What Did Einstein Write? Does God Gamble?

Albert Einstein seems to have been a one-man factory of memorable quotes and aphorisms, producing them in large quantities.

His large output, however, created opportunities for misquotations and false attributions. Posters and bumper stickers bear slogans which never came from Einstein’s pen — or mouth.

For this reason, it is important to verify any phrase ascribed to Einstein.

One of his famous sayings asserted that “God does not play dice with the universe.” This was Einstein’s assessment of quantum mechanics. He argued for a more robust sense of causation, lawlike regularity, and mathematical certainty instead of mere probabilities.

But what exactly did he write?

In a letter dated 4 December 1926, sent to Max Born, Einstein wrote:

Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr Achtung gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, dass das noch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, dass der nicht würfelt.

Although this is a well-attested text, the phrase kaum näher is often cited as nicht näher. The lexical difference is not significant, and the straightforward meaning of the quote doesn’t change.

Sometimes the text is quoted with an individual word italicized for emphasis.

Only by examining the letter itself could one contend for or against italicizing any particular word in the text. Was the original letter handwritten or typed? Does it still exist in some library or archive?

Some historians assert that the same or similar phrasing may have been used in a letter to Niels Bohr. Again, archival research would be required to confirm or deny such statements.

Einstein wrote a letter dated 21 March 1942 to Cornelius Lanczos. Einstein wrote:

Es scheint hart, dem Herrgott in die Karten zu gucken. Aber dass er würfelt und sich telepathischer Mittel bedient (wie es ihm von der gegenwärtigen Quantentheorie zugemutet wird), kann ich keinen Augenblick glauben.

Commenting on this letter, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann write that Einstein was “expressing his dissatisfaction with quantum theory, with its denial of determinism and its limitation to probabilistic, statistical predictions.”

Dukas and Hoffmann offer translations of parts of the letter; in one, Einstein’s view of physics is rendered as “the comprehension of reality through something basically simple and unified.”

Although the transmissions of these texts is a bit wobbly, there is certainly enough evidence to justify assertions that Einstein sought, and asserted the existence of, lawlike regularities and causations in physics. He was not content with only the statistical phenomena, but rather wanted the concrete noumena which lay beneath those generalizations.

Einstein didn’t disagree with statistical methods, like those, e.g., of Boltzmann. But he seems to have viewed them as merely characterizations of observations, as phenomenal, and not an explanation or a mathematical modeling of the underlying noumena.

A Debatable Word: Defining ‘Atheism’

Among both philosophers and non-philosophers, the word ‘atheism’ appears in a variety of different types of text. It is uttered in conversations, lectures, and debates. Many readers or listeners have strong and passionate reactions to this word — pleasant or otherwise. Nearly everyone who uses the word believes that he or she knows what it means — or what he or she means by it.

An analysis of this word’s use reveals that its significance is not so obvious.

It is not, e.g., a synonym for ‘irreligious’ or ‘antireligious’ — as is clear from the existence of many theists who are both antireligious and irreligious.

A lucid and intelligible definition of ‘atheism’ is needed. Many words have more than one definition. If ‘atheism’ has more than one definition, then what is most needed is the definition which will serve to clarify philosophical analysis. The word may have other definitions which circulate in the non-philosophical word, but they are of no import.

It would be reasonable to propose that ‘atheism’ be defined as primarily an ontological word. The word is used when discussing whether or not a certain object exists, and that object is usually labeled ‘God.’ This type of definition raises the question of how ‘God’ is defined, and so puts off or postpones the question. Yet, despite the fact that this definition merely delays, and doesn’t directly solve, the situation, it still has a certain merit, because it directs attention to the question of whether or not something exists.

Like ‘atheism,’ the word ‘God,’ tends to be informally associated with various passions and experiences — pleasant or painful. The word ‘God’ may precipitate or prompt — or “trigger” — memories of encounters with organized religion or spiritual texts. It might be helpful to use synonyms: a ‘higher power’ or a ‘deity’ or another word can serve, as can circumlocutions like ‘unmoved mover’ or ‘that which must necessarily be’ or ‘prime mover’ or ‘prime cause.’

The question of existence is central in the word ‘atheism.’ This question is often lost in various side-issues which are tangential to a discussion of atheism.

It must be stated explicitly that a discussion of atheism is not a discussion of religion, and that these two discussions are quite separate. Religion is a socio-cultural artifact: a civilization’s response to whichever possible answer — or answers — the civilization has proposed to the question of atheism.

It is a recurrent mistake to label someone as an atheist merely because she or he directs a profound, impassioned, and accurate critique of religious institutions. A person can find a particular religion, or religion in general, to be wrong, dangerous, and repulsive without being an atheist. Often, the most intense critique of religion is delivered by those whose belief in God is equally intense.

The question of atheism, as a simple ontological question, would still be a reasonable question in a universe in which no human being existed — and in a universe which was also otherwise unpopulated. A question of the form “Does a certain object X exist?” is a simple question and is often — always? — reasonable to ask. The question is independent of any psychological or cultural traditions which a civilization may have formed around the concept of object X — whether or not it exists.

Whether one be “for” or “against” atheism, it is necessary that one isolate the question of atheism from any discussion or exploration of organized religion. Religion is ultimately a human institution. For the theist, religion is a response — and here the theist may label it a correct or an incorrect response — to the existence of God. For the atheist, religion is a construct which makes reference to a non-existent object.

The most insightful critique of religion, or even the rejection of religion altogether, is not equivalent to atheism. Some of the harshest criticisms of religion come from committed theists.

Conversely, there are atheists who are quite fond of religion.

It is possible, and in point of fact has happened, that people who work within religious institutions and who hold titles like priest, rabbi, imam, preacher, pastor, minister, etc., are in fact atheists, despite their affection for the spiritual organization in which they carry out their daily duties.

Refining the definition of ‘atheism’ can help to expose fallacies. To identify atheism with a critique of religion is a common mistake; more than one freshman has been heard to say “I’m an atheist because I hate going to church.” A variation on this fallacy is to label anyone who attacks orthodoxy as an atheist; this has in fact happened among those who work in the academic discipline of the History of Ideas.

Rigorously applied, a clarified definition of ‘atheism’ might yield some surprises: those often considered atheists might be theists, and those regarded as theists might be atheists.

Can Time Run Backward? Boltzmann’s Statistical Understanding

Time has long fascinated physicists for many reasons, but perhaps chiefly because of the four dimensions — three spatial and one temporal — only time is directional. Objects can move, or be moved, in space from up to down, and from down to up. They can go from right to left, or from left to right. Objects can travel from fore to aft, and from aft to fore.

But in time, objects — or people — can travel only from the past to the present and then on to the future, but never from the future into the past.

This unidirectionality leads to many questions: Is the unidirectionality of time truly a universal rule? Are there any exceptions? If it is a rule, why? Why are the other directions not unidirectional? What would be the difference between an ‘object traveling backwards through time’ and ‘time itself running backwards’?

To borrow a bit of verificationist jargon, if it makes sense to say that certain events can’t happen, then those events — the events that can’t happen — need to be adequately described in a way that an observer could know what they are. If it makes sense to say that an object can’t move backwards through time — i.e., travel from the future to the past — then in order for this saying to make sense, the observer will need to be know what to look for, and when the observer doesn’t find what he’s looking for — when the observer sees no objects moving backwards through time — then the observer can confirm this saying: the saying will have been verified. But in order to confirm that no objects are moving backward through time, the observer will need to know what to look for: there will need to be a description of what it means for an object to move backward through time, and not simply any type of description, but rather specifically a description which can be compared to any bit of sense data, or compared to any bit perception; this comparison will yield one of two answers: either “yes, it’s an object moving backward through time,” or “no, it’s not an object moving backward through time.” Presumably, then, the answer will always be “no.”

The description which either does, or does not, match an observer’s experience, is necessary in order for the saying to have meaning. Rudolf Carnap famously wrote that “we conclude that there is no way of understanding any meaning without ultimate reference to ostensive definitions, and this means, in an obvious sense, reference to ‘experience’ or ‘possibility of verification’” and “the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification.”

Carnap’s phrases became slogans for the verificationist school of thought.

For the notion of an object moving backward through time, there are many such potential descriptions, provided in print by science fiction writers, and on screen by science fiction films. Of course, some of those descriptions may be more useful than others. But there must be some description which answers the question: What does it look like for an object to move backward through time? If there is no description, then the observer has nothing with which to compare his observations.

But it seems more difficult to give meaning to the phrase “time itself moving backwards.” What would this mean? What would it look like? What description of “time moving backwards” would one give to an observer, to tell him what to look for?

If it were taken as axiomatic that time can’t run backwards, then to give that phrase meaning, the observer would examine various events to confirm that in none of them was time running backwards. What would the observer seek, and not find, in those events?

To say that “there are no purple flowers in the garden,” and to ensure that this saying has meaning, one would have to know what a purple flower looked like, so that when one looked in the garden, one could confirm that one did not find a purple flower.

Likewise, to give meaning to the utterance, “time can’t run backwards,” one would need to know what it would look like for time to run backwards, so that one could confirm that one did not see it.

Unless, that is, time actually can run backwards.

In aScientific American article, Martin Gardner details how some physicists attempt “to give an operational meaning to ‘backward time’” and do so “by imagining a world in which shuffling processes went backward, from disorder to order.”

One might imagine shuffling a deck of cards, and starting with 52 cards in a pile, in no discernable order. After shuffling them, one might find them arranged in a clear order, e.g., by rank and suit. This is improbable, of course — massively, overwhelmingly improbable.

Improbability can be overcome by iteration. If billions of men were shuffling billions of decks of cards, and did so endlessly for billions of years, then it is not so improbable that one day, a scrambled deck of cards would be neatly ordered after shuffling.

Similarly, the reader will be familiar with the story about monkeys and typewriters, which, if left to their task for enough time, would eventually type out an accurate copy of Shakespeare’s works.

Of course, nobody is organizing billions of card dealers or billions of monkeys. But the air in any room is filled with billions and trillions of gaseous molecules, each of which is constantly vibrating and moving about in a random or near-random fashion. Martin Gardner explains how one physicist viewed this:

Ludwig Boltzmann, the 19th-century Austrian physicist who was one of the founders of statistical thermodynamics, realized that after the molecules of a gas in a closed, isolated container have reached a state of thermal equilibrium — that is, are moving in complete disorder with maximum entropy — there will always be little pockets forming here and there where entropy is momentarily decreasing. These would be balanced by other regions where entropy is increasing; the overall entropy remains relatively stable, with only minor up-and-down fluctuations.

Boltzmann transferred this pattern from a container of gas to the universe at large. If the Brownian motion created these situations in a glass jar of nitrogen or carbon dioxide on a table in Boltzmann’s office in the University of Vienna, then the universe as a whole with its many galaxies might exhibit the same behavior, simply on a larger scale:

Boltzmann imagined a cosmos of vast size, perhaps infinite in space and time, the overall entropy of which is at a maximum but which contains pockets where for the moment entropy is decreasing. (A “pocket” could include billions of galaxies and the “moment” could be billions of years.) Perhaps our flyspeck portion of the infinite sea of space-time is one in which such a fluctuation has occurred. At some time in the past, perhaps at the time of the “big bang,” entropy happened to decrease; now it is increasing. In the eternal and infinite flux a bit of order happened to put in its appearance; now that order is disappearing again, and so our arrow of time runs in the familiar direction of increasing entropy. Are there other regions of space-time, Boltzmann asked, in which the arrow of entropy points the other way? If so, would it be correct to say that time in such a region was moving backward, or should one simply say that entropy was decreasing as the region continued to move forward in time?

One way to formulate Boltzmann’s question is to compare these two phrases:

Increasing entropy in time
Increasing entropy is time

Does disorder increase over time — in time, within time? Or is time the increase in disorder?

Is it valid to transfer, as Boltzmann does, the pattern from gas confined in a container to the entire universe? There may be some differences between the two cases. In the situation of gas in a sealed glass jar, the observer, in this case the physicist in the laboratory, is in a situation which, if not that of omniscient God, is at least similar: the observer hovers above the jar, and even if the pockets of disequilibrium are not visible, is able to view the entire “universe” of the experiment at once, and able to watch the the experiment from inception to completion.

When the concept is transferred to the entire physical universe, or to one like it in a thought experiment, the situation of the observer is more problematic. The word ‘entire’ entails that the observer be in the universe. The observer is not in an omniscient role and able to view the universe from the outside. If one were to be in a universe, then how would one know if some pockets of this universe had a time which ran in a different direction than other pockets of this universe?

There might be some empirical problems, as Martin Garnder points out: if the observer is in a pocket of the universe in which time is running forward, and attempted to observe a pocket of the universe in which time were running backwards, he would not be able to see such a pocket, even if it were present, because it would be inhaling light rather than exhaling it. A separate problem would arise when the observer asked whether he was resident in a pocket of the universe in which time ran forward, or whether he resided in a region in which time ran backward. Here one might invoke the Leibnizian principle of the identity of indiscernibles: time running forward and time running backward would be empirically the same for the observer.

The notion of a pocket of the universe absorbing rather than emitting light, because time was running backwards in that pocket, has caused some, like Raphael Bousso and Netta Engelhardt, to ask whether a “black hole” has a local time which runs backward.

The difficulties in determining about a pocket of space, whether its time runs forward or backward, tempts one to posit a sort of meta-time, which would act as a framework around the entire universe, and would allow the observer to determine whether times in different pockets of space were running in the same direction or in different directions.

When one describes a universe in which some regions have time running forward and other regions have time running backward, it is tempting to add a phrase to this description: “at the same time” or “simultaneously.”

One might say: “In this universe, the time in region A is running forward, and at the same time, the time in region B is running backward.” But in saying this, one has introduced the notion of meta-time.

But the idea of meta-time is problematic. It can lead to an infinite regress of meta-meta-time and meta-meta-meta-time, etc.

It is worth noting that Boltzmann came to this problem from the discipline of physics, or chemistry, or physical chemistry. One of his books is titled Gastheorie. The behavior and properties of gasses are treated statistically. A jar of nitrogen or CO2 contains billions and trillions of molecules, randomly vibrating and traveling to and fro. It is not possible to detail the exact movements of each individual molecule, and such information would yield little insight into the physics of gasses. But a statistical view of the movements of all the molecules helpfully characterizes the behavior and properties of the gas in question.

When Boltzmann then begins to ponder entropy decreasing and time running backwards in his glass jar of gas, Martin Gardner explains that “No basic laws would be violated, only statistical laws.”

Given that our general, even universal, experience is one of time moving forward, then how might one justify the hegemony of forward-moving time in human experience, and the absence of backward moving time? The emphasis here is on ‘experience,’ given that the hypothetically possible cases of backward moving time are not part of direct experience; those cases are invisible: the gas in the jar, or the galaxy which absorbs light rather than emitting it.

What explains the ubiquity of forward-moving time, given the possibility of backward-moving time? The answer again relates to statistics, as Gardner writes:

It was here, in the laws of probability, that most 19th-century physicists found an ultimate basis for time’s arrow. Probability explains such irreversible processes as the mixing of coffee and cream, the breaking of a window by a stone and all the other familiar one-way-only events in which large numbers of molecules are involved. It explains the second law of thermodynamics, which says that heat always moves from hotter to cooler regions, increasing the entropy (a measure of a certain kind of disorder) of the system. It explains why shuffling randomizes a deck of ordered cards.

Young students are often given this example: a solid object, e.g., a rock, could suddenly disappear in a cloud of dust and vapor, if the Brownian motion of all its molecules randomly happened to behave in precisely the right way. But the probability of this happening is so close to zero that it is treated as zero. It is a statistical explanation.

Similarly so with the directionality of time, as Gardner writes:

Physicists and philosophers argued that statistical laws provide the most fundamental way to define the direction of time.

So Boltzmann’s view of time is ultimately a statistical one, and the questions which his view raises are to be understood in that way.

The questions which Boltzmann’s work, directly or indirectly, raises are still open, and still the focus of research and debate.

Edward Teller: Physics and Politics

Edward Teller was born in Hungary in 1908, and moved to the United States in 1935. In 1942, he became part of the Manhattan Project, and in 1943 started working in Los Alamos. While there, he worked somewhat on the core mission of the project, the development of a fission bomb, but he worked more eagerly on the development of a fusion bomb. In the postwar years, he continued to work in varying capacities on the fusion bomb. The first successful demonstration of it happened in 1952.

Some newspaper reporters began referring to Teller as the “father of the hydrogen bomb.” Yet this is debatable. Stanislaw Ulam also did significant work on the project, and could conceivably earn this title. More accurately, it was a team effort, and no one individual could claim sole credit. The hydrogen bomb even had a mother: Maria Goeppert Mayer. Born in Germany, she worked with both Teller and Ulam.

By the same token, probably no one individual earns the title of “father of the atomic bomb,” although that phrase has been used on several individuals: Albert Einstein, whose famous equation pointed to the convertibility of matter to energy and who wrote of it to President Roosevelt; General Leslie Groves, who directed the Manhattan Project; Robert Oppenheimer, who managed the project; President Truman, who directly ordered the use of the bomb; and perhaps others.

Scientific research and industrial development of processes like fission and fusion are too complicated to be the product of one man. It was all teamwork.

At several points in time in the postwar century, various individuals raised the question of whether it had been ethically acceptable to develop and use the atomic bomb; later the same question was raised about the development of the hydrogen bomb.

In a 1999 interview with Teller, author Gary Stix asked about these ethical concerns:

What would have happened, I ask, if we hadn’t developed the hydrogen bomb? “You would now interview me in Russian, but more probably you wouldn’t interview me at all. And I wouldn’t be alive. I would have died in a concentration camp.”

Teller understood the dynamics of deterrence. Ultimately, the Cold War ended without a face-to-face war between the USSR and the United States. World War III was averted. Brinkmanship avoided the many millions of casualties and the devastating nuclear explosions which would probably have been part of that war.

The analytic skills needed in physics are transferable to geo-political history: Teller concluded that the Soviet Socialists were essentially of the same nature as the Fascists, the Nazis, and the Japanese militarists. He opposed them all, as Gary Stix writes:

Teller’s persona — the scientist-cum-hawkish politico — is rooted in the upheavals that rocked Europe during the first half of the century, particularly the Communist takeover of Hungary in 1919. “My father was a lawyer; his office was occupied and shut down and occupied by the Reds. But what followed was an anti-Semitic Fascist regime, and I was at least as opposed to the Fascists as I was to the Communists.”

Technological and scientific development would be the way to preserve freedom and liberty, and to eventually dismantle Soviet Socialism, in Teller’s view. He promoted a full effort to develop nearly every aspect of high-tech warfare, from the atomic and hydrogen bombs to missile defense systems to protect America’s civilian population.

Avoid war by continually developing ever more powerful weapons, and by showing the enemy that the United States was ready to use them. In the end, the Soviet Socialists couldn’t keep up the pace of research and development: financially, they couldn’t afford it.

It was a war of economic attrition:

The Soviets could never compete with America’s electronic weaponry — and even less with the northern Californian economic vibrancy that produced Macintosh computers and Pentium processors.

Teller’s vision of technology as the best path to peace was confirmed:

In the end, microchips and recombinant DNA — two foundations of the millennial economy — helped to spur the end of the cold war.

Edward Teller was not only a superlative physicist and a brilliant geo-political strategist, but rather he also explored questions of earth science. He was one of the first to use the phrase “greenhouse effect” — perhaps he was even the very first. He spoke of it in 1959. He also later proposed his own solution to it: having concluded that reduced CO2 emissions were impractical, he advocated releasing fine particles into the upper atmosphere.

On various topics, when he thought, he thought big. The term “Tellerism” is still occasionally used to describe a grandiose way of thinking and the promotion of grandiose solutions to problems.

The Earth’s Carrying Capacity is Larger Than Expected

What is the link between China’s population policy and the enduring hypothesis that the planet Earth can support only a relatively small population? How has China’s population policy changed over the years? How has our understanding of Earth’s carrying capacity changed? Is China’s population policy about science, or about economic and political control?

There is a complex and tangled set of connections between the policy decisions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and research indicating that the planet’s carrying capacity is large and even expandable.

The trend is clear, even if precise dates and quantities are difficult to specify: China went from a policy which allowed couples to have, at most one child, to a policy which allowed two children. That happened around 2015 or 2016. Then came a shift from allowing couples to have more children to encouraging them to have more children, and the two-child limit was lifted. The Chinese government is now actively rewarding couples for having three, or sometimes more, children.

China launched the one-child policy in the late 1970s. The policy was supposed to prevent food shortages. Although the population growth dropped significantly, there was no direct effect on concerns about the food supply. After several decades, however, the policy showed itself to be both socially and economically damaging. In a dramatic about-face, the Chinese government now wants to see fertile couples producing babies in large quantities.

More specifically, the economic harm caused by the one-child policy was that it led to a situation in which a relatively small number of young working people would be providing benefits to a large number of aging retirees. The ratio of people under the age of retirement to those over the age of retirement constitutes a solid economic wall.

The textbook example is four grandparents, two parents, and one child. Eventually, there is a ratio of one to six, and this ratio is not sustainable.

There were several flawed assumptions on which China’s one-child policy was based. One of them was that the planet has a carrying capacity which is both fixed and relatively low. This assumption led to questions, as author Michael Salemink writes:

Can the world’s resources support so many bodies? Should we encourage couples to procreate fewer children? May governments intervene if they don’t? It appears, however, that the Earth’s carrying capacity is not fixed. Technological and scientific innovations allow for increasing quantities of sustainable and renewable healthy food, clean water, and clean air.

The planet’s carrying capacity is not fixed, and it is not low. At present, a modest estimate of food production shows that the Earth currently produces enough food for at least ten billion people, and probably more, giving food waste in some first-world countries.

This current level of food production is achieved without using all available tillable land, and using suboptimal technology. Using more tillable land, and using more efficient agricultural standards would provide an increase in the food supply. Beyond that, however, concepts like oceanic seaweed farms would expand the food supply on an order of several magnitudes.

How did the idea of “overpopulation” arise? One starting point was the written works of Thomas Malthus. Many students are taught about Malthus, but aren’t actually given unabridged versions of his texts to read. Many of those who teach have themselves seen only snippets of his essays. This line of transmission allows Malthus to be presented as an alarmist, predicting global catastrophe because of overpopulation. A calmer, more nuanced, and more thorough reading of his books suggests that Malthus was simply pointing out that life on planet Earth will never be unproblematic. Michael Salemink explains:

Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich threatened in 1968 that global population surges were leading to imminent mass starvations. His prophecies have failed.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a series of alarmist writings about ‘overpopulation.’ But “research has repeatedly and thoroughly discredited” Ehrlich’s sensationalistic scaremongering.

While it is difficult or impossible to give a precise number to the planet’s carrying capacity, it is clear that it is far greater than the current population, and greater than any near-term possible population. Yet the fallacy of an overpopulated Earth persists, as Michael Salemink explains:

Many contemporary environmentalists keep laying the blame for deforestation, fossil-fuel depletion, animal-species extinction, and climate change at the feet of unrestrained human fertility. They insist that lest we selfishly elevate our own desires over the welfare of future generations, we must all take responsibility for limiting childbirths.

The enduring misconception not only continues to influence perceptions, but rather also policy. Mistakenly believing that Earth is at or near some upper limit, governments, like the Chinese Communist Party, take actions — actions which, being based on misinformation, are harmful.

Not only the CCP, but other policy groups around the world, concluded that efforts should be diverted away from food production — which they considered to be a futile effort — and directed toward population reduction. But “demographic data do not corroborate these conclusions.”

There are data about the various factors which influence population, and these data point toward a carrying capacity which is much higher than previously thought, as Michael Salemink reports:

International authorities indicate that current food production could sustain ten billion people. Freshwater withdrawals have risen seven times over the last hundred years, but population has only gone up four-fold. Presently, fewer than eight billion bodies inhabit the planet. Every individual could have five acres of her own land, a whole half acre of it suitable for farming. An area the size of Texas could house us all, and the population density would still be lower than many cities. If all we needed was space to sleep, we could fit in Connecticut, leaving the rest of the world wide open.

The factors which have led to increasing estimates of the Earth’s carrying capacity include sea farming and sustainable land usage. These estimates include clean air, clean water, and nutritious food. Energy, raw materials, finished goods, and food are all calculated as being produced in sustainable and renewable ways.

These are also calculated at a level which would be a net increase for much of the world’s population, i.e., a reasonable approximation of a first-world standard of living: HVAC, running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, internet access, mechanized transportation, etc., which would be an improvement for millions or even billions of people who currently have a developing-world standard of living.

The larger-than-anticipated carrying capacity is merely one of several surprises: not only can the earth support larger populations, but a steadily growing population is beneficial to economies, civilizations, and the environment.

A steadily growing population is contrasted to an erratically growing population or a rapidly growing population, as well as to a declining population or a “zero-growth” population.

In a majority of economic models, an evenly increasing population produces more reliable growth, more equitable income distribution, and more opportunities for individuals than populations with other growth patterns. Consequently, steady population growth is better for civilization and for the physical and social structures which civilization requires.

Somewhat more speculatively, these effects could be extended to an increasing likelihood of peace, civil and human rights, and civil and political liberty.

Perhaps most surprisingly, a growing population is not only consistent with good environmental stewardship, but rather actually supports environmental care.

A growing population was thought, in the 1960s, to pose a threat to the environment, but in the meantime, it has become clear that a steadily growing population ensures a relatively large number of young laborers continuously entering the workforce. Green business practices, which are labor-intensive and cannot be effectively mechanized, require these younger employees.

A “zero-growth” or shrinking population harms economies and destabilizes societies, and fewer business are able to adopt green practices, as Michael Salemink notes:

This puts further pressure on industries and economies, as the population gets older with fewer working-age people to support it. One model predicts world population reaching a pinnacle of 8.3 billion by 2050 and then dropping. Once this trend begins, it becomes increasingly difficult to escape, because fewer people have fewer children who have fewer children of their own and so on.

Work toward goals like environmental conservation, decreased poverty, and strong economies requires workers. More, not less, human creativity and ingenuity can address these challenges. People are the greatest resource and asset in the struggle for all those desiderata.

The question poses itself: if the planet has such a large carrying capacity, why are there people with too little food and too little water? Why is there still some extreme poverty — although the United Nations reports that instances of “extreme poverty” have declined significantly in recent decades? The reader will quickly see that many similar and related questions can be formulated.

Hardship and poverty exist, despite Earth’s grand carrying capacity, because of dishonest greed. Simply put, poverty is an artificially created social problem, and does not arise out of a shortage of resources. With a current population of around eight billion people as of early 2024, the plant presently produces foodstuff for approximately ten billion people. There are a few honest mistakes which contribute to the problem, but more often it is deliberate selfishness and malice which lead to malnutrition and other suffering.

Distribution of resources can either be liberated to allow food to flow to where it is most needed, or be controlled so that the delivery of food is prevented from going to some of the places where it is most scarce. The dictators who rule nations of starving people invariably live in great luxury.

Time, money, and energy which could be used to deliver food are hijacked for other social and political projects, as Michael Salemink chronicles:

Having more people actually turns out to be advantageous for the fight. History has continually confirmed that more minds and more hands equal more solutions. Whenever societies have overcome poverty, they have done so utilizing collective infrastructures. Sometimes certain segments of the public must become more comfortable with a less luxurious standard of living. If inadequate distribution bears more fault than insufficient production for poverty, then it seems beneficial to add more buckets to the brigade. On the other hand, devoting precious resources to “family planning” or “population control” measures only aggravates the predicament, particularly when impoverished people need bodily essentials instead of lectures about sex.

Humanity will be greatly served if it abandons concerns about “overpopulation,” and instead seeks reasonably steady population growth, which will in turn address numerous other problems in society and civilization.

Can There Be Competing Monisms? Is There a Real Difference Between Materialism and Idealism?

The majority of metaphysical systems which one studies, from the pre-Socratics to the present day, can be lodged in one of two categories: dualism or monism. A dualist ontology posits two levels of reality, usually a material level and a mental level. The terminology will differ among various dualists.

Typical and even archetypal is the dualism of Descartes. The mind is composed of a mental substance, and the body is composed of a physical substance. The key feature, according to Descartes, of physical substance is that it is extended spatially. The key feature of mental substance is that it thinks, or at least that it can think.

Dualisms like this cartesian paradigm have both strengths and weaknesses, which are revealed as dualists debate with monists.

Monism asserts that there is only one level of reality. This simplified ontology, while in some ways unsatisfying, relieves its proponents of the task of explaining some type of interaction between two different types of substance.

Looking at monisms, scholars often distinguish between the materialists and the idealists. Materialists would be those who assert that a physical level of reality exists, and is indeed the only level of reality that exists. The materialists argue that there is no such thing as a mental substance. Most forms of materialism assert, among other things, that “humans are entirely physical beings,” in the words of Scott Calef.

Idealists, on the other hand, are monists who deny the reality or existence of a physical substance, and argue that only mental substances exist. As Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann write, the “ontological” or “metaphysical” form of idealism asserts that “something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality.”

One way to phrase it is this: the materialist asserts that only physical substances and objects exist; what seems to be a non-physical object, like a mind or a memory or an idea, has no real independent being. The idealist, by contrast, argues that there are no independently really existing physical substances or objects, and what seem to be objects, like rocks or rivers or trees, are merely ideas or constructs in our non-physical minds.

Over the centuries, a number of major philosophers have lined up on either side of this debate, and each has produced a unique and nuanced version of one side or the other.

Thus far is a more-or-less standard account of dualism and monism, and of the two types of monism.

The question now at hand is this: Is it possible or plausible to argue that the two monisms, idealism and materialism, are reducible to each other? Because each asserts that there is only one level of reality, only one type of substance, can it be that it makes no sense to label this one substance as either ‘material’ or ‘mental’?

Do the words ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ have usefulness only in the context of two types of substance? If there is only one type of substance, to label it as ‘non-physical’ or ‘physical’ might be senseless.

The materialist argues that the mind is the physical brain and its neurochemical and neuroelectrical processes; the materialist argues that there is no non-physical mental substance which composes the mind.

The idealist argues that the mind is composed only of a non-physical mental substance, and that there is no physical substance which composes the brain.

Aren't the two of them saying the same thing? Both of them agree that mind/brain dualism is wrong. Both are saying that the mind exists in one level of reality, composed of one type of substance, and that there is no other type of substance. One might appeal here to Leibniz and his identity of indiscernibles.

Assuming that dualism were ruled out altogether, and that either materialism or idealism must be an accurate description of reality, which experiment would one conduct to decide between the two? If monism is granted, then is there any detectable or verifiable difference between idealism or materialism? Or are all monisms essentially one?

What It Means to Be Human: Marc Benioff and Klaus Schwab Get It Wrong

Generations of students have been assigned to write essays on the topic, “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” The result has been a collection of some of the worst prose known, and raging headaches for the teachers and professors who had to read it. Yet, as bad as most attempted answers to this question are, the question perpetually poses itself. Texts of today and tomorrow address it, as do texts from 3,000 years ago, and from every era in between.

Although getting the right answer, or answers, to this question is somewhere between difficult and impossible, and therefore a task undertaken only by the wise and brave, or by the ignorant and foolish, it is perhaps somewhat easier to identify what the answer, or answers, are not — to discern which answers are wrong.

Yet this approach has the defect of leaving one in the position of being labeled as purely negative: the armchair critic.

So perhaps a moderate approach to this question would be to do a little of both: to rightly discover the weaknesses in proposed answers, and to point to possible components of correct answers, without claiming to have precisely, exhaustively, and finally identified the correct answer or answers.

As a point of departure, Marc Benioff asserts that human nature is malleable, mutable, and changeable. He writes that not only is human nature capable of being changed, but rather also that it is in fact being altered:

The convergence of digital technologies with breakthroughs in materials science and biology means that we are seeing the emergence of entirely new ways in which to live. In both subtle and explicit ways, technology is changing what it means to be human.

There are reasons to question Benioff’s proposition that human nature can be altered. First, he asserts that “technology” is changing human nature; yet technology is a product of human nature. Any technology which acts upon humans is merely an extension of humanity itself.

In some science-fiction scenario where robot overlords, or AI run amok, or genetic engineering influences human beings, that is merely humans shaping themselves. To have an effect on one’s self — as in, the entirety of humanity having an effect on itself — is substantially different than being changed or altered by some external force.

If humanity acts upon itself, it will not change human nature, but rather merely be a working out, an extension, of what humanity is.

Technology can and does change a great deal about the world, and this is easily seen. But to say that it changes human nature is a different matter.

Benioff’s concept is essentially structured in the passive voice: “what it means to be human” is being changed by technology. If human nature can be changed by technology, then technology is in some sense superior to, or higher than, or dominant over, human nature. Yet technology is a product of, an extension of, human nature, and is therefore less than, or at most equal to, human nature.

Thus understood, Marc Benioff is partly correct and partly wrong when he writes:

In the coming decades, the technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution will fundamentally transform the entire structure of the world economy, our communities and our human identities.

To say that technology will change the economy, communities, and human identity is, respectively, correct, debatable, and wrong.

“The world economy” consists of what people value, how that value is produced, how it changes over time, how trades and exchanges are made, how local variables influence global patterns of valuation and exchange, etc. — All of which points to the malleability of economies. Indeed, a reasonable argument could be made for the hypothesis that economies are by nature changing and not static.

“Communities” are collections of humans who interact with each other on a frequent enough and significant enough level to create a communal identity in addition to the identity of each individual who is part of that community. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the word ‘community’ has been abused and misused to the extent that it needs some clarification. For example, there is talk of the “African-American community” or the “Latino / Hispanic community” or other alleged communities. But to assert that every African-American is part of some community, or that every Latino / Hispanic is part of some community, is to assert that a university-educated African-American millionaire on Wall Street is in community with an impoverished African-American farmer in rural Arkansas and with a blue-collar African-American in inner-city Chicago. It is to assert that a Latino professor of physics at the University of Michigan is in community with a Hispanic shop owner who operates a small business in Los Angeles. This is a thorough misunderstanding of what community is: community is more than a statistical sharing of only one of hundreds of demographic variables.

Before deciding whether, how, or to which extent human communities are mutable, it must first be determined what community is: a usable definition for the word ‘community’ must be found.

Human identity, on the other hand, is clearly non-malleable. One either is, or is not, human; and if one is human, then a change in “our human identities” would entail that some individuals would cease to be human if they met the criteria for the old version of humanity but not for the new version, and that, likewise, other individuals who were previously not human would become human through this “transforming” of human identity. Benioff’s assertion leads inexorably to some conclusions which even he himself might not desire.

Klaus Schwab echoes Benioff’s proposition:

Of the many diverse and fascinating challenges we face today, the most intense and important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution, which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind.

After an examination of Benioff’s and Schwab’s assertions about human nature — those assertions amount largely to the assertion of pliability — the task remains to make positive postulations about human nature: hypothesizing without going “a bridge too far” and claiming to have made a final and ultimate definition of human nature.

Therefore, the following are to be understood as suggestions — as indications about a possible path to a definition of humanity — and not as an exhaustive declaration of “what it means to be human.”

First, humans are rational, knowing, deliberate agents. A debt to the general trend of Lockean thought is evident here. Humans are rational: the powers of reasoning and logic are universal among human beings, even if the development and degree of that characteristic varies from one individual to another — 7 + 5 = 12 is a universal human truth. Humans know: they possess knowledge and information. Humans deliberate: the application of rationality to knowledge is part of deliberation, but there is more to deliberation than that: a teleology — deliberation calculates about a goal, or a set of goals, and how to reach those goals, and how to understand the possible tradeoffs between multiple dearly-held goals. Humans are agents: after reasoning, knowing, and deliberating, humans act. Thus described, human nature is immutable, and has not changed in all of recorded history — whether that be reckoned as 6,000 years or 10,000 years or some other number. It is not possible, nor even conceivable, that it should change.

Second, human nature is essentially imperfect and broken. Rationally, humans are liable to error in their deliberations. Cognitively, humans are liable to misunderstanding and misremembering. Morally, humans are liable to wrongdoing, to evil, to sin. Collectively, this is understood as “fallenness” or weakness — or, in the broader sense, mortality.

Third, humans have passion. Love and hate, sadness and joy — emotions are essentially human, despite the occasional attribution and misattribution of such to animals, and humans are essentially emotional.

Fourth, humans are communal. Aristotle’s comment on this is frequently quoted and as frequently misunderstood. Humans are innately social. Wittgenstein went so far as to write that language’s ability to have meaning is based on humanity’s social nature. Admittedly, humans can live in isolation: Defoe’s novel shows this, as does Mary Shelley’s less-known novel, The Last Man. The ability of humans to survive alone does not contradict the thesis that humans are intrinsically social.

No claim is here made that the above four assertions together constitute a complete or comprehensive definition of humanity. Rather, they are at best hints toward a rough working draft of such a definition. It is, however, plausible that the four qualities listed above are inherent, immutable, and immalleable, and that therefore, despite a changing context, human nature does not change.