Lunch Conversation

This is a conversation between my friend and me at lunch today. Needless to say, the conversation might not reflect either of our belief systems.

Absolute Truth

“You need to get out of the Matrix.”

“How will I know that the thing that I get into, after I get out of the Matrix, is not another Matrix?”

“That’s what happens in the movie. Sion was another system.”

“So, Morpheus completely wasted Neo’s time.”

“Maybe it is like this: You come out of the Matrix and then get out of the outer Matrix and so on. Each generation hands over the baton to the other. You need to find the absolute truth.”

“Absolute Truth? What is absolute truth? How can something be absolute?”

“Let me define it this way: The absolute truth is that the absolute truth exists.”

“How do you prove that this is the absolute truth and it is true?”

“You are right. Then let me redefine absolute truth: The absolute truth is that there exists an absolute truth for which no proof exists…”

“I had once thought on a similar problem. How do you prove a theorem whose statement is: This theorem cannot be proved.”

“Let’s see. If the statement is true, the theorem holds. If the statement is false, the theorem can be proved. That’s a contradiction. If the theorem is true, well, it can not be proved. Hmm…”

“Hmm…”

Proof For God

“Well, Ramanujam did not need a proof for the existence of God. He never bothered about rigorous proofs, even in mathematics.”

“Hmm…”

“However, many mathematicians did not believe in God. There is no proof.”

“You don’t need a proof to show that God exists. That is why it is called ‘faith’. Do you believe that George Bush exists?”

“Yes. I have not seen him. But there is an experiment to prove whether he exists or not, which might involve travelling to White House and verifying it.”

“I can give you an experiment which will establish that God exists. You need to be a good person. And after you die, you will be resurrected on the day of Judgement and you will get to meet him.”

“But I need a proof that God exists in this life time.”

“I think it would be unfair to add restrictions like this. What if I say that you cannot travel out of the country yet you need to establish the fact that George Bush exists?”

“I will meet him when he comes here.”

“When you die, you will have a concious thought. When you die and you are resurrected on the day of judgement, your next conscious thought will be in the presence of God.”

“But how do I see him here?”

“He is everywhere. He is omnipresent. Different people have different ways of talking about God. Let me stick to the Christian version. You cannot see God because you are sinful. God is sinless and therefore you cannot exist in his presence.”

“Hmm…”

“I have a problem with people asking for a proof for God. You can choose to believe in God or you can choose not to. But why do you need a proof? Isn’t it called ‘faith’?” (Pulls out his cellphone) “In the Bible, faith is defined as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

“Hardy conjectured that God does not exist and he believed his conjecture to be true.”

“Rene Descartes came up with a syllogism to show that the supernatural does exist.”

Origin of Mathematics

“The beauty of mathematics is that it works with axioms we have chosen. We choose some axioms which we believe to be true and use these axioms to prove other facts called theorems. In Physics, these basic axioms are hidden from us. We hypothesize laws to explain the universe.”

“Regardless of the question on whether mathematics would exist or not in platonic world, I think mathematics can be possible only as a result of our interaction with the universe.”

“That’s fine. We can have a philosophical debate over that. But here, I am explaining why we can rely on the mathematical proofs more than the laws of physics. The laws of physics can be modified or changed, when we discover something new which is not consistent with the laws.”

“I would like to conduct a psychological experiment. Say, we create a neural electronic interface in which the environment presented to the human is just a plain landscape with a grid on it. Will the person come up with numbers?”

“If there is a grid, there are squares.”

“I wanted a grid to give the sensation of movement. If there is no grid, he might not have the sense of motion.”

“And if there is motion, he would be able to know speed.”

“But will he be able to come up with numbers? I see two trees now. I count them. Then I see three of them. I add it and come up with addition. Will you be able to come up numbers in such a landscape?”

“Hmm….. This brings a question in my mind. Can there be a life where mathematics is different from ours? Where, they can predict the next prime intuitively? We have a limitation. We cannot distinguish between areas as easily as we do with lengths. For example, I have a grid of 2 X 5 stones and another grid of 4 X 3 stones. How will you say which one is bigger just by observing the area they cover?”

“Hmm…”

“I wonder how mathematics would have evolved if we had that ability. In many factorization problems, this ability can be used to solve some problems.”