More tools for the mind

How can a black hole absorb all light?

A black hole doesn’t just absorb light, it actually “traps” it due to its incredibly strong gravitational force. This gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even particles of light (photons), can escape once they get too close to the black hole. This point of no return is known as the event horizon.

The term “black hole” comes from this idea: these objects are literally black because they do not allow any light to escape and reflect back to an observer, and they are “holes” in the sense that anything that enters does not come back out.

The reason why a black hole’s gravity is so intense is due to the amount of mass compressed into an incredibly small space. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, mass warps the fabric of space and time around it. The more mass, the more warp. With a black hole, this warping becomes so intense that it forms a sort of pit, from which there is no escape, thus trapping light and everything else that falls into it.

However, it’s important to note that black holes don’t suck up everything in the universe. You have to get very close to a black hole to be trapped by its gravity. At the distance we are from black holes, their gravitational pull is no stronger than that of any other object of the same mass.

Light is indeed affected by gravity, even though it has no mass. This was one of the revolutionary insights of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, which describes gravity not as a force between two masses (as in Newton’s theory), but as the curvature of space and time caused by mass and energy.

So, in the context of general relativity, light follows what is called a geodesic path – the equivalent in curved spacetime of a straight line in flat spacetime. When light passes near a massive object, the spacetime is curved by that mass, and the light follows a path along that curvature. This is what we perceive as gravitational lensing – the bending of light by gravity.

Gravity, according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, is the result of how mass and energy distort space-time. This distortion creates what we feel as the force of gravity. In other words, a massive object like Earth distorts the space-time around it, and this distortion tells other objects moving nearby, including light, how to move within that space.

The classic analogy is the bowling ball on a trampoline. If you place a heavy bowling ball (representing the sun or a planet) on a trampoline, the trampoline fabric (representing space-time) bends or warps around the ball. If you then roll smaller balls (representing smaller planets or light) across the trampoline, they’ll move along the curves created by the bowling ball. This is a simplified explanation and the real situation is far more complex since it involves four dimensions (three of space and one of time), but it gives a good basic understanding.

But the ultimate nature of gravity and how it fits in with the other fundamental forces of the universe (like electromagnetism and the nuclear forces) is still a subject of ongoing research, and integrating gravity with quantum mechanics remains one of the great unsolved problems in theoretical physics.

10000 times makes the master

Repeating a task or thought 10,000 times can indeed lead to questioning your skills, as repetition often triggers introspection and self-evaluation. This process can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the context and individual’s mindset.

On one hand, repetition can help hone a skill or reinforce a concept, allowing you to become more proficient and confident in your abilities. This is the idea behind the popular “10,000-hour rule,” which suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in any field.

On the other hand, excessive repetition may also lead to self-doubt and anxiety, especially if you are not seeing the desired progress or improvement. This can contribute to a negative feedback loop, wherein you continually question your skills and, as a result, become less confident and less effective.

To maintain a healthy balance, it is essential to approach repetition with a growth mindset, focusing on learning and improvement rather than perfection. It can also be helpful to periodically step back, assess your progress, and adjust your approach as needed. Seeking feedback from others and incorporating different learning techniques can further facilitate skill development and help maintain a positive outlook on your abilities.

While there may not be studies specifically focusing on brain changes after repeating a task or learning something 10,000 times, there is a substantial body of research on the effects of practice and repetition on brain structure and function. These studies explore the concept of neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.

Studies that highlight the impact of practice and repetition on brain changes:

1. Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., & May, A. (2004). Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427(6972), 311-312. This study showed that extensive learning and practice of juggling led to increased gray matter in brain areas associated with processing and integration of visual motion.
2. Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403. This study found that London taxi drivers, who must learn and repeatedly use an extensive mental map of the city, have a larger posterior hippocampus, a brain region involved in spatial memory, compared to control subjects.
3. Scholz, J., Klein, M. C., Behrens, T. E., & Johansen-Berg, H. (2009). Training induces changes in white-matter architecture. Nature Neuroscience, 12(11), 1370-1371. This study demonstrated that six weeks of practicing a motor skill led to increased white matter integrity in the brain region connecting motor areas, which is involved in motor learning.

These studies emphasize that practice and repetition can indeed lead to significant brain changes, primarily through the process of neuroplasticity. As individuals engage in repetitive tasks or learning, their brains adapt and reorganize to support the acquisition and improvement of skills.

Where do we come from?

One of the central question of the mind are our origins and the question about creation vs evolution. Buddhism has an integrating spin on creation. Buddha, or Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, lived around the 5th century BCE, long before the concept of evolution as understood today was developed. The theory of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin in the 19th century CE, more than two millennia after the Buddha’s time.

The Buddha’s teachings are focused on the nature of suffering, its causes, and the path leading to its cessation, which is outlined in the Four Noble Truths. He also talked about the concept of impermanence (anicca), which suggests that all conditioned phenomena are constantly changing, and about dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), which explains how phenomena arise in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions.

While these concepts do embody a kind of “evolution” in terms of personal and spiritual development, they do not address biological evolution as we understand it today. Buddha did not speak on scientific matters the way we categorize them now; his teachings were primarily focused on the mind, ethical conduct, and the path to enlightenment.

Creation vs Evolution

Therefore, the Buddha had no specific views on the biological process of evolution. Any connections made between Buddhism and evolution theory would be interpretive and not based on explicit teachings from the Buddha.

The Buddha did not specifically address the creation of humans in a manner similar to creation stories found in many other religious texts. Buddhism generally does not focus on the creation of the world or humanity as a central religious question. Instead, Buddhism emphasizes the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth (samsara) and the law of karma, which refers to the moral law of cause and effect.

However, there are some Buddhist texts, like the Aggañña Sutta in the Pali Canon, that include mythic elements and provide a kind of creation story, although these are typically interpreted allegorically rather than literally. The Aggañña Sutta describes the world cycling through phases of formation and dissolution over vast eons, and it includes an account of how beings evolve in this process, eventually becoming human. This narrative explains how humans devolve from a state of ethereal, spiritual beings into corporeal, sense-based beings as a result of their actions and desires.

This story is often seen as a teaching device rather than a literal account of human origins. The Buddha used such stories to communicate moral teachings; the Aggañña Sutta, in particular, critiques caste distinctions prevalent in Indian society by suggesting that social status is not a divine endowment but a condition that changes according to one’s actions (karma).

In Buddhist cosmology, the universe and beings within it are in a constant state of flux and transition, and everything is subject to the principles of impermanence and interdependent origination. Humans, like all life forms, are part of this cycle, but Buddhism typically refrains from making definitive statements about the physical origins of humanity, focusing instead on the path to spiritual liberation.

So what is Time?

In Buddhist philosophy, the concept of time is indeed not strictly linear in the way we often think of it in Western contexts. The Buddhist view of time is cyclical, especially in terms of samsara—the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that beings are trapped in until they achieve enlightenment (nirvana).

The Buddha taught that the world itself goes through long periods of formation, existence, dissolution, and emptiness, known as the Maha Kalpa, which can be likened to an extremely vast cosmic cycle. Each of these phases lasts for inconceivable periods of time. Within this cosmological structure, beings are born into various states of existence according to their karma, the results of their actions from previous lives.

This cyclic understanding of time can be contrasted with a strictly linear time perspective where there is a single creation event, a continuous historical timeline, and perhaps an end point. The Buddhist cyclic concept of time doesn’t necessarily negate a linear progression within an individual’s life or within the known history of the world, but it places such progressions within a much broader and more complex framework that extends beyond a single lifetime or historical era.

Therefore, in Buddhism, the idea of linear time may apply to short-term, practical experiences, like the sequence of events in an individual’s life, but on a grander cosmic scale, time is seen as cyclical and without a singular beginning or end.

The cyclical view of the universe in some Buddhist cosmologies is reminiscent of the oscillating or cyclic model of the universe posited by certain interpretations within cosmology, where the universe undergoes an infinite sequence of big bangs and big crunches. In these models, each cycle is marked by a period of expansion (analogous to the big bang) followed by a contraction (potentially leading to a big crunch), and then another big bang, and so on.

In Buddhist cosmology, particularly as seen in texts like the Aggañña Sutta and cosmological descriptions found in other sutras, there is a similar sense of cyclical time and cosmic evolution. Worlds come into being, exist for a time, are destroyed, and then are empty before the process starts anew. This endless cycle is a fundamental aspect of samsara on a cosmic scale.

However, it’s important to note that these Buddhist concepts are religious and philosophical in nature, while the scientific models of an oscillating universe are based on physical theories and observations. The similarities are thematic and metaphorical rather than direct or scientific correlations.

Contemporary science discusses the cyclical universe in the context of physical cosmology, astrophysics, and quantum theory, while Buddhism discusses cyclical cosmology as part of a moral and soteriological framework, aimed at understanding the nature of existence and suffering in order to transcend it.

The cyclical models in both cases reflect a deep human intuition about the nature of time and existence—one that transcends individual cultures and historical periods, manifesting in both ancient wisdom traditions and cutting-edge scientific theories.

In Buddhist philosophy, the concept of time is both complex and fundamental to understanding the nature of existence. While the Buddha did not explicitly teach a detailed theory of time, his teachings imply a particular way of understanding time that is closely connected to the experience of sentient beings.

In the context of an individual’s lifetime, time in Buddhism is often considered to be:

1. Subjective: Time is largely understood as a mental construct based on change and the continuity of moments. Each moment leads to the next, creating the experience of a past, present, and future. However, these distinctions are seen as mental impositions rather than inherent qualities of reality.
2. Relative: Time is not absolute but is related to conditions and experiences. For instance, how time is perceived can vary greatly from one person to another and even for the same person in different states of mind or consciousness.
3. Dependent on Perception: Time and its passage are closely linked to perception. Without a perceiving consciousness, the concept of time as experienced by beings would not have relevance.
4. Connected to Impermanence: One of the core insights of the Buddha is the impermanence (anicca) of all things. This means that everything is subject to change and nothing remains the same from one moment to the next. This change is the very basis for the perception of time.

From a more absolute perspective, some schools of Buddhist thought, such as those influenced by the Mahayana tradition, posit that in ultimate reality (sunyata or emptiness), time is essentially an illusion — all distinctions we make between past, present, and future are constructs and have no independent, self-existing reality.

However, Buddhism does not deny the conventional reality of time. On the practical level, Buddhism recognizes and addresses the human experience within the framework of time, such as the importance of using one’s time wisely to engage in moral conduct, meditation, and the pursuit of wisdom.

Thus, while Buddhism might suggest that the ultimate nature of time is emptiness, devoid of inherent existence, it also teaches that within the conventional truth — the world as we experience it — time is very much a part of our lived reality and has significant practical implications for our lives and spiritual practice.

How do you explain our Moral Compass in the evolution theory?

Evolutionary theory offers explanations for human intuition and our moral compass based on natural selection and the social needs of human beings as a species. Here’s a general outline of how these features might be explained from an evolutionary standpoint:

1. Deep Human Intuition: Evolutionary psychologists suggest that certain intuitive capacities might have offered survival advantages and thus became hardwired into our brains. For example, pattern recognition allowed early humans to recognize the signs that indicated the presence of predators or the change of seasons. These intuitions have been honed over millennia and have become part of our cognitive toolkit, helping us to make rapid judgments and decisions that could have life-or-death consequences.
2. Moral Compass: The evolution of morality can be seen as a response to the advantages of living in social groups. For early humans, survival often required cooperation, and behaviors that promoted group cohesion were likely favored by natural selection. Over time, these social behaviors could become internalized as moral codes. Acts such as altruism and fairness would have helped to maintain the social structure, thereby offering a reproductive advantage to individuals who adhered to and enforced these behaviors.
   • Altruism: Kin selection theory, a part of evolutionary theory, suggests that altruistic behavior can evolve if it increases the likelihood of the genetic material being passed on, even if it’s not directly through individual reproduction. Helping close relatives can ensure that genes shared by those relatives are preserved, which could be the root of altruistic behavior.
   • Reciprocity: Reciprocal altruism refers to the practice of individuals helping each other with the expectation that such help will be returned in the future. This can also extend to more indirect forms of reciprocity within a community.
   • Group Selection: Some evolutionary theorists have suggested that groups with a higher proportion of cooperative members may outcompete other groups, leading to the natural selection of group-beneficial behaviors, although this view is more contentious.

These explanations are not without controversy and debate. While many scientists find evolutionary explanations for these human characteristics compelling, there are various interpretations and theories as to how exactly these traits evolved. Additionally, explaining human consciousness, intuition, and morality solely from an evolutionary perspective can be challenging due to their complexity and the influence of cultural factors.

Furthermore, evolutionary explanations do not necessarily account for all aspects of human intuition or morality, nor do they dismiss the potential roles of culture, individual learning, and conscious reasoning in shaping these human features. They are part of a larger dialogue that includes philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines.