Lehi and Fermions

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
– 2 Ne 2:11

If you swap the position of two electrons, you multiply the wave function by -1. If we have two electrons in the same place (remember, they act like waves: it’s like playing two notes at the same time) and we assume those two electrons are spinning the same direction, then we can’t distinguish the state before swapping their positions (since they’re the same position) from the state after—the wavefunction has to stay the same. The only function that stays the same when you multiply it by -1 is the constant function that maps every number to zero. That wavefunction describes a state with no electrons at all! So you can’t have two electrons spinning the same way and in the same place.

This is why there’s such a thing as chemistry. You can only fit two electrons close to a nucleus before all the states are taken: this is why we have two elements, hydrogen and helium, at the top of the periodic table. Out a little farther, there’s room for three more pairs: we get lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, oxygen, fluorine, and neon on the next row.

Electrons can pair up into “Cooper pairs” when you lower the temperature enough. Swapping electrons two at a time multiplies by -1 twice—that is, it does nothing. So you can have as many Cooper pairs in the same state as you want. Materials in which Cooper pairs form are called superconductors, and Cooper pairs are examples of Bosons.

If matter were only made of bosons, all the electrons would fall into the same state and be “one body”. If such a universe could manage a Big Bang, matter would immediately begin to condense into black holes; there would be no stars or planets, no light except the tremendously dim glow of Hawking radiation. Black holes would join and fuse until the entire universe was a single black hole. When the big black hole died, the universe would consist only of random thermal vibrations.

Hoist that Rag

Well I learned the trade
From Piggy Knowles
Sing Sing Tommy Shay Boys
God used me as hammer boys
To beat his weary drum today

Hoist that rag [2x]

The sun is up the world is flat
Damn good address for a rat
The smell of blood
The Drone of flies
You know what to do if
The baby cries

Hoist that rag [2x]

Well we stick our fingers in
The ground, heave and
Turn the world around
Smoke is blacking out the sun
At night I pray and clean my gun
The cracked bell rings as
The ghost bird sings and the gods
Go beggin here
So just open fire
As you hit the shore
All is fair in love
And war

Hoist that rag [4x]

Moroni knew the Title of Liberty was the only rag worth hoisting, and was ready to lay down arms at the slightest chance. I think he would agree with the sentiment of the song above.

King Arthur talk

Here’s a talk I gave before leaving New Zealand back in 2004.

Aidan just spoke on the “stripling warriors” that followed the prophet Helaman (Alma 56); we might call them his knights. I’d like to talk today about the symbolism of knighthood, and how it applies in our lives.

The Latter-Day Saint poet Michael Collings wrote “Epyllion in Anamnesis,” a collection of several poems comparing Joseph Smith to King Arthur. Here are four of my favorites.

Arthur is said to have been born on the winter solstice; Joseph was nearly born then, too:

The Solstice-Born

Nearly so, so nearly cusped against the back
Of summer, breast of winter–for perfected
Symmetry but two days lacking;

Sufficient, though, in one who bore no need
Of incarnational symbology–
And near, so near the winter Seed

That sprouted prefigurements and completion.
Solstice-born, he who adds, who would add,
Who will add through his subtraction

Present absence, absent presence.
Ice ridges and wolf cries welcomed him
Pine boughs and wood smoke offered incense,

Nearly so, so nearly cusped against the breast
Of balanced winter-year, ice-crystal kissed.

Whereas Arthur had Excalibur, the sword whose wielder could never know defeat, Joseph was armed with the word of God, “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” (Heb 4:12) and was promised by the Lord that “there is no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper.” (Isa 54:17; D&C 71:9)

Taliesin Considers Excalibur

It was no woman’s arm that bore his sword
Weeping upward from an ice-placid lake
To arm him for blood-battles yet to come–
His weapon wore the biting edge of words.

It did not come to him, this life-shield sword,
Sweeping upward from still, watery rest;
He dug for it, removed it from its stone store-
Place, redeemed it with his warm, breath-locked words.

It was no glistering, steel-shaft faerie sword
Sleeping sightless, beyond Time’s history;
His the vision, the graver mystery,
That from archaic dust formed sun-sharp words.

It was no woman’s arm that wore his sword–
His weapon bore the biting edge of words.

Arthur built Camelot; Joseph built Nauvoo. They laid the cornerstone of the temple on the hill; it took many years to build, and persecution mounted during the entire time they were there. The Lord sent the Twelve on missions during a time when Joseph was besieged by enemies and nearly all had sick families or were sick themselves.

Taliesin Witnesses the Commission to the Table

Twelve rose from his table, knelt to receive
His blessings, faded into waiting night
Leaving him alone to raise white walls, save
The City from flowing onslaughts of hate;

Twelve stole their way to the grey cornerstone
Lying dust-shrouded, belying blood-spoor toil
To roll it from earth-shadows without stain;
Twelve prayed, departed, questing for their Grails–

They would win strong workers for the City
In distant kingdoms. Twelve families lay ill,
Some dying, all hoping. From the jetty
Arthur stared unblinking Eastward. A pall

Darkened low hills…but he saw only Dawn–
New Sunrise–and twelve Table-Knights’ return.

Just as Mordred destroyed Camelot, the temple was hardly built before it was burned, the Saints were driven from Nauvoo, and Joseph was killed.

Arthur’s Great Hall

It was to be perfect…the perfect place:
Sun-stones, Star-stones, Moon-stones, Spire-columns to
Pinion Earth to Sky, pull Time down, embrace
Vast space between Here and Eternity;
It was to be his citadel: marbled
Mountain cresting his City’s future folds;
It was to house his chosen Knights’ Table,
Without Beginning and without an End;

It was…and was not. Even before walls
Rose sunset-high, before roof sparkled with
Dew, before squared pillars bore weight of ills,
His City lay beleaguered by black wrath,
His perfect place lay flayed as Evil’s home…
And he lay silent in his secret tomb.

In T.H. White’s “The Sword in the Stone,” later made into a Disney movie, Merlin changes Arthur into various animals in order to teach him. This story comes from the legendary origin of the poet Taliesin, who was the first to write the Arthurian legends.

According to this legend, the witch Ceridwen gave birth to an extremely ugly son. She determined to compensate for this by giving her hapless child the gift of wisdom and prophecy. She gathered herbs with the help of two assistants, one of whom was Gwion Bach. The witch brewed the herbs for a year and a day to distill three drops of a magical potion — but while she slept, Gwion Bach swallowed the three crucial drops himself. Ceridwen woke and the boy fled, with the furious witch in hot pursuit. He turned into a hare, she turned into a hound; he turned into a fish, she turned into an otter; he turned into a bird, she turned into a hawk and chased him across the skies. Finally he turned into a grain of wheat; the witch was a hen who gobbled him up. He lay in her belly for nine long months, and then Ceridwen gave birth to him. The witch couldn’t bear to do the infant harm, so she put him into a basket and set it adrift in the sea. There he was found by Elphin, the spendthrift son of a wealthy squire. Elphin named the child Taliesin (beautiful brow)…
–”The Magic of Wales” by Terri Windling

Shape-shifting does not, at first glance, seem to be a Christian symbol; it certainly never appears explicitly in the scriptures. And yet, I think we may liken it unto ourselves. (1 Ne 19:23)

Ceridwen hoped to give her son the gift of prophecy. In Rev 19:10, John the Revelator has bowed to worship an angel, whom he assumes is the Lord; but the angel forbids him, saying “See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” The only way we can know that Jesus is the Son of God is if we receive the witness of the Holy Spirit; no logical argument will suffice to sustain a person through the harsh trials of life. It must be a revelation from God himself. Moses exclaimed, “would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Num 11:29)

Gwion Bach transformed into different creatures, and was finally reborn as Taliesin. The faith in Christ I just mentioned is the first principle of the Gospel (AofF 4). The next principle and ordinances are repentance, then rebirth by water and fire; through baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, we become “new creatures” in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

Moses records (Moses 6:51+) Enoch’s account of God explaining these principles and ordinances to Adam. God went on to explain that “all things are created and made to bear witness of me, things which are in the heavens above [the bird], and things which are on the earth [the hare and hound], and things which are in the earth [the grain of wheat], and things which are under the earth [the fish], both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.” (Moses 6:63)

Especially us–our bodies are made in His image, and we are to serve our fellow men, not graven images, in order to serve God (Mosiah 2:17). Our spirits, our characters, are still in the process of becoming; we can choose to make them in His image, too, to receive His image in our countenances (Alma 5:14), to receive a “beautiful brow.”

Afterward, Adam was carried away by the spirit into heaven and a high mountain like a bird, then baptized like a fish or set adrift at sea, then confirmed, receiving the Spirit of prophecy, and finally ordained, adopted by a new father and given a new name and his Father’s wealth. “Behold, thou art one in me, a son of God, and thus may all become my sons. Amen.” (Moses 6:68)

Christ is the Lord of Armies, “For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke.” (Isa 59:17) We have the privilege, like Adam, of being ordained by an ordinance into the Order of the Son of God, the brotherhood of friendship. We are patterned after our Patron, the Temple our template. We promise, “Art thou a brother or brethren? I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant, in which covenant I receive you to fellowship, in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever. Amen.” (D&C 88:113)

Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, wrote of the knights who finally attained the Grail. Christ appeared unto them and said, “My knights, and my servants, and my true children, which be come out of deadly life into spiritual life, I will now no longer hide myself from you.” John the Revelator spoke about having become a son of God, and what we can expect as such. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

I pray that we shall be like him when he no longer hides himself from us, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Heart transplant

Elder Bednar’s talk this afternoon about heart transplants used a great analogy, working with the existing imagery. We’ve all got heart failure, due to sin; but God promises:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. (Eze 36:26)

Bednar said that this new heart would be rejected without daily medication (prayer and scripture) and periodic biopsies (weekly self-examination while taking the sacrament).

But the immune system exists to defend against infection; various viruses and tumors stimulate the release of TGF-β, a natural immunosuppressant, to survive in the body. We’d expect that any successful meme would encourage constant reexposure to the ideas constituting the meme and suppression of ideas that would break them down.

How do we know the difference between a heart transplant and an infection? There’s clearly good in Mormonism; it has many good fruits, as evidenced by the heartfelt service given by the members. But many other faiths have fruits just as sweet. As the Anglican minister John Mason Neale writes,

You have all heard of Thomas Scott the commentator. He was a man of some powers of mind, indefatigable perseverance, and no learning. You may probably have read his “Force of Truth.” If so, you will know the correctness of what I am going to say.

Before Scott came into public notice, he was in his belief an Arminian. Some considerations induced him to think that Calvinism was the doctrine of the Bible; and he determined to study for himself, with no other help but prayer and thought, whether it were or were not. After the labour of some months, he became a confirmed Calvinist. And he argues to this effect:—”I know,” says he, “that I spent vast labour in the search: I know I prayed earnestly during its course: I know that those who do so will be directed into all truth. I came to this conclusion. Therefore, I am right. Therefore, all who differ from me are wrong. Therefore, as the same promise was made to them, they must either have studied insufficiently, or prayed carelessly. If all men took the same pains that I did, they must come to the same conclusion.”

Now this is at least honest and straightforward: conceited enough and presumptuous certainly, but withal, after a sort, manly. The answer is, of course, easy enough. Twenty thousand persons from the same premises may with equal justice arrive at very opposite conclusions: therefore the premises themselves are false.

(Be sure to read the rest of the essay–it’s very good.)

What evidence justifies your beliefs?

You’re a good man, Charlie Darwin

Dresden Codak’s guest strip for Kate Beaton

Stuart Mackenzie the Revelator

Ach, I hated the Nicolaitans, with their wee, beady eyes and that smug look on their faces: “Ooh, you’re going to hold the antinomian heresy of Corinth, oooh!”

Animism

D&C 131:7-8:

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;
8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

Mormon doctrine asserts that there is a form of matter, invisible but not in principle undetectable, that interacts with normal matter. This matter is somehow related to the persistence of memory and personality beyond death, and also plays into agency and qualia.

We already know of dark matter, which interacts with visible matter only gravitationally and comprises a whopping 96% of the matter in the universe. Direct evidence for dark matter was announced only three years ago. Two large clusters of galaxies collided, and the dark matter traveled farther than the visible matter: while both forms of matter responded to gravity, the visible matter was also impeded by electromagnetic forces between the hot gasses. The dark matter, now stripped of normal matter, was detected by gravitational lensing.

Around the same time a new technique was proposed that would allow us to image anything that gravitates. For the first 400 thousand years after the Big Bang, the entire universe was glowing. Once the hydrogen cooled to the point that it was not radiating, the universe went dark. Around 400 million years after the Big Bang, starts started to form and there was visible light again. For a while before the stars lit up and for a long time thereafter, nearly all light in the universe was 21 cm light, the Lyman- band from a once-ionized hydrogen atom returning to its ground state. Because of the expansion of the universe, that light has been red-shifted to between 2 and 20 meters. Along any line of sight, there are around a thousand large structures (galaxy-cluster-sized thickenings of hot hydrogen gas); they can be separated from each other by filtering on the redshifted wavelength. By examining how these structures are deformed by gravitational lensing, we can get a map of the mass in the universe.

So dark matter is one candidate for spirit. There are several different ideas about ways dark matter could arise and what it might be made of; the properties of dark matter besides gravitational interaction vary widely from one proposal to the next. I don’t know if any of the proposals would allow for the necessary complex localized systems akin to bodies and minds to form, but it’s not unbelievable that dark matter could support such systems.

However, one thing everyone expects is that dark matter will obey laws that are very close to what we’ve already discovered; after all, we have proof that dark matter responds to gravity in the same way as normal matter. It will form linear superpositions of states, conserve energy and momentum, not violate causality, and so forth.

Most importantly, there’s no reason to believe that it will be any less ‘mechanical’ than the matter we already see around us, no reason to believe that there’s some property of dark matter necessary for qualia and agency. So while it may be the case that human minds depend on dark matter for their conscious experience, there’s no a priori theological reason we couldn’t build a perceiving machine.

We now come to the dancing pixies problem. Consider the quantum state of a perceiving being; we can write it as a weighted sum of basis states. Decoherence provides a preferred basis, usually consisting of states that are narrow in both position and momentum, but there is some evidence that quantum superpositions might persist in the brain. However, if it is simply the relative weights of the basis vectors that constitute a perception, then perceptive states arise by accident all the time. This is known as “panpsychism“, a strong form of animism. If one accepts this worldview, then because many (most?) of these states must be experiencing pain, this has bearing on the Atonement: will it bring about a universe in which accidental pain-perceptive states are forbidden?

Perception, however, is necessarily embedded in time. The computationalist says it is not the states that perceive, but rather the computation leading between the states. Naively, one might think that nothing has been solved: surely it was a physical process leading between the states previously identified as perceptive above. However, in computer science there is the notion of equivalence classes of computations: two programs may give the same output on each input and yet be fundamentally different programs. This is, essentially, the point of the Chinese room thought experiment.

The principle of relativity suggests to me, however, that bisimilar systems should be considered equivalent with respect to perception. Two systems are bisimilar if they each simulate the other: given an arbitary state of the first system, you can compute the state of the second system and vice-versa, and that relationship is preserved under time evolution. So an arbitrary physical process leading between states corresponding to successive states of a perceiving brain does not necessarily perceive, but a faithful simulation of the processes in the brain should.

Alma 46

In true Old Testament style, the prophet gives a tangible symbol as part of the prophecy: a rent coat.  We learn another interesting part of the Joseph story that didn’t make it into the Old Testament version: that when Jacob, before his death, saw that part of the coat of many colors had not decayed, he prophesied that even though most of his son’s descendants would perish, some small part would be preserved.  The rend also involves the covenant imagery of cutting, so those who follow Moroni make the covenant and rend their clothes as a token of the covenant.

The Book of Mormon itself is tangible evidence of prophecy.  I have had two dreams in my life that were vision-like.  In one, I was among men who were seeking a leader; there was an impending danger, and we were all worried.  A man called our attention, and asked, “Are you willing to follow this man to war?”  At this, Mormon or Captain Moroni stood up and we were all overjoyed that he had returned to lead us.  We shouted our assent, at which he responded, “Then why won’t you do your home teaching?”

Alma 45

In this extraordinarily intimate account, Alma passes on the plates to his son Helaman, and prophesies the destruction of the Nephite nation, the fall of the great and spacious building at the end of Nephi’s dream.  I think that Alma named Helaman for his best friends’ uncle, the brother of Mosiah II–what kind of a man was he?  I imagine a prince, highly educated, trained in diplomacy and war.  Alma’s son Helaman seems to be the one who most appreciated his father’s literary interests, the types and shadows, the symbolism of their own people’s epic journey.  I wonder, if Helaman had lived in more peaceful times, whether he’d have been a poet.  As it was, of course, he was the first choice for commander of the young Anti-Nephi-Lehites, the sons of Helaman, and led them to their incredible victories, backed by their invincible faith.

Alma becomes the first of five Nephites (that we know of) to be translated.  In Alma 29, Alma cries,

O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!  Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.  But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.  I ought not to harrow up in my desires, the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction. (Alma 29:1-4)

Alma got his heart’s desire.  We see him again some 2000 years later, again in the context of Nephi’s vision of the Tree of Life, working with another translated being, Siddhārtha Gautama.

(Edit, 2009-01-26: Karen guessed the reference above: Indiana Jones and the Tree of Life )

Alma 43-44

These chapters illustrate Captain Moroni’s character.  Mike Brown, our Gospel Doctrine teacher in Provo, said he believed that Mormon put these fighting chapters in for his own ten-year-old Moroni.  Now that Aidan’s nearly ten, I understand a little better.

Moroni is a champion fighter who hates violence.  At the earliest possible opportunity, he pulls his men back and offers the Lamanites an ultimatum: a chance to surrender if they will swear not to take up arms against the Nephites again.  Many accept; Zerahemnah infamously does not, claiming that they were preserved by their armor, not by any God.

I took a Book of Mormon course after my mission, and was dissatisfied with it; for example, in this section, the teacher thought that when Captain Moroni said, “I cannot recall the words which I have spoken,” that he meant Moroni couldn’t remember the words he uttered four verses earlier.  Clearly, Moroni is saying that he cannot take back the words he had spoken, and the ultimatum still stands.

Again, the Nephites take on the Lamanites, but the offer for mercy is still there: as soon as Zerahemnah is willing to stop fighting, Moroni is willing to make peace.

Christ is the same way: no allowance for sin, but eager to show mercy to the penitent.