beyond our grasp.”
Love is not a finite emotion. We don’t have only so much to share. Our hearts create love as we need it. Just
ABUNDANCE: THE FUTURE IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR
The art is in knowing how to ask.
Blake was a deeply spiritual man, morally evolved far beyond the dry, small-minded Christianity of eighteenth-century England. He believed that religions came in two flavors—the dark, dogmatic religions that oppressed creative thinking…and the light, expansive religions that encouraged introspection and creativity.”
Langdon now saw a stream of images in his mind—Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids, the Ajanta Caves, Abu Simbel, Chichén Itzá—sacred sites around the world where ancients had once gathered to watch the very same spectacle.
