What REALLY Matters

 My wife said about yesterday's post I didn't mention which pipe I was smoking.  My first few posts for this blog were written on the same day I posted, but now I write a day or two in advance, just in case something doesn't pop in my head the same day.  So, as I am writing this post, I am smoking a Nording pipe with the only bowl of Old Professor I will smoke today.  There.  I got the pipe in today.  

In some ways, I don't want this blog to be some kind of therapy session.  The world is full of interesting ideas.  I was in bed last night going through the list of YouTube videos that were on the site at the time.  I read some of the titles to my wife who asked if there weren't cheery titles for bedtime.  And she was right.  I don't want politics or religion before falling asleep, so I kept scrolling and didn't find much unless I wanted Angels to mend my soul, which I didn't really need.  

But I did come across one by a physicist whose name I don't recall who said that because of the findings of the James Web Space Telescope, he had been lying to us all along.  At least I found the description interesting, but all the theoretical physicists I have seen on these videos have been saying that the Telescope has caused physicists to rewrite the theories.  They found a black hole tens of millions the size of our sun.  But mote research and data crunching is needed to know more about it.

I like theoretical questions being asked about time and space.  I like the philosophical questions like whether the past still exists.   I enjoy asking the question as to whether I can go back in time and murder my great grandfather so I don't exist.  Theoretically speaking, could a person do this?  Can the past be altered to change our existence as we know it to be in the present?  Could someone go back in the past and murder Hitler in 1939, for example.  Could we have prevented WWII in some way?  So many what if books have been written about the past.  We just don't know.  

Or we could ask whether we could travel into the future to change our path in the present.  All these are theoretical questions that have no answers.  We just don't know.  I love pondering theorical questions about time travel, but the questions often give me little hope that time travel is possible.  Maybe we can visit either the past or future but have no power to change events.  But if we could time travel, do we need a code of ethics about altering events?  Some ate saying this about AI now.  

Could a robot change the course of human history?  We just don't know.  And given the limits of human knowledge, should robots be built with their own code of ethics of what they can or cannot do?  And who decides?  Some say our courts will limit what robots can do.  Can the creator of an AI program be sued?  There are just so many questions about laws, robotics, and time travel we just don't know.  And what if the course of human history is changed for the worst, and not for the better?

I am an ethicist, in my own way.  Maybe it is best the past or future never be altered.  I am fascinated by space and time as the questions are more often philosophical in nature.  I'm fascinated that both Voyagers I and II have traveled so far, but they need to travel for millions of years to reach the nearest star and by then we'll never know.  They are both dying as I write, yet they'll both keep going.  

I'm earth bound, and as much as I enjoy asking the questions, I leave it to science fiction to entertain me.  I love asking the questions as I smoke my pipe.  But I guess I'm more concerned about what my wife has for lunch.  We like to entertain ourselves with all these questions, but what I know is right now.  And it seems that matters most.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave